What Happened to Al Mohler?

Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast.

My name is John Harris. Today is the day for you Southern Baptists that we share the episode you have been waiting for.

What happened to Al Mohler? What happened to Al Mohler? Mohler has been known as the champion of conservative causes and now there are many who are conservative both in their political persuasion and their biblical persuasion on their theology who wonder where he's really at.

They have to ask the question, is he an opportunist? Is he still a conservative but he's just choosing for strategic purposes not to engage in certain battles?

Is he actually a liberal in some ways but he's been posing as a conservative?

These options have all been proposed and I'm going to give you what I think is going on but I want to bring you through a whole lot of information before we do it and I have a few thoughts to share with you, preliminary thoughts that I think are very important for this.

Number one, we've been talking the last few days about critical race theory on this podcast and that is by design.

There's a reason that we went over Jarvis Williams as well and showed how in his theology of racial reconciliation, every single one of Richard Delgado's seven principles for critical race theory is included.

There's a reason we went over LaTosha Morrison's book, Be the Bridge, and showed how that was critical race theory.

Hopefully by now, if you've been paying attention and listening, you kind of know what critical race theory is and you know the basic two categories that all those seven principles break down into.

You have the idea that racism is normative, embedded, systemic, the reason you're not seeing it is because you just don't have the special glasses, it's there.

This is the Marxist concept that there are definite categories of oppressed and oppressor and the relationships between them when they interact result in oppression of some kind.

Then you have the postmodern element, the idea that there are these standpoints of oppression, these social locations that have access to greater revelation.

They have truth that if you're in quote unquote majority culture, you don't have access to and therefore your job is to just listen and not to talk, but to listen to those who have this wisdom by nature of their social location.

They're going to help you navigate this racism that's out there, identify it and then dispel it. All the other seven principles come out of these two basic categories.

That's one thing. Keep in mind as we go through this. The second thing is that a tendency

I've noticed in the Southern Baptist Convention is when you rattle the cage a little bit. If you just expose things that are publicly available and you try to come up with a paradigm that makes sense of them, you are called a liar.

Your motives are impugned. You might be called a racist or depending on the subject, maybe you're called a sexist or something else, but ad hominem is the go -to response.

Whenever someone in the Southern Baptist Convention who has a public profile is either attacked or in a milder way, someone is trying to just understand them and comes to a conclusion that's not so desirable for that person.

That's what I'm doing. I have a lot of respect for Albert Moeller. I should say

I did have a lot of respect for Albert Moeller. Years ago, I would read his books. I listened to his podcast.

One of the reasons I went to a Southern Baptist school was because of him. That respect is gone at this point.

I know I've made some videos in the last few years where I've said I still have some respect and you've probably seen a trajectory with me where I've tried to be careful.

I had a suspicion that he was an opportunist and perhaps more on the liberal side, but I did not want to believe that.

I've come to that conclusion. I'm going to show you why I've come to that conclusion, but here's my challenge for those listening who might not be persuaded yet.

Here's my challenge to you. I want you to listen very carefully before we outline all the facts. You have to make sense of the publicly available information.

That's a constant. That's just something that you have to grapple with. It's part of the objective reality that we live in.

Moeller has said some things. Some of the things are very contradictory. Some of the things are very concerning. I'm going to show you some of those things that I could see someone accusing him of false teaching as a result of some of the things

I'm going to show you. You have to grapple with those things. Now, if you come up with a paradigm that makes sense of them and you say, oh,

I see where Moeller's going here. He is a conservative and this is what he's doing and you can make sense of them, fine, but you need to grapple with the information out there.

That's what I've struggled with and I've spent a lot of time doing it. My conclusion is

I don't think you can come to that kind of conclusion, but if you want to make the attempt, grapple with the facts.

There's no reason to accuse me or anyone else of lying. You'll see that everything is very well documented.

In fact, I'm going to have a link at the end if you want to see more documentation on this chapter and verse.

It'll be available and it's locked tight. You can't argue with the facts that I'm going to present.

Now, if you want to argue with the paradigm, go ahead, but you're going to have to make sense of those facts. I'm overstating the case here, but I just know the tendency in the

Southern Baptist Convention. I need to say that up front. The last thing

I'll mention is that this is important. Al Moeller, as many of you know, is the president of the flagship seminary for the convention and he's running for president right now, at least last

I heard, of the Southern Baptist Convention. This is an important election coming up in June and if Al Moeller wins and he continues the way that he has been overseeing the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he's the president, it spells, I think, the end of the Southern Baptist Convention as we know it.

We need stage four chemo at this point. If you're going to recover the convention, that's what you're going to need.

Al Moeller has proven himself that in the positions he's had, he's not been faithful in the little things, so how can he be faithful in much?

That's my little preliminary spiel that I want everyone to just be aware of before we get into this, but we are going to get into it.

There's a lot of information. I'm going to show you some video clips. I'm going to read for you some quotes and I'm going to try to make sense of what we see.

Now, there are, in some ways, two Al Moellers. At least, I think that's why there's confusion to some people is they see two

Al Moellers and they don't know how to reconcile the two. You have one Al Moeller who is against critical race theory.

