Yes They’re Gaslighting You, and It’s all About Power

Twitter, Gaslighting, and the Power of Name-Calling

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are going to take a little bit of a tour today. It's really more of an illustration, that's why I'm using this, but we will take a little journey into the world of Twitter.

I don't do that as much as I used to. I used to go on Twitter and look at all kinds of things, but I got rid of my Twitter at the end of last year, or I forget, beginning of this year maybe, January, something like that.

I had already been scaling back my participation in the format. I was shadow banned. Many of my friends had been completely banned. I was reminded of this as I was looking at some of the threads. The level of engagement is, much of the time, elementary school playground level engagement.

It's just not interesting to me much anymore, but there's still a lot of things that happened on Twitter, not as many things as there used to be, but there still are some. This is one of those things.

I thought it was just a good illustration of just a number of things I wanted to talk about. It just encapsulates so many of them, so I thought, yeah, we'll talk about this. Yes, they are gaslighting you, and it's all about power.

That's why they gaslight you. That's why they try to make you think that you're crazy, that you didn't really hear what you heard, you didn't see what you saw. You're the one that's actually making the accusations, and in a parallel universe, while they are the reasonable ones.

If they get enough people to, on Twitter especially, it's easy to do this, right? So many conservatives are purged from that format, and conservatives don't usually participate in that venue as much anyway.

If you get enough people to like your post, and to retweet it, and to say positive things about it, then you can start to believe your own lies. That's, to be honest with you, how Twitter, I think, is used often, especially by the left.

So this is an illustration of that, but it is a bully tactic that I'm going to show you, and it is completely vacuous. If you're someone that's rooted in truth, you're grounded, you don't want lies, and you're just going to follow it wherever it leads.

You don't care what kind of names you're called. When someone says racist, sexist, homophobic, it just bounces right off of you because you care about truth. If you're one of those people, and you're not afraid of those things, this attack won't bother you in the least.

It doesn't matter. You might even laugh at it. But if you're afraid of those things, which most people are, I hate to say it, even conservatives, even people in the, quote unquote, opposition to CRT, in the Christian conservative circles, they're deathly afraid of that.

They're deathly afraid of any association that could possibly, the left could use to call them racist, even though the left calls them that anyway, and they just run from it. It is a powerful, effective weapon, and it shouldn't be.

We need to take the sting out of this. Who cares if someone is called names? Who cares if you're called a liar? If all manner of evil is said against you for the right reasons, especially for the name of Christ, for the truth of defending the things that Christ cares about, his commands, his gospel, the word of God on which we find them.

If that's what you're defending, then look, hey, you're rewarded for that. Do a little jig. Rejoice. And it's harder, it's easier said than done. I understand that. But this is, anyway, this is just an example in my mind of what I'm going to show you of a ridiculous attack.

And I'm just going to reinforce for everyone, look, you're not crazy. You're not crazy. And I want to also, for those who might be, I don't know if they are, but if anyone's listening who is being attacked or about to be attacked, who knows, maybe I'm about to be attacked.

I don't know. I get it every so often anyway. Then listen to this, listen to what I have to say about this, and then respond accordingly. I just hope it is encouraging to you and then also motivating to you to just kind of like stand firm.

Don't budge an inch. Don't let these bullies make you do something that you know is wrong. And it is wrong to confess something, to call something sin that God has not called sin, to apologize for something that's not really wrong.

I have a hard time with that, guys. I think that is wrong. What you're doing is you're engaging in a lie. You are, and if it's something that isn't in conformity with God's law, you're apologizing for something, for breaking some man-made law, then you're giving that a place of prominence.

You're saying that's an important standard to keep in comparison to God's actual law. So I just, I say that's wrong. That's wrong. Don't do it. Stand firm. Stand in what you know and what you believe.

Adam Greenway's Letter to Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary

All right, let's get into it because none of you know what the story is yet. Some of you might, but we're going to start here. This is what has caused the issue. Adam Greenway, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, put this out this afternoon.

