Downgrade at Southern Seminary: Critical Theory & Al Mohler (Part III)

Dr. Fuller, it is good to have you one more time to talk about the leftward drift of the

Southern Baptist Convention, Southern Seminary in particular. We've learned a lot so far, and I would encourage anyone who's tuning in now to just go back to those two videos that we've already put out on higher criticism and postmodernism.

And again, I want to remind everyone, the documents that catalog a lot of these issues are available at enemieswithinthechurch .com,

you can find the links in the info section for this video. Today, though, Dr. Fuller, I want to talk about something that many are already aware of and get sort of the insider's take on this, but critical race theory, intersectionality, social justice, these are words that have become now part of the vocabulary of those in the

Southern Baptist Convention who are really debating, I guess, what I would call the new liberalism.

And Resolution 9, I think, really showed that there's something different, something's going on when critical race theory and intersectionality can be used as analytical tools.

And so there are some videos that surfaced, and there's actually a link in this video to a montage of three professors, two of them are still at Southern Seminary, one of them has gone on to another job, but Curtis Woods, Jarvis Williams, and Matt Hall, teaching ideas that are consistent with critical race theory.

And I'd like to just get your take on this. What's going on?

There had to have been discussions at Southern Seminary because these ideas were taught over the course of years.

That's right. So was this something that everyone at the school, at the administration in particular, was okay with?

Oh, absolutely. Matt Hall, I mean, when he was doing some of these videos, if you look at the full videos that he did, he did some panel discussions, and Jarvis Williams, Curtis Woods, and Matt Hall, I think, were in both of the main ones.

They were panel discussions held on campus. At that time, Matt Hall was the dean of Boyce College, you see, when he did that.

So Moeller had to be completely aware of what he was teaching. And it was being taught over at Boyce in particular, through Matt Hall, in his classes, like he teaches history, and there he was just teaching critical race theory and social justice very clearly, and Jarvis Williams.

One day, I happened to be walking down the hall, and I heard him, he likes to, let's say, kind of yell and scream when he's teaching, so I could hear him out in the hall.

So I just stopped to listen to him, and it was just a diatribe on race and so forth. And even when he finished, he goes, now

I know that has nothing to do with the Greek and the passage we're reading here in Ephesians, but I just had to get that off my chest.

And so he was constantly hitting these issues of, again, critical race theory and so forth in the classroom.

And I think many have seen the video of these three professors saying some of these things where they talk about race is, it's a power structure.

That's right. And Matt Hall saying that he is a racist, and Curtis Woods saying that you gotta read.

For every Anglo book you read, you need to read two non -Anglo books. That's right. Yeah, and so,

I mean, a lot of these quotes now have just become part of this discourse. Matt Hall will talk about, we need a global curriculum.

Because you see, it goes back to that standpoint epistemology is what it's going back to. So if you belong to a certain racial group, you're going to have certain insights that other racial groups get.

And again, this is part of postmodernism, because if you look at the real roots of the critical race theory, it goes back to postmodernism and radical feminism.

And so you can see that in their standpoint epistemology and different things. Well, there's one thing Matt Hall had said in one of these panel discussions where he said, you know, what you thought in your family and in your seminary or your institution, your church, were these beautiful stories of orthodoxy.

I'm going to rip that back. I'm going to show that that's the rotting corpse of white supremacy.

And that's what that is. He strikes me as a lot of the faculty in various history departments across the

United States who have accepted the new left critique, kind of this Howard Zinn approach to American history and all the people who came from him, the

Eric Foners and so forth and so on. And really this idea that it's really just a really crummy place, this country.

You know, and we get particular, we look at this country, we'll put it under the microscope. We don't consider really the alternatives.

We use presentist, we standards, present standards to go back to the past and then we cherry pick a lot of the times with things to try to create a narrative that makes it even look worse perhaps than it even is.

And he just struck me as, I'm like, I've met guys like that all over the place. And so I want to hear from you, though.

