Desmond Tutu and The Gospel Coalition: Promoting the Same False Gospel?

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna continue our topic that we started a podcast before last on Desmond Tutu, but we're gonna talk about the

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Gospel Coalition and how Gospel Coalition has positively used Desmond Tutu and then kind of examine the theology that's being advocated, whether vaguely or less vaguely, more clearly.

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I think it's gonna be helpful. I think it's gonna be a little eye -opening. I think some of you, this might be, if you heard the last podcast on this, on Tutu, this may be the moment that maybe a light bulb goes on for you and you reach a level of understanding about kind of what the play that's being made right now.

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So real quick, I just wanna let everyone know again, you can go to worldviewconversation .com, see where I'm gonna be at the end of this month.

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I'm gonna be in Kentucky and Tennessee. So if you're in those areas, I would definitely appreciate seeing you.

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And let's see, what else? I think that was it. So let's just jump into it. Oh, I almost forgot.

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So, that being said, let's get into it. We're gonna talk about, like I said, Gospel Coalition stuff.

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The title is Desmond Tutu and the Gospel Coalition Promoting the Same False Gospel? Now this is gonna be, this is gonna instigate a lot of people.

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How can you say the rank heretic Desmond Tutu? Well, maybe it won't. Maybe it won't. Maybe they'll take it as a compliment.

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I don't know. I mean, they do that with MLK, right? MLK is always, you know, an Orthodox believer in the way that Gospel Coalition folks usually talk about them, usually.

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And like, think about the MLK 50, which they sponsored. So, you know, maybe it'll be like that.

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But, you know, I did a whole podcast already showing that Desmond Tutu is like the rankest of heretics on theology.

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I'm not talking about Desmond Tutu's political side. I'm talking about his theology, okay? So I'm sure

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Desmond Tutu, a lot of great things, I'm sure. I mean, he was against Mugabe. I mean, that's pretty significant. But, you know, really bad theology.

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Horrible theology, in fact. So the question is, does the Gospel Coalition have similar theology?

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We know that they're not as far, you know, as Desmond Tutu was, as far as being down with the revolution.

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They haven't gone as far as he's gone with his egalitarianism, but are they on the same track?

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Is their gospel, is the difference one of degrees or of substance? And I would submit to you,

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I think it's more of degrees. I think the substance is pretty similar. So we're gonna go through the

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Gospel Coalition articles. And this isn't all of them, but these are the ones I found, you know, were the most relevant.

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Let's review real quick though. So Desmond Tutu's gospel focuses on humans forwarding social change in the temporal realm as a way to carry out

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God's dream for a new kind of world characterized by equality. Desmond Tutu, as I explained in more detail though, is really saying that man is

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God. Man can become God. Man must struggle to realize the dream. God needs man, actually, to struggle to realize the dream of this great, free, equal society.

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And to do that, we gotta deconstruct a bunch of stuff. We gotta rip down some fences. So religious differences and gender differences and, or at least orientation differences, differences in nationality, all these things have to be kind of ripped down so that we can view each other as just humans, blank, you know, blank, bland humans.

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Once we get to that point and our identities change, so we just see each other as humans and think of ourselves as just humans, after we strip ourselves of everything just about that would make us, would confer an identity to humans, then we will have, you know, true equality.

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And that's the goal, all right? So how is Desmond Tutu, which, and that is the thrust of his theology, how is this treated by gospel coalition types?

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We will start with why Desmond Tutu is so right and so wrong by Andrew Shanks.

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Now, this is interesting to me. This was in 2013 and there's

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Andrew Shanks and he wrote for the gospel coalition. And I have most of the article here, the relevant portions, at least.

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Earlier this summer, this is the situation, right? This is what he opens the article with. Earlier this summer, Desmond Tutu, former

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Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and primate for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, pronounced his belief that God is not homophobic and he himself would not want to reside in a heaven characterized by homophobia.

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He would rather go to the other place, okay? That would be hell, right? Desmond Tutu did say that he'd rather go to hell, right?

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But, you know, Desmond Tutu also said hell is a great compliment God pays to people. So confused man, but we get the point.

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He's saying, you know, I'd rather be going to hell than to, you know, go be with a God who's homophobic. Conservative evangelical outlets in the

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West are understandably disappointed by this pronouncement coming as it does from a man so instrumental in abolishing apartheid in South Africa.

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Archbishop Tutu is viewed internationally as a paragon of social justice, tempered by forgiveness and peacefulness, and his voice carries significant weight.

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So you can see the angst or the struggle going on with Andrew Shanks. Ah, this is a bummer.

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You know, Desmond Tutu, he said this, you know, we can't agree with that, but, you know, it's a bummer because we really like the fact that Desmond Tutu, you know, helped abolish apartheid.

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And he's viewed internationally as a paragon of social justice. That's good stuff. You know, so why would he go do this?

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Now, I'd love to like, be like, hey, Andrew, like, what do you think social justice is? Like, this is

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Desmond Tutu just going to the next step, right? And obviously, you know, apartheid is not ideal.

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We don't want apartheid, no one does. I'm in fact, I remember when we were doing the FBC Naples documentary, there was a woman who was being interviewed, called racist, right?

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For her opposition to social justice. And she had left South Africa, she hated apartheid.

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I thought that was quite interesting. And I haven't, I'll be honest,

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I haven't like read up on African, South African history as much as I have American history. The little

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I do know is that there was really a terrible no -win situation going on there.

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And it's way more nuanced and complex than today people want to make it out to be.

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Now, that being said, the apartheid situation was abysmal, really. It was wrong, it exacerbated things even more.

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But they had no great way to deal with the problems that their country was undergoing. And that happens a lot.

