Racial Reconciliation Sunday & Al Mohler's Dilemma

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The Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Quicker episode today. I just want to talk about a few things that I noticed,

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SBC related stuff here. We talked yesterday about Willie Rice, who has been nominated to be the next president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention. I wanted to talk, as much as I'm distracted by some of the stuff that's being said about the

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Ukraine -Russia thing, I want to talk about this Racial Reconciliation Sunday. I believe that was last

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Sunday in the SBC. And there was some controversy on social media a little bit over this because Conservative Baptist Network issued a statement meant to be an alternative to the

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Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission's bulletin insert. So the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, they put this out.

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This is their Racial Reconciliation Sunday, and they have some scripture from Ephesians, which

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I've pointed out many times. When people start using Ephesians 2 to try to make the case that this is racial reconciliation somehow going on, when in fact it is actually something much more, much more,

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I think, fundamental and important, it's the law and the way in which the law was viewed as important by the

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Jews and how Christ, when he came, he fulfilled the law, and it has brought about a relationship between Jews and Gentiles that did not previously exist.

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Gentiles could become proselytes, but Ephesians 2 talks about this barrier of the law being completely broken down in Christ so that the two groups can be one in the church.

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And so this is the existence of the church, what the church represents.

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It's no longer tied to unique laws that are associated with a nation, the nation of Israel.

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God's moral law still applies, but the hostility that existed as a result of the laws contained in ordinances is done away with in Christ.

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So this is the passage they're using, but yeah, that's really not, it's not racial reconciliation, not what is portrayed as racial reconciliation today.

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And so you have a black woman and a white woman then smiling as if, you know, the side -by -side, and this is the picture of what racial reconciliation,

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I guess, is. And so it's being, if that's all it is, it's just being friends with other people.

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Then, I mean, I don't know, you know, there's not many people that I wouldn't think have that problem, but the devil is in the details as always.

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So LaManuel Williams is the author of this little insert, A Call to Prayer and Fasting in Order to Combat Racism and Injustice.

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And he writes here that it's pretty basic, it's pretty general. Racism is demonic, and it's, you know, we need to fight it as a church, and you need to set aside time with your churches, families, or yourself each month to pray and fast against the stronghold of racism.

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It's still this really pernicious issue. And he said, I encourage you to note specific things to pray about related to racism and injustice in America.

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It may seem strange to set aside a time in the month to pray and fast against these issues, but doing so while asking

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God to address specific injustice will provide more motivation. Racism and slavery along with it is our nation's original sin.

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It is backed by demonic forces and cannot be easily overcome. So I just, it's,

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I'll be honest, it's not like horrible stuff. It's just, it's the typical stuff.

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It's, you know, taking Ephesians 2 out of context, and then the veiled kind of, but the accusation that yeah,

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America's systemically racist. We still have the, the assumption is that this problem is still in some ways connected to and the same as it was.

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And that this is just fundamental. It's America's original sin, which I've always been uncomfortable with that language.

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That's Jim Wallace language. I think he, his book title is even America's original sin. It's about racism. And the thing is like,

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I think what we've done with honestly, so many things I can think of, abortion being at the top of that list is so much worse.

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It's so much worse. You want to, you know, compare body count here. Like it doesn't minimize the racism or slavery, but it's just that there's so many things that we've done that have been bad.

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We've exported to the rest of the world. In fact, our own degenerate pop culture, which now is influencing nations across the entire globe.

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The, some of our foreign policy decisions, which have led to deaths. I just don't know if I want to call this the original sin, but that's, it looms large in the minds of the social justice crowd.

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And they think that nothing's really changed. We've got to have this regimen of praying against this. And it's, it's, it's systemic.

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That's the insinuation here. So that's Racial Reconciliation Sunday. And again, I wouldn't say this is the most extreme stuff compared to what's extreme now.

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I think 10 or 15 years ago, someone might've looked at this and been like, hmm. You know, but now it's just like, oh yeah, that's pretty mild.

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A lot of people would think because of everything else. So I'm not a fan, but that's, that's kind of what's going on there now.

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Conservative Baptist Network decided to release their own Racial Reconciliation Sunday.

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And I don't know if this is a bulletin insert or just their own statement on it. And they use a different verse.

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They use 2 Corinthians 5, 17 through 21. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. All things have become new.

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And I think this is actually the right, a way better verse to use. And the reason is, is because it's saying that people, it's locating already.

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You can see racism is located as this individual problem that people have because they hate people of other races.

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It's located in the heart. And so if anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation.

