Neil Shenvi and Two Woke Guys - (KB, Ameen Hudson) Have a Winsome Chat

Welcome back to the channel. Welcome back. It has been a already pretty decently long day. I took my son fishing early in the morning. We caught a couple bluegill and he caught a couple of yellow perch as well.

One of them was decent size and he was very excited about that. We also saw on the shore like a little tiny baby chain pickerel. We tried to scoop it up but it didn't work. It was too fast. But anyway, I was planning on coming and spending the morning watching some angry video game nerd videos or something like that.

But then I remembered that someone had alerted me to a video interview that KB and Amin had done with Neil Shenvey. And, you know, I don't even know this conversation happened. I mean, I don't really follow Neil Shenvey.

I know a lot of my friends, well, he's a bit of a lightning rod. Some people really like him. Some people think he is sort of like a secret, you know, critical race theory, woke church, big Eva, great reset.

Every buzzword you can imagine, a secret agent. And I understand why they say that because somehow he like thinks that critical race theory is dangerous. But he's willing to put up with very much in the church, which I don't really understand.

You know, if it's really that dangerous, you know, you ought to really come against it a lot more aggressively. But I like Neil and I get grief from my friends for that, that they think that I'm being a little naive or too winsome or too reasonable.

They don't really say that, but that's from my perspective. I'm being too reasonable. But listen, let me just say something really off the top here. Look, look, nothing is off the table as far as I'm concerned.

You know, when it comes to theories about what's happening with the great reset and all this nonsense, nothing's off the table. So, you know, maybe Neil Shenvey is a secret agent. I don't know. But I still like Neil for now.

And I figured I'd review or respond to this this interview debate. The way that these guys call themselves self side rabbi. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I mean, who knows? The kids have all kinds of weird words these days.

I don't I don't understand what that means. But they say buckle up for this one. Southside tribe. Y 'all better buckle up for this one. This time round, we caught up with our guy, Dr. Neil Shenvey, a .k .a. Big Daddy Neil, a .k .a. The Muffin Man.

And had a lot like, you know, you read it and you can read the words. I mean, they're English words, but none of this is is is it's not it's not landing. I don't understand any of this stuff. But anyway, I guess it's supposed to be a very difficult conversation.

I'm willing to bet it's going to be very winsome and Neil's going to agree with him on basically everything. That's my opinion. I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it, but we shall see. So we'll see how this goes.

I haven't watched it. It might be boring. You know, I'll we'll see. We'll see. Let me know in the comments below if you like this. Let's get started right now. Oh, oh, hold on. Hold on there. I mean, you're not in my headset.

I got to figure out, figure you out here.

Critical Theory’s Origins in the Frankfurt School

All right. We'll go. But we finished the first season of the podcast. And then as we started doing the second season, I was like, you know what? We need to get Neil on because we definitely want you to come on and we want to discuss issues of critical theory.

What's with the season thing? I don't understand that. Like the first season of the podcast, the second season. Should I have seasons? What do you think? I mean, let me know in the comments if you think I should have some seasons.

And all of that because as me and KB, who are two Christians who are very passionate about issues of justice and Christians in general having a really solid social ethic to deal with injustices, we thought it important to to actually take on, you know, this issue, because as we have sought to talk about these things, of course, we have been called critical theorists.

We've been called cultural Marxists. We've been called. I mean, there's a whole lot of liberals, leftists, anything that you can think of. We've been called a communist, whatever. So but we wanted to have you come on today so we can discuss the just just critical theory in general.

Right. What you think about it, the reasons that you think that it has posed a threat to the evangelical church, as a lot of people have have have also said. And yeah. So before we get started, even when we talk about critical theory, critical theory was was really formed out.

It really came from these Marxist philosophers in the Frankfurt School in the earliest 20th century. I think around 1923 is when they founded the Institute for Social Research.

You know, didn't Ruslan Ruslan say that that was a conspiracy theory that that happened in the Frankfurt School? That was a conspiracy theory. I seem to remember that I could be mistaken. I could be thinking of somebody else, but I'm pretty sure that Rizzi Ruslan, when he was talking to Marcus, said that what Amin just literally said here is a conspiracy theory.

