The choice to have Calvin Robinson replace Jeff Durbin at the Right Response Conference sparked controversy. Calvin Robinson was able to be platformed by Doug Wilson, Eschatology Matters, and the upcoming Clear Truth Media Conference with no controversy, despite his well-known Papist sympathies. However, after Calvin Robinson and Joel Webbon did a podcast debunking the term “Judeo-Christian,” it was announced that Robinson would replace Jeff Durbin as a speaker at the Right Response Conference titled Christ Is King: How To Defeat Trashworld.
At the time, the move was a bold step towards building a larger coalition than the niche Doug Wilson and James White fanbases. Robinson’s platform afforded. It coincided with my sentiment that the world is so much bigger than Doug Wilson or John MacArthur, and there are many more people to reach than the same audience that so many others are trying to target.
So when people who befriended Robinson weeks prior attacked the conference for hosting him with the stated reason that his Romanist views were suddenly untenable, Calvin Robinson was rightly upset at the turn of these people. Moreover, he became a lightning rod in the conflict between Doug Wilson, James White, and Joel Webbon, of which he was likely unaware.
Calvin Robinson’s response has been less than mature. He has fanned the flames of the discontentment against him, even with other speakers of the same conference. He took it a step further and called John Calvin a heretic, claiming that heretics can still be saved as a concession. Moreover, his understanding of history, be it British, American, or Anglican, is lacking. The Anglican faith is historically amenable to Calvinism, outside of ecclesiology. This is most obvious in the Book of Common Prayer.
Calvin Robinson has carved out a narrow theology with so few adherents, so naturally, his brand of Anglo-Catholocism has developed a little brother syndrome to Rome. But in the issuing conflict, Robinson made clear that he wants nothing to do with the attendees of the upcoming conference.
In extending an olive branch to sow peace, Calvin Robinson rejected both my offer and a whole swath of believers.
After the Trashworld conference I will no longer be engaging in this space. Although my public ministry is ecumenical, I will not be giving my time to followers of a tradition that does not recognise Christ in all Christians. I was unaware of how sectarian and purist the Reformed lot have become. For them to denounce my faith in the Lord and damn me to hell is too far. I want nothing to do with this sect or its bad fruit. There are millions of Christians out there who disagree with each other, but are still able to call each other brethren. My time will go to them.
Calvin boldly claimed that Reformed Baptists are sectarian which is ironic given that their church polity doesn’t allow them to be, unlike Rome.
As parting thoughts, for Calvin Robinson to revile the audience of the Right Response Conference is reason enough to cancel him. Cobelligerency must go both ways, and Calvin Robinson has shown that any favor extended to him will not be returned. And being a foreigner, his contempt for natives makes him an untenable ally.
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3 Responses
One thing I do agree with him is how the Reformed world sometimes looks like ignorant psychopaths saying Catholics believe that they are saved by their works, which no Catholic believes. They see any good work as coming from God’s grace, 100% His doing. So even when they see justification and sanctification as intertwined, it’s not their personal efforts attributing to either.
The Marian stuff is where they get weird, with the Lutherans tending to have a more balanced view as Reformed can sometimes trash Mary (Gabriel Hughes) which is the other side of the ditch.
Main problem with Calvin is he’s a foreigner, not of my tribe, so whatever he says holds no weight or importance for my people, as I’m not a boomer trying to virtue signal to everyone around me that I’m not racist.
If you want Christian Nationalism you will have to get over the idea that you can’t band together with “heretics.” Calvinism is a heresy to me, but so what? Calling Mary “Mother of God” is a heresy to me, but so what? We have to band together to defeat the Jews and atheists.
If you think that “Christian Nationalism” will be a Calvinist theocracy and put Arminians and Nestorians to death, then you’re just stupid. Its going to have to be a broad collision of many churches who oppose the Jews, LGBTQP+, and feminism. And unfortunately it will have to include Roman Catholics, even the weirdo Sedevacantists, and especially the Sedevacantists because nobody goes harder against the Jews than them.
As to the Book of Common Prayer, you said in your video on this that its very Calvinist; well, I don’t see Calvinism proper in it. Cranmer died 5 years before Jacob Arminius was born, and like 60 I think before the Synod of Dort, and Cranmer feels more Arminian than Calvinist. Cranmer is certinaly not Calvinist in the Synod of Dort sense of believing in TULIP. Cranmer is certainly Arminian in believing in unlimited atonement, that Christ died for all, and in the potential to lose your salvation (mentioned many times in the BCP really). True, he says in the BCP that predestination is a “sweet doctrine” and “full of comfort” but that’s because he is more like an Arminian that he says that; Calvinistic election is not “sweet” nor “full of comfort” because you cannot know whether you are elect until you die and find out in judgement in Calvinism. But in Arminianism, anyone who believes can assume themselves to be elect. The BCP baptismal services also boldly state after baptizing someone “seeing now brethren that his person is regenerated,” so take a stance that anyone who is baptized is regenerated thereby, which is plainly contrary to Calvinistic views on regeneration. So Anglicanism became very Calvinist eventually, but it was toward the end of the 1700s after they kicked Wesley out; Wesley was in line with Cranmer. There is some research (written by a woman and so easily dismissable) that claims that although Cranmer sounds Arminian or very very low Calvinist in his public writings, that his personal correspondence shows him to be more staunchly Calvinist; again, written by a woman, so who cares; but also, if true, it shows Cranmer understood that Calvinistic teaching put forth with bald face leads to a social contageon that will destroy the church and therefore even if one is a Calvinist in his heart he should teach as an Arminian (Arminius wasn’t born yet so he would lack that term though) and put forth an Arminian liturgy, which is what the BCP is. There is also this bold assumption in Cranmer and the BCP that when you pray to God for the grace to do a particular thing he automatically gives it, which Calvinists and even Augustine himself would find problematic (as Augustine taught he had to pray for 30 years “Lord give me the grace to live a chaste life” and God still didn’t). But in Cranmer its assumed all these prayers in the liturgy are effective, like in the confession “and grant that we may hereafter live a godly and sober life” and such like.