SBC Leaders Backtrack on Critical Race Theory . . . Again

SBC Leaders’ Critique of Critical Race Theory and the Southern Baptist Convention

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are gonna talk today a little bit about the Southern Baptist Convention, once again. And everyone groaned, no. I should say the special episodes are the ones that aren't SBC related, just because lately we've been doing so many SBC type content.

I mean, every week it's like a new compromise or, I mean, it's not new, it's like the same broken record, but it's showing up in a different way. Compromise, just Southern Baptist elites going crazy on something.

It's like they're really trying to destroy this denomination. And really what it is, is ultimately I think there's, every time orthodoxy tries to compromise with heresy, with error, you get error. 10 times out of 10, you get error.

You can't mix the two. And I think that's the problem right now, is you got two sides diametrically opposed, and then you have these elites in the middle who wanna keep the denomination and the institutions in the denomination, the entities afloat, and they wanna keep these two groups happy.

You can't do it. Ain't gonna happen. So that is the futile effort. And when you do that, you just keep drifting left. And I mean, theologically left. That is what's happening, and that's what's gonna continue to happen as long as these compromises continue to be made.

So let's get into it a little bit. Oh, one objection, by the way. So a few people say, John, you're not a Southern Baptist. You can't comment on this, which by the way, I should point out. I'll give you the reasons I'm doing this.

I've said them before, but I wanna point out first, that's very exclusive to say I shouldn't be able to comment on your little club just because I'm not part of it, even if it affects my life. I mean, I thought Southern Baptists were trying to be inclusive.

They don't wanna be bigoted. I mean, I thought that was Christian nationalism that was exclusive and bigoted and all the rest, showing partiality, et cetera. Not the Southern Baptist, but apparently that's one of the arguments that's being made there.

So that's a little hypocritical if you're gonna criticize Christian nationalists for their exclusivity, but now you're not being very inclusive to me right now. But the other thing, and on a serious note, it's a bellwether.

It's a big denomination. I mean, what happens in the SBC affects the rest of evangelical Christianity in the United States. There's no question about that. That affects all of us. And I do genuinely want to help people who are in the denomination when I can.

There'll be a day that I'm saying, look, it's a broken record. I've done it so many times. You know, go watch the other videos of similar things, examples, but I'm not quite there yet. And I do wanna help give you some thoughts as we go through some of the material we're gonna go through today.

So let's do it. The material is concerning the statements that were made by the seminary presidents a few weeks ago against critical race theory. They said, hey, we don't believe in that. We don't agree with it.

I pointed out in another video that that lasted not even a week. The ink was still drying and we're already seeing compromise. And that compromise just continues. And that's what this video is about. It's an extension of that.

The compromise just continues. That statement was not significant. And so let us continue to dive into this and I'll show you some of the things that have been going on in the SBC. Let's start, let's see, where do we wanna start?

Let's start with this statement, just cause it's up here. It is a statement on justice, repentance, and the SBC. I'll blow it up there and you can see all the different people who have signed this. And I guess those are the original signatories.

And then, let's see, those are the original signers, yes. And who else has signed it? Let me just see real quick. I haven't actually clicked on this. There's a lot, oh goodness. Yeah, there are a lot.

The Justice Statement and the Charge of Systemic Racism

Oh, no, there's, wait, hold on, load more. Yeah, I don't know how long this goes. I think there are a lot. Okay, so here's the part, here's why I'm commenting on it at all. And that's because we had J .D. Greer.

Let's see if I can upload, I don't think I put in this ad source. And I'm just gonna show you where I saw this first and why I kind of thought it was, in some ways, significant. Here we go. There it is.

J .D. Greer and Ed Stetzer both put this out. Ed Stetzer on the 18th, both on the 18th. J .D. Greer said, thank you, friends, for a gracious and important statement. I encourage all Great Commission Baptists to carefully and soberly consider these words.