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He's not going to do the old things, the old sinful patterns. And so if racism is a partiality sinful pattern, which of course the social justice crowd disagrees with that.

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They say, no, it's a stomach. It's more than that, at least they'd say. Then this verse would be appropriate though.

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And so I'll read you the statement. The Conservative Baptist Network appeals to the sufficiency of scripture in this and every other area of life and reaffirms the statement issued

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February 21st, 2022. The Conservative Baptist Network favors unity in the gospel of Jesus Christ. As far as race is our concern, we maintain that each of us belong to the human race.

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We are all of Adam and we are all of Noah. And more importantly, if we have been born again, we are united in Christ. Distinction based on the level of melanin in one's skin amounts to the sin of partiality.

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In a fallen sin -ridden world, humans have wronged and will continue to wrong one another. We must continually seek and skive forgiveness as the

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Bible teaches and may every effort live in harmony. May Southern Baptists not make reconciliation appear more difficult or convoluted than it is.

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I really actually like that line. Yeah, they act like you have to do this whole like, it's like a complicated math problem to get to the point of racial reconciliation and we're always making progress, but never there.

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But they're like, it's not that complicated. Division is caused exclusively by sin, amen. And Jesus Christ crucified and raised to life offers the only solution to sin.

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We do not need any worldly ideologies or frameworks to recognize sin as the problem and Christ as the solution.

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We pray Southern Baptists will lead the way in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ in a loss and dying world that clearly is looking for answers in all the wrong places and coming up hopelessly without a sufficient solution.

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And then they have Virgil Walker says, races don't reconcile, hearts do. And then Dr. Lee Brand, and both of them, by the way, black.

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He says, if the sacrifice of Jesus Christ provides the only means of reconciliation between the creator and the created, surely Christ's sacrifice is the only real means of reconciliation among any two created people.

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All attempts at unity that do not begin with Christ start on faulty ground and will produce nothing of eternal significance.

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So a few things on this. In general, I really, I'm in general agreement.

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And this is the case. I mean, cause they're assuming a different definition of racism, which is more biblical in my mind, and they are offering the solution.

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And notice how works driven the URLC one is and how this is more just like, believe the truth.

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It's not works driven, it's more driven by believe the gospel and your fellow brothers and sisters who are different ethnicities, you'll feel a kinship with because you're in Christ and you won't treat them in terms of partiality.

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Now, here's the thing that I want to quibble a little bit with, and this is nothing against Conservative Baptist Network or anyone involved in this document.

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It's just a general thing I've seen coming from those against CRT. They're very quick to say race is a social construct, which by the way,

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I've done some episodes on this. That is a tenant of critical race theory. And usually this is how it works is that, well, we're all part of the human race.

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And that's very true. We are, we absolutely are. We're in Adam, we're in Noah, more importantly, we have been born again.

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That's total truth. It's just not, I don't know how quite helpful it is in our current situation when there is a massive identity crisis right now.

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That's why, well, sometimes it's curiosity, but people are trying to figure out who they are on ancestry .com and stuff.

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Like people are moving around a lot. They don't have dads and moms, they're divorces, and there's just confusion on even gender.

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And just, there's so much, people are like, who am I? You know, where do I belong? Where's the place of my belonging?

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And if you're in Christ, you're in Christ, that doesn't fulfill. And I need to say this very carefully. I don't think that's meant to fulfill every temporal longing that is woven into the created order.

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We are part of a family too. We have identity in a family. We have identity, and I don't think this language would ever be deployed to be like, we're part of the human family, right?

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And like, no, we actually do have families, right? We actually do have things that make us unique, places we live, and the habits and traditions that are associated with those places.

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And so I think that a biblical understanding, like from Acts 17, that God has made even the boundaries of nations, he's created every kinds of people, you know, plural, peoples, and put in place the national boundaries for them.

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I just, I really think that that language needs to be inserted somewhere. And it doesn't have to be this insert, but somewhere along the line,

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I think we have to get away from this language that could be construed to make it seem like we think race is a social construct or something.

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It's not. We are one, we are, there is one human race, but there's also things that make us unique.

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And we just, we don't, I know that there's quibbling over the term race, and I did a whole episode where I, you know, talked about the history of this term, and what

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I believe the correct definition of this term is. And it's not, many people think it's just about melanin and skin, and that's the sort of leftover from Darwin, I guess, idea, but it's not, it really isn't what race is, or it was intended to mean when it originated.

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So you can use whatever term you want, but as long as the impression is given that, yeah, even when we're in church, we don't lose our earthly identity.

