Response to Matt Chandler ERLC #MLK50 Speech

Response to Matt Chandler’s MLK50 Speech and the Limits of Racial Generalizations

I've listened to a lot of really bad videos in the last, I don't know, six months or so. I've listened to a lot of people that I thought were completely wrong talk about social justice and racial reconciliation.

I've listened to a lot of arrogant people. I've listened to the most vile racists that you could imagine, white racists, black racists. I've listened to all kinds of stuff and normally I have no problem getting through it.

I've got a typically a pretty strong stomach for this stuff. But unfortunately, I recently attempted to listen to one of the talks at the MLK 50 conference put on by ERLC and the Gospel Coalition. And my streak ended.

I could only get through about six minutes of it. It was too much. I just had to close the browser and I just had to stop. And unfortunately, it was a pastor that I greatly respect. When I was first converting to Christ, there was a few pastors that I listened to their podcasts and their sermons all the time.

I would listen to, you know, three, four a day for a long time. And this was one of the few that I listened to. So I learned so much about theology and about God. So much of my foundations in Christianity came from this man.

And so I respect him very greatly. I still do, even though I could not get through his presentation at this conference. And so I don't want to this. This video is not about throwing shade his way. I don't I still think he has a lot to offer Christians in certain topics.

But unfortunately, in this particular topic, I think he demonstrates a really large imbalance. And so, you know, I'll link to the to the the talk so you can watch it in its entirety. Maybe you have a bigger maybe you have a stronger stomach for this stuff than I do.

I could only get through about six and a half minutes. But I'll link it in case you want to watch it. It's just a really sad, sad thing. And we'll talk about it. I'm going to I'm going to respond to it.

Start and stop like I normally do. And I'll take you through sort of what my thought process was as I was listening to it. So it'll sort of be a reaction video, even though technically I've seen it already.

Matt Chandler’s Framing of Ethnic Generalizations and “Fools”

So let's just go jump right to it. Unfortunately, this is from Pastor Matt Chandler.

Morning, got to kind of settle my soul, watching our crew minister to us like that. Any time you're asked to address an ethnic group, you're forced into some generalizations that I'm not sure ultimately that it's helpful.

So so what?

Pastor Matt Chandler, it's not helpful, so don't do it next time you're offered. You don't have to accept every every invitation you get. It's not helpful to do that. Dividing up the church like that, the white church, the black church, the Hispanic church, the Latino church, all this stuff, it's not helpful.

What I want to do, having gotten I remember the emotion I felt when I opened up the email and it just said, hey, we would love for you to discuss. The council is confident in your ability to discuss the inconsistencies in white evangelicals on the issues of race and the way forward.

Oh, and you have 30 minutes. So here's here's how I think I can serve us. I don't want to talk about fools today. I just don't. I don't have the time or the inclination to discuss foolishness. So what I want to do is I want to talk to you about a group of people that God has knit my heart to.

So here he he first presents this idea of fools and he doesn't want to talk to fools. And, you know, listen, everyone has the right to decide who they engage with and who they don't. That's that's a given.

You know, I don't engage with everyone that comes my way. I certainly think that there are fools out there. But what we're going to see is how he defines fools. And now there might be nuance in the parts of this video that I have not seen, because, again, I didn't make it through the whole speech.

But from the six minute snippet that I saw, fools is essentially defined as anyone who disagrees with him and what he discusses regarding racial reconciliation. Anyone who thinks that it is more akin to Marx, Karl Marx and cultural Marxism than it is to the Bible is a fool.

And unfortunately, when you start to paint your opposition like that, it's it's a conversation conversation stopper. It's so disrespectful. It's so condescending. It's so arrogant. Imagine if you walked around thinking everyone who disagrees, they're just a fool.

I just we're going to talk more about that concept because he, you know, kind of continues to rail against that. And it's just a real shame that he decides to do that.

Race, Justice, and Marxist Categories

I am the pastor of the village church in Dallas, Texas. It is a predominantly white congregation situated in a place where more than likely we will always be predominantly white. I don't feel an impulse to need to apologize for that or feel bad about that.

Well, that's great, Pastor Matt Chandler, because you shouldn't apologize for that and you shouldn't feel bad for that. But this conference was chock full of people who would say you do need to feel sorry about that.

You do need to feel bad about that. In fact, we should change our worship styles if we're our churches are too white. Because there's something, I guess, inherently sinful about having a style that doesn't attract blacks or Latinos to your church.

In fact, we have to crucify that with the crucifier worship styles. It would be nice if you could offer some insight into why you don't feel like you need to apologize for that. I'm glad you don't because nobody does.

