The Downgrade Continues: SEBTS, JD Greear, and Young American's for Liberty

Hello and welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I have a lot to get to today and not a lot of time to do it, so I'm going to move kind of fast here. I want to make a quick announcement, though.

I'm going to have Sean McGowan, who wrote the foreword to this new edition of The Confession of St. Patrick on Thursday, and it will be posted Thursday night or Friday morning, but I've read through this.

It's a great little read, and St. Patrick's Day is coming up, so we're going to be talking about the life of St. Patrick, how St. Patrick should inspire Christians or can inspire us and then how do we use his life as a witnessing opportunity during the festivities that are going to be happening this weekend, because Irish, non-Irish alike, Christians, non-Christians alike are going to be participating in celebrating this, and obviously, to those who know what goes on on St. Patrick's Day, not all of it will be very Christian in the way it's celebrated, so how do we use St. Patrick's life as a witnessing tool?

One other quick announcement, I did say in my last video there was going to be a live chat yesterday with a bunch of brothers who are also concerned about social justice infiltrating the church. We were going to talk to Judd Saul from Enemies Within the Church.

We did do that. We just didn't do it live, so if you want to watch our discussion, go to the first link in the info section, and you can watch the whole thing. I'm going to actually put a little clip from it into this, but I want you to go watch the whole thing if you have the time and inclination to do that.

We're really trying to push this thing. I think it's going to be a grassroots effort that gets this thing across the finish line, but Enemies Within the Church, the movie, will happen. The more I hear, the more I'm for it and think this needs to happen.

Please, if you have some extra money that you can donate to this, go to enemieswithinthechurch .com and do what you can to help Judd and Kerry Gordon, who's the face of this, and Trevor Loudon. Keep them in prayer, by the way, as they're making this.

They've had some challenges from others who don't want their message getting out. All the more reason to fund it. That being said, let's get into the nitty-gritty here. We're going to be talking about three different things.

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Social Justice Critique

Number one, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. There was a tweet that went out from James White last week that caused kind of a firestorm. I got caught up in the firestorm, so I'm going to talk about this.

To put an introductory remark on this that will give some context to why I'm talking about this, I backed up something James White said. I'm going to read it, what James White said to you in a moment.

But there are two basic criticisms that are made by James White and myself, and those who signed the Dallas Statement, when it comes to the issue of social justice infiltrating the church. Issue number one.

This is the bigger issue, and then we'll go to the smaller one. I mean, they're both big. Issue number one. There's a non-Christian ethic that's driving this. I would say there's an alternative gospel that's driving this, but there's a non-Christian ethic seeping into Christian communities and institutions and seminaries.

I've said this before. Nothing new here if you've been watching the podcast or listening. That's the critique. That sociology, progressive history, these things are informing our understandings of concepts that are in Scripture, like justice, like repentance, and we're coming up with these new definitions that were there all along in the world, but they were not in the church, and now they're in the church, and we have a scriptural veneer of cherry-picked verses that we place over it, but this did not come from exegeting the text of Scripture.

Very dangerous to get away from exegeting the text of Scripture, especially if you are a pastor. So, very concerning. Number two. The other concern is there's an emphasis problem here, and this is going to be seen in a moment as I go over some of the information about Southeastern.

But what are institutions designed to train pastors doing when they have degree programs, coursework, that is not understanding the Bible or theology and disseminating that to others, communicating that, but is something else?

You know, Southeastern was the Great Commission Seminary. It still claims to be, but I think that's changed. And I'm going to show you some things about that, but the emphasis is the other critique that's been made.

Now, here are the critiques that have been made about our critiques, and I saw this, it was clear to me, and I thought, you know what? This is going to be beneficial for you all who are perhaps, you know, maybe some of you are fighting it, maybe some of you don't know what to think yet, but I think this will clarify some things and help you.

