9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult #2 (hidden agendas)
[This series is "The 9 Marks of a Calvinist Cult" split up into smaller, individual posts.]
(Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!)
2. Hidden Agendas
Not only do Stealth Calvinist pastors get into churches using deception, but they come in with the hidden agenda to reform the church, to slowly drag it into Calvinism without the awareness of the people.
A post called "The Church Infected with Calvinism" shares this:
"This third scenario [of how Calvinism infects a church] is all too common. There are websites that instruct Calvinistic preachers who accept calls to non-Calvinistic churches on how to gradually 'acclimate' the church to Calvinism. I saw one website with a two-year, month-by-month plan for the stealth Calvinist to take a non-Calvinistic church into 'Reformed Theology' land. It's almost cult-like and certainly deceptive... While the Calvinistic pastor is crafting pulpit content to fortify his philosophical arguments, he will simultaneously be about the business of looking for and mentoring members of the congregation who are now open to Calvinistic logic. He'll slowly but surely transform as many of these folks as possible into full-blown Calvinists and, when possible, put them in places of church leadership, especially teaching positions... With the leadership of the church and a majority of the congregation now in league with him, the plan of transition is complete. The objectors, who are now in the minority, are powerless to reverse the Calvinistic course." [Yep, we've seen it happen.]
As that said, Calvinists have published plans for how to take over a church, such as the one I mentioned earlier from Founders Ministries ("Walking without Slipping") and this one from 9Marks ("A Roadmap for Church Reform"), both very Calvinist. (And FYI, I'm not picking on 9Marks with the title of my post. I'm picking on 9Marks and all other Calvinist organizations and Stealth Calvinists, too.)
These plans include suggestions like (my paraphrase) "Don't use words that will identify you as a Calvinist. Reform key people in the church first so that they can help reform others. Fill the church with Calvinist literature. Modify the membership list. Change the church's laws. Etc."
As the Founders Ministries' plan says: "Avoid terms such as Calvinism, reformed, doctrines of grace, particular redemption, etc. Most people will not know what you are talking about. Many that do will become inflamed against you. Teach your people the biblical truth of these doctrines without providing distracting labels for them."
Stealth Calvinists are most definitely and deliberately pushing Calvinism on the church, but they're hiding that they're doing it because they don't want pushback.
[There's even a section in the Founders Ministries' plan on the "suffering" a Calvinist pastor might face when trying to (stealthily) reform a church. To be fair, I'm sure they truly feel they have the best intentions. And they probably don't see themselves as deceptive. As MacArthur said, it was his spiritual "obligation." And so, in their minds, their tactics are okay, even God-blessed and God-glorifying. And so if they do get caught and if people pushback, they'll just view themselves as "suffering for the Lord, unfairly persecuted for the sake of the gospel" - as if we are the problem, and not their theology. Their hurt feelings are real - so be gentle - but everything gets messed up when bad theology slips into the church.]
And did you notice the name of the Founders Ministries' "book" that the "Walking Without Slipping" plan comes from?
"A Quiet Revolution." Quiet. Under the radar. Under our noses.
For those who still want to give Calvinist pastors the benefit of the doubt, who think they don't really have hidden agendas, here's a very telling, very revealing, sentence from the 9Marks article "Calvinist Pastors and Non-Calvinist Churches: Candidating, Pastoring, and Moving On" (an article that criticizes Christians for researching Calvinism on the internet for themselves):
"This doesn’t mean the internet has ruined the 'subversive' operations of Calvinist pastors sneaking into non-Calvinist churches."
Subversive operations? Sneaking into non-Calvinist churches?
[And of course they don't want Christians researching Calvinism on our own - because the more we learn without them looking over our shoulders, the more problems we see with their theology and the more questions and concerns we have, and the more we become pebbles in the Calvinist pastor's shoe. Flies in the ointment. Curd lumps in the cream (🎜that is what we are🎜). So it's no wonder the article encourages Christians who have concerns about Calvinism to seek answers from their local Calvinist pastor, instead of going to outside sources. "Hey snake-oil salesman, does your snake-oil work?" "Hey fox, would you guard our henhouse?" I examine that article more in-depth here: A Calvinist pastor has problems with Christians who research Calvinism.]
