Calvinist Takeover of Southern Baptists

The great Southern Baptist cruise ship is steaming on a long journey somewhere in the North Atlantic.  The passengers are sleeping in deck chairs, stuffing themselves from an endless buffet, enjoying a wide variety of entertainment and wallowing in ritual and tradition.  Cheerful crew members prance through the corridors chanting peace and unity like left over flower children from the 60’s.  But behind the façade, the ship’s officers are not united.  Some would like to take over the ship in a quiet mutiny of stealth, subterfuge and deceit to make sure the “elect” aristocracy on board can occupy the special peerage they deserve.  These officers claim to have privileged information indicating the lower class passengers must never be permitted to disembark at the same port as the elect aristocracy.  The lower class passengers don’t know it yet, but they will be dumped off the ship at an unpleasant location which doesn’t appear on their itinerary.  But the mutinous officers say that’s what these sorry reprobates have deserved from the time they left port.  Many of the remaining officers are troubled by this plan particularly since some of the reprobates might be pastors, deacons and Sunday school teachers.  But these officers are afraid to speak up for fear of being “divisive.”  They have been intimidated into believing that shipboard peace and unity must be preserved.  While all this melodrama is taking place, a few of the intimidated officers have noticed that the ship is headed for an iceberg only a few nautical miles off the starboard bow.  Like the Titanic, the great ship may shear in half before sinking thousands of fathoms into the icy darkness never to be seen again.  If only the sleeping passengers would awaken and exert their authority in time to avert disaster.  Should the intimidated officers risk disunity by taking command of the ship, alerting passengers to the imminent danger and working with them to restore the ship to its proper course?  What would Jesus do?  Did Jesus and the apostles sacrifice truth on a glorified altar of peace and unity (Mat 10:34; 1 John 4:1-4; 2 Pet 2:1)?  Is the history of the Christian church one of theological appeasement (1 Thes 5:21)?  Did the church welcome the beliefs of the Gnostics, Docetists, Ebionites, Arians, Apollinarians, Nestorians, Eutychians and Sabellians in the name of peace and unity?  When Marcion demanded that Polycarp recognize his teaching, did Polycarp embrace him in the name of peace and unity or did Polycarp respond, “I recognize you as the first-born of Satan?”