Calvinists and traditionalists in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) agree on almost everything, except for the nature of election, the extent of the atonement, how people become Christians, and the meaning of original sin. Don’t take my word for it: “Truth, Trust, and Testimony in a Time of Tension,” a 2013 statement from the SBC’s Calvinism Advisory Committee, calls for unity in the face of “significant theological disagreement.”

That report came a year after more than 60 percent of SBC senior pastors in a 2012 LifeWay Research survey said they were concerned about the impact of Calvinism on their denomination. Baptist News Global recently quoted Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, saying to denomination members: “I know there are a fair number of you who think you are a Calvinist, but understand there is a denomination which represents that view. It’s called Presbyterian.”

Founders Ministries, an organization supporting Calvinist Baptists, offered not one but six responses to Patterson’s remarks. One of these—by Shawn Merithew—connected Patterson’s own “personal sacrifices in the battle for the Bible” during the conservative resurgence of the SBC with “the theological resurgence we are currently experiencing,” a resurgence that includes the theology of John Calvin. “We love you as our brother in Christ, Dr. Patterson,” Merithew wrote, “and we express to you our profound gratitude. We are not Presbyterians. We are Baptists, cut from the same doctrinal cloth as our forefathers.”

Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and past president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention, questions that: Calvinists, though certainly present, “have never been a majority in Baptist life,” he said. But Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School, previously wrote in Founders Journal, “For much of our history most Baptists adhered faithfully to the doctrines of grace as set forth in Pauline-Augustinian-Reformed theology.”

Criticized critic

Donald Trump got his presidency, but will Russell Moore keep his?

Russell Moore Mark Humphrey/AP

“When I went to the ballot box this year,” wrote ERLC President Moore in December, “for the first time in my life my conscience wouldn’t allow me to vote for either major party candidate.” To anyone who thought his pointed criticisms of Donald Trump included everyone who voted for him, Moore said, “If that’s what you heard me say, that was not at all my intention, and I apologize.”

Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas, lamented one potential consequence of Moore’s election-year rhetoric: “He’s going to have no access, basically, to President Trump,” The Wall Street Journal reported in a piece highlighting some Baptist pastors’ newfound hesitancy to fund the SBC and the ERLC. Rod Dreher, writing in The American Conservative, said Graham’s remark “inadvertently highlights” Moore’s “real value.” As someone outside the SBC, Dreher nevertheless identified Moore as “the most prominent and credible spokesman for small-o orthodox Christianity in the public square.”

But is that what Southern Baptists are paying for? In a postelection blog post, William F. Harrell, a former chair of the SBC’s executive committee, asked whether the ERLC had outlived its usefulness: “It was never meant to be a political voice which would promote a certain candidate or to discourage people from voting for another one. Somehow the ERLC has morphed into something that it was not meant to be.”

Dreher, though, saw Moore as fighting for the SBC’s own beliefs, as expressed in this 1998 resolution passed during the Clinton presidency: “We urge all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.” —J.B.