New Calvinism finds Southern Baptist fans

OWENSBORO, Ky. — Within the Southern Baptist Convention a controversy is brewing that's as old as the outgrowth of the Reformation.

Do your actions help determine your eternal salvation or is your life, death — and salvation — predestined by God?

"If you're a Christian, it's not because you found Jesus," said the Rev. Jamus Edwards, pastor for preaching and vision Pleasant Valley Community Church here. "Not only were you not looking for him, but you couldn't have looked for him. He came to look for his kids. The good news is you're the kind of person Jesus has come to save."

The New Calvinist movement, rooted in the doctrines of 16th-century Protestant reformer John Calvin, has gained a following in recent years among many young pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention and smaller denominations and church-planting groups.

Critics see New Calvinism as a ruthless approach to both salvation and human affairs — with God destining some people for eternal damnation and many to natural disasters, torture and other earthly miseries.

Pleasant Valley is a member of the state and national branches of the Southern Baptist Convention but was denied membership in the local affiliate because its views differ from those of most member churches, according to a report from the Daviess-McLean Baptist Association.

Besides some Southern Baptist circles, New Calvinism is notable in such church-planting and denominational groups as the Acts 29 Network, Sovereign Grace Ministries and the Presbyterian Church in America, which is separate from the larger Louisville, Ky.-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The most recent research on the topic by Southern Baptist agencies, from 2006 and 2007, found support for Calvinism among nearly 30 percent of pastors who were recent graduates of the denomination's six seminaries. That's triple the 10 percent support among Southern Baptist pastors overall.

"When we train pastors, we're not training them to be Calvinists," President Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville has said. But he said they often come to such beliefs in their studies.

"This is a generation that is having to face the full weight of a secular age," Mohler has said. "There is no way they are going to step into the pulpit without having their most basic questions answered."