White Calvinist theology has gone to hell

“They’re going to hell,” declared Founders Ministry president and Southern Baptist pastor Tom Ascol. In a scene reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey’s “You Get a Car” giveaway, Ascol proclaimed, “Kamala Harris is going to hell, … (Anne) Branigin is going to hell, Jake Tapper is going to hell, if they think what they’re promoting is actually right, good and true.”

Ascol’s original comments were made in 2021 about Vice President Harris and the journalists who reported on his condemnation of her. As part of that controversy, Jared Longshore, Ascol’s co-host on the podcast “The Sword and the Trowel,” accused Branigin, a journalist, and Harris of having “the same spirit as the historic Jezebel.”

Now, Ascol has renewed the debate with an Aug. 15 post that declares: “I strongly rebuke Dwight McKissic & all other Christian leaders who think the statement that I made then is not eternally true. Kamala Harris is going to hell without Christ.”

McKissic is pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas. He recently joined the Evangelicals for Harris movement, rejecting the Christian nationalism and lies of Donald Trump and his hold on the Republican Party.

Ascol illustrates the penchant white Calvinist men like him have for declaring anyone they disagree with is going to hell. And they do believe in a literal hell of burning fire, so this is not a light statement.

The spirit of Jezebel

In 2021 and now, these accusations against a prominent Black woman are tied to historically racist language spewed by conservative white pastors. To them, Harris is a Jezebel.

That was true in 2021, and it’s still happening today. That prompted Melissa Gira Grant to write for New Republic: “To call a Black woman a ‘Jezebel’ hearkens back to America’s racist and misogynistic history of casting Black women as insatiably sexual, which served to justify slaveholding men’s systematic sexual assault of enslaved women. But for right-wing white Christians … to say a woman has a ‘Jezebel spirit’ is also to say she is a danger to them, a barely human being hell-bent on seducing men to their destruction and assuming their power.”

Back in 2021, Tom Buck, an East Texas pastor who advocates for conservative causes in the SBC, agreed with Ascol, tweeting, “I can’t imagine any truly God-fearing Israelite who would’ve wanted their daughters to view Jezebel as an inspirational role model because she was a woman in power.”

Ascol added that Buck’s “Jezebel” analogy was a “very appropriate” warning to Christians not to support “this pagan United States vice president in her wickedness.”

It’s interesting to note what these men hold in common. Socially, they’re all white men. Theologically, they’re all Calvinist, complementarian and Christian nationalist. And in their words, they’re all controlling and cruel.

There are reasons this particular people group with their theology so often get called out in pieces at Baptist News Global as well as by other conservatives who have different perspectives than they do.

Another view

In contrast, consider McKissic, who is theologically conservative but not a Calvinist. He’s a Southern Baptist who’s generally supportive of women in ministry and not caught up in Christian nationalism.

“I strongly rebuke Tom Ascol for saying this, and anybody who agrees with him,” McKissic wrote in 2021. “Madam Vice President Kamala Harris is a member of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, an NBC church that ascribes to the NBC doctrinal statement, almost identical to the BFM.”

As the oldest African American Baptist church in San Francisco, having been founded in 1852, Third Baptist is part of the American Baptist Churches USA, a denomination previously known as the Northern Baptist Convention — a denomination created when the Southern Baptist Convention split off over the issue of supporting slavery.

Despite being theologically conservative, McKissic seems willing to recognize there are other Baptists in the world than white Calvinist, complementarian Christian nationalists. But because McKissic’s conservatism doesn’t sacralize his own power at the top of a hierarchy, he’s willing to call out the harm caused by those who do.

This three-year-old debate came roaring back this week when McKissic wrote: “Donald Trump’s racist ads depicting Blacks and immigrants being destructive under a Harris presidency, and city life under a Trump presidency being pristine and well-ordered is an absolute lie, and again racist. Furthermore, offering complete immunity to police who kill innocent, unarmed persons on the heels of a case where a white police shot and killed an innocent unarmed Black woman is also evil. Until Republicans are willing to acknowledge racism and police brutality are as evil as abortion, we have a problem, and our politics will remain racially divided.”