I've posted, if you're watching, some examples of this. One is from 2019, two are from 2020.

He endorses Owen Strand's articles against critical race theory. They're more abstract and they're more simple.

There's no naming of names, which I know Moeller seems to be more comfortable with that because in the other two instances, again, he does not name names.

He put out, after Resolution 9 was passed, which endorsed critical race theory as an analytical tool, he put out a briefing where he targeted critical race theory.

Now, many of you will remember, he never said anything at the convention and he was there. He never did anything to prevent the passage of Resolution 9, really, other than at least what we know of is he sent a text to Tom Askell.

But after it was passed already, he attacked it, but again, more in the abstract. He does not name names other than when he names the resolutions committee, it's just to appreciate them.

Again, in 2020, at the end of 2020, another statement was put out that Danny Akin says was encouraged by Al Moeller, at least he insinuates that, where the seminary presidents affirm the

Baptist faith and message and declare critical race theory incompatible with that message. Now, again, very simple and very abstract.

Does not deal with the issues in his own backyard. He never really has that I can tell, I can't find it.

It's never directly dealing with the concerns people have about certain professors or teachings that are specifically coming from members of faculty at his seminary and others.

Instead, he just kind of this nameless, faceless idea of critical race theory, he'll attack that.

So when you hear those things, or when you see him interviewing someone like a James Lindsay, it seems like he's against critical race theory, and maybe he is on an abstract level.

And that's what has some people thinking, I believe, that Al Moeller is conservative on these things.

And I'll blow this up, you can see here the three tweets that I included here.

However, there is another side to Al Moeller. And you need to be aware of this. And I'm going to just walk you through a few things.

Number one, he defends the resolutions committee that passed Resolution 9, that crafted it.

He says that he appreciated them talking about Resolution 9.

And it's the right tone, he said, tone is very important to evangelicals right now for some reason. Truth, not quite as much, but tone is.

He said, I am sure it is released in good faith. And he posted this. And I went over this at the time, and showed you how they never answered any of the specific challenges to Resolution 9.

In fact, what they did is they just rehashed Resolution 9 again. Because Resolution 9 is, well, you know, you can use these analytical tools as long as they're subservient to scripture, which we know is not really possible.

The tools bring with them the underlying assumptions. And they're not tools like logic or math that are part of the fabric of reality and fundamental to reality.

They are tools that exist in the minds of sociologists, who are start, who their starting point is an atheist, well, at least a secular conception of reality without the revelation in the scripture at the very least.

And so they rehashed that again and say, well, we're against it, we, you know, we regret kind of the controversy this has caused, we're against critical race theory, but they rehash and they never really address the fact that they endorsed it as an analytical tool.

And now Mueller appreciates them. So he defends on some level the resolutions committee, though they never really did anything to undo the damage that they did.

He also, this is important, this is before Resolution 9, but he hired Curtis Woods. The reason I bring this up, and I'm not bringing up Matthew Hall or Jarvis Williams, because I don't know the stories there, but Curtis Woods did a dissertation at the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And here's a quote from the abstract, which is on their website. Chapter three assesses

Wheatley, who he was doing his dissertation on, Phyllis Wheatley, her critique of exemplary or open

American exceptionalism through the lens of Chattel slavery. Critical race theory becomes the analytical lens to understand the intersection of religion, race, class, and gender on Wheatley's sociopolitical imagination.

Now this is posted on their website. It is from a gentleman who for a while was at the seminary as a professor and headed up the resolutions committee that passed

Resolution 9 while he was a professor. And he was hired in the first place, though this was his dissertation.

This was signed off somehow. This was approved somehow. So maybe you could say

Mueller had an off day. He didn't realize what was in his dissertation, which to me would be kind of concerning.

But let's couple that with some other things. He not only hired

Curtis Woods, but he defends Curtis Woods and Jarvis Williams. And some of the tweets I'm about to show you, the context is important.

This is when Jarvis Williams and Curtis Woods at the time this was posted in August of 2019 were on the ropes for comments they had made that were consistent with critical race theory.

And they posted this article in Christianity Today, which again, pretty consistent with critical race theory assumptions.

I'm not going to read for you the quotes. You can read it yourself. It's called Jesus Deliver Us from this Racist Evil Age. And now

Mueller tweets it out and says, it's the right way to confront racism. It's biblical, it's theological, it's centered in the gospel.

And it's a timely word from Jarvis Williams and Curtis Woods. Now the effect this had politically at the time in the

Southern Baptist Convention was for Al Mueller to signal his approval of Jarvis Williams and Curtis Woods, though they were being attacked at the time, for promoting critical race theory ideas.

Al Mueller also has a, and this is a year or two years, no, one year, sorry, almost to the day, one year before Resolution 9 was passed.

He approves of Russell Moore. Now, Russell Moore had already done a lot of damage by this point, June 1st, 2018. But this is what he says publicly.

