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

Announcements and a Sad Update on Shelly Martin

Welcome everyone to the Conversations That Matter podcast for a hopefully short episode. I want to get to a few news items. We're going to talk about some social justice infiltration into institutions of higher learning and Christianity, as well as actually a very good point 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 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 I'm going to take it in the same way maybe he wanted me to, but I want to start off though with a few announcements and really on a sad note, 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 Joyful Patriarchy Wife account on Twitter and Gab and Facebook. The person behind that, Shelly Martin, has actually passed away and 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.

She was very generous, gave my wife some things to bless her and I was surprised when I heard what was happening, but the explanation is given here by her son Paul Martin that essentially she had been diagnosed three months ago with breast cancer and it was too late.

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 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 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 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 Martins.

CRT Conference and Upcoming Travel

So I wanted to let you know about that. Also another announcement, there is a CRT conference, Critical Race Theory conference in a good way, not a bad way, so examining Critical Race Theory, being critical of Critical Race Theory, coming up this particular Saturday at 9am and it's meeting at Rocky Springs PCA and this is in, let's see, 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.

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 I'm sorry I can't go because I have a memorial service myself this Sunday for an uncle who passed away this year and I'm going to be gone actually, I'm going to 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 going to be a big deal and so there's a lot going on with me, but anyway, it's going to be good, even though I can't make it, it's in Harrisville, Pennsylvania, yeah Harrisville too, man I bet my relative 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 Scott David Allen is going to be there who's written a good book on social justice, Jesse Gistan Stand is going to be there, pastor of Grace Bible Church in California, I'm not as familiar with him but I think it'll be a good time for you all and 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 let's start with some news stories here, the SBC disfellowships church over alleged racism, so this was broken by the Evangelical Dark Web, that's Ray Fava's website, he does a great job, I actually met him earlier this year, great guy, and really there's not a lot of details here, but I figured 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, it was the chairman of the credentials committee who said well, we've got to figure out what a pastor is basically at the meeting last summer because I'm summarizing here obviously, but maybe there's a place for women to serve under the title of pastor without holding the office or something like that, and there are churches, very liberal churches, I remember earlier this year I was looking for something totally unrelated and stumbled upon this SBC church that was gay affirming 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 SBC and they've changed, and so the credentials committee has that reputation, but also in the SBC there's been these fake or false assumptions, accusations of racism, FBC Naples being a prime example, and so now you have the credentials committee, to 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's discrimination, but there's a lack of cooperation, 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 what is this, do you think this is a big nothing burger, and I think that alone says there's a problem in the SBC when there's just an assumption immediately like was this really discrimination, the mistrust, the onus is on the credentials committee to try to basically prove it, so I don't know anything about this church, I'd be curious 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, I'm not gonna lie, but we don't know, so I can't really comment more on it, but is this a precedent for what could be coming, could churches be disfellowshipped or could they be kicked out of the convention because maybe they're not quite woke enough, 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, William Wolfe gave a speech at National Conservative Conference, talked about this effort to try to prevent 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 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, 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 Christian understanding of how a society should function, oftentimes what happens is those ideas get categorized according to bad motivations, so even loving your family too much now, that 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 somehow an unhealthy pursuit of power, or breaking from what 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, 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, and I'll read it for you, Christians, if your political ideology is your measure of Christian orthodoxy, your ideology has become idolatry, and then he quotes 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 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 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 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 than 2020 when it was Donald Trump in office, and it was all against the man, right, and Mike Kelsey was singing a different tune then, well now, 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 things are crazier right now, against God's law than they've ever been, as far as, I mean, sexual ethics and the breakdown of our national identity, our family identity, we're really under attack, and there's some silver linings, Roe v. Wade being overturned, but there's, even with that though, there's, the left is really making an aggressive pro-abortion push, 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, I haven't seen that before, but there's a real good verse evil thing going on, and yet this is the context in which 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, Jesus is saying my kingdom doesn't spread through fighting, that's not the way that this is done, and it's, the kingdom of God, as his parables taught, was spread through conversion, 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, I suppose, that is advocating Christian law, but you can't force people into being Christians, and it also, I wonder about his first part here, you know, if your political ideology is the measure of your Christian orthodoxy, who says that?

Oh, John, you say that. No, I don't. I say, and I think if people are, the people I've heard articulate it, this relationship between religion and politics, from our side, from evangelical 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, this is what 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 force speakers on private platforms is incompatible with rights of conscience, nationalism threatens liberty and justice, so equivocation between nationalism and religious supremacy, same thing, David French, and these things are threatening religious liberty.