He said, it is with deep disappointment but strong conviction that I have sent the following letter to Dr. Michael Spradlin, prayerfully requesting him to reconsider the decision by Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary to post the premiere of a film whose trailer contains scandalous and scurrilous slander against Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Now for those who don't know, Mid-America is separate from the Southern Baptist Convention. It is not an official Southern Baptist Convention seminary, yet it has an association with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary is the same way, Liberty University. So they're not directly affiliated, but they are indirectly affiliated, if that makes sense to anyone. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think Adrian Rogers started Mid-America and it's still somewhat loosely affiliated with his church, which is a Southern Baptist church, and many of the people who graduate from there go on to Southern Baptist churches and Southern Baptist institutions and become missionaries for NAM and that kind of thing.

So there is a relationship there, but yet, wisely probably, Adrian Rogers did not put it under the direct oversight of the Southern Baptist Convention. And look, one of the things, a point I want to make just right off the top, is how come there's only one seminary that seems like it's not circling the wagons?

It hasn't really gone woke. It's actually resisted some of these things to some extent. It's the one that's not actually in the machine, at least as tied as closely to the machine. So it's not officially under the Southern Baptist Convention.

I think that is interesting. But it's Mid-America, and Mid-America is hosting, from what I understand, the screening of the movie Enemies Within the Church, and that, I guess it's in, I don't even know if they approved of the movie as much as maybe they were just hosting a conservative Baptist network event and Enemies Within the Church happens to be at that event.

So either way, it's happening on their campus. And Adam Greenway, the president of Southwestern, which is an official Southern Baptist school, has a big problem with this. So puts the official seal of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on a draft, a form letter from, it says Adam W. Greenway, president on it, very official.

And this is what he says, President Spradlin, I write to you to express my deep disappointment that the institution you lead has plans to host a film premiere, in quotes, it's not even a real film, in quotes, of, again, quote, Enemies Within the Church, unquote, this Saturday, November 20th, in apparent coordination with the conservative Baptist network.

The film's trailer contains campus footage of the institution I am privileged to lead overlaid with narrative insinuations of Marxism, presumably intended to leave viewers with the mistaken impression that Southwestern Seminary is something other than orthodox, Baptist and evangelical.

Now, let's stop there for one second. I didn't know this. I don't think probably hardly anyone knew this when they were watching that trailer that that was Southwestern Seminary being used, overlaid with these terms.

I just don't think so. I just doubt it. But now everyone does that's seen this. And so okay, they were using that. Now, whether that's fair or not, I'm just pointing out that no one probably would have known, but now they do.

So Greenway is putting it out there, spreading the news that this trailer contains this. So already, you have to wonder, what's the strategy here? And I will talk about that at the end. But why bring attention to this, because this is any press is probably good press for Enemies Within the Church, any movie, right?

I've gotten into a little bit of documentary filmmaking, anytime anyone talks about it, it's always good. Even if it's negative, it brings attention to it, and people want to see it. So you got to wonder, okay, what's the angle here?

Why is he saying this? I take strong umbrage to such scandalous and umbrage. You don't hear that word much. By the way, Al Mohler uses that term a lot. Anyway, I take strong umbrage to such scandalous and scurrilous slander, particularly when it is apparently condoned by an institution such as yours.

Furthermore, I believe your late predecessor in office, B. Gray Allison, would strongly disapprove of his seminary's involvement in matters such as showing his film and supporting the CBN, given what has been attested in Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary's own publications.

Okay, so Gray Allison, this is just an appeal to authority. This is just, hey, if you don't listen to me, listen to this person. It's kind of irrelevant, but it's meant to further circle wagons and create the impression that, look, a lot of strong people in powerful positions are against what you are doing.

So it's to minimize the person that he's writing to. Former academic vice president Howard Bickers wrote in 1992 concerning Mid-America, The seminary prohibits any negative criticism of any Southern Baptist agency, leader, or program by speakers in the classrooms and in chapel services.

The leaders of the seminary believe that the institution best fulfills its purpose when a Christlike spirit and stance of positive support are engendered. Consequently, the energies of the seminary are focused upon the training of students rather than upon participation in divisive issues within the convention.

