UNMASKED Social Justice Straight, No Chaser - Liberationists

All right, well, let's do something a little bit lighter today. We've been going through some hard content.

You know, a lot of people really love John Piper. I do as well. I hope that comes through in the content.

I think John Piper has a lot of good value to bring to the table, a lot of good books, a lot of good content.

I just think on Critical Race Theory, that was horrible. And so I understand, you know, hard stuff to deal with, hard stuff to face.

I get it. So we're going to take a little bit of a lighter approach to today's content. But before I do,

I do have something to ask. My pastor has some family members.

They don't live in the area, and they're definitely struggling with the coronavirus right now.

Two elderly grandparents, one of them was, you know, not that healthy in the first place, and the other one's doing a little bit better, but also old and frail.

So prayers for them. They're all believers, which is the good news, but prayers for him. But especially, though, my pastor's father.

Younger, you know, not young, but younger, and not doing well right now.

So three of them have it. His mother doesn't have it. His brother that lives with them doesn't have it,

I think, or something like that. So just prayers for them to get through this, prayers for healing, and prayers just for strength during all of this situation.

But let's jump into it today, though. Oh, and also prayers for my pastor, because obviously there's a lot on his plate currently, and, you know, he's sad.

He's sad. So anyway, let's jump into this today. So Marcus Pittman sent me this video, and he said, here's some nightmare content for you,

A .D., and it's something called the Liberation Project, which is some kind of a new social justice movement.

Who knows? But I looked at this video, and it's basically a Zoom call, it looks like.

And I know that when you grow up, you're told not to judge a book by its cover.

I get it, and you're not supposed to. I understand. But when I saw this video,

I see six people on the screen, and I know right off the bat that four of them are homosexuals, and it's just obvious.

Just off the top, it's one of the gayest things I've ever seen. We've got this guy here with his mouth open, his hands up.

You can just hear him saying, yay. We've got this guy over here, looks like Farnsworth Bentley.

He's clearly a homosexual. And there's this one. By the way, all of them have their pronouns in their bio, so that kind of gives you a hint on a couple of these.

This one is calling himself Jonah. Don't know for sure, so I'm going to say him.

But he wants to be known as they, them. I'm not doing that, obviously. That's preposterous. And then

Cameron here as well. He's kind of got sort of like an urban thing going on, but he very much appears like a homosexual.

And I honestly think that all six of them could be, but I'm not sure. So when I saw this,

I was like, okay, four out of six, these are clear homosexuals, no question about it. These two I'm unsure of.

They could be as well, but I wasn't sure. So click the video and this is what this is.

Hi everybody, and welcome to the launch of the Liberation Project. We are so excited that you are here with us tonight.

Oh my goodness, look at this guy. So tonight is our official launch, and we are pumped to have our featured

Liberationists here with us tonight. These are the featured Liberationists. You saw Tyler over here, he, him.

Raising the roof. I don't know, do we still do this? Is this still a thing? I thought we gave this back up, gave this up back in 98.

I don't know. But Tyler over here is doing that. And so, you know, there's just so much going on in this video.

I can't, we cannot watch the whole thing, obviously, but I want you to get a little flavor for what this is. This is, this is cancer for the church.

This is clearly cancerous. Great discussion about liberation and what all of it means. But I want to tell you a little bit about just kind of what this is.

If you were not able to join our webinar a couple of weeks ago, our preview webinar, these are our featured

Liberationists, which basically means that these are the folks who are going to be modeling liberation, because we think that liberation needs a face, and many faces, really.

So liberation, in case you're trying to catch up, liberation needs a face. And what better face for liberation than four, possibly six homosexuals?

I mean, obviously, for Christian liberation, you would think that that would be clear, that the face of that would be a bunch of homosexuals that are pretending to be

Christians. That's amazing. Because liberation looks a lot of different ways for each and every one of us, and we want to give you examples of what that really looks like.

By the way, this guy, you might be like, well, how did you know this guy was gay, A .D.? And the thing is, I didn't know that right off the bat, but he appears very gay.

And I actually knew someone who looked just like this who also was gay. And so it just seemed very obvious to me, but you'll see,

I was confirmed. Homosexuality was confirmed in the course of this video. These folks are going to be creating content, producing stuff for you to consume and integrate into your ministry, and just get an idea of what does it mean to be liberationist.

And so I realize now that I'm saying all this, I didn't say my name, so I'm going to go ahead and introduce myself.

