SBC 2021: Diversity Agenda, The Gospel, and Abortion

Conversations That Matter

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The Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. It is the afternoon edition. I don't usually do two podcasts in one day, but as promised, we're doing a second one today.

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We're gonna talk about the Southern Baptist Convention since it did meet and what happened this afternoon.

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We did one in the morning, we're doing one in the afternoon, actually evening now. But we'll talk about the events of this afternoon.

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I've watched hours of the Southern Baptist Convention, more than I ever really wanna watch. I haven't seen everything, but I'll give you some highlights.

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We're also gonna talk about the presidential election and why it turned out the way it did. And we'll hopefully get

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Judd Saul on later on as well to talk about his experience. And he'll give us kind of the temperature of the room there.

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So let's start here. I want to talk about some of the highlights, just some interesting things.

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So I think the best place to probably start would be this exchange. It's about five minutes long. And it's a debate on,

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I believe it's Resolution 2. And I'll read that for you here, or at least part of it. Just give you the gist of what's going on with Resolution 2.

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And I'll show you a little debate that happened on the floor. This is Resolution 2 on the sufficiency of scriptural for race and racial reconciliation.

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As you know, Conservative Baptist Network had a much better resolution that they were submitting that denounced critical race theory.

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Well, this, of course, this resolution is just as limp -wristed and vague and weak as they come.

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Sidesteps the issue as much as they possibly can. It doesn't actually address the issue that's dividing

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Southern Baptists. And you can only do that for so long. I think Al Mohler is learning that. You can only try to stand over a fault line for so long before you're gonna be doing a split and you'll fall in.

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Here is the relevant section. It goes on about the nature of scripture, the nature of man, why

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Christians are opposed to racism, et cetera. Let me read for you the relevant section here, though. We reject any theory or worldview that sees the primary problem of humanity as anything other than sin against God, and the ultimate solution is anything other than redemption found only in Christ.

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That's what is connected to Resolution 9. That's supposed to satisfy the

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Conservatives, right? Problem is, both the Progressives or the social justice advocates and the

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Conservatives both would agree with this statement. It actually doesn't resolve anything.

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There's no clarity. It just kicks the can down the road. And be it further resolved, we therefore reject any theory or worldview that denies that racism, oppression, or discrimination is rooted ultimately in anything other than sin, and be it further resolved that understanding we live in a fallen world, we reaffirm.

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Okay, let me stop right here first before I talk about what they reaffirm. They use the term theory or worldview.

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Of course, not the term analytical tools, right? Because that's the whole crux of the issue. Can you use these analytical tools from critical race theory or not?

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They're replaying Resolution 9 here in a way because they're being silent on the controversial aspect of Resolution 9 while affirming the things that Resolution 9 said that were not really that controversial.

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So they just sidestepped the whole thing. Then they say that we reaffirm the 1995 Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th anniversary of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, which includes that we apologize to all African Americans, all of them, every single one of them, apparently, right, for condoning and or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime, and we genuinely repent of racism, of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously, applying this disposition to every instance of racism.

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And remember, Phil Johnson asked this question. How often do you have to renew this apology? And he was told at the

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Shepherd's Q &A in 2018, well, they've only done it once, only in 1995.

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And that, of course, was not true. They've come at it from so many different angles over the years, and it seems like every convention since 95, just about, they need something related to this.

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So now they are reaffirming their 1995 pledge, which was supposed to end it there, but they're kicking the can down the road.

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And that's about it. It's limp -wristed, it's just feckless. It doesn't actually, they're trying to focus on a unity that does not exist.

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It's an illusion. There is no unity. And the whole tone of the convention, every other prayer was for unity.

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But unity around what? That's the problem. If you're not gonna talk about the things that are controversial, that are dividing you, then how can you have unity?

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That's the whole problem here. Look at a family, look at a small church, or an organization, or even if you're a minister of music.

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I had to do this. What if there's a disagreement on the praise team or the music ministry? Any of these smaller areas of social relationships we live in and work in, how do you resolve something if you're never going to bring up the problem, if you brush it under the rug?

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It's just, it's not functional. It's not Christian. It's so dysfunctional, in fact.

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I just wonder whether or not, I mean, you have so many seminarians, or seminary professors and bigwigs who should know their theology and pastors.

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Where are they getting this idea that they can just sidestep these things? These are fundamental issues.

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It behooves me, but that's what's happening. And I wish they'd read

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Ken Sandy's book or something on conflict resolution, The Peacemaker.

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I just, they probably have. It's just, this is what they wanna do. Try to maintain the illusion of unity.

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So that was the resolution on that particular issue. And here's a floor exchange that happened in relation to it.

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Check it out. Hello, Mr. President. My name is Kevin Apperson from North Las Vegas Baptist Church in North Las Vegas, Nevada.

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I come to speak against resolution two due to insufficient, vague, nebulous, unclear, and ambiguous language that speaks concerning the content of critical race theory, but never has the courage to address it by its name, critical race theory.

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I, like many people, have flown a great distance to address an ideology which tells me that I am inherently guilty because of the melanin content of my skin.

