The Hit on John MacArthur over Civil Engagement

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. It is a blustery, cold day here in upstate

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New York where I am sitting currently. But warmer than it has been the last few days. It actually got down to about, now some of you are gonna make fun of me if you're in Alaska or maybe the northern parts of the

00:31

Midwest, but it got down to about seven degrees the other day, early in the morning, that's when it's the coldest, right?

00:38

I had to get up and there was something wrong with my heater and I had to go outside and go down to the basement and fool around with that and figure out why it wasn't working, so right at the coldest time.

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I did get it working, which was great, pretty quickly. It's supposed to get down to one degree this

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Saturday, so I'm already acclimating though. I mean, it gets up to the 30s and I walk outside now and I'm like, oh, this isn't too bad.

01:03

This is pretty good, you know? Light jacket, but I know that's still cold, that's still cold, so blood just gets thicker when you get used to it.

01:13

But anyway, that's my situation right now and I'm hoping, actually, later today,

01:19

I can go out and maybe take a little hike up a mountain or something. There's a challenge in the

01:25

Catskill Mountains, which I'm pretty close to, and I've done, the first part of this challenge, the first part is climb all the

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Catskill peaks, all 35 that are over 3 ,500 feet, any time of the year.

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And four of them, I think you need to do in winter, you need to do them twice, so that's the challenge. I did that, took me years to do it.

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The second challenge is do them all again in winter. So I'm thinking about it and I don't wanna go out this

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Saturday, because it's gonna be one degree. So I'm thinking maybe later today, I might have some time and I haven't gotten out in a very long time to do that.

01:59

I've taken some walks here or there, but I'm thinking of doing some winter hiking. And it's a beautiful thing.

02:05

Not as many people are out there, and anyway, you didn't come to listen to me talk about hiking and winter and all that, but that's part of my life.

02:13

So I like to include some things. Another part of my life I want to share with you, it's actually a sponsor.

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In fact, my dad drinks probably a lot more tea than he does coffee. And we're just more tea people.

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And you know what, there used to be kind of, maybe there still is in some circles a stigma with that, like real men drink coffee.

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And yeah, I understand, I get it. Cowboy coffee and all that. But actually, tea is a pretty masculine thing.

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Before, going back to even our country's history, before the Boston Tea Party, right, that's just what you drank.

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That's what everyone drank. And it's a gentleman's drink. That's how I like to think about it.

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and you can check it out. They got some great blends. And I'm not just saying that. I actually really believe in the product.

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So I actually just have, this is how I drink tea usually, I just have the bag in my mug, which I know some of you, you just dip it, you take it out.

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I just keep the bag in there, and I just keep drinking it. So, and it is good. It is my favorite green tea, by far.

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The tea is really superb. So anyway, that's my spiel this morning, and I am drinking it throughout the rest of this podcast on GoldRiver Tea.

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Ooh, it's really good. All right, so today we're gonna talk a little bit about a situation that is unfolding, even as I speak, change my plans a little bit.

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I was going to do something on Desmond Tutu. I know I'm late on that, but I read a book.

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I wanted to be careful about how I approach that whole subject, so I read one of his books, and was gonna do a podcast on that, and then

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I went to the Gospel Coalition, and read all this stuff Gospel Coalition was saying about Desmond Tutu, and was gonna do a separate podcast on that, and I was all queued up for it, and then this happened, and I thought, you know what,

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I really wanna weigh in on this, because it exposes some really important things. So the situation is concerning John MacArthur, and it's a video that was posted, and I'll show you all this, of John MacArthur preaching, but it was kinda cut up in a, and it's fine to cut up clips.

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I'm gonna show you later on, or at least edit them and string them together, if you're doing it honestly. No academic pursuit would be possible if you weren't able to take quotes, and use them to describe a whole piece of literature, or represent what someone believes.

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But the thing about taking a clip out of context is you leave something that's necessary for understanding the clip or segment that you wanna talk about out.

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You leave something out, and you don't fairly represent that person, because you can give the wrong impression.

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Sometimes you can make a person sound the opposite of what they actually mean by just taking something out of context, which is what has happened to John MacArthur, and it illustrates some super important things.

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I mean, I just can't, this is why I had to do it. I can't emphasize how much this exposes.

