Reactions to Voddie's Potential Run for SBC President

Reactions to Voddie's Potential Run for SBC President

Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast.

I'm John Harris. We're gonna talk a little bit about the situation with Vodie Bauckham running for the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, or so some people are saying, speculating on, wondering about.

There's been an article that I think just explains this from a few days ago, right now almost a week ago, in the Christian Post, and I'll go over some of that. And I'll talk about some of the pushback.

And just give my thoughts on it. I've had, I don't know how many people, a lot of people sending me this particular article. And I did email Vodie, and this article is accurate. That's all I wanna say, is that this article is accurate.

And I think if Vodie Bauckham is gonna run for the President of the Southern Baptist Convention, you'll hear about it in time. So we're not gonna go through the speculations about if it's a for-sure thing or any of that.

Just, you know, he's already made a statement. I think it's a pretty clear statement. And there is a possible barrier he mentions. And so we'll talk about that. And, but I wanna talk a little bit about what this could mean, too.

And so I know this isn't for everyone. This is for mostly those in the Southern Baptist Convention who really would love to see the Southern Baptist Convention return to orthodoxy. And they're afraid of the slide, that it keeps sliding down.

But they're not sure, you know, is this a possible way forward? So I'll give you some of my thoughts on that for whatever that's worth. I did wanna mention first, though, speaking engagements. If you live in the Austin, Texas area, we'd love to see you this weekend, March 12th.

I'll be at Christ Fellowship Church, McLean Street in Taylor, Texas. And you can RSVP at rightresponseministries .com. That's rightresponseministries .com. Not like I'm gonna get to Texas probably all that often.

So we'd love to see you there. Aidy Robles is also gonna be with me, Pastor Joel Webbin. And then the next day, I'll be preaching at Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown, Texas. So both right outside of the Austin area.

They're suburbs of Austin, as I understand it. And looking forward to that. Actually, for once, my wife is gonna be with me. Normally, I go to places myself, just because it is a lot of travel. But we're looking forward to going together this time.

And so if you're in that area, we'd love to see you. And then, of course, I'll be in Idaho. You can get the details at worldviewconversation .com, March 18th through the 20th. And then Arizona, and then California.

I just added that, San Diego. And then Maryland, Michigan in June. So check it out, worldviewconversation .com. I'm adding places all the time and would love to see you. One of the things, and it's not on my speaking engagements, I was just gonna mention, I am flying out to a church in May for one weekend.

I guess it's a larger Southern Baptist church. And it's really just to help them understand what's happening in their denomination, why the threat of social justice is a threat. And so this isn't something that's open to everyone, but it is something that I'm helping a church out with, which there's a sense of fulfillment in that for me.

I mean, all this is. And that's not the reason I'm doing it, ultimately. It's because I believe the Lord has made an opportunity here. And his gospel's being challenged. His ethics are being challenged.

The very foundation of revelation's being challenged. But there is a fulfillment when someone's helped. I guess that's the teacher in me. I like to see the light bulb go on. I like to see people understand.

I like to see people change their lives because they understand something to be true. And so a lot of that's happening. And it just, it causes me a great amount of joy when I see that. It is labor intensive.

It is a lot of wearing masks on planes. But it's enjoyable. And I love meeting you. I love meeting the people out there that are faithful, that are curious, that are fighting the good fight. So many of you that I've met online, really, through messaging back and forth and commenting on things.

And I get to see you in person. So I'm just looking forward to that. It's a great joy and it is fulfilling. And it's something that's gonna be happening here real soon. So I just wanted to let you know.

And that's it. So let's get into what's going on with Votie Bauckham and all that. Let's start with what we know, right? So publicly available information here. Votie Bauckham says he's been asked to accept a nomination for SBC president.

And it goes through some of the details of this. And this is the nugget you need to pull from this, whether or not he's gonna run. He says, article eight of the SBC's constitution requires that all officers of the SBC's must be members of Baptist churches cooperating with this convention.

