Historic Calvinism

Having read Luke McIntyre's open letter to Fred Phelps, there are a few points that should be mentioned. The first at the very outset being the ironic fact that Phelps himself was almost totally unknown outside the homosexual movement until recently. When I and my friends initiated Morals Week there at UNCG, it was widely rumored that we in the College Republican leadership were going to invite some guy we had never even heard of: Fred Phelps.

"Who is that?" we asked, not knowing that the whole story was purely to fire up campus homosexuals and their so-called "straight allies." Phelps' church consists largely of his own family and he has no influence with anybody. He's just an annoying, mean, and crude old man. But that's exactly why "gay rights activists" love him. Phelps fits the mold of the kind of enemy the homosexual movement would like to convince the public it's fighting. He is a half-crazed bigot with scarcely a drop of Christian love in his veins. He does not preach that Jesus Christ died to save sinners from the penalty and power of sin - he seems to rather God not bother. For him, sinners should just get what they deserve.

It also doesn't do justice to historic Calvinism to characterize it as sanctioning a slouchy, fatalistic well-God-controls-everything-so-why-bother attitude. That's the most serious gaffe of McIntyre's article. How can Luke appreciate the sovereign God of John Calvin that pardons sinners if he's busy bickering with the authority of the Judge? Luke's past columns show he makes no effort to hide that he sees as harmless the most brazen forms of perversity, i.e. homosexuality. Apart from divine intervention, his disdain for God's clear commandments will bar him from any humble appreciation of the grace and mercy that flows from that atonement that Christ's sacrifice made. That is a very grave concern!

Jason M. Crawford UNCG Alumnus