He says, I just realized that today is Dr. Moore's fifth anniversary as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Congratulations on historic half -decade of leadership and prayers for many more. He's saying he wants many more years of leadership for Russell Moore.

This is someone who is groomed at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to be ready for the job he took at the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. And he has been a progressive there pretty much the whole time. And Al Mueller is saying, 2018, wish for many more years of Russell Moore's leadership.

He's also defended Matthew Hall. Matthew Hall has been also, there's been a lot of concerns about him.

And I'm gonna show you a little clip of that in a second, the things that are concerning, just a little sample, at least.

But you can see here that Al Mueller in 2019 and 2020, right around the time that Matthew Hall was being attacked, both of these, all three of these tweets, he shows

Matthew Hall signing the Abstract and Principles. He does, he retweets a video where Matthew Hall is trying to defend himself against Russell Fuller's charge that he does approve of critical race theory on some level.

And again, Matthew Hall's, I went over this at the time, Matthew Hall's denouncement of critical race theory is basically, well, you know, it's secular, it's atheistic, it's

Marxist, and we don't believe in those elements. But he never specifically retracts or says anything to alleviate the concern people have over statements he himself has made that are ethical statements that he has combined with Christian teaching.

That's the concern. It always has been going against critical race theory in this abstract way, condemning the things that are at the base of critical race theory, but not condemning the ethics that grow from it is exactly the same strategy liberation theologians used when they say, well, we don't agree with Marxism, we're not

Marxists. But at the same time, we're going to take the Marxist ethic. And so you see

Al Mueller defending Matthew Hall. Now, what has Matthew Hall said and done that requires defense?

I just want to remind everyone, this is Matthew Hall. Some clips, I believe, from 2016, and then one that was posted in 2019.

Maybe the middle one is 2018. So there's a few different years here stemming from 2016 to 2019 or so, or the end of 2018, somewhere in there.

And here's just some quotes. First one is Curtis Woods talking about Matthew Hall on the campus of the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a video that is still publicly available. And here's what he has to say.

And then you'll hear from Matthew Hall himself. One of the reasons why I love Dr. Hall is because he's well -versed in critical race theory and history.

But he's using terms like whiteness. Some people hear that and it creates a little fence. What do you mean when you say whiteness, right?

Everything that you thought was true about your tradition, your denomination, your own family, there's a whole...

I'm going to pull the veil back and what looked like this beautiful narrative of faithfulness and orthodoxy and truth and righteousness and justice.

I'm going to peel that back and I'm going to show you the rotting corpse of white supremacy that's underneath that surface.

At some point, we got to get to the spot where we are able to look in the mirror and be like, yeah, I'm probably a racist. I'm telling you,

I'm a racist because I have a heartbeat. And until I receive my glorified, completely sanctified body, soul, and mind,

I'm going to be doing battle with sin. So these are the comments that Matthew Hall has made.

There's more, but that's just a sample. And you can see that these are never retracted or apologized for or condemned.

They are simply brushed under the rug. And then Al Mohler defends

Matthew Hall right when these clips are making the rounds. So not only does he defend

Matthew Hall, Jarvis Williams, Curtis Woods. He defends Danny Akin and Adam Greenway precisely at the points in time when their seminaries are being attacked for liberalization.

And I'm going to give you two examples here. Number one is Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And it really, it's more of a defense of the seminary than it is Adam Greenway. But this is when

Bobby Lopez was fired. Bobby Lopez was fired and we went over that. Part of the reason for it was he had enemies at the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He was giving his testimony, which included this idea that you can be delivered from same -sex attraction.

This was a problem. The seminary didn't want him giving his testimony. He had to get approval for if he was going to do any media anything.

You can go check out the episode I did with Bobby Lopez. Right when this is breaking news,

Al Mohler says this. I have full confidence in the biblical fidelity of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the commitment of its leadership to a robustly biblical vision of human sexuality and gender.

Southern Baptists are well -served by six seminaries committed to biblical fidelity. This is his defense of Southwestern.

Then you have this. In January 2nd, 2020, this is right when I believe there's been a few controversies with Danny Akin.

If I'm not mistaken, this is when I think there was an announcement that they were going to hire Karen Swallow Pryor and Founders Ministries was going after Danny Akin.

Al Mohler posted this. Happy birthday to Danny Akin. You are a dear friend and brother, older friend, older brother, thankful for you and wishing you a very happy birthday.

He doesn't do this all the time for everyone. This is not a common thing for Albert Mohler if you follow his Twitter. He went out of his way, though, during a time when

Danny Akin was being attacked to defend him. Now, you might say, well, that's fine.

I mean, he can defend these people. They're part of the Southern Baptist Convention. Maybe he's handling this all in -house, which I would disagree with, and I think

Scripture would, but let's just, okay, benefit of the doubt. Here's the thing, though, you have to also make sense of, who he has not defended.

He has not defended John MacArthur when everyone, it seemed like, a lot of people were going after John MacArthur for the

Beth Moore comment, go home, right? He is supposedly friends with him. He did not defend him, did not lift a finger to do anything publicly.

He did not defend Founders Ministries when they were being attacked. In fact, he joined in with the attack, and he posted a tweet.