And then Ed Stetzer, and he said, this move is towards the right thing. So they're endorsing, on some level, this statement. So I wanna go through the statement, and then what we're gonna do is I'm gonna go through some recent statements by Danny Akin, the president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I went, and also a letter that went out, or an email that went out to all the faculty at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Adam Greenway is.

So this is very tailored to Southern Baptists in particular. We're gonna start, though, with this. And I put it in a word processor so that I could underline and read some of the things, so that I don't wanna read this word for word.

It'll take too long with the other statements I gotta get to. But this was called the 155th anniversary of the proclamation of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude. And this statement was put out.

They use Luke 4, 18 through 19, about the spirit of the Lord has appointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, et cetera. Of course, that context is about spiritual poverty, et cetera but social justice advocates in the church have always used this to say what they say here.

We affirm that the fullness of the gospel speaks to our need for salvation as individual centers, as well as addresses the brokenness of the world. And so I pointed out in my book, "'Social Justice Goes to Church.".

You can get that on Amazon or go to socialjusticegoestochurch .com. I pointed out this is a very old interpretation. In fact, the new left influenced Christians in the 70s and late 60s used this verse.

Jim Wallace used this verse quite a bit to prove there was some kind of a corporate element to salvation. And so they start there. Then they go through, let's see what let's, we're gonna have a new heaven and a new earth.

We anticipate, however, human inability to achieve full justice before the return of Christ cannot become an excuse to avoid dealing with injustices in our lifetime. And there's a truth to that, right?

Just because God's gonna come back and reign does not mean that we, let me pull this up so you can see it too. Here we go. Sorry about that. I was reading that and you couldn't see it. So let's go through it.

Yeah, so there's some truth to this that we should be pursuing justice, but you can never pursue it perfectly. And that's kind of the point. You'll never be able to actually achieve that. You shouldn't expect to achieve that.

And that's not part of the call of the gospel either. And that's the conflation here early on. So that's one of the social justice problems is they conflate that with the gospel. The gospel ends up doing, they make it try to do things it's not meant to do.

Southern Baptist Convention was founded with injustice towards African-American, African, sorry, slaves at its very core. And I put in red at its very core because that's the key phrase that you need to focus on.

This is the attempt. And this is, you see this, not just with the Southern Baptist Convention, you see this with all kinds of things, the 1619 Project, this is what they're doing. This is what critical race theory and memory studies.

I try to shine a light on that. Memory studies is the issue here. That's what they try to do with all sorts of elements of American and Western history. They make oppression or racism or xenophobe, whatever.

They make their issue the primary thing that defined a group of people from the past or defines us today because we're living in the legacy of that group of people. So racism just, this is a CRT assumption.

It just impacts everything. That's the systemic racism idea that CRT has. It's like, it's on the McDonald's menu. It's everywhere. It just motivates everything. And so it's impugning people's motivations.

And so that's, the attempt being made here is no different. We've seen this a million times. This, using at its very core is supposed to be an attempt to say that that was the fundamental thing definitional of Southern Baptist.

That is who they are by definition. That is their identity. They just wanted to found their denomination on injustice towards African slaves at the core. The SBC was found in large part so that white Southern slave holding Christians could appoint and support missionaries while continuing to hold their slaves in chains.

So the emphasis is on, they have a motive to continue to hold their slaves in chains. Because why? Because they like it. They want that. That's something that benefits them. So you can, we don't even need that kind of language because it's all around us to impugn the motive.

You start using this kind of language. That's what you're communicating. This historical reality is neither disputed nor can it be ignored. And I would beg to differ. This historical reality is not necessarily a historic reality.

This is a half truth. This isn't a whole truth. And a half truth, when it gives this impression, it amounts to a lie. And I want to, I can't go through all of it in this short video, but I want to at least point you towards at least one thing that I think would help you out.

If you go online to Baptist Studies Online, you can find, and let's see, I'll show you here. You can find, I'll blow it up, the William B. Johnson's address to the origin of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.

