Recently, Calvinist pastor and G3 Conference founder Josh Buice got caught operating eight sockpuppet accounts over at least a couple of years. He used them to anonymously criticize and attack other evangelicals. So far, he’s lost his G3 leadership position at least. But he’s not the first Calvinist leader caught being a hypocrite. He’s just the most recent.
Today, let’s take a walk down Recent Memory Lane to review some of his hypocritical colleagues.
(This post first went live on Patreon on 5/20/2025. Its audio ‘cast lives there too and is available now!)
SITUATION REPORT: Josh Buice, the latest example of Calvinist hypocrisy
Josh Buice is a hardline conservative Calvinist evangelical pastor from the Atlanta suburbs. He champions what he calls “the new Calvinism.” It’s a new-ish blend of Calvinism and Reformed theology that emphasizes authoritarianism, strict obedience, and the culture wars. He used to be part of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). In 2022, he decided the SBC wasn’t conservative enough for his tastes, so he withdrew his church from the denomination. He’s mostly known for starting the G3 Conference (G3) in 2013 as a resource for Calvinist pastors like himself.
Last week, Buice was exposed for anonymously operating four social media accounts, two email addresses, and two Substack platforms. He used these accounts to criticize other evangelical leaders without tying his words to his own name. Often, these leaders were technically on his side, like Voddie Baucham! For two years, according to G3’s official statement and his church’s statement, people increasingly suspected these accounts belonged to Buice—but he lied about it convincingly enough to keep the farce going.
Finally in early May, elders in Buice’s church discovered evidence linking their pastor to these eight sockpuppet accounts. We don’t know what the proof was, but it likely involved writing styles, login times and activity patterns, IP tracing, occasional attacks on the elders from Buice’s own church, and other such failures of basic opsec.
Even in the face of that proof, Buice denied everything. Eventually, the evidence piled up so high and his questioners “pleaded” with him so hard that even this inveterate liar-for-Jesus had to admit the accounts were his. That’s when he finally “acknowledged his sin, expressed sorrow, and asked for forgiveness.” The church elders responded by putting him on indefinite leave.
On May 8 and with the encouragement of various G3 officers, Buice resigned from G3.
The group’s board also decided to cancel their upcoming September convention and refund all ticket holders. They’re losing a lot of income and publicity over Buice’s secret online antics.
In our past discussions, Buice has cropped up a number of times—sometimes on surprisingly friendly terms. In January, we saw him sparring with an Endtimes prophecy huckster and complaining about “heavenly tourism.” A couple of years ago, he complained about how hard it is to get Christians to view church attendance as mandatory. In 2016 and 2022, he slammed Beth Moore for her slightly less oppressive views on women’s rights. He’s also sharply criticized Ed Litton and Russell Moore, two enemies of the SBC’s hardliner faction.
But he did all that in public.
When he needed to snipe his own side, he did that with secret accounts. His Calvinist G3 mantra of “Gospel, Grace, Glory” only hid his hypocrisy. As we’ll see, that’s not an uncommon situation at all in his end of Christianity.
A quick primer about Calvinism and Reformed theology
Calvinism and Reformed theology are subtly different. But since they tend to be seen together, I conflate the two for ease of discussion. Both function as add-on DLC modules for Christianity.
Most normies know these guys as the “predestination” crowd. Indeed, Calvinists view humankind as utterly, totally “depraved.” From the beginning of time, their god decided exactly who’s going to Heaven or Hell, and nobody can change his mind. Everyone else goes to Hell.
So the people claiming Calvinism think they are the “elect,” meaning the ones Yahweh chose for Heaven. Calvinism, then, seems tailor-made for people who need to feel superior without all the messy work of self-improvement. In 2009, Rachel Held Evans wrote about Calvinists’ attitude. Since then, they’ve only gotten worse. Calvinist beliefs encourage a totalitarian, reality-denying arrogance that’s easily seen in people like Josh Buice.
Calvinists often use word “orthodox” (with a lower-case “o”) to describe themselves. I bet that habit displeases actual Orthodox Christians. That said, Orthodox folks seem like a way more chill group, so they haven’t made a big fuss about it.
The ur-example of Calvinist hypocrisy: Mark Driscoll
When I heard about Josh Buice’s sockpuppeting, I immediately thought of Mark Driscoll. At one time he was the Lizard King of Calvinist Theo-Bros. He single-handedly put Calvinism on the evangelical map when he established his megachurch-to-be, Mars Hill, in the mid-1990s. He also started a church-planting group called Acts 29. Then in 2014, he lost it all.
I’d never even heard of Calvinism till it showed up in a Portland newspaper spread in the mid-90s about Driscoll and his then-new church. Unsurprisingly, the article’s writer sounded dumbfounded that fuddy-duddy, super-strict 16th-century theology could make a big splash in slick, tech-heavy Seattle. Looking back, though, I’m not surprised. Young men, in particular, clearly viewed Driscoll as a substitute daddy figure—a kind of respect Driscoll himself found surprising and disappointing.