He's saying basically if you partner with conservative Baptist network at all, you let them use your facility to host an event, then you are breaking, you are in violation of the vision of the former academic vice president Howard Bickers in 1992.

So again, recruiting another person to try to create pressure here. You're out of step, you're the weird one, you're the unusual person that's doing things not in accordance with what the rest of us and those who are authoritative would do.

And it's not Christlike, you're breaking this. Since these sentiments characterize Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary during the SBC's much needed conservative resurgence, should they not even more so now given that both our institutions confess congruent convictions concerning biblical authority, inerrancy, and sufficiency?

Now, by the way, I got to say this, you'll see this again later. This is the one thing they have that they always go back to, hey, we got a statement of faith, you have a statement of faith. The assumption there is always that they are following it.

That's the hidden assumption. If we have the statement of faith, we must be acting in accordance with it. That is not a valid assumption. It doesn't mean that you're orthodox in every sense just because you have an orthodox statement of faith.

You could be violating it in places and you're just not enforcing the violations. I prayerfully ask you to reconsider the decision to show this film and to withdraw support from those working to divide our convention by engaging in untruthful attacks against SBC entities like Southwestern Seminary.

Okay, so he's accusing them of lying. He says, let's say you're supporting lies, but he doesn't list any of the lies here. That's another strategy. There's no, so it's heaping guilt on them. It's making them feel small, that they're out of step, that they're disobeying their own authority and the vision of the people that would have been instrumental in setting up mid-America and accusing them of giving safe harbor to liars who are slandering and divisive people, and yet there's nothing specific stated here.

No actual, here's the lie. The only thing you can possibly try to say is a lie, you know, that he clues you into is that, hey, they're saying that we have, the film's trailer says that there's some narrative of Marxism going on and that we're something other than orthodox.

That's the only thing he's got. That's it. But there's no specifics other than that. Clearly he hasn't seen the film or at least he's not letting on that he has. He's just saying something about the trailer.

Ethnic Diversity, George Floyd, and Woke Southern Baptist Statements

Now, the usual crowd of social justice activists who like to kind of hang around the Southern Baptist Convention and oftentimes wreak havoc or move it in the leftward direction decided to weigh in on this.

And I just gave you a few examples there, Dean and Sarah, Hannah Kate, Adam Greenway was retweeted by Danny Akin at Southeastern. I do think you will probably see more of this in the days ahead. You will see more of it.

You'll see more attacks. You'll see more seminaries. Probably circling the wagons. And in my opinion, it'll probably be all one big mistake. And maybe they're testing the waters. I don't know. But it will be a rah-rah on Twitter in the echo chamber to make them feel like they have the momentum and that people don't, that people will also join with them to heap scorn on South or rather on Mid-America.

And I'll tell you, I'll talk more about the strategy at the end. But I think they're making a mistake here. That's just my opinion. I think the ground has shifted underneath them and they're not quite keeping up with it because all this is going to do, in my opinion, is going to create more attention towards the film.

And that's what they don't want. They don't want people seeing this film, but yet they're going to come out here and attack it. So I think if they're between a rock and a hard place, what do we do? And this is what they're doing right now.

But we'll see if they reel it back in. They may reel it back in when they realize that tactical error. And that's my opinion. I just think it's probably a tactical error if that's their goal, to keep people from seeing this.

Because that seems to be the stated goal here. Hey, don't show this at Mid-America. But now you're going online with it and all these people that didn't know about the film now know about the film. Now I want to go through some things about Greenway.

Now is Greenway and is Southwestern, is what he said true? Oh, they're not Marxists. They're Orthodox. Is it true though? And I'm just going to give you a few pieces of evidence here, and I'll let you decide for yourself.

Adam Greenway, October 31st, 2019 for Reformation Day. He said, the time has come to finish the shift from the Confederate culture of our origins to a global vision of mission, ministry, embracing all peoples without distinction.

We are with Christ after the loss, not the lost cause. Honestly, it's just kind of a dumb, just juvenile tweet. But I think what he's trying to say is like, hey, we're more diverse. We're diverse. That's the main thing he's trying to get across there.

