Why Calvinists and Arminians (and those in between) can unite for religious liberty

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