Neil Shenvi & Jon Harris Convo

All right. We are going to get started then and hopefully it'll work this time. So welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast for like the third or fourth time I've said that. We've been having some technical difficulties.

We're hoping that it works this time. I have a special guest with me today, Dr. Neil Shenvey, and he has a PhD in theoretical chemistry from UC Berkeley. He's worked at Duke University. He did work there until 2015.

He now homeschools his children and attends Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina. And you can find his work at ShenveyApologetics .com. And so I've already said this once, but I'll say it again for those who are now hearing it because we're recording it.

Neil and I have crossed swords a few times on Twitter. And the purpose really of this conversation is for us to kind of expose and demonstrate those differences so people that you who are watching can see what those are and hopefully will be beneficial for you as you are trying to challenge social justice movement, critical theory, those kinds of things in your church.

So Neil and I approach this a little differently. But that being said, I do appreciate much of Neil's work. I was looking at a blog of yours, Neil, just recently on critical theory and no disagreements, thought it was a really good piece.

When Critical Theory Became a Concern in Christianity

And so I want to start off with just a simple question to kind of lay this common ground. When was it that you realized critical theory was a problem in Christianity? And what made you decide to write about it?

Sure. A few years ago, I began noticing, like I said in my talks, a drift theologically in people that I knew personally and in other figures. And so I wanted to know where it was coming from. And I met my good friend, Pat Sawyer, who has a PhD in education and cultural studies.

And he was telling me about his research. And that's how I got to know more about critical theory.

Gotcha. So is that three years ago, two years ago? Okay. Yeah, I think a lot of people, it was kind of like around that time that they started saying, what's different? If you don't mind me asking, what's your main problem, if you had to kind of boil it down into a nutshell with social justice theory or critical theory?

I think it functions as a worldview. I think people are, it's comprehensive and holistic. And so that's the main problem I have. Impact. How you view all kinds of Christian theology in a myriad of ways.

So that's why I'm concerned.

Gotcha. All right. So the purpose of our conversation obviously is to discuss why we approach it differently. And hopefully I'm being fair in this analysis. I think if we were to boil it down, you tend to think that myself and enemies within the church are dishonest in the way that we handle this.

And I think, I tend to think, and I don't wanna speak for anyone else, but I know there's other people that probably share the view that you tend to be inconsistent in how you apply, who you go after, what you go after.

So that kind of thing. So that's what I wanna discuss. And I know the last Twitter conversation we had, I think this is kind of where we left off. We were talking about Walter Strickland's affinity for James Cone and J .D. Otis Roberts.

And we can start there if you want, or I know you had some things you wanted to bring up. So if you have an example that you wanna talk about, if it's one I'm familiar with, I should be able to interact with it and we can dive into it.

So how's that sound?

Yeah, that's good. And so thank you, John. I appreciated your very ironic tone in your last podcast, although you were critical of my work and that's fine. I encourage dialogue. I encourage people to critique.

Me and to read both sides is totally fine. But I did tell you that I do think that your approach to these issues is dishonest. Now I do not, to make it clear, I have no problem with naming names, with criticizing major figures, beloved figures.

It's not a problem. Christians should welcome critique, even if it's not delivered in love. I'm not saying that you're doing that. I'm just saying that even if unloving people say nasty things about us, we should examine ourselves and say, are they true or false?

That's the question. Because I wanna honor God and why do. Amen. So that's not my issue with, well, you're attacking people that I know and that I care about. It's not my concern. My concern is, again, with the honesty of the narrative you're telling.

And I prepared a really brief sort of montage and I'm hoping, and I told you, I tried to just so the listeners know, I offered to discuss these things privately and you really wanted to have me on your show.

So I'm not springing things and surprising you with anything that I'm gonna present tonight. We talked about it at some length. So just to make that clear.

Should I just show a room? Well, you can, yeah, I'll say this. Anyone and yourself included. Now, I don't have time, so I can't always vet through every email I get, but anyone is welcome to approach me, including you, Neil.

If there's something that I've done that's wrong, I'm not above error. So that's, I've certainly, as many podcasts as I've done, I'm sure I've said things that are off here and there. So there's an open door policy on this end.

I wanna be humble. I wanna be teachable. I wanna be firm in my convictions, obviously, and immovable if I think that that's right. So that being said, yeah, you are free to, whether on my show or off my show, show me whatever you wanna show me.

So yeah, so go ahead.

Can you enable screen sharing for me so I can show just this montage that I created? Sure.

