Mike Bird is a conservative evangelical--but he is Australian. That means that he shares the same conservative view of Scripture as the American Evangelical Theological Society, but he does not have the same cultural influences. I have generally found evangelical scholars like him as a good self-check on factors in American evangelicalism that are more cultural than enduring.
In any case, you can see his assessment of the American Reformed evangelical OT situation after the firing of an evangelical pillar, Bruce Waltke, from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. I don't know Bruce but I don't think anyone thinks of him as a trouble maker. He certainly won't have any problem getting another job. From the standpoint of his evangelical scholarship, his firing is puzzling. From the standpoint of truth politics, it is not surprising.
There is definitely a hard core Reformed backlash in play, 7 point Calvinism, villification of N. T. Wright. Good grief, John Piper even got in trouble for inviting Rick Warren to a conference.
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Yes, it was a backlash, but it was not a hard core backlash. Rather, it was a sloppy backlash (Pastor Doug Wilson makes that exact point over on his blog and summarizes, “If someone right before the battle of the Alamo had exiled Davy Crockett for having too long a rifle, and Bowie for having too wide a knife, the situation would be about comparable.”)
And here is a good link that explains the flow of events (and why RTS felt they had to let Waltke go/accept his resignation) and here is a recent statement by Waltke.
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