Peter Lumpkins is a clever guy with a provocative sense of humor. When I saw his latest post, coy as it was, I was intrigued. When I clicked on the link and saw that the domain name southernbaptistconvention.org took me to the Founders web site, I grinned a big grin and wondered to myself who pulled this prank on Tom Ascol and the guys over at Founders.
I am not a Calvinist, but I am not an anti-Calvinist. I am, after all, the guy who authored the blog post Thank God for Calvinists. I have collaborated with Tom Ascol on the Regenerate Church Membership Resolution. I supported Al Mohler for the presidency of the SBC. I am not an anti-Calvinist, although I am not a Calvinist.
So, when I saw Peter's post, I presumed that somebody had pulled some electronic hijinks in order to tweak the folks over at Founders. Curious as to who was behind all of this, I performed a WHOIS search on the domain southernbaptistconvention.org. What did I find? Look for yourself. The domain southernbaptistconvention.org was apparently registered by Tom Ascol, or perhaps by the Reisingers, since barbreisinger@mac.com is the contact email for the registrant. And the page that you land on over at Founders does appear to be designed for people coming from this particular domain name.
It seems to me that this is cybersquatting, pure and simple. By a technicality (i.e., Founders is not trying to resell the domain name to the SBC at an inflated price) it is not illegal, but it surely is unethical.
The folks at Founders are good people who love the Lord. They've made a mistake with this (don't we all make them sometimes?). I'm sure they'll fix it. I hope they will. The aggrieved and defrauded party, after all, is the Southern Baptist Convention. And the Southern Baptist Convention is me (and a large portion of those of you who read here).