Again, he says this. What an incredible weekend it was to be with Dr. Ed Young and the great SBC Houston family of faith. Second is a diverse, multicultural Southern Baptist church baptizing thousands of new believers every year.

Thank you, Dr. Young's gracious hospitality and support. So again, valuing this multicultural Southern Baptist church. You have this from Adam Greenway, pursuing racial diversity is a way to, we bear witness to the gospel, quoting Dr. or Pastor Drew Erickson, teaching from Acts 10.

So he has, he values some kind of ethnic diversity, right? I hope everyone's seeing that. Now, I'm going to come back to that. But let's just put that in the back of your mind. Okay. Adam Greenway values ethnic diversity and thinks we should somehow push for ethnic diversity somehow or make conditions so that things are more ethnically diverse.

Now here's another thing to add to this list. SBC leaders have published a statement grieving the recent death of George Floyd and calling for an end of racial inequality in the distribution of justice in our country.

I was grateful to join with all my fellow SBC entity heads in making this statement. This is from May 30th, 2020. And Greenway signed this statement and let me read for you part of the statement that a number of other Southern Baptists, I think Al Mohler signed this, I believe, by the way, Danny Akin signed it, Jason Allen, Jamie Du.

As a convention of churches committed to the equality and dignity of all people, Southern Baptists grieve the death of George Floyd, who was killed May 25th, 2020 in Minneapolis. While all must grieve, we understand that in the hearts of our fellow citizens of color, incidents like these connect to a long history of unequal justice in our country, going back to the grievous Jim Crow and slavery eras.

The images and information we have available to us in this case are horrific and remind us that there is much work to be done to ensure that there is not even a hint of racial inequity in the distribution of justice in our country.

We grieve to see examples of the misuse of force and call for these issues to be addressed with speed and justice. While we thank God for our law enforcement officers that bravely risk their lives for the sake of others and uphold justice with dignity and integrity, we also lament when some law enforcement officers misuse their authority and bring unnecessary harm on people they are called to protect.

We further grieve with our minority brothers and sisters in the wake of Floyd's death, pray for his family and friends, and greatly desire to see the misuse of force and inequitable distribution of justice come to an end.

This is soft critical race theory language. This is connecting, it's basically saying that this George Floyd's death was motivated by racism. It connects to Jim Crow and slavery, saying that, implying that there's not an equal distribution of justice in our country, that there needs to be a more equitable, there needs to be a redistribution that you would think, right, if there's unequal distribution of justice, we need a redistribution of justice, which is exactly what the left was pushing.

And all these guys, including Al Mohler, signed it, but Adam Greenway also signed it. So this happened, put that in the back of your mind as well, say, okay, Adam Greenway wants to push for ethnic diversity, Adam Greenway signed this kind of soft woke statement, it's not even really soft, it's a woke statement in the wake of the George Floyd situation.

Now it appears that Greenway also was in support of the SBC executive committee waiving attorney client privilege because of the Me Too movement and the abuse allegations and all of this. So if you look at some of these tweets, he says that everyone should listen to what Bart Barber has to say, his perspective on what's at stake with the SBC executive committee.

You watch the video, and what Bart Barber seems to be talking about more than anything else in this is sole member privilege, and even says if they refuse to waive privilege, they are acting contrary to the overwhelmingly expressed vote of the messengers.

So Adam Greenway is retweeting this video in which Bart Barber argues that they need to waive privilege, but it's in the context of all this of when there's a debate about attorney client privilege. And so it seems to me like what Adam Greenway is signaling, and you'll see in a tweet I'm about to show you, is that that's a good thing, that the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention should waive it, or at least it's not a big deal if they waive that, and they should follow the dictates of the messengers who apparently want this waived.

Now Greenway questioned the motives of those angry over the waiving of attorney client privilege. This is what kind of in my mind sealed this understanding that, okay, I think he at least doesn't have a problem with them waiving this.

And he reposts this thread from Amy Carter Whitfield, I think she might be the wife of Keith Whitfield, the provost at Southeastern, I'm not sure, but she has this long thread, and basically the long and short of it is that those who are upset about the waiving of attorney client privilege should basically check themselves and they shouldn't be angry with anyone except abusers, really.

