SBC Professors Caught Pushing CRT & Liberation Theology, Where are Honest Leaders?

Welcome to Conversations That Matter. My name is John Harris and it is a late Thursday evening, but I wanted to show you guys a video that I just saw that wow, this needs to be digested a little bit and we need to think about this.

Walter Strickland, Liberation Theology, and the Southern Baptist Seminary Controversy

So I wanna make a few comments. I wanna set it up first though. So I'm gonna show you two videos. One of them you might have already seen if you follow the social justice debate at all and Christianity or evangelicalism, but for those who don't, I need to set this up.

We had MLK50, we had Dallas Statement on Social Justice. So it's two sides start forming. You have a social justice side and then sort of like an anti-social justice side. 2019, I'll start in April. New York Times puts out an article in which Walter Strickland was interviewed.

He's a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary which is I think the second biggest Baptist seminary. And Walter Strickland says in this interview in the New York Times article that he teaches liberation theology in James Cone without mentioning James Cone.

Now, the deception wasn't as much the issue as was why are you teaching James Cone? James Cone is a heretic and this is what a lot of folks asked at the time and it made the president, Danny Akin, a bit defensive.

And Walter Strickland tried to kind of reel it and he put out an article explaining more why he admired Cone and basically the long story short is I take the meat and I spit out the bones. So I know Cone is a heretic and I know he denies the divinity of Christ and so forth but I'm taking his good ideas.

Now, Danny Akin who's the president there, the face he tried to put on this was, well, no, we're just teaching it negatively. So the same way we would teach evolution like Darwin and Darwinistic evolution perhaps or well, I'm using that example.

He used, I think, neo-orthodoxy as an example. The same way we would teach neo-orthodox theology even though we don't believe it is the same way we would teach any flavor of Marxism, liberation theology.

We're teaching it so that our students who will be pastors can confront it when they get out of the seminary and see it in the real world. Now, of course, there's an apologetic reason to do that. But it was obvious to those who read the New York Times article and saw the article from Walter Strickland afterward that he was teaching it positively.

Now, I went to Southeastern. I don't know if I've, I don't think I did ever meet Walter Strickland. I've seen him. I know a lot of people who've taken classes and met him. And from what I heard, he's a very nice man.

But yes, he is teaching liberation theology. And this is known on the campus, those who know him. Now, I knew that Southeastern was woke without the influence of Walter Strickland. He was kind of in the periphery.

I mean, Kingdom Diversity was doing things. I saw that and Walter Strickland was involved with that. But you don't need Walter Strickland. There's a lot of other things going on at Southeastern and I've covered those things.

But Walter Strickland became kind of the face, not just of Southeastern, but even in the Southern Baptist Convention of wokeness. This idea, for those who don't know, wokeness is kind of this idea of being enlightened.

It's almost like a salvation experience, like a born again experience. Like you notice that, wow, I'm living in a system that favors whites over blacks, men over women, maybe even straights over homosexuals, so forth.

And wow, I'm part of, I'm benefiting from this. I guess that makes me a white supremacist or I have straight privilege or something along those lines. I'm part of the patriarchy. Now, here's where it gets interesting.

The Founders Ministries put out a trailer a few weeks ago about a movie that they want to put out. Founders Ministries is within the Southern Baptist Convention and it's on social justice. It's against social justice.

It's against critical race theory, intersectionality, egalitarianism, et cetera. Now then, how does this all connect? Let me bring this together before I show you the video. Resolution 9 was passed by a committee.

On that committee sat Walter Strickland. Resolution 9 said critical race theory, intersectionality can be used as analytical tools. Now, I went through why I don't believe that is the case and I'm gonna hopefully have someone, I won't mention their name yet because they haven't agreed to it, but I wanna have someone on who can really articulate this well.

Critical race theory is not a fundamental law of logic. It's not something necessary for existence. It is actually something based on assumptions that are contrary to Christianity. And the same way we wouldn't use Darwinism as an analytical tool, we're not gonna use critical race theory.