I know when I hear professors say those things, I know being on secular campuses, what students do.

The professor says it in class. And the next thing the student does is they go out and they protest or and they vote

Democrat, you know, whatever the case may be. But they say, I can't believe I've been part of this. I'm complicit in this horrible system.

I need to do something about this. Is there an effect you're seeing on the student body at Southern Seminary?

In other words, are there students that are social justice warriors now because of what they've heard? Absolutely. Absolutely.

I've seen this on campus. And if you talk to other students, they'll tell you, oh, yeah, we've got students who believe our whole country is nothing but it's been nothing but racism.

You know, like Matt Hall, he'll define systemic racism as the unjust allocation of like privileges, power, economics based on a lot of it's based on race, you see.

So we just have a. So if there's a difference between the average income of whites and blacks, a disparity, it's a disparity.

Any kind of numerical disparity like that. It's because we have an unjust racist society.

He's not giving credence. They don't argue for it. They just say that. Yeah. Instead of saying, well, maybe there's other factors.

Suppose there's other factors like, for instance, how about two parent homes? How do children do when they have two parents, you know, a husband and I should say a husband and a mother.

Or geographic considerations. You know, what does Appalachia look like? Exactly. He's not considering those things.

OK. If there's differences. So he sees America as very much and also evangelicalism.

He talks about evangelicalism post -World War II and he talks about the

National Association of Evangelicals and Billy Graham and his ministry as being affected by whiteness.

And he goes, most of our churches don't even know how they're affected by whiteness. That's a bad thing.

Oh, it's a bad thing. Whiteness, it's just a white culture, white power, white morals.

See, all these things have influenced us, not the Bible. And so this is how he sees

America. This is how he sees evangelicalism. Do you think that's changing the voting pattern of perhaps students?

Oh, I think so. I think so. Like, for instance, Curtis, I mean, Jarvis Williams in one of his articles, he talks a lot about the 2016 election.

And he talks about if the evangelical church, and he says, and it shows by the 2016 election that evangelicalism and right -wing politics are being seen as one.

If this happens, he goes, then evangelicalism will never be able to conquer racism.

Racism will basically overcome evangelicalism. So it would be better if Hillary Clinton were the president so that evangelicals could conquer racism.

Apparently so. Apparently so. And you can see it. It usually gets back to Trump somehow. By the way, the day

Donald Trump was elected, in our chapel, we had a sermon by Kevin Smith.

And he was just railing upon Trump and the Republicans and so forth. We've had some chapel services there at Southern Seminary that just railed against Trump, Republicans, and so forth.

Well, I need to ask you the next obvious question then. What's happening then behind closed doors?

Because I have to think that there's been some battles on the seminary campus over this because I know yourself, and I know you mentioned some other professors who have since been let go, had some problems with some of these things, and were they fighting this?

What happened? That's right. What happened was, I was a full professor, and in full professor's meetings, we have, in full professor's meetings, we do promotions of the other professors who are assistant and who are associate professors.

And so we help on the promotion process. Well, Matt Hall was up for promotion, and so I, along with two other professors, made statements against Matt Hall.

And so I gave a rather long presentation of why we should not promote

Matt Hall. And I said, basically, he takes critical race theory, tries to combine it with scripture, and I said, anytime you take secular views and combine it with scripture, you're corrupting and perverting the gospel.

And I said, this is completely unacceptable for us as a, who claim to hold to Orthodox Christianity.

There's no way we can promote someone like this. And it didn't go over well. It didn't go over well at all.

But in the vote, by the way, eight professors, eight full professors, voted against Matthew Hall's promotion, which

I thought was, you know, I mean, it was good. One abstained, but unfortunately, the problem is that 22 of them voted for Matt Hall.

And there were three who spoke out. One was let go two months later, fired two months later, or asked to leave, if you want to use the...

Let go would be the term that they would probably want to say, but yeah. And then within the next 12 months, myself and Jim Oreck were let go.