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So, the basic accusation is that MacArthur promotes some form of Christian nationalism, or theocracy, or Christians kind of taking over the government, that kind of thing, that category, whatever we wanna call that.

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And MacArthur doesn't. In fact, MacArthur is the exact opposite of that in so many ways.

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I mean, it's just, and I'm gonna show you some clips that prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt. We're gonna take the greater context.

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When you study scripture, you look in the immediate context, and you look in the general context of the whole Bible. We're gonna look at some general context stuff from MacArthur's life that no one's bringing up.

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And I'm gonna show you, that's not MacArthur's position at all, but MacArthur does believe that Christians should exert some kind of influence, not through force, not, he even frowns on the moral majority, and that kind of stuff, and he's not down with that.

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But he does think that Christians should vote at times, as long as they're not, they don't deviate from their primary mission of preaching the gospel, that they should write letters to their congressmen, that kind of thing.

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And obviously, with the situation over the last two years at Grace Community Church, they can sue.

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They can try to get a redress for grievances. MacArthur believes, and that's enough.

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That's all it takes. That's enough to get you, if you wanna exert any kind of biblical standard and apply it to the government, that's it.

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That's all, I'm just telling you, I feel like Rush Limbaugh sometimes, where he would talk about the left and how he's like,

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I know these people. I'm getting to that point, with all the books I've written and everything, I understand,

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I think, how the progressive evangelicals think in some ways. At least, I can see their moves sometimes before they even do them.

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And I'm not trying to say that to toot my own horn or in an arrogant way or anything. It's just, if you spend a lot of time with anything and you just really study it, and if you're trying to do it at least fairly, you're trying to understand, you're not seeking just to rip something apart, but you really do wanna understand, which is what

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I do try to do. I really wanna understand even what I'm critiquing. You just, you start to, you get to know them, and that's kind of what's happened.

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And I'm just telling you, just trust me on this, that that's enough. What I just described to you is enough to get you kind of branded as an enemy of the regime.

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We need to be about multiculturalism and quote -unquote democracy, principled pluralism.

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We shouldn't have really an effect on the public square. It goes, it's like David French's whole library hour for transgender people, right?

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Or whatever, transgender people reading stories to kids in the library, that's one of the blessings of liberty.

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And Christians should defend that. And the ERLC, defending the mosques being built and these kinds of things, they defend these principles, these abstract principles, but as far as like defending the actual church that the

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Lord Jesus ordains and trying to get, carve out a space for the church in the public square to where it's not being bothered by the government, like let's say lockdowns, that kind of thing, to try to forward the mission of the church in any way by not getting the government to promote the mission, but at least getting the government to, at the very least, allow the church to operate, that's kind of frowned upon.

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And that's seen as Christian nationalism stuff. And I've said this for a long time. That's the thing about these people on the evangelical left.

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They try to say they're against theocracy, they're against excesses, they're against violence, of course, they're against insurrections.

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They're, they try to couch it in that language, but when you start peeling back all the layers, what you find is they really are against exerting some kind of an influence in the public square coming from a biblical conviction if it is somehow running along the same side as conservative principles, if it lines up.

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And of course the Bible does, it lines up with conservative principles because that's where they came from. Of course, filtered through common law and tradition and all these things, but that's the basis for the conservative principles that the paleo -conservative, conservatism at least, the

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Burkean conservatism that we're kind of moving away from, that's the basis for it. And they don't like that.

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They're willing to bring out their Bibles when it comes to issues of the left that stem from an egalitarian place, and then they'll just use

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Bible verses to justify it. But if it comes really rooted from a biblical understanding of human nature and biblical ethics, this is just who they are.

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And I know this is simplistic, because this, you know, John, what are you saying? Are you just saying that the people that are pushing hard on the evangelical left for leftist stuff, that they're just the bad guys?

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And it's kind of hard to get away from that sometimes. Some of these people, yes, yes, they are bad.

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What they are pushing is bad. Many of them are false teachers. I know there's a spectrum, but the dyed -in -the -wool progressives who are operating in evangelical circles, yes,

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I don't have a problem saying that. They are pushing the wrong things, the evil things, or allowing them or nuancing them.

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And then the things that are righteous and just and good, they pour, you know, they rain on that parade.

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They don't want that. All right, so enough commentary. Let's get into the actual situation. Well, okay, two more things before we get into it.