So when Marcus says that it's a conspiracy theory, when Amin says it, me, you know, that's the hot. That's that's lit, man. That's lit.

They really were focusing on a class on classic Marxist ideas until around 1930 when they when they bought Max Horkheimer in and they moved from focusing on classical Marxist philosophy to having more of a comprehensive focus on like culture and society, the ways in which domination was won and maintained through culture and society.

He also recruited and bought in Theodore Adorno, Eric Fromm, Herbert Marcuse.

I don't know if I'll be able to finish this. This is boring as all get out.

How dominant ideology within like bourgeoisie society functioned in order to justify and legitimize dominance and oppression of folks. And within a capitalist society, they believe that in a given society, the ruling class had a dominant narrative and ideology for that society.

That actually made that domination kind of the norm or that ideology the norm. Right. And that's what every woke church person believes.

They believe that they exactly believe that's what white supremacy is, white privilege, all that stuff. So I guess Amin is saying that they're all critical. They're all critical race theorists or cultural Marxists.

I didn't say it. I mean, he's saying it.

This is kind of a reversal of how it's funny that these guys are super oppressed.

Right. I mean, this is the thing, like like from the woke church perspective, like these are like two maybe of the most oppressed people that you could imagine. And this they both have Apple Mac laptops, which, you know, I don't even have one of those.

They've got a bunch of books. You know, of course, they're showing off their books. A lot of a lot of podcasts do this. I can't give them too much grief. A lot of my friends do this. I don't understand it.

It reminds me of that Seinfeld thing. Books, books, books. You got to get more books. You know what I mean? Like I never did that. This guy's drinking a Fiji water. I mean. Their chairs are nicer than mine, like like everything about this, it's like this certainly screams oppression to me.

This image right here, if I've if I've ever seen oppression, it's right here. And, you know, the woke church would would agree that this is this is the sign of oppression.

Marx saw society via the economic base informing culture or the superstructure. They kind of I can't see their sneakers, but I'm fairly certain they cost more than my sneakers, including the oppression and domination that was happening in society.

So that's that's that's just my own quick rundown. But I think that what I would want Neil to do as we venture into the conversation is I kind of want you to see.

I was just looking down. These are the shoes that I that I wore fishing. You can see how much I spend on my shoes to let us know.

How do you see and frame critical theory? What do you think critical theory is? And then why do you think critical theory is a is a threat to evangelicalism?

Right. Sure. So I think that was a great description of critical theory and its origins. Right. Perfect. Exactly what I would say. And Neil, Neil is a very winsome guy.

So, you know, again, I like Neil. I personally believe him to be a force for good. But he I think he's a little naive. I don't think he takes the evil quite as seriously as he ought to. And I don't mean just in this situation of critical theory.

I think just in general and to be honest, like most Christians and I'm going to include myself in that category. We simply have an issue where we don't believe evil is as evil as it is. Does that make sense?

Like we don't actually take evil quite as seriously as we really ought to take it. And I think that there's some self-preservation in that because we recognize that our works oftentimes can be evil. And so we don't want to take it quite so seriously because then we'd have to really can condemn our own selves.

But as Christians, we ought to recognize evil for what it is. And we ought to not be naive about it. And we should do that freely because though our works can sometimes be evil, we are we're covered, guys.

Like we don't have to downplay our own sins. We don't have to downplay sin in general because Christ is fully aware of how deeply evil sin is. How sinful sin is. The sinfulness of sin. Somebody wrote a book about that.

The sinfulness of sin. We don't have to downplay it, guys, because we're covered. He knows how evil it is. And so we can recognize how evil it is in every single situation. Doug Wilson, something that I totally disagree with him about is where he says that we shouldn't apply evil motives to something that stupidity would explain.

And actually, I don't really agree with that so much. I think it's actually opposite. We shouldn't say, well, they're just stupid and ignorant where evil actually explains it a lot better. There's a lot of situations like that in our culture where evil explains what's going on more so than stupidity and ignorance.

And so we ought not to downplay the evilness of evil. Oh, no. Well, I lost my place, but let's just start.

So I think that was a great description of critical theory and its origins. Right. Perfect. Exactly what I would say. And what you described was the Frankfurt School and sort of critical theory narrowly.