My name is Victoria San Esparza. My pronouns are she, her. Listen, Victoria, we know your pronouns are she, her.

Unless, I mean, listen, this is a crazy world. I mean, unless you're a transvestite of some kind, it doesn't appear that you are.

I can't really tell. Sometimes it's just video. But we know that your pronouns were she, her, because that's how language works.

When you're a female, your pronouns are she, her. I know you like to live in a fantasy world where you get to create your own pronouns, but that's actually not how it is.

And we're not going to abide by that, obviously. I am the digital creator person behind the project.

So I'd love to turn it over. Oh my goodness, did you see what this guy just did? Let's go back here. Look at his old jazz hands.

So I'd love to turn it over to our liberationist. Did you see that? Oh my goodness, they both did it.

He did the jazz hands and he did the jazz hands. Are they doing that thing from the socialist convention where just so they don't trigger people, they do the jazz hands?

Because the point of that was, at the socialist convention, you couldn't clap because some people were triggered by loud noises.

But the thing is, in this one, you're all muted. So if they're muted, why would they do the jazz?

Is this like a thing? I don't even understand. It's hard to keep up with this kind of stuff, it really is.

But look at these people. These people are pretending to be Christians. This is interesting stuff here.

And we'd love for you guys to introduce yourselves. Thanks, Victoria. Let me introduce myself. My name is A .D., and that's all you need to know.

Hi, everyone. My name is Tyler Sitt. I use he, him pronouns. I'm the church planter of New City Church in South Minneapolis.

Woo woo, New City. No, you are not a church planter. No, no, you are not a church planter.

I know this, because you just went woo woo. My goodness gracious.

Oh, man. So as soon as I saw that, I was like, okay, so I did judge this book completely correctly, obviously.

You can just listen to him talk, and I knew instantly what this is about. And I am going to be exploring what it looks like from the perspective of a graphic designer, how to explore and communicate liberation theology.

And he's a graphic designer. Nothing against graphic design, because graphic design is necessary.

It's not a bad field to get into. Nothing against it.

But of course he's a graphic designer. Visually. I'll be doing that on Instagram.

Great. So he's on Instagram. In case you want to know what a liberation is visually, you can follow

Tyler on Instagram. Hello, everyone. My name is Cameron. I use he, him, his pronouns, and I am the lay worship pastor at Zao MKE Church.

No, you're not. No, you're not. You're not any kind of pastor, a lay pastor, paid pastor.

You're no pastor. That's guaranteed. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, we are a

Jesus -rooted, justice -centered, and radically inclusive church. And I'm excited to be with you all.

My kind of role in the liberation project at this point is, what would it look like if we had liberation in mind when we did music, when we have art on our walls?

And what would it look like to bring new and to recreate old into something that is meaningful for us here and now?

I'm sure it looks like this. Here's how it looks. Gay art and gay pictures and gay music.

Black music. Is that a thing? Black music? I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. Black music.

As long as the music is anything but white. So it can't be country, no folk music, none of that.

Then it'll be liberationist. And then what kind of art do liberationists like? Guaranteed it's ugly.

I mean, let's just face it. That's part of it. You have to do the most ugly thing you could possibly do, and then it's liberationist art.

That's how it works. I can't wait to find out more from the man in the tuxedo shirt.

I'm excited about in the liberation project, and I will pass it off to Jonah. Hey, y 'all.

I'm realizing I'm woefully underdressed. So when I heard this guy, I was like, maybe he isn't gay.

That was the first thing I thought. Maybe he isn't gay. But you'll see, I was right. After seeing Cameron's tuxedo t -shirt.

Thank you, Cameron, for bringing your - Let me clue you in here. Jonah is actually not a guy. Just a quick heads up, in case you weren't aware.

My name is Jonah. My pronouns are they, them, theirs. And I actually co -passed -

Kind of looks like, or she rather, kind of looks like the dude from, what's his called?

Ozzy Osbourne's son. What was that kid guy's name? Jack Osbourne. Kind of looks like, kind of got a Jack Osbourne thing going on.

No question about it. I'm here with Cameron in Milwaukee at that amazing church plant, Zao, where I'm really honored to be taught daily by the community members what it means to do church from a queer and trans perspective.

Both Cameron and I are queer and trans, but our - And your boy AD was 100 % correct.

So as it turns out, the dude that was just speaking is actually not a dude. He's actually a woman because he is queer and trans.