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So this whole situation exposes, it gives us an insight into what Christian nationalism actually is to those who oppose it.

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Second thing, the way in which many evangelicals' elites try to corral Christians into their agenda,

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I think, is also manifested in this. The intimidation tactics they use, and we're gonna see that with Megan Bash in a little bit and how they treat her, a reporter for the

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Daily Wire. And then, of course, the existence of Big Eva is also pretty much proven, or it's, you can see glimpses of it at the very least in this situation.

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So that's what we're gonna talk about. Let's get into it. A guy named Matthew Sheffield, doesn't matter who he is, blue check mark guy,

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Twitter, says extremist Christians love to claim they're all about religious freedom, but the truth is that they hate the idea.

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Sometimes when they're in a safe space, they admit this. Here's evangelical megachurch pastor John MacArthur telling you what they really think.

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And this is the clip that he plays. I read the other day that one of the evangelical publicists, whatever that is, said he's happy to let us know that the new administration will uphold religious freedom, really.

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The new administration will uphold religious freedom?

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I don't even support religious freedom. Religious freedom is what sends people to hell.

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To say I support religious freedom is to say I support idolatry. It's to say I support lies.

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I support hell. I support the kingdom of darkness. You can't say that.

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No Christian with half a brain would say, we support religious freedom. We support the truth.

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If the new administration supports religious freedom, get ready, persecution will be ramped up because the more supportive they are of the devil's lies, the less they're gonna tolerate the truth of Scripture.

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We're not gonna lobby for freedom of religion. What kind of nonsense is that? We are in the world to expose all those lies as lies.

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Now, as you can imagine, that clip just taken on its own, and that's all you see.

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And you can see it's edited in the middle there. Just that clip has people freaking out a little bit that John MacArthur doesn't believe in America, doesn't believe in separation of church and state, wants somehow like the

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Christians to take over the government or something like that. And people are freaking out. Let me show you some of it.

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David French, of course, David French calls it disturbing. And he says a bunch of other things, but that was the first thing he said.

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Michael Byrd, everyone remembers Michael Byrd from the It's All Cringe episode.

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We won't go back into that. But Michael Byrd, bit of a Byrd. He said, like I said, Baptists believe in religious liberty.

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Retweeting Adam Greenway, who said, And here, the courage to stand against MacArthur.

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Here I stand. And here is where Southern Baptists have stood since time immemorial. Few commitments are more intrinsic to our

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Baptist identity than this one, religious liberty. And so they post from the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

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I believe that's where they get in that. But there's a section on religious liberty, section 17. It says, I don't know if I wanna read this whole thing.

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Let me just read for you some clips. Civil government being ordained by God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience to all things, not contrary to the revealed will of God.

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The church should not resort to civil, to the civil power to carry on its work, the gospel. These are all things

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MacArthur believes, okay? So this is what they appeal to. And so they're actually like advocating

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MacArthur's position basically, in general, and using that against MacArthur.

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Like MacArthur doesn't believe that. MacArthur's some crazy theocrat. And I think they all know this to some extent.

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They have to know this. I mean, come on. You don't like exist in the evangelical sphere for years and like Adam Greenway and not know what

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MacArthur believes about this. This is why I think they are so dishonest, some of these people, they have to be. It's posturing, it's about image and fashion.

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And the image is about really, how loyal are we to the elites in our society who don't want that?

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Here's Ed Stetzer. And what I mean, don't want that. They don't want Christians exerting themselves in the government at all. Ed Stetzer, in a sermon given in 2021,

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John MacArthur called the idea of religious freedom nonsense, arguing that religious freedom is what sends people to hell. Yeah, in the context though, we were gonna get into that in a minute, that's not what

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MacArthur meant. At least what they're making it out to be isn't what MacArthur meant.

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And what they are trying to challenge MacArthur with is pretty much what MacArthur believes. Karen Swallow Pryor, again, retweeting

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Adam Greenway. And so then Megan Bashan from the Daily Wire. And by the way, she's doing really great work on this.