He said that he had seen the Founders Ministry video trailer and was alarmed at how some respected SBC leaders are represented, and accuses them of not being respectful or honest.

And then the Conservative Baptist Network forms, which you think, if Al Mohler's a conservative, he's going to want something that's going to try to hold the convention responsible and keep them from floating to the left.

When they formed, Al Mohler, instead of defending them against the attacks they were enduring, he said this, the real network of Southern Baptists is called the

Southern Baptist Convention. It's going to meet June 9th and 10th in Orlando. I look forward to joining you there. Everyone took it at the time that this was an attack on the

Conservative Baptist Network. He never clarified if it was or not, but the timing and saying the real network of Southern Baptist, I mean, it's clear what he's doing.

It is clear what he's doing. And he never defended these people. And if he was a conservative and he was concerned about his denomination and drifting to the left, you'd think these are the people he would defend, but he does not defend them.

But he does defend the people who are importing some of the worst ideas into seminaries.

Now, this is important for you to try to make sense of this first. Which one is it? Does he, why the silence when it comes to conservatives, but the vocalization to defend those who are helping the progressives.

And just to give you one example, there could be many, but here's one. He is very quick to condemn things like this bigoted letter that was not from a

Southern Baptist, but it was posted online. A lot of the progressives were making a big deal about this from the man named John Rutledge, who seems to be kind of an old style progressive, believes in Darwinism.

And we talked about it at the time. And it gets posted and Al Mohler immediately calls it vile and disgusting.

A vivid reminder of the hate that exists in many hearts. This hateful man hates the SBC. This kind of letter needs to be brought into the light for all to see, lest we think such hatred does not exist.

Now, here's the thing. He is very quick to condemn this, but he is silent on the people pushing critical race theory in his own backyard.

It doesn't cost Al Mohler anything to condemn this letter. In fact, we'll get accolades for it. I mean, this John Rutledge can't do anything to Al Mohler, but people in the

SBC that if he makes enemies with them, they can. And he refuses to condemn them by name, to go against them, to comment on their posts.

I want you to see the double standard here. Now, like I said, there's one Al Mohler who is the,

I'm conservative and I'm against critical race theory, and I'm a complimentarian, and I am conservative on sexuality.

And then there's this Al Mohler, and I'm going to play for you this clip. I want you to listen to it. And there are various clips from various years.

If you're watching, you can kind of see where they're from. And try to make sense of the conservative

Al Mohler in relationship to this. Here we go. I felt it quite necessary in order to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation.

And speaking at an event for the National Association of Evangelicals, 20 something years ago, I made that point.

I repent of that. I believe that a biblical theological understanding, a robust biblical theology would point to us that human sexual affective profiles and who we are sexually is far more deeply rooted than just the will, if that were so easy.

But Genesis 3 explains that. Helps us to understand that this complex of same -sex challenges coming to us is something that is deeply rooted in the biblical story itself.

And something that we need to take with far greater seriousness than we've taken in the past. Understanding that that requires a far more robust gospel response than anything the church has come up with.

It's going to take everything we've got in the gospel and in the scriptures to escape the trap of history.

But we're not, we can't just draw a line. We're going to have to deal it. We're going to have to confront it. We're going to have to recognize the word stain is exactly the right word.

It's a stain that we're going to carry as a denomination forever till Jesus comes.

I can't associate with any assertion that we do not have a massive problem in the society and in the church with claims of racial superiority and with historic patterns of claims of white racial superiority.

There are ongoing manifestations of this same racism, which is the great stain against the

American nation and the great stain against much of American Christianity. I love the people, respect the people who brought the resolution.

I would not have brought the resolution if it were me. And there's just some language in it that some of it's so good, but some of it is so easily taken.

Well, it's just confusing. So I just, I'll try to say that. But behind it, behind the resolution,

I'm convinced was an effort to try to speak to the real problem of the sin of racism in the

United States and in every structure in the United States. So there you have it.

That is Al Mohler, and I'll give you a little context so you understand kind of where those clips are coming from.

First one is from 2014 at an ERLC event where he's apologizing, he's repenting, he says of ever saying that there wasn't such thing as a homosexual orientation.

That's been focused on a lot. But the interesting thing is the end of that clip to me, where he talks about we're going to need a gospel response that is unlike anything the church has ever been able to concoct.

Basically, we're gonna have to come up with this gospel response. I want you to hear when Al Mohler talks about the gospel, how he uses it.

The gospel is always, it's constant. It's been the same for 2000 years. I mean, of course, those in the

Old Testament looking forward to the gospel, they had the same way that they were saved as well. The gospel is a constant, but we've had firm teaching on it.

And the church doesn't need to come up with something new to face this challenge. Maybe ethically, they have to think through some things.

But the gospel itself, no, the gospel is the power of God of salvation for those who believe and those who are in various sins, whatever they are, the gospel is there and for them.

So he sort of combines almost like an element of works or implies that there's an element of works to be combined with the gospel.

