Roasting the Social Justice Inquisitors at the #MLK50 Conference ERLC (Part 5)

Reviewing the MLK50 Panel Discussion

Well, hey, it's time to get right back to this review of the panel discussion, the most important panel discussion in Christian history, how not to talk about race, brought to you by the Gospel Coalition and the ERLC Conference, MLK50.

Let's just jump right to it. I don't know what part we're on, but if you're enjoying these, please go ahead and give this a like or a thumbs up.

I think what Dr. Mullis has identified is individual and systemic racism, and often...

Remember, he hasn't identified anything. He just talked about some things, and he was asked to define racism, and now it's, I guess it's been established that there's individual and systemic racism, of which we don't know what it is.

...times, I've actually been in groups where people have come together, very excited because it might be MLK Day or something like that, to come into a shared space and to talk about racism. Or that shared space, man.

These people, they love it. The spaces. It's a shared space, and we can talk about it in a shared space.

This critical theory is just... Race reconciliation and solutions to the problems. Some might come and have this idea of individual racism, it's sort of animus between one person and the next. And then the other group might come in with the idea of systemic racism, and when they come in, they're not only thinking about two different things, but then they begin to talk about and identify what the problems are.

They get frustrated with each other because they're talking about two separate things, and then because they can't identify what the problems are, they try to go on to, okay, let's talk about solutions.

And then when you try to talk about solutions to an unstated or misunderstood problem, they begin to just miss each other, and they go out of the room more frustrated than when they came in.

Individual Racism and the Problem of Undefined Systemic Racism

I think this brother's onto something, actually. That is very true, because what happens is a lot of times people will say, well, I'm talking about racism, and they're talking about individual racism, which can be easily proven.

You can see examples of it, two or more witnesses, the whole thing. We can see that. And then other people talk about this systemic racism, which, I mean, I've asked many times for evidence, I don't ever get it, so I just have to assume it's not real.

And then they're trying to solve that problem that's just a complete fantasy that they've made up on their own. And that is a big problem. We need to really establish the facts first. And if systemic racism is one of the supposed problems, well, we need to identify that it actually is a problem, and then we can move to the stage of making solutions.

And that brother actually has a really good point.

The Idea of “Theological Racism”

And so I think this is what you're really getting at. But it manifests in so many different ways. And as a Christian, one way that I begin to think about this also is something that I'm trying to figure out how to coin a phrase to get at, but I'm calling it right now, theological racism, in the sense that this is going to be good.

Can you feel this? This is going to be good. I let me see if I can, if I can guess what he's going to say. I don't know what he's going to say. This is new to me. So I've done a lot. So the reason why I can guess all this stuff before it's even said is because I've seen a ton of SJW materials on YouTube.

I've read a lot of stuff. And so I'm used to how they argue. But most of the stuff that I've done up until a few months ago, really, was primarily focused on secular materials. So people that weren't Christians.

So some of this Christian stuff is new to me. I wonder what he's going to say about theological racism. One thing I'm seeing a lot of lately is talking about how the Puritans were like, they held slaves and stuff.

So if you're like a reformed person, but your favorite authors are the Puritans, that's some kind of a racism. Maybe he's going to say something about that. I don't know. Or maybe he's going to say like, we only learn from white theologians, which is not true.

So that's just a false claim. Huh.

I don't know. I don't know. What do you think? It's possible to be considered well-read as an evangelical, never having read a book or listened to a sermon by a person of color. I'm good. I'm good.

Reading Proportionally and the Charge of Partiality

Yes, I got it. I was a little, I was unsure that I had that one, right. But I got it. But I got it. You know what? I, when, when somebody recommends a book to me, you know, one of the first things that I'm concerned with is I go, Hmm, I wonder what the ethnicity is of this author.

You know, if you asked me what the ethnicity was of any author that I've ever read in my life, there would be very few that I would know because I don't care at all. Don't show partiality based on race or ethnicity or skin color.

There are a few that I do know just because I happen to know a little bit more about him. I know Kelvin was a French guy. I know that, you know, that kind of stuff. I know Luther was a German. That's very easy.

You know, I know Augustine was from North Africa. So, you know, there's a few that I know, but most I don't know because I don't care at all. And if you care, you need to search your own heart and say, well, why am I partial?

Why am I so partial?

You know, you can be thoughtful and never have engaged rich traditions outside of the dominant culture. And so Cortland as a, as a student at a place like Southeastern getting a theological education,.

What you need to do is you need to make sure that you're reading proportional because otherwise you're oppressing. So you look at the, you know, the statistics of, of the percentages of, of, of Nigerian Christians and you better have books read equal to an equal proportions to the percentage of Nigerian Christians.

You better have that many Nigerian authors read. You also better make sure that, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're covering all your bases, not just black and white, but everything, you know, every Christian Alaskan author.

You got to read one, at least one. You know, you better do it. Otherwise you're going to be a racist and this is systemic, systemic racism. This is not even just regular racism. This is systemic racism.

What is it due to you when there's just nobody who is working through the same sort of contextual reality that you're working through as you're receiving sort of theological and biblical realities from them?

African American and Latino Voices in Theological Reflection

Yeah. Well, I mean, just straight up front, it feeds me and other students of false narrative that African Americans and other people of color have nothing to contribute to theological reflection.

So if you're not assigned a book in a certain class by an African American, then what that teacher is telling you that African Americans don't know anything, you shouldn't learn from them. Only if you live in a fantasy world, is that, is that how it works?

No. If you interpret it that way, then that's on you, right? Unless the teacher told you that African Americans don't have anything to contribute. If it is, unless they said that, which I highly doubt that they did, but maybe they did.

