What to do with Christian Leaders Who Soft-Peddled Social Justice

The Question of Leaders Who Soft-Peddled Social Justice

Hey everyone, we're live now on the Conversations That Matter podcast. I hope you're all having a good evening. It is a cold evening here in upstate New York. I was just outside and I'm glad I'm inside now.

We have a number of things to talk about. I debated this morning because I knew I was gonna do a podcast today. What exactly I would talk about because there was a couple of different things. But I thought about talking about some general news and decided against it because there's so much stuff in evangelicalism right now and Christianity that I think needs to be talked about.

And of course my day started with, many of you have probably already seen it, but the clip from Alistair Begg. So I'm gonna incorporate that at the beginning of this podcast, but then we're gonna talk about some other figures and really some things that I've been putting off just because of the holidays and then travel.

But I wanna talk about this issue because I do get the questions and it is something I think about. What do you do with people who, especially leaders, who went along with the CRT narrative, the BLM narrative, perhaps the COVID narratives.

To be honest with you, they've let wolves in at times or at least destructive ideas into their churches. And now it's a few years later and the political winds have changed in their church and it's more convenient, depending on where you are, to, I shouldn't even say convenient, but it's more acceptable to critique those things because now we're on the other side of them and we know that things got too out of hand.

What do you do with people that oppose ideas that they once held without acknowledging it, without repenting, without telling you that they are doing that? And of course we've talked about this quite a bit.

I've used Al Mohler as an example multiple times because he switches positions a lot and people who like him want to defend him and say that he doesn't do that. No, he's consistent. But if you're careful and you listen to what he says over the course of years, as political wind shifts, he will shift on things like reparative therapy or whether same-sex attraction exists.

I mean, he repented of it in 2014 and then in what, 2021 or so, he's saying that that was one of the problems that the church, people in the church adopted that view. Well, it was the view that he held, right?

The CRT stuff. I mean, he's really pushed many of the main tenants of critical race theory and of course hired people who have taught the main tenants of critical race theory and then he'll critique it.

And so he's just one figure. We've talked about a number of figures who do this kind of thing. And of course I look for repentance, right? I think we should all look for that. We look for, we all make mistakes and we all sin.

And so what happens when you do that? Well, you acknowledge it. You don't pretend like it never happened, right? That's really the main thing. But I think we're gonna see more and more of this. I don't know to what extent, I don't know how big it's gonna become, but as we get closer to the election and things heat up, a lot of things could happen.

And I'm just thinking, especially if we have Democrats running things, and it doesn't even have to be Democrats, could be Republicans at this point, but we have the people who are running things now running things then in the next four years, then the pendulum's gonna be pushed really hard left.

And you're gonna see somewhat of reaction against it amongst some quarters of the church. And people who were touting the ideas that have led to the problems we have are gonna be now criticizing some of those ideas.

So what do you do with people like that? That's the question for today. And it's not a new question, but it's one that I think needs to be talked about in a little bit more depth. And I wanna give as much guidance as I can to people who legitimately have these concerns.

So if you are a patron, you can join in the podcast later on. I told everyone around 8 .45 is probably when, it might be after that, but that's the earliest I'll probably start taking questions and comments.

We have people streaming right now. We have some comments already coming in. We have one person, and Wade Nelson's interested to see the names I'm gonna name. I'm sure you're not the only one, Wade. I'm sure you're not the only one.

Well, I guess I don't need this headset quite yet. So I'm gonna take this off for now. And my wire's tangled here anyway, so it gives me a chance to fix that. And we're gonna go through some slideshow stuff.

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Imagine that. All right, well, let's talk about the subject at hand. I have a slide show that I've made that I've queued up. If you're a patron, you have access to that. It's in the update that I put out there today.

Jeremy says that if Facebook doesn't work out, I think you have a career in commercials. Thanks, Jeremy. Well, we'll see about that. I don't know if I wanna do commercials. So I wanna start actually really early, like really early.

Like John, I thought you were gonna talk about social justice and you're going back to the fourth century here. And yeah, so I wanna talk about the Diocletian persecution a little bit. This was, spanned the course of four emperors in the Roman Empire and Christians were crucified.