He says in the second clip, which is from 2018 at a cooperative program event, that there's a stain of racism in the

Southern Baptist Convention, and that it's gonna take everything in the gospel to try to combat it.

Again, gospel is taking care of that. Maybe there's some Christian ethics, but as far as the gospel itself, it almost sounds like there's an insinuation again, that there's works combined.

And I have some more quotes I'm gonna share with you that are not, they're written down. They're not in video form that are even more clear on this, of this sort of combination or this insinuation that there's some kind of works connected with the gospel.

And then I believe the next clip where there were two clips where he is talking in 2019 about why he did not sign a

Dallas statement on social justice. And he basically says, because there's still racism around. And somehow that statement does not combat that racism.

Well, what kind of racism? He doesn't define it in those videos, but he does in some other places.

I'm gonna show you those. And then at the last clip is from 2020, June 29th.

And he's talking about the resolution nine and the committee and saying how much he loves them.

And they were just a little confusing people. Actually, what he says is that people took it.

It opened them up to people taking it the wrong way, basically. And he cuts himself off and says, it's confusing.

But defending the resolution committee that came up with this, let's use critical race theory as an analytical tool.

And he says that there's racism in every structure in the United States, every structure, apparently. So this is very consistent with critical race theory.

And I know after this clip, he tries to make this sort of departure between systemic and structural racism. And there's a difference.

But there's other clips where he's talked about systemic racism. And so it's like, or other quotes that I have of his.

It's very hard to nail Jell -O to the wall. And Al Mohler is, I'm convinced he's probably just a good, good politician on these things, trying to split hairs.

And there's no hairs to split on this. You're either for it or you're against it. You can't just, you can't kind of take both sides, which is what it sounds like he kind of does.

So how do you square this Al Mohler with the conservative Al Mohler who's against critical race theory and strong on issues of sexuality, et cetera.

And I'm going to try to give you that paradigm. I'm going to, I'm going to give you, we're not even probably halfway through the material here.

So buckle your seatbelts and keep going here. Here's just a few public things that were available.

I wanted to show you for examples of maybe where racism would be. One of them is the

Confederate battle flag. He was very strong against that in 2016, very proud and thankful for the

Southern Baptist Convention with their clear statement calling for the end of display of the Confederate battle flag. And and the reason for this in an article is because of how it offends people, certain people.

And though he knows most people who display it, he admits this in the article, they're not racist. They don't display it for any kind of racist reason.

It's just offensive to some people. So it's part of this ongoing kind of legacy of racism and slavery.

Well, it doesn't stop there. In 2020, last year, he supported getting rid of the

Brotis gavel, which J .D. Greer said, we're going to get rid of this thing because, you know, it's basically a slave owner had used it and it's named after him.

And it's so, I guess, beyond redemption because of that. And Mueller said that the reality is you can't tell the story of the

SBC without John Brotis. That does not mean a president should choose his gavel in 2020 or in 2021 to tell that story.

So he's supporting the what J .D. Greer is doing. Same kind of thing.

I mean, this is I mean, is that racism by extension? It's right. And this is how critical race theorists work.

They can argue anything to be racist within like two steps or three steps or less.

I mean, it's and that's what we have is that this racism is imparted to this gavel.

Racism is imparted to this flag because of the perception that people have. And then you have the

Southern Baptist Convention leaders release statement on the death of George Floyd. He was glad he says to join, glad to join in the statement.

And we've gone over the statement before and again, talks about how the ongoing effects of systemic racism are somehow related to what happened with George Floyd.

And there's no evidence for it. Again, this is coming from an idea that would be consistent with critical race theory that racism is normative.

It's embedded. It's you just if you don't see it, it's because you need the right glasses.

I mean, we saw what happened with George Floyd. And I don't think anyone that I know of was approving of what happened.

But you didn't have the evidence that it was motivated by racism. But Al Mohler thinks it was.

So you see you get a little glimpses here and there into what he thinks of racism, what he thinks it actually is.

And it's not probably the same definition that you as a conservative are thinking it is. And that's very important.

So here's the question. Is he liberal? Is he conservative? Or is he an opportunist or a combination? That's the question.

And I'm going to just tell you briefly how other conservatives have tried to make sense of Mohler's behavior. And here's two conservatives who have been close to him.

One is Tom Rush, who was on the board, the trustees for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And he made a whole video. It's almost half an hour long. Go check it out. And he talks about Al Mohler confronting Al Mohler on Sam Albury.

Al Mohler saying, OK, you know what? I don't support him anymore. But yet still allowing his videos to be left on the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary website, letting an interview be performed with him after the fact.

Tom Rush says, I was in the room. And he's tweeted this out before, too. I was in the room with him and talking about Matt Hall and critical race theory.

And it doesn't seem to do any good. He says he'll say the right thing, but there's no action. Then you have Russell.

And go check out his video to just check what I'm saying to make sure it's accurate. Then you have Russell Fuller, who was a professor there for years, knew

Al Mohler, went to his office many times. And he talks about Al Mohler grilling him when he did not approve of Matt Hall being elected to be the provost.