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All of a sudden, there's a reporter who's actually talking about this. It's taken years, but someone's, and I think she's probably getting a rude awakening into this world, realizing, wow,

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Christians, proclaimed Christians at least, are not acting the way that you'd think Christians would. So I would, if I were you, send the

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Daily Wire just a thank you, send Megan Bashan maybe an encouraging no, just say, thank you for doing this. But she was big on the

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Grove City stuff. She did a article on enemies within the church. She's covering this stuff fairly. That's what

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I have to say. It's not even that she's biased in my mind. She's just being fair about most of it. Now, it's for the

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Daily Wire, and she does lean more right, but politically. But these articles that she writes are pretty much just, here's the facts, here's what's going on.

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And the facts are, Matthew Sheffield edited, or at least promoted, someone else edited, a clip that gave the wrong impression.

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And so she talks about this. MacArthur appears to take aim at political lobbying, the

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ERLC, that was the context. And it was under Russell Moore. Well, what is left out is that Russell Moore and the

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission filed an amicus brief in favor of a Muslim community's effort to build a mosque. They used the money from the church to help

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Muslims build a mosque. And MacArthur seemed to contrast his church with Moore's approach, saying, it has no plans to lobby the government.

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We're not gonna lobby for freedom of religion. And that's what he's saying, is we're not trying to get everyone's false god like an extra boost to help them in the public square.

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If that's what freedom of religion is, we'll have no part in it. And what he's taking aim at is the idea that all of these religions are somehow equal, or they all deserve equal standing in the public square or something.

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And MacArthur's saying, no, we believe in the truth. This would be, Christians from history would all believe this.

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This wouldn't be a controversial statement to make. But of course, it just was taken that way.

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Economist John Fassman said, what does he support instead of religious freedom? Forced conversions, the banning and criminalizations of any faith other than his?

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Now, this is where Christians should be saying no, running to the defense of MacArthur. Of course, he's not saying that, but of course, they're just piling on.

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And I showed you some of that. So that's the controversy. I don't think we need to read any more of this. Now, let's keep going here though, because this gets more and more interesting.

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This is the part that made me say, okay, I'm gonna do a podcast on this. Here's Megan Basham. A thread she just put out last night.

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She says, there's an article in churchleaders .com, an article against her article in the Daily Wire.

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And she says, this article says, Basham admitted that MacArthur's comments in his January 17th, I didn't admit any, let's see, hold on.

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Oh, okay, so it's saying that she admitted something that she says,

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I didn't admit. She says, I just reported. And that's what my point earlier. Megan's just reporting stuff. But even using the term admit is to try, good for Megan for even, she's sharp.

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She catches these things. Using the word admit is trying to show that she's on a side here, right?

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And she's saying, I'm just reporting. And then she just tears this article apart from churchleaders .com.

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Now a lot of this is really good. All of it's really good as far as I can tell. But the thing that is the most interesting to me is the last thing she says.

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For those following this thread, I discovered a most egregious issue later. Story does not disclose conflict of interest that Ed Stetzer, who

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I cited in my reporting, works for the same media company as church lead. So if you were wondering if this was a hit job, it clearly was.

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They're doing a hit job on Megan Basham. And she's saying, she cited Ed Stetzer.

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And it looks like Ed Stetzer's not happy about it. And his organization or one he's affiliated with is going after Megan Basham.

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She's catching it, which is good on her. Now, one of the things that this led to, and here's the tweet, if I can pull it up here.

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I know she's had a few tweets since then. Okay, I'm gonna have to scroll down.

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Okay, so here it is. So friends, and this is a friend, apparently she later clarified,

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I guess, was from Steve Dace's show. So a friend with a very large conservative platform just informed me that a bat signal was sent out via an email asking for help dealing with my

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MacArthur, my story on MacArthur clip, and the people who feel they were badly represented in it.

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I'm looking at email proof. Big Eva is apparently real. Now, this is the crux of the matter in my mind.

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A coordinated attempt to smear, downplay, get rid of, discredit

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Megan Basham. Now, this has happened in far worse ways, and it probably will happen in far worse ways to Megan Basham.

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It's harder, she's a reporter for the Daily Wire, big organization, a lot of Christians would follow that. It's very hard with her. She's got some institutional credibility, and that's what people have a hard time.

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In fact, Grove City's having a very hard time with it, and the squirming is going every single direction, as far as I can see, to try to get out of this.

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It's very hard, though. There's someone with institutional credibility working for an outlet that a lot of the people that go to their school would trust saying critical things about their school.

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How do you deal with this? And this is the problem they have. And now they're saying, Megan's done a few stories.

