Living Out, Lynching's Legacy at the Library, and Leaving Marx

Hi, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris.

I've been thinking about renaming it the Has the World of Social Justice Terms podcast because it certainly feels that way sometimes.

It's funny that the first podcast I did in January was about hiking and how it motivated me to go to the gym and I like getting out in the woods.

And then I did my video on Southeastern and well, the rest is history. But obviously I think this is an important topic or else I wouldn't be covering it.

I'm passionate about those who especially are laymen in the church, fighting this in the pews, understanding.

So I'm going to be exposing some of this stuff, but understanding how it works, the concepts that are cranking out of some of these seminaries.

And then I want to give you the tools necessary to challenge it. So this is a threat to the body of Christ.

It needs to be answered. I'm grateful for those who, like Tom Buck this last week, which

I'm going to be talking about, are trying to answer this in a pastoral way. And so that's why

I'm here. For this season of my life, it's a passion. Now it does have a cost. I'm really grateful for those who have encouraged me.

I get a lot of encouraging emails and messages just about every day from people who have been blessed by things that I've said in the podcast.

So thank you for that. Also for those who contribute on Patreon. I mean, I have side jobs

I do to try to make ends meet for my family, and to know that I can do some of this and be financially stable is really helpful.

So I can do more of it if I'm able to have that assurance.

So I really appreciate those who are giving, and if you're interested, go to the info section and my

Patreon account link is right there. But more than even that, I'm really appreciative for those who pray for me.

And I would ask you, please continue, if you are praying for me, just pray that I would fulfill the responsibilities

I have, that God has given me, that are more fundamental. I mean, this is an important fight, and I am full throttle behind it.

We need to expose what's going on, and we need to answer it biblically. But at the same time, just like you who are watching,

I have responsibilities. I have my own job. I have, I'm a student,

I'm a husband, I'm a church member, I'm a citizen, and there's other things that I know that I need to be balanced in.

So I really appreciate those who are praying. If you just pray for me that I would have a balanced life, and that I would be strengthened in the fight against this stuff, because it does get weary sometimes,

I'll be honest. But thank you so much for your support. And this is exciting.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer at the beginning of this, I'm enjoying it, but it is exhausting. There is a cost to it, but I have a lot to cover today.

There's so much that's going on, you can't cover it all, but I want to hit the high points, I want to interpret it if I can for you, expose it, interpret it, and then give you the tools.

So here's where I'm going. We're going to talk about Tom Buck and Sam Malbury. If you already are familiar with that, maybe you want to skip ahead, because there's lots more

I'm talking about, but it's very important. It's one of the biggest things, in my opinion, that's happened in the class between what

I would say are the more orthodox folks and the social justice advocates, and it reveals a lot. And after that, we're going to talk about an odd, in my opinion, seminar, library talk it was called, at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on the legacy of lynching for pastoral ministry.

Yes, I said that correctly. I know. I don't understand it, but those who were part of it did understand it.

So we need to talk about that. Why was this something that made sense to them and doesn't to us? It seems like mission drift, right?

Now Danny Akin, the president, has made some tweets, put out some tweets in response to this, and some of them are disturbing, and I want to cover that and show you what's going on.

And then this may be one of the more important things I'm going to be covering, because I haven't seen anyone else so far cover this, but those who advocate social justice or who work at institutions that are advocating it are becoming very sensitive.

They do not want to be called Marxists at all. And there's a few ways they deal with it. Number one, I've seen this many times, they'll shut down argument by calling us to repent.

So you just need to repent. And because you disagree with me on neo -Marxism, or you said something that, you know, sounds bad.

You called me a Marxist or said that I'm advocating that you need to repent because that's not who I am. And not very deep.

So we can probably just disregard that. That's not someone who's open for discussion if that's the only thing they want to do.

The second thing that I've seen is those who are saying you need five

PhDs over a 10 -year period working in a committee to define these terms. No you don't. Intersectionality, critical race theory, feminism, these things you can define easily.

Go to Wikipedia. I don't ever tell my students to use Wikipedia as a source. In fact, I discourage it. But in this case, you can go to Wikipedia and these things are readily available to be defined.

So you can figure out their meaning very easily. And then the third thing that I've seen is, and by the way, what

I just mentioned, I want to talk about an email I saw from a certain professor at a certain theological institution, which was very long, in which he advocated not using these pejoratives.

Well, I guess I already let the cat out of the bag. Yes, there was a professor that I read this email from, which

I was like, you don't need like a team of experts to define these things. But Carl Truman, a couple of weeks ago at Gospel Coalition, put out an article along these lines.

You shouldn't be using Twitter to label people this or that, or say they're advocating neo -Marxism.

So anyway, Carl Truman. The third thing I've seen, and this is what I'm going to be addressing more specifically, are those who want to distance themselves and say, we're not

Marxists. We're just not Marxists. You're getting it all wrong. And I'm going to specifically,

I could pick other examples, but I'm going to specifically talk about something that came out, I think it was

Sunday, so about a day ago, from Bruce Ashford, who's the provost at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I was actually very grateful for some of the things he said. He criticized Marxism. Danny Akin actually retreated it, which is ironic.

And one of the reasons I wanted to cover this is because how can someone who just endorsed critical race theory on some level then, of course, say, yeah,

Marxism is really bad? I want to explain this, because I've had a number of people ask me questions, what's going on at Southeastern?