Number one critique made against people like James White and myself is, you guys are the tinfoil hat guys. I mean, there's nothing going on. You're making it all up. So if you post, this happened, you post, here's the degree program in social justice Southeastern has.

Well, I need to see the coursework. Okay, here's the coursework. Well, or the classes, I should say. Well, I need to see what's in those classes. It's like a black hole. You can't win. No matter how many pieces of evidence you use to prove, you could send them, here's the kingdom diversity website.

It's never enough. You know, it's just like always needing more evidence. It seems that way, at least to some people, not everyone, but there is this hunger for more evidence, more evidence, more evidence.

The evidence is there. You know, there's no watchdog that I know of that's perusing the archives at Southeastern. No one paid me to look at any of these things. I did not take hardly any time to go through some of the things I'm about to share with you.

And it's scratching the surface. I don't have the time to look into these things. I simply do not. But I need to shine a light on some of this because when I was a student there, it was constant. I couldn't have caught all of it.

There was things going past my head. I thought, you know, someone should have should mention that. But if you're in the environment, you get used to it. And if you're outside the environment, then you're not aware of it.

Except now there's been so much going on in regards to social justice, so much chatter that people outside the environment, like James White, who's not a student at Southeastern, are hearing this. And they're saying, oh, goodness, did not know that this was going on.

So that's one of the criticisms. You guys are the tinfoil hat guys. The other criticism is, and this is maybe a more important one. You know, you guys just don't think scripture should apply to the public sphere.

You don't think politics and culture are the responsibility of the church to prophetically speak into. This is kind of a ridiculous critique. Now, speaking autobiographically for a moment, I like Vantill.

I like Bonson. You know, Francis Schaeffer, a student of Vantill's, love his work. Nancy Peercy, student of Schaeffer, her book, Total Truth, recommend it all the time because I believe in the sufficiency of scripture.

When scripture talks about economics, it applies to the public sphere as well as the sphere of the church. It applies everywhere. Of course, I believe that. I've never heard anyone make this critique that people on my side are purported to be making.

We haven't made that critique. I've just labeled our two concerns, right? And that wasn't one of them. We're not sitting there saying, we think that we should only focus on the gospel, and that's it. And, you know, the Bible has nothing to say about economics or justice.

Of course, the Bible has things to say about those topics. We just don't think that we should be going outside of scripture to interpret what scripture means when it says those things. So this is a straw man, but it is a straw man that is there for a reason.

And I went through a couple chapel messages, just some clips, two of them I had heard, one of them I had not. And they were in Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's chapel, and it was almost like these three guys were reading from the same script, because they made that exact same critique and said, essentially, if you don't think social justice is an issue the church should be concerned about, well, you just don't think that the Bible has any authority to speak into the public realm, and you need to repent of that.

And so the conversation becomes pointless because it just becomes, well, you just need to repent, and there's no—discussion just breaks down, and just accusations fly all over the place. So I'm going to get into the weeds a little bit in a minute, and I'm going to tell you who those people were and what they said in more detail, but this is the bird's eye view.

This is what's going on. So that's the first thing. Southeastern. I think this will benefit you if you are someone who's involved in these discussions. Hopefully it'll make them more clear, more fruitful, and maybe give you something to think about if you're not of the opinion that I hold, or if you do, then it'll give you something apologetically to use.

Secondly, J .D. Greer said some things last Sunday which leave me scratching my head, and they're concerning. Someone in his church sent it to me. I don't think anyone else has covered this to my knowledge, but they are concerning.

He's the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and boy, he's on a roll lately. It is concerning. He said a lot of good things, but it's like that error that is mixed in with the truth. Not a good thing at all.

And then the last thing is something that I failed to mention because I hadn't connected the dots, but I do believe students, or I think it's called Young Americans for Liberty, libertarian organization, kind of a Ron Paul organization on a lot of college campuses, I believe they funded or supported or somehow sponsored the LGBT and Me Too protests that happened at Liberty University last week.

