nuance

This is from a Christianity Today blog article on Johnny Hunt who has just been elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention:

It’s clear that Hunt is no fan of the growing Calvinist movement within the Southern Baptist Convention. He’s hosting a major conference to refute Calvinism at his church in November. But most of the candidates were not friendly to Calvinism, and Hunt has given indications that he’s not out to purge the denomination of Reformed influences.

“I am not overwhelmingly concerned about Calvinism,” Hunt told Baptist Press two weeks ago. “I am concerned about hyper-Calvinism, simply being defined as those that take election to the point that they feel that the Gospel should not even be shared with the whole world. … I trust that Calvinists, and those who love Jesus of other persuasions, would come together for the common cause of making Jesus Christ known to the nations. There is plenty of room for all of us in this Baptist family.”

It’s worth noting that Frank Page, the current SBC president was also highly critical of Calvinism (even writing a book titled Trouble with the Tulip) but had an irenic spirit that won him support among Calvinists and Arminians alike.

Things may have gone quite differently had Al Mohler, the Calvinist president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, stayed in the race (he suffered health complications).

Al, of course, is a leader of the growing Calvinistic resurgence in the SBC. You can hear him “debate” Calvinism with Paige Patterson of Southwestern Seminary here. It is a short and friendly exchange.

You can also read more about the Reformed movement in the SBC at the Founder’s blog.

I imagine I should expound on this in a later post, but I consider myself a post-Calvinistic Baptist. From this perspective, it’s interesting to watch the controversy in the SBC; it is indicative of the way the issue is handled among Baptist/evangelical laypeople in general. My hope is that there can be an intelligent move toward understanding and conversation from both sides, rather than more debates and “major conferences to refute Calvinism” (which is almost funny). The kind of fear-mongering that you encounter from born-and-bred Baptist Arminians is annoying; the kind of pompous zeal you encounter with converted Baptist Calvinists is equally annoying.

And though Johnny seems to be hospitable towards Calvinists within his communion, let’s hope he doesn’t follow the tactics of another Hunt; the aforementioned “major conference” worries me.

[Edit: Some more info about the convention, the election, and J. Hunt can be found here at Ed Stetzer's blog. Ed is a Southern Baptist missiologist who has done much to pioneer the way for emerging church planting.]