And since I was a student there, and I still have a lot of contacts in the institution, I would like to try to explain that.

And I would love it if those, even Bruce Ashford, I would love it if he listened to some of this, and maybe it would benefit him in some way, at least knowing what we're thinking, what those who are critical of Neo -Marxism and think that that's being advocated, what we think.

So let's start at the top. We're going to start with Sam Albury and Living Out, and Tom Buck and the articles that he did at AOMN on the topic.

So here's Sam Albury. He's an editor for Gospel Coalition.

This is from their website, a speaker for RZIM and pastor in UK. He's the author of some books.

His God Anti -Gay is one of them. As far as I know, from what I've heard, I haven't read these books, but they're okay.

They're not deviating from orthodoxy, from what I understand. Here's the key thing, though. He's the founding editor of Living Out, a ministry for those struggling with same -sex attraction.

So Living Out is really the controversy. Sam Albury's a controversy only insofar as he provides cover for Living Out because he's the founding editor of Living Out.

So his name kind of is giving Living Out some approval here. Living Out.

What's the issue with Living Out? Well, according to Tom Buck, they endorsed revoice, and they tweeted in May of 2018, and for us,

US followers, there is, of course, the revoice event coming in July, which we highly recommend. They later removed this tweet, but there was an endorsement there in the beginning.

Revoice, I'm not going to go into it, but not good. They created a 10 -point audit to help churches identify whether they were biblically inclusive to the

LGBTQ plus community, and apparently this audit was not a good thing at all.

According to Al Baker, a Presbyterian evangelist, this audit was an example of mainstreaming of homosexual perversion into the church.

And then they teach that a same -sex attracted individual is fixed in their orientation, and that the orientation itself does not need to be mortified.

Now that's become, that's what Living Out, one of the things Living Out was about, and that's become a problem.

A gospel coalition has put out a bunch of things on this, and they just immediately think that this is an orientation that's fixed, buying into what the world's believed now for a while, but Christians had not and have not ever believed traditionally.

This is brand new. So we need to know how to respond to some of these things, and I'll give you some things to think about, but I want to survey what

Tom Buck did. So here's some quotes from Living Out. This is from some of the other editors, or writers,

I should say. Tom Buck gives you some more extensive quotes, but here's a few that I just picked out.

Sean Doherty, I believe I'm pronouncing that okay, he said, The couple should cease, this is a same -sex couple, they should cease the sexual aspect of their relationship, he argues, that it may be good and right for them to continue living together, especially if they have children.

The intimacy, fun, loyalty, companionship, and faith encouragement aspects of same -sex relationships are great, and they can of course be a healthy environment to nurture children.

Holding back from sexual intimacy doesn't spell an end to physical intimacy. From Sean Doherty.

Now I'm going to ask a question, Tom Buck asked the same exact question, but would you ever, if you were a pastor, give that advice to a heterosexual couple who's struggling perhaps?

I mean, even if they weren't struggling, would you say, yeah, just go ahead, live together, have some kind of intimacy, just make sure it's not sexual, and you can raise kids in that environment?

Does that make any sense whatsoever? Moving on, he also offers advice to a heterosexual married couple where one or both spouse experience same -sex attraction.

So someone who is homosexual, well, they experience same -sex attraction, that's the new term.

So this is what they're experiencing, and they're in this heterosexual marriage. What should they do?

Well, they should choose not to repress their desires. And of course, it's right to avoid situations that place us in temptation.

That is not the same as seeking to ignore or deny your feelings, which is dangerous. So how does this fit in with mortifying your flesh, which is what

Paul tells us to do? This is so anti -biblical. So moving on, Ed Shaw, another writer, says, we'd be crazy to deny the good in permanent, stable, faithful, same -sex sexual relationships.

Read accounts of the gay community at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and you'll be moved to tears by the self -sacrificial love of couples who devotedly nursed both loved ones and complete strangers.

That's Ed Shaw. He also confesses that his desire, when he looks at a beautiful man, is to become one with him, to be united with him.

And he says, in a sense, you've got to suppress the sexual fantasy, but there's a beauty in this, because God made beauty.

And so you would never see someone, like a pastor, saying this about a heterosexual relationship.

Oh, you're looking, and you're just admiring the beauty of your red -blooded male looking at a woman.

And just admire that beauty, and you want to become one with them. Well, stop short. Don't fantasize, but it's a good thing.

There's something positive here. And there's beauty in your—you would never hear a pastor say there's beauty in your fornication or your adultery, because—this is what the example

Tom Buck gives, but he says, let's pick another sin. Let's pick robbery. You know, what about the bank robbers who go to jail, or they end up getting shot by the police?

And on their deathbed, the other bank robber comes, and they're consoling them, and this is some—we should say that's a beautiful thing. No, it's not.

Why is that a beautiful thing? And so we would never say this about any other sin, but somehow there's an exception made for homosexuality and same -sex attraction.

And so there's something, I think, very interesting here going on. This is what

Tom Buck says about the ministry. He says, while they admit that acting on the desires would be sin, and even the attraction itself is a result of the fall, a church is not biblically inclusive if they tell a

Christian who experiences same -sex attraction that they should not—that they should even seek for God to remove that desire.

He quotes Colossians 3 .5, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

And this seems to be, in my estimation, more or less the point. God does not just look at what you do outwardly.