If I know how to do that. You're asking me to do technology. Let me see here. Screen, share screen. Is it this? It just enabled me to screen. I think I did it.

Did I do it? Let me try it. Yep. Thank you, John. All right. So there you go. All right. So this is a really brief montage that I created. Oh, gosh. My gosh. Entitled, Enemies Inside the Church. Now, John, I'm just gonna read the slides.

I'm not gonna offer any commentary. So you can imagine that it's just, it's a recording or a voice, whatever, narration. So here's a video on your Facebook page why I defend the Confederacy. And it's a 30 or so minute video.

About you defending the Confederacy. And here's a webpage that you created called the Rising Seed. It features a prominent Confederate flag and a quote from Jefferson Davis. And the mission is to honor the Confederacy and spread its message.

And I'm verified that this was indeed your website. It's taken down now. But here's a quote from Alexander H. Stevens, who is the vice president of the Confederacy. He said, you know, the founding fathers of the United States, the prevailing ideas were those of equality.

That they thought slavery was in violation of the laws of nature. That it was an evil. These are the founding fathers like Jefferson. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error.

The Confederacy, Historical Context, and Moral Judgment

Now, speaking of the Confederacy saying, our new government, the Confederacy, is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid. Its cornerstone rests on the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man.

That slavery, subordination to the superior race, is its natural and normal condition. This, our new government, the Confederacy, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

And that, again, is a very famous speech by the vice president of the Confederacy. And again, this is your website. His mission is to honor the Confederacy and spread its message. And now we have a shot of you talking about your personal hero, Jefferson Davis.

Here's a quote. He was, of course, the president of the Confederacy. And what he said is that slavery, you know, is instituted for the class of persons, black people, not fit to govern themselves. Recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the creator.

And from the cradle to the grave, our government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority. How many more slides do you have? Because you already told me you weren't going to do this. OK. No, OK.

No, no, no. I said that was very short, not monologuing. And so I'm done. That's it. There you go. So I didn't want to go on. So I'm going to stop there. Now, the question I would ask, John, is that I know for a fact, for a fact, I can give you evidence, that that slideshow was dishonest.

Would you agree with that?

It could. Well, yes. It was dishonest in the sense that if you're trying to paint me as I agree with words and things that I haven't endorsed, then it would be dishonest, yes. Absolutely. I agree. There are several things there.

I'll point out the problem. So that slideshow was dishonest. It was misleading. And for a number of reasons, so let me just name them. To be clear, I do not endorse that show. When people on Twitter actually had compiled a whole bunch of screenshots, not just two or three, but dozens of you saying things about the Confederacy.

And you actually objected to it. And you said, hey, you're cherry picking. I have lots of other stuff I've written. And if you put it in context, it paints a very different picture of my actual beliefs.

And you, I think, were upset at how they had painted a narrative that was false.

Well, there was someone who was trying to take primary sources that were quoted in a book that I wrote and then attribute them to me that I had said them. And I'm like, no, I'm quoting a source. It's not me who's saying it.

And there's a purpose in the context of why I was quoting it. But yeah, I mean, so I think the distinction here is that when you look at an idea, like if you look at 18th and 19th century views of race by anyone, really, you go to Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, almost anyone of that time period.

And you say something like, well, I appreciate Thomas Jefferson's views in the Constitution, what he put down. I appreciate, in the sense of the Confederacy, obviously, I'm not defending the Confederacy.

It's not 1862. I'm defending against those who would want to rip down monuments to soldiers who fought to defend their homes and that kind of thing. So if you were to say, well, that means John must agree with everything from, let's say, even Abraham Lincoln.

If I said, I like something about Abraham Lincoln, you said, well, John must endorse Abraham Lincoln's views on race. Well, that would be dishonest, because they're not fundamental to Abraham Lincoln.

They're not fundamental to Thomas Jefferson. I would argue, and I could argue very well, that they're not fundamental to the Confederacy either. Despite, there's actually a big dispute about that Stevens speech.

He even said later he didn't say those things. But here's the main issue, though, in all of this. When you have a guy like Jarvis Williams or Walter Strickland quoting critical race theorists or liberation theologians, they're not quoting books that they wrote on hiking or camping or fishing or some unrelated thing.

They're actually taking the heretical ideas themselves, and then they're using them to corrupt even the gospel. And I would be as bold as to say Jarvis Williams definitely does that. Let's get to that, though.

But I want to

But that's a huge difference, Neil. OK. Well, but let's examine that. So I think the problems that were set were manifold in that montage. The first is, I called you an enemy. That's a very serious charge.