And I'm like 90, 95 sure about this. I want to show you the evidence I have. I actually messaged them, Young Americans for Liberty, and they have not replied to my email, which might be telling in and of itself.

I don't know. But I'll show you what I have on this. And the reason it's important is because I went to their page, and I have a lot of mutual friends, conservative people, who like Young Americans for Liberty.

And it's concerning if there are certain chapters, perhaps, or certain areas, certain schools, they're pushing LGBT stuff. So I want to shine a light on that. And I wasn't looking for it. I literally stumbled into it, which is amazing to me.

After having Judd Saul on and talking about all these outside organizations funding social justice on Christian campuses, college campuses, I just stumble into it. It just, it's amazing to me. So let's start, though, with Southeastern.

So this is what James White said. He said, shall we cut to the chase? Social justice, cultural Marxism, intersectionality, victimology. Thinking has taken over Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

This is a given. I agree with that. Any unwritten but obeyed rule that says silence, no warning is poison to the church. Yes. No. Now, you all probably know my answer. Yes, it is poison. And he's talking about what he terms to be the 11th commandment, this idea that you shall not criticize a Southern Baptist.

And it's concerning that those who know better or who should know better are not saying anything while this is going on. And so what is going on at Southeastern's campus? Now, you can watch my hour and a half long video where I give you a lot of information about my experience.

There's a couple of things I left out that I thought about later. Maybe I'll incorporate some of those. But here's just a sampling. Again, skimming the top of the water here, skimming the surface. This is an article by the Intersect Project.

Now, those who... Here, I'll show it. Those who do not know the Intersect Project, the Intersect Project is funded by Oquinomia Network. And I talked about this in the episode with Judd Saul, the first one on enemies within the church.

But Oquinomia Network funds this, and it's not good money coming in. We'll put it that way. Now, I'm gonna jump through a bunch of the things that this article says, because I could spend all day on this.

There's a lot of really not great stuff, especially the history section kind of aggravates me because it's just not informed. But let me read for you this section here. All right, this is under number three, expand your knowledge of your context's history.

Okay, so again, top of the page here, this is... We're trying to get some racial reconciliation here, right? So how do we get that racial reconciliation? Well, first of all, you gotta question yourself.

Have you ever questioned why that's just the way things are when it comes to racial disparities in your community? Have you ever questioned that? Do white flight schools exist? Does the company you work for have a white leadership, yet many people of color are employees?

Do children of color sit separately from white children in the cafeteria? Is your city a major city for refugee resettlement? What are the stories of indigenous people where you live? You can find helpful resources with extensive research to help you understand the history behind the way things are when it comes to race.

For example, if you wonder why Sunday mornings still seem so segregated, where should you go? Read Divided by Faith. Now, Votie Bauckham, I talked to him, he's a Southeastern grad a couple months ago, and I asked him, where did all this stuff start?

It just seems like it's like so suddenly this social justice emerged. And he said he thought that the book Divided by Faith was a big part of the emergence of this movement. So there it is, Divided by Faith.

Now, let me ask the question. Southeastern put this on their social media. I only saw it because when I was logging into my student account, when I was a student there, it was right there in front of me.

And I clicked on it and read it and read it with my wife. We were both a little shocked. Now, nothing shocks me, it seems like. But I want these questions to be asked of Southeastern. So have you ever questioned why that's just the way things are, racial disparities?

Now, Southeastern is in Wake Forest, very white community, if I do say so myself, having lived there outside of Raleigh. Do white flight schools exist? Well, I don't know what you call the school that's directly across from Southeastern.

A white flight school? I mean, I guess it would be, according to how the left defines things. Does the company you work for only have white leadership, yet many people of color are employees? Southeastern and a lot of the churches that the men at Southeastern go to would probably fit into this category in some ways.

Yeah, a lot of white leadership. And I can speak just as a student. Yeah, there were some people of color that did more, some of the more menial tasks and so forth on campus. Does that mean I went to like a racist institution at Southeastern?

