Deflect, Deny, Disguise! Three Bad Responses to the "Evangelical Dark Web"

The Weekend Review and the Emergence of a Pattern

Welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris, and this is The Weekend Review. I've never done this before, but there are times, whether it's a few days a week, two weeks a month, that a pattern seems to emerge connecting a series of events, and this week is no exception.

This week, Albert Moeller, Thabitiana Wibley, and a website, Muir Orthodoxy, all, I think, responded to critiques made by conservatives like myself, in which we state that, yes, social justice is having an impact and an effect in Christian denominations and institutions.

This is significant. I think for a long time, we were ignored, and I think those days are over. I think that we are going to get objections whenever we point these things out, and I think if you're having a conversation, whether it's online or hopefully with real people at your church, perhaps, you need to understand what some of these objections are.

So I am going to give you a paradigm for understanding this and give you some hopefully helpful responses that you can use when this comes out, when these objections come up. So let's think through this.

The Southern Seminary Video Montage and Critical Race Theory

Let's turn the clock back to last Friday. Last Friday, there was a compilation released by Enemies Within the Church. I carried it on my podcast, and it was of three professors at Southern, Jarvis Williams, Curtis Woods, and now the provost, Matthew Hall, saying things consistent with critical race theory.

Now, the videos in this montage were taken from 2014 through 2018, and I've watched now all the videos, the primary sources that were used in this compilation because I wanted to understand in full context where these ideas were coming from, and it is scary.

It is scary. It is worse than the montage makes it look, actually. In one of the videos, Matthew Hall is actually being interviewed with Otis Moss. Otis Moss is the pastor that took over for Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor, you know, the guy who said, not God bless America, but God, you know what he said, America.

And so Otis Moss says that white people can't go to heaven, or they can't be saved, and that heaven's gonna be a gangster's paradise. Think about that. White people can't go, but it's also gonna be a gangster's paradise, and Matthew Hall, in the interview, hearing what Otis Moss is saying does not contradict Otis Moss.

Instead, he actually repeats that heaven is a gangster's paradise. This was not included in the montage, and this is what Matthew Hall, the provost of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is saying.

Absolutely shocking. I don't know what to say to that. Now, I am not the one who said that Matthew Hall believes critical race theory, or knows critical race theory. Curtis Woods is the one who said this.

So it's not Tom Askell. It's not Tom Buck. It's not A .D. Robles. It's not me. It is Curtis Woods. In a 2016 panel discussion, it is included in the montage, in a room filled with students and professors from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Curtis Woods looks at the crowd, and then looks at Matthew Hall, and he says, you know why I appreciate Matthew Hall?

Because he understands critical race theory. I believe what Curtis Woods said. I think that's exactly what's going on. Does Albert Moeller believe what Curtis Woods said? Does the BDN Wibley believe what Curtis Woods said?

Does Mirror Orthodoxy believe what Curtis Woods said? Well, we're gonna find out, at least a little bit. Now, I wanna briefly review. Those of you who haven't watched the video are gonna find this interesting.

Those of you who have, this will be a review for you. But I wanna talk about, just very briefly, what has Matthew Hall actually said about critical race theory? What leads us to believe that what Curtis Woods, how Curtis Woods has characterized what he said is true, that this is, in fact, critical race theory?

Well, first of all, Matthew Hall said that his world blew up, his words. It blew up my whole world when I went to a secular university after being in Christian colleges, and I finally found out that I had a racialized lens.

Matthew Hall is saying, I have a racialized lens, and in fact, I'm a racist. He says this twice, in 2016 and 2018. I'm a racist. 2018, he adds, I'm a white supremacist. And he says the reason for this is because he's immersed in a culture where he benefits from racism all the time.

That's the basis for it. So hold this thought for a moment. He also says that race is not biological, it's ideological, it's power, it's status. Racism is a system, this is his quote, built on allocating privileges, power, opportunities in inequitable ways on the basis of race.

So this is very consistent with critical race theorists say. This is Richard Delgado, right? Hall also says that Billy Graham and everything surrounding his ministry is, it's a whole lot of whiteness, really is what it is.

I mean, this is the world he lives in. Billy Graham and everything in his ministry, it's whiteness. He says that his own elder board, his church, it's not very diverse, it's not very multicultural, it's all white.