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She's not going away. We need to do something about her. And so she sees the proof that Big Eve is real.

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Now, I could have told you that years ago. A lot of us who have the bruises and took the shots for exposing and telling the truth, or even just platforming people who tell the truth about what's happened in some of these evangelical institutions have experienced the same kind of thing.

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And of course, even in far worse ways sometimes, we don't have institutions, some of us, that protect us like this.

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There aren't institutions that will. We don't have that credibility as much. Even though many of us, some people are very accomplished.

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I think of Will McCraney. I mean, they've just torn that guy in half. Very accomplished guy.

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I mean, really an expert on evangelism, missions, these kinds of things. Educated man.

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They tear people like that apart. They try to categorize them as kooks. I have two master's degrees.

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Not everyone knows that. And it's fine. It's like, that's one of the least of my accomplishments in my mind.

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Didn't really, it wasn't that difficult for me. And it wasn't, I learned something, especially at the one at Liberty that I did for history.

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Southeastern, frankly, I kind of want to forget that I went there sometimes, because I don't feel like I learned much at all.

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But I mean, look, I've been around these institutions. I've seen their programs. But you lose all that.

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All that credibility you would have, you lose it all once you come out against the guild. Once you come out against the institutions or say that there's compromise with some of the leaders in them and that kind of thing.

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And Megan's starting to find this out, I think. She's starting to feel that pressure. And now she's saying, wow, no, this is real.

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The coordination is real. And it's funny, Ed Stetzer, I mean, I've heard so many stories about Ed Stetzer being, in fact, one,

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I have it on my email list. It's a denomination. I won't say which yet, because I'm gonna probably talk about it at some point.

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But they're saying, hey, our denomination started going awoke and post -modern as soon as Ed Stetzer came in and he rearranged everything and left.

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And I've heard that story over and over with Ed Stetzer. Okay, so this was interesting to me.

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So the exposure, the admission that there's some kind of a guild out there is finally making its way to bigger platforms.

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It's not just, it's not pulpit and pen, right, saying there's this big EVA guild. This is the Daily Wire now.

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Someone who writes for them is saying, wait, hold on, there is one. Now, I want to play for you.

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This is the moment you've all been waiting for. I want to play for you some clips from John MacArthur.

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It didn't take me that long. I just went to the Grace To You website and I found some clips.

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And I want you to tell me, listen to these, whether you think John MacArthur supports theocracy or Christian nationalism or any of that.

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You tell me, just listen to the clips. I think Christians ought to stand up against abortion and gay rights and the

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ERA and a lot of other things. I really believe that we ought to take our stand on those issues. But somehow what happens is in the midst of wanting to take the right and legal means to take a stand and preach and proclaim against sin, we get diverted into the illusion that we can change our country by effecting changes in the political system.

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The reason I don't belong to the moral majority is because I'm not willing to alienate all the Democrats. Well, what do

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I gain by that? Because politics isn't the issue. There's no such thing, by the way, folks, as a

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Christian country, and there's no such thing as a Christian government. Well, there will be a

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Christian government in the millennium with Christ ruling. I don't expect my government to act in a

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Christian way. They have nothing to do with the church. There's no such thing as a Christian government, no such thing as a

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Christian nation. Never has been, never will be until Christ establishes a worldwide theocratic kingdom.

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All I expect out of my government is that I can get here when I want to get here, not get shot in the process, and that the water comes when

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I turn the faucet on. We want to do everything we can because we live in a democracy to bring about the best conditions that our people in this society may enjoy.

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There's always the temptation to cross the divide between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness and borrow things from the kingdom of darkness that you think are gonna aid you.

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I mean, Jerry Falwell believed that, right? He believed that if we're going to reach the world, we've got to have a

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Christian president, a Christian Congress, and a Christian Senate. That has nothing to do with the kingdom of God. And what you do in terms of social change, lobbying hard and fast for social change and giving too much of your time to that has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

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That's why Paul said we preach Christ and him crucified. There's a singularity in our focus.

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We do it with love and compassion. Okay, having listened to those, what do you think now?

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Do you think they're misrepresenting John MacArthur? Yeah, I think so. Now, this isn't the episode for it.

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I don't necessarily agree with all of that, but I'm not gonna misrepresent and lie about him.

