Next week my denomination will meet, days after a special committee tasked with
seeking unity between Calvinists and non-Calvinists in the Southern Baptist
Convention issued a report to SBC Executive Committee President Frank Page. The
report concludes what I’ve long suspected: We have much more uniting us across
these questions than dividing us, and most of us are ready to love one another
and work together.
I think it’s important, though, to consider how both
the Calvinist and Arminian streams in Christian life bring important emphases
together when it comes to one of the most important questions of our time:
religious liberty.
James Leland was a Baptist evangelist in the
revolutionary era, who agitated Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to include
constitutional guarantees of religious liberty. He railed against the Anglican
state churches, with their restrictions on Gospel preaching. He did so for
theological reasons. At one time, he defined his theology as one that preaches
“the doctrines of sovereign grace with a little of what is called
Arminianism.”
I think both traditions, and the in-between place, have
some things to contribute to our defense of a free church in a free state. Read more
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