Christian Supremacy vs Liberty, CRT at Cedarville, Mark Dever on Local Church Accountability

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome everyone to Conversations That Matter podcast for a hopefully short episode. I want to get to a few news items.

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We're going to talk about some social justice infiltration into institutions of higher learning in Christianity as well as actually a very good point

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Mark Dever made if you can believe it. People are going to wonder about me because I've said some positive things about Al Mohler and now

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I'm going to say something positive about a point Mark Dever made. But it's interesting what he said because I don't think

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I'm going to take it in the same way maybe he wanted me to. I want to start off though with a few announcements and really on a sad note

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I want to let you all know about something. It is public at this point. It is online and that is for those who are familiar with the

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Joyful Patriarchy Wife account on Twitter and Gab and Facebook. The person behind that Shelly Martin has actually passed away.

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My wife and I had the privilege of meeting her and her husband earlier this year when we were traveling and they were just a very sweet and generous couple.

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She was very generous, gave my wife some things to bless her and I was surprised when

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I heard what was happening but the explanation is given here by her son

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Paul Martin that essentially she had been diagnosed three months ago with breast cancer and it was too late.

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That's basically the long and short of it and of course this is something as Christians we know all things work together for good to those who love

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God and are called according to his purpose but it is very hard in situations where it is unexpected and especially people who we think of as really positive voices out there who are doing good work and why would the

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Lord take them and we don't know all the answers to that but please pray for the family and I'm going to put the link to the

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GoFundMe. There's a GoFundMe out there for funeral expenses in the info section so for those who want to check that out but yeah pray for the family, pray for the

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Martins. So I wanted to let you know about that. Also another announcement, there is a

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CRT conference, Critical Race Theory conference in a good way not a bad way so examining

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Critical Race Theory, being critical of Critical Race Theory coming up this particular Saturday at 9 a .m.

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and it's meeting at Rocky Springs PCA and this is in, let's see what it,

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I know it's near Grove City College, I guess it would be, is that Rocky Springs I guess, well the information for those near Grove City College for those who want to attend this conference is also in the info section.

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I am NOT going to be there, I was supposed to be there and I had to pretty much out of the gate as soon as it was announced say

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I'm sorry I can't go because I have a actually a memorial service myself this Sunday for an uncle who passed away this year and it's

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I'm gonna be gone actually I'm gonna be in California this week and into next week pretty much all of next week my grandfather's 100th birthday is next week and so that's gonna be a big deal and so there's a lot going on with me but anyway it's gonna be good even though I can't make it it's in Harrisville Pennsylvania yeah

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Harrisville too man I bet my relatives set up I know my line goes through Harrisburg so Harrisville I'm wondering but if you're in the area please check it out go to this conference there's

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Scott David Allen is going to be there who's written a good book on social justice Jesse Gisten stand is gonna be there

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Pastor Grace Bible Church in California I'm not as familiar with him but I think it'll be a good time for you all in a time of encouragement we need these times to get together and to just realize we're not alone there are others who think the same way and are concerned about the same things and even just for that I think it's important but bring a friend if you can especially a friend who might not be convinced about this or doesn't know about this and needs that information so well let's start with some new stories here the

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SBC disfellowships Church over alleged racism so this was broken by the evangelical dark web that's

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Ray Fava's website he does a great job I actually met him earlier this year a great guy and really there's not a lot of details here but I figured

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I'd at least mention it because of situations in the past not with the credentials committee necessarily the credentials committee actually has a reputation for being very slow and not really acting when they should

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I mean it was the chairman of the credentials committee who said well we got to figure out what a pastor is basically at the meeting last summer because I mean

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I'm summarizing here obviously but you know maybe there's a place for women to serve in under the title of pastor without holding the office or something like that and there are churches very liberal churches