Southern Seminary itself is very white, remarkably white is what he says, and this is a problem. So what's the solution? Well, the solution for Hall is that, first of all, in his capacity as a historian and a theologian, he needs to show people that everything that they thought, and here's his quote, about their family, I'm sorry, I'm gonna start earlier here, about, this is his quote, about your tradition, your denomination, your own family, he is going to, quote, pull the veil back.

And what looked like this narrative of faithfulness and orthodoxy and truth and righteousness and justice is I'm going to peel that back and show you the rotting corpse of white supremacy that's underneath the surface.

Now, I told you to hold the thought just a minute ago about what Hall was saying about, he is a white supremacist, he is a racist. Well, so the rotting corpse of white supremacy must reach him, it must reach right into the year 2019.

Let me paint the picture for you. If you are a Christian, let's say, let's say you're a Baptist, let's say you come from a long line of pastors and your family is very proud of this, or at least thankful for this legacy.

And it stretches way back to England, 1611 London Baptist Confession types. And you say, you know what, I'm so grateful God put me in this family. Matthew Hall's gonna say, you know what, you gotta take into account that there's a rotting corpse of white supremacy there because I'm sure there's people in your family who, you know, they were racists.

Now, Matthew Hall is saying he's a racist. So, I mean, does this critique influence, I mean, does it apply to him? I mean, like, where do we draw this line? That's where the white, that's where the critic race theory comes in because this, the defining racism as benefiting from systems of oppression, alleged systems of oppression, broadens it so that, yeah, we all get hit, right?

I mean, I don't know where you start. You start in 95 when the Southern Baptists apologize for racism and say, okay, everything before that is bad, now we're good. Well, according to Hall, I guess it applies to him.

So 2019, you know, we can't ever start the clock. And I wanna suggest, I can't get into this because there's tentacles going everywhere but this is a history that I've studied in the Southern Baptist Convention when it comes to race.

I've read the secondary sources. So those of you who say, it started just over racism, white supremacy, yes, I get it, I've read that. But if you read the primary sources, what you're gonna find is that the Southern Baptist Convention started in 1845, specifically on the topic of slavery.

If we, you know, there's other topics but the topic of slavery, which was a major issue, specifically, it was directed at those on the Boston Mission Board who posited the idea that slavery in and of itself was a sin and the relationship between master and slave was sinful.

And Southern Baptists said, this isn't biblical. Now, how could they say that? In 2019, we look back, how could they say that? Well, the reason they said that is because, just like the institution of marriage, just because you are a husband who is beating your wife, doesn't mean that someone who's a Christian who is faithful to his wife is affected by your sin.

In other words, if you lived in a country where marriage is pretty bad, maybe the United States in 2019, marriage is ending in divorce, husbands beat their wives, wives cheat on their husbands, I mean, it's common.

There's horrible things going on, let's say. If you are a faithful husband, let's say, and you wanna treat your wife well according to scripture and you're governed by biblical principles and you're in a system, there's a legal system with marriage, I mean, profaning of marriage, gay marriage, I mean, look, you're part of that system if you have a marriage license.

There are those who could potentially say, I've never heard anyone say it, but they could say, you're part of an evil system. And I would say, yeah, yeah, it is, very corrupt. Marriage in the United States and the legality of marriage and the law when it concerns adoption and no-fault divorce and all these things, it's horrible.

But you know what, I'm not sinning. Because I'm part of that and because I have a marriage license doesn't mean that I am sinning because I'm part of that system. Let me give you another example. Christian welfare worker.

Welfare is not a good thing. The way that it's currently practiced, at least, in the United States, federal government, giving welfare checks and food stamps to those who aren't working, that's specifically what I'm talking about.

Not saying that is all welfare, but specifically that, that is not just. The Bible says that those who work should be the ones to eat. Those who don't work should not be allowed to eat. Now, yes, I know there's exceptions and principles, I realize, but that is a general principle in the Bible.

The welfare system does not take that principle into account, they're not running based off that principle. Am I going to then turn to a Christian who works in the welfare system and say, you know what, you're in sin, you're part of this evil system that's really enslaving people and producing generational welfare and dependency on the federal government?