But article two says it is the purpose of the convention to provide a general organization for Baptists in the United States and its territories for the promotion of Christian missions at home and abroad and any other objects such as Christian education, benevolence, enterprises, and social services, which it may deem proper and advisable for the furtherance of the kingdom of God.

So Bauckham says, my sending church, the church I planted has always been, has always practiced regenerate resident church membership. Unfortunately, this is not common practice in many SBC churches. As such, we have always believed that missionaries sent to the field need to join local churches in order to be shepherded properly.

Unfortunately, since the SBC is an American entity, that means missionaries who leave the USA must either practice non-resident membership, which I'm convinced is unbiblical, or join a local church and be technically outside the SBC while being counted as SBC missionaries.

Bauckham calls the situation a huge problem in foreign missions. And this is somewhat the situation he's in. So the crux of it is this, can he run for SBC president if he has a sending church that is Southern Baptist, but he himself could not, it was prevented from planting a Southern Baptist church because he doesn't live in the United States.

Now, I think he's probably got some moral high ground on this because it seems like kind of a ridiculous rule. It's, you know, why couldn't someone who's sent from a Southern Baptist church, went to a Southern Baptist school, is keeping in line with the values, the theological beliefs of the Southern Baptist Convention, but is prohibited because of geographically where they are from planting an actual SBC affiliate church.

You know, why should they be prevented for running for president? That's the issue here. And so he's wondering about whether he's eligible if he's technically not a member at the church that he planted because he couldn't be.

Yet his church that's funding him, the church he was sent by is SBC. You can see how that might, there might be some gray area there, and I'm not sure all the ins and outs of that, but that seems to be possibly here the holdup.

If he was to run, he might have to challenge this, or at least get a clarification, figure out whether or not this does prohibit him or doesn't. So that's from what I understand being worked out right now, and it's being thought through.

And really everything here is the truth. This is where things are at. So no need to try to speculate beyond this at this point, just that's what he's publicly said. And it would be great. Now, there are some people posting things.

This is from Tom Buck, for those who don't know, he's a SBC pastor who is very involved with G3 and seen as one of the more conservative pastors in the convention. And so he posted, I'm going to be off for a few days on March 3rd, but before I go, I leave you with this.

And it's like a Batman kind of signal for Votibacum. It's a profile of Votibacum. And then he says, for whatever reason, people took this meme as me dropping a hint from CBN that Votibacum was running for SBC president.

That was never the case. I certainly will. So anyway, stuff like this is causing some people to speculate and be confused and like, well, you know, reading into things. I would just, it's what he says, right?

So let's just go with what he's saying here and just assume he's being honest. And he just is proclaiming his desire that Votibacum would be either, I guess, I don't even know, because it's, he doesn't really say in the post, but that there should be some influence from Votibacum somewhere, that we need him, right?

So he's not saying that he's necessarily running and we shouldn't assume that, but that possibility, that door is definitely open. And so that's something to pray about, right? Pray for Voti, that he would have wisdom, pray for those around him giving him advice, pray for the Southern Baptist Convention.

And I will give you my thoughts at the end as to whether this would be a significant or a possible path to victory for the conservative, more orthodox crowd. Now, there's been some pushback to this suggestion, the mere suggestion that Votibacum would run for SBC president.

Let's end with this, because this one is crazy. Let's start with this one. And it's so minor, right? There's hardly any, there's like eight likes on Twitter, but this was highlighted in an article, which you can read, by the way, at Servants and Heralds, which is more of a conservative type leaning, I should say, blog in the Southern Baptist Convention.

And Jay Adkins, who, I think, isn't Jay Adkins? Okay, I'm not, I don't wanna speculate here. I feel like I recognize this guy. And from like SBC Voices or something, but I just don't know that, I don't know if he is in SBC Voices.

It doesn't say on his profile, but anyway, this man speculated. Or said, I should say he said, lots of talk right now about Votibacum possibly being nominated to serve as SBC president. I'm a bit confused.

Does anyone know what SBC church he is a member of and what is the relationship he has with it? I thought he lived overseas. And so this, I think is just, the reason I'm sharing it is because this is going to be one of the things, if Votie does run, it's going to be one of the drum beats.