9Marks even published an article for pastors about how to subliminally incorporate more of Calvinism's five points into their Sunday services ("The Five Points of Calvinism and Your Church's Sunday Meeting"). It says "it’s vital for those of us who hold to a reformed or 'Calvinistic' doctrine of salvation to consider if our corporate worship reflects our professed soteriology. Have the earth-shattering doctrines of grace sufficiently steeped into our services?" And then it gives suggestions for how to do this, such as keeping the lights on and being careful what songs you sing. It's not that these suggestions are necessarily bad, in and of themselves. It's that they're used strategically, with an agenda, to smother you with and funnel you to the 5 points of TULIP. It just goes to show how thoughtful and careful Calvinists are to weave Calvinism in everywhere, any chance they get, any way they can.
[The one that bothers me most, though, is the "Total Depravity" one: "Human beings are 'inclined to evil, dead in their hearts, and slaves to sin ... neither willing nor able to return to God' (Canons of Dort, III.3; see Ps 51:5, Eph 2:1–3). If we believe this is true, we should declare it in our services. God is glorified when we help believers appreciate the depth of the depravity from which we’ve been rescued." Our Calvinist pastor must have read this because he was quite heavy-handed in constantly hammering home how depraved we humans always are. Yes, we get it, we're terrible! It felt like one depravity-beating after another. (And notice how the author of that article references the Canons of Dort as his primary source for his points, filtering verses through it.)]
This post from Wartburg Watch - "How to figure out if your non-Calvinist or non-Authoritarian church is being taken over" - shares one person's experience of a stealth Calvinist take-over: "A few years ago, I realized that a church I attended was being co opted by the Calvinistas. I knew that the majority of the members were not Calvinists but quickly discovered that the newest elders of the church were and had planned to hire a New Calvinist pastor. At the meet and greet for the new pastor, they asked us to submit, in writing, questions for the soon to be lead pastor. All of the questions were asked except for mine because 'they ran out of time.' My question was simply: Are you a Calvinist?... Sadly, these new elders and some former pastors did not inform the congregation that their theology was about to change. This sort of gamesmanship is despicable for so-called Christians."
[And for a few more stories of Calvinism sneaking into and taking over churches, see Stealth Calvinism in Oklahoma (video) and How the Young, Restless, and Reformed Split My Church (video) and Church Takeover Success Using Strategies from the Calvinista Playbook and Spiritual Abuse in EFCA: Review of Once an Insider by Amanda Farmer.]
John Piper, in his article "TULIP: Introduction," even admits this about a church he pastored: "Up until that point in the life of our church — I had been there for five years — we had not made any issue at all about 'so called' Calvinism. ["So-called"... as if it's not really what it is!] We hadn’t made any issue at all of this controversial thing. I had just tried to be faithful to Biblical texts because I think that’s what wins the confidence of God’s people. They don’t want to hear a system mainly, they want to hear Bible mainly, which is what they ought to mainly hear. I tried to just win their trust to say, 'I’m a Bible man. I’m not a system man, mainly.' But after five years, it seemed like the time was right to talk about those verses."
[And did you notice how he added "mainly" to "I'm not a system man"? He is definitely a system man, all Calvinists are. (What do you think those big "systematic theology" books are for? To lead you systematically from one point of theirs to another so that you reach the conclusions they want you to reach.) But adding "mainly" makes "I'm not a system man" feel less of a lie.
And I have a question: Is Piper really winning anything or anyone if it's all been predestined by God anyway? If the game is rigged and the outcome already decided, is winning really winning? And besides, if Calvinism repelled people, wouldn't that be equally predestined by God, for His glory? So why fight it? And if Calvinism is such godly truth and so God-glorifying, shouldn't they be shouting it from the rooftops? Why hide it? Doesn't make sense. And it contradicts their own views.]
Going back to the other John Piper article in point #1, Piper says, "But that label ["Calvinist"] is not nearly as useful as telling people what you actually believe! So forget the label... If they say, “Are you a Calvinist?” say, “You decide. Here is what I believe...”.
And notice what he writes near the start of article: "We are Christians... In other words, we are Calvinists."
And according to Calvinist A.W. Pink (in his Doctrine of Election): "those who continue to cavil against [Calvinism] [who make petty or unnecessary objections against it] and steadfastly refuse any part of the truth, are not entitled to be regarded as Christians." [Well, then, good thing our objections aren't petty or unnecessary!]
In the Calvinist's eyes, Calvinism is Christianity. Christianity is Calvinism. So they will always be teaching Calvinism and will seriously doubt the salvation of those who don't accept it.