Nope, I'm not gonna say that because hopefully that Christian is being a salt and a light in a dark environment. And that was really, I'm doing this injustice because I'm taking a nuanced historical reality and I'm trying to interpret it in like two seconds, but that's the critique that Southern Baptists had.

You can't take what Paul said about Philemon and what even in the Old Testament, how slavery was regulated. Yeah, there's a bad system of slavery down here in the South and in the North because the Northerners were bringing the slaves over and in Africa where the slaves were being captured in tribal warfare and then sold to the Northern flesh merchants.

Like this whole thing, yeah, it's not good. There's a lot of bad things. And yeah, some of the laws on the book are bad, but you know what? You can't say that a master is in sin just because he owns a slave.

That is not biblical. The Roman system of slavery was pretty bad. I don't remember gladiators fighting to the death in the antebellum South, but it happened in Rome. And yes, the Roman, you weren't a slave if you were a citizen of Rome.

So yeah, there's sort of a, you wanna call it ethnic, you can, or you can call it just based on your nationality, but yeah, national-based slavery. And Paul writes in this environment, this horrible environment where it was very common.

Your slaves were, if you were a man, your woman slaves were basically concubines. And in many cases, yeah, you could rape them. They didn't have the same rights because they weren't Roman citizens. And so anyway, Paul writes in this environment and says, you know what?

If you're a slave, obey your master. If you're a master, you treat your slaves well. And the Southern Baptist Convention, when it formed, that was the objection they had to what the Boston Mission Board and some Northern Baptists were saying.

They said, you are exceeding what the scripture says. Now, we can get into a whole conversation about slavery and yes, good riddance to it, right? We're glad that that system is gone. I'm so glad. And what has replaced it is not good in every sense.

As I just talked about, general racial welfare and a larger federal government and so forth and so on. But you know what? Yeah, we're really grateful that that is gone. And I think you can say that and you can look back at your Southern Baptist legacy and you can say, you know what?

There's some warts in every family. There's some warts in this denomination. 2 ,000 years of Christian church history. I mean, are we gonna throw out John Chrysostom and Martin Luther and Augustine? Are we gonna look at the things they said about Jewish people and say, you know what?

Just a rotting corpse of white supremacy. Or are we gonna say, yeah, there's some warts but we have a lot to learn. I'm telling you, this presentist lens is destroying everything and it does come from a critical theory understanding of history.

It predates the modern critical race theory, this idea that we just need to throw out the past. But look what Matthew Hall says. He's agreeing that, yeah, it's a gangster's paradise in heaven. It's, you know, I'm a white supremacist and we need to show the rotting corpse of white supremacy.

So we have to throw everything overboard, essentially. And that's dangerous. I think it's perfectly fine. And I don't have a big legacy of Southern Baptist in my family. I have some. But if you are from a family that has Southern Baptist going back, that are confessional, I think it's fine to be thankful for that legacy.

In fact, that's what we see in the Bible. That's the thing. Guys, look how this, I mean, I'm going on a little rabbit trail here. I'm gonna get to what happened this week, believe me. But I need to say this.

If you look at King David and the sin that he committed, if you look at the patriarchs and look at the polygamy and the slavery and then all the things that they did, what does the Bible do with these men?

Does it show them to be perfect men or does it point out that they had warts but they are still heroes of the faith that need to be remembered? Moses, at the transfiguration, who shows up there? Men who sinned.

Jesus is called the son of David. I mean, guys, you wanna start playing this game, you better throw out your Bible. And Matthew J. Hall is giving us great ammunition for doing just that if we so intend.

Racial Justice, Global Curriculum, and the Problem of Orthodoxy

All right. Now, Matthew Hall wants to have a global curriculum to react to this. In other words, this is the kicker, guys. He says, we need to pursue racial justice. His word, not mine. That makes white folks very nervous.

In the last few years, and he's saying this, I think maybe he's referring to the Trump campaign, I don't know, there's been a normalization of almost explicitly racist language in the church. Racial justice includes pursuing a global curriculum influenced by non-white authors.

And who's one of the ones that he says, this is an example, he goes, W .E .B. Du Bois. He says, he would cringe if he were identified as an evangelical, but there are so many things that haunt Du Bois in his writings that are deeply Christian.