And Al Mohler basically gets angry and hot under the collar and basically starts insinuating that Russell Fuller doesn't really believe in systemic racism and asks him very angrily, do you believe in systemic racism?

And he refuses to define it. And it's this whole scenario that Al Mohler has never come out publicly and talked about.

But the accusations out there from a man who is very well respected. So you have these two things out there.

And these are two conservatives who basically have insinuated. And I know Russell Fuller has insinuated to me that he thinks

Mohler is more on the liberal side. And maybe there's some opportunism there, but that there's a liberal bent that Mohler has.

Tom Rush certainly doesn't think that he's behaving in a conservative manner.

So these aren't things that I'm saying. These are things that two people who know Al Mohler personally have said. And you can go check out their videos where they're saying much of this.

Now, this would, if that's true, this would confirm in some ways a pattern. This is from a book called

The Evangelicals by Frances Fitzgerald, which came out not too long ago. And she talks about when

Honeycutt, who was the previous president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who was liberal, resigned in 1992.

Weary of the struggles between the faculty and the trustees, the search committee with Honeycutt's support appointed Mohler, then just 33, on the assumption that he could resolve the differences better than candidates from the outside.

Instead, Mohler moved the seminary abruptly to the right, adding positions on abortion, homosexuality, and women in the ministry to the litmus test for future professors and causing turmoil in the faculty.

Now, at the time, this was considered to be the reason that Al Mohler was a conservative.

He's a conservative for this reason. He has to be. I mean, he's moving it to the right. But Honeycutt thought

Mohler was going to negotiate this disagreement that he wasn't able to negotiate, but he wanted

Mohler in that position. So there was some thought that Mohler would carry on Honeycutt's legacy or Honeycutt's ideas.

And this is confirmed over and over. And you can actually go watch. There's a documentary on it from,

I think it was PBS put it out from the early 90s, specifically on this issue. And I know in a previous video,

I had played the clip where you had professors from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary saying,

Al Mohler is an opportunist. Al Mohler, I think there's one clip of that I'm thinking about.

I think it's where Honeycutt or one of the professors says, whether or not Mohler was conservative or whether or not the

SBC was going in a conservative or a liberal direction, Al Mohler would have been the president because he was an opportunist.

And right at the moment Al Mohler took over, the convention was going in a very conservative direction. So Al Mohler did a 180.

He changed his views on a whole host of things. The major one, though, that gets a lot of attention is the complementarian issue that he went from being more of an egalitarian to being a complementarian kind of overnight.

And so this is out there. Now, I'm not saying whether that take is true or not true.

I'm just saying it is consistent, this opportunist idea with what Tom Rush and Russell Fuller have said.

And it is a paradigm that does help make sense of what the contradictory things it seems like we find from Al Mohler.

Now, there's another angle to this, though, I want to share. There's something that, in my opinion, is very important because it is directly related to the gospel.

And I want to get back to that because there's a greater question here, and that is, is Al Mohler promoting false teaching or is

Al Mohler covering for false teachers? That's, to me, a bigger question here. Oh, before I get there, just some scriptures on the screen there about double -mindedness.

Double -mindedness is a bad thing. So at the very least, even if Al Mohler isn't promoting false teaching or people who promote false teaching, he's at least being, you know, there's some inconsistency here.

And double -mindedness is very bad, according to scripture. So I'm not going to read all these scriptures to you. Here's just three of them, and you can do your own study on that from the

Bible. Not someone you want leading your convention. Let's get to the false teaching, though. There were false teachers in Galatia, in the book of Galatians.

The apostle Paul categorized two different groups of people responsible for advancing another gospel, which incorporated elements of the law.

First group he referred to as the false brethren who desired to boast. Ultimately, they stood accused before God.

In common usage, the term translated as false brethren referred to traitors within a city who allowed the enemy to sneak into the city and survey its defenses.

They were enemies within the church. That's what they were. Paul used similar language in the epistles, in his epistle to the

Philippians, when he referred to the false circumcision and enemies of the cross of Christ whose end is destruction.

Those who actively fuse the demands of social justice with the gospel are in this category. And as you know from some previous videos,

I put Walter Strickland and I put Jarvis Williams into this category, because I can show you chapter and verse.

Here's the false teaching, and it's absolutely false teaching. And they're in these institutions teaching the next generation of pastors.

Now, there were also some opportunists in Galatia, though. And I want you to consider whether or not

Al Mohler might fall into this category, because there's two categories. As far as I can see, when

Paul presents two options for when there's a false gospel going forward and those who are propagating it or helping to propagate it, there's two options.

There's one, they're the false teachers. And then there's two, those who, like the apostle Peter, stood condemned because out of fear they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel.

Now, that's different from preaching another gospel. Being obscure about the gospel is not the same as preaching another gospel.

Paul described them as hypocrites whose motive was avoiding persecution. They were not accursed, but they were guilty of enabling those who were.

Christians who are orthodox in their own personal theology, but failed to publicly oppose another gospel and knowingly platform those who promote another gospel are in this category.