So it's wrong to, it's kind of this false dichotomy that if you get angry at that, well then you're somehow taking away from being angry at actual abuse. It's a manipulative thing that she's saying, but Adam Greenway reposts this and finds this totally valid.

So he's running cover for those who are supporting the waiver of attorney client privilege, which we talked about that at the time, was a very foolish thing to do and really is probably one of the most foolish things that's ever happened in the SBC executive committee.

It's just insane. Now he also defended Ed Litton, okay, so put that in the back of your mind. Adam Greenway wants diversity, according to what he said, ethnic diversity. Adam Greenway, I can't even remember everything I put down here.

He signed the woke statement in the wake of the George Floyd's death. Adam Greenway to some extent at least supports or at least opposes those who were concerned about the waiver of attorney client privilege.

And then he defends Ed Litton amidst his non-apology over serial plagiarism. In fact, he sat down with him and they had a whole discussion. I talked about it on this podcast where Ed Litton pretty much blamed everyone but himself and just, he didn't apologize, made out kind of like he did, but it really was not.

It was horrible. And Adam Greenway just kind of accepted that and said, again, publicly going out there saying he appreciates Ed Litton's helpful words in his statement, another non-apology on the sermon series, and then advertises the chapel with Ed Litton, gives him the platform.

So put that in the back of your mind as well. Adam Greenway doesn't have a problem with someone being a serial plagiarizer as long as I guess they're in an institutional power in the Southern Baptist Convention.

He's fine with endorsing that on some level. It's not like he even just had him there to preach. They literally talked about that issue and Ed Litton just squirmed and blamed all kinds of other people and said how he just, basically he's got such a good memory and he's got to take a break from listening to sermons.

A sermon breaks sabbatical because it's just too hard for him. He just remembers so many things, like, and that wasn't the issue. We all know that. So many times he was just reading transcripts. Okay.

So we see all that. Now here's the question. Does he really want diversity? Does Adam Greenway at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary really want diversity? No, not really. Here's what Bobby Lopez wrote in November 16th, 2019, a new president took office, Adam Greenway, and fired 26 professors in 24 hours.

And by the way, I do have the names of those professors somewhere. I know I talked about them in a previous episode. The majority of them are, the vast majority are minorities, ethnic minorities, and women.

Many women in that group. He fired them in 24 hours, sending a clear signal to all of us that we were eminently replaceable. Greenway told us that this was due to budget cuts, then turned around and hired at least six new professors, all white, from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the place he had just left.

Why do this? If you're all about ethnic diversity, why fire so many ethnically diverse people and then hire a bunch of white people? That would be getting, if a CBN person did that, they would be in so big trouble for that.

They would be called racist. They'd be called all kinds of things. How come Adam Greenway gets a pass on this? One of the things you'll see, if you haven't noticed it yet, is if you are on the side of the revolution in any way, if you're pushing that needle towards the left, then you get a pass on this stuff because the issue is always the revolution.

The issue is never racism. It's never actually sexism or any of the stuff that they claim to care about. The issue is the revolution. Adam Greenway is carrying water for the revolution. He gets a pass on these things.

You'll see some others that get a pass as we go through this as well. Here's the question. I have two. Adam Greenway says, hey, no, we're Orthodox. We don't have Marxist stuff at our seminary. Enemies Within the Church is lying.

Is CRT taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary? Well, let me just give you a few examples of places that We already saw the statement Adam Greenway signed, the woke statement. We already know that that's out there.

How about this? Dr. Jeffrey Bingham, Fall 2019 Systematic Theology class. Whiteness. Are there things about whiteness that can help in biblical interpretation? Sure there are, but there are many things about whiteness that are used in history past to pervert the meaning of the biblical text, to pervert it greatly and in a disastrous way.

So I need brothers and sisters within the community of Christ who are not white that I can approach and say, brother, sister, how is it that my whiteness is working against my understanding the meaning of the biblical text?