Check this out, guys. You need to throw overboard the rotting corpse of white supremacy that you see in your family, in your denomination, in your national heritage, whatever. But we need to include Du Bois, who's not Orthodox, because he's Christ haunted.

This will destroy Orthodox theology. It will undercut it, and if you don't see it, I'm gonna give it one more shot a little later, but not much I can say to help you. This should be very clear. Including people who are not Orthodox while trying to expose and throw overboard.

I keep using that language, because that seems like what Hall's trying to do. He's trying to shock people into like, look how bad your ancestors are. Your Orthodox ancestors, this isn't faithfulness. This is white supremacy.

And looking at it as an either or, there's an exclusion. It's either faithfulness or it's white supremacy. And then taking a guy who's literally not faithful, because he's not Orthodox, but because he's not a white supremacist, he's all good.

We need to include him in our curriculum. It's insanity, guys. It's insanity. This is the provost of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Now, continuing on to this week. Let's fast forward to Monday.

Albert Mohler's Confessional Shield

Now, what does Albert Moeller have to say about all this? Albert Moeller puts, and if you're watching, you can see this, he tweets, what a great and historic opening convocation week we had at SBTS and Boyce College.

This is Matthew Hall. He's signing the abstracted principles of our confession of faith. Now, here's something that's interesting. This is a week old, this news. Matthew Hall already posted about this.

Albert Moeller's tweeted a bunch of things since then. But yet he feels it necessary to bring up a picture of him and say, this is the highlight. Of the last week. He's saying, everyone notice Matthew Hall is confessional.

Now, he doesn't say here, I'm doing this because of the video that was released on Friday. But I'll show you what everyone else thinks. Everyone else is posting the video. Albert Moeller, look at this video.

Look what Matthew Hall believes. And there's a lot of people posting it. Believe me, look. Here was what I posted. I posted, this isn't working, here's why. And I posted an article that I had written that was populated onto the Enemies Within the Church website called Why Faith Statements Won't Save Us.

And you can go to worldviewconversation .com if you wanna see that article. But I said, I plead with you, please fight critical race theory, not in the world, not on your show, but in the household of faith.

Specifically, the SBC and SBTS. You are a hero of mine. This breaks my heart. We need a conviction to lead more than ever. And of course, that's a reference to Albert Moeller's book, Conviction to Lead.

And it does break my heart. It really does. This is a funeral for a friend. This is not a day to rejoice that someone was exposed. This is a day to lament that this kind of exposure needs to take place, but it does.

Let me ask you this question. There's two options that I can see. Either Al Moeller is putting this up there as a statement against heretics, that Matthew J. Hall does not agree with you, because that's what a statement of faith is for, or he's putting it up as a shield against conservatives to point out that Matthew J. Hall is not a heretic.

Which one is it? I don't think it's the former, guys. I really don't think it is. I think he's putting this up there. It's the only thing that makes sense to me, because Matthew J. Hall has been exposed, and Al Moeller now needs to somehow respond to this, and the only thing he knows how to do is to circle back to Matthew J. Hall is orthodox.

In the article I wrote before Moeller did this, I pointed out that in 1923, J. Gresham Machen had made the statement that professors were signing the Westminster Confession while believing ideas that undercut the Westminster Confession, and he called it hypocrisy, and he called it a different religion.

Liberalism is a different religion. It's the same thing here, guys. Critical race theory is a different religion. It's a postmodern religion. It will destroy the hermeneutics that are grammatical and historical, and some people in pop terminology say literal, because you have to now back up a intellectual step and try to look at everything through the lens you have, which is determined by your social group.

It destroys objectivity, and Matthew Hall is adopting ideas from critical race theory. That is that postmodern idea. He's saying we need to have a global curriculum. Why is that? So we can look at things from other perspectives, not measuring it based on orthodoxy at all.

He throws that out, but measuring it based on the cultural lenses people look through and making a diverse panoply of cultural lenses so people can study. This will undercut the inerrancy of scripture, and I will say it in no uncertain terms.

This is heresy. I don't care what people say about me. I don't care if I'm thrown overboard by the moderates for it, guys. This is the Jay Gresham-Machen moment. We're reliving history, and history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, and it's rhyming really clearly right now.