Bibles were taken and burned. You had to surrender your Bibles. You had to, many Christians were forced into slavery in the Roman Empire. And this really took place over the span of around 30 years or so.

And in this particular situation, you had severe persecution and then there was backlash against this persecution. So there was, this persecution ended. And when it ended, I'm giving you obviously some very cliff note type history here.

I had actually, I have a full presentation on the Donatist that incorporates a bunch of these slides. I just borrowed a few of them for this. But three groups emerged after the persecution ended. And these three groups were those who handed over the scriptures.

So basically the compromisers, right? The Roman soldier comes and knocks on your door. Where's the Bible? And you give them the Bible, right? And they go and they destroy it. You're just complicit in it.

And then there were those who did not hand over the scriptures. So they were suffering, right? They suffered the punishment for what they did. They might've even died. And then there are those who handed over something other than the scriptures.

So you're asked, hand over your Bible and you give them something else that maybe looks like a Bible, but it's not the Bible. And so these three groups existed in what was considered the church at the time.

And a culture of martyrdom developed within the African church, especially the Bishop of Carthage, Manus, Manusarius and the Archdeacon, I can't say these names. It's been a while since I've said them.

At one time I could pronounce this stuff but I haven't pronounced it in a while. So we'll just skip his name. He stood against the craving for martyrdom. So you had leaders in the church who were recognizing this is an issue.

The martyrdoms become kind of like the pinnacle that we should strive for. And that's not really good. We shouldn't strive for it. We should accept it when it comes but it's not something that we shoot for and think of that that's the end all be all for being holy.

And a theological debate ensued. Cyprian's teaching in the unity of the Catholic church from 251 said there is no salvation outside the church making legitimate schisms, a technical impossibility and those separated from the church unable to perform sacraments.

So you have a theology developing that basically says salvation's in the church and these compromisers, it's dubious. Some thought it was dubious whether or not they were really part of the church. And what about the people who denied?

Some people outright denied Christ and then later wanted back in when the pressure was off. The Donatists were a group that believed that the sacraments were only legitimate if administered by someone who did not cave to persecution.

So if you caved, then you cannot administer the sacraments. You are not a rightful shepherd in the church. You don't have that position. So they held a high, they had a, I'm gonna say a high standard, they had a high standard though.

And Augustine argued with these people. He said that the church was a mixed body and he used different parables of Christ to prove that but that there's always gonna be tears among the wheat. You can't have a, it's a pipe dream to say that you can have a church, a physical church that is going to be 100 regenerate and you can be sure of it, this side of heaven.

That's just not consistent with biblical teaching. So that's why we have the invisible and the visible church and those kinds of things. So this was the situation back then. Now, John, why do you bring this up?

Well, I think in light of some of the things today that we're dealing with, I think this is an important parallel to draw. And I'm not the first one to draw this parallel. We don't wanna go towards the Donatus side, right?

Of saying that we don't wanna go too far and start imposing extra biblical categories and issuing purity tests that don't allow for repentance. And I think that's the key thing here. If someone's repented, if they did something wrong and they've repented and they're in the process of proving themselves, it might mean you might not trust them.

You might not wanna give them the helm. They shouldn't be leading your movement. Perhaps they're a shepherd who let wolves come in. I mean, that's a pretty bad shepherd. You probably shouldn't give that person their staff back and say, go guard the sheep because they ran away last time, right?

But that doesn't mean that you just kick them out of the church. You say, well, they're not part of the church, I guess, anymore if they repented. Now, if they haven't repented, that's another matter.

But the Donatists were, they were just barring anyone. It didn't matter if they repented or not, if they were compromised during the times of persecution. Now, we don't have something as severe as that yet, at least in this country.

Of course, if you go to Nigeria or other places, you'll see things similar to that. But we did have a time, I would say, and I think it ebbs and flows. I think we're still in this time. I just think it's not as severe as it was, or at least, actually, in some ways it's more severe.