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I tend to think that my view on the relationship of church and state is probably a little more in line with the magisterial reformers, more in line with the founders, probably more of an

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Anglican and Presbyterian kind of way of approaching it, and not state church

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Anglicanism, I'm not saying that, but there was kind of in the north a more

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Puritan outlook. A lot of denominations took when it came to the church and state, and in the south, more of an Anglican approach.

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And I don't have time to parse out all of that right now in this episode, but I've described it before as the difference between political religion and religious politics.

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I would be a religious politics guy. The church and state are separate institutions, and the church shouldn't be agitating, fomenting.

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As an institution, its job is not to get involved in the political realm other than, and here's what they should be doing, is teaching people

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Christian ethics and what God expects of the government, and being a prophetic voice in that sense to the government.

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Herod's a fox, you can do that, but it's not the government. I get uncomfortable when

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I see candidates campaigning at churches and these kinds of things. It starts to blur those lines, and there's some wrong assumptions that can really creep in.

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And on that point, I think I would have some agreement with MacArthur, but I do think there is definitely a place for Christians getting very involved.

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And Christians who, that's what they're doing, and they're not, their primary thing is not being evangelists, but it's getting involved in the political realm.

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I don't think there's something wrong with that, but don't confuse that with evangelism, okay? Don't do the Richard Mao thing where he took

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Kuiper and now TGC basically takes this approach of that's political evangelism. No, we don't do that. So it would take me more to parse all of that out, but I probably don't necessarily agree with MacArthur.

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MacArthur's view seems a little more, and this is actually what an elder at Grace Community Church said to me. I was there for some of those sermons.

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That's how I could find them so quick. I was at Master's. I remember an elder telling me he thought that, and he had been there years, that Grace Community was very impacted by kind of an

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Anabaptist understanding of church and state. Now that, I can't speak to that really. I'm just telling you what I heard there, and maybe that makes sense of it.

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I don't know. I remember distinctly, because I was conflicted.

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Should I go into politics? Should I stay in seminary? That kind of thing. And I remember asking the head of the evangelism at Grace Community Church, what do you think about this?

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And he basically told me, there's nothing significant about politics. It's just like being a janitor.

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There's really just nothing. It's almost like proclaiming the gospel from the pulpit is the highest thing you can possibly do, and becoming president is just not.

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It's just not really that important. And that attitude does exist with some people who are in those circles.

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So I'm not saying everyone's like that. I'm not even saying MacArthur believes that necessarily, but there are people who, let me give you another story.

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This is from when I was at Master's. I remember at a Shepherd's Conference, I don't know,

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I'm not giving names. Okay, so the first guy was Jesse Johnson, who told me that about politics. The second guy was Nate Busenitz, did this whole thing about,

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I think it was what hath Athens to do with Jerusalem, or something like that. And I remember

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I had talked to him before this, because I was in his class and we talked about this.

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I said, look, you're gonna present this thing on kind of, you shouldn't really be involved in politics as much, and you just wanna be careful.

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There are people who take this really far, and they just don't vote and all that kind of thing. And he appreciated me coming by.

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Well, then he speaks. And I remember afterwards, someone comes up to him. I was standing right there. And I go up to Nate and I say, because of you and the ministry here at Grace Community Church, I don't even vote anymore.

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It's an ungodly system. And you get that in a sense, almost from MacArthur's last comment in that clip of like what

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Jerry Falwell did. And we're gonna kind of band together with darkness somehow to get this good end justifies the means thing.

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And so he had taken that to the point of he doesn't even vote, which I'm sure MacArthur votes. I'm positive he does. And I was just,

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I remember standing there being like, oh, there's something wrong with this. So I'm not,

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I would be probably more in, more positive about Christians exerting political pressure.

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Look, if anyone is, Romans 13, right? Government is responsible for carrying out

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God's law when it comes to the civil realm. Who's gonna understand that? Christians more than anyone else.

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Christians should be in office. I encourage Christians out there, please get involved with your school board or your local county seat, your town, get involved with these things.

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And that is important. In fact, it's important for the gospel in this way. It's not the gospel, but here's the connection.

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Holding up civil, in the civil realm morality, true biblical ethics creates the ground where you can proclaim the gospel.

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And it makes sense because people know that there's a good and there's an evil. Because they know if they do the evil, they get punished.

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It reinforces that there's evil. Get involved with that. It creates the conditions for the church to be able to freely operate.