So this is kind of like, this would be a significant speech. And because it's the first president of the Southern Baptist Convention explaining why there's a Southern Baptist Convention. Now, no show of hands, but how many of you have actually read this?

How many of you have ever heard it referenced? How many of you have heard though that the Southern Baptist Convention is just founded on the idea of oppression, like this says, it's fundamental to it, or it's just all about racism.

That's what was motivating them. It's all about slavery. That was what was motivating them. How many of you have heard that? You've probably all heard that, but it's been something that's just repeated, repeated, repeated.

How many of you have actually gone back and read the source? At least, and there's many sources you can read, but this would be like probably the major one, like the main one you'd wanna read. So the answer is probably not too many of you.

And I'd like, let me bring you through a few things. I don't have time to get into all of it, but I want to show you, give you a little historical context for the issue over abolitionism that eventually led to the formation of the SBC.

You could accurately say the authority of scripture led to it. I mean, that's what they would have said. I'll show you some of that. You could also say the issue of abolitionism led to that in some ways.

And I realize most of my audience probably has an idea of what abolition is in their head, and it might not be the most accurate definition or understanding historically. I don't have time to correct all of those things or to get into the details of it.

If anyone's curious about getting this more, I can recommend some resources for you if you wanna understand, and I can give you some other primary sources. But for our purposes right now, I just want to walk you through in general what the issue of abolitionism was really about in the minds of the original founders of the Southern Baptist Convention.

And once you understand that, once you get the big picture, you have a very hard time going back into history and vilifying these guys by saying, well, they just were motivated by racism, and then using that as a wedge for today's identity politics, which is how it's being used.

Make no mistake, this is all about a present political objective, but using ancestors as the political tools for that. And so I want to at least give you some context, because like I said, most of you probably haven't read the primary sources or even heard them referenced, and most people telling you it was just formed over racism, they don't realize the issue between North and South wasn't even over racism per se.

And the issue in this Baptist Convention was not over racism. And I'm gonna show you something that's gonna put a whole wrench in that in a moment from Johnson's address. It was over a particular understanding of the biblical teaching on the relationship between master and slave.

And there were other things too, but that's the main thing. For our purposes, that's the main thing. And so let me just bring you through a few things here. If you start, we start in 1822. Denmark Vesey had a slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina, violent revolt.

Dr. Richard Furman, who was the Baptist State Convention head in South Carolina, this was before the SBC, basically tried to distance himself from this and say, look, I'll read you some of his quote. The convention are particularly unhappy in considering the idea of the Bible's teaching the doctrine of emancipation as necessary, intending to make servants insubordinate to proper authority, has obtained access to any mind.

Several of these, Vesey's followers, were grossly immoral, and in general, they were members of an irregular body, which called itself the African Church, and had intimate connections and intercourse with a similar body of men in a Northern city, among whom the supposed right to emancipation is strenuously advocated.

Thus did, so this is what he did. This is what he's doing. He's telling the governor, this is a letter to the governor or statement to the governor. He's saying, look, this is not, we didn't do this. We didn't teach them this.

This was instigated by people who were abolitionists in a Northern city, teaching them to rebel, to revolt. And this is part of one of the issues that many Southerners feared in certain areas, instigating them to revolt because slavery in and of itself, that relationship is evil, and by any means necessary, revolt against it.

And this is what he's saying is like, that didn't come from us. And then he goes on, he tries to affirm a biblical teaching in what in his mind is a biblical teaching of that relationship and say, look, in and of itself, and this is the issue you need to remember, in and of itself, those who formed the Southern Baptist Convention did not believe slavery was an evil in and of itself as such.

Doesn't mean that there weren't progressive emancipationists. It doesn't mean that they thought, not all of them thought slavery was a moral good. Some of them certainly did, but the issue that ended up breaking the convention apart more than anything else was whether or not the Bible taught that that relationship in and of itself was evil because they said, hey, hold on, if you do that, then what do you do with the apostles?