But that was in the 30s, 40s. I mean, Mercuse was writing up until, like, the 60s. Conspiracy theorist. But that was still, you know, it's like, you know, 50, 60 years ago. So since that time, critical theory has created entire disciplines that have evolved from that core based on the ideas of Marx and Horkheimer and Mercuse.

And it has spawned an entire set of fields like queer theory, critical race theory, critical pedagogy. Right. So all of those would be. What about fat theory? That's a good one. That's my favorite one.

Fat theory. Plural. You're fat. You're all under this large umbrella of critical. And healthiness is the oppression. So, yeah, so that what you described was a perfect description of sort of early critical theory.

But it's sort of like talking about, you know, feminism. Right. What's feminism? Well, talk about the suffrage movement in the 19th century to realize, well, that was again, that was 100, 150 years ago.

Right. So since then, feminism has evolved quite a bit. And so if you want to talk about modern feminism. Right. Includes a lot of different movements. Right. There's there's womanism, black feminism.

Right. There's third wave feminism. There's there's gender critical feminism, it's called sometimes. So the point is, there's a lot of varieties. And so in the same way, what we're seeing today is not just one critical theory, but a lot of different critical social theories.

Right. Queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory, things like that.

This is important because a lot of times what will happen is someone will say, well, I can't be a critical theorist because I don't agree with this, this, this and this. And what they're doing is they're they're cherry picking some of the crazier things in another critical theory and saying, see that I don't believe that.

Therefore, I can't be employing critical theory. And that's that's actually false. It's very, very easily to talk in that way. It'd be like if if if somebody could find something that like, let's say I found something about Calvinism or about Calvin that I did not agree with.

Like something Calvin said that I didn't agree with. And I said, see, I'm not a Calvinist because Calvin said this and I don't agree with that. And but you'd be like, yeah, but, you know, you believe the five points and you believe this and this and this.

And there's really only like two or three things you don't agree. So you are a Calvinist. And I'm like, no, I'm not. It's like that's the level of the conversation where we're at right now. It's so stupid.

And I just wish people would own these categories. I mean, you know, if somebody calls me a Calvinist and I know that they're trying to insult me by calling me a Calvinist, I'm not going to be like, well, no, I'm not.

You know, if I believe Calvinism, you know what I mean? Like, that's really stupid. And unfortunately, many, many, many people on the woke church movement side of this debate will do exactly that. Oh, you can't be this because I don't believe it.

It's so it's childish, guys. We got to get over that. We got to get over that.

The Mission of the Southside Rabbi Podcast

Beautiful. Yes. Now, I think for this is KB outside rabbi. The context of what we do really lands on two primary lands in two primary places. Number one, a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. There's this passion to see him glorified.

There is good for you. Kingdom reality infiltrate every aspect of the world and particularly the world that is right in front of us as we myself and I mean, grew up in Southside St. Petersburg, concentrated poverty, dominated mainly by black and brown people and all of the kind of social ills that go along with that.

And the conviction is to take that kingdom reality. And as we say, apply to the world, the real life thing for us is those who are right in front of us.

So there's nothing wrong with this, by the way. I completely think that this is great. You see, I want to apply all of Christ to all of life as well. And I want to do it according to the moral law of God.

I want to do it according to the general equity of the civil law of God. And I've got specific, very simple commands and things that God has said that we can apply. We can talk about and all of that kind of thing.

There's nothing wrong with this mission that he's talking about here, by the way. And I guess that's where they get their name. They grew up on the south side of whatever. And I guess they're rabbis?

We move into what we do on the podcast. We're taking that passion and then practically fleshing it out by looking at God's word, considering how people.

I'm going to have to take the inhaler. Hold on a second.

Wearing a Fauci shirt. We've done theology throughout the years, that kind of thing. So we want to be historical. We want to be biblical. We want to keep with that which is within our theological tradition.

Is he trolling? He has to be trolling. He can't really be wearing a Fauci shirt, can he? We've got to take care of the communities as is right in front of us. And we're very passionate about the Lord Jesus Christ.

