White Calvinist theology has gone to hell

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on August 23, 2024.

“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.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.