What do you do with the patriarchs? What do you do with what scripture says about this issue? That was their issue. Let's keep going. Alabama in 1835, certain individuals, this is the group of Baptists in Alabama, says certain individuals mostly residing in the Northern parts of the United States, calling themselves abolitionists who are fanatics.

They are trying to interfere with the relation of master and slave. Their activities were inconsistent because, and this is their critique, abolitionists will oppress the slave, arm the assassin to shed the blood of the people of our good state, and alienate the people in one state from those in another, thereby endangering the peace and permanency of our happy republic.

Many people don't realize, because of the way Civil War studies is taught today, it's neo-abolitionist narrative, or now it's actually more of a neo-Marxist narrative, but it relies heavily on a neo-abolitionist narrative, that many of the abolitionists, this is the kind of thing they promoted.

This is the kind of thing that happened. So many quotations from abolitionist societies in the North saying, the full gospel was not preached by those in the South because slavery exists. You can't have the gospel if slavery exists.

And one of the things that many Southerners, Southern Baptists, had a problem with is like, well, what do you do with scripture? And that, it kept coming back to that in all these debates. Mississippi Baptists in 1837, the movement of the abolitionists at the North is misguided and impolitic and calculated to detract from the social, civil, and religious privileges of the slave population.

So they're saying this is bad for the slaves too. Maybe there's a little care there for the slaves as well with some of these individuals. I know you're not supposed to say that. It's almost like heresy to say that, but you have to go back into the historical record and see, okay, what are they actually saying?

What are the primary sources saying? You're gonna find things you don't agree with. You're gonna find things that are ugly, but you're also gonna find things that are gonna surprise you because you've only been told a lopsided version of this.

Now, let's get into the tipping point here, when it snapped. James Hutkins and Williams Tyrone were found to be slaveholders in 1843, and the anti-slavery Baptists demanded that the Triennial Convention Board investigate them.

By 1844, the battle lines between the North and South were firmly drawn at the convention of the American Baptist Missionary Union, where James Reeve was denied entry to the National Board for owning slaves based upon the view that missionaries had to manumit slaves before being accepted.

So the mission board in Boston is basically saying, look, you can't become a missionary if you hold slaves. There's no way to become a missionary, and I believe that extended to if you go to a church in which that's acceptable, if I'm not mistaken, but let's keep going.

It was this action that precipitated the Georgians and Virginians to establish the SBC. At this point, the Great Lakes Region Baptists had already formed an abolitionist convention. So the Southern Baptists weren't the first ones to break off.

You had the Great Lakes Region Baptists breaking off first, and then the Southern Baptist Convention forms. Now, this is, I'm just trying to give you some historical context to work up to this. William B. Johnson, the first president of the SBC, he said, he expressed his reluctance to separate from those in the North, and he called the division painful.

After expressing a common bond in the principles of the gospel, an unwillingness to exclude those of like faith in the North, as many Southerners have been excluded, he laid out the reasons for the departure, claiming, and this is important, listen up.

Johnson claimed that the missionary board in Boston had thus acted upon a sentiment they had failed to prove. What was that sentiment? That slavery is, in all circumstances, sinful. Again, that is a different thing.

You may not, let me repeat that. They thus acted upon a sentiment that they failed to prove, that slavery is, in all circumstances, sinful. So what he's saying is, there are situations, and he's not denying that there aren't situations in which slavery can be sinful.

Bible says that. What he's saying is that there are actually situations, though, in which it is not sinful, and you'd have to destroy scripture if you were to claim otherwise. That's the argument. That's the problem they had.

They said, don't call something sin, which God does not call sin. Be very specific about what God says is sin. Johnson demonstrated that the board was not only in violation of scripture, and this is key, but also the constitution of the general convention for usurping the convention's authority to define the qualifications for being a missionary.

So he said, look, this is, you're not following the rules of the convention. If you're not doing that, we can't partner with someone who's not gonna follow the rules of the convention. You could break it in other areas.

