Walter Strickland's "Cookie Cutter" Teaching

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are going to talk about a video today.

I'm gonna show you some clips from it from Walter Strickland. For those who don't know, Walter Strickland is a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, vice president of diversity,

I think it is there, for the Kingdom Diversity Program. We've talked about a lot of problematic things he's said, false teaching, even as it relates to the gospel, combining social justice works with the gospel, liberation theology, standpoint epistemology.

He used critical race theory in a positive way in his dissertation. He was on the committee that really created, honestly,

Resolution 9, which endorsed critical race theory as an analytical tool. There's a lot that we've talked about in regards to Walter Strickland.

Those who listen regularly, you probably feel like you already know who Walter Strickland is, and I certainly feel that way in some sense, and I wouldn't normally go over more material from him, except for the fact that ACSI is still planning on using

Walter Strickland's organization, UnifyEd, and they did a Zoom meeting. I watched the first few minutes of it, someone has sent me a link.

I haven't gotten around to looking at the rest of it. Some people who did watch it told me, and the reason for this

Zoom meeting was to try to allay the concerns and fears some people have about Walter Strickland's problematic teachings.

What most people said was that they evaded the issues, and that Walter Strickland basically took the position that he doesn't endorse critical race theory as a worldview, and that's the key phrase there, as a worldview.

That's the same position that so many of the social justice advocates have, that they, oh, we're not critical race theorists, we don't endorse it as a worldview.

They will endorse the analytical tools that come from it, but not as a worldview, and we've talked about that and why that's a problem.

But today, I wanted to talk about this video, particularly because ACSI is still using

UnifyEd, and there's a specific school that I want to help out a little bit if I can, who some of the teachers, as I understand, want to share some concerns,

I guess, and basically, they're not having this. They don't want this, but I think they're having a little bit of a difficult time.

That's the impression I get. We're going to play this clip, which is,

I'm just going to warn you, it's about 20 minutes long, so this may be a longer episode, and I'm going to comment on it as we go. Now, I've shortened it down.

There's a lot of things that I could have put in here. We could have just played the whole clip, which is like 45 minutes, but I cut it in at least half, if not less than that, just to give you a sense for what

Dr. Strickland is saying. We cut out some of the fat, and here's the meat. Here are the things that I think are pertinent for those who are trying to shine a light on this, if they're in a

Christian school and they're concerned about ACSI advising them on diversity, etc.

The reason this video itself is so significant, though, is because it is Walter Strickland giving a talk recently.

This is from February 12th of this year to the Charlotte Christian schools, and the link is in the info section if you want to check out the whole thing.

If you think, oh, John messed something up here, or was that in context, or whatever, you can go ahead and you can go look at that, and I encourage that.

The link is in the info section, but this is Dr. Strickland presenting to the upper school faculty at Charlotte Christian School on February 12th.

This is the kind of thing that ACSI schools can expect, since they're partnering with UNIFI -Ed.

That's why I think this is significant and important to go over. For those who have no connection to ACSI, or UNIFI -Ed, or Walter Strickland, or Southeastern, or the

Southern Baptists, it's still, I think, helpful, because this is the kind of narrative we're hearing all across evangelicalism.

He's not unique in that sense. He's not coming up with things that I would say are really that unique. There might be packaged a little differently.

He may articulate them a little differently, but it's good to be prepared for these kinds of teachings,

I think, no matter where you go in evangelicalism, because they're arising from everywhere. We're going to talk about that.

A few announcements, though, real quick, before we get to the video. This is a book,

I just wanted to mention, this is a book that I've started reading called First Century Slavery in 1 Corinthians 7 .21

by S. Scott Barchi, I think that's how you pronounce his name. I don't really actually know anything about him, to be honest with you, other than what's on the cover.

I mean, he's got quite the resume. I don't know if his theology is orthodox or any of that. I haven't really gotten to some of the meat of the book, but you see how far

I've gotten so far. But I will say this about it, so I'm not giving it a full endorsement or anything, but I want to say this.

It is a helpful book if you want to understand Roman slavery during the time of Christ and the apostles.

I'm in the middle of that section, and I think he's doing a really good job. One of the significant things is that you hear people talk all the time about how basically

Paul's teaching concerning slavery in the ancient world, in the Roman world, the Greco -Roman world, is not really applicable to the slavery that existed in the

Western world, specifically in the United States, because it's apples and oranges, two completely different things.

I'm reading through this, and yeah, of course there's differences, but in some ways,

Roman slavery in some areas was actually much worse. The sources seem to be very scholarly, good sources.

You don't need to know Greek, but it does help, I think, if you're interacting with some of that stuff. I want to just throw that out there.

First Centralist Slavery in 1 Corinthians 7 .21 by S. Scott Barchi, and some of the material in here may end up in the book that I'm writing now, which

I'm in the middle of chapter 4, maybe towards a little over the middle of chapter 4, writing about standpoint epistemology, which is fun.

Actually, that's not really true. It's actually not that fun. Some of the other chapters are kind of fun. Standpoint theory, you take three

Advil so you can understand it, and then you try to explain it. Anyway, it'll be good for those reading it.

I'm trying to keep it at that level where it's kind of like upper high school, maybe lower college, more like upper high school.

It's more like, I think, an 11th grade level that I'm trying to write at, 10th, 11th grade.

Most Christian books, though, if memory serves me correct, when I used to read a lot more Christian books, especially when

I was in seminary, I'd be assigned some of the even pop Christian books at Southeastern. They tend to be written on the highest levels, it seems to be like 5th grade for a pop

Christian book, maybe 6th. A lot of them are written on a 3rd or 4th grade level almost.

Maybe 3rd or 4th grade isn't what it was when I was going through those grades, but I don't think any of the ones that I read from a pop

Christian standpoint a few years ago really entered the junior high category. I realize that.

I'm trying that balance. You can pray for me. How do I make this book just really accessible to everyone as much as I can, but I don't want to diminish the truth.

Standpoint theory, let's just face it, this is something that you do need to put a little intellectual work in to understand it.

I don't want to diminish that. We want to understand it. Anyway, that's a little bit of what I've been up to and just wanted to let you all know that.

What else? Oh, one other thing that I'll mention before we get into the video from Walter Strickland.

Of course, the election, the gubernatorial election here in Virginia is in full swing.

There's only a few days left before Republicans vote for their primary candidate. I noticed that Glenn Youngkin, who

I've done a few episodes on Glenn Youngkin and basically showed this guy, he's a globalist. He's not good on gun rights.

His church is woke. He's endorsed a book that's basically standpoint epistemology. All that to say,

Ted Cruz endorsed him. Today, he's actually probably a few miles from where I'm actually recording this.

Ted Cruz is holding a rally with Glenn Youngkin, which is kind of an eye -opener for me.

In 2016, I liked Cruz. Some of you might not like that I did, but I did in 2016 at least.

There's still things I like about Ted Cruz, but my eyes are being opened a little bit. I'm just realizing that sometimes the high and lofty principles you think are out there, it's not always what they seem.

Sometimes I found out, and it sounds like, and I don't know if this is 100 % true, but the explanation that I've been given is that Ted Cruz's wife goes to basically is part of the same, how do

I say this, the same circles that Glenn Youngkin's wife runs in.

More elitist circles, I would think. They're fairly well -to -do people, and so they're part of that same circuit, and that's why

Ted Cruz's can't. I don't know if that's the reason. That's just what I was told to try to explain that, but what we've seen in Christianity, what

I've seen with compromise, with leaders that I just thought, there's no way. That person's principled, and then you find out it gets proven that, okay, this person's not principled.

Obviously, that same thing is happening in the realm of politics, and it's just a reminder to me, I guess.

Not to be discouraged. I'm not bringing this up for that, because I know it can be discouraging, but it's just a reminder to try to be as discerning as you possibly can.

Ask good questions, and don't be afraid to ask good questions. I'm actually considering,

I'm not considering, I'm going to do it, kind of like a questionnaire, like maybe 10 questions to ask incoming pastors to try to determine where they stand on social justice issues.