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I am either, according to this theory, an ignorant oppressor or a conscious oppressor because of that melanin content.

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Two years ago, we approved critical race theory as a teaching tool.

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And now we need to address it by its name. And this resolution does not do so.

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Local school systems address it by critical race theory. Governors call it critical race theory.

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State school systems call it critical race theory. If we do not have the courage to call a skunk a skunk, let's not say anything.

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I think... Boop. Does the committee wish to respond?

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I very much would like to respond. You may. So, fellow messengers, let's just put it on the table.

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It's time to find out who we are and where we're headed. I'm gonna say this bluntly and plainly.

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If some people were as passionate about the gospel as they were critical race theory, we'd win this world to Christ tomorrow.

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When I was a student at Stetson University, my first semester, I read the New Testament through 27 times.

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I read the Bible through every year for probably the last 40 years. I found a lot about race.

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I found a lot about race. There's only one race, the human race.

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And it's all, we're all created in the image of God. I found a lot about racial reconciliation.

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We've been given the ministry of reconciliation, not just reconcile God to man, but people to people. Oh, but I didn't find

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CRT in the Bible. Well, correction, I did find it.

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It stands for Christ Returns Triumphantly. We've got a choice.

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We have a choice. Yes, sir. The chair wants to remind you that when one messenger is speaking, other messengers should not be shouting over top of them.

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You can get to a microphone and have your turn to speak. But let's respect one another and honor. My brothers and sisters, we are not the 2019 resolutions committee.

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We are the 2021 resolutions committee. And we decided we're not going to limit anything to just one theory.

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By the way, the same state schools that are kind of up in arms and some of these people that are against rhetorical race theory are teaching evolution to your kids every single day.

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What we have done in this resolution is say, you know what, let's just settle this issue once and for all yesterday, today, and forever.

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We reject any theory that goes against the worldview that our problem is anything other than sin and the solution is anything other than salvation.

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So I close with this. There's a world watching out there. This is exactly what they want.

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This is exactly what they want to put on the front pages of their paper. Well, as the country song goes, let's give them something to talk about.

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We can either build bridges and tear down walls or we can put up walls and destroy bridges.

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Let me be plain. It doesn't take a lot of effort to blow up a bridge, one stick of dynamite, you'll do it.

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But to build a bridge, it takes hard work. It takes sacrifice.

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And it takes a commitment to reach to the other side, to the people that are not with us yet, but we're gonna do everything we can to get them there.

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And I ask you to support this resolution. So if you're a fan of the word of God, logic, and reason, you probably heard what

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James Merritt just said. I guess he's the chairman of the committee for resolutions.

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And you probably thought, how did that even address the objection that was given? It didn't.

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It also sidestepped the objection that was given. And it also shamed the person who raised the objection.

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Never answered why they didn't name critical race theory by name. He brought up stupid red herrings, like there's people teaching your kids evolution if they go to public school.

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Yeah, so why don't you have a resolution against evolution and Darwinism or something? Irrelevant.

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Almost insinuating that someone who would have an objection is trying to cause division and put up walls and you know what?

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There are some walls you do need to put up between error and truth. And I think that's what the objection was about.

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Let's be clear so we know where the walls are. If you just knock down every wall, then I guess you just let everything in.

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Why even have a convention? Why not just be totally inclusive, equitable, and diverse?

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Just have every shade of theology represented. Well, of course they wouldn't want that. They're Southern Baptists, right?

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They have beliefs. And that's the point. If we have beliefs, major councils of church history had to separate.

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They had to build walls. They had to show this is what we believe as opposed to the error over here that is being used to confuse people about what we believe.

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So this is, I'm just glad that James Merritt wasn't at any of the church councils,

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Council of Nicaea, Chalcedon. I'm just glad he wasn't there for any of that because the call for unity and the shaming of people that would wanna bring clarification is sick.

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But yet you have all these people clapping, and that's one of the major concerns. How can you stay in a convention where these are the people who show up, even after years of people like myself and others raising the alarm, trying to get the alarm out there?

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I remember when I first started talking about this, it was very difficult. I had some people in institutions reach out that had experienced things, but overall, most people who were just regular church -going

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Christians that weren't in seminaries thought, this is nuts, this can't be happening. They thought maybe

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I was a slanderer or I was making, most people didn't think that. I thought I was maybe embellishing or making something up.

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Well, now, obviously, I wasn't. If anything, I was probably being tame on a lot of what I said. And we've reached a point that, unfortunately, these errors have gone on for so long, for so many years, without proper response, because people are afraid, they're timid, they're vague, they wanna live in the vagueness, they wanna run for the middle, they don't wanna be seen as on the outer edge of being extreme, that people have been conditioned, and it's the boiling frog thing.

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And so James Merritt's answer there is shameful, but what's worse and what's more shameful, and this is what

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I want you to see, is the clapping. The clapping for what James Merritt is saying, which makes absolutely no sense when you think about it, has nothing to do with the objection.