He's not eligible, he lives overseas, and you can't be a member of an SBC church, I guess, if you live overseas, or you'd have to retain some membership in the United States, which Votie doesn't see as biblical.

So that is one objection that you're going to see brought up more and more if this narrative gets heightened. And if, of course, if Votie does decide to actually run. And then you have this guy, Danny Slavich, who's a, he teaches at the, let's see, he's an adjunct professor at, I guess that would be the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, it looks like.

I'm not sure, actually, it doesn't seem to be clear. PhD from Midwestern Baptist. Just says adjunct professor, doesn't say where. But he's a church planner, he's with the SBC. And for those who, I guess, are on Twitter, which I'm not anymore, but used to be, he's one of the guys on the more progressive side of the Southern Baptist Convention, kind of pushing things, pushing the slide, we'll say.

And this is what he says. He says, eligibility questions for the SBC Presidency aside, Votie Bauckham has shown himself to be more divisive than unifying. This is gonna be another line of attack. If his best-selling book is any indication.

And so he published, he has a blog that he had written previously about Votie Bauckham's book. And I think I talked about this at the time when I was talking about objections to Votie's book. He says the upshot, and he quotes, I think himself here, instead of pitting brother and sisters with basically the same theological beliefs against one another, Bauckham would have done better to help us build a church that can handle the shaking.

And so it's so funny to me, it's so weird to me. I'll just, being honest with you here, the ability, especially of Southern Baptists to do this, I know progressives do this constantly, but the Southern Baptists are, they're particularly good at this.

I was at Southeastern when I saw the flip. I saw things trend towards this critical race theory narrative and heightened, heightened, heightened. And then after Trump was elected, it was like, go. And it was crazy.

It was crazy what I saw on campus at that time. And a lot of that, from what I understand, is the dialectic has kind of, not like anything has evened out. If anything, conservative professors have left.

But because there's been such an attack on critical race theory, it's like different words are used, things have gone underground, students aren't allowed to record. That's the situation. But, so it's not like they, they're not going more conservative by any stretch.

But what's happened is the very people who initiated this, pushed this whole narrative, the professors at Southern and Southeastern, especially who are pushing this hard, all of a sudden it's like either silence or the fingers start pointing at the other side.

Well, if you object to what I'm saying, you're the one who's divisive. You're the one who's being mean by calling a brother a false teacher or identifying false teaching. You're the one who has the problem and you're dividing Christ's church.

And we need unity. And there's this call for unity, unity, unity. When it's there, it's a case of projection. They're the ones who are dividing the church, who initiated this whole thing, who, not in a revival way, from the church to the academy, but from the academy, from the secular academy to the seminary to the church, have brought in the secular pagan ideas and it's caused a wedge.

And then they're saying that anyone who would point out that there's a wedge there or would leave a church over it or something, they're the ones that are dividing it. It's not biblical because any case in scripture where someone brings in false teaching, they're seen as the divisive ones.

It's not those who are holding to orthodoxy, okay? But yet you have another case here where Danny Slavich, who's a, I don't know if he's teaching at SBC school, but he's on the payroll for, I guess, the SBC as a church planner.

He is repeating this mantra once again. Look, Vody's not causing division. Vody's responding. And if anything, Vody's response, some could probably interpret as delayed almost, that this has been going on for years before Vody even wrote a book on it, which is fine.

Does it not, he can write a book whenever he wants. That's not a critique. I'm just saying, if anything, there's some patience and grace and just forbearance here. And then finally, okay, there's a divide.

Fault lines, there's fault lines here. Let's point it out. Let's identify it. Let's talk about it. And that's causing division. No, no, no, the division's already there. He's identifying it. He's describing it.

He's helping people interpret it. And it is due to some false teaching. So this dog doesn't hunt, but that's another line of attack is that Vody's divisive because he dared say that there's division and there is.

Now here's one. Now, my understanding is Phil Fisher deleted this thread, which doesn't really surprise me, I guess maybe. And I'll get to this in a minute, whether or not that's a sign of public opinion is not in his favor.