All right, this is what Albert Moeller's doing, and I find it absolutely disgusting from a man that I respected for so many years, and it absolutely breaks my heart. Let's turn now to Thibediana Wibley.

Thabiti Anyabwile and the Denial of a Social Justice Movement

Here's the objection that Thibediana Wibley gives. Now, interestingly enough, Thibediana Wibley has changed the picture on this since September 3rd when he posted it. I don't know if that's because A .D. Robles did a video where he kind of mocked it, but originally there was a picture here of kind of like is there life out there, and it said is there truth out there, and it was like the solar system like trying to communicate with aliens, or rather it says is there a social justice movement I think was the caption, but he's saying that those who say that there's a social justice movement, it's like they're trying to contact aliens.

They're conspiracy theorists. They're crazy, and he's changed that now to a random picture of people walking on a street. I don't get that, but okay. His title is Is There an Evangelical Social Justice Movement?

We really have to ask that question. A lot of people pointed this out. I didn't discover this, but if you go on the Gospel Coalition's website, and you just type in, here it is if you're watching by the way.

If you type in social justice, what's gonna come up are 4 ,000 results, over 4 ,000 for that term. So the very website that this is being hosted on, which is the Gospel Coalition, they seem to think there's a social justice movement when there's 4 ,000 hits for that word.

Now I'm not gonna interact with everything here because it's not worth it, but it's kind of just like burying your head in the sand if you don't think there's a social justice movement. But I wanna specifically focus on one thing.

I wanna go down here to Jarvis Williams. Now he is responding to Tom Askell. Tom Askell did a talk back in the spring, in March, and he mentions Jarvis Williams, who recommended Richard Delgado's critical race theory to Christians.

And he says this is an example of critical race theory entering evangelicalism. And Jarvis Williams was also one of the professors in this video montage put out last Friday, which is linked in the info section, by the way, if you wanna check it out.

Now Jarvis Williams says some crazy stuff, in my opinion. He says that Jesus died for racial reconciliation. He says that it is part of the gospel, basically. And one of the most startling thing he says at the end of the video is, you should be willing to fight for racial reconciliation the same way you would die for the, I believe it was the atonement, or penal substitution is actually what he says.

It's on the same level, penal substitution and racial reconciliation. And of course, in his world, racial reconciliation is the decentering of whiteness, the promotion, it's multicultural, it's all the stuff we've already been talking about.

So that's on the same level as penal substitution. That guy, Jarvis Williams. Now, I have to ask the question, the same thing I did with Al Mohler. I said, why is Mohler pulling up old news from a week ago?

Why is Thabiti Ann Wibley pulling up something from Tom Askell from March? Why? I don't know if it's because Jarvis Williams is on the ropes all of a sudden, but I suspect it is. Because Thabiti Ann Wibley had a lot of opportunity to interact with Tom Askell's video and he didn't.

And Jarvis Williams now is sort of in the news as they say. And if you wanna attack those who are giving Jarvis Williams a hard time, this is an easy way to do it. But not giving credence to Enemies Within the Church or, I don't know, Pulpit and Pen or any of these other websites.

And I'm not lumping them all together, by the way. I'm not saying that Enemies Within the Church is the same as Pulpit and Pen. I think there's differences between them and NAD Robles and New Christian Intellectual and all these websites.

But I think they all carried this story. Founders did not. Tom Askell did not. But nonetheless, Jarvis Williams is on the ropes and Thabiti Ann Wibley, I don't know if he found a way to respond to those criticisms while acknowledging Tom Askell, who's maybe has a more moderate reputation.

Well, maybe not now that the Founders trailer's released. I don't know. But he doesn't have to acknowledge the guys he probably really doesn't care for as much, like the guys I just mentioned. So I don't know.

That's an idea. But nonetheless, he's talking about Jarvis Williams. And here's the argument. So Jarvis Williams recommends this book, Critical Race Theory. And he says, well, that's not evidence that Critical Race Theory is coming into the church because Jarvis is a committed scholar.

And what do scholars do? They read, they write, they recommend books. It's their craft, their stock, their trade. And so he says that this is just what Christian scholars do. He's not smuggling in Critical Race Theory.

He's not talking about Gramsci or Derrida here. He's not smuggling in their ideas. And I think Tom Askell wrote a brilliant, just a great response to this when he points out a lot of other examples of social justice coming into evangelicalism.

