Nonetheless, I found Lemke’s article to be close to failing grade material. I agree that if I had turned in a paper like this one, I’d at the very least be given the paper back or given a D maximum. Mark Rathel easily dismantles Lemke’s paper, and of the other two responses, only Hatchet’s paper bothers to give any substance. Ken Gore’s very short submission seems to say, “I don’t know, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.”

Of these four papers, Rathel and Hatchet’s papers are the only ones offered even worth reading. I liked Hatchet’s and I hope more non-Calvinists behave as he did.

Local Baptist Associations have been an interesting place to police Calvinism in the SBC. I know of one DOM who has filtered all resume’s to the churches in his association that come from SBTS because it is a “Calvinist” school. We are all aware of the Arbuckle Baptist Association who made a motion to “take a stand against Reformed theology.” See here:

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c171/tomascol/SaturdayNovember102007.jpg

The denominational bureaucracy have done well to perpetuate antagonism against Calvinists in the SBC.

State papers give editorial license to from men like Mark Wingfield of The Western Recorder (KY) and The Baptist Standard (TX) to Lonnie Wilkey of the Baptist Reflector (TN) to Norman Jameson of The Biblical Recorder (NC) to freely express their dislike of Calvinism.

State conventions such as the Florida Baptist Convention under the direction of John Sullivan and the Southern Baptist Texas Convention (SBTC) under the direction of Don Cass have distributed to all pastors within their respective state conventions anti-Calvinistic material (in TX it was Roy Fish’s “The ‘C’ Word” sermon and in FL it was Vines’ “Baptist Battles”). The Alabama Baptist paper recently ran a multi-article series by Dr. James Leo Garrett which was a bit more fair though not entirely accurate. AL Baptist state convention, by the way, has also publicly recommended Fisher Humphreys book For God So Loved the World to pastors in AL wanting to understand Calvinism.

Needless to say, state conventions and local associations have continued to use their platform to push their antagonism against Calvinism on a regular basis.

On a convention level, we have heard speeches from men like Dick Lincoln, motions from John Connell, and ultimatums from the director of the Executive Committee Bill Harrell to deal with Calvinism once and for all in the SBC.

On an academic level, there have been articles by Drs. Malcolm Yarnell, Steve Lemke, and Elmer Towns which have attempted to debunk or discredit Baptist Calvinists.

On a presidential level, the last four presidents (Graham, Welch, Page, and Hunt) have all been outspoken in their anti-Calvinist positions.

And now we are holding conferences about Calvinism by non-Calvinists.

If these references are not an indication of how systemic the anti-Calvinist agenda is in the SBC, I can provide further documentation.

My guess is that it will not end, although some who have spearheaded the agenda have since backed off. Since the advent of blogging and the democratization of the Baptist voice, authorized outlets like state papers and the Baptist Press and bully pulpits and convention speeches are no longer immune to accountability.

The statistics and conclusions have been challenged (from 2005’s article) and I guess will need to be addressed again. I’ve got some statistics to present as well.

I will be there too.

You can contact me through my blog if you like.

Mark

thanks for the, always, thoughtful posts. I have not read for a few weeks, but wanted to let you know that Jerry Vines is hosting “The John 3:16″ Conference on November 6-7 at First Baptist, Woodstock, GA. When you look at conference info at http://www.jerryvines.com , it immediately starts the description by stating this will not be a “lets bash the Calvinists” conference. I am planning to attend in order to listen and learn, especially in light of the speakers: Jerry Vines, Paige Patterson, Richard Land, Steve Lemke and others. I am interested in hearing what will be said and even more so in events to follow.

Just a brief story. I recently met an evangelist that has traveled extensively throughout the southeast. He stated to me his concerns about Calvinism, and especially the argument that it kills evangelism. He, obviously, shared some personal examples. I stated to him that in the area in which I live there are close to 40 churches in the local Baptist Association. Our Associational Missionary stated to me his great concern of the lack of evangelistic zeal among the churches. I then asked the evangelist if he believed that Calvinism was the problem? The obvious answer was “no” because many church members in our association would probably not know much about Calvinism anyway. You are on task when you speak of the unfair characterizations made on Calvisnists.

Many blessings to you.