What can be done and what cannot be done on the Calvinist/Traditionalist issue

Most Southern Baptists are pleased with the outbreak of harmony, unity, and comity between convention Calvinists and Traditionalists. Only those brethren who in a screwball sort of way, think that a lack of conflict somehow signals a lack of denominational health are displeased with the Calvinist/Traditionalist convention actions and post-convention results.

I'm pleased.  I like peace and harmony.

I'm optimistic. I like for the brethren and sistren to get along and join together in pooling our considerable resources in the important tasks of reaching North America and the word for Christ.

But I'm also realistic. There are those among us who make up both tails of the SBC C/T Bell Curve. These would be the militant Calvinists who believe that anything less than the fully formed five points is not just wrong but heretical and who seek to correct such heresy in churches or anywhere else it is found. These would also be the hard-nosed and hard headed Traditionalists who think that we are in a death struggle against Calvinists in our churches and entities and that Traditionalists need to fight and win every battle. 

What can be done:

1. SBC entity leaders like Frank Page, Al Mohler, Danny Akin, Paige Patterson et al as well as leaders who are not SBC employees like Tom Ascol and Eric Hankins need to maintain a cooperative, irenic posture toward each other and also to be conscious of the reality that Southern Baptists will be watching very closely both their words and actions. After all, we are on the same side.

2.  Calvinistic entity heads should watch their employment structure. It is not helpful to give the perception that we are dividing up the seminaries into those that are Calvinistic and those that are Traditionalistic. I offer Danny Akin's recent words that Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary will be a Calvinist seminary "over [his] dead body" and his invitation for any who think it is to come to the campus, at SEBTS' expense, and see for themselves.

3. Those who have influence, especially among the Calvinists at the seminaries, should publicly and frequently be heard counseling the young Calvinistic theologs to be open and transparent in their conversations with churches where they are potential staff candidates.

What cannot be done:

1. The extremists will not be silenced, especially on the blogs, but they can be isolated and ignored.

2. Some churches have, and will likely continue, to negatively designate their Cooperative Program giving in order to defund some entities, namely Southern and Southeaster seminaries. While there is nothing new about designating giving and while it is a legitimate option for any local church, sensible voices can respond that this is neither helpful nor necessary.

3. We will not be able to prevent future candidates for SBC offices and entity CEO positions from being seen, and judged by some, as Calvinist or Traditionalist.

I still like some things about Calvinists and think that in various ways they are helpful in the SBC and I am still wary about some things concerning Calvinists, but I am more optimistic about the future than I have been.

Did you notice the Calvinist team's only pragmatic recommendation?

Frank Page did a good job with his Calvinist team. He initiated the process, picked the people, and marshaled the group to a positive conclusion. I give him credit and appreciate his leadership.

At the SBC meeting this week it has been love and kisses all around among the Calvinists, non-Calvinists, and fence sitters. Al Mohler and Eric Hankins, the former is the SBC's leading Calvinist warrior and the latter has acquired by default the lead position for Traditionalists, are now BFFs.

Mohler will quickly show us if he is serious about moderating his words if not his Calvinistic views. Check his widely read blog for backsliding in coming months and more importantly, watch his hiring decisions.

One wonders if the CEO of our flagship seminary will even deign to acknowledge that some churches are designating around Southern Seminary and some Associational Missionaries and other Southern Baptists recommend not hiring SBTS graduates because of the perception of aggressive Calvinistic views?

Albert, this would be a good time for a chapel message that takes Danny Akins' statement, "Southeastern Seminary will be a Calvinist seminary over my dead body," or similar. And you might take time to bear down on your neophyte theologian students about being too cocksure and militant about Johannes Calvinus to the exclusion of Jesus Christ. That will preach well and also be received well around the SBC.

But, brethren, did you notice the repetition of the single specific and directed, pragmatic recommendation of the Calvinist study team? Here it is:

In order to prevent the rising incidence of theological conflict in the churches, we should expect all candidates for ministry positions in the local church to be fully candid and forthcoming about all matters of faith and doctrine, even as we call upon pulpit and staff search committees to be fully candid and forthcoming about their congregation and its expectations.

Translation: Calvinist candidates should start being open and transparent. There is no rash of stealth Traditionalists sneaking into churches and tearing them up.

Paige Patterson, yesterday on the panel:

"Just be honest. Be forthright, up front [about beliefs on Calvinism]," Patterson said, speaking to those who submit resumes for church positions. "

If I stop hearing stories about stealth Calvinists, confused or uninformed church search committees, and resultant problems of Calvinistic pastors implementing their vision and theology in churches who did not see it coming, then I can say progress is being made.

To balance the above, I will acknowledge that Frank Page stated that he sees "a level of 'anti-Calvinism' in the convention 'that frightens me.'" Likely, he means the calls for quotas and the reality of churches now designating their giving around the two perceived Calvinistic seminaries, SBTS and SEBTS.

But, let's give our Chief Encouraging Officer credit here. Frank Page showed good instincts, solid leadership, and an impressive amount of persuasive power.

Good work, Frank.

What major SBC meeting was held in Nashville this week?

Er, ah...LifeWay had a Christmas sale? Frank Page played Santa Claus for the Executive Committee's office party?

Nope.