This is the reality of God's call on my life. It's where I've been placed. It's the ministry that God has given me. And I deeply love the men and women of the village church. I have for 15 years wept with them, buried them, married them.

They have wept with me. They have visited me in the hospital. I have visited them in the hospital. They are my people and God is our God. That is the context that I find. But here's something I noticed, and this gets me into our journey.

This people I love, this people that support me and applaud me and encourage me and through their tithes and offerings pay my bills would operate in some inconsistencies that were discombobulating to me.

If I preached a sermon out of the book of Isaiah on justice, my inbox would fill with their glee that I would broach the subject. But if I applied it to the subject of race, then all of a sudden I was a Marxist or I'd been watching too much of the liberal media.

Right. So he's going to say a few of these sort of couplets here, but on one hand, you know, they would be this and the other hand, they'd be that. And he's going to try to say there's some kind of inconsistency there.

And he brings up the idea of justice. Well, yeah, a gospel pastor should preach about justice. But then he says that when he applied it to race, all of a sudden he's a Marxist. Well, the problem is not that Christians don't think that the gospel message of justice applies to race, because a lot of people strawman the opposition here.

They'll say, oh, yeah. What do you think that the justice doesn't apply to race? The gospel doesn't apply to race? No, nobody's saying that. Nobody's saying that. What they're saying is you're misapplying it.

You're a misapplying it in a cultural Marxist type of way. And it's just Marxism. It's not such a thing as cultural Marxism. It's just Marxism. And so, you know, if you do that, if you misapply that, it doesn't mean that there's an inconsistency there.

All it could mean that there's an inconsistency with you and how you apply justice. You have to you can't use Marxist categories like black church, Latino church, you know, institutional racism, all these disparities, how they prove unjust unjustness.

You can't use Marxist categories and then expect someone not to call you a Marxist, because this is the thing when you when you ask someone you say, OK, well, tell me about this institutional racism. How do you know it's there?

And what they'll say is, well, you know, income for white families is is up here, but the income for black families is down here. Well, here's the thing. A Marxist says there's a disparity and that must mean oppression.

That must mean that there's an unjust situation there, because if it was just, it'd be even. That's Marxism. That's Karl Marx. That's straight out of Karl Marx. On the other hand, a person who's not a Marxist says, OK, well, some people make this much.

Some people make this much. And there could be a totally just situation. It's just the way it shook out. This is some people make money in a righteous way more than other people. Just because there's a disparity does not mean that there is some kind of oppression.

That's Marxism. The Bible doesn't know anything about that. The Bible doesn't say anything about how it's automatically unjust if there's a disparity. That's why people call you a Marxist. It's not because they're saying the Bible doesn't apply to race.

The Bible doesn't apply to these issues. It's because you are using Marxist categories. You're using Marxist theory more so than you're using biblical categories when you talk about this issue. So why paint your opposition like that?

If I spoke on abortion, I was applauded as courageous and a ferocious man of God. And yet when I would tackle race, I was being too political.

Right. Well, that's a good point. It's kind of a stupid argument. The gospel applies to race. That's not too political. But I would imagine that it's actually probably not the criticism that you're getting, Matt Chandler.

Not to say that you're lying, but what you're probably getting is you're applying this in a partisan way. This is straight up Democrat, socialist, Marxist partisanship. It's not that it's political. It's partisan.

That's the issue. And that's legitimate feedback.

Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Problem of Heresy

If I quoted the great reformer, Martin Luther, never and I've done that hundreds of times over 15 years, never did I get an email about his blatant antisemitism. But let me quote the great reformer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and watch my inbox fill.

With people asking me if I'm aware of his moral brokenness, I can't even imagine someone.

Making the comparison on the one hand, talking about the great reformer, Martin Luther, the Christian reformer, and in the same breath called Martin Luther King, Jr. A great reformer. It's the same context.

He's using the same context and calling Martin Luther King, Jr. A great reformer. How, how? Yes. Martin Luther King, Jr. Had moral failings. No question about that. Martin Luther had moral failings. No question about that.

We all have moral failings. There's no question about that. But these are totally different categories. There's a chasm between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr. One was a heretic. Okay. And I'm not talking about he had a different eschatology.

I'm not talking about he was credo Baptist instead of paid a Baptist. I'm not talking about, you know, pre-mill post-mill trivial ish stuff like that. Not to say that that's trivial. That's, that's not the correct word, but, but things that aren't foundational.

