This piece from April just came to mind when reading the latest twist in the Trayvon Martin case. April saw the 2012 version of the Together for the Gospel conference of neo-Reformed folks, and David Murray noted the lack of blacks at the meeting.
If you thumb through the historically black denominations, you have the AME, which is Arminian by definition (the M is Methodist and Wesley is probably the most influential Arminian thinker), the Church of God in Christ, which (if memory serves) flowed out of an Arminian Holiness background, and a variety of Baptist flavors, which lean Arminian in practice if not doctrine.
Add that to the political conservative nature of our neo-Reformers and you'd have a small subset of black evangelicals who are Reformed and comfortable hanging out with their white peers.
Meanwhile, on to Trayvon and his folks, who don't sound too Reformed here-
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity televised Wednesday, George Zimmerman said he felt the course of the night 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed "was all God's plan."
"We must worship a different God," Martin's father, Tracy Martin, told The Associated Press. "There is no way that my God wanted George Zimmerman to murder my teenage son."
Two quick thoughts that are independent of the merits of the Zimmerman trial-
(1) God does at minimum let bad things happen and might even use them for His design. To say otherwise would bring Him down a few pegs, essentially denying either his omnipotence or his omniscience or both.
(2) Papa Martin must have a better knowledge of God than I, for I'm not sure if He had a hand in what went down in Sanford that night; however, Trayvon's dad is sure He didn't. If God didn't want that to happen, He had it within His power to stop it. God thus is down-with the death since it happened barring some sort of Open Theism version of God that gets surprised by events.
Note that what happened is tragic and some lethal mistakes were made; it's up to a jury to figure out whether Mr. Zimmerman broke the law that night and if so to what extent. However, saying that God wasn't in the loop is questionable theology.
[Update 2:15PM- I'm getting some Google traffic on "George Zimmerman Calvinist"-As far as I know, he was raised Catholic; he's Hispanic on his mom's side and that traditional Latin Catholic background got passed down.]
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