That seems obvious to me, but they said as long as we keep the word of God as the authority, we can use these things as analytical tools. Founders Ministries said no. Tom Askell, who's the president, challenged it.

And Tom Askell in the last, I think it was like a week ago or so, I think it was a week from today, announced that half their board at Founders has resigned. Now, why would that be? Why would half their board resign after they made this trailer against social justice?

Well, four of the top Southern Baptist Seminary presidents came out against it. Al Mohler, Adam Greenway, Jason Allen, Danny Akin. And they said this is divisive. Of course, MLK 50 wasn't divisive. Revoice wasn't divisive.

Apparently, this is divisive though, this trailer. And it's like within an hour of each other, it looked coordinated, they came out against this. And now there's just divisions. It's just blowing up. It's heating up this debate.

Now, Matthew Hall, who is the provost at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship seminary for the Southern Baptist Convention, Al Mohler's right-hand guy, essentially would take over for Al Mohler, logically speaking, if Al Mohler retired.

Matthew Hall had said in 2016 that he struggled with racism and white supremacy. I'm gonna show you the video of him saying that. Now, there's other things he said that are actually more radical than that, that I've seen and I've read.

But this was the one that sort of made the rounds right afterward. How come Al Mohler is going against Founders, but yet he doesn't have a problem with Matthew Hall saying this? Now, Al Mohler ordered that that video be taken off the website.

So it's gone. It's not there anymore. It was scrubbed. Things at Southeastern that were social justice that have been exposed to the light have also been scrubbed. I believe both Southern and Southeastern, they've scrubbed the Kern Family Foundation funding.

I mean, there's just, from the Intersect Project at Southeastern, and I forget the one that's Southern, but the point is that there's a cover-up. And this is what's not good. This is what's not good.

If things are above board, then we shouldn't need a cover-up. We shouldn't need to be erasing things from the website. It just takes an apology, really. We were wrong about something, or we don't believe in this, and we've let that person go because they believe it and we parted ways.

Something that says, we don't agree with this theology.

We don't agree.

At Southeastern, we don't agree with liberation theology. Walter Strickland makes a statement. I do not agree with liberation theology. It is heretical. James Cone is a heretic. I will no longer be teaching him, and we regret what we have done.

That's the key thing. We regret and we confess what we have done with Southern Baptist money in teaching that to students. That's not what's going on. That's not what's going on. At Southern, it would look like, Al Mohler saying Matthew Hall, and there's a couple other professors as well that have pushed this woke theology.

We don't believe that that was right, and we apologize for what we've done with the Southern Baptist funds, and we are going a different direction. Something to indicate that, but nothing like that seems to take place.

Instead, it's cover up, which just causes confusion. If nothing shady is going on, then just be honest, right? So, it raises questions when nothing is said. Now, here's what I'm leading up to. I wanna show you, first of all, the video of Matthew Hall.

So, here it is.

Think more biblically. And what I mean by that is, I have a pretty historic, and I think Pauline or biblical view of the power of sin. The problem is a lot worse than we think. What I mean by that is both individually, like I am a racist.

Okay, so if that freaks you out, if you think the worst thing somebody can call you is a racist, then you're not thinking biblically. Because guess what? I'm gonna struggle with racism and white supremacy until the day I die and get my glorified body in a completely renewed and sanctified mind.

Because I am immersed in a culture where I benefit from racism all the time.

Now, here's the question. This video did not age well, right? The media is going after white supremacy now after the shooting down in Texas. And they're using this as a platform to get to even the president.

And Republicans and try to hammer them. Matthew Hall though, is not saying what you think he's saying probably. If you're someone like, let's say 15 years ago, if you weren't in some liberal academic bubble, you would have thought white supremacy means because of the shade of my skin, I think someone else is less valuable than me.

That's not what they mean by it. They mean that you're benefiting from systems that were put in place even hundreds of years ago by white people. So you are a white supremacist or a racist because you're benefiting from these systems.

It's a new definition of racism and white supremacy. That's critical race theory. That is the de-centering of whiteness. This is the getting woke. This is understanding that you're the benefit of systemic abuse.