And he says, the book he's recommending does talk about Gramsci, and it does talk about Marx, and it does talk about Derrida, and it does talk, he's saying, this is in the book that's being recommended.

And Thabitiana Wibley, this is so pathetic, and I should have pulled this up, but on Twitter, Thabitiana Wibley admits that he hasn't read the book. He hasn't read Delgado's Critical Race Theory. He doesn't read anything by Critical Race Theorists.

Therefore, he's not influenced, which by the way, that's like saying, I guess if you don't read anything by a racist, you're not influenced by racism, right, Matthew Hall? No, they don't think it works that way.

But I don't read anything about democracy, so yeah, I'm not influenced by it. I don't read anything about, choose whatever idea you want. You are influenced by a lot of things you don't read about. In fact, probably more influence if you don't read about it because you're not aware that you're being influenced.

That being said, this is Thabitiana Wibley's argument. I haven't read those things. So a book he hasn't read that actually talks about communists and postmodernists, Thabitiana Wibley is saying those ideas aren't being smuggled in even though it's being recommended by a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The mental gymnastics this takes, guys, are insane. So I don't know, so Al Mohler is, let's put up the shield of, Matthew Hall signed the abstract and principles. That's a shield. And then Thabitiana Wibley is like, let's do some mental gymnastics and ignore.

So it's not just covering up and deflecting, this is ignoring. That there's even a social justice movement. He follows up with another article, and this was from today, so I'm just gonna show you this really quick.

Insistence is not evidence, a final reply to Tom Askell. Now the only thing I really wanted to point out from this article, there's a lot we could talk about, but I don't wanna spend too much time on it, is he, scrolling down here if you're watching, he basically accuses Tom Askell of using the genetic fallacy which is essentially like, yeah, there's a common, it sounds like something else, therefore it came from that correlation and causation.

Now I've already said this once in this video, but in the case of Matthew Hall, it is Curtis Woods who is saying, yeah, Matthew Hall is a good, he understands critical race theory. So this is a primary source right now, we're talking about Matthew Hall.

But in the case of Jarvis Williams, who is recommending a critical race theory book to be read that also attributes socialists and postmodernists with critical theory ideas, it is not the genetic fallacy to say correlation equals causation.

You sound like this other person, therefore you got ideas from them. No, no, they're attributing the ideas to critical race theorists. It's like, yeah, what more can you say? All right, I'm gonna move on because that, it's so weak, it's so obvious, there's like nothing more for me to point out.

The Evangelical Dark Web and Mere Orthodoxy's Self-Refutation

Let's go to one of the most interesting articles this week. This is from Mere Orthodoxy. So, Notes on the Evangelical Dark Web. Ooh, there's a little abandoned house it looks like. And so it's, first it was aliens with the BD, there is no evangelical dark, there is no social justice movement, and now it's the haunted house, the abandoned house.

Notes on the Evangelical Dark Web. So, we're vilifying something that's not really that bad. So here's the narrative I'm weaving. I'm showing you, here's the picture of the house. Al Mohler, a shield.

These guys are Orthodox. They may believe this stuff, but these guys are Orthodox. The BD and Wibley, it's their conspiracy theorists, crazy guys, because there is no social justice movement, and now Mere Orthodoxy, well, there may be something going on, but it's, they're vilifying it.

They're the ones that are putting words in people's mouth and showing, they're making stuff up. They're showing something that isn't really there. They're making you fool yourself when you look at what they're doing.

It's sleight of hand. And I'm gonna show you this article. This is just so good. This is like one of my favorite articles right now. So, the Evangelical Dark Web is a designation adopted by a group of evangelical social media personalities and bloggers centered around a few various websites, such as For the Christian Intellectual, Pulpit and Pen, Sovereign Nations, and Enemies Within the Church.

Now, I was not included in this. I mean, I've contributed some articles to Enemies Within the Church, but I'm not, that's not my ministry or whatever. I have my own podcast. So, I will consider myself absolved of the Evangelical Dark Web label, if possible, and I will objectively bring you through this.

This article, I'm sorry, I'm holding back laughter a little bit because it's just funny to me. As I go through this, I'm gonna be asking an important question. Are there primary sources to back any of the insinuations in this article up?