I don't know. But Phil Fisher, creator of Edgy Tales, how most people would probably know him, but totally woke now. And I mean, I've seen even, I saw a corporate, I forget if it was a company, secular company using Phil Fisher's Race in America video to train their people on implicit bias training.

And not even a Christian company. I mean, that's kind of how far to the left he's gone. He has veered so far. He's way out in like Siberia at this point. It's just so far out there that it's shocking almost to people who thought of him as this bastion of Christian culture.

I mean, I remember books, I think if I'm not mistaken, I think Nancy Peercy, I have a book back there where she has a section on Fisher and how influential Fisher is with Veggie Tales and how good this is, Christians and culture.

And now it's like, whoa. Now, some of you, I know you didn't like Veggie Tales from the beginning. So just a shout out, I see you, I know you're there. But regardless, this isn't Veggie Tales anymore, right?

This is pure leftism. And Fisher has just gone off the deep end. And this is what he said about Votie. First, he says, he compares it to a Candace Owens presidency. He said that Votie Bakken's presidency would be no more than a Candace Owens presidency.

He doesn't speak for many African-American Christians, says the white man, Phil Fisher, which is funny that it's like, is he breaking his own rules? And the answer is no, because you have to understand that in critical race theory, there is a, to have any standpoint, epistemological knowledge, knowledge from your standpoint, from your social location, you have to be politically engaged.

I talk about this in Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict. And by the way, you can get that now in Audible. You can listen to it if you don't have the time to read it. But I talk about this.

You have to be politically engaged. So if you are a minority ethnically, racially, and you don't go along with the political narrative that the sociologists, the leftists, the elites want you or think you should go along with, then you lose your status in a sense.

You are no longer speaking for, representing the social location you come from because it requires political engagement. And of course, you know which direction that political engagement runs in. So Voti, so this is just the way they all think.

And so I understand like dunking on these guys, like, oh, like you don't support black voices or whatever. Like it doesn't actually phase them. You gotta understand this. It can be some, maybe somewhat rhetorically effective if you're carefully pointing out that there is a hypocrisy of some kind here.

But you have to get to the root of the argument or the assumption that they have. The assumption they have is you must be politically engaged on behalf of your racial group if in order to being able to speak for their plight and to speak about justice for them.

So if you're not concerned with the plight of your racial group and you're not politically engaged in that fight, then you're down with the struggle. You are not a representative for them. In fact, you're a tool of the other side, your oppo.

And this is where we have to engage it with them. And it's very difficult. I'm not gonna lie. It's hard to think of how to even approach this really. It's just, but you have to understand they're just in a different paradigm than most of us are.

And so you have to show that actually, Vodi Bakum does, he is concerned for his racial group. He does, in fact, he's in Africa. Point that out. He literally went to Africa and he wanted to be involved there.

He cried when he got there because of the connection he has. That's a beautiful thing. That's something I think we shouldn't shy away from that. And there is something significant to that. And so Vodi does care for the people that have that common tie with him, racially speaking.

And he, and of course there's many cultural differences where he is in Zambia, I'm sure, but with, and he's talked about that. But he wants to help. He wants to help the people there. And he cares, he cares about the church, but he also cares about the people that he has that connection to.

And so he is engaged in helping their plight. And so how dare Phil Vischer minimize what Vodi Bakum is doing for people that look more like him in some ways, and people that he has a cultural or a probably more like a racial tie to in some way.

So he is engaged and you don't have to be on the left to be engaged. In fact, if you're on the left, maybe you're the pawn of white, mostly elites, who want to use, and mostly the Democratic Party, who want to use these groups as voter blocks to enrich themselves.

And what have they done for these inner city areas where they've controlled for how many years which are still just as bad as they are? They're worse than they've ever been actually. Chicago is terrible.

So why not, and it's not just Chicago, obviously, it's Philadelphia, it's so many of these inner cities where Democrats have been running the show and they've been relying on the black vote. What have they done for these people?