And you don't have to have any, your heart can be perfectly pure. You have no thoughts of animosity against another race, biologically speaking. I mean, you just really are fine with everyone. But because you're benefiting from a system of oppression, you are a white supremacist.

I mean, this is how this logic works. Now, liberation theology informs critical race theory. And James Cone was one of the major players, if not the most famous player, at least of black liberation theology.

He's called the father of black theology. And James Cone, well, let me play this clip for you.

James Cone, Black Liberation Theology, and the Redefined Gospel

As you said, Lisa, oftentimes what happens is that people get wind of Cone, primarily because he is considered the godfather of black liberation theology.

He's prolific.

He's written monograph after monograph, like hitting you every year, especially in the beginnings of the movement. And then also, most recently, he came out with a, I think is his most beautiful monograph, which is the cross and the lynching tree.

If you have not gotten that, you need to read that. It'll challenge you, it'll stretch you. You may agree with more or less of what he says, but either way, you'll be blessed by that.

The lynching tree interprets the cross. It keeps the cross out of the hands of those who are dying. I think racism has to do with power. And you switch the power and you'll get black racism. Yeah, you would.

It has to do with power. It has nothing to do with biology. And that's why the redistribution of power is so essential. If you're not talking about redistributing power, you're just joking around. You just want to feel good.

It's not about feeling good. It's about distributing power. And people don't want to do that. That's why the Senate in the city, that's white power right there.

That's what it is.

White power.

And people can have it and smile at you at the same time. That's what I tell the people in that union.

That's white power.

Because whites have all the power. All they have to do is vote. That's why they love democracy, at least for a moment. But soon they're going to figure out a way so democracy won't count.

You'll be blessed by that. And so people have sort of latched on the cone because he's more of a lightning rod. He is intentionally trying to wed the Christian faith of Martin Luther King with the black power of Malcolm X, hence his book, Martin and Malcolm in America, A Dreamer and Nightmare.

And so because of that, he's this sort of seminal, powerful figure, almost like a wrecking ball, right? He is sort of trying to deconstruct and blow up this sort of stranglehold that white men have had on academic theology in America.

A lynching is trying to control the population. It is striking terror in the population so as to control it. That's what the ghetto does. It crams people into living spaces where they will self-destruct, kill each other, fight each other, shoot each other, because they have no place to breathe, no place for recreation, no place for an articulation and expression of their humanity.

So it becomes a way, a metaphor for lynching if lynching is understood as one group forcing a kind of inhumanity upon another group. If you are going to worship somebody that was nailed to a tree, you must know that the life of a disciple of that person is not going to be easy.

You may end up on a tree too, just like Jesus blocks and gays that whites and straight people despise.

I think it's his most beautiful monograph, which is the cross and the lynching tree. If you have not gotten that, you need to read that. It'll challenge you, it'll stretch you. You may agree with more or less of what he says, but either way, you'll be blessed by that.

See, our resistance is a resistance against the odds. That's why we can understand the cross.

J .D. Otis Roberts comes along in 1971 and publishes Liberation and Reconciliation.

Which I love that book.

Yeah, which is my favorite theological book of all time. You need to pick up Liberation and Reconciliation. It'll be, it's just as applicable as it was then for it is now because there's, it's the same, same, but different, as they say out in the Far East.

So I really do like his second book. I think it was written in 73, A Black Political Theology. The Prophethood of Black Believers, which is a, I mean, people don't really know this book as much, but I love it because he's really marching out what it means to have a practical black theology.

And so for him to talk about Christology and the blackness of Christ, he says, you know what, Jesus is not ontologically black. He is whoever you are, wherever you are. So God, to him, looks black, but for the person who's Asian, he looks Asian or Japanese specifically or Taiwanese or Chinese, or the person who's African, God looks African because he meets you exactly where you are.

And he's restoring all that brokenness where you are to be more like the kingdom that's to come. Granted, because we can't do it perfectly ourselves, he will bring it about himself, but he will meet each and every individual in that particular where they are, but there is still these universal ideas of restoration.