So to call any professing Christian enemy a wolf in sheep's clothing, which is when you say, this is the montage that begins with enemies within the church. I know on Twitter you said, well, I'm not calling Strickland an enemy.

I'm saying the enemy is Marxism. I'm not calling

I didn't say that. No, I said that the enemy So Enemies Within the Church is a sequel. Yes. Judd Saul's the director to a movie called Enemies Within, which is about Marxism infiltrating the United States Congress and Senate.

And so what he's saying is that these same ideas are now infiltrating the church, which I agree with him. That's the enemy. So that's the brand.

That's the context. So you're not calling Strickland, for example, an enemy? Because you said it in Twitter. Technically, Neil, I didn't call him that.

Yeah, I would call I'd say false teacher. That would be a much that would be more a theological word that I would use. I didn't label the movie or the documentary, but I wouldn't I mean, if I did, maybe I'd call it false teachers in the church or false teaching in the church or something like that.

They're different biblically, right? Because false teachers are actually wolves. They're not sheep. They're not Christians. So would you say that he's maybe teaching false things? For example, you know, R .C. Sproul's a Presbyterian.

He's not a false teacher. I'm a Baptist. I think it's false to baptize babies, but I would never call him a false teacher. So are you saying that Strickland is a Christian who's teaching wrong things, or are you calling him a wolf in sheep's clothing?

So the emphasis, I think, in scripture is on the false teaching itself. And so if you're going to examine a topic, especially within the church, there's a big difference between social issues that affect the here and now and eternal issues.

And I would say that people like Walter Strickland and Jarvis Williams are actually corrupting the gospel itself. That's been my contention really from the beginning is that this stuff is getting into areas, soteriological areas, where it should never be.

Okay, so are you calling Strickland then a false teacher or in a biblical sense, an enemy?

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, all right. I would say, well, but here's the thing. When I say this, you gotta understand, I've used this example quite a bit. When someone, when you bring up like, let's say Galatians and the Galatian heresy, Paul confronts Peter, an apostle.

And Peter hasn't completely given into this false teaching, but he's providing cover for it. He's tipping his hat to it. And it's a real problem. He had to be confronted to his face because he was doing something publicly.

So Paul rebuked him publicly. And so I don't know where everyone is on that threat. Are they more or less a false teacher? Are they, I don't get into really, are they going to hell or not? I mean, unless something's extremely obvious.

What I will say is that there is a corruption, I believe, going on of the gospel itself. And that concerns me greatly, way more than anything that could affect this material world.

Well, so the thing is, again, so I said, are you calling Strickland an enemy? You said, technically, Neil, I didn't call him that. But now you're saying, well, I am kind of calling him something. So maybe this will help too.

So when I Well, I didn't label the movie. That's all I'm saying. I wasn't the one that came up with the title or anything.

Let me point out again. So here's the picture of their title slide. This is actually an important picture to show you this. It's a man, a person with his fingers crossed behind his back. So he's lying about what he believes.

This is an important image. So he's not just teaching wrong things. He's actually deliberately lying about what he actually believes. And then again, the actual synopsis says they're exposing false teachers and people and organizations that are active participants in destroying the church.

So it's not like passively airing and wayward brethren, but these are non-Christians. They are wolves that are actively trying to destroy the church and then lying about it. So this is a very John, I'm just pointing out that

Yeah, there is definitely a category for that, for sure.

But by putting Strickland and really anyone in that montage, I mean, you have a montage, you're implying something about that person. When they put you in a montage of enemy inside the church, I'm saying that I'm implying that you're the enemy, not just that you're airing.

Right, that's a problem. Strickland is endorsing liberation theology though on a level in which it affects the gospel. So that is a problem. Just stop with the slideshow for one second. Okay, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah. I'll just quote that. Because we already discussed this. I said, we're not doing presentations. We're doing a back and forth. So we have to examine each element as it comes up. But really the good thing for the audience would be to find something we disagree on.

So we disagree on Strickland, right? I think that he's promoting a false gospel. I think that he's promoting ideas which subvert the gospel. You don't see him that way. You don't see him as promoting those things.

So I think that would be the place to have the discussion. Sure, but let me just quote.

There's more to it than that. So I want to quote Tom Askle here. I won't show the slides.

Tom Askle, by the way, showed the same montage on By What Standard. He took that montage and put it in the film.

The one you're complaining about. But the enemies, he had that slide in it.