It's just that I think it was kind of like when you jump in a cold lake or something, if anyone does like the polar dive, initially, it shocks your body, and then you just kind of get used to it. So I think we're still somewhat in the social justice phase, but it's not as shocking.

Our bodies have acclimated to some extent, and we don't have buildings burning down and that kind of thing. So we're in the institutional phase of this. But when it first started happening, along with the COVID stuff at the same time, and the Me Too stuff, and the CRT, and the transgender stuff, it all really started around the same time period, the same 10-year, five-year, three-year, two-year period that you see all this stuff kind of coming to a head, right?

And this was a time of making decisions as to what line you were gonna be standing across, where you were gonna stand. This was a time to figure out, am I gonna be on the side of this revolution, or am I going to be on the other side?

And of course, this podcast, it's no surprise to those who've listened for a long time, this whole podcast started with talking about that very issue, exposing the people who compromise, not because I liked exposing people.

In fact, far from it. I really don't like it. Even this podcast, I'm dreading to some extent, I'm gonna be honest with you. I just think it needs to be done, and other people weren't doing it. They weren't even talking about the issues when I first started, not many at least.

And so I wanted to make sure when I talked about these issues, I wasn't also naming the names, because that's what I see in scripture. You don't have disembodied evil, there's people that promote evil.

And it's interesting to me how many people still are willing to talk about these ideas, but they have an unwillingness. And I'm not saying you have to do it all the time, but there's an unwillingness to ever name names.

So I started naming names and saying, hey, this guy, Danny Akin, where I went to seminary at Southeastern, I just already named Al Mohler, Russell Moore, Tim Keller, Matt Chandler, David Platt. I just started naming these people and say, this is what they're saying, and this is where these ideas lead.

And of course that resonated with a lot of you because you saw it happening at your church, you saw it on the local level with your pastor, with whatever ministry you were involved in, you saw the same thing.

And it was compromise. It wasn't the same kind of thing that the Donatists were going through and reacting to, but it was compromise. And there were people in our churches, it's sad to say this, and I gotta be careful on YouTube how I say this, but would there be, I'll ask the question, I'll put it this way.

Would there be people in your churches who might still be alive if the pastor hadn't pushed certain treatments, we'll say? Would there be people in the church who might, I mean, this is all speculation to an extent, but I think it's healthy to ask these questions.

Would there be people still sitting there instead of rejecting the church and going off with some social justice nonsense? Would there be families that would still be together if pastors would have preached the truth about these things and guided their congregations through these things?

I think, yes, I think we would be much more united and much less divided if pastors had taken strong stands. And you have some people now who wanna take some strong stands, but when the battle's not as heavy, when it's not raging.

When the cost isn't as much, what do you do with that? So I wanna start off, this is a little bit, this is related, but it is different than the majority of the podcasts because the majority of the podcasts we're gonna be talking about people who I would say were indicating at least on some level they were on the social justice side of things.

And now they are making an about face without acknowledging that they're making an about face, publicly at least. This first example, which is a little different, and I feel obliged to play it just because this is what's going around this morning is someone who I think many would consider to be very solid.

And I met him before and he's Alistair Begg is the person. And I would say, I don't discount all this man's preaching because of this one clip, but there's compromise. There's compromise. And so I'd like to start off with the question of what do you do with someone like that?

Who's had some fairly faithful, consistent preaching, I think for decades. And then says something like this. So I'm gonna play it for you. And then we'll talk about it on the other side.

In very specific areas, this comes across. I mean, you and I know that we field questions all the time that go along the lines of my grandson is about to be married to a transgender person. And I don't know what to do about this.

And I'm calling to ask you to tell me what to do, which is a huge responsibility. And in a conversation like that just a few days ago, and people may not like this answer, but I asked the grandmother, does your grandson understand your belief in Jesus?

Yes. Does your grandson understand that your belief in Jesus makes it such that you can't countenance in any affirming way the choices that he has made in life? Yes. I said, well then, okay, as long as he knows that, then I suggest that you do go to the ceremony, and I suggest that you buy them a gift.

