A vision of the future?

In addition to the contest for the presidency of their denomination, Southern Baptists meeting in their national convention are also debating over Calvinism: Baptists debate dueling doctrines by Nancy McLaughlin Greensboro News-Record 06/13/06

Calvinism? Say what?

And does this have anything to do with politics?

Unfortunately, it probably does. The debate, as McLaughlin describes it and as one might guess from knowing it's about Calvinism, has to do with the Christian doctrine of "predestination" that is identified with John Calvin, the idea that God determined from eternity exactly whose souls would be saved and whose would not. McLaughlin's report describes the two sides in Greensboro this week as "Calvinists" and "Armenians", the latter refer to a doctrine and not to nationality or ethnicity:

In general, Calvinists believe Jesus died for the elect, a select group. Armenians believe he died for everyone. Both strains - and in more liberal and more conservative forms of each - are traditions of Baptist history.

The range of theological debate has become so constricted in the Southern Baptist Convention that it would be considered beyond the pale at an official event to discuss whether the Bible is literally the words of God exactly as dictated to the writers, versus the Bible as the inspired Word of God that might include some teensy errors of fact due to the human frailties of the actual writers.

In the America dreamed of by the Christian Dominionists, we could expect the acceptable (and legal!) range of debate to be something like this: Was George Bush predestined by God from the beginning of time to be our Dear Leader and the Scourge of the Heathen? Or was it through of the wisdom of the Christian Republican Party choosing him as our Dear Leader in obedience to God's will that he became the Scourge of the Heathen?

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