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Throwing out red herrings, grandstanding, shaming opposition, these are all tactics that should be embarrassing to James Merritt, but they're not, they're not, they're cheered.

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We are watching the breakdown of communication completely. Let's talk about something else.

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Let's talk a little bit about the gospel, because the overall theme here seems to be, of the convention, seems to be unity and the gospel, right?

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The gospel is the main thing that we have, and we need to, we have unity in that, and I mean, you just heard it from James Merritt, really.

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You know, we don't need to, I guess, define ourselves against these worldly philosophies as much as we just need to categorically kind of reject them or their worldviews, and then we're just about the gospel, and unity, unity, unity, and if anyone wants us to define what we're talking about, we'll just say unity some more, and shame them for even asking the question.

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The problem is, what gospel are we talking about? Let me play for you a clip by J .D.

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Greer, and I want you to think about what J .D. Greer is saying here and I will give some commentary on the danger of this.

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The gospel is the north star of our convention. For 175 years, it has guided us, exposing our errors and correcting our faults.

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Yes, we had tragically inconsistent and sinful beginnings, with our forefathers even affirming the right of slave owners to be ordained to ministry, but eventually the gospel corrected that.

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A few years ago, we were confronted with the painful fact that many of our churches had failed in responding rightly to sexual abuse, but again, the gospel corrected, is correcting that, teaching us that we can only honor a savior who laid down his life to protect the sheep by doing the same, and we got much farther to go in this, but my point is, that's what the gospel always does, and that's why it has to remain the center.

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The gospel is the message that the God who had everything, humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on the cross to purchase us from our sins, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes, he became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich, and that gospel,

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Paul says, not only saves our souls, it guides us into truth. It is of first importance, the apostle says.

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No, we are not a perfect people, but our gospel and our Bible that holds that gospel, that is perfect, and if we keep these things at the center, then eventually we're gonna become the people that God has called us to be.

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We might be slow and dull and hard of heart sometimes, but eventually the gospel will get us there.

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The gospel, the gospel, the gospel. As you can see, J .D.

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Greer really likes using the term gospel. He's always done that, gospel above all, and then he puts all these social issues into it.

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Now, here's two he put into it. One is the idea that slave owners can be ordained for ministry, and that was a belief that people early on in the

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Southern Baptist Convention held that the gospel then corrected, and the convention came to its senses finally and realized this is wrong.

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Now, of course, this isn't even really a biblical ethic necessarily. I mean, Fine Leman's house was a house church, someone who did own slaves, and if you wanna know more about that, this is a book that I've been reading lately on first century slavery, and it's quite interesting, and you'll find out that a lot of the aspects, a lot of aspects of first century slavery in the

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Roman Empire were actually much worse than even what we know of the antebellum period, so if you want to make that argument, you have a mountain to climb to try to make it, and you're not gonna get there.

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I'm just telling you right now, you're not gonna get there, but more importantly, there's a categorical issue going on here. The gospel corrects this ethical issue that they had, right?

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So if that's the case, right, if it's the gospel that corrected this, how did the gospel correct it?

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Did they not have a proper understanding of the gospel? That's a problem. I mean, they're 1689 Baptist, but they didn't have a proper understanding of the gospel.

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How could they, how could we call them Christians then? Or to what degree was this severe?

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Because they failed at a moral point according to J .D. Greer. Again, not really according to scripture, according to our modern sensibilities and presentist concerns.

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These men, because they held this idea that I guess you could be a pastor and have slaves at the same time, which is something you find in the

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Bible, they were somehow out of step with the gospel, not with a

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Christian ethic, mind you, but with the gospel. This is really loose language and it's dangerous language because it's the kind of thing that Paul talks about in Galatians.

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These are the kind of people that would add something to the gospel. Yeah, you have grace, you have grace through faith and believing in the finished work of Christ for salvation, to be in a right relationship with God.

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You have the atonement, you have all these great things, but you know what, you just gotta be circumcised or you know what, you just, you can't believe or give any aid to anyone who would want to be a pastor or ordained and also a slave owner, something like that.

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You can't, me saying right now, the Southern Baptist Convention is in process with sexual abuse.

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So they're getting there, but they're not quite there. The gospel has been the corrective, really because the debate right now is over what the

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Southern Baptist Convention is. What is it in and of itself?

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Ontologically, what is the Southern Baptist Convention? That's the debate right now. It's not like you have one group that's against sexual abuse and another group that's for sexual abuse.

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That's how they want to portray it. Or one group that's pro -slavery. You should laugh at that, as if someone, as if there's a whole group of people that want to bring back chattel slavery or something.

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There's no serious plan. There's no one that thinks that. It's pretty universal that everyone thinks that that wasn't a good idea and it's really good that it's gone, myself included.

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But they want to make this black and white dichotomy, that there's these two groups of people. So on the abuse thing, you have those who are for it and those who are against it in this simplified social justice version of the issue and the gospel standing with those who are against it.

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How about this? How about there are people who have a disagreement on the nature of the

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Southern Baptist Convention and what its authority is in situations of abuse and to what extent it can exercise authority because of what it is.