In one of his books in 2006, Driscoll wrote about discovering that his church’s young men were “mama’s boys or thuggish pervert jerks” who were “slave to [their] lusts.” In that book, he compared their sexual weakness to his own—because he was already operating his sockpuppet account at the time he made that discovery.
Around 2000, as he tells it in his 2006 book, his church’s website started up an unmoderated discussion board called “Midrash.” (Just so incredibly arrogant!) Driscoll started a sockpuppet account there called “William Wallace II.” Yes, after the character in Braveheart. That’s how this jackass saw himself. With his anonymous sockpuppet, Driscoll ranted about single mothers and America being “a completely pussified nation.” When other forum members challenged him, he attacked and belittled them.
When his congregation eventually found out who “William Wallace II” actually was, naturally they were furious. Driscoll reports in his 2006 book that he responded to the furor by calling for an all-hands-on-deck church meeting of just the church’s men. There, he reprimanded them in a two-hour-long sermon and “basically gave the dad talk to my men.” Here’s how the meeting ended, according to his book:
On their way out of that meeting, I handed each man two stones and told them that on this day God was giving them their balls back to get the courage to do kingdom work. Guys put them on their monitors at work or glued them to the dash of their truck and kept them. [Source: Wenatchee the Hatchet]
All one can say is that the early 2000s were a very different time in the Christ-o-sphere.
As I said, Driscoll ‘fessed up to his sockpuppetry in his 2006 book. By then, too, his church had known for a few years who “William Wallace II” really was. But when his downfall eventually came in 2014, this whole sockpuppetry thing re-emerged as part of his lifelong pattern of attacking critics and avoiding accountability.
Tom Buck, another G3-affiliated Calvinist hypocrite
Tom Buck is a G3 contributor and pastor in Texas. He also contributes to Founders Ministries, another Calvinist hardliner group. At one time, Tom Buck entertained grand ambitions of SBC leadership. He even eyed the president position! But that upward trajectory came to a crashing halt in 2022. That year, his higher-ranking colleague Tom Ascol ran for SBC President. Buck tried to help Ascol by revealing the confidences of one of his opponents. But Buck’s foray into seedy SBC politics backfired spectacularly when he himself got exposed as a wife abuser.
Tom Buck’s wife, Jennifer, had written a book draft about how fervent faith had cured her husband of domestic abuse. She later published a much shorter, toned-down blog-style post on the same topic for the G3 site. As far as I can tell, she sincerely believes what she wrote.
The blog post was bad enough, but then the book draft leaked. It’s still not public, but those who’ve seen it say it describes much worse abuse.
As you might have noticed, opsec isn’t a big priority for evangelicals. This story, in particular, wouldn’t have been something they’d think to protect in the first place. That’s plainly evident from Buck’s church’s official statement on the matter. Jennifer clearly didn’t view the story as a complete indictment of her entire faith system, which is what it actually is. She saw it instead as a triumph of faith over her husband’s human weakness.
But other evangelicals—and normies—had very different opinions. As his ambitions fizzled before his very eyes, Buck and his entire faction of hardliners within the SBC went on the offensive—against the person Buck accused of leaking the draft, the slightly more progressive SBC professor Karen Swallow Prior. At some point, Jennifer had sent a draft of her book to Prior for help with editing. So Tom Buck assumed Prior had to have done it. Hardliner sites like Capstone Report were all too happy to help him out there. They were so focused on attacking her that they completely ignored the entire matter of Buck being abusive.
At no point has Buck addressed his own abusive nature. I doubt he ever will. Nobody else has the power to hold him accountable for any of it, either.
That said, his hardliner pals quietly and mysteriously dropped him just a few months after the leak, which hints at deeper issues. Oh, Buck pops up here and there still. But he’s a spent force.
Steve Timmis, Matt Chandler, and Acts 29
This one’s a three-fer.
As I mentioned, Mark Driscoll founded Acts 29. In 2012, Driscoll handed leadership of the group to Matt Chandler. Afterward, Driscoll himself became a board member. When Driscoll fell from grace in 2014, the Acts 29 board booted him for good.
In 2015, the next year, Matt Chandler became famous for shielding a child-porn-consuming sponsored missionary. The missionary’s then-wife discovered the secret while the couple was stationed abroad. She insisted the couple return to the States, but when she tried to tell the congregation about the situation, Chandler silenced her and tried to punish her. He backed down only when the story went viral nationwide. In general, he comes off as a power-hungry hypocrite with stunningly poor judgment.
Originally based in the UK, Steve Timmis impressed Chandler and the other Acts 29 theo-bros with his global outlook. By 2012, he was an Acts 29 board member. After Driscoll completely tumbled from grace in 2014, Timmis assumed the CEO position.
In 2020, numerous sources exposed Timmis as an abusive bully and power-hungry hypocrite. Acts 29 ended up firing him. Chandler also earned some criticism for mishandling initial reports about Timmis’ behavior: He fired the people complaining, then forced them to sign NDAs to silence them.
The thing is, Acts 29 never should have hired or promoted Timmis in the first place. Or Chandler.