He looks at your heart. Desires can be sinful, and in Romans 1, these kinds of desires are classified as—well, they're disordered.

It reverses the order of creation, and so there's something twisted about it.

Praying that God would get rid of those things and trusting in the sufficiency of Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Word to do that work in the process of sanctification, mortifying the flesh—I mean,

Jesus says that you should—I mean, he's being figurative here, but, you know, cut off your arm, cut off your hand if it causes you to sin.

So this is what Scripture calls us to do, but living out is giving a different message, and that's

Tom Buck's concern. This is false teaching. Now, Tom Buck did this in a few different parts, and during this whole exchange, him and Sam Albury had their own interaction, and Sam Albury essentially says, well,

I'll check into it, Tom. I'm going to look at these things, and, you know, I'll kind of get back to you.

And by the end of the series, though, Tom Buck is like, okay, well, until you get these things off your website, then you shouldn't probably be speaking at some of these major conferences that you're invited to speak at.

This is a concern. This is a really important issue, because this is biblical teaching that's at stake, and it could lead people into sin.

So if you're not concerned about this enough to deal with it—and these aren't hard things to deal with.

These articles are fairly simple, and they're short—then, you know, this needs to be dealt with soon, and so he's encouraging, by the end of it, he's encouraging

Christians to take action, essentially. And so here's the more concerning thing.

You may think, okay, that's bad. Well, here's what happened when Tom Buck decided to—I guess, more or less, he put in an inquiry on the website and pretended to be,

I guess, like a 15 -year -old boy. He wrote a message as if he was a 15 -year -old boy making this inquiry, and he's struggling with same -sex attraction.

What do I do? I'm in the church. And this is the advice that they give him, and this is absolutely shocking.

One of the things they said to do was to go to a website, True Freedom Trust. True Freedom Trust says—it's for Christians who have same -sex attraction—says it's good to have hugs with a same -sex friend.

Visiting. So these are some of the things they say to do. Visit naturist beaches. Visit gay bars or nightclubs without the intention of sexual intimacy.

What? Use online chatroom or a dating website app to meet other same -sex attracted people just for friendship.

Share a house or going on holiday with another person—this is from England, so going on a vacation—of the same sex.

Solemnize a particular same -sex friendship. This is shocking.

Can you imagine any pastor saying anything close to this about a heterosexual couple?

Imagine a husband who is committing adultery. Can you imagine them giving this advice? Yeah, go to a cheating website and become friends.

Don't do anything sexual. This is getting as close to the cliff as you possibly can, jumping down halfway but not trying not to hit the ground, is what this is.

That is really disturbing, and Tom Buck exposes this, and I think he does a good job. So if you're looking for more detail,

I would go to AOMN .org and check that out. Now, moving on, this is what happened after Tom Buck's expose on living out.

Well, the ERLC says, hey, the Gospel Coalition is coming to Indianapolis, and you know what?

Sam Albury is going to be there. Now, Sam Albury—it's not Sam Albury's—what he said in his published writings that's really the issue.

The issue is Sam Albury's website and his ministry and what's being promoted there, and Sam Albury is aware of it, and he's not distancing himself from it, at least right now.

I hope he does. We should pray for that, but that's what's going on, and if he doesn't, then this is concerning.

Speaking at these big Christian conferences—here's Midwestern Seminary—join us at the

Gospel Coalition. And what do they say about Sam Albury? He's going to address current issues surrounding living out ministries.

That's going to be interesting, and this is maybe one of the more concerning ones, J .D. Greer. Now, this is the day after Tombaugh posts his last—Tombaugh is a

Southern Baptist pastor, right ?—the day after he posts his last article, J .D. Greer says, For those who have same -sex attraction, it is allowable to pursue same -sex romance so long as a person abstained from same -sex while sex.

Albury's response reveals much -needed distinctions between friendship, intimacy, and romance.

So J .D. Greer posts his endorsement of Albury with the rainbow flag there, and it's the timing,

I think, that is the issue more than anything else. It would be very surprising if he did not know, if he was not aware of what was going on in the broader evangelical world and what

Tom Buck and Sam Albury's interactions were and what Tom Buck was writing on James White's website,

AOMN .org. So, some folks pointed that out to Greer in the comments, but it is disturbing that this is happening.

The wagons are being circled around Albury, and they probably shouldn't be. Ten years ago,

Tom Buck pointed this out, this would not be happening. If he advocated what

Albury's website is advocating, he would be done, and now we have major evangelical organizations circling the wagons around Albury, whose ministry is living out, and you've just seen what is currently, even now, on their website.

So very disturbing. You can see the fault lines are being drawn. The dust is starting to settle on some things, but there's a lot more dust that's going to be kicked up, and there's a lot of other issues in the social justice package that we need to talk about.

So, let's move on to a new topic, but not really a new topic, because it's still pertaining to social justice.

Let's talk about this library talk that happened at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary on March 27th.

The title is, The Lingering Effects of Lynching on Your Ministry, an Untold Story.

The person moderating it was also named James White, which I had to do a double take. It's a different James White, and there were two others that joined him,

Dr. Will Willimon from Duke and Dr. Donald G. Matthews from UNC. One of the things that was interesting to me is that James White, I've heard his name before, and I thought, well, where have

I heard that? Well, he teaches at Southeastern, so he's teaching on the college level, and this is just kind of a rabbit trail, it's just a sidebar, but it shows something to me.