I'm talking about a formal heretic. Like God didn't come in flesh heretic. Okay. Now the Bible says, unless you know that I, unless you say that I am, this is Christ talking, unless you say that I am, you will die in your sins because it's heresy to say that Christ is not God, man, to say that Christ is not deity.

And that's what Martin Luther King, Jr. Did. Now you can deny that. I guess if you want to, you just have to deny everything that he said. Um, but you can't put those in the same category. Why, why are you quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. From a Christian pulpit?

That's perplexing to me. We don't quote heretics from the pulpit. And again, I'm not talking about a Baptist instead of a Presbyterian. I'm not talking about that kind of stuff. I'm talking about a formal, every Christian council, every, um, orthodox statement of faith would consider this heresy.

How could you, how could you say that he's a Christian reformer? I just don't understand that. Well, before we get back, it just seems like social justice has completely taken over at this point. Racial reconciliation, these ideas, these categories, these Marxist categories have overrided what you would normally, you know, apply to a man.

Martin Luther King doesn't get the same treatment in Matt Chandler's eyes than a standard heretic would because he's a social justice leader. It's a real shame.

The Role of Biblical Knowledge, Ignorance, and Public Schools

I want to be careful because these are people that I love. These are people who love the word of God. They are crazy. Like if I, I finished like a year and a half through the book of Exodus and I did a topical series and I started getting questions about when we were going to start preaching through the books of the Bible again, these are people who pray and worship and evangelize and love Jesus.

Look, if these people are so zealous for the word of God, they're so in love with Christ, they love the Lord and they are careful about their Bible study. You know what? Maybe they have a point. Maybe they can recognize the difference between Marxist categories and biblical categories when you can't for some reason.

Now we have to prove that we can't just say, oh, you're a Marxist and write you off, we have to demonstrate how you're using Marxist categories and many have done so, but why is it, why is that not even on the table?

Why is it automatically? Well, they just don't understand. And I understand, but they don't understand. And that's some racial inconsistencies that they're using. Not necessarily, not necessarily. You have to prove that.

And you've already said they care about the word of God. So why is that not even in the conversation? Like I, you can't possibly be wrong about this. I don't know.

And yet there were these inconsistencies around this topic that were confusing to me. And again, I'm not talking about fools, 300 fools left when we first broached the subject and there weren't, there wasn't any lament in our elder room about that.

You see the arrogance, do you see the absolute arrogance of this, of this, of this speech? I'm not talking about those fools that left the church. Look, if you start using Marxist categories instead of biblical categories, when you talk about this issue and some people leave your church over it, okay.

That does not make them fools. It doesn't. Now they might be fools, but you can't just say, well, if they left the church, once I started using these, these, uh, this rhetoric, they must be fools. This is just arrogance.

Imagine if you thought everyone who disagreed with you was just a fool, write them off. We don't even worry about those fools. And we, we don't even shed a tear in our elder session when those fools left the church.

It's just sad that it's come to this. If the irony of all this is that this speech, I believe it's called, let's take you to a house divided, cannot stand. Wow.

Other than the normal lament that you lament concerning a fool. So I want to try to explain as best I can, the inconsistencies in the white evangelicals that I have been called to lead around race. I think there's a cascading effect and it starts with ignorance.

Yeah, that's right. Because if someone wasn't ignorant, they'd agree with Matt Chandler. No question about it. I hope I never come to the place where I think that everyone who disagrees with me is just stupid.

They just don't know. They just hadn't, had never learned it. I hope I never come to that place because that's a really tough spot to be in. It really is. We should assume that someone who disagrees with us might know something we don't, that's how we should interact.

Someone who disagrees with me, you disagree with me. Maybe I know something you don't. You disagree, I disagree with you. Maybe you know something I don't. Why, why assume that they're ignorant? They just don't know.

They haven't learned it. Look, we all don't know what we don't know. We're all ignorant in places, right? But what this man is talking about is if you disagree with him on this racial issue, it starts with your ignorance.

I've had people tell me that I'm blinded by privilege, my white privilege. So I've had brothers that I really respect say that I was blinded by my white privilege. I'm not white. So that doesn't have an effect on me.

I laugh that off. I think that you sound stupid when you say something like that to me, but for some people that does have an effect on them. It does have an effect on them and it makes them wonder, you know, you know, maybe I am just, I just don't know.

Well, maybe you don't, but just because you disagree with someone doesn't mean you don't know. Okay. I know what it's like to be a minority pastor, Matt Chandler. I do know all about it because I am one.

Maybe you don't know.