Religious Liberty, Political Power, and the Limits of Conscience

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, 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, Christianity is, if you believe, as David French says he does, that Christianity is the truth, then you would want 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 constitution at least, we can do this with localism and federalism, but there needs to be at least some respect given to God.

We still, 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 say that these things are symbols of religious supremacy? I don't think he would.

I mean, 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, 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 is a respect for conscience that has developed, but show me the other religions, even secular humanism, atheism, show me what system doesn't have some kind of limitation to what private people can do.

I mean, even basic laws against murder, and that, there's a principle here, a religious principle, that humans are worth something, that you can't just take a life of someone in an unjustified way. I'm thinking too of just the fact that there were blasphemy laws on the books.

George Washington's army had blasphemy laws. Anti-pornography laws were in effect until very recently. We're talking about the 1970s, 80s. There were still anti-pornography laws that were enforceable, and in some places, especially in the South, were enforced, so this idea that there should just be, it's limitless, you can kind of do what you want, there is nothing like that.

We have to be, it, this is a fairy tale, that's what I'm saying, this is a fairy tale, but what's the effect of this? The nationalism is a threat to the American way, to liberty and justice, and national, what's that, religious supremacy, so it's a disincentive, and William Wolfe talked about this on the podcast yesterday, and I just think these are good illustrations of it.

I just happened to see these, people sent 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, I'd like to, let's see, is this the order I want to do this in?

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

Vanderbilt’s Transgender Clinic and the Profit Motive

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. Shane Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game.

She emphasized that it's a big money maker, especially because the surgeries require a lot of follow-ups. Those are quotes, big money maker, follow-up, yes, quotes. She does talk about this. It's, it's, you can make a lot of money.

Vanderbilt was apparently concerned that not all of its staff would be on board. Dr. 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, 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 misgendering. Vanderbilt takes their trans buddies available to children too, makes their trans buddies available.

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 archive screenshot there.

And there's a video from Vanderbilt Psychiatry's 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, Vanderbilt has explained in this video presentation by plastic surgeon, Julian Winokur, and physician's assistant, Shailen Vanderblomen, will happily perform double mastectomies on adolescent girls.

This is crazy. And I mean, this is in Nashville, where the 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, 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 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 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, I don't know how you can make the case now, of all times, that now is the time to really take your foot off that gas pedal on the political stuff, because Jesus doesn't care about it as much.

No, 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 basic moralities, God's law, and it's good for all people, not just for Christians.

Critical Race Theory in Christian Higher Education

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, I recognize the name because he helped edit a book with Jarvis Williams called Removing the Stain of Racism from the Southern Form of Critical Race Theory, and that book, when they edited it, they were both at the 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. Matt Hall is now in California at a university, and I believe Curtis Woods, if I'm not mistaken, 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. 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.

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, I think, see it, because they're young impressionable students there to learn, and this is, and you parents send them thinking they're getting a good Christian education, and they're getting this kind of stuff.

Let me play it for you.

Had and how I've gotten here, the Lord has placed me in both predominantly African-American spaces with my black church experience, like I went to an 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.

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 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 I could say about that with sometimes people who are woke, especially minorities. I've noticed a tendency sometimes to take on oppression or experiences that really aren't their own, but they try to kind of, in a second-handed way, take those identities on.

I don't know if he's doing that. What's significant, really, about that statement? It seems to me like the assumption is that, you know, hey, I got some experience with racism.

It began to give me a broader scope and view of race in education, and race in education, how those things have walked alongside one another since the 1600s.

Could you possibly give a brief overview of what that relationship would be?

You can't disconnect it. You can't disconnect those two things. In the founding of the 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, 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, February 25th, 2021, when we look at the inequity, 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 what 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 to just say, well, in America, you would be, if you were Black and you learned that you would be, what do you say, dismembered?

So cruel and unusual things would happen to you. Yeah, there are circumstances. I mean, you can point to lynchings and things like, I mean, you could point to things that happened, but generally those weren't the result of learning, but there was certainly a disincentive to learn, to learn to read in the antebellum period, just because that was viewed as, they would be ripe for literature coming from more extreme abolitionist types that would want, look at the postal crisis, you'll see what 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 that was the real reason that that was kind of frowned upon by many governments, but there were exceptions to it, and that wasn't the across the board, in America, you were dismembered if you were Black and you learned stuff.

No, there was people who were Black that were educated, and I mean, how did you get even thousands of slave holders in the South who were 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, I mean, you could be killed. And I mean, there were penalties. I don't know that the death penalty was, 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. Oh man. And that's why in 2021, that's why we still have, it's racial, it's differences that are causing this discrepancy in education, these disparities.