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I remember earlier this year I was looking for something totally unrelated and stumbled upon this SBC Church that was gay affirming and or had female pastors it was just totally not what you would have expected and lo and behold it's on the list of SBC churches so there's still churches like that out there that may probably have a historic tie to the

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SBC and they've changed and so the credentials committee has that reputation but also in the

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SBC there's been these fake or false assumptions accusations of racism

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FBC Naples being a prime example and so now you have the credentials committee they do their credit it looks like they kicked out a homosexual affirming church and then they recommended to the executive committee to kick out a church that this is what their language says that showed a lack of cooperation demonstrated by the church to resolve concerns regarding alleged discriminatory behavior so you have alleged discriminatory behavior so we don't even know if there is discrimination but there's a lack of cooperate it's it's vague so we don't know exactly what this means but there's a number of people who have noticed this and have brought it to my attention and just asked me you know what is this do you think this is a big nothing burger and I think that alone says there's a problem in the

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SBC when there's just an assumption immediately like was this really discrimination you know the mistrust the onus is on the credentials committee to try to basically prove it so I don't know anything about this church

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I'd be curious that if anyone listening knows about this church the church is amazing grace Community Church in Franklinville New Jersey I would love to find out maybe what the issue here is because I have the same suspicion

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I'm not gonna lie but we don't know so we can't really comment more on it but is this a precedent for what could be coming could churches be disfellowshipped or you know could they be kicked out of the convention because maybe they're not quite woke enough that's the that's the fear out there among some conservatives in the evangelical world let's talk about these tweets these illustrate a point that was made yesterday on the podcast

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William Wolfe gave a speech at National Conservative Conference talked about this effort to try to prevent

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Christians from well first of all obtaining but then exercising political power and that is true here's actually two examples of it one from Mike Kelsey who

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I believe is still a pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia where David Platt is and then we're gonna look at an example from David French the interesting thing in this and the thing to keep in mind

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I've said this before is that oftentimes social justice advocates in Christianity want to categorize concerns from the left or from social justice directions as somehow related to Christianity they sanctify them really they sanctify them as justice concerns as discipleship issues as gospel issues if it's an idea though from the right even ideas that really were rooted in a

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Christian understanding of how society should function oftentimes what happens is those ideas get categorized according to bad motivations so even loving your family too much now that's just should be we should suspect that of possibly having an idolatry somewhere so sanctify politically left ideas and then categorize politically right ideas as idolatrous or you know somehow an unhealthy pursuit of power or breaking from what

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Jesus would teach or something so there's kind of an unequal weights and measures thing going on here where especially people who are very politically active in 2020 and doing podcasts like Mike Kelsey did where he talked of he shared his feelings on white people let's say and they weren't too great in 2020 and now this is what he has to say

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I'll read it for you Christians if your political ideology is your measure is your measure of Christian orthodoxy your ideology has become idolatry and then he quotes

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John 8 36 where Jesus says my kingdom is not of this world because if it was my servants would be fighting and then he says

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Jesus may not be as passionate about your politics as you are hold your convictions with humility and grace and so this is a message to all those

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Christians out there and I mean I mean this is in a political context we just had that piece from NBC on Doug Wilson and we just had the

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National Conservative Conference and it's during the Biden administration when things are getting crazy and there's an effort now or at least people want there to be an effort to push back different circumstances in 2020 when it was

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Donald Trump in office and it was all against the man right and and Mike Kelsey was singing a different tune then well now

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Christians need to tone it down a few notches Jesus isn't as concerned about politics as you are it shouldn't be our concern when when things are crazier right now against God's law than they've ever been as far as I mean sexual ethics and and the breakdown of our national identity our family identity really under attack and there's some silver linings

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Roe v. Wade being overturned but there's even even with that though there's the left is really making an aggressive pro -abortion push

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I'm in a state where it's happening actively I mean I saw an advertisement at the airport for abortion it was just I was like wow

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I haven't seen that before but there's there's really a real good verse evil thing going on and yet this is the context in which