He's the Executive Vice President at the YMCA of the Triangle. He studied at East Carolina University, and he has a

Bachelor's of Arts in Sociology and Political Science. No seminary degree.

That's all he's got is a Bachelor of Arts, according to his LinkedIn. He's part of a church, but it does not seem to be a

Southern Baptist convention church. I looked it up, and so it's confusing to me why he's leading panels on these kinds of things.

I don't quite get it, and why he's teaching,

I guess, at the university would be another question I have. How is this happening? But this is what's happening, so what happened at this discussion?

For that, I would really like to direct you to Enemies Within the Church, because they posted a student's reflections of the recent lynching seminar at SEBTS.

There is a student who attended this event, and what he says is,

I'm going to paraphrase some things here and read you a few quotes, I guess, but this is the paraphrase.

He says that this really wasn't about lynching as much as it was about Donald Trump, Fox News, modern police shootings, racism that exists today, and how lynching is just the result of this lynching legacy.

And he talks about the intimidation that students have if they wanted to disagree, that it's just not an environment where they can really do it.

He talks about, I mean, the word that came into my mind was reprogramming, or reconditioning, which is what

Thabiti said at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary last year. We need to be reconditioned, but they said that what needs to happen is you need to internalize everything that we heard.

So they tell stories of lynching, they have photos and things, and you've got to internalize it. Don't try to analyze it, internalize it.

Very interesting. And of course, this is being led by a sociologist, and so that's not much of a surprise, but you would think maybe this would come from sociology, psychology.

One of the panelists expressed frustration that whites often do not talk about this history. He mentioned that often white people respond when things are discussed.

I never owned slaves. I never lynched anyone, et cetera. He responded that as Christians, we have to begin this discussion with confession and repentance instead of defense.

There's what I was talking about earlier. Repent. That's the first thing. Repent. Even if it's something that you didn't do, didn't participate in, no connection whatsoever, but the color of your skin is such that people that look like you at one time in the past did some things that weren't very nice, well, you need to repent of that.

So he goes on, he talks about they never argued for the connection between police brutality and these things.

One of the panelists recalls himself on the far left, a

Democrat, and so that just raises questions about, is this guy for abortion?

How far left are we going here? But this is a seminary. This is training pastors.

This isn't just a historical forum. This is supposed to be linked to ministry somehow. And so this seminary student who, very balanced,

I just go there, go to enemieswithinthechurch .com, find a student's reflections of the recent lynching seminar at SCBTS and check that out because I really think that he's going to give you a fuller picture.

Now, here's the thing, guys. There's a melodramatic element to this, and it comes out in the seminars, but you've got to internalize this.

You've got to let the emotions hit you, the anger that you feel when you see this picture. I don't know if there was music with it or not, but you're hearing these stories, and it's going to make you angry to see something like a crime taking place.

You want, your soul's going to cry for some kind of justice, right? You're going to want to see those who carried out a crime punished.

And these are crimes of the past, and that's part of the problem. And it sounds to me like they oversimplified lynching, too, to an extent.

I mean, I don't want to give a whole history of lynching right now, but in the American context at least, the term lynch comes from Colonel Charles Lynch and his treatment of the

Tories. The Tories, British, they're white people, British sympathizers. And it has become now, the term lynching has a racial component in our country.

But these are the stats from the NAACP, which, I mean, they got their information from the

Tuskegee Institute, but 3 ,446 blacks and 1 ,297 whites from 1882 to 1968.

And by the late 40s, hardly any lynchings are taking place. The last lynching would have been,

I guess, 1968. But that's according to the Smithsonian.

Again, I'm trying to use my leftist sources here. I get in so big trouble for, depending on what source

I go to, but I'm looking at their sources, all right? So I'm trying to treat this as favorably as I possibly can.

There's some bad stuff that happened, guys, there really is. I think there's a broad brush here that's saying it's all motivated on racism, it's all whites against blacks.

That can't be the case, because we know that there were black folks who also lynched black folks, and we also are not sure about the motivations for every single lynching and what exactly took place.

Some of this was during Reconstruction, during a time when there was a lot of lawlessness, a lot of poverty, and that's a whole historical context that needs to be talked about.

But all that being said, none of that takes away the horror of lynching, the injustice that did take place at times.

It did, all right? And it's evil, and I'm no problem coming alongside anyone who calls it evil and saying,

I agree with you. It's wrong to have vigilante justice. It's wrong to, and if you're going to have a racial component or any other component, here's the thing that gets at social justice, if you're going to say, well, this person did it, and we don't have evidence, but because they're a certain color of skin, then we should punish them,

I will stand all day with that person, no matter what color of skin is being challenged there, and I will say that is wrong, that is not justice.

Justice does not look through a spectrum to determine what's right or wrong. And the picture we're given of lynching is that that's what was going on, and that was what was wrong.

Well, that's a good criticism of what's going on today in social justice as well. The panelists don't even seem to realize the very thing that they're complaining about, which is looking at someone, assuming they did something wrong because of the color of their skin, is the very thing they're doing.

They're doing the exact same thing. They're saying, no, they haven't killed anyone for it, thank goodness, but they're saying, yeah, the color of your skin, if you're white, you're complicit in this in some way.