Give me a break. No, that's not why in 2021, because of laws that were in place in local areas in certain states in the antebellum period, because of, in the postbellum period, the just lack of education that tended to exist in war-torn areas.

And this is the thing 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 in, in the rural South, in rural areas period, but especially in the reconstruction time.

And, and even after up through their 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, 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 it's unfortunately what's passing these days for truth. So, and that's the Marxist element of it. That's the, the haves and the have nots element of it.

And so Dr. Jones is Dean of the School of Education and part of the recently formed Kingdom Diversity Council. Great. Cedarville has a Kingdom Diversity Council. I did not know that. We have church fathers in this clip set before us, and I'm not sure how many African-American church fathers are set before people to actually think about.

Let's talk about Absalom Jones. So, and I watch, I watch this whole interviews. Basically, I'm just going to summarize that Kevin Smith is making the point to the student that basically there's like a hidden history.

You're, you're not being taught the history of minority groups and their theological contributions. You're being taught, and I actually, it's funny, what Preacher Clip says, the patristic era ended centuries before Christians reached the Americas.

I had the same thought when I heard Kevin Jones say this. I think what Kevin Jones is saying, he's talking about African-American church fathers. He's talking about, he's not talking about the patristic era, but I had the same thought because generally when you talk about the church fathers, you're talking about the early church or the patristic era.

So it's probably just sloppy on his part, but the whole thing's sloppy. And, but okay, if you, the thing is you generally, when you're doing historical theology, church history, you're generally going through church history and you're looking at significant contributions, significant controversies, creeds, movements.

You're going to talk somewhere along the line about Christianity in the United States, which would include the ethnic Christianity. I mean, generally it's mentioned at least that there's historical black denominations and part of the reasons that they were formed.

And it's not, when you have 2000 years of history, guys, you have to do some, you have to make some editing and it's not racism that motivates this. You have to figure out what actually matters and what doesn't.

And it's not that these people don't matter at all, but when you're trying to get a wide breadth of history, there's no reason for you to get into the weeds on Absalom Jones. So it's not like there's something being kept from you.

In fact, if you focus on Absalom Jones to the detriment of the major church fathers or significant events in church history, then that is to your peril. So he also gets some other clips in here of Kevin Jones from 2018, where he botches scripture and he uses the story of Lydia inviting Paul to her house to say, often we do not want to meet black and brown people in their spaces.

People often say, Dr. Jones, what are the top two or three books about African-American history I should read? My response, he says, is you need to read two or three a year because you're behind, you're behind.

At Cedarville University, he played it closer to the vest, what Preacher Clip says, and mostly just pointed to subversive material for further study. In 2020, during a panel discussion on CRT, Jones plugged Ken Dee's Stamped from the Beginning, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and more without qualification.

Let's just listen to that clip. There's so many clips here. Which clip do you want to go to? We'll listen to this one.

Um, I think Stamped from the Beginning is a good one to pick up. It's good. It's dense. It's an excellent read. I think The Color of Law is a great read. The New Jim Crow is a great read. And since you did three, I'll do four.

Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria and other conversations about race? So those are not just anecdotal moments.

Yeah, I mean, The New Jim Crow, I've read that one. And that's is, they do rely on critical race theorists. And it's just bad history, too. I did actually, Phil Vischer's video relied heavily on that book on systemic racism.

And I took it apart in Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict, a whole section on that. There's actually a book, someone wrote a book, I'm trying to remember the name of it now, against The New Jim Crow.

Man, I can't remember the name of it now. But anyway. So yeah, and Kendi, I mean, he's a pop CRT advocate. So this, and I have read excerpts from The Color of Law. That's where you get the redlining narrative and stuff.

That's from The Color of Law. So it says that last year he promoted Thabiti Anabwile's Just Gospel Conference. Yeah, that's pretty, that's a woke fest. A really weird moment from the same chapel. I didn't know how many black folks wrote books until I got to Kentucky State University because none of my teachers ever told me.

So anyway, this is the thread that Woke Preacher Eclipse put up. And the only reason I'm bringing it up, it's not to get down on Kevin Jones. It's just to say that if you're at Cedarville University, this is something that if you're a parent sending your student there, just be aware of this.

This stuff is there. So we could get into the weeds. I don't think it's necessary today. A lot of these concepts we've already addressed in other podcasts, but just to inform you that Cedarville is not necessarily safe.