But to Ascol, that was going too far. He accused McKissic of making a “vacuous moral equivalence.”

“What is it about Calvinism, complementarianism and Christian nationalism that come together consistently to produce the fruit of control and cruelty?”

One thing Ascol, Buck and McKissic all agree on is that there is a divide in the SBC. What those of us on the outside of the SBC can observe is that the divide tends to run down the line between white Calvinist, complementarian Christian nationalists, and those who won’t submit to those men. And as BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield once noted, “The rise of complementarianism in the SBC coincides with the rebirth of Calvinism in the SBC. The two themes are inextricably linked.”

So what is it about Calvinism, complementarianism and Christian nationalism that come together consistently to produce the fruit of control and cruelty?

The control and cruelty of Calvinism

Buck often refers to himself as “Five Point Buck.” While that may be a way of touting his masculinity, it’s also a dad joke based on him supporting the five points of Calvinism.

According to Wingfield, the Calvinism of the SBC “teaches that all humans are born as sinners living in total depravity but that the irresistible grace of God will bring to salvation all the elect whom God has preordained to be saved. That also means those not among the elect are destined for a fiery literal hell and have no chance of being saved.”

Of course, Ascol and Buck think they have nothing to worry about regarding the afterlife. They plan to wear their crowns, perhaps cast them at Jesus’ feet, and walk around in tearless bliss as their neighbors burn.

“The idea of people burning in hell is God setting things right to Calvinists.”

The idea of people burning in hell is God setting things right to Calvinists. So it is not something to lament and certainly not something to question, but a justice worth celebrating.

Thomas Aquinas once said, “Whoever pities another shares somewhat in his unhappiness. But the blessed cannot share in any unhappiness. Therefore, they do not pity the afflictions of the damned.” Similarly, the Calvinist pastor and slaveowner Jonathan Edwards rejoiced, “When they (the saints in heaven) shall see the smoke of their torment (the damned), and the raging of the flames of their burning, and hear their dolorous shrieks and cries, and consider that they in the meantime are in the most blissful state and shall surely be in it to all eternity; how will they rejoice!”

Notice how the two dynamics of control and cruelty are present. God controls who goes to heaven and who goes to hell all for the sake of God’s glory, despite how it affects humans. Thus, because God’s sovereign control is just, the worshiper must submit with violent delights, which are cruel toward their suffering neighbors.

This is why men like Ascol and Buck can so casually mention Harris, Branigin and Tapper all burning in hell.

The control and cruelty of complementarianism

It cannot be lost in this conversation that Ascol and Buck are criticizing a woman. But these men are hardly alone in their public dismissal and mockery of women. Almost two-thirds of the SBC voted in favor of the Law Amendment this summer, which would have excommunicated any SBC church that ordains women as pastors.

But the control and cruelty of complementarian men against women is most clearly on display in their weekly pulpits.

The SBC poster child for sexist sermons this year has been Josh Howerton of Lakepointe Church in Rockwall, Texas. In last week’s first sermon of his new four-part series titled “Fighting for Your Family,” Howerton was supposed to be addressing men but ended up mocking women and sexualizing children.

His second sermon of the series wasn’t any better. His complementarian theology says men have a calling on their lives that women help them with. But he adds that when a man is struggling with his career, it might be his wife’s fault.

“In this framework, marriage for a man is the prosperity gospel.”

“Some men only achieve a fraction of the potential that is in them because they married a hindrance and not a helper,” he said. In this framework, marriage for a man is the prosperity gospel. You can be a rich and successful king. But it depends on your wife.

To Howerton, women’s choice is to “either be the crown on his head” or “the cancer in his bones.” To crown her husband, Howerton says she must not only respect and submit to her husband, but she must tell him how amazing he is and how amazing everything is going to be every time he walks out the door.

For women who say they are equal partners with their husbands, Howerton claims, “A body without a head is a corpse, and a body with two heads is a freak.”

Of course, these messages of men being in charge of women are unpopular today, which leads Howerton to suggest pastors are too hard on men and not hard enough on women. He says pastors going hard against men are “going with the grain of the culture” and pastors who don’t go hard at women are afraid of being “feminist crushed.”