And so the three people who spoke up, Mark Coppinger, Jim Oreck, and myself, within really about 12 to 14 months, we were all gone.

Wow. Oh, yeah. So Matthew Hall will be up for one more promotion to a full professor.

And I'll tell you what. Again, I don't think you're going to get eight votes against him and one abstention next time.

Because again, many of us who voted against him, we're no longer there. And so he'll do much better the next time.

And you know, you had spurred something in my mind when you had said a corruption of the gospel. I remember, I think it was

Jarvis Williams had said in one of these panel discussions that you should fight for,

I think it was racial reconciliation, one of these panels, in the same way you would fight for penal substitution.

That's right. Because he's taking his, what he calls his kind of version, let's say, of social justice and critical race theory, the way he's applying it to scripture, he calls it racial reconciliation.

And what he's done is he has basically taken a form of critical race theory.

And what he claims, by the way, is that the evangelical church is basically overrun with racist ideologies.

That's what he indicts the church. Yeah. The church is, the evangelical church is, again, the term he used was racist ideologies is dominant in their minds.

It's systemic. Yes. And, and they despise, you know, foreigners, immigrants, people of another race.

They're despised by the evangelical church. Again, he doesn't give examples, but he just indicts.

It's just a blanket indictment. We all know. We all know this is going on. Yeah. And I mean, this is, to me, this is slander on the church.

Right. He's slandering the church. And what he's doing, in my opinion, is he's creating another gospel.

And he says, he goes, again, he goes, well, he goes, reconciliation is between us and the Lord, but then horizontal between each other.

And therefore he starts saying things like, you know, different races need to be reconciled.

But see, the Bible doesn't teach that, like the

Jews need to be reconciled with the Moabites. You know, the Israelites need to be reconciled with the Moabites or with the

Babylonians. Or the New Testament doesn't teach that one group of Gentiles need to be reconciled with another group of Gentiles.

The big division in the scripture was between Jew and Gentile. And God made that distinction in the

Old Testament through the law, through the Mosaic law. But in the New Testament, that distinction now is broken down.

And now the one new man is that Jew and Gentile are seen as one people.

That old distinction of Jew and Gentile doesn't mean anything anymore. And the old distinctions of things like Jew -Gentile, free bond, male -female,

I mean, those are real distinctions. But in Christ, the only distinction that matters is that we belong to Christ.

So for instance, Jarvis Williams, he's very much against this idea of colorblindness.

He believes that people who believe we ought to be colorblind, it's a form of racism, you see. And he doesn't believe it's possible for us to look past the skin color or to look past race when we make decisions.

But yet the Bible clearly tells us to do this. You know, things like Jew -Gentile doesn't make any difference anymore.

So this just unravels the fabric of the fellowship and communion that Christians should have.

And I think that was a beautiful explanation of how this undermines the true gospel. It's another gospel.

It's another gospel. It's a different gospel that I believe we should anathematize.

So I want to go back to the meeting for a moment. When you did try to mount an opposition with Matt Hall, were there any other opportunities?

I mean, have you spoken to Dr. Moeller directly about these concerns and gotten his take on it?

Yeah. Before this happened, I wrote a letter. This is right before the statement of social justice came out.

And again, I didn't know at the time that that statement was coming out, but I wrote him a letter detailing my concerns about the teachings of Jonathan Pennington, Dominique Hernandez, and then the teachings of the critical race theory by Hall and Jarvis Williams.

And for that, I got an official letter of reprimand that these people do not teach this and basically threatened to be fired.

Did Moeller send that? Who sent that? Well, it came... Well, Moeller obviously instructed... No, it came from Herschel York, but obviously

Moeller told probably Stinson and Stinson told...

Essentially, they're reprimanding you. Oh, absolutely. For blowing the whistle. Wow. Absolutely.

Wow. That is shocking to me. So, I mean, has he had words, like personal words with you about this at all?