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A lot of countries just, there's no great solution. And we shouldn't expect that in a sin -cursed world like we live in.

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There's sometimes gonna be situations like that. I know Rhodesia often gets the shaft when it comes to their policy, but their policy wasn't racially based.

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It was more, they had an education standard one had to meet in order to vote and these kinds of things.

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And of course that was, the same forces that were against apartheid basically didn't see much of a difference with the issue, with this state of affairs in Rhodesia.

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So people speculate, could South Africa have done something different to avoid the communism that came upon them, which is what they were afraid of?

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And I don't know. I don't think no matter what they did, I think it would have been, they would have been called racist, but unfortunately they put into place an evil system.

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So I wasn't expecting to talk this much about apartheid, but I think it just, I wanna just clarify that because you know what?

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The main accusation you get as soon as you start talking about Desmond Tutu is if you're critical, then you must be racist because he's the anti -apartheid guy.

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And that's not the angle I'm coming at this from. But anyway, Andrew Shanks uses the term social justice here.

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And that's my question. What do you think? If he's a paragon of social justice, I mean, this makes sense.

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This isn't out of step, but he acts like it's out of step, you know, being, so anyway.

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Here's what he says. He says, Andrew Shanks for the Gospel Coalition. He says, we must remember that when social liberals employ the homophobe word group, they often have in mind personal revulsion to gay sex.

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And I should have said this up front. I am so sorry. For those listening with children, please.

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There may be, you know, it doesn't really go past what the Bible describes and talks about.

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But again, that's the kind of thing that there might be a little more of. I hope that was kind of obvious from the beginning or from the last slide that we were gonna go into that territory.

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But I can tell with my quote here that it's gonna be a little bit more colorful, not too much.

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So anyway, nevertheless, we see homophobia in some churches as they tacitly justify the mockery and mistreatment of homosexuals.

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Westboro Baptist grabs headlines with its God hates and then there's a slur placards, but many more repeat hopelessly shameful cliches such as Adam and Eve, not

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Adam and Steve. So when many here, Christians faithfully defend traditional marriage on the basis of scripture, they think of this kind of homophobia along with the images of Matthew Shepard being dragged for miles behind a pickup truck in Wyoming.

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I wanna put the Matthew Shepard thing on the shelf. That's been proven that it wasn't a homophobic thing, that was a drug related thing.

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But so forget about that. He's buying into the media garbage narrative. But look at the big picture here.

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There's a contrast going on, okay? And this is the struggle TGC is having, right?

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Because TGC wants to be on the side of the revolution, but they know they got this thing called biblical orthodoxy. They gotta try to kind of stay with.

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So personal revulsion to gay sex is contrasted with reasoned disapproval on the basis of the dictates of scripture.

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Now, let me ask you this. Could you have a personal revulsion to gay sex and a reasoned disapproval on the basis of scripture?

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Yeah, that would be actually probably the biblical position. There should be a personal revulsion to gay sex.

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Why is that? Like, why is that the bad thing? Like you shouldn't have that somehow, like that's wrong.

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The only acceptable critique is reasonable disapproval on the basis of the dictates of scripture.

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That's the only thing. Personal revulsion to gay sex is just invalid somehow. That's bigoted, that's homophobic.

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That's what's being set up here. Shameful cliches, Adam and Eve and not

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Adam and Steve, right? That's a shameful cliche. Why is that shameful? How about it's shameful to enter into intercourse with someone of the same sex?

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Why is it shameful to have a cliche like that? I don't get this. I mean,

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I do, but if you're trying to be biblically orthodox, the Bible goes way farther than a cliche like that.

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I mean, come on. So when many here Christians faithfully defend traditional marriage on the basis of scripture, right?

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That's the legitimate thing. He contrasts it with Matthew Shepard being dragged for miles behind a pickup truck.

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That's the contrast. Personal revulsion to gay sex, shameful cliches like Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And Matthew Shepard being dragged behind a pickup truck, contrasted with reasoned disapproval on the basis of the dictates of scripture.

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He's trying to create a separation where one does not exist in the way he thinks.

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There is a natural revulsion that people should have. It's unnatural, okay? I know some people will say, oh, sin nature, sin nature.

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No, no, no. What I'm saying is this is, it's a step into depravity beyond the heterosexual depravity that would, that's a natural, heterosexual activity is a natural.

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It is the way God designed things. That's the point. When I mean natural, that's what I mean.

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It's unnatural. It's not the way God designed things to, it is shameful.

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It is an abomination. It's toiva, Hebrew, Old Testament, to lie with a man like one would lie with a woman.

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It is, that is, if that's not revulsion, I don't know what would be, but he's trying to parse here the unparsable.

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So then there's, let me read this for you. He says, when a man like Desmond Tutu who spent his life defending the rights of the disenfranchised views homosexuality from this perspective, we're not surprised to hear him say that he would not want to worship a homophobic

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God, nor is he in this sense wrong for who would want to worship a God who truly hates facts?

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Who would want to worship a God who smiles on those who torture and murder gay youth? What kind of God would mock those who struggle with their sexual identity?

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Certainly not the God of the Bible. And Archbishop Tutu is absolutely right in disowning such a false

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God. There's a redeeming going on here.

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Redeeming Desmond Tutu. Desmond Tutu, paragon of social justice. We're on Desmond Tutu's side on this.

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We can see his point. We're with him in his opposition to personal revulsion to gay sex, shameful cliches,

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Matthew Shepard being dragged, homophobia, the rights of the disenfranchised, right?

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Cause homosexuals are disenfranchised. How so, Andrew Shanks? How are they disenfranchised? How so?