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Those are very important. Our heritage is very important. Who we are is also very important, not as important as who we are in Christ, but it is identity defining.

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And God created it that way, and I think that's true diversity, and God wants it that way. He likes that, that's why he created it.

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And so anyway, that's the one thing I would say, if there was a way to put some language in here, like even just a sentence that said something like, while we all may be part of different, while we all may have different ethnic backgrounds and traditions that make us unique, we are one in Christ, right?

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Something like that. I think that would just be really good language to insert, just so we acknowledge, you know, there is,

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God did create and providentially allow things to develop in a certain way, and those things are significant.

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So that may seem super nitpicky of me, and I realize that, and it's not, I'm probably using this as an opportunity to talk about a number of other things

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I've seen along this line. So it's, don't take any of this personal. I think this is a great statement on this subject, and I think it's hitting the right notes.

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Nine out of 10 of them, it's hitting the right notes. And I think it's a great response from Conservative Baptist Network for the most part.

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Now, obviously, there was a lot of pushback, and there's, let's see, 45, let's see, how many comments?

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I don't know if I can see here how many comments are on this, but yeah, they're getting, they're being called racist for this all over the place.

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They're against racial reconciliation because of this, because I guess Virgil Walker says, "'Races don't reconcile hearts, do.'"

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And look, if you wanna say, I think Booker T. Washington, even, if I'm not mistaken, used the term racial reconciliation. This term has been around, and it can mean something good.

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But it's just, it's been used in the past few decades. It hasn't meant that. And certainly in the past decade, the past five years, definitely, it has not meant building over time trust between two groups that have been having trust issues, right, like, you can do that.

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That's perfectly legitimate. So, but that's, today, it's meant that one side has to give up all this stuff.

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You have to give up your history, your heritage, your money, resources, platforming, influence, give up all of that to this other side.

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And only then can we have true racial reconciliation. That's sort of insinuated. You gotta take this anti -racist stand.

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And so that's, I think, where this is coming from, is like, look, there's not this abstract thing called a race out there that reconciles with another race.

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You gotta bring the humanness into this, which is what Virgil Walker's saying. Like, there's, it's a human thing.

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But I think there is a way, and there has been in the past, to use this term, racial reconciliation, in a right sense, that, you know, over time, building trust.

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So that, this is the problem, and I'm running into it all over the place, but the dictionary, all these battles are over the dictionary.

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It's one side has a certain view of these terms. What is racial reconciliation? What is racism?

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What is race, right? Totally different set of definitions that Conservative Baptist Network probably has, for the most part, on some of these things, than the

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ERLC, and that's causing a lot of this. So people will say, well, you're against racial reconciliation, and the first thing they wanna do is rip them in half, because they think that that means that you must be somehow against or in favor of some kind of racism.

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So, yeah, a lot of people agree with this, a lot of the quote tweets, but there's definitely a lot who don't.

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One says, so basically your idea of racial reconciliation is to be colorblind. What an unrealistic joke.

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Yeah, you can never be colorblind. Never treat someone primarily according to the fact that they're in Christ.

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You gotta really look at those external qualities, right? He says, let's see, in other words, we don't have to do an actual work of reconciliation because Jesus, the religiosity, is exhausting.

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No, actually what's exhausting is the works that are placed on people, telling them what they must do in order to achieve reconciliation.

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This guy's got it backwards. Resting in Christ and just believing the truth is much easier than doing all the

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Protestant Hail Marys to try to achieve this, because we're all somehow guilty if we're

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American. So anyway, some people are saying that this is a 60 -year -old Sunday emphasis, and that CBN is against something that's been around for 60 years.

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Yes, it wasn't called Racial Reconciliation Sunday, though. It was called something else. I think it was called Race, how's

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Race something Sunday, Race Unit? I don't remember now. But it was, yeah, it's true that there has been an emphasis on this shared ministry between races for the past 60 years.

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I somehow doubt it was like it's been for the last 10, though. I somehow doubt that. And I'd have to go in the archives to try to figure that out.

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What was the emphasis like in 1965 when they had their Race Unity Sunday, or whatever they called it?

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So a lot of people are just assuming that it's always been the way it is now, and I don't know that that's the case. Let's talk about this now.

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You know, why is that important? Why is that important, what I just talked about before we move on? I think it's just important to give you the contrast here that I think

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CBN's being more biblical about this. And you can see from the other side, the reaction to this, too, it reveals something.

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There's two visions of how to apply the word of God, what reality is, the dictionary definitions.