There's these universal ideas that God is bringing about in every context, but it looks a specific way in a specific context. And so he does well to not get caught up in their own context and to make God or Christ ontologically black, right?

In his essence, making him black so that he's therefore non-applicable to other Christians who are not black, but he then escapes the other extreme of making Christ in his work in salvation so ethereal and so theory-driven that it's no good to anybody in any context because you haven't done the work to apply it anywhere.

So if there's anybody who has done the work of being a theologian of understanding the universal imperatives of the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also articulating it so clearly and so profoundly in any other context, I think J .D. Otis Roberts is it.

The Books Walter Strickland Recommends and Why They Are Heretical

All right, for those who are listening, you probably heard some music in the background and some of those scenes that those who are viewing, they could read the quotes, but here's the deal. This is just, I'm gonna get down to brass tacks here.

So Walter Strickland, this video, I believe, is from, I think, 2016. This was put out by Enemies Within the Church, and I do need to give credit where credit is due. This was Enemies Within the Church that put this out in their description, and an informant had given this video to them, and the other video was from the New Christian Intellectual.

That's where I got it. Now, Enemies Within the Church, this video on Walter Strickland, if you couldn't hear all those quotes, I'm not gonna go, or you didn't see them, you're listening, I'm not gonna go over all of them for the benefit of those who are watching, but essentially, this is what's going on.

Walter Strickland has said, and this is public, this is on YouTube, in fact, I'm gonna try to find the link of the original video. I'm gonna put it in the bar here, and we'll see if it gets scrubbed, but you can go check it out for yourself.

He's saying, this is my favorite book. This is a book I recommend. I also like this book. This is another book, and he mentions all these different books, and they're all black liberation theology, and they're all heretical.

They're heretical. I mean, James Cone, you could hear some of those quotes. There were some clips with them where James Cone is promoting his book that Walter Strickland just essentially recommended, but the other gentleman that this, like, what, three books that I guess he recommended, Liberation Reconciliation, saying it was his favorite, but J. Diotis Roberts, in these books, he denies the, he basically says that he doesn't believe that you can take scripture literally, so he denies a literal interpretation.

He is saying that you must understand Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud if you wanna have an understanding of human nature. It's not enough to just go to scripture. I mean, some blatantly racist things he says about white people, and they're not even capable of receiving the benefits of salvation.

I mean, he doesn't even have a full gospel. The way he talks about the gospel in the way that a black liberation theologian would talk about the gospel. The gospel is a good news that Christ is not, it's not just a spiritual thing.

Christ has come to liberate in the here and now people who are oppressed, and that quote where James Cone says, basically, wherever you see oppression and people struggling against it, that's where you see the gospel, and the poor people struggling.

That's the gospel. No, that's not the gospel. That's not the gospel. I mean, it's so far from the gospel that it's heresy, and the scary thing to me is Walter Strickland, at the end of that clip I just showed you, articulates black liberation theology, and he articulates, listen to what he says about the gospel, you have to rewind it, go listen to it again.

I don't know how you get around hearing heresy in that. I'm not saying Walter Strickland is not a Christian. Maybe he is. I sure hope he is. He should be. But he's peddling some really dangerous stuff.

He's saying things that contradict the gospel. Jesus did not come as a black man, or an Asian man, or whatever your context is. He didn't come, he came as a Jewish man. Like, let's talk reality here. He came as a Jewish man.

Came as the son of God to give his life to atone for the sins of his people. All right, so we could be made right with God, and it's not just about going to heaven, but that is the destination where we are headed.

It's about being made right with God, because we, because of our sin, are at odds with God. That's the gospel, in a brief nutshell. Repent, believe the gospel, have faith in Christ, not your works, and God promises that he will save you, he'll give you a new heart, he'll give you the Holy Spirit.

You don't find any of that in any of the books that Walter Strickland just recommended, and I'm positive about that. I actually flipped through, I went online, and I looked through all of them, just to, I was familiar already a little bit with Cone.