Why is that off the table? It's a real shame. And let me chat about ignorance. I think what I'm talking about on ignorance is they don't know what they don't know. And they are a part of a system that encourages they're not knowing.

Prove it. Let me just lay this before you. I am a public school kid. My kids are public school kids for the love of God.

And I mean that seriously. I don't mean that in the colloquial way for the love of God. If you are sending your kids to a school, that's going to teach them to ignore black and Brown people, it's going to teach them white supremacy.

If it's going to teach them this, this kind of systemic injustice, take them out of that school, take them out of that school. You just said that this is a system that encourages ignorance and you're sending your children to that school.

Now, I don't believe that the system encourages ignorance. I don't think that Matt Chandler is correct about that, but if you do put your money where your mouth is, or I don't believe you. In fact, I think, I think that this is rhetoric.

I don't think that Matt Chandler actually thinks that the system encourages ignorance because he's a good man. He would not send his children to a school that encouraged you to ignore minorities, that encouraged ignorance.

At least I hope not. Pull them out of that school for the love of God.

Black History Month, Proportional Representation, and the Great Migration

And here's, here's what I've done leading up to this. I have asked 30 white men and women that I know and love to tell me who they learned about during black history month. Among the 30 plus men and women, starting at age 12, all the way up to 60, I was given seven names, Harriet Tubman and the underground.

This is why people call you a Marxist because you're, you're looking for some kind of proportional representation here. You think, I would assume you would think that there should be more black people taught in school and, um, it's not proportional.

Well, that's, that's Marxism. Okay. The disparity there, you know, you're assuming that there's some kind of oppression or there's some kind of injustice when there's not necessarily, because think about it, you send your kid to a government school, they're going to learn government history.

And the reality of American government history is it's mostly white. If you have a problem with that, take your kids out of that school, because that's what the government schools are going to do. They're going to teach government history.

And it doesn't mean that they're racist or they're, they're, they want, they want to perpetuate this idea of there's no black people out there that, that are, that are worth talking about. That's not it.

It's just that it's government history. Take your kids out of that school. If you have a problem with it, that's Marxism. These are Marxist categories. That's why you're called the Marxist.

Railroad, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King.

I wonder when, when, uh, black history month was implemented, what was the percentage of, uh, blacks in the United States? And I wonder how proportional actually is even using your Marxist categories, which I don't buy for a moment, but there's one month out of the 12 months of the year, that's a certain percentage.

And I wonder how, what, what the percentage of black people in the United States is that sounds, it probably, I don't know, I don't know the numbers, so maybe someone does comment in the comments below, but probably pretty proportional, even using your Marxist standards.

King Jr., George Washington, Carver, Malcolm X. If this is all we know, then intellectual, innovative, creative African-Americans are anomalies. They are not normal. These brothers and sisters are outliers.

They are not what I should come to expect in my interactions with African-Americans. There's nothing about the great migration. How can you understand the layout of the United States of America without knowing about the great migration?

And how can you, and that's where I turned it off, the arrogance. It's just astounding. The arrogance, how could you, you don't even know. I know, but you don't even know about the great migration. How could you even have an opinion here?

I know. God help me. If I ever come to the place where I start presenting my opposition in this way, that they're just stupid. They just don't know. I mean, how, how could you even know? You don't know about the ghettos and how you don't know when we start assuming that our opponents are ignorant, when we assume that they have, they don't know any better that they're just, you know, Neanderthals essentially when it comes to these, these issues, we've reached a place where we just can't have a conversation anymore.

And the irony again, is this is talking about a divided house. You are the one dividing the house. There are brothers and sisters out there that are saying, look, this is not the way there is no black church.

There is no yellow church. There is no Brown church. There is one church. There's one church United in Christ. There's multiple ethnicities. Yes, we can acknowledge that. But our true identity, our, our fundamental unity is in Christ.

So let's not chop up the church. Let's not divide the church in this way. Matt Chandler, you started this, this, this speech by saying, I don't know how helpful using these general generalized categories.

You should have followed your first instinct, brother. You should have followed your first instinct because this is not helpful. This is not helpful in any way. Now I've heard again, I didn't watch the rest of this cause I stopped it right there.

I couldn't take the arrogance anymore. I couldn't take the condescension anymore. Um, but I've heard that it actually gets worse. I've heard that there are statements in the rest of this speech that are just mind boggling, mind boggling.

And it's just a shame. We have to get past this idea that if someone doesn't agree with me on this issue, that they're somehow immoral, there's somehow ignorant, there's just fools, we have to get past that.

If I ever get to that place, man, God help me. God help me.