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It's a cooperation of churches. And you have others who want to centralize authority. That's what the debate's over.

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If you want to just kind of put some stakes in the ground and say, here's where one group is standing, here's where another group is standing.

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And you know what? Both groups on that particular issue that just what

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I just said, you can have two different groups that disagree on that and can both be

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Christians and have the gospel. But once you start saying that, you know what? This gospel is this corrective thing and it's evolving us into correcting this issue.

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What are you saying about the gospel? Is it because more people are getting saved?

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What is it about the gospel people are realizing that's causing them to say, oh, Southern Baptist Convention, it should be more centralized so they can deal with sexual abuse.

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You are outside of the category of gospel and you're in the category of law.

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That's the problem. And that was the problem in Galatians, mixing law with gospel. A lot of people didn't catch it. I don't think probably 99 .9

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% of that, well, maybe that's an exaggeration. Okay, 98 % of that room. I don't think they got it. They're giving ovations to J .D.

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Greer as he's saying these things. I cut a lot of them out. It's nauseating. But why not just say we're popeless

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Catholics at this point? Why not just say we have these list of ethical things and we're just gonna say these are also part of the gospel somehow?

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Or, I mean, it's not even fair because the Roman Catholics in theory at least have a tradition that kind of guides them. Southern Baptists are unhinging themselves from not just the

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Bible and categories of gospel and law, but from whatever tradition they have as well.

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They're more free floating than Catholics in some ways. In the direction they're going.

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And no, I'm not saying that their soteriology at this point is worse or anything like that. But it's like they're trying to get there.

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So that's what he said about the gospel. He also, he added in this. I wanna just play this for you. He said this about, well, actually, you know what?

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Let me before I get there, we'll go on this in a minute. But I wanted to also read something for you here as well because he's wrong on the formation of the convention anyways.

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And this is kind of like annoying. I've talked about it before. Let me just give you one quote. I don't wanna spend a lot of time on this, but William B.

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Johnson, first president of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1845. When the Southern Baptist Convention formed, first speech made, here's what he says.

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The christening of the convention, right? We can never be a party to any arrangement for monopolizing the gospel.

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Any arrangement which like that of the autocratical interdict of the North would first drive us from our beloved colored people.

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Our beloved colored people. Yeah, he said that. I know they were all monsters, right? That didn't have the gospel or something, but that's what he's saying.

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Of whom they prove that they know nothing comparatively. And from the much wronged aborigines of this country.

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That would be the Native Americans or the indigenous people. Yeah, he says they're much wronged.

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Interesting. And then cut us off from the whitening fields of the heathen harvest labor. One of the biggest issues, and there's a bunch of them, but one of the big ones that drove the

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Southern Baptist Convention to form was the missionary board in Boston disobeying the rules of the convention.

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And they believe the rules of scripture by claiming slavery was a sin. And they would not ordain anyone to the ministry who was a slave owner.

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And they said this isn't biblical. Now you can have a disagreement, you can have a social disagreement on it. You can say that it's bad or whatever.

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You can wanna change public policy. But you can't say that that's a biblical thing. And you can't call it a sin in and of itself.

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You can say all kinds of sins are attached to slavery. You can do all kinds of things. But you can't go beyond what the

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Bible says. And that was the issue. One of the issues. And you can see here that they're saying, look, we pay for this cooperative.

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Well, I forget what they call it at that time. But that we pay to send missionaries off. And to cooperate with one another.

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And now you're telling us that missionaries, who people who put into this to pay for missionaries to go forward, some of them can't be missionaries themselves or be ordained because they're slave owners.

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This isn't biblical to say that. There's all kinds of reasons. Remember, slavery at this time, a lot of people have modern state assumptions about this.

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But it was something inherited. It was something that was, it was something like Jefferson said, we have the dog by the ears, right?

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There's not a lot of whole good options right now. And it wasn't something that everyone got together, voted on and said, let's have slavery.

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And then we had slavery. It was something that happened organically over time. And then it was an inherited reality. Some people inherited slaves.

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Some people, there were all kinds of different circumstances that led to people being slave owners.

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Robert E. Lee is one I use quite often. He just inherited his wife's slaves and he freed them.

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And he couldn't though, because of debts and so forth and so on, because they couldn't take care of themselves with some of the skills that they had.

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He had to have them work until the time that he was able to afford freeing them.

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But these are the kinds of complexities people in the modern era don't appreciate at all. They don't understand. And they have a ideological kind of understanding and a presences understanding.

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They just condemn people from the past with. J .D. Greer does it here. And he gets an ovation for it.

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Maybe it makes people feel really good to think that they must be way better than their great, great, great, great, great grandfathers. Because they're completely ignorant and they don't think about all the ways they participate in maybe sweatshop labor, maybe paying taxes to a country that I don't know, gives money to Planned Parenthood.

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Maybe a welfare system that doesn't even have dignity in it because there's not work and there's generational welfare.

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Totally anti -biblical. But we pay into that. And there's Christian social workers. I mean, is that something?