Oh, she said, what? She was caught off guard. I said, well, here's the thing. You're not gonna, your love for them may catch them off guard, but your absence will simply reinforce the fact that they said these people are, what I always thought, judgmental, critical, unprepared to countenance anything.

And it is a fancy, it is a fine line, isn't it? It really is, and people need to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. But I think we're gonna take that risk. We're gonna have to take that risk a lot more if we want to build bridges into the hearts and lives of those who don't understand Jesus and don't understand that he is a king.

Okay, so what do you do with something like this? This is kind of blatantly off. I don't even know what you would appeal to. I mean, the only thing he's trying to appeal to principally is that we're supposed to be good witnesses.

So that means buy a gift if your child or grandchild is marrying a transgender person. I don't know if this makes you recall the time. There's a show Calvary Chapel put out there called Pastor's Perspective, and it was Chuck Smith who was getting older.

And he started, there was actually one, there was a few weird things he said, but there was this one that sticks out to me where a caller called in. It was a female, I believe, and asked about abortion.

And he opened the door for, in certain cases, perhaps. Perhaps, right? I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was like, wait a minute, doesn't that go against everything you've preached? And the explanation, and I was somewhat satisfied with this at the time, is he's getting old, right?

And I really want to be able to say that about Alistair Begg here. It's like, well, he's getting older,.

And if he's getting older,.

Perhaps take him out of the pulpit. Maybe that's what needs to happen. His reasoning faculties just aren't there. He's not thinking straight. And so it's like the insanity defense, right? That's what I'd like to say, because it really is, from what I know, maybe there's something you know that I don't, but from what I know, that's kind of a one-off.

That's inconsistent with the rest of his preaching. And so, and he is trying to at least say, the grandson should know that you disapprove, but then you're going to give mixed signals by going, attending, right?

A fake ceremony that is meaningless, but you're going to attend as a witness before God that these oaths are important and legitimate, and then you're going to give them a gift so they can start their life together, which is by definition, a sinful life.

A little weird. I mean, you can still give them a gift and spend time with them without going to the wedding and making it a wedding gift, right? And show them that you love them and be a witness, right?

So this is like, so what do you do with this? Well, yeah, I would expect Alistair Bigg needs to, he needs to say something publicly. He needs to repent of this. He needs to be confronted on this. And yeah, and maybe if this is, the people close to him are realizing that he's having moments like this more consistently, hey, time for you to step down.

That would be the obvious thing in my mind. But, you know, this is, it might be a little easier because of age in that situation. And it's so out of the blue, it just like knocks you down. What do you do though with people that, it just seems more calculated, right?

More consistently premeditated and there's a shift going on and it's in a different direction. They were on the wrong side. Now they're on the right side. What do you do with that? I'm gonna take a few questions before I shift here.

That was kind of the big soundbite of the day. But someone says, is it that common for old people to go squishy on issues? Ah, I just know that even from my family experience, older people start to say weird stuff sometimes.

And so, I mean, I think that we all know that. You know, I don't know, like squishy isn't even the word. It's more just weird. So yeah, I don't know. And I don't know, I'm not saying that's what's happening with Alex Trebek.

I honestly don't know. I'm just hoping it is because I tend to like the guy, right? And I think most of us do. John said, I love you, brother. I see one common thread woven by all these compromisers, they're Calvinists.

I always said those who let Platt's church were not the apostates, but those who stayed. Yeah, I don't really, I'm not gonna get into the whole Calvinist Armenian thing right now, but I don't think that's 100 true.

So, and I've heard this from a lot of people that, you know, it's the Calvinists who are causing the problem. Alex Trebek is one. And I think probably the majority of the people, if not all the people I'm gonna talk about today are.

Part of the reason is the main influencers in the evangelical world now seem to be more Calvinistic unless you're on the charismatic side of things, I suppose. But that's where I do say that, yes, the charismatic churches that were not Calvinistic also compromised in 2020, many of them.

You can pick the denomination you're gonna see a compromise, whether it's assemblies of God, or even I'm actually flying out in two weeks to a church that was a former Calvary Chapel. And I asked why, you know, why'd you have to leave Calvary Chapel?

