How to spot a Calvinist

WORLD editor-in-chief Les Sillars grew up attending Christian & Missionary Alliance churches in Alberta, Canada. When he traveled south in 1990 to attend Dallas Theological Seminary, he noticed that many of his stateside evangelical friends and classmates often greeted each other with a hug.

He remembers thinking, “What’s with all the hugging? It’s weird! I don’t want to do it.”

The conversation left me wondering if theological distinctions affect one’s approach to church-based hugging. Between Calvinists and other evangelicals, one difference is the most immediately obvious: avoidance of, or extreme ­discomfort with, the Standard Evangelical Side Hug, or “SESH,” a term I just made up and which appears nowhere in Scripture.

In researching this column, I learned that the anti-SESH phenomenon is pervasive among Reformed Christians but not limited to them. For example, WORLD executive news editor Lynde Langdon is Lutheran and married to a Lutheran pastor. “Do Lutherans hug?” I asked her.

“Definitely not,” she said. Lutherans, like Calvinists, tend to be more staid, descended as they are from sober German and Scandinavian stock. In fact, Lynde said, “If a Lutheran raises his hands in church, Jesus is coming back.”

Properly executed, a SESH is actually less invasive than the early Christian practice of the “holy kiss.” In making so bold a statement, I pause here to explain proper SESH protocol, which has never been written down before now. When executing a SESH, the hugger should:

1) Approach the huggee sideways, facing in the same direction.

2) Place one arm across the huggee’s back, no lower than the shoulder blades.

3) Place the hand of the hugging arm on the huggee’s opposite shoulder.

4) Administer three brief shoulder-pats. (Pat-pat-pat = PLA-TON-IC.)

Together, Paul and Peter mention the holy kiss—the philēmati hagiō or philēma agapēs—five times in the New Testament: in Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, and 1 Peter. While the holy kiss usually occurred between members of the same sex, the early Christian apologist Tertullian seemed to regard it as both relational and liturgical, regardless of gender.

“We are united in mind and soul,” he wrote of Christian fellowship. “We do not hesitate to share our earthly goods. All is common among us—except our wives. We call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister,’ and the kiss of peace seals our prayers.”

But history shows Tertullian was in the minority, and gradually the holy kiss fell out of use. Then somewhere along the way—probably during the Jesus Movement—evangelicals became a very huggy culture, and that was the culture Les Sillars encountered in Texas.

This causes consternation for some of my dear Calvinist friends, such as WORLD Digital executive editor Tim Lamer. Tim wants nothing whatsoever to do with the SESH. (I didn’t ask him; I just know.) The Tims of the Church are in tricky waters, navigating between their ethics and offending overeager Baptists and nondenoms who insist on hugging.

Since the Church is shot through with hug-zealots, I felt we should discuss evasive maneuvers. One tactic is to take refuge behind some physical object, such as a church pew. But danger lurks: If the hugger is undeterred, you could wind up trapped. A small child can serve as a human shield, but that might encourage the hugger even more.

Therefore, I heartily endorse what I am calling the Gandalfian Arm Thrust. One day in Washington, D.C., I ran into a prominent Calvinist scholar whom I knew but hadn’t seen for a while. Since I was saved in California, the ancestral land of touchy-feely Jesus People, I moved in to express my joy at seeing him with a chaste and friendly hug.

But with speed that seemed supernatural, the scholar thrust out his arm and blocked my way as powerfully as if he were thrusting down Gandalf’s staff: “You! Shall Not! Pass!”

We shook hands instead.

Still, some SESHers will find a way to hug you no matter what. If that happens, you can always choose to “do as the Romans do”—advice, it is said, that Ambrose gave Augustine regarding which day to fast “when in Rome.”

That’s the route Les Sillars chose. He didn’t like all the hugging, but he eventually got used to it.

“I can do it now,” he told me, smiling, “… if I have to.”