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Should they be ordained for ministry? I mean, there's so many things you can pick at today to just that maybe in a hundred years, someone's gonna come around and say, oh, they were monsters back then.

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And, but there's no understanding of any of this. There's no thinking through any of this. And that's, it's a sign in my mind of where the

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Southern Baptist Convention is. There isn't thinking. It's very ideological. And I can perceive that to be a very big problem.

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Now here's what J .D. Greer says about why the diversity agenda that he promotes is what he promotes.

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I made diversity a goal, not because it's cool, woke, or trendy. It is because the largest growth we've seen in the

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SBC has been among black, Latino, and Asian congregations. So as diversity is going up, church plants, baptisms, every other metric is going way down.

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And we're supposed to think that's successful. This could be a self -fulfilling prophecy because they're putting their money behind these inner city initiatives and they want more diversity.

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That's a purposeful thing. So it could be a self -fulfilling prophecy. It's not that this is just happening and so we need to continue this.

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It's more like we're trying to make this happen. That's one of the things. The other thing is, his whole, after this he talks about platforming all these minorities and that that is basically how to do it.

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That's the snuck in bias that, well, if you're going to focus on this demographic, you must platform people from that demographic in these important positions to a point that it actually reflects even beyond the makeup, the demographic makeup of the

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Southern Baptist Convention along ethnic lines, if that's what you're doing, which is what they're doing. So this is important.

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This is what we have to do. But what about just not looking at that issue, not looking at ethnicity and just trying to get people who maybe meet the qualifications that the

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Bible gives us for elders? And maybe that should be the qualification and really not this other stuff that we're putting on there that the world happens to be doing in every other institution out there.

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Maybe he's saying, oh, I'm not woke, I'm not social justice. I'm just doing this because, well, we just, this is the group that's responding.

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Well, yeah, but that's the only group you're focused, not the only, but it's the main group you're focusing on or groups you're focusing on. It's also where the money's being poured into.

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Think of like the Kingdom Diversity Initiative at Southeastern. It's also completely pragmatic. It's also adding to the qualifications that are given in scripture.

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Why are we to think that this is a good idea when all the other metrics are going way down and diversity is going up?

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Does that cause anyone to wonder if there might be a relationship between the two? And it's not that diversity is bad.

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It's that maybe the mechanisms being employed to create diversity are bad. In fact, the guy that's leading worship,

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I could pull the picture, but I don't think I have time. The guy who's leading worship, I know there's been stories about him on, I think like Reformation Charlotte and some of these other blogs, really pro -Black

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Lives Matter guy. I mean, there's pictures of him with the raised fist and the shirt, I can't breathe and all that stuff.

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Really into it. And to the point that advertising it at the church, that, hey, I'm going to this

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BLM protest. As Christians, we should go to this.

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But that's somehow, that's okay. That is the kind of thing that gets smuggled into this promoting diversity.

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And we have to do it because it's a matter of survival, I guess, because the demographic changes.

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Not a biblical, that's not a biblical understanding at all. It's just, it's a pragmatic approach to all of this at best.

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And he also, let's see, there's another clip I wanted to play for you from J .D.

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Greer, yeah. All right, so we're going to play this other clip from J .D. Greer, which also touches on the gospel.

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But it's, just think about what I just mentioned about who they pick to do their music and just how every other institution seems to be doing this diversity agenda, including the

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Southern SBC, but yet they're not being political, right? That's just a gospel thing. But here's what

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J .D. Greer says about politics. Pastors, you know this, but one of the things that COVID revealed was that for many of our people, political identity mattered more than a gospel one.

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Church members drew lines and said, no, unless you approach this question exactly like I do, I'm leaving. And a lot of us had members cancel us because we didn't handle a cultural issue exactly like they thought we should.

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But Jesus never said cultural or political uniformity was the basis of church unity. Talk about an exercise in projection.

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So you're not allowed to disagree on the COVID stuff. You can close your church down for a year, that's totally fine. You should still have unity, even though you're not meeting and you're obeying, you're not obeying the basic command of scripture to meet.

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You can't, how do you have unity when you're not even meeting? It's so nonsensical. It's just, you're not even coming together in the unity that God wants, the spirit who gives gifts for you to use them to edify the body.

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You do that for a year and somehow that is, you're the one that has the problem.

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You're the one that's not unified if you leave that. And you're canceling people, which of course that makes no sense either.

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The cancel culture stuff is trying to take away someone's freedom of speech, their freedom to exercise their abilities in the market and make money and these kinds of things, to just cast them aside from society.

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Did anyone do that with their pastor? They're just trying to shame them and get them canceled and fired from their church so that they're destitute in the public square and have no money.

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And he's talking about people leaving their church and that's now cancellation apparently. But okay, this is just crazy though to me because he's one of the ones that's bringing in this equity, diversity, inclusion agenda straight from the world.

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And it's not biblical and that is a political, social thing from the world. But he smuggles that into, that's the gospel, that's part of the gospel.

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But yet anyone who wants to meet and obey the commands, like blatant command of scripture to meet, they don't have unity in the gospel.