And because they compromised on social justice. I'm like, really? And then he told me the story and I thought, man, really, they are too, huh? It's not every Calvary Chapel. I have Calvary Chapels that support what I'm doing.

Just like it's not every reformed church. But I think this cuts across the denominational spectrum. If you look at like the United Methodist Church, for example, they, I mean, the Southern Baptist can't hold a candle to them on compromise when it comes to social justice and especially the LGBT stuff.

And they're very, very anti-Calvinist, many of them. So anyway, I don't think it's that, but I understand why people think that. And that's for a bigger discussion. And I think the neo-reformed world, you're right about.

The neo-reformed world, which is not just Calvinist, it's kind of a, it's a subset, it's a movement, a recent movement that's more puritanical, Kuyperian, and I would say, I'm more, missional was the word that used to be used there.

They were more like on mission to reach the culture. And whenever you have that, you're gonna, when you focus too much on what the culture thinks, what happens? Well, we know. All right. Well, I don't see any other questions except dementia.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not saying that. I'm not accusing them. I'm just saying this is like a real thing that people have to navigate, right? All right, so let's talk about some other figures here as we go along.

Oh, I was gonna mention this too, Justin. Okay, so this is the beginning of this. This is what kind of started my brain going this direction. Justin Taylor from the Gospel Coalition. I'm gonna have to be, I'm gonna have to summarize to go through all the slides.

But Justin Taylor recently, let's see if I can remember which one it is that's the first one. I think it's the, actually the second one's the first one. I have these out of order, but there was a sort of a debate that broke out.

David Schrock and Justin Taylor on Twitter were going back and forth a bit. And Justin, I noticed he did this. He's talking about the vaccine, you know, the vaccine. And he says, if we are going to publicly castigate fellow believers for making different choices than you would have made, should we not also chastise those who told us that this was just a bad flu season?

And he goes on to that, this was the second deadliest pandemic, et cetera. David Schrock had made a post basically talking about how we've been misled on that whole thing, right? Well, I went back to 2021, so a few years ago, and while this was all happening, and Justin Taylor's asking different questions at that point.

He's asking about whether or not this is kind of like seatbelt laws. Would you oppose seatbelt laws? That's like equivalent to the vaccine. Shouldn't some things be mandated? Shouldn't they be obligatory, right?

So we went from, shouldn't this be obligatory to, well, what about just different Christians making different choices? That's a shift. Now it might be a subtle shift, but it is a shift. That is going from the assumption that this should be mandated to the assumption that this should be a choice, right?

There's no acknowledgement there that I know of, but that is a shift. And I would say it's going, it's starting to go in the right direction, right? But there's a lot of public pressure now because in at least conservative Christian circles, because there has been so much information coming out showing that what took place in that time period, and I'm being careful how I say this, wasn't the best.

So there's a shift. And this is, and we all should shift when new information comes that shows that what we previously believed was wrong, right? It's not wrong to shift. It's just wrong to act, I think, to pretend like we didn't or to just make it seem like we don't have anything to apologize for if we've misled people.

So now we get into this. And this is something, this was on December 23rd. So this is right before Christmas. And I was so busy with some things. And then as many of you know, personal things that I never got back to this, but I wanted to get back to this today.

Someone pointed this out that Andrew Walker had made this post. He said, I think we fail to understand how much of evangelical thought leadership has been calibrated to make plausible the voting for positions and platforms that are unambiguously opposed to scripture and feeling superior in making such equivocations.

We have the destruction of human life, human nature, and the human family as core principles of a major American political party. And yet we're told that minimum wage laws and carbon footprints are worthy of equal consideration.

So he's saying in this post that, look, the Democrats have an evil platform. They have, what they are forwarding, there's no moral equivalency between that and what the Republicans are forwarding, even in its most negative way that you could frame it.

And he's saying, look, the evangelical thought leadership, okay. Now he's a member of that. He's a professor at Southern Seminary and he's writes for all the evangelical magazines and outlets and gospel coalition included, right?

And he's saying, hey, evangelical thought leadership, they've been calibrated. Now, I don't know who did the calibrating, but they've been calibrated to make plausible the voting for positions and platforms that are opposed to scripture.