He didn't call it enemies within the church. But he took the same basic tactic that you're saying to quote Walter Strickland and to show here's what James Cone teaches. That's exactly what Tom Askle did.

Well, so let's go.

I haven't actually watched By What Standard yet, although it's been recommended to me. But let me quote from Tom. He was actually asked about that montage under the heading enemies in the church. And here's what he said.

He said that if you were asking him, did you partner with this enemies in the church organization? He said, no. There's no partnership between founders and them. And he closed that article by saying, yes, there are problems.

There are serious problems within the church. We do not, however, need automatically to regard those with whom we disagree as enemies. The Lord Jesus has been incredibly patient with me and my errors and folly over the course of my life.

So I'm very hesitant to paint other people as wolves in sheep's clothing.

Yeah, but you're putting words in the mouth of Judd Saul at this point, because I've already explained to you, when he says enemies, he's talking about Marxists.

It's a brand. But it's persons. He said on the picture, it's a person with a handle.

Well, we don't have disembodied error. We have people that carry the error. So he's saying that the people that are carrying the error into the church are enemies. Are enemies, yes. But he's talking about Marxism coming into the church.

Now, it's going to get into how this is a false gospel, Marxism is, and it will affect other things. But that's the brand, enemies within the church. So he's not going any farther than that.

Well, but he's calling these people false teachers. I'm calling them false teachers. That labels them enemies and active participants, not just erring brethren, but wolves.

Yeah, well, look, here's the thing. If you correct someone, and then they keep saying the same untruths for a long time, and they don't actually ever amend their ways, then there is a certain point in which you have to say, well, I guess they're false teachers at this point.

They're not, they didn't respond the way Peter did when Paul confronted him. So Strickland, I mean, this has been a couple of years now that he's been confronted on this from multiple angles. And there's been no retractions.

And it seems like you continue to defend this guy, which is, I think, what has a lot of people that are more conservative scratching their heads. Why would you defend Walter Strickland? He's promoting liberation theology.

OK, so let's get into that. Well, let's get into some specifics then, John. So in that montage, you had a picture of Strickland, a video of Strickland interviewing with Lisa Fields. And he said that James Cone's book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, he said he's a prolific author, which is true, and that the book was beautiful, this monograph was beautiful, and that whether or not you agree with or disagree with it, you'll be blessed by it.

That was what he said about that book. But then the montage put in clips of Cone saying things in an interview. And now you objected. You said, oh, you can't say that I, OK, Jefferson Davis is my hero.

Doesn't mean I agree with everything he said. Look, look, when I wrote that, was it 10 years ago? And I wrote that after watching a documentary about Jefferson Davis. And by the way, that was a time when these were more open questions, and you could debate them.

Now it's cancel culture has taken over all those things. And it's because of some of the new left and critical theory ideas that we're fighting in the church. They ransacked the historiography before they got to the church.

But I have no problem saying, yeah, look at the life of this guy. He lost, I think, what, a couple of wives. It's been a while since I saw the documentary, but lost a bunch of his children, lived with his former slaves after the war.

He even, when he was in Congress, he was fighting to make sure that slaves could patent things that they had invented. He was actually a progressive guy for the time. And so in his book, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government After the War, he's basically saying this was all a constitutional issue.

One of the, it's almost a direct quote from him. He goes, slavery was not the occasion, or not the cause of this conflict, but it was an occasion for conflict. And he gets into all the constitutional issues.

And so I have a respect for him, because he was a man who suffered greatly, never got the trial that he should have gotten. He did proclaim faith in Jesus Christ. And so that's the kind of character I would want in leaders.

And then the same goes for O .O. Howard or Joshua Chamberlain. Many Northerners as well. But I'm looking at the whole man. I'm looking at the character of the individual himself. So I don't have any problem saying that.

But I'm not taking, I'm not saying, you know what you really ought to do? You guys really ought to go to Jefferson Davis and look at all his 19th century quotes on race, quotes that would have been common for that time.

And you need to take your cues from that. No, of course I wouldn't do that. And I've never have done that. But Walter Strickland is going to liberation theologians, Cone and Deotis Roberts, and he's endorsing their heresy.

That's a big difference. And so that's the problem that I have. James Cone, and I have a bunch of quotes from Strickland on James Cone. He's allowed Strickland, in his own words, to see how to live out Christ in certain circumstances by asking questions of the text derived from personal experience.

That standpoint, well, that's what that is, is actually the horizon's approach to scripture, which is the foundation of liberation theology. It destroys objectivity. He introduced Strickland, James Cone did, to the theological idea of systemic sin.