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He doesn't specify that. You know, we can understand him defending homosexuality or defending against homophobia cause they're disenfranchised.

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You know, this is without, if you're not gonna be specific here, this plays right into the whole narrative that the church is oppressive because it doesn't validate the orientation of homosexuals.

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That's what this is doing. It plays right into it. And, you know, he says he's not wrong.

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Desmond Tutu's not wrong on that. He's absolutely right in disowning a false God.

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So the God of the Bible apparently doesn't have a personal revulsion to gay sex. Again, this is gospel coalition, guys.

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And I want you to see the agenda that's being pushed here and how Tutu's being used.

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Now, here's the orthodoxy part, right? This, you have to put the brake pedal on because this is an evangelical organization.

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You gotta have qualifications. If you just left it there, uh -oh. So here's the qualification.

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At the same time, the law of God clearly condemns the unrepentant who practice homosexuality. Each of us, notice how that's phrased.

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It's not homosexuals, which is the Bible uses. It's very, that's qualified.

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See, that part is qualified. You know, it's those who engage in those acts. So it opens the door for the revoiced theology.

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So he goes, each of us must lay aside sin and worship God alone through Christ. This is simple, albeit personally costly gospel truth.

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This is not homophobia, but we cannot rely on the culture to make this distinction to the extent that Tutu conflates

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God's law with homophobia. He is absolutely wrong. This is the weakest reply you can think of to Desmond Tutu.

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He's absolutely right on opposing homophobia, right? But hey, you know what?

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Biblical Christianity is not homophobia. And if Desmond Tutu thinks that biblical Christianity is, then he's wrong, but we don't really know to the extent that Tutu conflates.

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We don't know whether he's conflated. We just don't know. So Tutu, he'd be just absolutely right. We're against homophobia.

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He's against homophobia. That's the orthodox statement, right? That's as good as it gets as far as being biblical.

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And then we have the neutralizing. We have him saying, Andrew Shanks writing for Gospel Coalition, we must not be guilty of the same mistake.

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We must not mistake revulsion towards homosexual activity with the biblical warnings against it as if our own sin is any less revolting.

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Okay, he's setting up a straw man in a way here. Yeah, it is revolting and arson is also revolting.

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And there's, guess what? Different levels, different penalties even associated with different sins and different levels of sin.

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There that people are given over to, you see that dissent in Romans one. If it would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment, why?

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Because they were shown more or less light than places like Chorazin and the cities that Jesus had done ministry in.

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And so therefore there are different levels of sin and the

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Gospel Coalition always bristles against that when it comes to this topic. Yeah, you can't say that. You can't say that there's a different level.

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There's a different penalty associated, civil penalty. All right, we have no biblical mandate to despise or devalue gays.

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Okay, yeah, obviously, like, but what does it mean to despise or devalue? We must find a way to stand firm on the biblical boundaries for human sexuality while simultaneously demonstrating solidarity with homosexuals and their struggles.

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This is the poison pill. That's the poison pill. We must commit to finding solutions to the medical and psychological problems that beset the homosexual community.

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We must find ways of engaging in discussions on homosexual marriage that assert the biblical standard without belittling relationships that means so much to gays.

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Okay, well, let's walk on eggshells. Let's be part of the struggle. We're gonna be for social justice. We're gonna show solidarity with homosexuals and their struggles while holding onto orthodoxy.

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And we gotta find a way to do this because obviously there isn't a way. That's why we have to find it.

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This is the goal. End goal, ready? Essentially, we must show radical, self -denying love to the homosexual community in the hope that the slander of homophobia might disappear from our cultural vocabulary altogether.

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Oh, yes, we get to the meat of this whole thing. The end goal is we don't wanna be called homophobes.

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We're not homophobes. That's the message. We don't believe in homophobia. We agree with Desmond Tutu.

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Now, hopefully Desmond Tutu isn't, you know, thinking we're homophobes. And if he thinks God's law is that, well, he's wrong, but we don't really know.

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And we think that homosexual sex is not revolting. In fact, we just think, you know, the

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Bible apparently arbitrarily, I'm being sarcastic, Paul was, so I feel like I can be. The Bible apparently arbitrarily just gives laws about things.

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And we just have to go with them like some automatrons without thinking through why that might be.

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Maybe there's a creation design here and God's saying don't deviate from it. But as soon as you say that, that opens the door to you can be, you know, the deviating from the design can be wrong and revolting.

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This is the catch 22. It is internally contradictory. And what's the big picture here? Why was this article ever written?

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Why? And how is Desmond Tutu being kind of used?

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Desmond Tutu comes out looking pretty good in this. You know who comes out looking pretty bad? Christians who are revolt against gay sex.

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You know, find it revolting. Who use catchphrases like Adam and Eve, not

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Adam and Steve. Those are the people that come out looking pretty bad. So what's Gospel Coalition doing?

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What's the whole point of this? Let's put that on the table. Think about that.

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Think about why an article like this, what's it trying to move? What's it trying to provoke you into thinking and doing and feeling and all of that?

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Where is it taking you in the end? And this is the Gospel Coalition.

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So I can, I think ask too, what does this say about the gospel? Does it say anything about the gospel?

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All right, let's go to the next one. 10 reasons you should read

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Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion by Andrew Wilson. So here's Andrew Wilson writing for the Gospel Coalition and commending

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Fleming Rutledge. Now I don't know a lot about Fleming Rutledge, but she is an

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Episcopal, I guess, pastor in the United States. And I looked through,

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I couldn't get a copy of her book. I saw some reviews on it. I got some quotes from it. The Crucifixion is the book.

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And let me read you a quote from this. This is what Andrew Wilson says.