And he's wearing a Fauci shirt. That is well played, KB. He's got to be trolling. He can't be a Fauci fan. There's just no way. There's no way he's a Fauci fan and he's wearing this Fauci shirt. There's just no way it's the case.

He is definitely trolling. That's what I'm going to take it.

I cannot be convinced otherwise. But the question that we are asking as we think about those two places that we land, passion for Jesus, relevancy for the folks who are right in front of us. Right. As we think about something like critical race theory, why should those who are sharing the gospel on the ground think pastors will center on them?

Why should they be concerned about critical race theory? Because it's a false religion.

And it's a false religion that the people right in front of you have often imbibed completely. And it's a system of morality. It's a system of law. It's a system of salvation. It's a system that is completely upside down and antichrist.

And so it would be like, this would be like asking, because in our context in America, there's very few areas where critical theory has not weaseled its wormy little snake tentacles into. There's very few.

My context here in New Hampshire, I have a church in Vermont, rural church in Vermont. And it's amazing. My pastor asked me to do some Sunday school classes about sort of the verses that I think are relevant to critical theory.

And when he asked me to do it, I was happy to do it because I love talking about this kind of thing. But I kind of in the back of my mind was like, yeah, but is this really going to matter? I mean, these are rural Vermont.

We're kind of insulated a little bit. Brothers, let me say this. I've had so many people reach out to me, and they're like, oh, wow, now I understand what's going on here in school. I'm a teacher. Now I understand what's happening over here.

It's everywhere. And so this would be like, it's amazing that KB would ask a question like this because this would be like asking someone who ministers to Muslims, why would it be important for a Christian pastor in the Christian context and the pastors, why would it be important for them to understand or be worried about Islam?

And you're like, because I'm in Pakistan. What are you talking about? This is insane.

Why Pastors Must Understand Critical Race Theory

Let's see how Neil answers. And its effect on the individuals they're trying to shepherd. So let's start with that. How would you answer that? That's a great question because you talk about the people in your path right in front of you, like the Good Samaritan.

You want to minister to people in front of you, and sometimes people can say, look, I don't want to worry about these theories, these abstract principles. Why does it matter to loving people in the name of Jesus?

I think if that's your attitude, I think that's fine and that's good, but we have to also be aware of the cultural context in which we minister, in which these ideas are influencing people. So for example, just take a simple example.

If you're ministering to people who are influenced by ideologies like say, as a scientist, I have to be aware, I had to be aware when I was in academia. I had to understand, say, evolution. I couldn't be ignorant of it.

I couldn't just love people. I could, but people would have questions then. They'd say, wait a minute, you're a Christian and you're a scientist. How do you reconcile faith and evolution? How do you reconcile just science and religion in general?

So I had to start understanding the conflict, understanding their beliefs so that I could effectively communicate to them. Now, is it necessary? No, I can share the gospel whether or not I understand evolution, but it really helps me to answer their questions.

And so in the same way, in a culture, I think in the last say, three months, critical race theory has exploded into the cultural consciousness. It was already pretty popular. I think if we're going to minister to people who are swimming in these waters, we have to understand the theory and then understand both how we can appreciate some of the things it says as Christians.

It's not all false, but also how we can understand how it leads to conflicts with our worldview. Practically, I had a really good conversation about a month ago with two Black pastors and a Black woman on a podcast called Tactical Faith, and one of the guys was like, the Black pastor said, I minister in a rural community in rural Alabama and my congregants, many of them are poor.

We're talking about how racism is a system versus racism as individual sin and all this abstract stuff, but when a man comes to me and he says, pastor, I live across the field from these white people, and these white people they hate me just because I'm Black.

Why would they hate me like that? He said, how does it matter to him whether I define racism as a system or as an individual sin? He was asking the same questions you are. Why does it matter? How is it relevant to him ministering to his Black congregant?

I said to him, look, here's a great example. If you view racism as primarily a system of power and a structure that produces racial disparities and hierarchies, then when you talk to your friend about why do they hate you, you'd say, well, because of there's embedded systems and ideologies in our society that have produced disparities, and the way to change them is through implementing government structures and changing law, and you're talking on that level.

But if you're approaching it as a Christian, you're saying, look, racism is primarily a sin, and it can infect systems, it can, but primarily it's about his heart. So what's the solution primarily? It's the gospel, brother.