What happened was that several upper echelon SBC leaders met with several Baptist World Alliance reps.

You'll find this news, not at Baptist Press, but at Associated Baptist Press:
BWA, SBC leaders meet for first time since 2004.

From ABP:

Initiated by BWA General Secretary Neville Callam, the joint meeting was part of a commitment made in 2004 for continued dialogue between the two groups.

Joining Callam in the BWA delegation were John Upton, current BWA president and executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia; George Bullard, general secretary of the North American Baptist Fellowship; and Sam Chaise, general secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries.

Representing Southern Baptists were SBC President Bryant Wright; Frank Page, president of the SBC Executive Committee; Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Page, Patterson, Wright & Mohler in the same room with BWA president et al? Sounds like a newsworthy item to me.

One might have figured that the SBC, after spending several hundred thousand on Bobby Welch's Global Ambassador position for a few years, might reassess how we relate to the world's major Baptist body. I've been one who thinks that the SBC ought to have some relationship with them. This Global Ambassador stuff through the peripatetic Welch wasn't much of a substitute, though no fault of Welch's.

They met. They had a conversation. Good.

Maybe BP will stir themselves up enough to do a piece on it...tomorrow...maybe this week...maybe this year...maybe next year?

The Epiphany of Perry, the Shining Evangelical Christian Knight

What might get Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s Richard Land together in the same room with female megapreacher Joyce Meyer and, ugh, Kenneth Copeland?

Why, a common political purpose, I suppose – the election of Rick Perry who is beginning to look like the choice of the Religious Right for the 2012 presidential election.

Ex-SBCer James Robison, who fell from SBC grace years ago, summoned our two big guns (really big guns in Hatari Patterson’s case) to meet with Meyer, Copeland, David Barton, Ruth Graham and about 75 others at his HQ in Euless, TX. They had a little confab on saving the nation.

Alas, Plodder wasn’t invited to be among the Christian Worthies. I'll try to cope.

Reported from Robison’s spirituo-political summit:

It’s not about politics but about revival.

It’s not about ‘who’ but ‘what.’

Purely spiritual.

Yeah, sure. It's political. It's about who. It's partly spiritual.

Participants were reported to hunger and thirst for their Shining Christian Knight, presumably Perry, to use the campaign to get the nation to pray and straighten up and fix all these messes.

I'm deep, deep into cynicism here but the more I read the less I like the concept of another political messiah like the one the country elected in 2008: Obama, the Anointed One.

Bah humbug. I want a president who can run the country. I don't want a president who thinks he is Moses, or, to give him the benefit of the doubt, one whom our supposed spiritual leaders thinks is Moses.

Am I too far afield in asserting that there is no political salvation to the nation’s problems?

Is it heresy to state that God doesn’t need politicians to invoke revival and spiritual awakening?

Isn't it more likely that they will mess it up anyway?

Hey, Rick! Run for office. Throw your sombrero in the ring. I'll vote for you if you're the Republican nominee. Go for it. But don’t let them talk you into hijacking God as your running mate.

Report of the meeting of Robison's Evangelical Oligarchy may be found here:

Did the road toward the White House begin in Euless?

Another reason to thank God for the Conservative Resurgence…

…as if any were needed a quarter century after the battle was concluded. But, why not remind some of our younger, thirtysomething, goateed, spike-haired, shirttail brethren about the kind of Southern Baptist Convention they would have if not for Adrian Rogers, Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, and the vast host of lesser brethren who showed up in the 1980s to vote. A reminder once a quarter would be enough, I think.

If there were no Conservative Resurgence, Robert Parham would probably be the leading denominational ethics schoolmarm. Read his piece, Uncut Tax Movement Is Morally Righteous

Parham, unsurprisingly, heartily endorses a British tax increase program commended below by a leader of a mirror movement in the US:

"The message is simple – before you sacrifice hard-working public sector employee's [sic] jobs and necessary public programs, why not first make the richest of the rich pay their fair share in taxes?" Gibson told The Guardian about the motives of US Uncut.

Parham adds, and don't fail to note the abundance of snarl and scare words, that:

…unless we – the people – insist on corporations paying for the right to live in and benefit from good societies, then good societies will be at risk for dirty water, unclean air, unregulated food, substandard public education, predatory financial institutions, health care only for the those who can afford it, collapsing infrastructures like roads and bridges, cutbacks in fire and police protection.

Were there to have been no CR, we would in the SBC be paying to receive a steady diet of the wonderful Christian doctrine of government control of private businesses for the purpose of wealth redistribution.

To be fair, tax policy and Christian ethics is a legitimate issue. The devil is in the details and in the degree of taxation and government regulation but when religious liberals start talking about a “fair share” of taxes, one would be wise to reach for their pocketbook – someone’s after their hard-earned money. When religious liberals think of helping the poor, saving jobs, and providing citizens with health care, their default position is to compel the government to use coercion to take, by force, the earnings of ordinary working citizens so that they can assuage their own consciences.

I recommend that Parham take what he has earned himself and give to those he feels needs it more than he does. I will do the same.

I’m just glad we aren’t paying to hear this stuff with our offering plate dollars.

Addendum: In contrast to Parham, I believe that Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, makes a much better case for religious liberty than does what we SBCers do pay for. Sample of Walker's clear defense of religious liberty.