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There's just two visions of what sin is, and you're gonna have to choose, if you're in the SBC and wanna fight and continue in the

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SBC, which one you're gonna accept and support. This was interesting.

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Okay, so pressure on Al Moller right now. I've known about this now for over a year, I think, at least, more than that, actually,

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I think, two years, maybe. But there's been nothing really public that was, it was just, I don't know,

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I never felt comfortable talking about it. I just knew about it, though. I'd heard about it. And I'm gonna go, this is from Protestia.

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They actually talked about it recently, op -ed, is what the SBC Executive Committee apologized, really non -consensual sexual abuse.

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Now, here's what the SBC Executive Committee just apologized for, February 22nd, 2022. The SBC Executive Committee acknowledges its failure to adequately listen, protect, and care for Jennifer Lyle when she came forward to share her story of abuse by a seminary professor.

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Baptist Press failed to accurately report the sexual abuse Jennifer Lyle reported to two SBC seminaries and local

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Southern Baptist churches. The SBC Executive Committee acknowledged its failure to miss Lyle, including the unintentional harm created by its failure to report

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Miss Lyle's allegations of non -consensual sexual abuse. So it's saying we were wrong and she's got trauma.

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And so this was the statement they tweeted out about this. Now, this really, this is interesting because this is different a little bit.

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Let's keep reading here. In the article, a couple of years ago, Lyle, then a vice president of Lifeway Christian Resource, admitted to being sexually involved in a relationship with Southern Baptist theological professor,

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David Sills, for over a decade. She claimed that it was a result of him grooming her while she was enrolled in admissions class.

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Let's see, the Baptist Press, which is overseen by Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, reported on the story, but framed their involvement as a morally inappropriate relationship.

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That's what's changed. Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee said this in March, 2019.

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Let's see here. In recent days, I've been made aware of the situation surrounding the article and decisions made by Baptist Press at the time of publication.

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I'm also aware of the story, admitted all references to abuse and a lack of consent to sexual activity and was framed as a morally inappropriate relationship.

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This led to a general understanding that what happened between David Sills and Ms. Jennifer Lyle was a consensual affair, as I understand it.

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This is not accurate. Okay, so they're changing the story. At first, it was like, well, this was just, it was consensual. Over a period of 10 years, they met up and they had an affair and they were working, it was the office type stuff and this is what happened.

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So it says, in March, 2019, Lyle wrote, so that day when

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I shared what had happened to me with my boss at Lifeway and then later with SBTS president, Albert Moeller, I was quick to also share the responsibility

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I bore for being compliant at times. No, that wouldn't mean, that would mean an affair.

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For not telling immediately and for so idolizing the idea of a whole family that I protected it despite what was happening within it,

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I am a sinless, I am not a sinless victim, but I am a victim nonetheless. Now, here's the issue of this whole thing.

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I'm gonna keep going here, but here's the issue you gotta keep in mind. Right now, the Me Too movement wants to make abuse about power disparities.

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If you have someone who is a male especially, but has any kind of power and it could be a consensual affair, but it's still abuse because of a power disparity and you're seeing this more and more.

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The Bible doesn't talk about things this way. Adultery is adultery and the women are just as guilty as the men for it, okay?

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That's biblical ethics. We are moving into a different kind of ethic, a social justice ethic on this topic.

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And this situation is, I think, possibly revealing that. A year later, she would walk, she would seemingly walk back any suggestion that she was guilty of any sin of the relationship, explaining in an update that just because she was compliant did not mean their relationship was consensual.

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So she's changing her tune according to this article and according to the sources that they're citing. And they do have sources they are citing.

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The SBC committee apparently agrees with her with their own release, framing the 12 -year together as one big long incident of non -consensual sexual abuse between adults, assuming a unilateral manipulative, let's see here, let's see here, some analysis of it by a gentleman named

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Peter Lumpkins. I mean, a 12 -year voluntary illicit sexual relationship between two grown adults at times miles apart ceased to be a unilaterally manipulative, exploitive and wrongful relationship.

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So they're traveling to have affairs and stuff like that to meet up. So he's saying, well, how is this, this doesn't fit the definition of abuse as much as it does adultery.

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So there's a pattern here. Let's see here. Lyle said she spent weekends with the family, enjoyed holidays with them and became very close to their grandchildren.

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Apparently Lyle must have been close to Mrs. Sills during this time. Friends except for one qualifying factor that made it different.

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Lyle continued to pattern inappropriate sexual activity. So this is the bottom line with this.

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The caring well narrative, which is the Me Too movement in the SPC is using this.

