by Sandy » Wed Jul 03, 2013 6:43 am
I don't see anyone among William's list of SBC leaders who are Calvinist, or associated with Calvinism in the SBC, that would be a threat or deterrent to the evangelistic and missionary emphasis among Southern Baptists. It does not appear that the Calvinists in the SBC are of the same variety, or operate with the same intensity, as those who so drastically affected primitive Baptists.
The decline in baptisms is demographic. If you look at the state conventions, the baptism numbers are down in the deep South, and so is the membership and attendance. They've pretty much saturated that area among the homogeneous population that they reached in the 50's and 60's, and the churches are basically just swapping members as younger people move from traditional congregations to the megas. But outside of that area, most of the state conventions are seeing record baptism numbers, and growth in attendance, membership and total number of churches. The Philadelphia-New York corridor has seen a lot of new church plants in the past decade, and that work is showing up in the numbers in two state conventions. The upper Midwest, especially the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor, is seeing similar growth, as is the Northwest convention, and California. The numbers are smaller there, but that's where the action is. And I don't see Calvinism interfering with those efforts, in fact, a lot of those church planters are coming out of Southern.