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Mike Kelsey is like well you know don't be as concerned Jesus wasn't and of course the verse is taken out of context

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Jesus is saying my kingdom doesn't spread through fighting this that's not the way that this is done it's the kingdom of God as his parables taught where it was spread through conversion it was it was organic more so it was the way that plants grow it was the way leaven leavens a loaf it's not something that you can just force conversion you can't you can force people to respect an authority

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I suppose that is advocating Christian law but you can't force people into being

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Christians and it also I wonder about his first part here you know if you if your political ideology is the measure of your

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Christian orthodoxy who says that oh

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John you say that no I don't say and I think if people are the people

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I've heard articulate it this relationship between religion and politics from our side from evangelical

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Christian conservatives they would all say that it's your evangelical it's your biblical convictions that drive the politics not it's not the politics that drives the theology but anyway here's what that this is what

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Mike Kelsey is assuming and David French is saying that it's basically the same thing and they have the same effect he says religious supremacy is incompatible with religious liberty elevating the power of the state to censor private speech and speakers on private platforms is incompatible with rights of conscience nationalism threatens liberty and justice so equivocation between nationalism and religious supremacy same thing

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David French and these things are threatening religious liberty now think about this it's inescapable that you're going to have moral decisions made and enforced by a government and those decisions must be informed by what where do moral decisions come from religion there has to be some kind of religion informing it somewhere along the lines now it depends

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I guess what your definition of religion is but if we're talking about if you want to use the term worldview sure but there's

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Christianity is if you believe as David French says he does that Christianity is the truth and you would want

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Christianity the Christian understanding of reality to be that which informs the laws of the land now we can do this in federalism we have nine of the 13 states were had state religions at the time of the founding the

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Constitution at least we can do this with localism and federalism but there there needs to be at least some respect given to to God we still

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I mean would David French say that the Pledge of Allegiance or the I don't know in God we trust on our currency would he would he say that these things are symbols of religious supremacy

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I don't think you would I mean these are these are things that we've been raised with we're used to but for the logic to work you would think it would have to be there has to be something is going to fill the void now in Christianity there is this understanding that you can't actually force a conversion so there's this thing called the freedom of conscience and that has led to a greater tolerance and more

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I think perhaps other religions have taken advantage of this in Christian countries but there's been a recognition of the fact that you can't force conversions and so there there is a respect for conscience that has developed but show me the other religion even secular humanism atheism you know show show me what what system doesn't have some kind of limitation to what private people can do

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I mean even law basic laws against murder and that there's a principle here that a religious principle the humans are worth something that you can't just take a life of someone in an unjustified way

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I'm thinking too of just the fact that there were blasphemy laws on the books

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George Washington's army had blasphemy laws poor anti -pornography laws were in effect until very recently we're talking about the 1970s 80s there were still poor anti -pornography laws that were enforceable and some in some places especially in the

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South were enforced so this idea that there should just be it's limitless so you can kind of do what you want there there is nothing like that we have to be it this is a fairy tale that's what

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I'm saying this is a fairy tale but what's the effect of this the nationalism is a threat to the

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American way to liberty and justice and national was like religious supremacy so it's a disincentive and and William Wolfe talked about this on the podcast yesterday and I just think these are good illustrations of it

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I just happen to see these people send them to me and I thought well I'm gonna talk about that because these are good illustrations of what he was talking about now

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I'd like to let's see this the order I want to do this in yeah it is all right

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I'd like to play this for you this is some good advice from Mark Devere if you can believe it some good advice from Mark Devere actually let's let's leave this to the end let's leave the good advice from Mark Devere to the end and just continue with a few new stories some crazy stuff that's going on out there and I'm gonna try to summarize here instead of playing for you the clip so you can go watch them yourself if you're interested

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Matt Walsh did some undercover really what journalists should be doing right but his team did the journalism they investigated a transgender clinic at Vanderbilt in Nashville Vanderbilt drugs chemically castrates and performs double mastectomies on minors but it gets worse here's what we found and I watch these videos and oh my goodness they it checks out so Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018 during a lecture the same year dr.