Who does that sound like to you? I'm very open to Al Mohler being in this category, and I'm saying,

I'm open to also this. I'm open to some false teaching, because I'm going to show you some more quotes that lead me to believe that that could be a possibility.

But I'm actually a little more open to this, because Mohler is confusing. And when you read that line about they weren't just being straightforward about the truth of the gospel, that's

Mohler in my mind. And so I think these, both of these options might be tenable, but this is the one that I'm, I feel more comfortable with right now.

And I'm going to give you some examples. So number one, I see a shift with Mohler. We already talked about his shift in 2014, where he repented of denying the existence of same -sex sexual orientation.

But the next year he condemned reparative therapy, and he had signaled support for it 11 years prior.

So he's making these public overtures to, I guess, a progressive tendency, it seems like, and changing his views to be a little closer to that.

His views on racism have also adjusted in ways which parallel a more new left or critical race theory now inspired understanding.

In a 2018 interview with Jarvis Williams, Mohler stated that his biblical theology was in a very different place than it was in 1995, when he was part of an effort by the

Southern Baptists to separate themselves from racism of the past by passing a resolution apologizing for complicity in slavery and racism.

At the time, Gary Frost, the denomination's first African American vice president, accepted the apology on behalf of black

Christians. Since then, Mohler came to realize that it was impossible to separate the denomination from complicity and racism, though.

He stated, it's going to take everything we got in the gospel and the scriptures to escape the trap of history.

And I played for you this quote. But we can't just draw a line. We're going to need to deal with it. We're going to have to confront it.

We're going to have to recognize the word stain is exactly the right word. The stain that we're going to carry as a denomination forever until Jesus comes.

But it's a stain that if we deal with rightly can actually show the power of Christ. In Mohler's view, racism would always characterize the

Southern Baptist convention on some level despite efforts to eradicate it. In contrast, the Apostle Paul wrote that those justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ were not defined by their former sin patterns, which that's a problem, guys.

When Mohler is seemingly contradicting Paul. He believes racism is systemic, implicit, normative.

Let me give you some quotes. He says that when he refused to sign the statement on social justice in the gospel, and I played for you this one, that he could not associate with any assertion that we do not have a massive problem in the society and in the church with claims of white racial superiority.

Around the same time, he released a report on slavery and racism in the history of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in which he lamented how

Southern Baptists were guilty of a sinful absence of historical curiosity by ignoring the deep racism in the story of their denomination.

In his contribution to removing the stain of racism from the SBC, during the same year, Mohler characterized the

United States as conceived in racism, though every society showed the stain of racism in every epoch.

Think about that. Every society in every epoch has the stain of racism. So I guess,

I mean, like, it's, I mean, that in a way just waters it down, I guess. It's just like, oh,

I guess it's just everywhere. So, but that the United States, he says, specifically, though, was conceived in racism.

More recently, he said, there existed a real problem of sin of racism in the United States and in every structure in the

United States. Mohler's assessment of the continuing prevalence of racism is similar to the way sociologists in the 70s, such as Michael Harrington, diagnosed a new racist dispensation unrectified by civil rights legislation and resulting from the racist economic structure.

It's a structural racism that you hear in the 70s, guys. That's what Mohler is advocating now. Now, what specifically, what acts constitute racist acts?

Well, let me give you some examples. I know I gave you some earlier. In the aftermath of the Ferguson, Missouri grand jury decision to acquit

Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown, Mohler reinforced the idea that the incident was connected to a greater narrative of police mistreating communities of color who weren't just making these problems up.

He stated that Christians should be foremost in considering the accusations and concerns coming from the African -American community and implied the nation's system of justice was not fair on the questions of race and the law.

After the death of Breonna Taylor, Mohler contrasted his helpful encounters with Louisville police with those in African -American neighborhoods who are afraid when they see blue lights behind them.

When George Floyd died, Mohler signed a statement connecting the situation to inequitable distributions of justice, like segregation and slavery.

Though no evidence existed suggesting any of these police encounters were motivated by racial animosity on the part of the officer,

Mohler connected them to what he believed were pervasive systemic disparities. Again, guys, you can't see the racism.

Why not? Because it's systemic. It's invisible. It's embedded. That's what racism is in Mohler's view. At least it's part of what racism is.

Now, here's the main part here that everyone needs to pay attention to.

So please listen up here. This is super important. Bad teaching on the gospel.

And I put bad teaching there instead of false teaching. Suppose someone could have said false teaching.

I put bad teaching because, again, I'm leaning more towards he's not being clear about the gospel, and that's what's going on.

But look, I'm open. I'm open to someone arguing, hey, John, no, this is actually false teaching, some of this.

Let me read for you some quotes here. For Mohler, racism was, quote, the antithesis of the gospel and a, quote, heresy.

No one could believe simultaneously while, quote, rightly presenting the gospel because it denied, quote, the full power of the substitutionary atonement.

Okay, so listen to that. You can't be a racist and preach the gospel. You can't because that denies the full power of the substitutionary atonement.

