Reformed Ex-Felon or Arminian Ex-Felon?

I can’t tell if the New York Times is making a theology joke or not with their headline: “A Reformed Ex-Felon in Trouble Once Again“. The article is about Barry Minkow who

has made many names for himself: as a boy-wonder entrepreneur, as a Ponzi schemer who served seven years in prison and then reinvented himself as a fraud-detection specialist, government informant and pastor.

His life took another turn when he was charged Thursday with conspiracy to commit securities fraud against the Lennar Corporation, one of the nation’s largest home builders.

The two churches where he was a pastor, the Community Bible Church of San Diego and The Church at Rocky Peak both have statements of belief on their web sites, but they’re too sketchy for me to be able to tell if they are Reformed (which in today’s Evangelical argot usually means Calvinist), or Arminian, or something else.

Here’s an article from the Baptist Press with some background on the revival (so to speak) of Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention and the debate over whether it’s a blessing or a scourge.

But even though the Times covered the Calvinist revival a bit in their 2009 Mark Driscoll article, I’m guessing there really isn’t a wink from the copy editor in the Minkow headline after all.

If you’re wondering where Catholics stand on these issues, I recommend (as I have before), James Akin’s article “A Tiptoe Through TULIP”.

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