I mean, there's no trust there at that point. Furthermore, the missionary board also violated the convention's resolution that specifically allowed for the expression and promotion of views on the subject of slavery as long as such views were communicated in a Christian manner and spirit.

The missionary board made the relinquishing of such speech a requirement in order to serve. Emphatically, Johnson twice cited 1 Thessalonians 2 .16. They would forbid us to speak unto the Gentiles. In other words, they're not letting some of the people that wanna be missionaries become missionaries.

They're forbidding us from being missionaries. They say, look, this is a violation of 1 Corinthians 2 .16. And he said, that's the main reason for the schism. The main reason for the schism is you're forbidding us to speak unto the Gentiles.

He says, we can never be a party to any arrangement for monopolizing the gospel. Any arrangement which like that of our autocratical interdict of the North would first drive us from our beloved colored people.

Wait, did he just say that? Our beloved colored people? Of whom they prove that they know nothing comparatively. Let me stop there. If you understand some of the debates politically that are going on, no political party had a solution for emancipating slaves.

There were many people who wanted to do it. In fact, in the 1830s, there were more anti-slavery societies in the South, progressive emancipationists. That's the difference between the abolitionists and progressive emancipationists.

The abolitionists wanted it done immediately and oftentimes by violence if necessary, right? That's the John Brown, the secret six kind of wing. They were much different than the progressive emancipationists.

So if you understand the issues politically going on, put this in its kind of social political context, what he's saying is, look, you're saying that it's wrong. We have to, but you can't be a true Christian.

You can't serve as a missionary. You can't be involved in Christian work. You can't exercise your spiritual gifts if you hold slaves. Even if you inherited the slaves, even if you're trying to take care of them, even if they're not ready to go out on their own and exercise their freedom, and you're trying your best to care for them, that kind of thing, even if it's that kind of situation, you're denying them.

And even though they're paying you to do missions, you're not giving them the benefit of being able to partake in the very thing they're funding. That's what he's saying. And he's saying, and there's no solution during this time.

There is no, he says, again, I'll read it. He says, the North would first drive us from our beloved colored people, drive us from them. So we're supposed to get, we're supposed to free them. That's what you're saying, he's saying, to the Boston missionaries.

We're supposed to free them, but you're proving that you know nothing, is what he follows it up with. He's like, where are they gonna go? What are they gonna do? How is this gonna work? There's nothing practical there.

So he follows this up, and this is his very next statement, of whom they prove that they know comparatively nothing, know nothing comparatively, and from the much wronged aborigines of the country, and from the much wronged aborigines of the country.

So he's saying, we can't be a party to agreement, and our arrangement, that would drive us from our beloved colored people, word he uses, and from the much wronged aborigines of the country, and then cut us off from the whitening fields of the heathen harvest labor.

He admits that indigenous people are much wronged, yes. He admits, he says, our beloved colored people, yeah. That's what he says, he says that. Now, you may disagree with some of what he says here. In fact, I mean, I wouldn't, we wouldn't even use some of this language today, but is that a different picture than what you're getting from other places?

Yes, it is. Notice the issue that he's harping on here, is not the issue that you hear harping on, where they're just motivated by racism, and wanna keep their slaves in chains. Is that what you're hearing him say?

Did he say that? In an emotional ending, Johnson refers to his northern counterparts as beloved brethren and co-agitators in this cause of world missions. He sets the goal for the new denomination to extend the Messiah's kingdom and the glory of God until the deserts of unconverted human nature rejoice and blossom as the rose.

Now, you can go do a lot more research on this. This isn't exhaustive, and there are likely to be people who are going to rake me over coals for even reading what I read, but you have to start somewhere.

And I think a good place to start is William B. Johnson's address to the origins on the origins of the Southern Baptist Convention. Start there, read it, try to understand it. And I think if you do that, then you're gonna start to see through some of these statements.

So let's go back to the statement. Southern Baptist Convention was formed with injustice toward African slaves at its very core. SBC was founded in large part so that white Southern slave-holding Christians could appoint and support missionaries while continuing to hold their slaves in chains.