You're judging based on someone's skin tone, and that's terrible. It was terrible back then, it's terrible today.

Now, let's put these numbers into perspective that I just read. This is in Chicago alone.

From the spring of 2011 to the present, to the end of 2018, over 4 ,000 murders in Chicago alone, just Chicago.

We're talking similar numbers here, and this is a modern problem going on today, affecting the community that this seminar is supposed to be advocating for.

I don't see seminars on this, I don't see library talks on this, but that's a current issue.

Obviously, abortion, 1 ,876 black babies, on average, aborted every day in the

United States. This is a current issue. Why have a talk about fighting issues from years and years ago?

I mean, something that fizzled out more or less in the 40s, the last time it happened, apparently, is 1968, and you want to fight that.

Instead of fighting something that's happening right in front of us, that real pastors going to real communities are going to have to deal with.

That bothers me, really does. I might as well.

There's more of a complex nature to this whole lynching thing as well.

It's not just a racial thing, and that's where ... I'm going to give you one example of it. This is from Wycliffe, Kansas.

There was a murder of Walsh Thomas, 1901. There was a lynch mob that came, and Ernest Harrison, Sam Reed, and Frank Howard were lynched by a mob of black people, according to the paper in September 13th, 1901.

The color of your skin does not necessarily determine the evil that's in your heart, and subverting justice does not have a skin color attached to it.

It's a heart condition. That's been the point all along that we've been trying to make, and yes, in certain points in history, certain groups oppressed other groups more than others, but it's not unique to those groups.

Whiteness is not a thing. There's not a whiteness that is evil that just attaches itself to the heart of a white person growing up just because they're white, and the same would be true of someone who's black or any other skin color.

That's the problem with this whole thing. Now, the questions I would ask, if I was there and I was able to ask a question, here's what I would say.

Why are we talking about lynching when by the late 40s, hardly any lynchings were taking place according to the

Smithsonian, again, and you had 3 ,699 people that were killed in Detroit alone in a 10 -year period, and 1 ,876 black babies are dying every day, and we're talking about this.

Would the crimes of today affect our ministry more than the crimes of yesterday? Wouldn't they? Another question

I want to ask is, if we're going to talk about how the past affects pastoral ministry, wouldn't it be just as important to talk about the pastoral ramifications of slave insurrections, or the

English Civil War, or the legacy of organized crime during Prohibition? Pick your historical topic, and then figure out a way to connect it.

We just opened a can of worms, we can do anything now, if that's the case, right? It all affects ministry. Do you believe, this is what

I'd ask, that there should be panels on these historical events as well? If they don't, then

I want to know why. Why not? Don't those things affect, aren't they connected, if this is connected?

And this is another question I'd ask, you'd have to be very brave to ask this question, but I would, and the reason

I'd only ask this is to expose the racialism, the critical race theory that's driving this. What is the legacy of black lynchings like Ernest, Harrison, Sam Reed, and Frank Howard's?

So there's a crime that happened, what's the legacy of that? Is there a legacy of that? What is the legacy of the white people that were lynched?

There are white people also who were lynched, so what's that legacy? How do these things apply to our pastoral ministry?

Now if they downplay it, if they were going to say, oh, you know, of course, those are smaller numbers, it didn't happen as often, well, then they're exposing themselves,

I think, in that case, because they're picking and choosing the sins that they want to promote and say, these are the sins that are affecting pastoral ministry.

Now of course, certain sins are going to affect things more, but like I already pointed out, there are sins right in front of us that are happening every day, which we should probably be focused on.

It drives me a little nuts, I guess, to see us shadowboxing, fighting things that fizzled out years ago, instead of focusing on the evil in front of us today.

So there's my two cents on that. Now, Danny Akin also gave his two cents on this, so I want you to see that.

Again, go to Enemies Within the Church, give them a donation while you're there, by the way, if you're going there to look at this student reflection.

I'm very grateful for students like this, who will write something anonymously, even if they're afraid that there'll be blowback to them, but they're willing to get the information out there.

I really appreciate that. It really confirms some of the things I said, too, that there's another student from inside saying this.

Danny Akin's reaction. He says, during the lynching century, 18... The lynching century.

So the whole century is just colored by this lynching. There were...

Okay. 1882 to 1968, an estimated 3 ,466

African Americans were brutally lynched in America. Today, more African Americans are killed by abortion every four days.

Abortion is the American Holocaust. Now, we need to commend this.

I commend it. I'm commending it to you. I'm thankful. I don't like the first part of that tweet, necessarily, because it seems ridiculous to have a panel on this, for the reasons

I just laid out. But he's actually shining a light on a real problem.

And unfortunately, I mean, if he's endorsing it, he's saying that, yeah, the police brutality is a legacy of lynching. Well, whatever that is.

Now, at least he's going a step farther and he's saying, yeah, you know what?

Abortion is the real problem here. So I can live with that to some extent, even though I don't like the first part of this.

But then this happens. And this is very interesting to me. Someone named

Kyle J. Howard, who I've had a little bit of interaction with, enough to be blocked. He says...

So someone else sent me this. He says... Now, what was the piece?

I'm going to get into what Danny Akin's reaction here is, because this is what gets concerning. Kyle J. Howard's piece is called

Moral Credibility and Ethnic Diversity in the Pro -Life Movement. And here's what he argues.

I'm going to give you a couple quotes. He says... I'm going to read that again.