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And they're propping the, well, here's Jennifer Lyle on Twitter. Beyond thankful for this is the Al Mohler connection.

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Although I knew it was possibility, I'm in shock that almost four years after Al Mohler investigated and corroborated what

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I reported as non -consensual abuse, it is finally public. So Al Mohler is involved in this.

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And that's, and there's more that I've heard about this situation that would even make this situation.

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Let's just say that the tie between Mohler and framing the situation this way way closer, but it's not listed in this particular article.

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But I don't think you need that. I think there's enough in this article to show you, okay, Mohler's involved. This was at Southern Seminary and Mohler framed it this way.

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And so this is kind of, you know, Mohler's, his leftist bone kind of bubbling up.

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You have his leftist bone bubbling up again here. Litton stresses removing stains of the

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SPC. So Ed Litton, right before he announced he's not seeking re -election, he, there's an article in Baptist Standard and he told the

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SPC executive committee about the stains of sexual abuse and racism and that we need to regain moral credibility.

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And guess who he quoted in this? That's right. He decided to use the book that Al Mohler contributed to and supported very heavily and wrote for, removing the stain of racism from the

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SPC. And he referenced an essay by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, President Al Mohler.

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It says that suggested eradicating racism will take much more than acknowledging the evil of slavery, such as the

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SPC resolutions in 95. He's just parroting, this whole thing is, so much of it is he's parroting

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Mohler. He's citing Mohler. He's saying, he's putting Mohler in a tough spot right now because Mohler's previous things he's written and said,

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I mean, think about it. Much of this is documented in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. Whole section,

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I have all the sources there if you wanna check it out on Al Mohler. But Mohler has said that the stain of racism won't be removed from the

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SPC till heaven. He said every American institution is affected by institutional racism.

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That was in 2020. He said that Southern Baptists are guiltful of an absence of historical curiosity about the link between their denomination and racism and slavery.

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So they're in sin because of that. He has linked Breonna Taylor and George Floyd to racism, those particular incidents.

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He was the one that really approved of with the executive committee.

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Some called it reparations, but there's extra scholarship if you're black, you get because of the previous history of the school in being racist.

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So there's almost like an affirmative action type thing. He has suggested the

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Brodus gavel should go, Confederate flag shouldn't be displayed because of connections to racism.

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He has appointed professors at the school that are basically pro -critical race theory.

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And have taught views to students in line with that. I mean, there's a problem here.

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And now he's trying to run the other direction. He's interviewing James Lindsay for his particular podcast,

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Thinking in Public, making the conservative political Republican circuit, speaking, writing for World Magazine.

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And the image he's cultivating now is that they are more conservative. And it's like that with,

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I mean, look at the COVID stuff, right? Initially, like Southern students had to sign, or faculty,

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I can't remember if it might've been both. They had to sign a, basically, I'm going to comply with the regulations, the

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COVID regulations. And then, year and a half or so later, we're gonna be part of a lawsuit against the federal government for the

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COVID regulations. You find this kind of stuff with Al Mohler all the time. It's a political move.

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That's the only way I can make sense of the various positions he's taken and then contradicted later.

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It's political moves. And now it's gonna come back to bite him. And I think, and I'm speculating on this, and I'm letting you know

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I'm speculating on this, but this could be a warning shot in a way. Mohler is kind of on the outs in the

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SBC in a way. He lost to Litton and Mike Stone, actually. And if he can forge a relationship with conservatives, like CBN types, perhaps, he can become the president of the

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SBC. Problem, though, is he's alienated so many of those guys.

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They kind of see through him. On the other side, the left is gonna hold his feet to the fire.

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They're gonna, they remember the things that he's done that were in their corner, and they're gonna use them.

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And so you see two examples of it right there. So I think that's incredibly interesting, and that's just some

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SBC politics in this episode. I don't talk about it all the time, and I frankly don't always like talking about it, but I do see the importance of, for some people, there are certain individuals who are in the

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SBC, and they are still trying to make an effort to understand what their cooperative funding is going to, and some of them are trying to maneuver a taking back the denomination for orthodoxy, and for them, this kind of thing helps.

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So that's why I'm putting it out there, and I hope it did help. More will be coming next week. We have some very helpful podcasts.

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I'm gonna talk to a lawyer, actually, who does really great work for churches on their bylaws to protect them from the

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LGBT lobby, and also from internal issues. So you're gonna get that. I have a history one for all you history buffs out there.

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We're gonna talk about Warren Harding, and most of you are probably like, who's that?

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But we're gonna talk about that, and there's much more. So God bless, hope that was helpful.