Now, I could be wrong about that because when you're queer and trans, it might cancel itself out.

Like that girl who played Juno, she came out as queer and trans and she wants to be called

Elliot now. But a lot of people were asking, so if you're queer and trans, then you're straight. But you also dress as the other sex, so I guess you're really not straight in that way.

But yeah, Jonah here is, I don't know her real name, so I can't call her that. Probably Joanna or something like that.

They tend to choose names that are similar to what their other names were. But anyway, Jonah here is also pretending to be a pastor.

Cameron's also pretending to be a pastor. And then there was Tyler. He was the one that sounded like a homosexual.

So it is very, this is very, I don't even know what to say.

Community has made up a lot of those folks too. And doing community and doing church and doing

Jesusiness in that kind of way has been really, really, really fun and really eye -opening for me as a queer and trans person.

And it has made me view a lot of things really differently. And so one of the things that I'm really bringing to the

Liberation Project this season is storytelling. I love stories. I believe we are a story people and that's why we have the

Bible, which is just stacks on stacks of stories that we can derive meaning from.

But who tells the story, who gives meaning to the story, who hears the story, that all changes how those stories land and shape us and transform us.

Do you see this, how similar this language is to the woke church movement? Because many in the woke church movement, at least the conservative -ish variety of it, would be laughing about this kind of thing with me.

They would see how preposterous it is to have Cameron here, who's really a woman, pretending to be a worship pastor.

They would see how preposterous what Jonah is saying here. But the language is very similar. It's like, we're a storytelling people.

Well, that's very true. We are storytelling people. That's why the Bible is a list of stories.

It also has law in it, but it's all presented in a bunch of stories. But the thing is, who tells the story is

God, right? So God's perspective is the perspective that matters. And so if a trans person is interpreting the

Bible and they come to these radically different conclusions to what the Bible says, well, that's a big problem.

And we don't need trans people amongst us to understand the Bible properly. Everyone would see how preposterous that is.

So then why do we need Blacks or Latinos in order to interpret the Bible properly? Well, we don't.

Now, it's great to have Blacks and Latinos interpreting the Bible, but what matters is not their perspective as a

Latino or a Black person, but are they interpreting the Bible in the way it's supposed to be understood?

And that's something that we can discover. God wrote the Scriptures. God gave us the Scriptures through men under the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit. They wrote in a specific context. They wrote with specific language. And we can determine what was meant by those men writing under the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit. And it doesn't matter if my name is Victoria or A .D. It doesn't matter if my name is Jonah or Tyler or Jay or Cameron.

We can understand that meaning. There's one interpretation that's accurate, right?

Now, we might be able to apply that in different ways, but there's one interpretation that's accurate. And so if it's preposterous for Jonah to say, well, we need trans interpretations, why isn't it likewise preposterous to— why is it not preposterous to say, well, we need

Black interpretation? Why? Why? Is not what matters what it actually says?

Why are we bringing skin color or sexual perversion into this? It makes no sense at all. So it doesn't make sense what

Jonah is saying, but it also doesn't make sense what people like J .D. Greer say about this. You know what I mean? It's very similar.

And there's really no logic that can disconnect what Jonah is saying here about standpoint epistemology and what other people from the conservative, quote -unquote conservative movement say about standpoint epistemology.

It's very preposterous. And I'm glad for this liberation project thing because it actually— this is how preposterous

MLK 50 should have looked to you. It should have looked like— this is Russell Moore here.

Russell Moore should have looked as crazy as Jonah looks here because what he was saying was crazy. And so my kind of prophetic imaginative question for us during this season is, what does the

Bible look like or what does it teach us? How does it transform us? If we're hearing the Bible through the lens of queerness or transness or Blackness or any of the other identities that shape so many of the liberationists in community with—

You notice that she put Blackness in there? That's exactly right. She put Blackness in there, and that could have been uttered from J .D.

Greer with the exception of the queerness stuff. But why? Why would he accept queerness stuff?

What, is he some kind of a bigot? Well, you know, you have to talk about the Scripture here. We have to bring the Scripture to bear on this just like we would with skin color.

So this is very interesting because it puts— It's a clown show. This is a bunch of clowns, obviously.

It's a clown show, but this is a very good avatar for what you're seeing from the woke church movement.

This is how it should sound to you. It should sound just as crazy as this because it is.