Was I part of? I mean, I feel like they're shooting themselves in the foot when they say things like this. But here it is, right in front of us. Here's another one. Do children of color sit separately from white children in the cafeteria?

When I first went to college, I remember in the community college, I started out in community college that I went to, there was some segregation, I guess, when I, I mean, I would have to think about it.

But as I think about it, yeah, there were different people that hung out with people that were like them, listen to the same music, because a lot of times in the cafeteria, they're listening to music, they're watching something, not going to class.

That was the cafeteria at the school that I started going to. When I first started going to college, people that are from the same area have the same interest. I mean, that's just kind of natural that it's not because there's division, it's because there's unification, you unite with people that tend to have similar interests.

That's just human behavior. There's no, it doesn't mean you're racist. Now, I'm thinking back to this particular cafeteria, those who are sitting separately from one another, weren't, it wasn't all along racial lines, but I could see very easily looking at the big picture and saying, well, this is along racial lines, you know, look, there's 10 white kids over there and there's one black kid, or, and look at there's 10 black kids over there and one white kid.

So, I mean, there were some exceptions, but, but yeah, I mean, there, there, there was some of that, but there were also other people, there's Hispanic people and other races and ethnicities all mixed in.

I never thought a thing of it. But apparently that means that I'm just not in touch with my own self, I guess, when it comes to these issues. And I need, this is part of the getting woke thing. It's training your mind to think differently.

If you didn't notice race before, you just treated everyone the same. Now you have to think about race. You have to, or else, you know, you're not for racial reconciliation. It's really concerning, this stuff.

And it, this whole thing, article is crazy. I don't, but it, but it comes from somewhere. It comes from somewhere. The person who wrote this, I don't believe for a moment they themselves, you know, just came up with this and they're crazy.

You know, they learned this from somewhere and it made sense to them the way it was presented. So I'm again, skip, skipping along the top of the surface here. Here's kingdom diversity's website. Now, if you go through this website, you are going to find a lot, a lot.

I would recommend if you are a doubter, when it comes to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary being on the social justice bandwagon, you need to go to the kingdom diversity area and just see the kinds of things that are being posted there.

It's, I mean, I thought it was quite eye-opening the first time that I went here. I mean, look, critical race theory there. We already have it. I know there's another critical race theory, a lot of critical race theory stuff.

Remembering James Cone. I mean, if you know anything about James Cone, you will know that he was not a Christian theologian in the orthodox sense at all. And so part of the motivation for this, I believe is actually down here.

When I looked at this from 2015 to 2016, look, we increased 14 to 16 .15 in the non-white population. Now, non-white is right because, you know, when I hear people even on my side of this debate saying it's the race issue, I don't like that.

Because, you know, it's not the race issue, really. It's not every race being equal and we want multiculturalism. It is against white people. The efforts are against being white. It's the anti-white issue.

It's not the race issue. But here we go. I mean, this is kind of a pathetic thing to tout. 14 to 16 .15%. And look, it goes back to 2016. I mean, we're in 2019 now. But it's, I mean, they're bragging about Native American 0 .5%.

I mean, his name is Bill. I was on this campus. It's very white. I don't know what they're talking about exactly here. But yeah, they're very proud of this. And I'm going to kind of go on a tangent here, but I think it's an important one.

I know someone who was part of the Southeastern Society, one of the donors. And they're not now, but they were last year, up until very recently. And they told me in the last meeting from 2018 that they were at, the provost essentially made the argument that Southern Baptist Convention is losing members.

And in order to replace these members, social justice was part of the effort. Or getting the kingdom diversity, I should say, was part of that effort. Trying to get people who are not white into the school.

They're going to save the Southern Baptist Convention. I do think there's a pragmatic element to this. I really do. So for what it's worth, I'm going to keep going here with a few other things. I've mentioned this before.