He opened Strickland's eyes to the idea that Christ is trying to restore brokenness. He helped him see the totality of the gospel as individual and social because Christ summarized the gospel as loving God and loving neighbor.

Guys, that's not the gospel. That's the law. He's now combining law with gospel. And I could go on and on. He recommends reading Cone to the evangelical world without any qualification. And he's done this a number of times.

And so I feel very comfortable putting a montage together. And I limited it to Cone talking about the cross and the lynching tree specifically. I didn't go past that, but I could have. But it's just, here's Cone talking about his book.

And it's more entertaining from a video standpoint to see the guy talking rather than here's just quotes from his book.

With Diotis Roberts, that's what I did. It was just quotes from his book. Sure, sure. But John, again, you're saying it's okay to say that Jefferson Davis is your hero, but it doesn't mean you endorse everything he said.

Well, it's okay to say Thomas Jefferson's your hero too, right? No, no, no, no. But I'm not going to say, go read what Thomas Jefferson said about race here, something that we would both disagree with.

But John, I'm saying you have to use the same standard. I am. Equal ways to measure. So you can't then quote Strickland endorsing, say, a book. And by the way, the book itself, it's mainly, I'm not trying to whitewash Cone.

Cone was a heretic, undeniably. But the book is actually not mainly about Cone's theology. It's mainly about his book of historical theology about other people's theology. And some of the theology in the book, it's other people's theology is actually orthodox.

And there's stuff about how

He says, Neil, he says the gospel is found wherever poor people struggle for justice in the book. That's a denial of justification.

No, I totally agree. And so when Cone talks about his own theology, yes, it's heretical because Cone's a heretic. But in the book, if you look at the chapters, the chapter on theology of black and full of black spirituals and blacks who are being lynched, praying to Jesus and saying, I'm at peace because Jesus has saved my soul.

That is not Cone's theology at all.

Because he says the cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. There's a soteriological element. That's the reason he's telling these stories.

That's what liberation theology is about. But John, the point is you can't say, because Strickland thinks the book is beautiful, therefore he endorses all these other things. First of all, that Cone says not in the book, but in an interview about the book.

There's a number of quotes out there from Walter Strickland endorsing James Cone, but it's not just one book that he's saying, well, this one book, and he doesn't even give qualifications with that. It's a heretical book.

The purpose of the book is heretical, Neil. Will you admit that, that the purpose of that book is a heretical purpose? I think so, yeah, because Cone's, again So why would you endorse it?

John, listen to me. You said he never makes an attempt to correct or offer any pushback against Cone. I did not say that.

No, he does. It's very vague, and most of it's after the New York Times article that he got in so much trouble for that. He says, well, there's things I would disagree.

With James Cone on. So that interview was in 2016. I think, yeah. And then listen to this omitted clip from the video. Field says, Lisa Field says, when I was reading through him, Roberts, because the video portrays Roberts and Cone as basically being on the same page.

Roberts is a rank heretic, and yes, he says that Roberts is better.

I know. Listen, listen. Yeah, when I was reading through him, Roberts, he critiques Cone and gives him the same critique of Cone that I was giving many times. Cone, I believe, goes a little far left than I would like to go, and Roberts reels Cone back in.

Strickland says, definitely, definitely. When we see Cone interacting with the Black Power Movement, he lets that ideology really engulf his theology. So there, so Strickland says, Roberts is pushing, is critiquing Cone.

And actually, if you read it, Roberts says, yeah, most of my critics, they read it, and it's like saying, I'm pushing back against Cone. That was how the book was interpreted. That's certainly how, that's how Strickland's reading it.

He's saying, Cone's way off here, and Roberts is bringing balance and pulling him back. And he says another quote too. He says, Roberts is locking horns with Cone. He's saying, my Christian faith, Roberts says, is dominant over my desire to do all this violent stuff.

So Roberts says, protests, yes,.

But in a way that's aligned with Christian scripture. It's a direct quote from Roberts combines works with the gospel. He is a heretic. I can read you the quotes from the specific books, even the one that Walter Strickland says it is his favorite book, theological book of all time.

That's a direct quote from Strickland. It's heresy.

Listen, John I've read it. You said a quote, there is no effort to contradict any of the heresy, Marxism, et cetera, but you left out the part where he actually says, yeah, Roberts is contradicting Cone here.

No, look, not Roberts, Strickland. No, no, no, no. Strickland quotes Roberts as He's contradicting Cone.