I think whiteness is spelled wrong here. It's witness. It's whiteness though. I heard the clip and I guess just didn't transcribe it correctly. But this is Dr. Jeffrey Bingham, Fall 2019 Systematic Theology class.

You can go online. You can probably even type that in and it'll come up. He says this. You have Malcolm Yarnell. Malcolm Yarnell is a very prominent professor there. And he says a number of things. Here's one of the things in the biblical recorder, June 15th, 2020.

He says that this is about racism and there's so many things. It was hard to even narrow down. What bothers me the most about this? What would we pick out to say this looks like CRT? Let me read this for you.

Among other errant ideas we have heard are the following, that the scripture does not command the reconciliation of all peoples, that the word of God advances the system of slavery, and that oppressed peoples ought not seek freedom from wicked systems.

And by the way, I'm not buying this. I don't know who in the world is he talking about here. I've never met, maybe one person in my life who thought this. In the Southern Baptist Convention especially, everyone's going to say that they believe that the scripture commands reconciliation, that the word of God does not advance a system of slavery.

Now certainly the word of God regulates slavery in the Old Testament. Certainly there's regulations in the New Testament. But to say that it advances, like it commands a system of slavery, I mean, being slave to Christ I guess, and that oppressed peoples ought not seek freedom from wicked systems.

Who says that? That oppressed people should not seek freedom? I don't know of anyone who says that. Not in a revolutionary violent way perhaps. There's an orderly way to go about these things, but I think everyone would say, yeah, if you're in a wicked system, then you should seek the freedom from it.

Now here's the thing. This is a straw man, and this is how he knocks it down. Further, we are disheartened to hear people explain the deaths of unarmed black men with arguments based in supposed white superiority.

Okay, what's an argument based in white superiority that explains the death of an unarmed black man? This is about police shootings. Here it is. Suggesting that propensities to crime, misbehavior, and standardized test scores are to blame.

These specious claims remind us of old ideas that Southern Baptists more than once resolved to denounce. Saying that you're white, supremacist, racist, something negative, right? One of these things, if what you say is, hey, there's reasons that in some of these police shootings there's maybe a justifiable reason this individual was killed or wounded because they had some kind of a propensity to crime.

In other words, they were committing a crime. These disparities that exist with test scores and these kinds of things can be attributed to that, well, these are the problems. There's a lack of education and a lack of character.

Most of the people who would make that argument would probably say that there's a fatherlessness problem. There's a family breakdown problem. Well, here's Malcolm Yarnell coming out along with Ryan Putnam and Keith Whitfield and saying, you know what, that's white superiority right there.

That's what you're saying. No. That's not what, and this is, if that's not what they're saying, this has to be the sloppiest thing ever. But there's so many other things in this that just show me that there's some kind of a willingness to make some kind of a piece with critical race theory.

There's some kind of a syncretism going on here because to get to the point of calling someone some kind of a white supremacist or racist because simply they point out that there's a disparity when it comes to crime or test scores in a certain community or a certain region, that is, why would that be critical race theory?

Or I should say, how could that not be critical race theory that would cause them to do that? They have to make some kind of attachment. They have to create some kind of a way of linking racism and white supremacy to someone claiming that these disparities are problems, that that alone gets them titled a racist or something.

So you have to make a big jump there and that's what critical race theory does. It makes the big jump for you. It gives you license to call people names based on very sometimes tenuous links that you can somehow draw a line here or there.

Sometimes you can't even do that. Let's see here, there's more in this article, but I'm going to skip that. Let's go to other things Malcolm Yarnell has said, because I don't want to focus too much on that.

There's so much more. He says, what if from now on every Anglo male candidate for an SBC entity leader's role were to refuse appointment? Of course, only as their conscience leads until a more diverse leadership representative of our desire to reflect the redeemed gathered around God's throne were installed.

So he's basically saying, you know, in order to force diversity, which is what Adam Greenway said he wants, right? Ethnic diversity. We are going we should do this. What if every Anglo male just said, you know, we're not going to be leaders anymore.