There's more, I guess, sources that I could cite. Here's one of the main ones, though. And I want to draw attention to this. Kern Family Foundation. They put a grant out there to Southeastern. They give them some money.

What was that money for? And if you read, if you watch the first episode I did with Judd Saul, we talk about Kern Family Foundation. There it is. Aquinumian Network. Right there. That's even worse. That's coming into Southeastern.

And what is it for? Curriculum Development. Head of Kingdom Diversity. Walter Strickland is part of this. Crafting of this. Bruce Ashford. I'm going to talk about him in a minute. And what kind of courses are we talking about?

Well, Theology of Vocation. Economics, Poverty, and Wealth. So, these are the kinds of things that Kern is funding. I am fairly confident that this new program that I'm about to show you probably has some Kern money.

And I can't verify it because, you know, Southeastern doesn't publish everything. Not all the information is necessarily out there on this. But this is a new effort. And it's concerning. Actually, before I get there.

Yeah. I was just going to show this real quick. This is the front of the College of Southeastern's website. Look, I'm going to empower women. And I think what this dear young lady means by this is that she is going to go, as she says, empower women to be good stewards of the word.

But that phrase, empowering women, that did not come from a Christian context. I mean, these are people going out to do ministry, to be missionaries. Empowering women is not part of the Great Commission, which is what that sign is supposed to represent.

One of the aspects of the Great Commission. Preach, teach, disciple, baptize, or a place. Usually someone puts it like here. I'm going to Kenya, this girl says. But empowering women is not part of that.

But now, because social justice is a gospel issue, you can have something like this. So now let's go to this new program here. So the new program is justice and social ethics. You can major in this. Now, what's the purpose of majoring in justice and social ethics?

Well, here's what it says. It's for people that want to be in ministry. Pastors, military chaplains, missionaries. Right here, it says that. So if you want to be a pastor, well, maybe you should major in justice and social ethics.

Well, what will that do for you? It will give you, in the words of Southeastern's website, a prophetic edge, which I think is, for some reason, hysterical. I don't know why, but it's like, it's a weird way to phrase it.

You get the prophetic edge. You can, I guess, speak truth to power. Kind of like in the way the Old Testament prophets did, but I don't know. It'll give you an edge somehow if you want to be prophetic.

Now, what kinds of courses are in this justice and social ethics degree? Well, we have social justice and race relations. Well, what's that? A study of the ethics of social justice and race relations in light of biblical principles, theological doctrines, and historical expressions, with special attention given to the church's task in promoting social justice and confronting discrimination.

Let me read that again. The church's task in promoting social justice. You heard it here first. The church's task in promoting social justice? I thought this was the Great Commission Seminary. I thought that's what was going on here.

But no, apparently that's, you know, part of the Great Commission is empowering women. Part of the Great Commission is social justice and furthering that, promoting it. Here's another course they have.

Ethics of wealth and poverty. Now, it's interesting the way these things are phrased. Instead of saying just like biblical economics, it's the ethics of wealth and poverty. Notice how wealth and poverty, they're contrasted here.

You know, there's two different things. There's wealth and there's poverty, and that's what we're going to study, the ethics of that. What does that mean? You know, this would not have been in any biblical, like a Bible degree or a seminary curriculum, even like five years ago.

But now this is in the church. This is a change. That's part of the point, is that this is something that's new. It's a deviation. For the life of me, I can't figure out why Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary would drop hermeneutics as a requirement from their MDiv program, and then come up with a major for their undergrad that's this.

I just don't get it. There's a mission drift going on, and if it's hard to see that, then I don't know what else I can say. It seems fairly obvious to me. So, a couple more things regarding Southeastern.

I want to talk about this. I mean, this stuff is just, if you're listening and you're not watching, you're not going to see any of this. But what I'm doing is I'm walking through, I'm just skimming the top of the surface.