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"'The atonement is connected to race, relations, and civil rights.'" Now, focus on that.

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The atonement is connected to race, relations, and civil rights. Far more than would usually be the case in a work of white evangelical theology.

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Footnotes contrast the different laughs of Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama and highlight the implications for theologies of suffering.

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Rutledge's vantage point means she can see many things I can, and that makes the book valuable. I suspect the same will be true for most evangelical readers.

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So Fleming Rutledge is a woman. Remember, I think it was Michael Byrd said something like this at Southeastern, talking to Walter Strickland in their

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Kingdom Diversity podcast a few years ago, and says, hey, I have my students read Fleming Rutledge because, you know, she's a woman and she can see things

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I can't see. And, you know, Andrew Wilson says the same thing. She sees things. It's this, it's really a standpoint theory.

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You make that statement out of a standpoint theory of sorts. So anyway, let's ignore that though for now.

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The thing I want to focus on is this, the atonement is connected to race, relations, and civil rights. And then, you know, the next sentence,

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Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. And I'm like, I'm thinking, okay, like, so a heretic and a Hindu, and like what, like there's implications for theology as a suffering by interacting with Desmond Tutu and the

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Dalai Lama. And the gospel coalition is putting this out there. And the atonement is connected to race, relations, and civil rights.

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Like, what does all this have to, this sounds like, this sounds like a mainline denomination because, well, it's

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Fleming Rutledge. It's talking about someone from a mainline denomination. Turns out

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Fleming Rutledge, Fleming Rutledge looks like she is what, you know, you'd expect from an Episcopal, a mainline denomination.

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That's her theology. She doesn't, you know, you can't get a clear statement from her, but it doesn't seem like she even believes in hell, which is,

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I'm about to read for you a statement that talks about this. But anyway, this article by Andrew Wilson is commending this.

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It was, it's 10 reasons you should read Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion. It's a good thing. And he has a whole section too,

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I didn't include it on, you know, the gospel and stuff. And Fleming Rutledge just gives us all these insights. Let me give you just this one section from Fleming Rutledge's book,

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The Crucifixion. She says, God does not possess his justice, righteousness, same word, far off in a remote imperium.

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The righteousness of God is not a static, remorseless attribute against which vulnerable human beings fling themselves in vain, nor is it like that of a judge who dispenses impersonal justice according to some legal norm.

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So what she's saying is like, it's not there's this standard that God is applying to everyone. Instead, it's this,

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God's justice as Desmond Tutu insisted is not retributive, but restorative.

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It is natural that many do not understand this because God's love resisted is felt as wrath.

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Okay, remember what Desmond Tutu said. We said this two podcasts ago in the whole episode about Desmond Tutu that he said, hell was the highest compliment

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God ever paid to someone. Fleming Rutledge takes that and says, yeah, Desmond Tutu is right about that.

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She doesn't say hell. She says, God's love is felt as wrath. So that means there really is no

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God's wrath. It's just taking it away. If there's no wrath, if there's no standard that we fall short of that God is holding humans accountable for, and as a good judge would applying the law, if that's not what's going on, how do you have a gospel?

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Why even bother to have a gospel? We don't need a gospel because God's wrath is just love.

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It's just love. That's all it is. You see the problem here. You see how this destroys the gospel and it's a man -centeredness again, creeping in.

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And Desmond Tutu shows up here that the influence of Desmond Tutu shows up in this. Gospel coalition saying, you know what?

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We can glean from this. The atonement is connected to race relations and civil rights.

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It's interesting. Where do you see this in scripture? And I know where Jarvis Williams goes.

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I understand Galatians and Ephesians and well, it's racial reconciliation there. No, no, it's actually getting rid of what they believe.

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It's the idea that you can bind grace and law together. That's what that's about, not race relations.

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Yes, there's a Jewish and Gentile thing going on that the fracture, the root issue between those groups was the law and what place does the law have?

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See, this is seeping into what Desmond Tutu wants, right? All right, remember the first article, soft peddling homosexuality, right?

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Trying to kind of soften what the Bible says to get it to we can still be

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Orthodox, but we can be on the side of the revolution. Second article we're reading here is saying that the atonement is connected to civil rights and that has something to do with Desmond Tutu and theologies of suffering.

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And then you read from Fleming Rutledge and you find out that means, you know, it's just man centered thing. There's really, we just destroy wrath.

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So what's the gospel at the end of the day? It just strips it and it becomes a political thing.

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It becomes the taking down of barriers, of social barriers and stuff.

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This is the atonement. All right, I hope you're starting to see the same kind of thing

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Desmond Tutu promotes gospel coalition is promoting, except it has qualifications.

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It uses language like Orthodox language at points to kind of like make you think, okay, good, they're not going that direction, but they actually are.

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And that they're doing it in a series of steps. It's progressive. Here's the next one,

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Black Religious Experience, Conversations on Double Consciousness and the Work of Grant Shockley, reviewed by Joe Capoglio.

28:31

And by the way, critical race theory, this idea that there's a standpoint, this idea that victims know more than the oppressors because they have to live in the oppressor's world.

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This is goes back to Marx's class consciousness. James Cone talked about this. Grant Shockley talked about this is older than critical race theory.

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Most of the ideas from critical race theory are. And so this book, it's not CRT, but it's the same ideas.

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It's not CRT because of where it stands sequentially, not because of in content it's any different.

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So I'll read for you some quotes. This is Joe Capoglio, Gospel Coalition. Black and all other people in the struggle for liberation from dehumanization, depersonalization, de -socialization and disempowerment.

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That mission is to help black and all people to overcome instead of giving up. Jesus put it well in the gospel of Luke.