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Shane Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game she emphasized that it's a big moneymaker especially because the surgeries require a lot of follow -ups those are quotes big moneymaker follow -up yes quotes she does talk about this it's it's you can make a lot of money

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Vanderbilt was apparently concerned that not all of its staff would be on board dr.

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Ellen Clayton warned that conscientious objections are problematic anyone who decides not to be involved in transition surgeries due to religious liberty will face consequences and then in the case of objectors if you hadn't gotten the memo

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Vanderbilt unveiled a program called trans buddies the buddies are trans activists from the community who attend appointments with trans patients monitoring the doctors to guard against unsafe behavior such as mis -gendering

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Vanderbilt takes their trans buddies available to children to make their trans buddies they make lots of services available to children including chemical castration though at some point in the last month they explained explicit admission of this fact from their website here and they have an archived screenshot there and there's a video from Vanderbilt psychiatry's

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YouTube channel in 2020 which admits explicitly that they will give and have irreversible hormone drugs to children as young as 13 after they have drugged and sterilized the kids

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Vanderbilt as explained in this video presentation by plastic surgeon Julian Winokur and physicians assistant

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Shailen van der Blomen will happily perform double mastectomies on adolescent girls this is crazy and I mean this is in Nashville where the

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ERLC is I'm glad that the I haven't talked about him yet Brent Leatherwood who's let's just say his record hasn't been great on the abortion issue he did make a statement against this but as far as I know

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I don't think they're doing I don't think there's anything they're doing actively against it that I'm aware of the governor of Tennessee made a statement on this and I actually have that on my phone a quote from him governor

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Bill Lee we should not allow permanent life -altering decisions that hurt children or policies that suppress religious liberty all for the purpose of financial gain we have to protect

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Tennessee children and this warrants a thorough investigation so there you have it that's what's going on in the world and it is a time right now that Christians ought to be involved more than ever you can't

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I don't know how you can make the case now of all times that now's the time to really take take your foot off that that gas pedal on the political stuff because Jesus doesn't care about it as much no

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I mean this is why we need more Christians in places of authority and this isn't a threat this isn't religious supremacy or something like that this is just the application of some basic common sense really but some some some basic moralities

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God's law and it's good for all people not just for Christians so let's talk about the infiltration of social justice into Christian higher education we're gonna talk about Kevin Jones at Cedarville University Kevin Jones of course

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I recognize the name because he helped edit a book with Jarvis Williams called Removing the Stand of Racism from the

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Southern Baptist Convention which does advocate a soft form of critical race theory and that book when they edited it they were both at the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary so this is how this stuff gets exported from one place to another so Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has these issues and now these people are going all over the place

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Matt Hall is now in California at a university and I believe Curtis Woods if I'm not mistaken

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I think at least temporarily I don't know if he still is he went to another church and you have Kevin Jones now at Cedarville and this is what happens so Kevin Jones is doing an interview this is from last year with a student and by the way woke preacher clips did a great job with this there's so many clips

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I watched this entire interview and the thing that stood out to me is this student this poor student who is basically woke and masked too

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I mean look at them doing this interview in 2021 but masked interview and this student is just hanging on to every word of Kevin Jones and the guy's getting indoctrinated and doesn't even

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I think see it because they're young impressionable students there to learn and this is and you you parents send them thinking they're getting a good

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Christian education and they're getting this kind of stuff let me play it for you I've had and how I've gotten here the

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Lord has placed me in both predominantly African -American spaces with my black church experience like I went to an

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African -American church growing up went to an HBCU as an undergrad I've pastored at historically black churches and then on the other side of that I've also attended predominantly white institutions the flagship our largest institution in the state of Kentucky University of Kentucky and pastored at predominantly white churches