And so I am really thrilled to be bringing y 'all a podcast launching in December called

Jonah and the Peacock where I revisit Bible stories, including my own namesake, from a lens of transformation and beauty and finding new meaning through identity and story.

Did you just say truth formation? Truth formation. Experience. I'm going to pass it off now to Jay.

So I'm Jay Williams. My pronouns are he, him, his. I'm the lead pastor of Union Church in Boston, which is like this really amazing community.

It looks like a cross between Larry Fitzgerald, the receiver, and Farnsworth Bentley.

That's what he looks like to me. I could be wrong, but that's what he looks like to me. And when I heard him talking,

I kind of second -guessed myself. Well, maybe he isn't the way I thought he was, but he is. That I was a member of when

I was in college and then got appointed to be the pastor. And right over these 200 years of us being together, we've been a story of liberation.

And I'm really thrilled to be part of this project because every

Sunday we're preaching liberation. We're living it out. We're telling the story in new language.

And I also teach at BU. I'm teaching a course now, Black Lives Matter in Theology. So I'm interested in reclaiming historic liberation theology that was birthed in the 1960s in South America and the streets of the

United States and being able to help bring it alive in a new way through sermons and blogs and other writings.

So that's not just something we read about, but it's something that we're living and preaching and teaching every day.

So turning it now to Jason. Hey, everybody. I'm Jason Butler. Just a white guy.

That's what he should do. He should just be like, hi, I'm Jason. I'm just a white guy. I'm the senior pastor at Open Table United Methodist down in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is a relaunch of a church, very traditional church that we helped become affirming, liberative, justice -focused, and doing that in the

South. You see how it's connected? Justice -focused and affirming. Now, I don't know if he's actually gay, but obviously his church is an affirming church, meaning that they don't believe that the

Bible gets to define what sin is. But the thing is, we have to understand that this is connected, guys.

This is connected. It's intimately connected. This affirming stuff and the social justice movement, they're intimately connected.

The evangelicals that are involved in the woke church movement are the new liberals. This is the liberal progressive movement.

It's no question about it. They're liberal theologians. So all of the professors, all of the teachers that are doing this, they still want to claim their conservative bona fides at this point.

So they're not all the way there yet. They're not owning it. But they are that. They are the liberals that Machen fought.

They are the liberals that the conservative resurgence fought. They've reared their ugly heads again, and they need to be opposed as liberals because they are liberals.

That's the thing. And so these people here, look, again, this is a clown show, obviously. We can all laugh and joke about it.

But these are real people. These people need the gospel. They need to be evangelized. These people's souls are in jeopardy at this point.

But at least you can have respect for a guy like Jason. At least you can have respect for a guy like Jay and Tyler and stuff like that.

I have less respect for Jonah and Cameron because their whole life's a lie. But Jason, Jay, and Tyler, and Victoria, they're making no bones about it.

We're liberals. You know what I mean? We are liberal theologians. We're liberation theology people.

We're all this kind of stuff. And they're owning it. They're at least willing to own their liberal theology.

That's much more than I can say for so many of these conservatives that are liberals but are desperate to keep their conservative bona fides.

See, they're living a lie. They're acting as if they're not liberal when they are. And so that's the thing. I need you to understand a lot of the people that I criticize, not all of them, but a lot of them, people like Jamar Tisby, for example, and stuff like that, they're liberal theologians masquerading as conservatives.

They should look as ridiculous as Jason looks when he talks about being an affirming and justice -focused church.

That's how you should see it when Russell Moore gets on and says, well, a convention that doesn't have room for Beth Mohler doesn't have room for a lot of us.

That should sound as stupid as this guy sounds. It really should. ...part of North Carolina. And I'm excited to be part of this project as a white leader and to really come alongside other white leaders in our denomination and really the kingdom to help have a discussion about what liberation is theologically, how scripture speaks to it, and how we can empower other white churches to become part of a liberation movement.

And so that's why I'm here. And hopefully we can make that happen. Awesome. Well, we are so glad that you are joining us here tonight.

And I want to say that we're going to be taking live questions. So we got some folks helping us here on the back end with Facebook and our streaming.

And so if you have questions for our liberationists, whether it's theological questions or content questions or just whatever you want to know about them, we would love for you to drop those in the comments.

And we're going to be kind of filtering through them throughout the night and weaving them into our conversation. We're going to stop there.

But yeah, so this is crazy stuff, guys. If you want to watch this, more power to you.