Now, you first, Malcolm, right? Here is a see, here's another thing you said. Let's get to that in a minute. He says he agreed with Rachel Denhollander's exegesis of the story of David murdering Uriah and having relationship with Bathsheba and saying that that was rape.

We did a whole podcast on that, and I showed that that was not rape. It's even different Hebrew words used there. But Malcolm Yarnell insists that it is rape. And this is this is the pressure. The Me Too pressure is is brought to bear on biblical interpretation.

You see Malcolm Yarnell going the same way as a Rachel Denhollander on that issue. You have him defending Resolution 9. He says that the the work of the 2019 resolutions committee for the SBC displayed the wisdom of Solomon in addressing some of the most difficult issues facing our churches.

That's Resolution 9. He says if pagan books said things which are indeed true and are well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared. Rather, what they have said should be taken from them as from unjust possessors and converted to our use, quoting Augustine and applying that to the critical race theory debate.

Hey, we can take this stuff. You can use it as analytical tools. Here he is again. This is what he was supporting some form of standpoint theory. Here's an example of what I meant at SBC 2019 when I advocated that we strive to hear the female voice while all the male disciples were arguing about their roles of power and prestige.

This lone female disciple perceived what Jesus really needed. What Mary did was beautiful. So again, we need the female voice. That's that's again the standpoint theory coming out here again. He talks about essays by Peter Tai, a SWBTS PhD, I guess, student and another student.

And they wrote in this book, they compiled some essays written from a global theological perspective. So this is Malcolm Yarnell. So do you think between the statement Adam Greenway signed in the wake of George Floyd death, do you think between what Jeffrey Bingham said about needing these other perspectives, do you think everything Malcolm Yarnell's put out there and this is just the tip of the iceberg, do you think in addition to that, how Southwestern Seminary sponsored the Caring Well initiative?

And we've gone over that, too. I actually write about it. If you go to my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, if I can find it here. If you if you if you have a copy of this book, I actually have a whole section on it talking about the Caring Well initiative and showing that this is standpoint theory.

This is postmodernism. And it is totally the Christianization of the Me Too movement. It is denying innocent until proven guilty, at least on the church level. It's terrible stuff once you get into the details of it and what they're actually saying.

Well, Southwestern Seminary supporting this and sponsoring it. And this is the ERLC initiative, Caring Well. So that's Southwestern. And so for enemies within the church to have a to have some kind of a, I guess, a narration where they're showing the seminary and saying, hey, there's Marxism.

I don't know what I haven't seen it in a while. I think I have seen it before, but it was a while ago to have some narration saying social justice is somehow in play here would be accurate. How would that not be accurate?

These ideas that are being advocated, at least in part at Southwestern, and have not been retracted to my knowledge or apologized for, no repentance that I know of, these ideas are would trace back some of them to to Marxism.

So what's the problem here? Why? Why is this such a big deal if they have evidence for it? Now, you also have circling the wagons here. You have Mark Wingfield. Now, it says on his Facebook profile that he studied at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

So here is a former student, I guess, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who posted on Baptist News Global that the Conservative Baptist Network promotes conspiracy laden film to be shown at Mid-America Seminary's campus.

That's the headline. And what are the talking points from this? The talking points are, he quotes Ben Cole. Ben Cole says the school's decision to host an event this week that slanders our seminaries through outright lies, purposeful misrepresentations, and politicized fearmongering threatens that decades long institutional fraternity.

This style of national socialist propaganda should be rejected by every Bible believing Southern Baptist. OK, so he's saying they're Nazis, saying enemies within the church is Nazis. If the school persists in its determination to host this event, Mid-America should be given the same exhibit space allocation at our annual meetings as we would give to the Ku Klux Klan, the Watchtower Society or to Louis Farrakhan.

OK, so the Ku Klux Klan and Mid-America would be on the same level. That's the accusation here. Basically, we should shut them out, cancel them. They should not even be allowed a space at the annual meetings.

And he is, if they allow this to go forward, and basically says that these are Nazis, the enemies within the church, guys. And here's the interesting thing to me. I just want to point this out. And this isn't to get jump down Ben Cole's throat or anything like that, you know, assuming he's sorry for this.