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The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has appointed me. Sorry, let me back up for a minute.

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The quote I'm reading is from the book that Joe Capoglio is reviewing. So let me get this straight so everyone isn't confused and they understand what

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I'm talking about. Joe Capoglio writing for the Gospel Coalition. The work, it's very confusing.

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There's a bunch of names here and I even got confused. The work he's writing on, he's reviewing is a book about a guy named

29:54

Grant Shockley. So this is from the book about Grant Shockley from the

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Black Religious Experience. That's the name of the book, Black Religious Experience. Okay, I'll start over. So black and all other people, they're struggling for liberation from dehumanization, et cetera.

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That mission is to help black people overcome instead of giving up. Jesus put it well in the gospel of Luke. Spirit of Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

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He has set me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the

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Lord's favor. And I've talked about this section and where it's quoted from in the Old Testament and showed that just a few verses, it talks about basically other peoples serving the

30:39

Jews, serving Israel, you know? And it's like, you know, is that really part of your, you know, why don't you keep reading?

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That shouldn't be part of the final state or the egalitarian utopia we want to enact.

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Right, it's not. But you have images here of Jubilee and stuff. And I would submit to you the way

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Jesus is using this, it's a spiritual thing. And most commentators that I've read, especially in the reformed tradition, which is mostly what

31:07

I've read, they agree that that's the take they have of this, that Jesus is saying, you know, yeah, there's a temporary blessing in that Jesus is there healing people.

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But what Jesus is, the deep thing Jesus is doing, what he's trying to communicate is that the prisoners, the gospel, the good news is to the prisoners of sin.

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That's the whole point of this. And of course, this becomes, again, immanentizing the eschaton, it becomes the gospel is about liberation from dehumanization.

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And it's a political thing. And so this is what Grant Shockley believed. And this is from the

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Black Religious Experience. Let me read you one other thing before I get to the quote from Gospel Coalition. This is from another book by Kenneth Hill called

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Religious Education in the African American Tradition, a Comprehensive Introduction. Now this is gonna give us some information about Grant Shockley, okay?

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The new direction of liberation theology affected education theory and practice, especially its engagement character.

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African American educators such as Grant Shockley and Olivia Pearl Strokes have identified with and utilized theology of liberation and pedagogy of the oppressed of Paulo Freire.

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They have argued for a more explicit social and cultural role for religious education.

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Grant Shockley proposed a liberating education appropriate for black churches. For him, this education entails a critical reflection on praxis that is sensitive to forms of human injustice, discrimination and racism.

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Shockley consistently used the language and themes of liberation in his corpus work. Shockley has made the most sustained attempt to relate liberation theology and black theology to religious education.

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He has made a persuasive argument that religious education in the black church should be grounded in a biblical theological foundation concerned with liberation.

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And as I recall, he, I think he was a Harvard or Yale, I think

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Harvard. And then he ended up going out to the Midwest and he was like a, he was an educator.

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That was his, I think Kansas or something, but I wanna, I'm not sure off the top of my head. So Grant Shockley though, this is the description of what he believes.

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Okay, so we're talking liberation theology, different gospel, right? That's all I wanna bring to you. Different gospel.

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The work that's being quoted here, black religious experience, different gospel. The description of who

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Grant Shockley is, what he does, different gospel. Now, what is Joe Coppolo do with this in the gospel coalition?

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From the pages of the gospel coalition, this is what we have. In section four, Foster and Smith, authors of black religious experience, okay?

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Foster and Smith move beyond the work of Shockley to suggest that the logic of his work would lead to a third movement.

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After white racism, black reaction and black theology, that is the Ubuntu theology as articulated by Desmond Tutu and demonstrated in a truth and reconciliation commission in which the oppressed and oppressor are both released from the forces that bound them on the opposite sides of the divide.

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The double consciousness of being African -American must lead to a triple or reunited third consciousness of a

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Christian African -American sense of self. There's an endorsement of this work, of what

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Shockley was doing on a certain level. And it's because it would lead to this movement, that Desmond Tutu describes as Ubuntu theology.

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And there's this, it almost sounds like thesis, antithesis, synthesis, but the oppressor and the oppressed come together and there's this unification, this piece that can kind of develop.

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Again, this is the point of Desmond Tutu. This is what he wants to have happen, that everyone's gonna, everyone come together, take down all boundaries and barriers, right?

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Let's read the next quote. I think things will become a little more clear. The challenge of this book for the Christian church are clear. Christian education cannot simply be informative.

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It must be transformative. Interesting. The plight of the disadvantaged in the flux of life, which is their lot must form a major part of the platform for a relevant

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Christian education, which can and should lead to a truly united community, which accepts, promotes, and celebrates differences without erecting unnecessary and unbiblical social and cultural barriers.

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There it is, right? We don't want the walls, okay? This book is truly informative, instructive, and relevant for the church in the

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United Kingdom as it faces the growing rift between mainstream white churches and the fast growing black majority and other ethnic churches.

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The hope of the book is the vision of not only Isaiah, but also of John of the Apocalypse in which diverse peoples of every tribe and tongue can come together to be a kingdom of priests to serve their

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God. Now, the word gospel is not used here, okay? But I will submit to you, again,

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Desmond Tutu didn't really use that word. He used the word transfiguration to describe his goal of enacting this egalitarian utopia of some kind.

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And you see the same kind of thing happening from the pages of the Gospel Coalition, even quoting

36:19

Desmond Tutu. But it's this, you know, we need to create this society by getting rid of barriers and education needs to be transformative, needs to, it's liberation theology.

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The plight of the disadvantaged, it must be platformed. We gotta celebrate difference.