He says... So he's saying, you're not really pro -life. You're just being someone who tokenizes.

You're just trying to claim that you're not racist, because you're concerned about black babies.

But you're really not that concerned, because you're not concerned about police shootings and other things that affect the black community.

He goes on. He says... And he's saying...

He's talking to this friend of his who's pro -choice and who is a member of Black Lives Matter. And Kyle J.

Howard's trying to convince him, no, you should be pro -life. And this guy's saying, why would I want to be pro -life? Those are the white people.

And Kyle J. Howard is saying, oh, no, it affects us. And I'm consistently pro -life, because I believe the leftist causes are also part of the pro -life movement.

He goes on. And he says the difference between him and the other guy was, I was engaged... Oh, between...

So this gentleman that he's trying to convince had interactions with other pro -life advocates and was not convinced.

But Kyle J. Howard says, I convinced him, because I gave him the data. And I showed him the needs of the black community and human flourishing.

There's that word again, constantly coming up. And the last quote... You quote, concerning unborn black children.

That is very telling. So you're a hypocrite, essentially. So why does he send this to Danny Akin? Danny Akin agrees with Kyle J.

Howard. Danny Akin supports... He gives a winks and nods at least to illegal immigration and to the idea that the black community is being over -policed and the incarceration rates, and he's against the monuments, and he's for affirmative action.

Go down the list. You would agree with Kyle J. Howard on this stuff. Kyle J. Howard says, you're not really pro -life unless you adopt those things.

So what's going on? This is the interesting thing to me. They're policing themselves, it seems like, to me.

I don't want to put Kyle J. Howard and Danny Akin in the same bucket. I'm not saying that they're... But I'm saying what's becoming the evangelical left, they want to make sure that no one steps out of line too much.

And Danny Akin did it, apparently, in this post a little bit. So does Danny Akin double down? And does Danny Akin say, well, hold up.

Abortion is the big deal right now. I mean, look at the numbers. This is actual humans losing their lives.

We're not just talking about economic policy. I mean, people can disagree on what's going on with police and shootings.

I mean, there's more than one way to look at that. But there's really not more than one way to look at abortion, unless you want to commit moral insanity.

I mean, does Danny Akin say any of this? No, he doesn't say any of this. Here's what he does say.

He tweets back to Kyle J. Howard. He says, thank you, Kyle James Howard. I am in full agreement with every word, my brother.

We must have a comprehensive pro -life ethic, as you well state. I was simply highlighting one aspect of that ethic.

Thank you for directing me to the fine article. And then Kyle J. Howard responds to him. And he says, I love you, brother.

Grace and peace. I do want to press a little in love. Beloved brother, your tweet does come off very offensive.

Was Danny Akin's tweet very offensive? The dynamic of lynching is radically different than abortion, though both are sinful.

Comparing psychological terrorism, so that's what the lynching century was, psychological terrorism, to black abortion.

Black abortion is apparently not psychological terrorism, which is a fruit of systematic racism.

Now, this gets very telling. I'm just going to read it and withhold my comment until the end. It is not a fair comparison and is deeply offensive.

Consider this. Many single black women are left in hopeless positions, largely fueled by systematic racism. They end up getting an abortion.

To compare that choice to lynching is calling them terrorists. It's villainizing victims.

When it comes to looking at black abortion statistics, you can't approach it that way.

Your approach, the way you approach abortion in general, that's why it rubs the wrong way. Black women are systematic realities working against them, leading to the choice that women of other ethnic groups don't have.

This is super interesting. This is what Danny Akin just caved to. Not even an attempt to point out the issue here.

Kyle G. Howard just says they're a bunch of victims, those who abort their babies. Just a bunch of victims. Specifically, it's the black people who abort their babies.

They're the victims. White people who do it, yeah, not so much. It's the black people who abort babies. They're not murderers.

They're victims of a system. The systems to blame in this case, I don't even know what to say.

I can't believe Danny Akin caved to this. This is the president of a Southern Baptist seminary. So lynching is psychological terrorism, but abortion is not.

Dismembering babies, whether they're red, I don't care what color they are, it's murder.

Call it what it is. Proportionally speaking, yeah, there's a lot more babies in these communities, and that's by design.

That's what Margaret Sanger wanted from the beginning, that are being aborted. It's minority babies in many cases, and this was by design.

I mean, if you want to try to find a systematic thing going on, maybe that might be a place you'd want to look.

And so he says, yeah, there is a systematic thing going on, but there's no responsibility.

There's no complicity. I mean, they're choosing to do it. You're not forcing them. He's saying they're being forced.

Why can't someone who looks at the lynching situation say, well, you know, these were the conditions during Reconstruction, and you just got to understand the historical context, which

I think we should understand the historical context. But then to say something that's not justified, that's a lynch mob that goes around justice to vent anger and kill someone as a result of that, to say, well, they're not really complicit.

They're forced by the circumstances. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous.

But you could say the same thing for that. Why not? I still can't believe

Danny Akin caved this, but he did. And here's the thing. I am frustrated, but I want you to see this.

Those of you watching right now or listening, this is what we're dealing with. This is the president of an institution training pastors to go into your churches if you're

Southern Baptist. This is very concerning, and we need to pray for Danny Akin that his eyes would be open to this.

Now, let's move on here. I'm going to show you what happened.

