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The founders refers to the founding of the SBC, not antecedents. Like i said, this outfit is not going much farther in our Grand Old Convention.

The problem with the rabid Cals is that once people get to know them and their theology, they don't like them very much.

I remember a quote from Tony Campolo to the old SBC Forum in the early 1970's: "You're so busy down here in Dixie building a pure denomination that you will one day be able to hold your meetings in the front seat of a car." There may yet be some truth to that.

Interestingly, the two strands that fed Southern Baptists, the Charlestonian and the Sandy Creek traditions, were on opposite sides of the Calvinism question. The most Calvinist among early Baptist theologians was probably James Pettigrew Boyce from Charleston and later the first president of SBTS. The tension has always been there in Baptist history. The Founders claim Boyce while the revivalists were all in the Sandy Creek tradition.

Well, I look at it this way: 1) We know that John was the first Baptist, all the way back when Jesus was getting started, and we know John was a Calvinist, because hey, 2) Calvin himself was a John. Whatever happened in the 1600s is a day late and a dollar short.

I did have an aunt, Margie, my father's elder sister, who traced her Baptist roots all the way back to John. But she was a bit of a flake, religionwise. She even went Eddyite for a while. My Dad thought she was a loon, and sometimes said so. She was also responsible for getting Grandma convinced in 1960 that a vote for JFK (whom my dad supported) was a vote for the Catholics to take all the guns they were hoarding, that they bought with the Bingo rake-ins, out of their basements and take over the country.

The Secretary of Fremont Baptist was recently searching for a covenant, confession, or Statement of Faith of Fremont Baptist, to help the Search Committee as we try to find our next shepherd or overseer. She failed, but she did find the one whereby grocery store employees have to perjure themselves to remain in good standing. One solemnly consents not to engage in or assist the sale of alcoholic beverages. I imagine a lot of Georgia Baptists were between that sort of rock and a hard place vis-à-vis eternal security.

I started a thread on Church Covenants . Thought someone might be interested.

I don't think either of the Baptist history profs I had at Southwestern would have conceded the Founder's claim that all 293 delegates at the first SBC meeting in Augusta in 1945 were as staunch in their Calvinism as claimed. Granted, the Charleston tradition group would have dominated the meeting on the strength of their proximity by geography, with the meeting being made up mostly of Georgians and South Carolinians, but even many of those were "three and a half pointers" as the saying goes by that time. The Abstract of Principles of Southern Seminary is one of the early confessions adopted by Southern Baptists and it is compatibly Calvinist. I don't remember if Estep or McBeth indicates in their work that there were other confessions prior to that, but when the SBC actually got around to adopting a Baptist Faith and Message in 1925 or so, it was not completely Calvinist in the doctrine it expressed. It did state Southern Baptist belief in the Bible as "truth without any mixture of error" and infallibility of the scripture.

Until recently, attempts to bring about some sort of doctrinal "conformity," by which I mean attempts at denominational interpretation of doctrine, had always been resisted in the SBC. During the 50's and 60's, though there were some bumps and bruises, Southern Baptists commonly accepted the principle of cooperative missions over doctrinal conformity. But no more. That is one place that they can look to find at least one root cause of the steep decline in membership and attendance. With the conservative resurgence came a weakening and in some cases a loss of denominational loyalty in a segment of the convention that they couldn't reach and now likely won't get back.

Could help Thornton understand all this, get more insight.

But as my Daddy used to Preach, you can take a horse (mule) to water, but you can't make him drink!

And Tom Ascol, Jerry Vines for that matter could learn a lot from the collected essays of Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things, close as your nearest Barnes and Noble.

I wonder if Tom Ascol or anybody engaging him in this conversation has had his mind addled in the least by Worthen or Robinson