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And that is important. For educating your kids, for all the things that we hold dear, those go the way of the dodo bird.

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If Christians aren't involved in the political realm, you have to be, you have to be on some level.

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Even if you're not very involved, be involved in some way, vote at least, right? Do something, pray.

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So anyway, that's my two cents. Very short nutshell of it, because I didn't want to go into the whole nuances of the different ideas existing about the relationship between the church and the state.

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But I don't think MacArthur's view is any different significantly from the

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Baptist faith and message. It just doesn't seem like it. And they're trying to bash MacArthur with the Baptist faith and message as if he doesn't believe that.

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And that's the thing that sickens me about this whole thing. MacArthur has been fairly consistent and he's really tried, even if the things

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I don't agree necessarily and the excesses I see in MacArthur being against the religious right and so forth in his ministry,

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I have to say this about him. He's trying to answer these questions and he's opening his

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Bible to do it. You can't fault him for that. And a lot of these guys,

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I just don't see, I don't see these big Eva guys opening their Bible and then approaching this subject. What I see them doing is doing this.

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Which way is the worldly winds blowing today and how can I be on the good side of them?

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How can I have them at my back instead of trying to walk into them? Cause that's really hard. Oh, throw

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MacArthur under the bus. That'll help us. Shame on them. Shame on them. He shouldn't be having to deal with this in his elderly years.

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All right, so one last thing I was gonna show you, cause I just, as I was looking today,

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I saw this. I wasn't gonna talk about Grove City. This is very minor though. This is interesting to me. So Kristen Dumez, I think that's how,

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Dumez, I guess. That's probably how you pronounce her name. I mentioned her book briefly in Social Justice Goes to Church as kind of like, it's just one of the,

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Jesus and John Wayne is like, there's a string of books just like that. Every year there's another book like that. Not interesting to me.

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But I'm probably gonna have to cover it cause it's gained so much popularity. But kind of like, I was just like, this is academic.

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This is really, this is a serious work. I just, I'm not impressed. But there are leftists that I'm impressed by.

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Kristen Dumez is just not one of them. But she, and this is one of the reasons.

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She says, this is how, this is how, sorry, let me repeat here. This is how this works.

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And how the anti -CRT movement is designed to where Grove City isn't the only Christian college coming under fire like this.

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What's needed is a bold response from colleges in the face of these tactics. What are the tactics? Some guy named Matthew Martins says he's familiar with critical race theory and Grove City College is being attacked for supposedly promoting critical race theory because the school showed a six minute video of Bryan Stevenson, just mercy, speaking about sentencing juveniles to life in prison.

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I have no clue what he's talking about. I haven't seen that in any of the, this is so weird to me.

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And this is what I keep seeing over and over with the defenders of Grove City is like they wanna shift the conversation to something no one's talking about.

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You saw this with the National Review article too. They wanted to talk all about this professor that had a controversy like three years ago.

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And like, it's like no one's brought that up today, like publicly about Grove City. But you know, that's, they really wanna try to find some ground that's more defensible because the ground that is being critiqued is not defensible.

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They've clearly, critical race theory was clearly platformed in the chapel on many occasions by faculty members.

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You have implicit bias training. You have the course that is blatantly pro social justice being taught on campus.

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I mean, there's enough there to say like, you know, let's get the straight story about this. But that's not what they wanna do.

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And so it's a lot of deflecting, denying, disguising, and you just see that all over the place. So figured I'd mention that in closing.

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All right, one last thing. For those who want to come and see me,

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I'd love to meet you. There are some places you can do that. This is filling up quite a bit. But January 29th,

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Shelbyville, Kentucky. January 30th, Caneyville, Kentucky. January 31st,

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I'll be in Bowling Green, Kentucky. And then I will be in Nashville, Tennessee. And I should have put the date there.

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It's February 1st. It's a Tuesday. February 1st, I'm gonna be in Nashville, Tennessee.

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And the RSVPs for all these places are right there. Sign up, RSVP. We'd love to see you in Shelbyville, Kentucky.

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We'd love to see you in Caneyville. We'd love to see you in Bowling Green. We'd love to see you in Nashville, Tennessee. And I know some of you in this audience are close to those places.

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So go to worldviewconversation .com forward slash speaking dash engagements. You can just go to worldviewconversation .com,