Again, this is something Danny Akin also read. I think this is either the same day or the day, or I don't know if it's the day before or the day after, but it's in the same time period, essentially, that this was all going on.

Danny Akin tweets out this article from Christianity Today, and it says, The Black and Evangelical, Why I Keep the

Labels. This is getting to be a long video, so I don't want to go through every single part of this article.

You can go read it for yourself. It's very disturbing, but I put the quote here that bothers me the most. It's a bad article.

I wish I could go through it and have the time. Here's the main thing that really should raise our eyebrows.

Cultural presuppositions are inherent to a theologian's method. Intellectual integrity compels us to recognize that theologians do not do theology in a contextual vacuum.

This is not necessarily bad. Personal and cultural experiences create lenses that are essential to the discovery of objective truths.

However, to disregard this reality is detrimental. One must be mindful of how cultural contexts contribute to today's ethnic rift.

And Danny Akin says of this article, which this quote is from this article, he says, A superb article that so well convicts and captures my heart all at once.

Black and Evangelical. This person, in the order I think of words matters here. Black and Evangelical.

Reading the Bible, reading theology through the lens of your culture, of your ethnicity, of your blackness, in this case.

That's what the article's about. It's a person that's trying to defend the use of the word Evangelical from someone who doesn't like it because they think it's white and it's associated with all these horrible

Republican things, essentially. And he's saying, no, it's still a good word. But you just got to realize if you use the word

Evangelical and we talk about the theological convictions that are attached to that word, we read those convictions through our cultural presuppositions.

So, something clicked in my head when I looked at this. And, again, read the whole article if you really want to understand more of what's going on here.

But someone had told me, who's high up at Southeastern, that hermeneutics is the real issue here.

Essentially, a neo -Orthodox hermeneutic had come in years ago, and now hermeneutics is not even required at the MDiv level.

But there's this sense in which Scripture must be interpreted through the lens of your culture to arrive at objective truth, which is exactly what this article says.

So you can't escape the context you're in. Just to be clear, we're not talking about ancient cultures.

We're not talking about looking at the Bible in the context of Greek or Roman culture. That's appropriate of Jewish culture.

We should be doing that. We should be understanding the original audience. That's proper hermeneutics. But there's another kind of hermeneutics, and I'm not going to go into the details, but it says we look at things, and it's inescapable through our cultural lens.

And because we're looking at things through our cultural lens, we shouldn't be ashamed of that. We should just make sure it's the right cultural lens that we're looking through.

I had someone reach out to me who's a student at Southeastern, and they said in one of their classes, their theology professor says, we need to rid ourselves of interpreting

Scripture through the lens of white privilege. So that's wrong. But according to Danny Akin, apparently looking at Scripture through the lens of a black ethnic heritage of some kind is how you arrive at objective truth, and that's okay.

Read the article. That's what it says. Very disturbing. That's more disturbing than – because this gets to the heart of how to interpret

Scripture. That's more disturbing than the lynching seminar, except for the fact that the lynching seminar was put out by the library.

It wasn't even the kingdom diversity section of the school, which everyone knows is kind of off the rails. This was officially the library, so the school is endorsing this.

And this isn't just Danny Akin tweeting. This is the school vetting this. So in that sense, it is disturbing.

But this is the methodology. This way to do hermeneutics will destroy interpretation of the

Scripture. Now, last but not least, I wanted to get to this. Bruce Ashford put out – he's the provost at Southeastern.

And Danny Akin actually retweeted this. So if you're thinking, wait a minute, Danny Akin just endorsed critical race theory.

What's he doing retweeting this? I'm going to try to make sense of that for you if I can. Bruce Ashford says,

Marxism offers itself as an alternative to God's revelation and salvation in Christ. It offers an imminent salvation by a social political action and stands ready to persecute those who stand in its way.

And I went through all of the articles. It's a collection of articles. And there's a few quotes that I want to go over here.

So he criticizes Marxism. I think it's very important to understand why he criticizes

Marxism. And some of this we need to applaud. But he says there's an idolatrous nature of Marxism.

So it's the idolatry. Now, Bruce Ashford says there's idolatry on the right. There's idolatry on the left.

We've got to beware of these idolatries. It's almost like there's thesis, antithesis, and we need a synthesis.

I don't know that. I mean, for those who know Marxism well, you know what I just said. But he's saying that there's an idolatrous nature to this.

And it also has corrosive effects on individuals and societies. So the outcome of Marxism isn't good.

Marxism is not primarily an economic theory. It is primarily a surrogate religion. So he evaluates it.

And that's true. I'm not disagreeing with any of this. But I want you to be paying attention to what he's not saying.

He criticizes central planning. Good for him on that. Here's a very telling quote, though, in one of the articles.

He says thus, If we wish to see members of every social sector, ethnic heritage, and economic class flourish together in a roughly equal manner, it will not be through the implementation of socialist ideology.

It will only come when someone greater is on the throne. So this is what

Bruce Ashford is essentially saying. He's saying Marxism has some real issues with it, which

I would agree. Marxism has some real issues with it. But what he's saying is that in order to critique

Marxism, you have to view it as a religion. I would agree with that, too. What are the main critiques made from conservatives, or even you could say traditionally

Christians, against Marxism? What has been the major critique that we've seen?

I would say the major critique has been that Marxism is stealing. That's the simple critique.