I'm not going to. I'm not going to because this is poisonous, man. This is cancerous to the church, obviously.

These are people pretending. This guy's pretending to be a church planter. This guy's pretending to be a pastor. This guy's pretending to be a pastor.

I guess this is a girl. They're both girls here. This guy is—I guess he is a pastor, but doesn't seem to be, again, pretending.

He's a pastor of something, and all these people are a pastor of something. But, I mean, they're obviously not

Christians, right? We understand that. They're obviously not Christians. We need to give no quarter for these people.

We need to understand that these people need to be evangelized. They don't understand the God of Scripture.

They don't understand anything like that. And so—hold on one second. Sorry about that. All right, anyway.

So, yeah, let's jump into something else, though. I wanted to just mention one thing. I was reading this article from space .com,

and I wanted to just ask the question here because this is— I find this to be quite preposterous. The article's called,

It's 2019. Why Haven't Humans Gone Back to the Moon Since the Apollo Missions? Now, the argument it makes is that, you know, we're just not motivated to do it.

Like, it's kind of like been there, done that. You know what I mean? Like, we don't have the will to do it.

That's why. Back in the day, we were fighting the Soviets, so we had to put all of our energy into it. And I find that argument very preposterous.

Let me just say that right now. Like, what person—like, I bought this camera for 50 bucks, right? This is a better camera than many of the cameras they use in Apollo.

It gives you a better picture. This microphone is better than what they had in Apollo and stuff like that. Like, you cannot convince me that people wouldn't find it amazing and awesome to see high -definition video from the moon, you know, astronauts doing amazing feats, jumping six feet in the air, backflips, the whole thing.

Like, you're telling me that people wouldn't find that amazing. They just kind of have a ho -hum, been there, done that attitude towards it.

That's ridiculous. I don't believe that for one second. The other thing it says here is that the administrations that change, they always cancel the other projects.

So, like, George Bush wanted to go back to the moon. Barack Obama canceled it and said instead he wanted to go to an asteroid.

And then they started doing that, and then Trump canceled that and wanted to go to the moon. So that's what we're planning to do now, but now we got

Joe Biden, and what do you think is going to happen? Joe Biden's going to cancel the moon project and then say we should go to,

I don't know, Mars or Venus or something. Like, it's just preposterous. Like, that's a preposterous way to run anything.

Like, why would a country be run that way? I think, here's what I think. I think that NASA, in many ways, is just a, a, a, the people that work for NASA are real and they're really working on these projects.

But I think that the government uses NASA almost like a money laundering scheme. Like, if they keep switching the mission, which is so stupid, like, how could you do that?

Like, that'd be like running, that'd be like, that'd be like sailing on a ship and being like, okay, we're going to go to Peru. And then you start, you head towards Peru for a couple days, and then you go, well, actually, no, we're going to go to Hawaii.

And then you change your direction. No, actually, we're going to go to Russia. Like, it's just crazy. So, so I think it's a money laundering scheme.

I think it's a boondoggle. Is that the right word, boondoggle? I don't know. I think that the people that work for NASA are good people.

There's some good people at NASA, smart engineers and stuff like that. But how can they get anything done when every time you get a new present, they're like, ah, scrap that mission.

We're going to do something else. I think they just use it as a way to just keep the payroll bloated, just keep the whole thing very bloated.

I think that's what NASA is primarily used for. I don't think the people in NASA are party to that.

But you can't tell me that Barack Obama, Biden, Bush, they're just canceling each other's projects just for the fun of it.

Like, and nobody cares about going to the moon anymore. Like, you mean to tell me that someone wouldn't think it was amazing to watch

HD video from the moon? Of course they would. That would be awesome. The other thing

I wanted to ask, I don't know anything about this, but apparently, let me see here.

This article says that we haven't put a person on the moon, but we've sent probes to the moon.

And so I've got to, first of all, have you heard about that? Have you heard that we sent robots to the moon since the

Apollo missions? I hadn't heard that. And so I'm wondering, where are the pictures? Where are the audio? Where's the video? I want to see that stuff, man.

Like, why haven't I seen new pictures? We've seen pictures supposedly from Mars. We sent the little robot to Mars, a remote -controlled car, we're tooling around on Mars.

How come we don't do that to the moon? Does anyone know about this? Like, what do you guys think about this? I think

NASA's a big scam. I don't think the people who work there are part of it. I think that the politicians use it as a big scam.