Books
- The Darkness and the Glory: His Cup and the Glory From Gethsemane to the Ascension by Greg Harris is now on sale at Amazon (Also available at GBI and Logos). If you still don’t have The Cup and the Glory: Lessons on Suffering and the Glory of God be sure to pick it up as well.
Culture
- Here is an interesting little map which looks a adoption as a global phenomenon.
Economics
- This chart speaks for itself.
- Reuters details the current employment situation, as this November American employers cut the most jobs since 1974, here.
SBC Life
- Last month Voddie Baucham posted a The SBC and Calvinism: A Personal Perspective it is well worth the read.
The John 3:16 Conference
- Phil Johnson has responded to David Allen’s misuse of his “Primer on hyper-Calvinism” at the John 3:16 Conference in his recent post “You May Be a Hyper-Calvinist If….”
Missio Dei 
Keith,
In case you hadn’t heard, David Allen has posted his response to Phil Johnson et al. at SBC Tomorrow. Here it is at http://peterlumpkins.typepad.com/peter_lumpkins/2008/12/sbc-calvinism-three-events-that-widened-the-divide-a-rejoinder-to-tom-ascol-by-david-allen.html
Todd,
Thanks for the link, I did not know about it, but I read it and thought it was interesting. Do you know where I can find that chart of theologians that they handed out at the conference? I would really love to see that.
Keith,
It is linked in Comment 5 under this article. I have taken issue with his assertion that Edwards was not a 5-point Calvinist and Tony Byrne and I shared some discussion about this around the 40’s and 50’s of the comments here.
As a side note, you may see the interaction with Peter Lumpkins, the author of SBC Tomorrow, is *interesting* to say the least. In his succeeding article, “Calvinism and the SBC: Temperature Lowering, Questions Remaining,” I again raised the point that many SBC Calvinists “heated responses to J316C are not just about soteriology or someones system being attacked” but instead focus on the fact that “J316C was a conference which was held in the church of the SBC President, led by a former SBC President, spoken at by both men, and sponsored by half of the SBC seminaries and a fourth SBC-affiliated school,” producing the conclusion that “it [was] a show of solidarity and force saying that Calvinism is not acceptable in the SBC;” thus making the statements of Dr. Allen and others who say they want ‘unity’ look more like lip-service than a genuine commitment.
After some disagreements between myself and Peter, his argument was called into question by both myself and a poster who disagreed with my initial conclusion, which brought about his final comment (#25). In this he raised the question, “You insinuate [that if the conference presenters really wanted unity that] they ‘would be more careful not to bear false witness against their brothers beliefs.’ Are you suggesting they carelessly bore false witness? Are you saying they lied?” I responded to this question by saying that, yes, I do believe they carelessly bore false witness against their “brothers” if noted by nothing else than the fact that they incessantly charged 5-point Calvinists with not requiring faith as man’s necessary response to Christ’s work (though certainly there was more as I have shown on my blog). Peter didn’t like this and so did not publish my comment, and then just recently he has informed me that “[he] trust[s] that [my] own site will be a better medium for [me] to issue, if any, future complaints” (i.e. he has blocked my posting to his site).
Needless to say, I think this sort of debate squelching is the rampant problem with the current views of SBC non-Calvinists. I sure hope for better interaction among people in the future, but at the moment am a little disappointed in someone who claims to be “eager to dialog with those not of [his own] spiritual DNA.”
Have you bought the Harris book??