He is a sinner who needs to repent and turn to Jesus, and the good news is that Jesus can save him from the sin of racism and all sin, and so what we can do for him, brother, is to pray for his heart and love him in the name of Jesus, and also another thing, remember that because you're a sinner, don't get proud, because you have the same sin in your heart.

So we can approach it now in humility and say the sin that lives in your heart lives in my heart too, so brother, I'm not going to look down on you. I'm going to love you in the name of Jesus and point you to the Savior who can cleanse you from that sin.

So my point is not that we have to ignore systems. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that what you think is primary will reflect how you minister to people, both racists and people that are hurt by racism.

That's exactly right. He's exactly right, and I agree with pretty much everything he said there. So, you know, he says it's important to know the critical theories and the ideologies and stuff because it can help you understand the questions that you're receiving, but he also said it's not necessary, and I completely agree with that.

You know, my book on the woke church movement doesn't even mention critical theory. It's a completely non-issue as far as my book is concerned, because my book is about the very simple commands from God that anyone can understand.

You don't need a theology degree. You don't need to have gone to school to be able to understand the commands of God and how they directly confront a lot of the nonsense that the woke church movement spouts every single day.

And so if you're going to have to pick one or the other, you're going to either study and master the Scripture or you're going to study and master a critical theory as a missionary, clearly you're going to choose the Scripture.

Clearly you want to choose what God commands. Master what God commands. It's like counterfeit, right? You don't study every single kind of counterfeit. You study the real thing, so that way you can identify the counterfeit.

So he's exactly right about that. And his example was really good as well. If you understand racism as a system of oppression by the majority culture that's just normal and it's just like, it's ordinary and, you know, what we got to do is we got to re-engineer the systems and then racism will go away.

Then you're going to be telling a very different story about what sin actually is and what the solution for sin actually is. And this applies in so many different ways. You'll see people that have this victim mindset, I'm just oppressed.

I'm just totally oppressed. And they don't go out and get a job. They don't go out and try hard because the man is out to get them anyway and they're just going to screw me over anyway and all that kind of thing.

It's like, no dude, you're lazy. You're a glutton and you're in sin and you're in debt. You went to debt to buy a TV or whatever. That's sinful. You're in sin, you must repent. This has to be primary.

What the scripture teaches about sin has to be primary. What the scripture teaches about the solution to sin has to be primary. Alright, I think my kids are leaving. Anyway, that was pretty good. Good job, Neal.

Critical Theory, Sin, and the Church’s Blind Spots

Right. So, I think two quick things. Number one, you said that critical race theory has exploded in contemporary culture here recently. I'd love to hear more about what that means. What does it mean that critical race theory has exploded?

Particularly when I think about, let me just say this just as a little backdrop so there's no kind of gotcha going on here. For our experience, as I think about being a part of Living Faith Bible Fellowship, it's a small urban church that primarily ministers to the working class people.

There are many folks in that demographic who are, it isn't a matter of folks not being educated or unaware. These are people who perhaps come from or live in poverty, but they're very intelligent, they're very capable, and they're lovers of Jesus.

Many of them go throughout their lives never hearing of critical race theory. Preceding the explosion, many of them, especially the black and brown folks, and by God's grace, a lot of the white people in our church, in fact, most of the white people in our church is the same thing.

Individuals who are in our community have held their vision of racism and how it works in the world before this became a popular thing in culture. That's false.

Because this is another scam that the woke church runs all the time. It's like, I've never heard of critical race theory, therefore I can't be influenced by it. And it's like, that's completely false, and it's so naive to think that way.

There are schools of thought that I'm influenced by that I've never studied. That's just a fact. That is just a fact. You are influenced by schools of study that you've never heard of, and yet, the way you think, your thought patterns, the way you categorize things, the way you think about things have affected you.

And it's just that simple. I've got that kind of thing, and you've got that kind of thing. And so to say, well, if I've never heard of critical theory or critical race theory, then I can't be thinking that way, that is super naive, and I just think it just betrays just a very low level of self-reflection.