Liberty University and a DEI Summit

And last but not least, is this last? No, not quite last. But I wanted to just let you know, this has been on my list for a long time. Someone sent it to me. This is from the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance.

And this is an event that already took place, but it's literally a diversity, equity, and inclusion summit, literally. And it's sponsored by, yeah, you guessed it, Liberty University. And guests, speakers even from Liberty University, presenting partner, Liberty University right there.

Liberty University is definitely not out of the woods for anyone who thinks that they're not. And there's other things I could share with you, more behind the scenes stuff. But here's the thing with Liberty.

It is such a big place. It's a mixed bag. There are certain departments that are good. There are certain professors that are good. You just gotta, even there, you gotta watch out. It's not free of social justice thinking.

It's there. It definitely is. And this is just one evidence that if they are willing to sponsor, put the school in a position of sponsoring a diversity, equity, inclusion workshop, then something's off.

So just be warned, just be aware. Hopefully everyone out there is already taking the precautions they ought to, but just for your information. Now, I wanted to end with this. This is actually a really good point that Mark Dever makes.

And Phil Johnson tweeted this out. And Phil Johnson, he didn't take like a big issue with it, but he just basically said, well, I'll play the video,.

And then we'll look at what Phil said. You said entities are a separate thing. At the same time, the root illnesses in our churches do eventually work their way into our entities. And well,.

I think we, those of us who are more like, we're strong biblical inheritors, we believe everything the Bible is true. We tend to, we have some kind of tendency, and maybe it's written political philosophy, Jonathan, I don't know, to attack entities like they're the problems.

And I am confident if Southern Seminary ever taught liberalism, it is the fault of the churches in Louisville that let those men be members in their churches. I have to say it is so distracting.

Watching this with Jonathan Lehman frozen in this posture. I don't know. I don't get it.

It's, what is that? Because if those churches would have excommunicated those people, like they should have done, and like when they were founded, they would have all been in favor of doing, the poor trustees at Southern Seminary would never have had to have done that work.

So you see, it's the churches. We can come to the convention and throw all the stones we wanted entity heads and feel very good about ourselves. But brothers, I'm telling you,.

It is in the... Where's his hand? What? I don't... I'm sorry I'm so distracted, but I'm just, I'm noticing this. Jonathan Lehman seems permanently stuck in a, in a very contemplative, for those listening, it's hard to describe this, but he has his knees crossed, and he's got his hand, it looks like, on Mark Dever's back, maybe touching Mark Dever's chair, like he's trying to get his attention to be like, I want to talk now.

But he's got this contemplative look, like he's trying to process what Mark Dever's saying. It's the kind of posture that I would have taken when I was young, trying to get my parents' attention when they're busy with something.

And like, come on, mom, like, please stop talking. I really want to talk to you. So anyway, I'm sorry. I just, I had to point it out. I shouldn't have. Anyway, now no one's listening to what Mark Dever's saying.

All right, try to listen to the last few seconds here.

And the church is the frontline for redemption and against sin. That's where the real battle is fought. Entities are not unimportant, but the INB and NAM will always be a reflection of our churches in America.

So if there's anything you do not like in the INB or NAM, look in the mirror and look around your own association, see if you're building friendships with other pastors in your area, and if you're able to help them and edify them.

Okay, so how dare you? This is a Mark Driscoll moment. No, this is Mark Dever reaming out people. This, where did this happen? This must have been at an SBC event for, they need to look at themselves.

You know, they shouldn't be feeling good as if their motives, he's questioning their motives. You know, you feel really good about yourselves questioning the entity heads when it's the churches that need to hold people accountable.

So here's Phil Johnson's response. How about both? There's more than one frontline. It's true that most of our energy should be focused in the local church, but contending earnestly for the faith is a duty.

In an era of drifting decline, the chief change agent should not be exempt from critique. And I agree with Phil Johnson here, but I also agree with Mark Dever in this sense. I think he's absolutely right.

If the churches were functioning properly, we wouldn't have these problems. We wouldn't have Kevin Jones doing what he's doing at Cedarville. If the local churches and the churches that these people that teach there all go to were solid and biblical and it just wouldn't happen.

Someone said to me once that the SBC will not be taken back until people take back their local churches. And I think that's absolutely correct. If we don't have the guts to actually take a stand and the organizational skills to take a stand at our local church level, there's no way you can take back a larger denomination.

And it is a sign of failing churches when you have these bigger entities doing what they're doing. Now, that said, I mean, this cancer of CRT and social justice came in from the institutions. It didn't originate in the churches, but the churches have no immune system by which to fight it, and that's a big problem.