So that's probably more where you're gonna get close to where the battle actually lies. It really is a right or wrong, who's actually doing things that matter and that work and that are helpful for this community that is impoverished and that's really where the battle probably is gonna be more.

So that's the assumption behind most of this. And I'm not saying Phil Vischer personally, I'm just saying this is baked into it. This is just, it's group think. They all really, people who buy into critical race theory, they all think this way.

And so that will be another line of attack that he doesn't represent black voices. And all you have to do is a poll in the Southern Baptist Convention, if you have the money to do it, how many people who identify as black want Votie Bacchum?

And if you have the majority that doesn't want Votie Bacchum then you can say, you can start to smear him that he's not really black or something like that. And it's something that, it's just, it's the way that these people think.

It's a hump that it's very difficult to get over because it's so ingrained in them. But hey, someone might have a plan that the majority isn't accustomed to considering that may be better for them. And that's the door we have to open somehow.

And I'm curious, right in the comments section, if you have another way of approaching this. I just, I know the dunking on these guys and just, it just makes them more ingrained. I just know, hey, like you don't support black voices.

I guess you're a hypocrite. I know, I get it. I think there is some effectiveness in saying that somewhat, but it's just, I'm just trying to say, I'm not saying not to say that. I'm just saying it's not the heart of the issue with these guys.

Let's go on with this Phil Bisher thread though. He says that he would be a Candace Owens presidency. So he's bashing Candace Owens here. Candace Owens doesn't speak for African-Americans, right? And then he says, his views are very unpopular among most black Christians.

There you go, it's the democracy thing, right? His audience is overwhelmingly conservative white Christians, not much progress likely to come from that. So you know what he's saying? Voti, you're just a tool of white people.

You're adopting their views. They'll benefit from you. This is, you know, you can hear the assumption, the insinuation, this would be an extension of the racism. It's already supposedly there. And Voti's just, you know, he's not gonna help the situation, why?

Because you have to do something politically on the left to be considered a legitimate black voice and to make progress. No progress made in the inner cities where these leftists are implementing all their policies, but that's the assumption.

And it's just an assumption. You gotta understand, it's just an assumption. There is no, it's vacuous. It could, that's what you can attack. You can topple that, but that is what they think. No other words.

None of the African-American pastors who left the SBC last year would come back for Bauckham. It would reinforce why they left. You can only be black in the SBC if you adopt white beliefs about social issues.

And Dwight McKissick says, there's a kernel of truth here, yeah. He just, he adopts white beliefs about social issues. And so Vischer apparently deleted this thread and some said, or some speculated, you know, it must be because people were dunking on him.

They were just, he was getting so much pushback for this. And if that's the case, what does that mean? How do we interpret that? And I don't know, I don't know. I've encouraged Christians, don't believe Twitter.

Don't look at Twitter, don't. Twitter tends to be a leftist echo chamber. So that being said, then if Vischer's being right through the coals for this, then does that mean that the tide has turned in a way?

Does that, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes too on Twitter, I know back when I was on it, you can have like buried in a thread someone's post that not a lot of people saw and then it can create a firestorm where other people are just retweeting it.

But it doesn't, it comes, the way the algorithms work, it only comes across the news feeds from the people who are reposting it. So it could be that it's one of those things and it's not reflective of much, but you know, some people are hopeful.

Maybe the tide's turning. Maybe Vischer's got to hide his beliefs now more. I don't know that that's the case. I'm skeptical of that, but that is some of the hope that's out there. Let's talk about this one.

This is the most ridiculous. So it's lines of attack so far, right? He's not eligible. That's the first thing. You know, he can't, cause he's in Africa. He can't, he can't run for SBC president. And then the second one is, you know, he's divisive.

You know, it's the, you're in big meaning. And then the third one is you're a racist, right? And these are, they just, it's the same ones. Vischer didn't say that explicitly, but that's what he's implying.

So not eligible. You're, you know, divisive, racist. Those are going to be probably the three lines of attacks and they're already emerging. This is a crazy, and I can't, I can't read this whole thing because I don't want to drag you through the mud, but Baptist News Global, not to be confused with Baptist Press, though I think it used to be called something Baptist Press.