I've read some Cone, and I know he was a ranked heretic, but no, there's no gospel, no real gospel in any of these works, and he's saying that there is. That's the scary part. Walter Strickland is saying that there is, and that the gospel is Jesus coming to identify, if it's black people, he comes as a black man, identifies with them in their struggle, and creates this meaning for them in that, and he's identifying with them, and they can identify with him, and it's all about struggling against this oppression, against systemic abuse, against those with privilege, the oppressors, that is not the gospel.

This is not, you just don't get that. I mean, I'm so tempted to go onto a rabbit trail of where you find hierarchy in scripture, but I'm gonna, I don't want this video to be too long, so I'm just gonna kinda leave it there, but here's the main point I wanted to make.

Why the Seminary Drift Matters More Than Parachurch Drift

Here's the main point. Albert Moeller and Danny Akin, both, there was an article that came out in Baptist Press about a week ago, both of them saying, no, there's not really a drift, a liberal drift going on.

You know, things are solid, things are fine, and it's like this whistling past the graveyard, like we're just, we're smooth sailing, everything's gonna be okay, we just, we need to have a conversation, we need to get along.

I mean, Albert Moeller said that he wanted to have a conversation after the Dallas statement, which he did not sign, but he said, yeah, it was a sparkly conversation. Hasn't seemed to wanna have that conversation in public.

I'm talking about from the public perception. I'm not talking about behind closed doors. I don't, no one knows what's happening there, except those who are there. But from the public perception, it's not looking too good.

And because there clearly is a problem. You saw those two videos, there is a problem. Now, if Albert Moeller or Danny Akin, because Danny Akin's already said this, they wanna say, well, no, hey, they don't believe that anymore.

And from what I've heard that Albert Moeller's been saying this too. I don't know if any of that is published, but Matt Hall doesn't believe that, Walter Strickland doesn't really believe that. That was just in 2016.

Well, then why don't they come out with a statement saying we were wrong, that was heresy, we regret it. We apologize that we were using Baptist funds to propagate this stuff, and we're done with that.

And just to prove it to you, we are going to speak out against it very strongly and identify the issues with it. You don't see anything like that. It's just coverup. It's just, oh, nothing to see here.

That creates suspicion. And the funding thing, look, I know this article came out about Exley, I believe is his name, this Justice Democrats guy. And he's now up on charges for stealing from the AOC campaign.

But apparently, he was really big on, he controlled some Soros money, and he really wanted to get behind evangelical social justice movements. And I'm telling you, if some of that money stolen from AOC winds up at Southeastern Seminary or the Gospel Coalition, without them probably knowing, I mean that, ooh, I think it's an FBI investigation right now, that won't look good.

But here's the thing, if that kind of thing is happening, don't erase Current Family Foundation from your websites. Don't go underground, that just creates more suspicion.

Just come forward.

Come forward to the pew sitters who are funding this. Let people know what's actually going on, because right now, there's confusion and there's division. And when there's more confusion, there will be more division.

And I'll tell you what, the evangelical world right now is going crazy on so many levels. I've written a few articles, even the last week, the Crew speech, Van Opstel, I believe was her name, the keynote at Crew, that was absolutely horrific.

Go check out my blog, worldviewconversation .com, and you can see some of the things I've written in the last week and a half, but Crew has gone down the woke hole. Paige Patterson and his wife, their portraits are removed from Southeastern, and some of you might think, oh, that's fine, there's nothing, well, yeah, but where do you draw the line?

Do we just erase all history if we ever find a flaw? He wasn't even convicted, he hasn't really even given his side, removing his portraits. I mean, there's a lot of things going on on the periphery. Mark Dever, if you were at his church last Sunday, go to Mark Dever's website, go to the Nine Marks, listen to Mark Dever's sermon from last Sunday.

He opens up saying that identity politics are at play in the church in Jerusalem, I'm serious. He actually says that. But these things are just going on everywhere, missions organizations decrying their colonial past.

I'm not as concerned about those things as I am about this thing, about what's happening at the seminaries, and here's the reason. Parachurch organizations are not in scripture, that parachurch is the parachurch, and it's not the church, I don't confuse the two.