Well, were those the root issues? Was that the core? Was that the major disagreement? No. This historical reality is neither disputed nor can it be ignored. Well, it was disputed by the very first president of the convention.

Now, here's the truth. Let me give you the truth in this. The truth is that, yeah, slavery totally existed in the South at that time, and in actually parts of the North at that time. The SBC, when it was founded, it was founded in large part as a reaction against the tactics of abolitionists in the North who were breaking the rules of the convention and subverting, in their minds, the authority of scripture.

But that's a much different motivation than they just wanted to continue to hold their slaves in chains. Would you say that about someone? Would you say, well, we just want to hold our slaves in chains, but in the same breath, they're beloved to us, and say the much-wronged Aborigines.

So this is just, it's on purpose. It's an attempt to twist. And then it goes on. Yet, in the current moment, we see attempts to downplay this historical reality. They're gonna say I'm downplaying it or something.

No, no, no. Actually, what we're seeing are attempts to exacerbate and mischaracterize this historical situation. Many people deny the existence of systemic injustice as a reality. What do you mean by that?

What do you mean by that? I don't deny it, in the sense that there are evil systems that can be perpetuated because of evil laws that come from evil hearts. The evil resides in the heart. But if you want to say that there's a system that exists, and you can't point me to the law or to the heart, and it's just systemic, no.

And I don't use the word systemic because I know where it came from. It used to be institutional. Now it's systemic. But this is a new left word. It is a Marxist word. That's where it comes from. Yes, it was used in 1995.

The SBC used it. At least at that time, they were talking about slavery specifically, so they gave an example of what they meant, what could have been enshrined in laws, that kind of thing. I still don't agree they should have used that term, but they did use it.

But at least, like I said, they're pointing back to something that actually is concrete. This is just a boogeyman that's not concrete when we hear it today. It's systemic injustice. In where? What are you talking about?

Well, it's just there. And all these general statements, or if they get specific, it's the police. It's something that you can't verifiably prove generally. So it's a different situation now that critical race theorists have gotten ahold of it.

But anyways, they continue. Many who recognize systemic injustice are labeled as Marxist, liberals, and critical race theorists even though they are theologically orthodox and believe in the total sufficiency of scripture.

Well, you can say that. A lot of liberation theologians said that kind of thing. Doesn't mean it's accurate, okay? If you're gonna use that term systemic injustice and you're not gonna point to laws or people, but you're gonna just say, oh, it's embedded.

And that's somehow, there's a sinful component to that. Well, I'm sorry, that's outside of orthodoxy. While God desires us to continue growing in an area of racial justice, the actions of some in this SBC, in this convention appear to be more concerned with political maneuvering.

Now, I think that's projection when we look at that. That is, who's doing the political maneuvering? This whole statement is political maneuvering. So, I mean, watch out for that kind of thing. Let's keep going, let's skip ahead here.

For any person, our actions should never be motivated by a desire for power and influence. There we go. Now we're getting to, I think, what this is really about. Fear can also be an overwhelming motivation for any of us.

So impugning the motives of people who are against critical race theory, et cetera, by saying, well, they're just motivated by a desire for power, influence, and they have fear. Really? Give me the sources.

What are you talking about? How do you know that? This is right around the time Christian nationalism is being vilified, because Christians should never pursue power, which means, I guess, any influence Christianity has in a society.

Christians, I mean, this is so damaging because it's vague. Let's keep going. What has felt like progress to our brothers and sisters of color has caused many of our white brothers and sisters to believe they are on the losing side?

Okay, how do you know? I don't feel that way. What are you talking about? This isn't a black versus white thing. This is a truth versus error thing. Why make it a black versus white thing? They're injecting this, guys.

I have not seen that injected by anyone on the conservative side. Keep going. We stand with our brothers and sisters of the National African American Fellowship of the SBC when they affirm their acknowledgement of systemic racism.