Well, when I gave the speech against Matt Hall, and again, you can read the speech that I gave.

You go to Enemies Within the Church. We have the document there. We have the document. You've made it available. Yeah. I read that. And one of the other professors told me, said, when

I was reading, I was watching Dr. Moeller and I could tell he was getting angrier and angrier as you kept reading.

And then once everybody finished speaking their mind about Matt Hall, Dr.

Moeller spoke and he looked at me and he said, Russell, you're an idiot screaming this at me.

And then he says, you shouldn't say anything about anything. You don't know anything you're talking about. Oh, my.

Then he started saying things like, do you believe in systemic racism?

And I was trying to say, I kept saying to him, how do you define it? But he just, no.

Do you believe in systemic racism? And I go, see, it was a loaded question. However I answered that, he was going to attack me.

And what I wanted to say is, how do you define it? Because in critical race theory, you can have systemic racism without any racist.

And to me, that's as foolish as saying you can have a sinful society without sinners. That's just, that's impossible, you see.

That's not, that's not possible. And so finally I said, well, yeah, but I had to,

I mean, because he was sitting there just constantly haranguing me on this, you see. In front of everyone. Oh.

All your peers. Absolutely. All the people that work with you. Absolutely. About 35 people. Did he apologize?

Two months later, privately in his office, he did apologize. But it was, he couldn't, listen.

He asked for your forgiveness? Yeah, he did. Okay. But let me tell you, that's all he had. All he could do was attack me personally because he couldn't attack the substance of what

I was saying. He couldn't attack one thing. And let me say this. When you see this stuff on the internet and so forth, watch.

They're going to go after me personally because that's all they can do. They cannot go after the substance of what

I'm saying on this. I want to ask you a final question here. Were you asked to sign a non -disparagement and confidentiality clause in order to receive pay and benefits?

Yeah. In other words. When you were fired. I used to have tenure. It used to be an award that they really pressed you.

If you really do your job well and so forth, you'll get tenure. But then what they did is they took tenure away from us and basically gave us 30 -day contracts.

They said we had rolling contracts. But if you read the fine print, they can give you 30 -day notice.

And when they fired me, they basically gave me 30 -day notice. So I have a 30 -day contract.

And that's all I have. But if I were to sign the agreement, I would get pay and insurance to go through July 31st.

But you don't teach during the summer anyway. No, I don't. Okay. No, and I completed. Even though I was fired,

I had two more weeks to go to teach. And for the students' sake, I went ahead and did my duty with the students. But again, yeah,

I've done my duty, but no, I'm not going to get paid. So you're taking a risk. Because it sounds like to me, is it for the rest of your life you can't say anything disparaging about Southern if you sign that?

That's right. I cannot criticize anything about Southern Seminary, any person at Southern Seminary for the rest of my life if I sign this.

Oh, my goodness. That is correct. And the confidentiality of the agreement, I can't mention anything about the stipulations in the agreement or anything if I sign that.

I know you may not know the answer to this, but some of the professors who have been let go recently, if they had signed that document, they wouldn't be able to criticize anything anyway.

That's correct. Even if they were asked, even if they had criticisms of any kind, they couldn't say them. That's correct.

And I know one who did sign it, and I know for a fact he cannot criticize the school now in any way.

Well, that is troubling. I appreciate you for not signing it. Yes, I will not sign that.

Let me say this, John, to you. I could have, if I wanted to keep my job,

I knew how to do that. Just when you see all this liberalism coming through, just look the other way.

I could have done that and still had a job. But, you know, John, I couldn't sleep at night if I did that. I couldn't,

I would feel like I love my job more than I love the Lord. I couldn't do that.

So I know I was putting my job on the line and the money on the line by speaking out.

Now that I've been fired, am I going to sign a document to get just a little bit of money? I mean, why?

So if I spoke out while I was on campus, now that they've pushed me off campus, I'm not going to be quiet.

I'm going to still try to say to people, we need to do something about Southern Seminary and turn it around.