It's so confusing, but this is Baptist News Global, which is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, but yet, yet it is a Baptist news website. Plagiarism is the least thing to worry about with Voti Bakum, who is a threat to children, women, and daughters.

So this would be a fourth line of attack. So I'm going to try to just artfully, we'll read the intro and then we'll, we'll just try to go through this and give you some nuggets because I don't want to drag you through all of this.

It's not worth our time. But he says, after Baptist News Global broke the news that Voti Bakum was being asked to accept a nomination to become president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Theo Bros could hardly contain their excitement, which is, it's a pejorative against guys who really care about things like complementarianism and theology, and they're just uptight puritanical types.

And he says, one of the, I guess this is a Theo Bro, he says, Owen Strand tweeted, what Voti saw 10 years ago, among evangelicals still refuse to see. A decade ago, with little support, Voti stood up and named the approaching monster.

He dared to speak, he sacrificed popularity, position, and money to tell the truth. Recognize a warrior when you see one. He went on to prophesy, 200 years from now, no one who studies church history will know the names of the woke critics of Voti Bakum, but they'll know Voti's name.

They'll know it because of the God he faithfully proclaimed in faithless times. Be assured of that. Let me read the next sentence. Of course, Bakum himself has similarly swooned over Strand in his review of Strand's book, Christianity and Wokeness, saying, few men possess the mix of intellect, winsomeness, academic rigor, pastoral sensitivity, and raw courage that drips from every page of this book.

Strand, a former president of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, is a vocal complimentarian. All right, so let's just before, notice what he's doing in this article before we even start. He's setting up, look at this over the top, almost like, I don't know, I don't wanna say the word worship because that's over the top, but it's kind of like a hero worship.

Like, look at this over the top language of like Voti's the hero to, you know, assurances that 200 years from now, people will know the name of Voti Bakum. He sacrificed, I'll be honest with you, this, there's some truth to this, yes.

I mean, I saw the panel, what is it, from 2014 or so, with Voti Bakum, and I think, man, who was it, Hibidi Anabwile, and there's a number of other kind of woke guys, and if I'm not mistaken, Ed Stetzer, I think, was like the one that was hosting it, and Voti like was the only one who dissented from the narrative.

So I totally, I believe, yeah, Voti's absolutely courageous, and in fact, I'm gonna get to at the end why what we should probably do, or what conservatives who are in the Southern Baptist Convention should do, and one of them is to really highlight the courage that Voti has, and for the dark times we're entering, Voti is courageous, he's a man.

You can't argue with that, he's a man. That being said, this is kind of over the top. Speculating about 200 years from now, and I understand, though, you just wanna support him, but this sets it up for a guy like Rick Pidcock, which is his name, to really try to show, to try to cast the pro-Bockham side as just being out of touch with reality, that they're so just unhinged, and there's a hero worship, a celebrity appeal, it's not substantive, and he zooms in on really the thing they like, really the thing they like is that Voti is this raging, patriarchal figure.

So this will be the other line of attack, that it's the people who like patriarchy and really like to oppress women, like Owen, right? You know, they shout from the housetops the greatest, most grandiose praises for Voti-Bockham because they're both interested in the same thing, and that's oppressing women.

That's the gist of this article. He says, but despite Strand and Bockham's love fest for one another, not everyone is fantasizing about Bockham's potential rise. So again, fantasizing, that's what he's trying to do, is like, these guys are out of touch.

So I don't know, maybe you could put that in a fifth category. People who like Bockham don't really know him. They don't know, they're just, they're giving him almost inhuman abilities, like he's some superhero, right?

The Batman flash is going off. 200 years from now, they'll only remember Bockham. They won't remember his critics. You know, he gave up all this stuff. He's the warrior for our time, and that's just, they just don't know him because he's a regular person.

That's what he's trying to tap into. It's like, these people don't know him. Here, I'll tell you what he's really like. I'll give you the sources. I'll give you the quotes. So this is what the rest of what he does here is, Bockham peddles ignorant, violent power over children.