If you're trying to hire a pastor, you're on a search committee, something to help you out, because I think a lot of times, for the sake of not wanting to be rude, for,

I don't know what the reasons all are, fear, not wanting to ruffle feathers, people just don't ask questions, or they don't do research into candidates, or even pastoral candidates.

I know for those who do do that research, it can be frustrating, because some of you have messaged me, but I just want to encourage that.

More research on people when you're not sure, and just ask good questions. Anyway, all that to say, let's talk about this video, though, from Walter Strickland.

It's, like I said, about 20 minutes long. This will probably be a little bit of a longer episode, and I have it broken down into digestible clips, so we'll go through it here.

Let me find my play button. Here we go. All right. I remember when

I was in my first year in seminary, and I have to say this as I play this, the clips are all in sequence, except for this one.

This one, I found in the middle of the video, he gets a little autobiographical, and I thought this was really helpful to understand the rest of what he says.

He's talking about his first semester in seminary, and I'll let him go on. I found a paper that I wrote, I had written, and it was a book review, and I was critiquing a book that was written by a

Black man, and I actually slammed the book pretty bad to the point where I actually went and found the book, reread the thing, all 307 pages of it, and the book wasn't that bad, and so I was trying to figure out what happened and why did

I respond so negatively to that book. Well, to that point in my Christian maturation, I was taught covertly, never overly, but taught covertly that persons of color have nothing to add to intelligent theological discussion.

Now, I want you to listen to that language. You're going to hear it more in this, and you hear it a lot from the social justice crowd, it's this, there's something implicit.

It's part of the implicit bias training. In fact, that's, in some respects, that's what he's doing here.

So he's talking about how he implicitly, he caught this view kind of, right?

Worldviews are caught, not taught. You've heard that before. He caught this view that Black people were not good theologians, white people were, and he talks about how much damage that did to him, though no one ever said it.

So I want you to listen for that, and then look at the evidence he uses to back that claim up. Here's how it was implicitly taught.

There was simply no representation for me to know otherwise, and so I had well intention and well -meaning

Anglo professors and teachers who assigned books written by those who looked like them. We listened to guest chapel speakers who looked like our teachers, and then all the guest lecturers who also was of the same background.

And so at the conclusion of my education, within my education, the education in my education,

I surmised that only people who are of Anglo descent had anything productive to say about theology, because the capstone of my education, especially with college, was about theological studies.

As a result, I discredited news anchors of color, professors of color, politicians of color, even before hearing them.

And so when I heard them and their sets of concerns were outside of the pale, or their faithfulness was expressed in different trappings,

I discredited them. And so the consequence is that I felt that for me, to do real theology or to be a real mature

Christian like my mentors, I had to mute parts of who God made me, to be more like my disciples.

I began to squelch everything in me that didn't cohere with them, and it made me miserable.

And so there was a serious emotional effect that came from this dynamic, because in a real sense,

I was muting parts of who God made me. So I was an image bearer who was muting and trying to, to belittle parts of who

God made me that didn't cohere to that dominant culture. And it was really everything that was particular to African American culture.

And so it seemed like I was the only person, or at least one of the only people, struggling with what seemed to be like a schizophrenia of my spiritual maturation.

And in hindsight, I probably was nearly alone in that, because at that point in my spiritual journey,

I was in a seat of people who embodied the culture that was considered normal amongst evangelicals, that was a part of, or part and parcel to, or closely associated with the cookie cutter.

And so my cultural affinities and experience did not fit into, fully, into the dominant cultural evangelical mold.

And it forced me to raise questions, not only about the faith as it pertained to those things, but about the faith as a whole.

I want to stop there. That's a lot. So let's summarize a few things. This is kind of like Matt Hall's, I'm a racist moment.

Walter Strickland is saying, I adopted implicitly all these views about discrediting news anchors and anyone who was black, you know, looking down on them.

He was saying he was doing that because he did not see them represented at his school in an evangelical culture in general.

So he's talking about chapel speakers. He's talking about teachers that he had. There weren't enough black people is what he's saying.

People that look like him. And so he assumed because of that, that people that looked like him were,

I guess, devalued. And so they weren't as smart in some way. They weren't, didn't have the mental capacity or weren't spiritual, as spiritual as white people.

So he tried to be like a white person. That's what he's saying. And he's saying this did all kinds of damage to him. You heard him mention the phrase cookie cutter.

This is something you'll find throughout this whole talk. Really, this is Walter Strickland's cookie cutter teaching that there's this cookie cutter mold that evangelicals in particular, people that attend

Christian schools commonly have to fit into. And it's really quote unquote, white culture. And people like him, they, you know, they try to fit into that cookie cutter mold, but they're not able to do it because that's not really who they are.

That's not really their culture. And it does all kinds of damage to them. And a few comments on this.

Number one, you know, the thing that hits me is I almost want to cry. It's so sad to hear this. And he's not the only one I've heard say something like this.

I'm going to, I'm going to let fly something that I've been holding onto for a little bit. I'm not going to get into details about it, but I want to say this.

Someone did contact me months ago from Walter Strickland's former church.

And this kind of thing happens semi -often. I rarely ever talk about it. I'm not going to get into details about this, but his church in California, you know, someone who knows their family on some level and or did,

I should say, because I don't know what their relationship is now, but, you know, watched him grow up kind of thing.

And he's basically shocked to see, you know, where he's, where he's landed because, and this person described for me kind of the setting that Walter Strickland grew up in, the church that he went to and how there really, there just wasn't anything at least now that people could push back and say, well, you know, this person just, they weren't aware of the racism that was there or something.

I don't know. I wasn't there. I'm not, I'm just saying that this isn't the first time this has happened. This has also happened with Jarvis Williams.

I've had people do the same thing, reach out to me about him. Curtis Woods, the same thing, even Matt Hall.

I've had people reach out about these guys and tell me, yeah, like I, I knew this person before they went off to college and their conclusion that they have is that in every single case, pretty much is that somewhere along the line, when they were leaving high school, going to college or grad school, they got woke.

There's something changed in them where they had almost like a bitterness about where they came from, about their experiences.

And it just, they didn't, it wasn't really there before they didn't, they weren't aware of it. And someone, it's like someone took them and explained to them all the ways they were oppressed that they didn't realize.

And then it's just like, it dawned on them that, oh man, I've been oppressed. I've, I don't know. Here's the thing.

I got to be careful about this because I don't want to, you know, Walter Strickland is giving his autobiography here.

I don't know Walter Strickland on a personal level. I didn't watch him grow up. The only reason

I bring this up is to say that I think when you're watching someone like him, and it's not just him,

I think it's good to consider that possibility. When I was doing my book, here it is, the first one.

So I'm writing the second one now. This is the first one. Social Justice Goes to Church, New Left and Modern American Evangelicalism.

I had to do the bios of a number of people. Most of them are elderly or gone. So it makes it a little easier when you analyze people and you have the long, the broad sweep of their life to look at and multiple sources over time.

And so I had to do mini biographies. And what I found with all the social justice advocates of the 70s was pretty much the same story, just about all of them.

Everyone I did a little mini biography on, they, it's like somewhere in high school or college, they ended up having a teacher or a series of teachers, or they rub shoulders with the new left somewhere and they got woke.

You know, Jim Wallace called it an awakening. They didn't have, they didn't use the word woke, but, and they just became aware of all these systemic biases that they weren't aware of before.

And implicit bias in this case, you know, and Walter Strickland's talking about this, that he didn't know about it. And these are his words.

He didn't see it at the time, but now he's looking back and realizing that's what that was. I was, you know,

Walter Strickland saying, I was a white supremacist in some ways. I was looking at things that way. And so this, it strikes me as sad because you can see that there's an identity issue here with someone like him.

And I, I'm gonna just tell you what I, I don't attribute that identity crisis to implicit biases that were, you know, subliminally taught to him because he didn't see black people in chapel at school.

I attribute it to the social justice ideas that he imbibed from people like James Cone.