So they're affirming systemic racism. Again, vague, they don't give examples. Further, we stand firmly in opposition to any movement in the Southern Baptist Convention that seeks to distract from racial reconciliation through the gospel, and that denies the reality of systemic injustice.

Well, racial reconciliation according to whom? Because Jarvis Williams' version of racial reconciliation involves critical race theory stuff. It's the platforming of racial minorities because they don't have power, diversifying your theological library, taking down images and statues and things that are symbols of whiteness in his mind, et cetera.

I mean, what do you mean by that? Of course, they're not specific. And the reality of systemic injustice. So if you say that, look, I don't believe in systemic injustice. I believe that there's injustice and that it can work itself into systems, but I don't believe in this concept that systems in and of themselves can be sinful or unjust in and of themselves as such.

If you say that, which I say, then I guess these individuals say, well, we can't be in a convention with you. And again, the reason I say that, guys, it's not because there aren't systems put in place.

We can think of some systems put in place that were wrong, that were unjust. The transatlantic slave trade is one of them. And it's not a system though, in the sense that we think of systems today. It actually was very organic.

It wasn't like a modern state where everyone got together and voted, hey, we're gonna let this happen. It just kind of happened. People individually went over, they purchased labor and they brought that labor back to in large part, South America, Central America, and then for the 5 that came to the United States.

So if you wanna call that a system, I'm okay with that. I am, but just realize that words are, the meanings are kind of changing in some ways. And the way that systemic injustice is talked about today, it's like there's this official narrative that is injected into everything.

And that's what I don't agree with. You gotta point me to where it is. You gotta show me, and when you point me to it, I'll stand with you against it. But don't just impugn people's motives, vilify people.

When you don't have any standing to do so, that's called lying. That's actually slandering and that's wrong. And so any kind of concept of systemic injustice, which is slander, which is how it's used often today, then no, I can't agree with that.

And I couldn't be in a convention with someone who supported that either. You couldn't trust someone like that. They're gonna use that and vilify you if they don't get what they want. So let's keep going.

We believe God is calling us to repentance as individuals and as conventions of churches, but our hearts have grown cold. Okay, there we go, the virtue signaling. We're grown cold because we want money and institution and influence.

Then it's, this is what it's working up to. You just, people who are against us just want power. And using the R, including themselves in it makes it sound pious. We need collective repentance for attempting to address social problems through human power instead of prostrating before God.

These commitments are not upheld and it will signal to many in the SBC that cooperation has already ceased to exist. Now, I've said this for a long time. Cooperation has ceased to exist. But let me remind you of something.

That was the recent statement. Can I read for you? This is what, this is fresh. This is just from a few weeks ago. I had written this and I will, it was on why we should cancel Lottie Moon. If you're gonna be consistent Southern Baptists, cancel Lottie Moon, okay?

You're not gonna do it, but if you were consistent, you would. Here's part of this article. In 1989, the convention issued a statement against racism and bigotry. They apologized for slavery in 95. In 96, they made a statement condemning arson in African-American churches.

In 2007, they denounced the Dred Scott decision. In 2015, there was another statement on racial reconciliation. The next year, they issued a statement against the Confederate battle flag. In 2017, the convention adopted a resolution against the alt-right.

In 2018, Danny Akin sponsored a resolution which condemned William B. Johnson, who I just read for you from, because of things. It's because Johnson's crime concerned his disagreement with the mission board in Boston, which had placed itself in direct opposition to the constitution of the convention by disqualifying slaveholders from becoming missionaries and had failed to prove that slavery is, in all circumstances, sinful.

This was offensive to Danny Akin. And that resolution, though, however, failed, but then the convention adopted a resolution against using the curse of Ham as a justification for slavery. Guys, this is, I mean, Al Mohler's talked about this numerous times, there's a stain of racism.

It never ends. It never ends. And then this statement. How many, I mean, we already had a statement this year about systemic racism and George Floyd from SBC Elites. How many statements are you gonna do?