I went to Southeastern's Twitter feed, and I just saw, you know, just a few things that, uh, you know, while I was there, you know, half an hour or whatever, not even, I was probably there like 15 minutes, if that, you know, just looking for what they had, and this is the kind of stuff that was there.

So, social justice is just all over the place, and the conversations about, I mean, this is the emphasis thing, discussing the importance of race relations within the church, racial reconciliation in the church, social media and race, ethnically diverse community.

I mean, and I could have picked a lot more, but this is, it's constant. This is a message Russell Moore gave in, I'm going to read you a clip from it, in chapel last year, and this is important because I think this is where one of the criticisms made against people like myself and James White and all the other Christians who are concerned about social justice is coming from.

So, Russell Moore said in this chapel message, which was called the Morality, uh, Morality, Justice, and the Gospel According to Jesus from 2 Kings 21, by the way, there wasn't a really, a lot of exegesis of 2 Kings 21, it was kind of a launch sermon, uh, but what he said is, here's a quote, how dare you, and I should set this up, he is basically impersonating myself or James White or someone, uh, like Tom Buck who would be against the social justice infiltrating the church.

He's saying, this is what they say, this is what I say, how dare you talk to me about issues I want to classify as social justice, because the gospel has nothing to say about the way we live together in groups.

Now, is that what we're saying? The gospel has nothing to say? Of course the gospel has something to say. The gospel informs the way we interact with everyone. I don't understand. No one has said this.

He cannot provide a citation for this. He won't try. I'm sure he won't try. There's no way, but this is the accusation, and I'm going to show you that this accusation is made constantly by prominent evangelical leaders, and it is deceptive, and it needs to be apologized for.

There's no evidence for it, which there isn't. I mean, I know what the guys on my side of this issue are saying, and they're not saying this. This is the issue that really needs to be repented of, misrepresenting us this way.

Here's what he says, again, social injustice could include the crucifixion of an innocent man. So, so if you're against social justice, are you for the crucifixion of Christ? So that's one of the, that's social injustice.

That's part of it. The context in which he raised that is what's concerning because he's talking about people like myself. Here's something else he says. You know what? I'm not going to go into that. I could go all day.

I'm going to cut it there because that's sort of the gist of his message. But I guess I'll leave with this one. He says, again, impersonating people like myself. Let's not talk about black and brown people in my neighborhood because people will become angry with me.

Who's saying this? Our motivations are because we're afraid people will become angry with us. That's why we don't talk. So it's all nefarious. Paul says the gospel is a gospel of justice and justification.

A gospel of justice and justification. What verse says that? This is what Russell Moore is saying. This is at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's campus, in chapel, within the last year. Here's another one.

This is Bruce Ashford, and he preached. I actually listened to this one while it was going on, while I was on campus. Here's a quote, and I'm going to give you kind of, I'm going to set this up. He's preaching on Daniel 3.

I mentioned this in one of my previous podcasts. And he's saying that we shouldn't bow to the state. It's idolatry. And he makes this point. He says, human beings are idle factories, right? Calvin says that's true.

And then he goes on to say, well, I'm not being partisan here. Is, and he criticizes the left. I'm gonna give him credit there. He says, you know, they value sexual ethics too much. Not ethics, the opposite.

They value their sexual license too much. And they throw out sexual ethics. And then he says, is there a form of it, meaning idolatry? Is there a form of idolatry that grows more on the right, that refuses to have any economic norms ever?

I don't know who he's talking about here. That may be like an extreme, like an anarchist position, like no economic rules. I mean, like this is not people that have any power or control in the conservative movement on the right and the Republican party.

Like no one believes in no economic controls at all. They believe in limited government, limited responsibility, not just free for all anarchy. But that's what he's saying. This is, it grows on the right.

Is there any ideology that elevates the nation state or an ethno-nation within the nation state to a level of ultimacy that the nation is willing to be unjust toward people who are not part of the nation state, who are not a part of that ethnic group?