I don't know. But if you're just interpreting things as if that's what they're saying, that's your problem. You need to work that out with yourself and somebody needs to encourage you and you know, look, if you watch, if you're watching this video, let me encourage you to sort that out in your own heart because you're not getting that message from somewhere else that's coming from within.

That's coming from within because I've never in my college experience, as far as I know, and again, this may, maybe just cause I'm weird and I don't consider these things, but I've never, as far as I know, been assigned a book by a Puerto Rican.

Okay. Now I did not grow up thinking that Puerto Ricans have nothing to contribute to the conversation. I don't even know of a single Puerto Rican author and I might have read theological books by Puerto Ricans, but I don't care to look.

I don't care, but maybe I have, maybe I haven't, but I don't even know of one that I could say for sure is a Puerto Rican. Now, does that, do I think that that means that Puerto Ricans have nothing of value to offer to the theological conversation?

No, no. That's something that's within you. You need to, you need to sort that out with yourself.

Athanasius, Augustine, and the Value of Non-White Theologians

Doing so you continue to perpetuate this segregated history where we've kind of cropped out the voices of Athanasius or Tertullian or Augustine or all these people and even more modern.

That brother just say we crop out Athanasius and Tertullian and Augustine, like it's just the circles that I run in. These are names that are quoted all the time in the circles I run in. Augustine's like one of the most famous theologians in history.

Like probably even non-Christians know about Augustine. What is he talking about?

George Lyle, a missionary, all these other people, Lemuel Haynes, you know, I can go on and on who have contributed.

How is it that you can go on and on if, you know, you were taught that black people don't matter? How is it that you know about these people if we're systematically and institutionally hiding them from everybody?

I don't think your experience is unique. I know about all these guys. Lemuel Haynes. He actually preached in the city that I preach in, in Rutland, Vermont.

I mean, in robust ways to the salvation history. But when our seminaries and our Bible colleges ignore those figures, it teaches a false narrative that the most helpful and most robust contributions to theological reflection only come from white Europeans.

And this isn't true. So I've personally benefited from guys like yourself at Southeastern who have tried to rewrite that narrative to contribute to bring to light the voices that are already there. But it's needed because there's so many people who have ignored those voices for so long that they almost forget.

You know, that's why you get a book with Augustine's face on it and he's white. You know, that's how that happens. No, no, no, no. That's not how that happens. No, no, no, no, no. A false narrative about who these people were.

In one breath, he's saying Augustine's completely ignored and he's being suppressed. And then the other hand, he's talking about how Augustine appears to be white. Those are two different things, first of all.

And they're kind of contradictory. But no, no, that's not how that happens. That's not how that happens. And let's not pretend like teachers want you to think that Augustine is white so that you actually respect him.

That's not how it goes. That's not how it goes. I'm sure somebody said that in the world. And it's a weird world we live in. People do a lot of weird things. That's not a systemic institutional problem.

When I knew about Augustine, for almost the very first time I heard him, I knew he was African. OK, I mean, I just, I don't even know whether to continue. You know, let's continue.

Identity, Value, and the Poison of Syllabus-Based Worth

A step further and you say, and I'm a black woman in academics. There is enough that we didn't do anything when you walk through your classes and you study. And I think that.

Look, this is on you guys. I'm going to stop it right there. If you if you if your metric for knowing whether or not black people or Latinos are have something of value to add to the conversation, if your metric is whether or not you were assigned the reading from them.

I mean, you've got another problem. And this is this is why I this is why I mock this stuff. And I make no mistake. I'm mocking this this panel. This is ridiculous. But but this is why I mock this stuff, because, you know, it's not just for fun.

It's not just because I enjoy mocking, you know, people that I would consider social justice warriors. This is serious because this actually hurts the minorities that they claim to be helping, because when you start to perpetuate this idea that unless you're assigned books of a certain race of the authors of a certain race, then then what you're what you're learning is that, you know, people of that race have no value.

Look, that's not helpful. That's that's an interpretation that is not helpful, because guess what? Life is not always going to be that way. You're not going to always have somebody, you know, with kid gloves saying, Well, I want to make sure that we read books of every color of the rainbow.

The reality is that they're always going to be going to be the best books in in a certain subject, and they're not always going to be written by ethnically diverse people. And so you need to understand that your value does not come from the amount of ethnically diverse books that are assigned in your classes.

You need to understand that your value is not does not come from what other people say about people of your ethnicity, right? Your value does not come from that. I saw one brother say that that black ladies feel ugly because white guys don't ask them out on dates.

And I was shocked by that statement, because I'm thinking, Yeah, that's really that that sucks. But the lesson from that isn't so white guys ask black girls out on dates. That's not the lesson. The lesson is you want to talk to that sister and be like, your value is not where you're deriving your value is not in line with what the scriptures say you should you have value you have worth because of who you are in Christ, because Christ died for your sins, because Christ chose you elected you for salvation.

You're one of his you bear his image. That's why you have value. It's not because, you know, we assigned 13 books by, you know, by black female authors in your literature class. Okay, that's going to hurt these minorities when they're starting to say, Okay, well, my value is determined based on how much I see in the media.

It makes me mad because because here's the thing. This is this is what this is serious. And I'm sorry, this video is taking a little bit of a serious turn. But this is what this is what burns me up about this.

Because when you grow up, and you think that that's where you get your value, based on how often you see, you know, people in leadership positions or in the media or something like that, with a minute, you don't see it, then you're gonna think, Oh, where's my value?

That's all twisted up, man, you got to address that at the soul level at the heart level. No, that's not what you get. Just because your professor assigned 13 books, and all 13 of them were written by a white guy does not mean you have any less value because your value comes from Christ, not from the syllabus.

This is serious stuff. This is poison. This is going to this is going to damage these people. This is a recipe for shipwreck. There is no question about that. This is poison.