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I served as an administrator at historically black colleges as well as the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that was started by slave owning people and so just the diversity of the experience that the

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Lord has given me I think how is that significant is it because there's still like remnants of this slaveholding left that caused discrimination and that just is why he has a broad experience because I've been at places where I've accepted and then places where I'm really not accepted there's a lot

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I could say about that with uh sometimes people who are woke especially minorities

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I've noticed a tendency sometimes to take on oppression or experiences that really aren't their own but they they try to kind of in a second -handed way uh take take those identities on but I'm I don't know if he's doing that it's just it what what's significant really about that statement is it it seems to me like that's the assumption is that you know they're hey there's

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I got some experience with racism begin to give me a a broader scope and view of race in education and race in education how those things have have walked alongside one another uh since uh the 1600s could you possibly give a brief overview of what that relationship would be you can't disconnect them yeah you can't you can't disconnect those two things in the founding of the

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United States there were some people who were learning and some who were not learning and by law some people learned and by law some didn't and by those that some didn't

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I mean African Americans by law if African Americans were caught learning how to read and write they'd be dismembered and even whites who may have been teaching them or blacks who may have been teaching them how to read and write would have received harsh consequences many even death and so race and education are almost inseparable when we look at them through a long historical lens and even today contemporarily

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February 25th 2021 when we look at the the inequity

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I think in some of the education we can tie those directly to ethnic postures and not just socioeconomic statuses okay the argument he's making is that and I what

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I said before is true I mean that's the significance I was at an institution started by slaveholders and by the way here in 2021 it's the same we got the same inequities and that's because of these racial differences and that's sloppy history at best uh to just say well in America you would be if you if you were black and you learned that you would be uh what'd he say dismembered so cruel and unusual things would happen to you um yeah well there are circumstances

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I mean you can you can point to um you can point to lynchings and things like I mean you could point to things that happened that but generally those weren't the result of of learning but there there was certainly a disincentive to learn uh to learn to read in the antebellum period just because that was viewed as they would be ripe for literature uh coming from more extreme abolitionist types that would want uh look at the postal crisis you'll see what

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I'm saying there's examples of it the people that were sending things down south to literature to encourage slave rebellions and uprisings and that kind of thing and there was that was the real reason that that was kind of a frowned upon by many governments but there were exceptions to it and there and it wasn't you know that wasn't the across the board in America you were dismembered if you were black and you learned stuff now there was there was there's people who were black that were educated and uh

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I mean how did you get even thousands of slave holders in the south who were uh black themselves there had to be some level of education in order to even interact in the business world like that so this isn't he actually he just paints with broad brushes he just throws it out there and if you're white and you taught someone

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I mean you could be killed and um I mean there were penalties I don't know that the death penalty was uh it's possible it's possible that in some regions that was there was some harsh penalties there but to act like it's across the board is that's ridiculous it's actually laughable and the students just sucking it in and oh man and you know and that's why in 2021 that's why we we still have it's it's racial it's differences that are causing this discrepancy in education these disparities uh give me a break no that's that's not why in 2021 the that because of laws that were in place in local areas in state states certain states in the antebellum period because of you know in the postbellum period the just lack of education that tended to exist in war -torn areas and this is the thing

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I'm thinking too I'm like man I mean thinking of even my own personal family story like there was there wasn't a lot of education period for white people and in the rural south in rural areas period but especially in the reconstruction uh time and and even after up through the depression there just weren't even up through world war ii there just wasn't a lot of opportunities like that for anyone black or white so it's like it this is such a uh such a skewed narrative and that's what you get from critical race theory it's it's ideology it just flattens everything and you're you're trained now to see the world as a student is being trained through this lens of everything breaks down into some kind of racial power dynamic it's just not accurate it's insulting to our intelligence but uh it's unfortunately what's passing these days for truth uh so um and that's the