Well, I am so beyond grateful for you. One other thing, John, because I know there's going to be a lot of controversy over this.

Yes, there will be. Let me say this. Any full professor, anybody on the administration and Al Mohler himself, if any of them would like to publicly debate me on any of these issues that I have said,

I'd be more than welcome, I'd be more than willing to debate them publicly, maybe in front of the students on campus, and then we could live stream it on YouTube or something.

I'll host it. They probably won't want me hosting. I don't think you'll get that invitation. But I tell you what,

John, I really don't think anyone's going to challenge me on this, because when you look at the documents and so forth.

It's all there. It's there. It's just like when you look at the videos, John. You know this. When you look at the videos, they speak for themselves.

And what I used to say to people on campus the last year I was there, it's hard to debate this now. If you've seen the videos, and if the videos can't persuade you, probably

I can't do much for you either on that. Well, Dr. Fuller, I thank you so much. If you want more information about any of these documents that were mentioned, you can go to enemieswithinthechurch .com.

Link is in the info section for this video. Throw them a few pennies while you're there, if you would, to support their project.

They've sponsored this three -part series. And, Dr. Fuller, is there anywhere

I should send anyone if they want to order your books? We talked about that in the first episode, but are getting in contact with you?

Yeah, I guess the best way right now is I'm just starting to get back on Facebook again. It's been about three years since I've done anything on Facebook.

Oh, no. So I'm going to try. That's probably the best way right now. Don't get on Twitter. No, no,

I don't do Twitter. Good. I don't do Twitter. One other word I do want to say before we dismiss. When it comes to people like Curtis Woods, when

Al Mueller hired him, we already knew what he believed. He made it very clear.

But yet he knowingly hired people that he knew taught critical race theory and social justice.

Al Mueller knew that when he hired him. Well, we've seen a lot of contradictions with Al Mueller endorsing Pennington's book, and you say he spoke out against it, and speaking out against critical race theory,

Resolution 9, but hiring guys who teach it. Attenhall and I had a conversation, and one of the things he said online, he was talking with a man named

Otis Bass, who was the successor to Jeremiah Wright, you know, Barack Obama's pastor.

And he was talking on this video. You can see it on YouTube. And they were so excited.

These are very liberal people. He's a pastor, by the way, of the United Church of Christ. Yeah, very liberal.

That should tell you something. And they were so pleased with what Matt Hall was teaching. They called him a liberal and a social justice warrior.

And I asked Matt Hall. I said, Matt, they called you, they were complimenting you, calling you a liberal and social justice warrior.

I said, Matt, why didn't you correct them? Why didn't you say, no, that's not true at all? No, no, you've misunderstood me.

I'm not either one of those. What did he say? Nothing. Then I said,

Matt, Curtis Woods, in one of the panel discussions, said you were well -versed in critical race theory, and you use words like whiteness, which gives some people angst.

I said, Matt, why didn't you correct the record right there? Why didn't you say, no, no,

I don't believe in critical race theory. No, I don't do that. I said, why didn't you correct the record right there, right in front of students on our campus?

And I said, there were all kinds of words being thrown around in that meeting, from microaggressions, I mean, all the buzzwords.

They were all being said. Why didn't you correct the record? His answer, nothing. Then later he said, you're taking my words out of context.

Well, we have the words. We have the words. We have the words, and you can go read them for yourselves or watch them as the case may be.

I'm sure we could go all day, but we need to end it at some point. I know you have a lot of information.

So thank you once again, and we'll be praying for you and your family. As I know, this will be hard for some people to hear, but we pray that the

Lord uses it. God bless you. Thank you, John. I appreciate it. To help assist Professors Russell Fuller and Jim Orwick, who have refused to sign the separation agreement

Southern Seminary required in order for them to receive their pay, go to gofundme .com

slash sbts dash profs. To support Enemies Within the Church, which sponsored this video, simply go to enemieswithinthechurch .com.