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And again, he's getting ovations for this. It tells you where the Southern Baptists are at. These are the people running your denomination, Southern Baptists.

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Can you remain in a denomination where people like this are running it? I ask you, this is insane.

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This is what's going on there. This is a great deception that is going on. And it's so subtle.

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People don't even notice it. So that's why I'm trying to point some of this out to you. And here's another just slightly interesting resolution that came up.

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And I think this is playing off of those who wanted to resend Resolution 9. Check this out. My name is

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Jonathan Six. I am a messenger from Faith Baptist Church in Youngsville, North Carolina.

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Mr. President, if we are going to be in the business of rescinding previous conventions resolutions, then all past resolutions that do not reflect our biblical and theological convictions should be rescinded.

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Therefore, I move that the Southern Baptist Convention meeting on June 15 and 16 of 2021 in Nashville, Tennessee, rescind the following resolutions.

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Resolution on colored people dated 1849. Resolution on Negroes dated 1849.

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Resolution on missions dated 1855. Now we're not gonna go through all of these.

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This is, it's interesting to me though, because two things. Number one, the first thing, well, three things.

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Number one, the first thing is Resolution 9 was passed within our lifetime. So it was two years ago.

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Kind of like issues that are really hot topics in the culture right now. And that's why there would be an importance of rescinding it.

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Rescinding things from over 100 years ago, or yeah, well over 100 years ago, some of those things, would be just, it's not, it doesn't have the same relevance, right?

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Which is okay if you wanna do that, but I'm getting the sense he's playing off of the people who wanna rescind

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Resolution 9. The other thing is he was rattling off all these different resolutions. I doubt hardly anyone, including myself, knows exactly what he's talking about with all of those.

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You'd have to like spend the next half hour reading all of them. Let me read one for you though, because I was like, okay, what's the first one?

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I mean, maybe it's something just really racially insensitive that needs to be, in his mind, rescinded.

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Let me read it for you, because I was surprised when I read it. Not that surprised really, because I sort of understand the tactic, but I was kind of like, at first I was like, well, what's the issue that he's talking about?

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And I think I know what it is now. I'll explain it, but let me read it. Resolution on colored people is what it is titled.

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Not my words, it's the words of the title. May 1st, 1849, resolved that the pastors of our churches be affectionately requested to impart to the colored members of their charges.

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Okay, first of all, affection towards colored people. That's the term they use. It's an antiquated term.

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I'm not saying we should use that term, but that is a term that was used at the time, and it did not have a racialized, you know, insensitive element or anything like that, but I'm sure someone's gonna try to, probably someone who's doused in critical race theory is probably gonna try to correct me on that, but as far as I know, there's a lot of other words that could have been used back then that were not, and this was probably one of the better ones, but affection towards the colored members of their charges.

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So people in their congregations is what he's saying. The Southern Baptist Convention said, the people in your congregations who are black, other charges, information in relation to the

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African missions of the convention. Oh, the convention was trying to reach Africans. Isn't that interesting? Or isn't that what we just heard

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J .D. Greer basically saying, reaching out to minorities? This was one of the groups back then that they were specially trying to reach out to, and to secure their cooperation as far as practicable in sustaining them.

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So basically, here's what it's saying. Try to work with people who are black and be affectionate towards them, those who are members of your churches.

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Resolve that we regard the instruction of our colored population as a duty imperatively incumbent upon us as Southern Christians.

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Really interesting, because some of the places had laws against teaching people to read, and they're saying, no, we gotta instruct them.

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That we regard the preaching of the word of God as the best means of discharging this duty. Educating, this would include slaves, educating them.

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And we earnestly recommend our churches to devote a stated portion of their public exercises of that, to the particular instruction of colored persons in the truths of the

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Bible. Basically, pay for someone to go teach them. And look, at that time especially, and you could say today, there's been hundreds of years of all kinds of different cultures that have even come since then living together.

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Back then, I mean, you did have, you had some people fresh off the boat. You did have, by that time though,

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I mean, the slave trade is in theory ended by 1812. We know that, or 1808. We know that's not really true, but in theory.

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And so there was some time, but there was a very different culture that had also from different tribes had come and kind of formed its own culture in the

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United States. That's why I do believe there is a black culture, if you wanna call it that.

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There is a culture that does, I think, need to be celebrated. And people who are part of that culture do need to feel proud of who they are.

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I think every culture should have things that are worth celebrating, and foods, and achievements, and all kinds of things.

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The tragedy right now is that they're made to feel so self -conscious about themselves because every five seconds, they're hearing how oppressed they are, and how they really can't achieve anything because of all these barriers.

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It's actually very offensive, if you think about it. So anyway, I digress, because that's not what we're talking about now.

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But at the time, this resolution that this guy wants to rescind, that's what it said. What is so offensive about that resolution?

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It actually, I was expecting to open it up and find something really racially insensitive.

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What's the insensitivity? I guess the terms, the terms that are used. I don't know, maybe the fact that it's patronizing.

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But isn't that what they're doing now? The Southern Baptist Convention, I just played you some clips from J .D.