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This whole push, and this is 2019 from the Gospel Coalition, this whole push that Desmond Tutu has, you see it being pushed from the

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Gospel Coalition. It's pushed vaguely, okay? That's the thing, if they were specific, it would probably be much harder to push, but it's pushed in this vague kind of manner.

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Here is David T. Williams. This is from 2020, Gospel Coalition. Theology in South Africa, the current situation, and it's what he says.

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Evangelicals have plenty of, have been guilty of emphasizing benefits which are not wanted and of presenting solutions to problems which are not appreciated.

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Tutu, in fact, encapsulates the usual African view of white theology. In an oft -quoted remark, that Christianity has produced answers and often splendid answers to questions which were not asked.

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This is, by the way, I gotta stop here. This is a liberation theology thing. Liberation theology is very focused on asking questions.

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And every time you hear that, you say, well, if you ask questions from a certain vantage point, a certain experience of oppression, then the

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Bible communicates with this fusion, this horizon between the, that fuses the experience, the hermeneutical spiral between the interpreter and the text.

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And you get these answers, right? And so this is, Desmond Tutu is, it sounds very similar to me.

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It's that, you know, there's this pragmatic aspect. You know, what's the Bible good for? Well, it's good for the things that we can use practically in our situation to help oppress people, et cetera.

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That's what the Bible is good for. It's you have to ask the right questions. And so it's just, you know, doing theology isn't really important.

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Just understanding who God is. Yeah, what does it mean for us? Very man -centered, okay? Now here's the kicker.

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A gospel meaningful to Africa has to be present the immediate and material benefits of belief.

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So the gospel has to present the immediate and material benefits of belief, or it just will not even be considered.

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Okay, what's the gospel then? Gospel is the good news, right? Good news of what? I'm not ashamed of the gospels.

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The power of God is salvation for those who believed. What's the gospel here? It's gotta present immediate and material benefits.

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There's gotta be material benefits. So that's part of the gospel. And what would material benefits be?

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Works, yeah. There's a fusion going on here. And I know it's subtle.

39:10

You don't catch it. But if you read it and you think about it, that's what it's saying. It's not saying the gospel, it's the gospel needs to come with a

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Christian ethic. People need to engage in charity. And no, it's saying a gospel meaningful to Africa, a gospel, singular, has to present the immediate and material benefits of belief.

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The African view tends to be that religion and so also Christianity should give immediate material benefits. So because the

39:36

Africans think, you gotta have material benefits, then therefore we, what? We gotta change our gospel.

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We gotta add that to the gospel. The relation between evangelism and social action, for example, has become important for many of the more traditional churches, which have in the past neglected the latter.

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The organization that Cassidy founded, Africa Enterprise, has consistently tried to preach the gospel in a holistic way.

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There you go. There's the language right there. Holistic gospel. So would the gospel without meeting material needs, is that not the whole gospel?

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Boom, right there. Gospel coalition. The true gospel, the holistic gospel, that's gonna have some works attached to it.

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Some, and some, maybe some charity, maybe some social justice. And of course, the inspiration here, again,

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Desmond Tutu. Here we go, another one. At least in part, Desmond Tutu. Understanding African theology in the 20th century by Kwame Bataiko.

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I think I'm pronouncing that right. This was published in 2020. To the extent that the African endeavor has achieved a measure of success, it may hold promise for a modern

40:45

Western theology, which is now also asking seriously how the Christian faith may be related in a missionary sense to Western culture.

40:53

It is this relocation of African primal religions at the very center of the academic stage, which may prove a benediction to Western Christian theology, as it also seeks to be communicative, evangelistic, and missionary in its own context.

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For the African vindication of the theological significance of African primal religions. You know, this goes on forever.

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I don't wanna bore you with all this. I probably included too much here. I thought it was important.

41:20

That's why I was including it. Let me just skim here. The nature of the meeting of Christianity with European primal religions may hold more significance for understanding the modern

41:27

West. Okay, the primal worldview may turn out to be not so alien to the

41:35

West after all, even a post -enlightenment era. So there's this fusion between African theology.

41:41

This is what African theology, I guess, basically is. This fusion of these ancient African traditions with Christianity, right?

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To produce a uniquely African Christianity, right? Not the Western, it's an anti -colonial thing.

41:57

And here's what he says. Whenever Western missionaries or a missionary society made the scriptures available to an

42:03

African people in that people's own language, they weakened, by the same token, whatever Western bias might've characterized, their presentation and prescription of the gospel.

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African Christians with access to the... Okay, I'm gonna stop here. So there's a bias.

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You can have a bias in the way you present the gospel. Really, what's the bias? You know, too much grace?

42:23

Again, there's this language being introduced here that like, well, there's a right way to produce the...

42:29

If it's in English, there's a bias with the gospel, right? There's a bias if it's not coming from the

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African experience, somehow. There's not some fusion of African tradition with Christianity.

42:44

Well, then that would be an unbiased gospel, I guess, or maybe a bias in a better direction.

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Where do you find this in scripture? You know, be careful when you go and you witness to those Greeks, Jews, because you don't wanna bias it.

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You don't have a biased gospel. Understanding... The categories, by the way,

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I should just say, it's true gospel, false gospel, okay? It's true or false. A different gospel would be a false gospel.

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Those are the categories. It's not, you know, a Western gospel, oh, an African gospel, oh, these are, you know, they're different gospels somehow.

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That's the implication, that there are different gospels. Excuse me, I'm losing my voice.

43:22

Understanding African Theology in the 20th Century by Kwame Bidaico from the pages of the

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Gospel Coalition continues here. Desmond Tutu's observations at the Joss Conference on Christianity in Independent Africa are worth citing at some length.