Yes. And he's saying yes, and he's confirming, yes, I agree with you, Lisa, definitely

Roberts is not a, but Roberts is a heretic as well. He has the same problems that James Cone has. So the disagreement between them is not a significant disagreement, not significant enough to say, well, one's orthodox and one's not.

Neither of them are orthodox. Oh, I agree with that. He's definitely designs inerrancy in there, but I'm pointing out here, wait, listen, there's a pattern. You're omitting things from the montage, or you, I don't know if you created it, but there are things omitted from the montage that would actually contradict things you said about the montage.

And then let's go into this further too Like what? Like I said, like these quotes saying, actually Cone and Roberts are not on the same page here. That is irrelevant, Neil.

That's absolutely irrelevant. They're both heretics in the same way, in the same sense. Just because one's a little farther left and because Strickland said, I don't like that one. He's a little farther left.

That doesn't matter. So wait, but John, again, you protested against leaving out context from that montage that I created. You said, you can't just leave out something. I said, what about this?

How about this? It's not, it's not about, it's not about context. It's, so in the, what you tried, the narrative that you tried to weave about me though, was going back to sources that, like I said, they're not, these are not sources that would be fundamental to whatever I'm endorsing.

That's the difference with Walter Strickland. He's going back to sources and he's, he's actually pointing out the heretical sources and endorsing those.

I've never done that. Well, you did endorse the Confederacy and the vice president says it's grounded and rooted. This is the cornerstone of our government.

Well, I already explained that to you though. I defend the Confederacy against those who would want to write down the statutes to brave soldiers and those kinds of things. We're not in 1861. I'm not out there.

There's no, Confederacy's long gone. As far as the quote from Alexander Stevens, that's a, that's a disputed quote. I mean, I can take you to a number of other places like ethnogenesis or for causing comrades, a secondary source that talks about why the soldiers fought or we could go to, you know, the reason, there didn't have to be an invasion just because there was secession.

I mean, I could, we could talk about all sorts of other speeches that talk about state's rights and you know, it, the secession itself being a constitutional right. And that's ultimately the reason they were invaded.

So you want, you want more context, more what. You believe this, you believe this.

You said, but look, we could do that about America. And you know, we could say the American flag flew over every slave ship, 1619 project. That's exactly what they're doing to America right now. And people say, whoa, hold on.

You can't do that because these were not fundamental to America itself. You're just taking quotes here and there. I'm not taking quotes here and there with Strickland. I'm not just cherry picking and saying, well, Strickland endorses this, endorses this.

Strickland's made broad sweeping claims about James Cone's works that are his theology that is heretical itself. Okay. So, so here's the difference. If you were to say like, you know, James Cone has a great cookbook and I really liked the cookbook or I really liked James Cone and James Cone wrote one heretical book and there's a bunch of other stuff that's really good.

Well, we couldn't do that. But James Cone is, all he writes are heretical books. He's known as a heretical guy. There's nothing useful in James Cone's theology as far as he's not even a Christian and Strickland is specifically saying he's opening his eyes to gospel things.

He's helping them understand the gospel better and that evangelicals should hear the voice of James Cone so they'll understand the gospel.

That's the difference. So for example, like, so when Strickland's been asked what does he, why even read James Cone? What's the point of it? What do you appreciate about him? And he actually says, he said in the quote you read, he was the first theologian that Strickland encountered who talked about systemic sin.

Now you believe that systemic sin can't exist. Like you've gone on record as saying the American slavery system was wrong. That system was wrong.

You've said that, right? Yeah. Well, if you can point out a specific law or something like that and you can say, well, you can point out that law and say, well, that's creating a system that's wrong. But again, he's, this is not, James Cone is going way farther than that.

James Cone is talking about invisible. He's talking about systemic sin in the sense that a critical race theorist would talk about systemic sin.

Well, he was talking about in that book that Strickland liked, it was about lynching, which is definitely a, right.

But lynching is a present reality. And it's also a reality that interprets the cross. It's contextual theology. It's liberation theology.

But wait, that's not what, so Strickland says, what is there, you said, what is there about this book? And I said, well, Strickland says, Cone, why do I think it's useful at all to read him? It's, well, he was the first person to show me that.

Let me read you some quotes from Cone, from Strickland rather. This is why he says, this is what he says about James Cone endorsing. And just a few things. The evangelical world would do well to hear the voice of Dr. Cone in drawing us toward the reality that the gospel, the resurrection of Christ has implications for the here and now.