Some say it's stealing. This is redistribution of wealth. You're taking my wealth, and it's my private property, and you're not using it for the narrow lane

God gave government, and that's stealing. It's my job to do charity, not yours, government.

Bruce Ashford doesn't really get into that much. Now, I don't know why. I would love to hear him talk about that.

But that's not the criticism being made. Now, I'm going to flesh this out for you. I've read material from Oikonomia Network, which funds

Intersect, which Bruce Ashford is very much behind writing for them and Intersect and creating curriculum for them.

Tim Keller is also very involved with Oikonomia, and I've read Tim Keller. And the material from Oikonomia and the material that Keller has put out there,

I'm thinking especially of his book, Not Generous Justice, the other one that he put out there,

Every Good Endeavor. He says that there's a problem with Marxism, and Oikonomia says the same thing.

There's a problem with Marxism. But the problem that they have with Marxism is that, well, it's based on materialism.

Materialism is bad, and it's idolatrous. It's very similar to what Bruce Ashford is saying. They also use the word human flourishing quite a bit.

It just doesn't make for human flourishing. And by the time you're done, and they criticize capitalism, by the way, the same way.

And then by the end of it, they have this new synthesis, this new way forward. It's the third way.

I've called it third -way evangelicalism. And we're going to create this society, and it's going to be based on these

Christian principles. But when you look into it, it's pretty vague, but it seems like it's this communitarian model that resembles socialism in some ways.

It's critical of capitalism. It's critical of free market, I should say. And Bruce Ashford's using some of the same language, and he's making some of the same criticisms.

And I know he writes for Oikonomia, so I would be curious. I would love Bruce Ashford to come out, and this is what

I think would be great. If he came out against the Frankfurt School, Marcus, and even

Kimberly Williams Crenshaw, the founder, essentially, of intersectionality.

This is what's going on at Southeastern right now. I just highlighted some of that. There's critical race theory at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Ashford is criticizing a version of Marxism that a lot of his stuff was about the

Soviet Union, and it's fine to do that. But it's based on modernism.

It's from the Cold War era, mostly. He does try to create a connection in some things to Bernie Sanders and what's going on currently politically.

But the main issue seems to be that they're not religious. So what if they were?

What if they were religious? What if they believed in human flourishing? What if they had...

What if this was a version of socialism that incorporated critical theory and had

Christianity at the center of it, but still said that, you know what, there does need to be some kind of redistribution mechanism in this, whether that's the church or something.

There needs to be something that... I don't know. What would he say? And this is where it gets vague, and it's almost frustrating because Danny Akin retweets this, and it almost seems like it's as if to say, see, we're not

Marxists. I don't know if that's what they're trying to say, but the reality is you have critical race theory.

You have intersectionality right under your nose. You have feminism. You're promoting this stuff at the seminary.

Can you not deal with what's in your backyard? If you're really against Marxism, are you against it in all its forms?

It doesn't seem like it, and I don't know what the options are here. I mean, the only ones I can seem to come up with is either you're not recognizing this, or this is an attempt, this is a

PR move. I know that the Intersect Project posted, Bruce Ashford posted something like this about a month ago there, trying to collect all the anti -Marxist things.

Is this a way to cover and then to reinvent a version of communitarianism, socialism?

I mean, because that's what I'm seeing coming out from Forrester and Tim Keller and Oikonomia Network.

So is that what's going on here? I suspect that. Now, I wanna be corrected. I would love for Bruce Ashford to come out against Marxism in all its forms and be very specific about Kimberly Williams Crenshaw, intersectionality, feminism, and critical race theory, and then go after where he sees it even at his own school.

That would be really great. I would love to see that. Hard for me to take it seriously when the criticisms,

I'm still applauding it. I'm still grateful for it, but I can't take it too seriously if you're not dealing with what's right in front of you.

So that's my main critique of, I guess, question. I should say question.

I'm gonna back off the critique language a little, even though I am critiquing, but that's my question. It's not very helpful if we're going against the

USSR and not against the current Democratic Party and what it's advocating, even the religious aspect, which is right in front of all of us at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

So that's my main critique there and question. I wanted to close with just a few things.

There's a lot going on, and I dealt with the homosexuality thing a little bit, the same -sex attraction,

Christianity. I am planning on dealing with this further because I think this is going to worm itself into everything.

It's already happening, in my opinion. And the way that it is advancing is not through logical argument, theology.

I don't know that living out is the main culprit as far as advancing this cause.

It may be, but in my own experience, what I've noticed is it's personal testimonies from books and from blogs and messages that are going out there from people that claim that they're same -sex attracted and they've struggled for years and they can't free themselves and Christ isn't freeing them.

And, well, now this is just the way they have to live and the Church needs to accept this. And it's an experience -driven message that's going out there.

And I think what Tom Buck did was really good, a theological critique, but I really want to do a critique of some of these testimonies, these experiences.

So I just want to sort of let you know where I'm going, those of you who are my supporters. And there's some other big things coming up too that I'm looking forward to that I won't go into detail about now.

But please consider going to Enemies Within the Church, giving them a donation. They're putting out some of this stuff.

They're exposing some of it. Join the Enemies Within group on Facebook that Cody Liebolt and I talked about in the last episode.

Pray for me. Pray for the Enemies Within the Church film and project. And if you are compelled to do this, if you feel like you should pray about it, maybe donate to my

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