Where did I get the idea that there's this thing called white privilege and all that kind of stuff? Where did I get this idea that there's this white supremacy that it's just like a secret pervasive...

They don't actually hate you, but they set up the systems in a certain way so that they hate... Did you get that from the scripture? Did you get the idea that if black people are poorer in general than white people, and Latinos are poorer in general than black people, whatever it is, I don't know the numbers anymore.

Who knows? They're probably changing. Where'd you get the idea that that's an injustice? You didn't get that from the Bible, right? You didn't get that from the Bible. You got that from somewhere else.

And it'd be naive to think that everyone just kind of thought about that on their own. That's a school of thought, okay? That's a school of thought. And so that's a very naive way to look at things. There are particularly.

Leaders in our church who have been doing the work of discipleship and racial reconciliation, understanding the way that this sin works itself out in people's prejudice for 20, 30 years. You know what I mean?

Yeah, and a lot of them.

Got it from James Cone. Like, this is the thing. Some woke people are honest about this, right? Like, Jamar Tisby's honest about this. Walter Strickland's honest about this. It's like, well, I read James Cone, the heretic James Cone, and it changed my life.

It just influenced me so much. And so, yeah, those guys are honest. They read James Cone and it influenced them, but here's the ticket. There's a lot of people who read James Cone and were influenced by it and then taught other people, and maybe they didn't cite James Cone, they didn't say it, because Walter Strickland even says, I don't tell people it's James Cone, because then that's a stumbling block.

He's a heretic, so I don't want people to know I'm teaching them heresy. And so, now you know James Cone's ideas even without knowing who James Cone was. You've got his ideas because Walter Strickland taught you his ideas without citing him, without telling you what he was actually saying, what he was talking about.

And so you can see in the issue of Walter Strickland—by the way, this is all documented. There's a New York Times article that I'm quoted in as well that tells you that he's doing this, right? So it's very easy to see how this could happen.

Walter Strickland reads James Cone, it changes his life. He knows the gospel now. Then he teaches other people James Cone, but he doesn't tell you it's James Cone because he doesn't want your guard up against the heresy.

And then now you have James Cone's ideas, but you think it's just the way things are. No, that's James Cone. That's James Cone. This has gone on 30 minutes. Let's pause it right there. If you found this helpful, let me know.

I don't know. I mean, this is kind of boring, in my opinion. The South Side Rabbi Show, it's very flashy, but I don't know. Let me know what you think this Fauci shirt is. If you guys think he's honestly a fan of Fauci, I don't know.

I don't know what this shirt says, but it's weird. It's a very weird shirt to wear. I don't know. Anyway, if you want me to continue doing this, give it a thumbs up. Let me know in the comments below.

If you think this is a waste of time, it very well might be. I don't know. I'll do it for you guys because I do my content for you guys. I hope you found this helpful. You know, something else just occurred to me that I think is very, very important regarding KB's question about why does this matter, right?

Why should a pastor in a local church context even be worried at all about critical race theory? And this question also kind of betrays sort of a lack of understanding of the sinfulness of your own people's sins, right?

Because you should care about critical theory because there's a good chance that some of the bad ideas of critical theory regarding white people, some of the attitudes about white people have been imbibed by your congregation and that's these are sinful attitudes.

Sinful attitudes against fellow image bearers of God. They bear the image of God. White people do. And so you should care about your own people's sin very much because you need to be helping them defeat that, right?

Because Christ died on the cross for the sins of your people, but we have to work out our salvation day to day. We have to be holy as Christ is holy. In fact, personal holiness is very much one of the primary things that Christians ought to be concerned with.

And so if your people are believing evil, vile, vicious things about them white folks, white people, you ought to be very concerned with that as a pastor. It'd be like if you have a local congregation that used to be pagans, right?

They used to be they used to worship rocks and sticks and trees and stuff like that. You ought to know about that stuff because you want to make sure that their thought patterns aren't still being affected by their previous beliefs.

And you need to be destroying those previous beliefs and replacing those beliefs with scripture, with the mind of Christ, right? We ought to be focused on believing the same things that Christ taught us to believe.

And so of course you'd be concerned with the sinfulness of some of those beliefs that are congruent with critical theory that your congregation might be engaged in.