Mark Driscoll left indelible marks on Acts 29. Their misogynistic, macho roots only proliferated under Chandler and Timmis. The group’s leaders have just gotten better at hiding that fact. A 2017 article on The Gospel Coalition (TGC) quotes Chandler as saying the group had matured considerably—but at the same time behind the scenes, leaders like Timmis were terrorizing and punishing anyone who stepped out of line.
Somehow, Jesus never taught any of these theo-bros how to lead in a loving, gracious way. Nor did he magically “convict” them about abusing people and punishing them for doing the right thing.
Jordan “J.D.” Hall, the Calvinist pastor-blogger who turned out to be a violent substance abuser
No roundup of Calvinist hypocrites would be complete without touching upon Montana pastor Jordan “J.D.” Hall. He founded Pulpit and Pen to gripe about less-conservative evangelicals. With this platform, he viciously attacked his targets for years.
Then, in May 2022, authorities arrested Hall for DUI. He cited medical reasons for his intoxicated appearance that day, vaguely alluding to a “vitamin D” deficiency. A couple of weeks later, Hall had to publicly apologize for completely fabricating a story about a trans lobbyist assaulting someone in Montana’s capitol building.
In June 2022, authorities investigated Hall for gun violence and domestic abuse. That same month, Hall’s church fired him for, they claimed, Xanax abuse. (Newsflash for Calvinists: Xanax doesn’t contain vitamin D!) A few months later in September, a Montana court found Hall guilty of felony embezzlement—from his church. As part of his sentence, he had to agree to repay some of that money.
As for Hall’s treasured blog, it had to rebrand itself after Facebook blocked it (apparently for being anti-trans). The entire site went down for a short while before returning as Protestia under the leadership of former contributor Seth Dunn.
JD Hall has lost everything. He still pops up here and there, though. In 2023, he griped in an interview with Protestia about how hard it is to be a pastor. (Also, holy cow he looks strung out in the photo at that link. His wife looks completely dazed.) On February 28, Hall even showed up on a podcast about Calvinists being the Designated Adults of young Americans. He still writes sometimes for Protestia. Despite his complaints about the life of a pastor, it’s hard to imagine he’s truly happy out of the Calvinist leadership limelight.
As far as I have ever been able to tell, Hall faces accountability only when forced to do so by the law. Calvinist beliefs have never made him a decent human being. I doubt they ever will.
This is a lot of Calvinist leaders turning out to be hypocrites, isn’t it? But wait, there’s more!
Our list of Calvinist hypocrites doesn’t stop with JD Hall. It just keeps getting longer.
We could talk about Steven Lawson, one of the single biggest names in Calvinist circles and a buddy of Calvinist giant John MacArthur. Lawson got fired for having an affair in September 2024. Or Calvinist site TGC itself, which saw nothing wrong with running a creepy, abuse-condoning, rapey-sounding marriage seminar hosted by Joshua Butler. Or the entire Sovereign Grace situation, which saw powerful pastor CJ Mahaney lose power over allegations of years-long abuse coverups.
Incidentally, Mahaney mentored Josh Harris, who as a complete virgin wrote the bestseller I Kissed Dating Goodbye. That book has cropped up often in the testimonies of people damaged by evangelical purity culture. Harris, whose own eventual marriage disintegrated, later disavowed his book.
As for the Founders Ministry group mentioned earlier, one of its other members is Jonathan Elwing. He’s a vocal critic of sex abuse reform in the SBC, tweeting in February 2023 that their sex abuse task force “will be the end of the SBC.” But in 2024, authorities arrested him for possession of images of child sexual abuse. The exact nature of his offense is so bad that he faces at minimum life without parole if convicted, with the death penalty on the table as well.
Looking across all of these recent exposures for hypocrisy, one must ask: Why? How?
One of conservative Christians’ most treasured beliefs is that correct behavior follows correct beliefs. And these hypocrites say they have the most correct beliefs in all of Christendom.
So how in the world could these big-name leaders consistently turn out to be such hypocrites?
Shielding abusers from accountability since forever
Calvinist doctrines tell evangelical men that no matter how meager their power or stature in the world, they are superior to every woman who ever lived. They are superior as well to every other Christian on Earth. In every way, they are the kings of Heaven. They don’t need to work to become better people. Instead, they just are better people.
As a result, their culture illustrates a whole new TULIP for the “New Calvinists”:
- Total depravity (yeah, this one didn’t change at all)
- Unlimited sockpuppets
- Lying for Jesus
- Irresistible ego
- Perseverance of the sinful
Their orthodoxy is control-lust.
Their praxis is abuse.
And their “spiritual fruit” is completely, utterly rotten.
They don’t care who they hurt. They care far more about strict adherence to doctrinal purity than they do about improving themselves in any way. Even Jesus’ direct commands to his followers don’t matter. They’ve found a substitute for obedience that lets them do all of the terrible things they like.
NEXT UP: What’s old is new again: YouTube evangelicals are straw-manning atheism again to get attention. I couldn’t be happier. See you soon! <3
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