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Greer. If you listen to the whole thing, it's way more, I don't know how to even put it, if that's the word

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I want to use. It's what I just described. It's this, there's just so many barriers that you can't achieve.

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We have to support you to put you in these positions because you just won't make it there on your own. I mean, isn't that offensive?

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Maybe just rescind the whole Southern Baptist Convention if that's the case. But this kind of stuff is nonsense. It's grandstanding.

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And it's just telling you, again, where the convention's at. So, all right,

40:56

I wanted to bring that stuff to your attention. I wanted to say this as well before we get to the president stuff.

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The last video I put out this morning, there was a Tony Evans joke that he had said about someone had said at the pastor's conference, you should be president of the convention.

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And Tony Evans said, I thought lynching was over with or something along those lines. And I had, my interpretation of that was he was basically saying the

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Southern Baptist Convention is racist. And a number of you commented and said, hey, John, I think you're getting this wrong. I think he's just saying that it's a tough ordeal to run for president and he's comparing that to lynching.

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To which I will say that you may be right about that. And I was also reading the article on a website and that was the interpretation the website gave.

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And so I think that power of suggestion, I'm not impervious to it. I may, I think

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I did not think through all the possibilities and I should have thought through them. And that is a very strong possibility. It's still weird in my mind that Tony Evans said that.

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It's still kind of strange and given the political climate, I don't know why he did. But anyway, the point is well taken that Tony Evans still has a lot of problems, but I may have misjudged that.

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I'm not sure though. Maybe he was joking about the convention being racist. I don't know. I still tend to think that my initial interpretation is the correct one, but it is possible that it is not.

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So I wanted to mention that at least. Also saw that the information on the person who confronted

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J .D. Greer in the elevator and the police were called on him is now out there. There is a podcast now, Protestia put out there talking about it.

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Judd Saul saw it as well. Maybe we'll ask him about that later. I don't know if I'm gonna do that in a separate episode or if I'm gonna do that in this one yet, but we'll see.

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I'm still waiting on him to give me a call. But Judd Saul talked to the guy as well, got him on camera.

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I've heard Marcus Pittman, another guy who's there got him on camera. So there you go.

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That's all I guess clarified and at least there's a source on that. Also some other stuff coming out again about the young lady who accused

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Mike Stone last night of basically being, well, if you watched the last video, you'll know what it is.

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I don't wanna get into all of it, but some stuff coming out about her just recently this year saying that she's not a

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Christian anymore and admitting that she had a history, I guess, of some mental instability.

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So not surprising that's coming to the surface, but that situation's being used quite a bit.

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Now there's also a resolution on abortion that I want you to hear and I want you to especially to pay attention to the response from the resolutions committee member,

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Nathan Finn on this. Check this out. And I'm Bill Askew, pastor of the

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Bethel Baptist Church in Owasso, Oklahoma. I'm a messenger out of that congregation. I wanna be very friendly.

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I found a baby. I brought a baby with me to stand next with me. His name is

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Charlie. He's very excited about what I want to do. All right? Mr.

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President, the resolutions committee chose to decline the resolution on abolishing abortion that was submitted by myself and several other pastors across this great convention of churches.

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Please understand my feelings are not heard at their decision. As I celebrate my 47th anniversary being married today,

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I can assure you that I've been declined many times through the years. So you could say that my wife has been used of the

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Lord to prepare me for this moment. But the nature and content of our resolution is too important a matter for me to sit in silence.

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For that reason, I move that the resolution on abolishing abortion be brought out of the resolutions committee.

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If I get a second, I would like to speak to this motion. Okay. Yes, please.

45:04

Mr. President and my fellow messengers, 50 years ago this month, Southern Baptists met for our annual convention in St.

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Louis, Missouri. At that meeting, a resolution on abortion was offered, which concluded with these words, be it resolved that we call upon the

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Southern Baptists to work for a legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.

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In other words, Southern Baptists were functionally pro -abortion in 1971. Our president made several references to the conservative resurgence and the good that was accomplished in rescuing the convention from the death grip of liberalism.

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I would suggest, however, that in addition to the gospel enemies of liberalism and Pharisaism, there is another enemy to the gospel, pragmatism.

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And this manifests itself perhaps no more clearly than in the sanctity of life resolutions put forth since our course correction.

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While they have been more intentionally anti -abortion, Southern Baptists have never flexed the strength of our commitment to the inerrant, infallible, all -sufficient word of God, which teaches us, you shall not murder innocent image bearers of the creator, but rather we must do all we can to protect the lives of those who cannot protect themselves.

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God commands us in his word to rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

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If we say, behold, we did not do this, which we cannot do, does not the one who weighs the heart perceive it?

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Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it? And will he not repay every man according to his work?

46:57

Mr. President, Southern Baptists were wrong on the abolition of slavery. We have been guilty of applying half measures on the issue of abortion and have not consistently and intentionally insisted upon equal protection and equal justice under the law for every human being, born and unborn.

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As a result, the wholesale murder of unborn babies continues unabated at the rate of 3 ,000 souls every day.