That's what I attribute it to. And, and it's just a pattern I've seen over time with people who were content for the most part, and then they get woke and they're, they're not.

And I challenge you, what woke person do you know that, that has contentment? And I know in a certain sense, we all realize there's things that could be better.

We live in a sinker's world, but I would say that marks people who are woke or on the social justice train.

They're, they're, that becomes part of the purpose of their life is just how, you know, what, what's been done to them, how bad it's been, how their, their victim, they're, they're very, you know, they navel gaze a lot at their victim experiences and how bad it's been for them.

And, and it's, it's, it's sad for me because it's like they're stuck. And I know

Walter Strickland here, he's at a Christian school giving advice to teachers, but he sounds like someone who he's saying he struggles with this.

Sounds like they're, in some ways he's kind of still stuck on this. This is something that he kind of hasn't moved past.

And, and he doesn't want other people to go through the same experience that he's, that he's gone through.

And so what's the solution to that? The only solution would be, well, you got to bring in a bunch of black people in and I guess, and, and, but, but what is that?

Here's, here's the thing I just wanted to challenge people with. Let's say you do that. Southeastern has done this. They've been doing this for years.

Okay. So your chapels then are going to be a multi -ethnic. You're going to, let's say 50 % of the chapel speakers, let's say are going to be black.

And then 50 % are going to be white. Even if the ratio of students, let's say you have, you know, you know, 10 % are black, but we're going to make sure that there's, they're overrepresented in chapel.

That's kind of like what Southeastern does. And we see that being done everywhere now. What does that say about other ethnicities then?

Does that now teach Asian people that, wow, man, I don't see Asian people represented up there.

I guess they're simply not intelligent. I don't see women up there. I guess they're simply not intelligent. I don't see fill in the blank.

I'm a blind person. I don't hear people who are blind speaking. You know, does that mean that they're devalued?

Just take the logic to its ultimate conclusion. And you'll realize that we live in a world where you are not always going to be represented or people that look like you or share your hobbies or whatever the external factor may be.

We live in a world, you know, that just, that's the reality of the situation. You're not going to see mirrors of yourself everywhere you look.

And that's something that adults just learn to live with and they don't consider it to be a problem and it shouldn't drive them to think that they're not valued or that people who look like them aren't valued.

I mean, you could just take this to any characteristic. Now, I realize some identity factors are stronger than others, but I mean, look, people who dress a certain way, people who wear glasses, people who have braces, people who grew up in a certain region, people with certain accents.

I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. I don't see people like that, you know, therefore they must not be whatever.

Usually the reason that people are brought to chapel or people are, I mean, there's a couple of reasons, but usually in theory, what most people would say is that there's a qualification that, you know, if, and there's a convenience, convenience and qualification.

So if like someone is speaking in chapel at a Christian school, I mean, I happen to be related to some people who have taught at Christian schools and stuff.

So I know a little bit about this. It's because there's maybe a pastor in that area who's local, there's the convenience factor.

And on top of it, they're qualified to speak about it. So usually you're looking at a certain pool of people that are theologically

Orthodox, that agree with the school, that can help. So there's limitations there.

And that's generally the stand. Now, look, in theory, can people use standards that are partial and there's bigoted reasons that they're not choosing?

I'm sure that's possible, but Walter Strickland even here is saying that this is something that just was implicit.

This isn't like they purposed like, hey, we're just going to find people who look this way to be in our chapels.

So someone who thinks this way, like Walter Strickland, and if you cater to someone who thinks this way, it seems like what you're doing is you're actually, you're not doing them a service because they have to live in the real world and you're creating an expectation within them that they're not valued unless they see people that have whatever identity factor they value platform somewhere.

And the thing that the solution would seem to be bringing someone back to their worth is because they're made in the image of God.

He's given them a purpose and abilities and all these kinds of things. Don't find it through the eyes of other people.

But Walter Strickland is kind of assuming that off the top, that he found it through the eyes of other, or what he thought was the bigoted perspective of other people.

And that's where he's finding his worth. And he's even assuming that, that they were bigoted in some way. So there's an assumption going on here.

And then you kind of blame other people for your own insecurities and stuff. There's a lot more I could say about that, but we need to get through it.

So we're going to keep going here. Hopefully you can kind of see how this problem emerges and how this problem just is not, this isn't something you see represented in scripture either.

You don't see this kind of a problem and, or anything like this being a problem, you know, because they could have said that, right?

What's up with all these Jewish men, you know, being platformed in the early church and writing, why are they the apostles?

You know, that, I mean, you could say that it just makes me feel devalued, right?

I mean, this kind of logic that he's using could be completely flipped to counteract the

Bible itself, to challenge the scripture. And I hope no one would do that. But this is the kind of logic that could lend itself to that.

So let's see here. Let's keep going. And so it's taken me 30 years to be more comfortable with myself, but I still struggle with this if I'm honest.

And so my conclusion is that while I have a better sense of who I am today, I have,

I've had so many unique experiences that, that, that I've taken the best of all these worlds

I've experienced and tried to sort of take them on to myself. But it's still, it's still been a struggle with being comfortable with who

God has made me as a Christian. Here's the... That's so sad. That's just so sad.

Does your heart not want to just, I mean, look, I've critiqued some things that Walter Strickland said, but there's part of me that just wants to hug the guy and just be like, you are made in God's image.

Um, you know, there's, and I, look, I realize he's, he's promoted false teaching and I, and I couldn't,

I'm, I'm being hypothetical here, but I, I would, my heart just kind of like snaps for that.

Uh, it, it, it's tugging at me a little bit. Um, I just, 30 years, he's saying 30 years that he, and he's dealing with this.

And, and I, I think of, um, well, I'm, I'm, I'm going to keep going because I don't want to get bogged down in this, but, um, it's just sad.

So let's keep going. And the challenge has emerged from, uh, some, some surveys that I've done, both qualitative and quantitative analysis with students around the country.

And this is what I've found. As long time minority students get older on campus, as they go throughout their years, uh, sometimes there's schools that I've been at school that call these folks lifers.

And so as these lifers are close to lifers get older, they are convinced that their teachers care about them.

So that that's the first point they're convinced that their teachers care about them. But, uh, as they grow, they, they're less and less confident to share their struggles with their teachers.

I want you to ask yourself right now, what, how do you, uh, what would you attribute that to?

How do you interpret that? So he's saying that, uh, minority students feel comfortable with their teachers when they're young, but then as they get older, they feel less comfortable with their teachers confiding in them.

Um, let me, let me throw out one possibility. When you become aware of the media narrative around you, um, and the bigotries that may exist around you, um, that may make you suspicious of someone that you formerly trusted because you're realizing maybe that they're not, uh, for instance, let me give you an example of that.

Um, the police, right? Uh, if, if you are immersed in, um, a setting where the narrative you're hearing all the time is that the police are racist, the police are racist, the police are racist, they're out to get you.

You will wake up one day and you will actually believe it and you will function that way. There was, there was a, actually a, um, a video

I just watched. Some of you might've seen it online where a lady gets pulled over, uh, recently and she starts calling, um, this policeman a murderer and just verbally abusive to this police officer.

He takes it very well. Um, but what, why did this person, you know, she didn't have her driver's license.

Uh, I forget what the issue was. It was something small. He kind of pulled her. Oh, she was on her phone. You know, there was a legitimate reason for him to pull her over.

Why is she, and he was Hispanic too, but she was saying how he really wanted to be white, uh, that, you know, he's not, you know, he's not a black person.

He's, he's a wannabe white person. And he's a murderer and all these things that does that didn't come from her experience with that officer.

It came from some kind of an understanding she had before the issue was ever pulled over. And that's,

I think what's happening a lot of the time is people are conditioned into thinking certain things are racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever, when it's not those experiences that are actually in the collection of data that is leading them to draw those conclusions.

It's a narrative that just keeps repeating itself over and over and over. I know, I know of a person who, um, uh, basically did not want to leave their house because they're afraid the police were going to get them.

This is recent too. And as a Christian person, but did not even want to leave their house. Uh, and it's just like that, that just cripples you through life, that kind of thinking, but it's conditioned.