Guess what that looks like? I'll just give you a little clip. Bockham says, people who, in a sermon, people who don't believe in original sin don't have children. That's a viper in a diaper. The angry cry happens early.

The demanding cry happens early. The stiffening up of the body, that happens early. One of the reasons God makes them so small is so that they won't kill you, and one of the reasons he makes them so cute is so that you won't kill them, and by the way, I'm pretty sure I've heard this sermon, or I've heard, maybe he's told it in other contexts, and people laugh.

He's joking. This is hyperbole, and everyone knows that by his tone, but these guys, they don't, they can't take a joke, I don't think, and it just becomes, Vody's serious about this, like he'd kill his kids, and it's just like that alone, and he's got a number of other similar quotes here that these get Vody in trouble.

He thinks that kids are evil, and that if they had their way, they'd kill their parents to get the cookie or whatever it is they want, and this is just the doctrine of total depravity. This shouldn't be really a shock or a surprise to people who know that Vody is more of a Calvinist, so I don't know why this is so shocking to him, but this is totally against the social justice religion, which assumes that there's an innate goodness in man, especially from those early ages.

I mean, society hasn't corrupt them yet, but Vody's saying, his whole point is that, no, they don't need society to corrupt them. They are corrupt. So he says, Vody Bacchum peddles ignorant, violent power over women, and so he talks about, basically, you shouldn't get divorced.

There's no grounds for divorce, even if you're in an abusive marriage. Now, that doesn't mean, by the way, that doesn't mean that you can't separate, that you can't get out of harm's way. In fact, I wonder, this looks like there's no transcript here, so I can check.

I'm sure Vody would have given those qualifications in this sermon. But the idea that divorce, that the only grounds for divorce is adultery would prohibit someone from divorcing in the case of abuse, that you could certainly get a separation, you could certainly get out of harm's way, call the police, all that stuff.

But he wants people to think that Vody's just saying, oh, they should just remain in the marriage and keep getting abused. And violence over daughters, he says. Talks about daughters submitting to their father first, to learn how to submit more to a husband, and calls that, you know, this is all creepy, and that, let's see.

He, so, yeah, I mean, there's one thing here. I don't know how to even quite make sense of all of this. He talks about something Bauckham says in a book. I guess this, what book is this? Um, I'm not sure what book this is from.

Let's see here. Oh, no, this is not a book. This is a YouTube video, I guess. Okay, so, yeah, Bauckham, I guess, said at one time, a lot of men are leaving their wives for younger women because they yearn for attention from younger women, and God gave them a daughter who can give them that, and instead, they go find a substitute daughter.

So, maybe, I don't know. I'm not sure if that's the case. But he's using quotes like that to try to really smear Bauckham as this really creepy guy who really, you know, what does he think about his daughters?

Remember, they did this with Trump, too, I remember. Trump was very complimentary of his daughter's looks, and Ivanka, and this was one of the things that was kind of used against him. Let's see, not that Bauckham and Trump are anything close to each other as far as their morality's concerned at all, but I just remember that same similar narrative being weaved.

And so, he tries to take from a blog that one of Votie's daughters wrote some of her regrets about things she supported, I guess, in her teens or something, and that this is a reflection on Votie. But she even, so there's some weird speculation here.

Let me get to it. So, he says, or she says, that my dad is not abusive, overbearing ogre, who dictated every decision of my life, and that it was actually her dad who forced me to get my license and pushed me to get an online degree, and now that she's married, she says I've never made decisions for myself.

She's taking these cherry-picking from the blog that Votie's daughter wrote. And listen to this line. Perhaps some of what's going, maybe going on here, is a lack of awareness on Jasmine's part. For the depths of abuse she suffered under the dominion of her dad, and may still be suffering under her husband, with her continued lack of an ability to make decisions for herself.

If so, hopefully, she'll eventually begin the process, the healing process, of discovering and grieving that through therapy. Shows you where this author's at. You know, he's speculating here. I mean, he's trying to get on Votie's case for speculating about the motives of men who leave their wives for younger women, and they want attention from younger women, and this and that.