So can't have it. Yet at the same time, Mohler thought that the racist defenders of slavery who, and his words, not mine, who founded his seminary affirmed, quote,

Baptist orthodoxy, preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people and held to the same gospel he himself believed.

Okay, which one is it, right? So you can be racist and preach the gospel, but at the same time, you can't be racist and preach the gospel.

Which one is it? And this is the problem with Al Mohler. He has said both.

And if, for those who are doubting me, go to the info section. There's a link there. You can go check out the document that has this all outlined.

Read it for yourself. Chapter and verse. This tension of Mohler's understanding of the gospel came out again in 2019 when he recommended an article coauthored by Jarvis Williams and centered on the gospel, in the gospel.

Those were his words about it. The article argued that the gospel was meant to reconcile ethnically diverse groups, that racism and white supremacy were opposed to the gospel, and that Christians should use the gospel to combat racism.

Yet, it also claimed that Christians needed to be aware of their complicity in racism through their silence about racism and failure to, here it goes, apply the whole gospel.

So Christians don't have the whole gospel. There's that language again. Mohler agreed with Williams' approach when he wrote, the gospel needs to be preached to the church due to its complicity in racial injustice and systemic wrong.

So here's the question. Is the gospel then enough? Or is it that we don't have the whole gospel?

Because there's this problem that he says that is still going on, apparently, with racism in the church, and it's a failure that we don't have the whole gospel, that the gospel needs to be preached to the church because the church clearly is forgetting it or doesn't have it, et cetera.

This is the problem that we have. So Mohler seemed to both affirm and deny the legitimacy of the gospel of Christians who held to orthodox belief, yet also participated on some level in cultures or systems that were somehow connected to a version of racism.

Such confusing and contradictory language echoed the words of the Apostle Paul, who accused Peter of being not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, which

Peter knew. Like many social justice advocates and evangelical institutions, Mohler promotes the multi -ethnic church model, which connects the work of promoting diversity to the gospel.

At Southern Seminary's 2015 convocation, Mohler announced that authentic gospel churches would look more and more like a changing demographic map, and that if the church gets ethnic diversity wrong, they were getting the gospel wrong.

In 2018, he stated his intention for Southern Seminary to increasingly represent many races and nations and ethnicities as part of looking more like the people born and new by the gospel.

For the Southern Baptist Convention, he wanted transformation through removing racism stain by stain as a sign to the world of the power of the gospel.

Again, linking the gospel to all these works, guys. Think about this. As a result,

Mohler opposed displaying the Confederate battle flag, using the Brodus gavel during denominational meetings, and established a $5 million scholarship for African -American students.

This is supposed to be showing the world the power of the gospel. This is, you know, the church needs to be somehow multi -ethnic or else they're getting the gospel wrong.

Let's talk about that multi -ethnic church model, because this is where Jarvis Williams argues, based on critical race theory, everyone into.

You got to promote this multi -ethnic church model. That's where it all leads. That's the telos of this. And of course, there's more packed into that, that equity, diversity, inclusion agenda.

But Mohler is getting us to the same place. He's driving us to the same location, giving us the same arguments, essentially.

Because this is what he basically says, that we need to become more diverse.

It's something we artificially manufacture. And that's somehow part of the gospel of these works. Some have speculated that this posturing of his is because of this incredible strategy to become more diverse in the denomination in order to survive changing demographic trends and the scrutiny of social justice advocates.

Because of Mohler's history in promoting orthodoxy, it is hard to understand his newfound desire to use the gospel as a way to justify manufacturing ethnic diversity.

The way in which he endorses figures like Russell Moore and Jarvis Williams, who do not advocate another, who do,

I should say, advocate another gospel, also causes confusion. Yet, as Paul confronted

Peter for behaving like the Judaizers, so too must Christians today confront both those who add social justice imperatives to the gospel and those who obscure the gospel.

I'll leave you to figure out which one it is. Is he adding social justice imperatives to the gospel, or is he just obscuring the gospel?

I want, I'll be honest with you guys, I just want to believe he's obscuring the gospel. That's what I want to believe. It is hard for me, though, with some of these quotes, because I can see it right there.

It looks, it really looks like he's adding some kind of works element to the gospel. So, best case scenario, he's obscuring the gospel, and he's like Peter and needs to be confronted.

Now, he has been. He has been confronted by Tom Rush and Russell Fuller, at the very least, and probably others that we don't know about, at least publicly.

I might know about some privately. I do know he's been confronted, and this is the man who wants to lead the

Southern Baptist Convention. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's just not, someone needs to understand the gospel, and it's not just about understanding it.

Someone needs to articulate the gospel clearly to be the president of the largest Protestant denomination in the

United States, I would think. So, there's my two cents on Al Mohler. I hope that was helpful for all of you.

I hope that made sense of some things. Again, go to the info section and find the facts. I have listed there what

I just read for you, all the sourcing for that. You can check it out for yourself. Do your own homework. It's not, you know, it's not like I'm just coming up with fake quotes from Al Mohler.

I'm trying to make sense of his public positions. So, God bless. Hope that was helpful, and even if it hurt a little, because you like Al Mohler a lot,