It's not based on experience. It's based on conditioning. And so that, that certainly is, uh, that that's at play as well.

And I wonder if that is what would make sense of this. Now let's see if Walter Strickland considers that a possibility.

And so this is in contrast, uh, to a slight decline amongst minority of majority students, but there's a big drop off.

That's a very drastic with underrepresented students. And here's my underrepresented means minorities.

When he says majority students, he's talking about white students, just for those who don't know explanation of this after having interviewed some of these students who have taken these surveys that I've gotten some of this data from.

And so minority students feel like their teachers care for them. But as I get older, they feel increasingly so that they can't communicate the challenges of life as a minority to their beloved teacher, because they are convinced that it might disrupt their relationship.

They, they don't want to communicate these challenges that are specific to being a minority either on campus or just in life to their teachers that they love because they are convinced that it might disrupt the relationship.

Again, why though? Why would they think that that would disrupt a good relationship they had? Why would they think that that would cause a problem?

And so let's explore this just a little bit. So the next breakdown you have on your outline is cultural assumptions of the cookie cutter.

And so to be clear, most often the faith does not become culturally captive intentionally.

It becomes culturally captive because it's not guarded against. So, so here's, he goes on and I've chopped this up a little bit, but there's a, there's a problem he's saying with the environment of the school that there's some kind of this

Christian school has become culturally captive. That Christianity isn't solving this issue.

It's not, there, there's some problem that someone like Strickland has to come in and address because they're part of this majority culture.

That's basically what he's saying. Now, I just gave you an alternative explanation that might make sense of that data, and it may not have anything to do with the school, but Strickland's placing the blame to some extent on the school.

And that's a pretty serious charge that they become culturally captive, that the culture is essentially taking that Christianity and distorting it in some way.

So the question becomes what culture has become normal at your school or specifically what culture fits best into your school's cookie cutter.

So this raises the question of normalization of the dominant culture. This is where you're going to start to see, okay.

The problem is still being identified, but the problem is you're endorsing this culture.

You're endorsing quote, unquote, white culture, quote, unquote, majority culture. You're making that the status quo.

That's the goal that everyone has to shoot for and certain, it's not fair to certain people who aren't part of that culture.

That's what he's trying to say. And so what would this be? And he'll give some examples, but like,

I'll give you an example though that he doesn't give. I know of a church where there was a family who said, you know what?

Hymns are not part of our culture. You need to stop singing hymns. That's the kind of thing we're talking about where that's part of the majority culture.

This is the way we've always done it. Well, now to make room for us, you need to stop all of that. And you need to cater to us and what we desire.

It's got honestly a ring of selfishness to it. It's got an air of wanting to be catered to and wanting everyone else to kind of cater to you instead of seeing how you can, you know, here's the situation.

How do you fit in? And these aren't issues that are like sin issues. This is, these are more things that are just tradition and over time style, those kinds of things.

I'll just tell you where I kind of land a little bit. I'm of the mindset and I've had, you know, I've been a praise team leader, administer music and those kinds of things.

I'm of the mindset that I do think there are standards in music and we're not gonna do a podcast on music right now.

I do think there are certain things that sing ability is one of the major ones. You want to be able to sing and for everyone to be able to sing.

So that does preclude certain styles, at least for that sacred music usage.

But I'm of the opinion that if you have a diverse church of people from, you know,

I came from a very diverse church, people from all kinds of different countries, talking about like international.

If there's songs they want to do or styles they want to use or instruments they want to use, I tell them, come on in and we can all worship

God together and we may do a traditional hymn and then, you know, we may use a different instrument for another hymn and we may there.

So there's ways of doing this. Now I realize some traditions are going to be a little more rigid than others.

Some traditions where, you know, only singing the Psalms are acceptable for theological reasons, regulative principle type things.

I'm not commenting on all that, but I'm saying at the same time, when you walk into that room and if that's not,

I mean, I've been in churches myself. This has been me. I've been in churches myself where I've been told, yeah, we don't play guitar here.

And I'm like, well, that's what I do. I love to use my gift. That's not what they do. And it's not a matter of me like, well, they're discriminated against me because they don't like guitar players.

And no, it's like, okay, well, this is the church I'm going to and this is where I'm going to serve.

This is where I'm going to make use of myself according to the gifts God's given me. And I'm going to try to edify the body.

They're going to edify me. And if there's some underlying legalism that's motivating that, then, you know, we'll challenge that. But if not, if it's just, you know, this is the way that they do things.

If they have a pipe organ and they have an opera singer, which I've seen as well at other churches, then you know what?

I can appreciate that. And that's the thing that like for someone, you can appreciate that too.

If you're going to send your kids to a school, you're kind of like, you're making the choice to put them in that environment and to appreciate some of the cultures that they're going to be interacting with there.

And that should be part of what it means to grow up and be an adult, to know kind of how the people around you live, to know the differences of the people around you, to know, to interact with certain styles in certain cultures and traditions.

Walter Strickland was saying that it's not, that's kind of like a bad thing, that this is creating the problem and the problem of the insecurities that he had is created by this.

So normalization of the dominant culture means, and again, the dominant culture depends on where you are. And so that normalization of the dominant culture means that the most popular or influential culture is the baseline or the measure from which all other cultures are judged.

You do realize in Virginia, this kind of logic that he's using is applied to math.

They don't, they're not teaching upper level math now, or they don't want to because of diversity initiatives in the state of Virginia, because that's part of the dominant culture, that math stuff.

I just want you to realize like where this logic can lead you. And as a result, it's considered being culturally neutral.

And so I've given you some bullet points there on your sheet to demonstrate how this happens. And it really, again, it happens more passively than actively.

So what culture becomes normative? Well, who leads the most celebrated churches, local churches at your school?

Who sits in the most influential offices on campus? Who writes the books that the students read?

Who writes the books that the teachers read? Also, just as a more anecdotal and low level thing, whose podcast do teachers and even administrators listen to?

Whose podcast do they listen to? So he's saying that it's a problem if it's all people from quote unquote majority culture.

There's a bunch of white people. And if you're in Iowa, what do you do? Everyone who lives here is white.

There's only a few people that might be of other ethnicities. They're mostly German or Dutch. That's the diversity of Iowa, right?

It's like you got your Germans, you got some Dutch, you got some maybe some English kind of people. But it may be in the cities you have.

I don't know. If you're in the farmland, the cornfields of Iowa, there's no way to escape this.

So if you're in a Christian school there, it's like that we're not that doesn't mean they're all a bunch of white supremacists because they're just platforming white people.

There's listening to white podcasts, etc. This is this is a hyper focus, an obsession with skin, with with with race, really, to the point that it's just like that motivates everything that's it's holding people back if they're just have to be subjected to so many people that look the same.

And it's just what it ignores is qualifications that should be the standard for hiring people.

Promoting people if they're good at what they do, then, you know, regardless of what their cultural background is, if they're going to be a good fit and they're going to do the job well, then then hire them.

Right. But if that happens to be in the area you live, mostly people who are, you know, white or black or whatever, then then that all of a sudden becomes a problem.

And of course, he's using the term majority culture, though, so it wouldn't apply to black. It wouldn't apply to minorities. It would only apply to white people.

And, you know, I don't know how else to to sound the alarm on this, but like this is complete secular thinking.

This is not you can try to like put a veneer of Bible verses over this, but you're not going to find this kind of stuff in scripture.

It's just not there. This hyper focus on on race. It's likely that many of these folks share a similar cultural background and their cultural context become the assumed backdrop to pursue

Christ's likeness on campus. And it sort of becomes interwoven with an expression of those values that are trying to be intentionally instilled, those biblical values that are intentionally trying to be instilled in the students at the school.

So like if everyone wears a suit who comes to chapel, does that mean that you're saying that, you know, you're communicating to the students that in order,

I don't know, to be godly, you must wear a suit? Or is that just part of the culture we live in?