So he compared, what's he talking about here? This is the immigration issue. He's speaking about it in like cryptic terms, but you tell me what he's talking about. There's a group of people that we gotta be careful of that we don't slip into their way of thinking and they're really concerned about their ethnicity and they wanna treat people unjust who aren't in their ethnicity.

Who is he talking about? He says it's on the right. Is there any political ideology that elevates cultural heritage and tradition to such an extent that it's unwilling to weed out the evil and the bad that's built into that heritage?

Again, who's he talking about here? Anyone who has any power in the Republican Party on the right and the conservative movement will acknowledge sins in America's past. We will not bow to any of the false gods of our day.

We should not bow to the political gods of our day. No one covered this. And he's the provost at Southeastern. I think one of the reasons this stuff isn't seeing the light of day more, there are no watchdogs looking at this stuff.

There's no one paid to go through the archives or pay attention to what's being said at chapel at Southeastern. But the information's out there. If you wanna go look for it, it's there. And the thought occurred to me that this is kind of vague.

Someone could say, well, he's not really saying, he's not criticizing conservative Republicans. He's saying really extremists out there. But here's the problem with that. When he talks about the left and their idols, he talks about mainstream leftism.

Those who would want homosexuality and abortion. That's what all of them, I say all of them. I don't mean like all, there's no exceptions. I mean the vast majority, that's the Democratic Party's platform is abortion, unlimited.

This isn't apples and oranges then, if that's what he's doing. If he's saying, oh, there's this really extreme group. There's like the Ku Klux Klan and the anarchists are on the right. I don't think that's what he's talking about because he uses mainstream examples for the left.

The other thing here is the word dog whistle came to my head when I was looking at this, listening to it. And I thought, is this a dog whistle? Is this like telling everyone, don't go for the Republican Party?

And I thought, the left accuses the right of dog whistles all the time. You were sending a racist message, even though you didn't say it. And I think the reason the left does that is because they're the ones that use the dog whistles.

People on the right don't tend to use dog whistles. When I mean people on the right, I mean conservatives don't tend to try to be cryptic and signal to their constituents while making sure everyone else doesn't know what they're talking about.

Conservatives tend to just say what they mean. I think people on the left, if you want to talk about a dog whistle, I think this is kind of maybe as close as you get to it. This is being cryptic, not really identifying anyone, but you know who he's talking about.

You know what he's talking about. So that's the provost in chapel, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Now, here's another gentleman, which some of you may recognize, but this is the chapel at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Thabiti N. Wibley.

And he actually gave two lectures at Southeastern last year in chapel. And I remember I was a student. I listened to one of them. And then the other one I went back and I listened to part of the recording today because I wanted to know what he said in both.

I'm going to give you some quotes. And this is from both of them. So here's the first one. This is sermon one, Preach Justice as the Good Life. That's the title. Here's what Thabiti says. You're hearing some of this.

Oh, and again, he's talking about me, Dr. White, Tom Buck, people like us, people of our way of thinking. You're hearing some of this. You're suspicious of this talk of justice. So someone's sitting there in chapel.

They're perhaps thinking the way that I think about this. And they're suspicious. Isn't this liberal? He says, isn't that the social gospel? Has Thabiti become a social justice warrior? I would suggest to you that if you hear it that way, and not merely as the word of God coming from the text, you have learned a hearing impairment.

And then he goes on to say, preachers have conditioned you to hear a conversation about justice in a particular way. And we need to rework that conditioning. So there you have it. There's what's going on.

This is Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary's chapel. We need to rework that conditioning. You've been conditioned by the preaching you've heard to see justice and social justice. That's the context.

Listen to the sermon. You've been conditioned to think about this in negative terms, and you need to be reconditioned. He literally uses the word conditioning. He goes on, he trashes the American dream a bit in this.

A lot of the buzzwords, human flourishing, that there's this third way. It's not liberalism necessarily. It's not conservatism. It's this Christian way, which is not either. It's liberal though. It's liberal.