Then he impersonates a woman shaking her hips at him in the church lobby after his sermon while saying, “You’re just saying that because you’re a man.”

In addition to claiming Lakepointe women shake their hips at him in the lobby, Howerton also says the women come up to him in the lobby to belittle their husbands and “say things like, ‘Man, Pastor Josh, I wish my husband were a spiritual leader like you.’”

Again, notice the pattern here. We have a man using theology to justify being at the top of a power dynamic that leads to the cruelty of subjugating women and of mocking conjoined twins as “freaks.”

The control and cruelty of Christian nationalism

A third part of the power dynamic that has been characterizing SBC pulpits is Christian nationalism, even by men who would not overtly call themselves Christian nationalists.

In Howerton’s first sermon, he repeated the eugenics concerns of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance by saying, “We’re on the brink of population collapse.” He also said the government is taking the place of godly men by providing for and protecting people.

Each of these arguments are the building blocks of Christian nationalism.

Jessica Johnson, author of Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire and the forthcoming Radicalizing White Men, told the Washington Post that Christian nationalists believe an “authoritarian father figure” should be in charge, that white men calling Black women “Jezebel” is a sign they’re afraid of being replaced, and thus doing so is “an incitement to violence.”

When you consider Howerton’s contrast of government safety nets with godly men in light of Johnson’s claim that Christian nationalists promote authoritarian father figures being in charge, it all fits together. The SBC’s Calvinism presents God the Father as an authoritarian figure who controls everyone below toward cruel ends. The SBC’s complementarianism presents men as authoritarian figures who mock women and those they consider to be “freaks.” And the SBC’s Christian nationalism takes these dynamics from the home and the church to society.

Ascol himself once agreed with a definition of Christian nationalism from Paul Miller, who wrote: “Christian nationalism asserts that there is something identifiable as an American nation distinct from other nations that American nationhood is and should remain defined by Christianity or Christian cultural norms and that the American people and their government should actively work to defend, sustain, and cultivate America’s Christian culture, heritage, and values.”

Referring to Miller, Ascol said, “I affirm the things that he’s concerned about in that definition. America’s a distinct Christian nation — yes!”

Acts of violence in the church

The SBC’s Calvinism, complementarianism and Christian nationalism are all top-down hierarchies that dehumanize those on the underside of white male power by taking away their agency, putting them in their place, mocking their concerns, creating caricatures and straw men about them, and celebrating their demise.

So where is this coming from? Why do these men so consistently dehumanize the women in their congregations and the women elected as leaders in our country?

At the risk of Howerton, Ascol and “Five Point Buck” feeling “feminist crushed,” perhaps no one has explained this dynamic better than feminist writer and professor Lacy Johnson. In her book The Reckonings: Essays On Justice for the Twenty-First Century, she says: “I learned that by the time most children have reached the age of 10, they have witnessed at least a hundred thousand acts of violence in the media and that bearing witness to so much violence damages our empathy in profound and devastating ways. Our natural orientation as humans is toward one another. To see another harmed, harms us also. We are a little destroyed every time we watch another destroyed. As we age, we learn to turn inward, increasingly orient our care and attention away from others and toward only ourselves, not out of apathy but rather as a response to ongoing trauma, until we finally abandon empathy entirely out of self-preservation.”

While these men may or may not be witnessing a hundred thousand acts of violence in the media, they are sacralizing and witnessing a hundred thousand acts of violence in their churches through the theologies they wield over those they think God has positioned below them. They actively warn against empathy because their theology conditions them against the natural human orientation to feel harmed when others are harmed.

And the results, as Johnson suggests and the rest of us experience, are profound and devastating. SBC men like Howerton, Ascol and “Five Point Buck” are internally destroyed, and thus have turned inward only to themselves in a power-sacralizing response of self-preservation to the trauma their theology has cauterized in their souls.

Their hearts are not soft hearts of flesh. They are hearts of stone toward their neighbors. And as such, they are hearts of stone toward God. This is why their presence in American Christianity has become the presence of hell.

 

Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.

 

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