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So here's what Tutu says. African theologians have set about demonstrating that the African religious experience and heritage were not illusory and that they should have formed a vehicle for conveying the gospel varieties to Africa.

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The gospel varieties. It was vital for the Africans self -respect that this kind of rehabilitation of his religious heritage should take place.

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It is the theological counterpart of what has happened in say the study of African history. It has helped, and by the way,

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Marxists are the ones all over that one. So he's saying, if this is the counterpart, you know, read between the lines.

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It has helped to give the lie to this super, can I even say this word, supercilious, but tacit assumption that religion and history in Africa date from the advent in that continent of the white man.

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You hear this when the woke people all today, you know, hey, you know, the gospel and Christianity didn't come with a white man.

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And it's like, guys, you know, if you're talking about Sub -Saharan Africa, I'm sorry. Like it was missionaries coming there.

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That's, anyway, it is reassuring to know that we have had a genuine knowledge of God and that we have had our ways of communicating with deity.

44:48

Wow, really? Those were false ways. You're communicating with demons, right?

44:53

But that's what he's saying that's legitimate. Ways, which meant that we were able to speak authentically as ourselves and as pale imitators of others.

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It means that we have a great store from which we can fashion new ways of speaking to and about God. New ways and new styles of worship consistent with our new faith.

45:09

Okay, here's, you have the emergence of a new faith. There's a new faith, new ways of speaking to the deity. And you know, the ways our ancestors did it were authentic, even though they weren't

45:18

Christian necessarily. Or maybe what he's saying is that, you know, there was a primitive

45:23

Christianity that existed before Europeans came. I, it's a little hard to say. Instead of rebuking this ridiculous, heresy -laden paragraph, this is what the

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Gospel Coalition has to say. Kwame Bidiko printed on the pages of the Gospel Coalition. He says, whereas Archbishop Tutu's observations are a strong affirmation that the effort made in African theology to rehabilitate

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Africa's rich cultural heritage and religious consciousness has been valid, it still remains important to appreciate why this effort has been made as self -consciously, as a self -consciously theological endeavor, and in a specifically

46:02

Christian interest. Wow, okay, well, that's very enlightening.

46:09

Now, this is academic speak, I get that, but this is the Gospel Coalition. Let's not forget the

46:15

Gospel Coalition is what we're reading here. And you'd think the

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Gospel Coalition would pick up on false Gospels, you know? You just would, but not really.

46:28

And that's the interesting thing to me. I would never have delved into these articles had not someone said, have you seen what evangelicals are saying about Desmond Tutu?

46:38

And now I'm like, man, is this everywhere? Is this just what the Gospel Coalition's about? Here's another one. Church and State in South Africa by James J.

46:45

Stemoulis. This is also in 2020. All right, we're at the homestretch, guys.

46:51

I know this is a lot. The crucial task for every group of believers is to examine their own function in society to see if they are bearing witness to the

46:59

Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Good, right? Is what he says about it. This is difficult both to ascertain and accomplish because of our tendency to conform to the cultural expectations of society and because of the personal sacrifice opposition to the state may involve.

47:13

In many countries, especially those composed of groups from various cultural, ethnic, and denominational backgrounds there may be no agreement on what would appear to be even the most basic social principles.

47:23

Diversity in doctrinal belief is compounded by diversity in Christian social ethics. Okay, so he's saying there's diversity in Christian social ethics.

47:31

Not everyone agrees on social stuff, probably political stuff. And it's just so difficult to bear witness to the

47:38

Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't accomplish that well because of our tendency to conform to cultural expectations.

47:45

Tim Keller says this stuff all the time. So there's sort of this assumption here that you have to have the correct ethic here.

47:58

If you're gonna promote the Gospel, there's like an element to the Gospel that you have to have some agreement somewhere on ethics.

48:08

And I will submit to you, you need to understand that there's sin and that that's what the Gospel is remedying. But because of the other things that we've been reading here the suspicion that naturally comes up in my mind is what he's saying you have to get like ethics, right?

48:24

Because that's part of the Gospel. Like you can't be a witness to the Gospel unless you have an ethic to go along with it.

48:31

Like because law and grace are somehow connected. That's the suspicion

48:36

I already have. So here's what he keeps saying. For in addition to the normal scandal of the cross, the added scandal of the behavior of most white

48:42

Christians is added, right? It's always the white Christians. You ever noticed that? Yet there are black Christians who combine their

48:48

Christian faith with a social consciousness. In their sermons and speeches, the implications of the

48:53

Christian faith are worked out. The Gospel is applied to the situation. There it is, bingo. While some applications may sound political, it is because they are answering political questions.

49:02

There he is, there it is. It's the endorsement right there. Guess who's got the true Gospel? It's the black church. White church doesn't, they're confused.

49:08

They have the wrong ethic. Black churches, they have it. They have the right ethic. We should do like a poll.

49:14

We could do it probably in South Africa or the United States or Great Britain. And just how many historically black churches support abortion or candidates that support abortion?

49:25

How many? Or individual Christians in those churches? We know the answer.

49:31

We know the answer. But they're supposed to be the ones with, as a group, the right ethic.

49:38

And I'd say ethics doesn't, you know, color doesn't really, white, black, pink, doesn't really matter.

49:46

Ethics are ethics and the Bible has a standard, okay? The emphasis on race denies the

49:51

Gospel. And he's talking about apartheid here. The emphasis on, apartheid denied the Gospel somehow. The challenge before the

49:56

Christians in South Africa is to live out the implications of the Gospel. It cannot be regarded as an easy matter that can be solved without cost.