And because even people on ESPN have suits, it's a matter of showing respect. It wouldn't be, you know, well,

Jesus wore a togo. Maybe we should go back to that. I'm just trying to take another example and use that, put that through the grid to show you that this this makes no sense at the end of the day.

He's basically accusing people of wetting their theology, syncretizing it with this like white culture, this dominant majority culture.

And so you're like creating something new. You're creating some kind of error there. But that's actually what he's doing because he's the one, and I've showed this in other episodes, that takes the ideas stemming from liberation theology and critical race theory, and he shoves those into the gospel, which

I think you'll see in a minute, a little bit of it, at least, and creates this kind of syncretized works with grace gospel, which can't really save anyone if that's what you actually believe the gospel is.

So think of the social environment that middle and upper school students are growing up in.

And I was thinking through these concerns that are outside of the average concern of typical

Charlie Christian student. I was forced to think about the fact that since 2012, these students have witnessed a lot.

And I marked 2012 because that is the year when Trayvon Martin's name was just on the news throughout the country.

And if we think about ninth graders in 2012, they were five years old. If we think about juniors, they were seven years old.

Since then, they've had to make sense of the streak of African Americans who have died and who have made national news, including

Eric Garner, 2014, Laquan McDonald, 2014, Tamir Rice, 2014,

Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland, and the Emanuel Nine in 2015,

Orlando Castillo, Austin Kutcher, Alton Sterling, 2016, and the list goes on and on to the most recent

Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd in 2020. The reason why I painstakingly mention all those names to you is because this is the environment in which our students have come of age.

You know, this is the kind of stuff, these incidents in the preceding conversations have been going on virtually their whole childhood.

So imagine how all of this affects children, especially minority students. Yeah, there's a lot of assumptions in that, right?

That all these shootings were motivated somehow by racism because it's affecting minority students.

I would phrase it this way. The media narrative accompanying those incidences are affecting children because it's conditioning them, and that's what we should be going after.

A Christian school is going, they're going to have a challenge because they have a media that is lying to these kids, telling them that they live in this racist world where they can't get ahead, they can't achieve, where if they're the policemen that they're after them.

I mean, that's the kind of thing that they're having these lies told to them, and that's what a Christian school teacher would probably have to counteract.

Instead, what Walter Strickland seems to be advocating is that that media narrative is actually true, and Christian school teachers would have to adjust to that media narrative and be sensitive to the realities that these students have to face, when in actuality, oftentimes it's fantasy.

It's a conditioned fantasy. Again, I'm not saying that there's no racism anywhere against minorities.

Of course there is. And that will not be solved through any kind of social justice measure, and it certainly won't be solved through what

Walter Strickland is trying to do here at all. But what I am saying is this pervasive, it's systemic, it's everywhere, it's normative thinking that it's just that all those incidences he just lined up were motivated by racism, that was just simply not true.

And it's factually not true, and the burden of proof is on someone like Strickland to prove it, but they can't. So let's keep going here.

So on your sheet, I have collective memory introduces new sets of concerns.

That's memory studies, just so you know. He's talking about when you're talking about collective memory and that this is something that certain minority, certain oppressed peoples have this collective memory.

We need to respect that collective memory. You're engaging now in memory studies. And with those incidences, that's part of it.

That's part of the shield that gets put up. You can't criticize the interpretation because that's part of our culture. That's part of our collective memory.

So you can criticize dominant quote unquote culture all day long, but you cannot criticize that kind of culture or else you'll be a bigot if you do that.

So I'm just telling you, it's just a word. I heard the word collective memory. I know how it's used in social justice circles.

It's collective memory introduces a set of concerns that resonates with what I've just talked about.

And collective memory is a pool of knowledge or information that is shared by people in a social group.

This phenomenon is true. Now, what if it's not true? What if you have a whole social group that's been lied to by CNN and they believe something and not the majority of the social group, we'll put it that way.

And the leaders in the social group and they've imbibed this lie. How do you challenge that? Well, you have to challenge it, right?

You have to appeal to objective reality. And that would be the solution. But Walter Strickland doesn't go there.

This is part of the truth, the truth of that particular social group. This is where you see a little of the post -modernism,

I think, sneaking in here. All communities, but it's more pronounced among minority communities because there's a greater emphasis on maintaining cultural heritage.

So as a result, these stories are told on the porch and at the dinner table that include the names of Sam Hose, Emmett Till, Rosa Parks, Sandra Bland, and the list goes on to include the names

I just mentioned. And these stories are told so that their names are not forgotten. But in my house, they're also told so I'd be aware of the world in which

I lived. Which is good because I guess he can be aware of the world in which he lives, according to the collective memory of his culture.

But as soon as someone, let's say, wants to remember the memory of their

Confederate ancestors, no, that's not allowed. In fact, we're going to take that monument down. Not allowed to remember that one.

And now, of course, not allowed to remember Columbus, not allowed to remember the founding fathers in those ways, unless it's to vilify them.

That's kind of where we're heading now. Fortunately, I grew up in a house where this was done in a very positive way, just so to build awareness.

But in some places it's done where it instills bitterness in some students. But all

I'm trying to say that there's, as we tell, as we collect the memory of our people and pass it down, which is more predominantly done in minority environments, these sorts of concerns that lie outside of the cookie cutter experience, so to speak, at a school are going to be introduced.

For minorities, it has emboldened them, for better or for worse, by a culture who wants everyone to be a part of the conversation, but assumes that there's very little truth that comes in light that comes in this conversation from the majority culture.

So what effect do these concerns have on students who have them?

Well, first of all, it clarifies an accepted set of normal concerns. And so minority

Christians and students are often accepted insofar as their biblical and theological concerns match that of the dominant culture.

Many African Americans will have to figure out what does it mean to be a faithful follower of Christ when being racially profiled, or engaging in the assertion that Christianity is, quote, a white man's religion.

Being able to answer those concerns that are even outside of the normal sort of cultural cookie cutter of the school are very important to these students who are on the margins, culturally speaking.

All this is, this is from critical race theory. This is just the trying to de -center whiteness.

That's all this is that he's talking about. I've heard this same talk from secular critical race theorists, basically.

Sometimes it's more aggressive from them, but there's this problem. This problem is this one culture is dominating this other culture.

And where? How? Well, you see it in the kinds of people that are platformed, or they bring up this stuff that is not by any reasonable definition, sinful or racist, et cetera, but it ends up becoming this huge problem that people like him are paid to then come in and solve.

Which it's kind of sick that people pay to have someone like this come in and try to, quote, unquote, correct these supposed issues.

But that's what's going on here. This is about de -centering whiteness.

I don't know how this would differ from what a critical race theorist would say. It's important for us to allow our students to understand that even though those cultural realities are distinct, that there's still ways that they can apply the gospel of Jesus Christ to those things.

Listen to that. Listen to that. There's still ways they can do what? Apply the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, how? That's the big question. How do you apply the gospel? So there's a big problem. Majority culture then subordinating this minority culture, and they're having all kinds of issues.

They don't know how to answer apologetics questions, which, I mean, they should be able if someone says, isn't

Christian a white man's religion, which is one he just brought up. They should be able to say, actually, it's a Jewish. It comes from the

Jewish people because I have a very basic Bible understanding from my

Bible teacher. It shouldn't really take more than that. But anyway, you got to do something special, apparently, to be able to reckon with that particular objection.

And that whole situation, that whole scenario, that whole problem is going to be somehow solved by the gospel.

But how? What's the gospel going to do? And this is the big thing. I've showed you before how Walter Strickland has promoted another gospel by combining social justice works with the gospel.

And it sounds almost like he's doing it again a little bit. And I'm going to keep playing, and we'll see kind of where he goes with this.

And at the very least, this is very vague. And it's concerning if you have a guy like this who's vague on the gospel teaching

Christian schoolteachers how to be diverse and teaching them about how the gospel solves that.

Being faithful in those circumstances as they're being fully engaged in discipleship.

So being faithful and fully engaged in discipleship is how you apply the gospel. I mean, if you're talking about the abstract, the short definition of the gospel,

I'm talking about the gospels as in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the life of Jesus. But if you're talking about the gospel theologically, the power of God is salvation to those who believe.

