The Re-Sectarianization of the SBC - Calvinism Attacked

Ah, the Southern Baptist infighting may have just reached a new level in Florida...

From the Associated Baptist Press...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) -- Some Baptists in this state say the Florida Baptist Convention is intimidating and demonizing churches that believe in Calvinism -- and doing it with the churches' own money.

Convention executive director John Sullivan last week sent recordings of sermons by Sullivan's former pastor Jerry Vines to every church in the state, apparently at convention expense, that identify Calvinism as a threat to Baptist life.

A week earlier, Sullivan sent one of his associates to a rural Panhandle county to confront local pastors about alleged "conflict" created by Calvinists in the Holmes Baptist Association. Sullivan's emissary, Cecil Seagle, was at times "angry and mean-spirited" and tried to intimidate the pastors, according to the pastors' detailed notes from the meeting, warning that Calvinism "is dividing the Florida Convention and a split is almost inevitable."...........

Tom Ascol, the most prominent Calvinist in the 1 million-member state convention, blasted Sullivan's tactics in his blog. (www.founders.org/blog)

"This much is clear: The mailing of Dr. Vines' sermon on Calvinism is a clear indication that the executive director of the Florida Baptist Convention has an agenda to demonize the ministers and churches in our state who believe what the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention believed regarding the grace of God in salvation," wrote Ascol, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral and executive director of Founders Ministries, which promotes Calvinist or Reformed theology.

"This is a serious matter," he said. "Very serious."

In his sermon, Vines said Calvinism "kills" churches because it neglects evangelism by teaching that salvation is only for those whom God "elects," not for everyone. He said Calvinistic pastors tend to be divisive, dishonest and prone to "intellectual pride."

Read more from the SBC's Chief Calvinist Tom Ascol HERE.

Another outspoken Calvinist, Southern Seminary student Timmy Brister, reports on efforts by John Connell - a Savannah megachurch pastor - to remove all Calvinists from God's Country, er Georgia.

Who didn't see this fight brewing? Well, Bill Leonard did...

Back in 1993, Bill Leonard wrote:

Bringing Reformed theology back into mainstream SBC life may be a battle which will make the fundamentalist-moderate confrontation seem like a minor skirmish. A great many very conservative Southern Baptists are shocked when they learn that the founders believed that only an elect group of sinners, chosen before the foundation of the world will be saved.

Southern Baptists are beginning to reap what they have sown....

The Re-Sectarianization of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Militant Fundamentalists vs. Moderate Fundamentalists.

Maybe - just maybe - fundamentalists will finally realize that the source of "cooperative unity" in the SBC has never been doctrine and doctrine alone....