Now here's a Founder's Ministries article by Calvinist Tom Ascol that really irks me - and alarms me. And it should alarm the Church as well. It's called "Dishonest Calvinists (?) and the call for integrity," and it's basically just a defense of Calvinist pastors hiding their Calvinism, and it pushes the blame on us - not the Calvinism - for any disturbance that Calvinism causes in a church. Here are some things from that article [my comments are in italics and brackets]:
"Does anyone else find it troubling to hear what sounds like a growing chorus of criticism directed toward Calvinistic pastors who run into difficulties when trying to shepherd their congregations toward greater spiritual health? [The "difficulty" comes because Calvinists are stealthily and strategically taking over churches, and yet Ascol reframes it as "shepherding their congregations toward greater spiritual health". Now, of course, I don't doubt that's what Calvinists think they're doing... but therein lies the problem!] Mixed in with the criticism is a charge that such men have been dishonest in the way they have gone into their churches because they did not make an issue of Calvinism from the very outset. Perhaps this can be legitimately said for a few, but they would be the exceptions and not the norm. Why, then, all the criticism?"
Farther down the article, Ascol defends Calvinist Al Mohler (president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, providing pastors to SBC churches) who was accused of "destroying the seminary, wounding the body of Christ and hijacking one of our prized institutions in an attempt to push his Calvinistic agenda". He says that "Al Mohler has no agenda to promote five-point Calvinism. What he obviously is doing, however, is restoring doctrinal and ethical integrity..." [So once again, "pushing Calvinism" is reframed as "restoring doctrinal and ethical integrity." If this is how they see it, do you think they'll see any reason to stop or to be more upfront about their Calvinist agenda to take over churches? *And see below what Mohler himself says about Calvinism.]
Ascol goes on to say that it's not Calvinism that's causing the problem in the church, but it's that the church is full of godless people who resent the Bible's teachings: "... in the great majority of cases that I know about where Calvinistic pastors have encountered turmoil in their efforts to preach and teach God’s Word, it was not because of Calvinism. It was because of biblical Christianity. Calvinism tends to be the tail on which the donkey of controversy is pinned, but the real culprit is the erosion of real biblical Christianity that has occurred over the last generation or more in many of our churches... [And so therefore] if a man tries to introduce a biblical ministry into such a situation does it not stand to reason that there might indeed be some controversy along the way? When the Word of God begins to be taught and followed, those who have no appetite for it–and who have been not only allowed but encouraged to live happily in the church without it–will inevitably feel threatened, deceived and even 'lied to' by the preacher. The reason is not Calvinism, but because of the strong reaction of godlessness to biblical Christianity..." [In their eyes, Calvinism equals biblical Christianity. So, according to them, if we reject Calvinism, we reject biblical Christianity, which means we're godless. Can you see the kind of power this will give them over the church and its members, the accusations they can lobby at anyone who disagrees with them or tries to stop them? And as you'll see under #9 (about "authoritarian narcissists") in this series, Calvinist 9Marks' churches can remove you if you deny "Christian doctrine" - their Calvinist doctrines disguised as "Christian doctrine."]
As Ascol says in another Founder's Ministry article, regarding the recent pushback Calvinist pastors are facing: "Calvinism is being made the whipping boy for many of the serious problems that are coming to light in denominational entities as well as local churches." [See? Calvinism's not the problem. Poor Calvinism is being unfairly persecuted for the sins of others.]
So, there you have it, fellow non-Calvinists! The problem is not that Calvinist preachers are stealthily and strategically taking over our churches with bad theology; it's that we are godless and hate God's Word.
Wow, I had no clue that we godless sheeple are such a cancer in the church, that we're the problem.
Thanks, Ascol, for clearing that up for us.
(Go ahead, try and convince me that this isn't the kind of attitude and tactics that go with authoritarian personalities, the "don't question me, I'm in charge, I have the truth so you all just shut up and listen, and those who disagree with me can leave" types.)
And finally, he goes on to say that pushing Calvinism is really just teaching Christianity, trying to justify why a Calvinist pastor can and should hide their Calvinism (their "theological system"): "Should not that fact, coupled with the wisdom that recognizes that the proper goal of a genuinely Reformed ministry is not to 'Calvinize' a church but to 'Christianize' it more and more, lead a man who candidates for a church to emphasize his commitment to biblical Christianity more than to a theological system? This is not dishonesty. It is wisdom...
I am not at all suggesting that a pastoral candidate refuse to speak plainly with a search committee or church regarding theological commitments. [Umm, yes, you are. We're not stupid.] But the reality is that most churches–including their search committees–are not very equipped to have that kind of conversation. [So, once again, the problem is us, not them. And these Calvinists, with their superior intellect, don't really have a very high view of the rest of us, do they? Of our ability to understand Scripture without their help?] Should the details of Calvinism... be spelled out anyway, even though there is no understanding of the language, categories or constructs? [So notice how he starts with (paraphrased) "I'm not saying don't be upfront about your theological views with search committees," but then he immediately goes into reasons why Calvinists shouldn't be upfront with their Calvinism with search committees. Liar, liar, pants on fire!]