I'm talking about people getting justified and their sins being paid for by Jesus Christ.

It's all about Christ's work, what Christ does, how Christ is the one that justifies them, that sanctifies them, that glorifies, that brings them into glorification.

That's Christ's work. Walter Strickland followed that up with, this is something we have to do.

It's discipleship. So applying the gospel means going and doing something. You're getting a little dangerous there, more than a little, actually.

Well, let's continue. Let's see where he's going here. That coffee bean takes up the flavor of the soil where it's planted.

And so for some, that's why you like Colombian coffee or Guatemalan coffee or Brazilian coffee.

Or Ethiopian coffee and so on and so forth. And the reality is that the gospel ought to do the same.

So this is after he had said, I didn't play the clip, where he says, the gospel is like a coffee bean. So his point is that there's different flavors depending on where you grow that coffee bean.

And so the gospel is the same way. The gospel is going to look different, taste different, depending on where it's coming from.

Now, look, you can communicate it in different languages, but the gospel is the gospel. It doesn't change based on, you know, it doesn't change.

The way you communicate it may change, but it doesn't change itself. So again, dangerous analogy here.

It should take up the flavor of the soil in which it's planted. There is a Christ -centered, redemptive core of the gospel, which is often captured so well in those values, biblical values and statements.

But it should never be captive to any culture, although it is embodied by people who are enculturated.

I'm not even sure what that means. I'm not even quite sure what that means. How are the teachers that are learning from Walter Strickland, how to teach their students, what are they supposed to make of this when it gets to the gospel?

So what do we do differently? How do we we're going to share the gospel differently? How do we do that?

What does that look like? At the very least, give the most benefit of the doubt we can.

This falls into the Peter category of you are being unclear about the gospel. You stand condemned because you're being unclear about the gospel.

What do you mean by all this? It sounds like there's a lot of human effort, human things that humans have to do.

And that's somehow changes the gospel as part of the gospel. Yeah.

So again, Walter Strickland has made clearer statements in the past that are false teaching, even to the point of saying that the law is the gospel and misconstruing the two.

But this is also this is confusing at the very least. And so the gospel refines the most

God -honoring parts of every culture and eradicates that which does not honor Christ at all. And so this raises the question for us, can the school's shared biblical values be expressed from various cultures?

Yes. The answer is yes, you can do that. But that does not mean that everything at your school has to be.

You can't deconstruct every single thing at your school to cater to minority students who want something a certain way.

There are limitations to that. And again, I keep thinking of my experience as in various leadership capacities, but especially with musical styles, because that's something that people can be very passionate about.

There are ways to incorporate things, but there are rules, too. There are some things you just can't like you can't dumb down your math standards, right?

There's certain things. There's a purpose that we're here to get educated, right? So we're going to we're going to teach a curriculum.

It's going to be a classical education if you're at a classical school. And there's not a whole lot of wiggle room there. You can certainly add some elements, some literature, but it's got to be enriching literature.

It's got to be it had it has to meet a certain standard. Dumbing down the standards isn't a good idea, which is what's happening in a lot of places when they start to apply this logic.

So, of course, if it's going to help the learning process, if it reflects the people that are in your community and that's the cultures that they have, they're going to learn more about those cultures and people learn to get along with one another because they're learning about those cultures, etc.

There's nothing wrong with that. But there does have to be some standards and it's not sinful or wrong.

And I need to say this very clearly. It's not sinful or wrong to have European standards in some areas.

And it's not sinful or wrong to say we're going to study Shakespeare here. It's not sinful or wrong to say we're going to sing hymns here.

It's not sinful or wrong to say we're going to have this certain dress code here and it's going to be Western style clothing. We're not going to be wearing, you know, kente cloths.

It's not none of those things are sinful or wrong. So I think

Walter Strickland is making out like they're so they are almost there. There's such a problem. Paul had this concern.

I don't mean those specifically things that but but things in that category. Galatians chapter two, when he was concerned that his fellow

Jews were putting too many Jewish cultural custom demands on Gentile converts.

I hear this all the time from social justice advocates. They get Galatians all wrong, saying that the problem was that there are these

Judaizers who are placing their cultural demands on the Gentiles. It was this cultural thing going on.

They were really they were racists. That's what was going on. When in reality, the issue in Galatians was salvation, mixing law with grace, mixing these these

Jewish rituals with the gospel. That was the issue. It wasn't their Jewishness that was the problem. It was the fact that they were works.

It was law. Civic cultural elements marked out by the law, including

Sabbath and food laws, circumcision, et cetera. And so that identify.

So these realities identify inheritance to a particular culture, which is

Jewish culture, rather than faithfulness to Jesus Christ himself, the New Testament people of God.

And so this directs our attention back to the missy logical reality where of not making people adopt the culture of the vandalist or miss our missionary, or we can say in this case, the teacher to enter into a robust and appropriate relationship with with the family of God and with Christ himself.

So this is he's sort of merging what he's talking about with Galatians with colonization and saying that the missionaries would would go into an area and then not only preach

Christianity, but take the standards of their culture and impose it. And to some extent, I mean, this is true.

This did happen. You have to have a little bit of compassion on some missionaries because they're kind of starting from scratch.

If you're going to an unreached people group and we're Christians now, it's not like you can from scratch.

Okay, here's the hymn book for your culture with your musical styles. It's going to be from their culture.

If you're building buildings there and you want buildings that are going to be superior, they're going to function in a certain way that keep out the rain and things.

And you're in a primitive culture, primitive tribe or something. It's going to look like the architecture of where you came from.

And there's nothing actually wrong with any of that. Where it has, I think, become a problem is where there's sort of like a a fusion of the culture with the faith to the point that unless you are doing it this specific way, you are not a

Christian, you are not a believer. But then that's the same problem as the Galatians had, where you're combining an element of works, an element of law, and this is not even a biblical law, with grace.

But then the problem there isn't that the certain culture is bad or that that certain culture, you know, they shouldn't have their architecture or their hymns.

Those missionaries should dispel those things. The problem is the combination of works and grace and them thinking that they have to do it this certain way.

There probably are ways that missionaries can do better at this. I know in my missions class, we talked about this quite a bit.

There are missionaries working on, okay, for certain cultures, we want to try to see what elements can we incorporate into a worship service, for instance, that are similar to their culture.

Obviously, their dress is going to maybe factor into that. We're not going to require them to wear suits when they come in, even though that's what we would wear if we were back in the

United States or Great Britain or wherever. So he combines that and he makes that, he sort of touches on what could be a legitimate problem.

But again, think of the context he's speaking in. These are, this is a Christian school, and he's talking about Christian teachers, how they're going to help minority students.

Is that really the problem that's going on in these Christian schools? Are they the colonizers that are coming in and they're forcing students who probably their parents are paying for them to be there or they're on a scholarship and probably should be grateful to be there.

They're forcing these students to adapt to a culture that's not theirs and making that part of Christianity.

Now, I'm just going to leave that an open question because I don't know this school. It's a Charlotte Christian school. I don't know if that's such a problem there, that they're saying certain cultural things are, this is the way it must be done or else it's not

Christianity. I don't know, but I have a suspicion that that's probably not the case.

There probably isn't colonization like that going on. It's probably just a school that has certain standards, that's been run in a certain way, that has certain traditions, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And the baggage and the problems that are being brought to the situation are being brought by the person who's conditioned into thinking that those are problems.

It's not the school, I would think, that's probably doing that. But again, I don't know. I don't know this particular school.

Maybe there are a bunch of Klansmen teaching at the Charlotte Christian school, but I doubt it. I doubt that's the case.

What we can do is be certain that we invite all people, all God's children to walk in Christ, which can be faithfully expressed from a variety of cultures without having to take on the specific cultural trappings of the dominant culture at a school.

How do you do that? How do you practically do that? There's certain things, I just don't know how you would.

Okay, so in a pulpit, right? Is a pulpit in Scripture?