50:03

Reconciliation is costly. It's costly to reconcile us to God. All right, he keeps talking here, abolishing the walls between Jew and Gentile.

50:11

We got to abolish the walls in South Africa, the racial walls. So again, this political state of affairs was apparently denying the

50:19

Gospel. You hear this kind of language all the time. And the question is, how is it denying the Gospel? If you were saying, if the

50:26

Christians were going and saying, well, we got to do a different Gospel to these people than these people, then yes. If that was part of apartheid, but that wasn't part of apartheid.

50:33

And in fact, that's what these guys are saying. That's what social coalition, Gospel coalition types are saying.

50:40

So they're saying that there's, well, Gospel arising from, or faith rising from the

50:45

African experience is different. They're the ones saying that, not us. This is a false

50:52

Gospel, guys, promoted from the pages of the Gospel coalition and using the motivation, using the example of Desmond Tutu.

51:01

And here's the last slide. The division between black and white is so complete that on virtually every issue, there is polarization.

51:07

Actually, you can become a kind of Euclid and propound an axiom.

51:14

Whatever pleases most white South Africans is almost certain to displease blacks and vice versa. Therefore, it is not strange to find that while whites, let's see, to whites, the situation looks bleak, to blacks, the future is one of hope.

51:26

It is eloquently expressed by Desmond Tutu. And I will say this, in 2020, yeah, it looks pretty bleak for white

51:32

South Africans experiencing a genocide in South Africa. I'd say it looks pretty bleak. Here's what

51:37

James Stamoulis says, and quoting Desmond Tutu. Desmond Tutu, my opinion is that we are going to have a black prime minister in South Africa within the next five to 10 years.

51:46

No serious minded person today thinks that is possible for a group outnumbered five to one, as the white community is by blacks, can go on forever lording it over the majority.

51:56

All the logic of history is against such a thing happening. To have hope is not to consider that the end will be obtained without a struggle, rather the hope is that the struggle will result in freedom.

52:04

And that's where we need to end this. That's what Desmond Tutu's whole point, it's a political salvation. We're gonna end with an egalitarian utopia of some kind.

52:13

If we get rid of the boundaries and barriers, same thing being promoted in the gospel coalition, fusing of works and grace, and it's the struggle that's gonna result in freedom.

52:24

We gotta struggle somehow against these barriers. And what were the barriers? You see the same things pop out of gospel coalition that pop out of Desmond Tutu.

52:34

And even quote Desmond Tutu in doing it. You see the deconstruction of gender and sexuality here, even while trying to hang on to biblical orthodoxy.

52:44

You see here a deconstruction of, in a way that the male view or through standpoint theory,

52:52

Fleming Rutledge has a better view, according to Andrew Wilson, and a different vantage point we can learn from. You have that kind of deconstruction going on.

53:02

You have the deconstruction of European Western civilization Christianity. You have the idea that there needs to be this unique Christianity stemming from an

53:16

African context with a different gospel apparently and a different faith. You need to, in a vague way, just tear down walls and not erect new ones and be inclusive.

53:30

We don't even know quite what that means in education. We have from the gospel coalition that, there's an inadequacy in the

53:40

Europeans who are missionaries somehow. They had an inadequate gospel somehow. And so, we need to kind of deconstruct that, decolonize that.

53:51

All this stuff is leading up to this idea that it's all a struggle to lead up to what?

53:59

Freedom. What was the word that Desmond Tutu, if you watched my episode or listened to it on that, what was the word he was, what's the goal of every, it's freedom, human freedom.

54:08

This is the reformed gospel coalition. This is the reformed gospel coalition.

54:14

And it's the ripping down of hierarchy, combining law and grace and using this stew that they have concocted to get to freedom.

54:25

So, I know that's long, but this is very telling and eye -opening. And I know it's complicated. I know there's theological terms.

54:31

I know there's a lot of those walls of words. I'm trying to make it simple as I can. But if you understand Desmond Tutu and you understand how the gospel coalition has used

54:39

Desmond Tutu's example, you can see it really clearly. The difference between them is one of degrees, not substance.

54:47

That's what I'm seeing. And wow, have, I mean, these are going back to 2013.

54:52

I mean, it's amazing that for some, I wasn't a big gospel coalition reader, but it's amazing to me that people on the board and the people who,

55:00

I mean, how can you even, here's the thing guys, here's the thing. How can you be on the board for the gospel coalition and this stuff keeps sliding by?

55:09

We've demonstrated over and over and over this kind of stuff from gospel coalition. How can you be on the board for an organization like this and not see it?

55:18

You either have to be super ignorant, in which case why be on the board? Or your discernment is just like in the tank.

55:24

You're letting horrible things pass by you. It's eyeopening for me.

55:32

I think I'm animated because I'm just personally like, I can't believe it, you know, like it's this bad.

55:38

Like I'm just comparing Desmond Tutu to gospel coalition and I'm like, there's not a substantive difference here. Yeah, Desmond Tutu says things that go farther, but it's one of degrees, not substance.

55:50

So anyway, I hope that was helpful. I know that's a downer, but I hope that was helpful for everyone in seeing this.

55:57

And so yeah, again, check out the website, worldviewconversation .com. You can go and check out where I'm gonna be,

56:03

Kentucky, Tennessee, in not too long, by the way. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you.

56:09

And then also there's some dates coming up for Texas, hopefully one in Dallas. I don't know yet, but there's one for just, oh goodness,

56:17

I don't remember where it was in Texas. I think north of Austin, just a little bit, but Idaho, go check it out, go check it out.

56:24

And then if you haven't gotten a copy of Christianity and Social Justice, check that out. If you've read it, please leave a review on Amazon.