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While some might be comforted in the thought - Brother, I know that there is a lot of agreement with what you're saying, but you are over time.

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I do want to allow our committee to respond to your suggestion. May I appeal to my fellow messengers to join me by two thirds and bring this out of committee so we can hear it, vote on it, and leave

47:47

Nashville taking a stand we've never taken before. Okay. So we certainly appreciate the spirit behind the abolition of abortion resolution that was proposed.

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Folks, we considered so many resolutions and we did adopt a resolution directly related to abortion, the

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Hyde Amendment Resolution. We have consistently been on record since the early 1980s as a pro -life convention of churches.

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If anybody thinks our network of churches is pro -abortion with respect, they are not paying attention.

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Our witness is crystal clear on this. We are a pro -life denomination. We stand for the sanctity of human life.

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We do not believe this additional resolution is necessary and I would urge the messengers not to bring this resolution out.

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Now, did you catch that? What's a bigger issue, you think, in America today? Is it racism or is it abortion?

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Is it the actual legalized slaughtering of the unborn or is it white supremacy?

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That's not to obviously defend white supremacy at all, which I would never do. It's to just give you kind of like a priority scale to think of in your mind before I ask the next question.

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Why is it that Southern Baptists are known to be pro -life? Therefore, because of that, they should not have another resolution on that because it's already clear.

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They've already stated what they believe. Yet, they have to renew their commitment to anti -racism almost every single time they meet.

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From some angle, they have to renew their commitment. Why is that? Why is there that hypocrisy that you would have someone on the resolutions committee say that, well, we've already been clear about this and in almost kind of a strong tone, like I encourage you, do not adopt this resolution as if it's gonna be a problem if they do adopt it.

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But at the same time, a resolution, resolution two, which is just, which is recommitting themselves to the 1995 resolution and adding some things is that needs to happen.

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That's important. Ask yourself that question. And I think you're gonna find that the

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Southern Baptist Convention is not only in a dilemma over soteriology, they're in an ethical dilemma as well. Not just communication and soteriology, but also their ethics.

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Their priorities are, what's causing this misplaced kind of prioritization?

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And I'll let you think about that. Now, I think what we'll do because I don't have

50:35

Judd yet is we're just gonna end this podcast and I'll probably release my interview with Judd from the convention floor tomorrow once I'm able to get ahold of him.

50:46

We'll analyze more of the presidential stuff. But I will say this, Ed Litton has won by a few hundred votes, right?

50:52

He is now the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention and he is the wokest of all four. He is the most on board with social justice of all four of the candidates.

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You have to consider whether you want your money going to a convention of churches that is gonna keep going down this direction at full steam, even more than they already are.

51:12

I personally think this is the end. You could probably say that the election of J .D.

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Greer marks the end of the conservative resurgence perhaps in some ways. I don't know. Historians are gonna look at this differently when they have some hindsight.

51:26

But this is, I think, the final kind of straw. And it was, unfortunately,

51:32

I mean, I prayed about it, but I did think even yesterday and even for the last few years,

51:38

I thought it wasn't, there's no way to take it back. Some of you know this.

51:44

Some of you have emailed me and I've given you my unfiltered thoughts on this. And one of the things that I didn't wanna do was discourage conservatives who were gonna try.

51:52

And I said, 2020, that's your line in the sand. But then, of course, they didn't have a convention. So, okay, 2021, line in the sand.

51:59

And I expected that this would happen. So it's not taking me by surprise. I guess the only thing that does surprise me a little was

52:06

I thought there was a huge, inflated conservative turnout. But the thing is, actually, I think there probably was compared to what it usually is.

52:12

So that tells you where the convention's going. This was probably the last chance. But we will talk to Judd Saul tomorrow and I'm sure we'll have some other people that I'll talk to and we'll have on the program, perhaps even, and we'll analyze it further.

52:25

But that's just my thought. And you cannot have fellowship with, light cannot have fellowship with darkness.

52:31

And the SBC is getting very dark. And it's not wise stewardship of God's resources to cooperate with churches that want to implement the great requirement as part of the gospel and infuse social justice to the gospel.

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So there you go, that's my analysis. A little dismal, I know. I know some of you were hoping for a different outcome.

52:49

But this is, look, this wasn't a surprise to God. It wasn't, unfortunately, a surprise to me either and to many who were observing what was going on.

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And we are going to move forward and we'll see what the

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Lord has in store. He's judging, I believe, I think, it seems like it, this country. And revival's gonna have to start in the hearts of men and the hearts of people is where we need to make our focus primarily.

53:17

Fighting error's important, that's what I've been doing. And in the SBC, that's been a big part of my focus.

53:24

But I think that that may change at this point. I wanted to assist the conservatives who were gonna be fighting.

53:31

And I think I'm still gonna be, my main mission has been to assist laymen on the local level and that's what we're gonna keep doing.

53:37

But as far as the SBC as an organization, I think you can put the date of death, unfortunately.

53:44

So God bless you all. On that note, we'll talk more tomorrow and have some more analysis.