In other words, does he quote an outside source? Here's where there's an example of this going on. Let's look at the first example here. One could assert that the self-proclaimed Evangelical Dark Web is insurgent in character.

I mean, I don't remember. I mean, I know the guys at Enemies Within the Church and Sovereign Nations. I don't remember them ever using the term Evangelical Dark Web, but yeah, moving on. Its overall aim is institutional takeover.

Its intermediate aim is intellectual capture of the target population, 18 to 30-year-old conservative evangelicals, particularly males. Now, let me ask you, are there any primary sources here whatsoever?

Does he show, yeah, here's an example of where Sovereign Nations or Enemies Within the Church or Pulpit and Pen or any of these guys are saying we want those 18 to 30-year-old males and our aim is to do an institutional takeover and we are insurgents and we've called ourselves the Evangelical Dark Web.

Nope, nope, no reference there whatsoever. This is gonna be the Achilles heel of this article. It is a complete self-refutation and I'm wondering if it's just projection. But here's what he says. I'm gonna move on here and show you why.

Here's the strategy that we are allegedly, I say we, those in the Evangelical Dark Web who, again, I'm not part of this, but those guys. This is the alleged strategy. They're gonna embarrass the regime in power.

Okay, no citation there that that's their motive. I mean, this is all motive stuff, right? They're gonna make it appear weak and corrupt. Okay, no citation, interesting. Create online zones of counter-control.

Yeah, I don't see a reference there. Tempt the regime in power to over-respond in a heavy-handed and inept manner. No primary source to back that up. Through expansion of its captured target population over time, overwhelm the regime.

Hmm, haven't seen that on enemies-within-the-church websites. Interesting, I didn't know that I was helping people that believed they were doing this. And its primary tactic is the rhetorical hammer.

Okay, well, that's good for starters. What should we do? I mean, speaking, again, as someone who's not part of this, what should we do to combat this horrible development? Well, here's what he says. Here's the steps that need to be taken.

Look at the first step, guys. Look at the first step. I'm gonna read it for you. Demand citations and evidence for every assertion. Oh, guys. Guys, I don't know. Apparently, this is like a counterintelligence guy He works for the government, which makes me fearful for who we have working in our government, but demand citations and evidence for every assertion.

Did he just do that? He just made like eight assertions. No citations, no evidence. Demand context for every poll quote. Fact check every infographic. Force them back to original sources, books, dissertations, at every possible juncture.

So, oh, man, I shouldn't be laughing. This is actually sad. I feel bad for the guy who wrote this. Think about this with me for a second. Let's just go with enemies of the church because I'm most familiar with them because I know the director and I've given them, I mean, I've allowed them to populate their website with a few of my articles.

Everything that I've seen there has been pretty much like chapter and verse. Look at the articles. It is all cited pretty much. It's like, you know, it's all primary source stuff. And yeah, I mean, I love this.

Yeah, we should demand citations, absolutely. But let's apply that standard to the other side as well. In this very article, like the last paragraph, there are no citations. And then he's like, you should all demand citations of the evangelical dark web.

Well, yeah, go to the articles at enemieswithinthechurch .com and look, see if there's citations there for what's being claimed. The montage video that came out last week, which perhaps maybe this is a response to that.

I don't know. But yeah, there's original citations. In fact, the whole thing is just an original citation. That's all it is. It's all primary sources. There's no like interpretive framework. I mean, obviously you choose which videos go where and stuff, but like no one came out and said, here's what you should think.

It's just, here are the videos. And they're presented in such a way that you can see there's a narrative. There's something in common. And so that's the interpretation, I guess. But it's just guys in their own words.

So this is just, this kills me, this article. Moving on here. Question all characterizations every time. If they say something is socialist or cultural Marxist, always make them define the term and support the assertion with evidence.

Yeah, I think that's good. And I think the same goes for the other side. If you use terms like, oh, I don't know, evangelical dark web, you know, really flesh out what that means. If you use, yeah, whatever pejorative you want to use.

Those who believe in white supremacy. If you, I don't know, discernment bloggers. Like just talk about them in a way that defines what you're saying. I agree. Interrogate, the interrogator. Research, write, and post accurate stories about the individuals and groups in the evangelical dark web.