No, a pulpit's not in Scripture, but we generally preach with pulpits. So how do you make all cultures feel welcome when you have a pulpit up there?

That's clearly from Western culture somehow. Take the pulpit out. Okay, well now it's just a big blank.

So you're not really making any cultures feel comfortable or less comfortable.

You may think that's a silly example, but if you apply the principles that he's giving, you have to think about that.

You have to think about everything. I mean, look, racism is normative. It's everywhere. You know, think about the building and the stained glass windows and how they portray the saints if it's a

Lutheran church or something like that. Think about, you have to think about everything, you know, those hymn books.

I mean, I heard it was a Harvard, I think it was a Harvard or no, Oxford professor saying that sheet music is racist now.

I mean, how in the world do you meet all the qualifications and all the new requirements that are coming, stemming from this ideology?

Walter Strickland's opening the door for all these things. I want to give two examples just to kind of help us get our minds around this dynamic.

So the first of the two examples is language. And so it's common that there is a certain insider language used as a litmus test to examine someone's spiritual maturity.

So in many schools, if specific words are not used to express the gospel or a person's relationship with Christ, then their spiritual maturity is at times called into question.

Or faithfulness is not based on using a specific linguistic formula, as we know, but it's by our depth of our relationship with Jesus Christ.

And so I bring up... That's dangerous. That's dangerous because he's setting the basis for legitimate faith now on a person's relationship, which is kind of a, it's a subjective thing and not their articulation of that relationship, which is more of an objective thing.

Unless, of course, you're postmodern and you just think, you know, like Derrida or something that you can, we should just, you know, take language and completely deconstruct it.

Languages is how we communicate with one another and communication is very important. That's how we're given revelation.

It's in scripture. It's in a written form. And so there are certain rules to that. And there's a reason that language must be fixed in some way in faith statements, for instance, in order to understand what's being communicated and to make sure that you're on the same page with someone else.

So it almost sounds like he's saying like dumb down the standards or change the standards to accommodate. Now, he's not being specific here, but if what he's saying is that,

I'm trying to even think of an example, you know, I'm trying.

So I've met people from other denominations, like, for instance, Pentecostals will say, right, good, godly

Pentecostals who love the Lord and have the gospel will sometimes greet you and you'll say, how are you doing?

And they'll say, you know, I'm highly favored, chosen and highly favored, something like I've heard that before.

It's not something that from a Baptist tradition you hear a lot. Of course, Baptist, everyone calls each other brother. So, I mean, there's little different things that have developed over time in different traditions like that.

But it's not those aren't things that would I would think anyone would say, well, if you're communicating in this way, if you're calling everyone brother, then, you know, that's a problem because it doesn't match my tradition or something.

These are these are pretty like inconsequential things. When it comes to like theology, though, the gospel especially, you do want to communicate that very clearly.

You want to articulate that well, and a school should be helping you do that. So I have a hard time kind of with trying to justify and even put a good read on what

Walter Strickland is saying here, because I don't see a way that this can really be a good thing. This would almost lend itself to deconstructing language in some way or dumbing down standards.

Language conversation, because in different denominations or different cultural backgrounds, people can be describing the gospel or a wonderful experience with the

Lord Jesus, but do so with different language. What would that be? Someone describing the gospel with different language?

We should be looking for, is it clear? Is it orthodox? And anything outside of that, it's not really a cultural thing.

Anything outside of that would be a problem. So there's a can of worms he's opening, and it's the responsibility of Walter Strickland to close that can of worms and to be very specific, or else he's just opened

Pandora's box here. And I say that because you could have someone who's a

Oneness Pentecostal coming and, you know, I'm just articulating it differently. You know, don't impose your majority values on me or something like that.

And we should be able to celebrate the fact that that person is becoming conformed to the image of God, even if they use language that is distinct from what is the culture that's most likely or most often associated with the school's pre -cutter.

How do you celebrate it if they just got the gospel wrong, right? If they articulated it wrong and they say, well, that's just my culture.

How do you celebrate that? I'm not sure what he's getting at here, except to say that if this is the guy you want coming into your school to teach your teachers,

I don't know why. But then secondly, disposition in worship. So there needs to be the space to be expressive or even stoic in our worship.

And during preaching at your school, is it common for someone to be snickered at if they raise their hands in praise to God or if they give a hearty amen when the

Bible is being taught? So these are indicators that those cultural customs have been othered at your school.

That's othered, othered. Foucault much? All right. So if someone snickers when someone else is raising their hands, two things, two thoughts.

Number one, kids are going to snicker at everything. You can't always, you can't stop all of that. Thought number two, this has nothing to do with majority culture, minority culture, any of this stuff.

This is just a matter of respecting other people. It could be, it doesn't matter what the person looks like.

If they're worshiping God and it's not causing any kind of, it's not blocking someone, right?

Your hands aren't up blocking someone so they can't view the screen or something. Then that's, they're worshiping, then there shouldn't be, you know, that shouldn't be tolerated if someone's being bullied over that.

And I mean, really bullied, you know, there should be, teachers should get involved in that.

But I think that would be self -evident. I wouldn't think you need a diversity expert to come in and tell you that, hey, if someone's kind of bullying someone else, then they should stop.

I think what he's trying to say is that this is the result of white culture or something, but it's not necessarily, it's not like white culture is to blame for this or it's white culture that's fault or anything like that.

What it is, is when anyone sees anything different, it doesn't matter if it's cultural, racial, doesn't matter if someone has glasses, right?

And they're called four eyes or something. Kids will always find stuff to make fun of, to view themselves as superior, that's growing up and teachers get involved with helping a student grow up.

And so it's a teaching opportunity when that happens. Injecting this whole racial thing into it, you're being racist because you snickered that person who raised their hands or whatever.

I don't think that, that's making a federal case possibly out of something. Probably not a helpful thing to do.

Because they're not the normal cultural customs. And so we need to see these dynamics so we don't make the mistake of conflating conformity to a specific cultural expression of faith with maturity in Christ.

And so sometimes we miss people who are being sanctified deeply into the image of Jesus because they don't speak and describe their faith with the same language, although it's still good and sound language.

Or we see somebody's disposition in worship and see it as different than our own.

I just love Matthew 22 verse 37, which reminds us that we are created mind, body, and soul.

And each Christian tradition, you know, loves God, loves God, emphasizes different parts of our mind, body, or soul in their worship.

So if you're a subdued or expressive worshiper, it's because one is emphasizing... Different personalities also do that.

This isn't necessarily a cultural thing completely. The mind, you know, they're emphasizing the emotion, the soul.

And so the more subdued crowd would be encouraged to explore their faith beyond cognitive realities and engage the seat of their emotions in worship, had they been worshiping with people who are more expressive worshipers.

And more expressive worshipers would be encouraged to continually engage their mind in worship and know more about the

God that fueled their worship. And so, suffice it to say... Too often. Okay, I guess

I cut that mid a little bit here. So he's saying that these things that are really particular to denominations too.

Yeah, there's a bunch of different things that can lead into whether someone's raising their hands or not. I mean, it's personality, it's even to what extent sometimes they're worshiping, you know, how kind of lost in the song that they are.

It could be the denomination they go to. There are certainly cultural elements. Certain cultures gravitate towards different denominations and have had different traditions form over time.

So there's a lot of different factors that go into that. It doesn't reduce down to like majority culture, minority culture, racism or anything like that.

It's something that... It's more complicated than that. And it really does...

It's on a case -by -case basis, honestly, kind of how someone reacts to music and how it moves them.

But this is something I think for a school to figure out. There may be legitimate reasons for a school to not want people to get too involved in dancing or something like that.

Or maybe even sometimes it's not nice to raise your hands when you're blocking the person behind you if they can't see the screen, if that's how you're projecting it.

I mean, there's a lot of different things to look at. It's certainly not...

It doesn't mean it's a racist thing if someone is against raising hands in a particular setting or against certain expressions.

Again, it could be. It's possible that there could be that. But I would say in most of the circles

I've run in, at least, it's very unlikely. And again, the thing that I keep coming back to is why would you need someone like Walter Strickland to come and help you with this?