And even a seminary is a parachurch, but here's the thing about a seminary. Seminaries train men to go into the church and do ministry. These are men that have watched over the souls of their flocks, their congregations, they keep watch, they shoot wolves.

They have to have discernment, there's a whole bunch of qualifications that they have to live up to, and seminaries are supposed to be helping form these things, and they are more important than these parachurch organizations, these other parachurch organizations, I should say, because they're so fundamentally vital right now to the training and equipping of men for ministry.

That's just the system we have. It might not be the best system. I've become convinced that if I was gonna do seminary over, I would go to a place like Masters or Expositor, somewhere that has a church on campus that is overseeing some of this, because I think that's more biblical, that's the model.

It should happen in the church, but it's not in every case, and that's the way that things are going. And if you want to undercut the Church of Jesus Christ, crank out a bunch of community organizers, that's what's going on here.

You're cranking out community organizers, and if they're doing it with money that is coming from left-wing organizations on purpose to help crank out community organizers, I would not want to be Al Mohler or Danny Akin on Judgment Day if that's going on.

And here's the thing, you can clear it up really easily. Just come out and tell us what's going on. Tell us, why'd you scrub that from your website? Why is Kern not on there? Why'd you get rid of those videos of Matthew Hall?

Why is like 90 of the stuff that was on the Kingdom Diversity webpage gone? Tell us, tell us. So that's my piece of advice. Not that they're watching or care, but if they happen to see this, I hope they'll listen because this is serious, guys, this is serious.

This is the next generation of pastors that we're talking about. And I'm just gonna go on a little rabbit trail here. When I was in seminary, I remember being in class and hearing some of the things that people, students would say, and it's not every student, but some students, they had, it's like before they even got out to their churches, they were already thinking about all the things they were gonna do to correct their church.

And it's not wrong to have a vision, but a condescension against the layman, and especially on politics. I mean, I could give you stories. The Republican Party, oh, they think that during the NFL, the kneeling issue, they don't watch the NFL, but they're wrong.

And looking down at them, that they don't know. I remember one student talking to me about how frustrated they were that, oh, these people at my home church, they don't care about education. And the reason was because they're not interested in pursuing the degree that I pursued.

It's like, guys, this is, it's not what it's about. But if you get a young man who goes to seminary and gets their mind filled with this liberation theology garbage, because that's exactly what it is, it is completely heretical, and they go back thinking that they're smarter than the other leaders at their church and the layman there, and they're going to introduce this to their flock, it is going to destroy churches.

I guarantee it. It can't unite, it can only divide. And that's my concern, and that's why I do this podcast to begin with. So thank you for listening. If you wanna support me, then you can go to my Patreon account.

The link will be at the end of this video. But I would rather have you, I mean, I enjoy, the support helps, believe me, it really does. I'm so thankful for you guys. Prayers are more appreciated than even money.

But the enemies within the church, guys, the enemies within the church, guys, if you could go to enemieswithinthechurch .com and give them a donation, that would be really appreciative. I'm sure they'd be really appreciative of that.

I mean, this video that you just saw of Walter Strickland, and that is so revealing of Danny Akin and Walter Strickland shows that there's such a disconnect going on. They need help to really expose this stuff on a massive scale.

I mean, they know where the money's coming from. I mean, they're top-notch. I've talked to Judd, the director, and I've talked to Trevor and Carrie, and they just seem to really have a heart to do kind of even what I'm doing, but on a grander scale.

And so I would encourage you to donate to them. Once again, thank you for listening. God bless. Have a good weekend. And by the way, one last comment. I know sometimes it's a downer when we hear all this, oh, another seminary, another ministry is woke.

Listen, there are some seminaries that have been reaching out to me, and Bible schools that are not woke, and they've even asked me for advice. How do we stay not woke? We don't wanna go down this hole.

We're not taking the money.

What do we do?

Guys, I'm gonna be revealing some of that soon. And if you're a parent, you'll wanna listen because you don't want your kid going to Southeastern. You want your kid going to, and I will withhold until I release the list, another college, another Bible college.

And they're out there. And I think using the free market, we can put some pressure on. So all right, God bless. Have a good weekend. Bye now.