When C.H. Spurgeon was in his heyday, an Anglican minister penned these words:

There was once a preacher named Spurgie
Who hated the English liturgy.
But his sermons are fine,
I use them as mine,
And so do the rest of the clergy

Much like the Anglicans, fundamentalists also have no issue with using Spurgeon’s sermons — as long as they have been sanitized of Calvinism. Indeed, the fact that he was a Calvinist appears almost nowhere in fundamentalist’s speaking or writing about him.

Like so many fundy heroes, Spurgeon probably wouldn’t be invited to speak at any fundamentalist churches today. It’s impossible even to picture a bearded, cigar-smoking, Calvinist preacher speaking in a fundamentalist church. The mind boggles.

But his sermons are fine. And so are his commentaries. And we can always just snip out the Calvinist bits…