This would be something that you're navigating on your own. I don't know why this would be a problem. Now, maybe there's some teachers in there that think, well, hey,

I'm going to go raise my hands now because I want other students to feel comfortable raising their hands. If they're minority students or something, they come from churches that are more lively like that.

There's nothing wrong with that, with doing that. But again, it's not something that you should have needed a diversity expert to come in and tell you.

It's something that I would think most people should just already be aware of, that different people express themselves differently.

And it shouldn't be on the teachers that that's their responsibility or the school that that's now their responsibility to drum up these kinds of expressions.

Generally, there should be barriers within a worship service. Here's what's acceptable. Here's the decency and in order.

That's what everything's supposed to be done, in decency and in order, 1 Corinthians says. So here are the barriers for that.

This is what we see is this. Sometimes that's unspoken. Sometimes that's not something that it's listed anywhere in writing.

But there's sort of an acceptable range of expression. And it's not really related to racial stuff.

He's injecting that kind of into it, I feel like. Students are forced to choose between their home or school's cultural expression of faithfulness.

As if that's such a problem that students are like, oh, no, students might have to worship a little differently in one setting than in another setting.

How horrible is that? I'm almost befuddled by this.

I mean, I've been in so many different churches and different settings that it's like, well, I've learned to appreciate.

Here's the thing, guys. I've learned to appreciate them. I've learned, okay, they do it differently in this region a little bit. They do it differently in this denomination.

They do it differently in this culture. And I've learned to appreciate those things. And that's actually what makes an educated person in many ways.

That's why people go around the world and they travel to see real diversity. Not to squash it, but to see how, you know, okay, this is how these people act.

And to some extent, a lot of people will conform to the way that the people around them are acting. It's not always a bad thing.

Sometimes that means you're trying something new that you haven't tried before. You know, someone who's really expressive that goes to a church that that's what they do.

And then they go to a church that's not as expressive. Sometimes that can help them realize, wow, I should focus on the words.

Sometimes it's helpful for those who are in a church that's more stoic to go to a church that expresses themselves more.

And it's, I just, I think there's like a missed education. There's a missed opportunity here in a way when you're just like,

I don't know, like saying it's a problem. If like one particular style or expression is kind of like, is the dominant one.

And most people are, you know, not raising their hands or something. Can you believe that this is where the conversation is?

This is a guy who's training them. What's the title of this? The title of this is, well, it just says presentation.

It presents the upper school faculty. But this has to be part of the diversity training. This is like a diversity thing.

Anti -racism thing. Can you believe that that's where we are right now? We're talking about raising hands, but we are all right.

We're almost done here. Cultural preeminence. And so this is most profound because when you don't raise your hand, you're saying my culture, white people, right?

They're, they're the preeminent ones. That's what you're saying. When a single group self -consciously assumed that their culture most effectively fosters faithfulness to Christ.

That is such an accusation. It is such an accusation to make. When a group assumed that their culture is the environment where that are the culture that faithfully embodies or fosters faithfulness to Christ.

And this leads to other challenges like reluctance to learn from Christians from other cultures.

So this reality leads to their reluctance to learn from Christians of different cultural backgrounds. And then also it leads to them to accept minority

Christians in so far as their biblical and theological inquiries match that of their culture.

If minority Christians accept their, or express their faith in similar cultural trappings, then those folks will be accepted.

Can I propose an idea? Rather than hire Walter Strickland to come in and lecture you, why don't you just go on some field trips?

If you're in a class that, you know, and it's relevant to the class. Why don't you go to some different, make sure they're

Orthodox, but different churches that express themselves differently in worship and see. Maybe show a video in class.

I don't know, but maybe go to a church. Maybe, I think it's really good for, to go to like a historically black church or something for someone who's not part of that particular, or has never been exposed to that particular culture.

Go to that, that church, check it out. Even if you don't stay, just go for a Sunday, check it out. That's what they used to call cross -cultural education.

Instead, it's like, it's this, you learn to appreciate cultures that way and you learn to mature that way.

This seems like it's going to keep you in an immature cave where you kind of like, you're always looking for like what culture is being dominant.

I mean, cause look, if you go to like a historically black church and they're expressing themselves a certain way and you're not used to it, then are you being oppressed?

Are they saying that that's the only way? I mean, like, come on, like different people express themselves differently and that's part of the flavor of life.

And there's something kind of beautiful about that. And I mean, I don't know that, that should be like appreciating diversity.

I don't understand this. Like, you know, it's such a problem that, you know, there's people don't raise their hands or something like that.

It's just, it's so weird to me. And also, it gives dominant culture believers the assumption or even students, the assumption that the gospel ought to only be applied to approve a set of cultural dynamics.

Okay. That's kind of disgusting. So this, so if you don't, if you don't normalize certain worship styles that are not part of the majority of the students that come to your place, even though they're the ones that are the ones worshiping, but if you don't somehow normalize these other worship styles, you're teaching that the gospel doesn't, doesn't apply to minority people.

How in the world do you get there? How do you get that kind of logic? And what is the gospel to you, Dr. Strickland?

What is the gospel then? If it's so feeble that apparently you, people won't know that it applies to them.

If you do this one little thing differently. That are within the cookie cutter. And this is, this is sort of an activity that can be done by perhaps a principal or a lead teacher, but it's not quite for everybody, but I'll just throw it out there anyway.

To host a student focus group of minority students to identify areas of tension.

To host a focus group of minority students identify areas of tension. And so I say this because it might be hard to just imagine where these tensions might be, but there are students who are living it out on a regular basis.

Okay. That's the end. Oh, goodness. We got through it. Study. So that last part there was part of, he had like five different things to do.

One of them, we don't have time to go through all of them. This is already long enough, but one of them was hire a focus group of the students to identify the areas where they may not feel comfortable or their culture is not valued or something like that.

That can get real nitpicky real quick. And you're going to have the wisdom of those students, I guess, be what dominate.

I just, I don't get it. I would think that this would be something where teachers, adults, parents would be able to, if there's a problem, they could talk about it.

They could resolve whatever that issue is. But to hire students, to have a focus group of students to solve this thing, you're teaching them early, kind of like they can just kind of get what they want.

If, if it's so, it's so strange guys, why, why do this? Why go through all these hoops?

Why pay all the money to have someone like Strickland come and tell you things that are mostly obvious.

And then a bunch of things that aren't really true. And then a bunch of things that are not helpful.

It's like the only things that are helpful in this are the things that should have already been obvious. So that's my two cents.

I know some people will probably think that I was a little too harsh in this. Just, just know, if you haven't seen my other videos, this is after probably,

I don't know, doing how many videos on Walter Strickland's teaching. So it's kind of becoming, it's just, it,

I've done it a lot. I'll just put it that way. I would plead with people connected to ACSI to really raise a stink about this.

If, if you care about your schools, if you care about, or find a different accreditation, accrediting agency, if, if, you know, one that preferably doesn't have this kind of diversity training,

I don't know what can be done. I'm not in ACSI. I've known people now, a bunch of people are reaching out to me who teach for ACSI.

But this is, this is the kind of thing that, I mean, this is an example of the training itself.

This isn't Walter Strickland talking about something unrelated. This is the training part of it. So keep that in mind.

And I'm sure there's other things that I'm not aware of, other videos and stuff, but this is just a little sample. I hope that was helpful for those in ACSI, et cetera, or those connected to this situation.

Hopefully we'll get to some other things that aren't quite as, as heavy and long as this later in the week.

If you want to, reminder for those who want to give to Last Stand Studios, we are, we do have some costs coming up.

We're going to be doing some traveling and some film work, and I'm going to put the link for the

American Monument documentary project. We are, we have a crisis now with the way history is being taught.

And so we want to get some, we want to tell the story about American monuments, why they were erected, the purpose for them, why it's wrong to take so many of them down like they have been.

So we're going to, we're doing that. Link is in the info section if you want to contribute to that effort. And we would appreciate it.