Or would it be wiser to stick with biblical categories, language and constructs? [Translation: "So don't bother to explain what Calvinism is because they won't get it anyway. Just hide it, cloaking it in words and verses from the Bible." Okay, wait, I want to stop right here a moment and point something out: If the vast majority of us Christians, us non-Calvinists, have no understanding of the language and constructs of Calvinism, then isn't the most likely reason because IT'S NOT CLEARLY TAUGHT IN THE BIBLE! In a backhanded way, Ascol is admitting that we don't find Calvinism clearly in the Bible, that we have to be educated into it. That's telling! And alarming!]
When a man does the latter [hides his Calvinism in biblical language] for the purpose of communicating as clearly as he can [yet not clear enough to actually admit he's a Calvinist!] I find it disheartening to hear Southern Baptist leaders criticize him as being dishonest." [He's got a funny view of what's honest and what's dishonest, if you ask me. And apparently, acting with integrity doesn't mean being upfront with your Calvinism; it just means continuing to push Calvinism but cloaked in more acceptable language.]
Clearly, to Calvinists, if we disagree with them, we disagree with God, with the truth, with biblical Christianity. How long do you think non-Calvinists can survive under a Calvinist pastor who thinks like this? And do you really think any good Calvinist pastor would not be all about promoting Calvinism, if this is how they view Calvinism, that it's "biblical Christianity" itself?
[*See what Mohler himself says about Calvinism in the clip from The Wartburg Watch's "Church Takeover Success Using Strategies from the Calvinista Playbook": "If you're a theologically minded, deeply convictional young evangelical, if you're committed to the Gospel and you want to see the nations rejoice in the name of Christ, if you want to see Gospel built and structured and committed churches, your theology is just gonna end up basically being Reformed, basically being something like this New Calvinism... There just are not options out there [besides Calvinism] and that's something that I think frustrates some people. But when I'm asked about the New Calvinism, I'm gonna say, 'well, just basically where else are they gonna go?'... [pastors] are gonna have to [side with Calvinism] if they're gonna preach and teach the truth."
Clearly, to Mohler, it's Calvinism or nothing. Calvinism is "the truth." And so if we wanna believe the Bible and be committed to the gospel, then we have no choice but to be a Calvinist, according to Mohler.
And some things worth noting about Mohler from a Christianity Today article called "The Reformer":
1. Within "a year or two" of Mohler becoming president, his "intention to steer Southern seminary in a Reformed direction became clear."
2. Non-Calvinists "indicted him as the main carrier of a theology they viewed as an alien spore in SBC life." But by then, it was too late. Calvinism was seeping out all over the place, and so no one could prove that he and his seminary were responsible for its spread.
3. Within three years of his leadership, almost all faculty and administration had turned-over completely. Through his efforts to control the hiring and tenure processes, to force resignations, to offer appealing retirement packages, and to plant students spies in classrooms to report back what everyone was saying, Mohler was eventually able to replace staff with only those who agreed with "his brand of Reformed theology," among other issues. (But some faculty claim that Mohler allows "diversity" because they allow four-point Calvinists to work there too.)
4. Because of his influence, every year there are more and more Calvinists graduating from the seminary and filling pulpits across the country, preaching Mohler's brand of Reformed theology.
5. Mohler says that non-Calvinist conservatives "are not aware of the basic structures of thought, rightly described as Reformed, that are necessary to protect the very gospel they insist is to be eagerly shared." Necessary to protect the gospel! And according to the author of the article, Mohler is "elitist... he is certain he has the truth" and so those who disagree with him "simply are not initiated into the systematic splendor of Reformed thought."
Only the most naive people - or deliberately deceptive ones who have a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" agenda (as this Baptist News Global article says, "Mohler's influence also is responsible for mainstreaming another once-fringe organization, Founders Ministries [Ascol!]... a group of Southern Baptists who adhere to... Calvinism.") - would say that a guy who believes like Mohler does, in the authority position he is in, "has no agenda to promote five-point Calvinism". (Oh, wait... my mistake... I forgot that he allows four-point Calvinism too, if he has to. I stand corrected!)
Once again, to a Calvinist, Calvinism is Christianity. Christianity is Calvinism. So they will always be teaching Calvinism. But if they think you'll resist, they'll simply tear off the label so that you can't tell what they're spoon-feeding you.