That's a pretty hefty statement if you think about it. That's a big charge to make. That much of evangelical thought leadership is compromised this bad, that they're actually supporting voting for positions and platforms opposed to scripture.

And then to boot, they feel superior about it. So they're arrogant. Who could he be talking about, right? So this is true. This is something that we've been saying for years. This is true. And then you have a couple other people.

And these, I'm giving you these three names because these are actually three names that were given to me as, hey, check this out, John. Look at these people who are also supporting what Andrew Walker just said.

And it's interesting given Andrew Walker and each of these people also had some measure of compromise themselves with the woke agenda. So Colin Smothers said, if you see an organization platforming Michael Ware, who is a Democrat operative, this is exactly what they are doing.

He was literally Obama's evangelical outreach director getting evangelicals to look the other way on abortion and LGBT indoctrination was his day job. Excellent, right? Eric Reid, this is absolutely true.

Now watch how people respond to it and equivocate to prove the point. Good. Josh Howerton, he posts under this tweet. Step one, Keller correctly popularized the phrase the gospel is neither right nor left.

Step two, his followers incorrectly treated the phrase as right and left are equal and opposite errors. Step three, willingness to embrace left positions became a sign of your gospel centeredness and being seen as politically conservative was a sign you weren't gospel centered.

So I wanna take a trip down memory lane now with each of these guys. I'm gonna show you another similar kind of tweet, I guess, a barometer to judge where people are at today by how they reacted to another tweet.

But there's a shift to the right. How do I know there's a shift to the right? Well, Andrew Walker, and here's, I put for each of these people, whether they wrote at a World Magazine or the Gospel Coalition, I put their little bio here.

So you know who they are. Andrew Walker wrote in 2020, this is for Breakpoint. Formerly, I guess, I think that was Chuck Colson's organization, right? Or I think it's an, I don't remember. I think it's affiliated with Chuck Colson's ministry.

What's ahead for the church in 2020, a Breakpoint symposium. So a bunch of evangelical leaders put their thoughts down about voting in 2020. And this was Andrew Walker, okay? He says, one of the most pressing issues, and I reject it as either the most important or an ultimate issue is the election coming up 2020.

I offer this not because of my primary concern is conservative versus liberal, Democrat versus Republican. My concern is the rank divisiveness that the name Donald Trump conjures up in evangelical circles.

What I find to be the case is that Trump opposing Christians and Trump supporting Christians both refract too much of their identity through Trump. It's leading to an inability to disagree amicably or empathetically, exposing yet another idol in evangelical cultural formation.

This division must stop, and brothers and sisters must stop judging one another on the basis of their political calculations. Let me read that one for you again. Brothers and sisters must stop judging one another on the basis of their political calculations.

How about one more time? Brothers and sisters must stop judging one another on the basis of their political calculations. Huh? Wait a minute.

Didn't Andrew Walker. Just, didn't I just read for you.

Where he's now judging brothers and sisters based on their political calculations? Well, you bet, but that's not what he said in 2020. And okay, fine, you know, we shift, but he says, while we need to leave room for conscience, we can also, cannot excuse voting rationales that impute too much to Donald Trump.

It's wrong to baptize Donald Trump as a Christian when he very apparently bears no fruit in keeping with repentance. It's also wrong to condescendingly demonize other Christians who make the choice to choose the policies of the Trump administration over the Democrats.

Evangelicals can make reasonable arguments for voting for Trump, and evangelicals can make reasonable arguments for not voting for Trump. Let's respect conscience. And we believe this and not mistreat one another and not ascribe motives to one another that may not be accurate if you vote for Trump.

Why? To legitimize him as a Constantinian-like savior or as a pragmatic, so it goes on, I don't wanna read this whole thing. But let's see, he talks about, he gives a call for unity, that we need to have unity, whether you support Trump or not.

And again, this is not, there were no primaries, right? Trump was already the nominee at this point for the Republicans. Now, at the very least, you can say, maybe you could say, he's just talking about Republicans, you know, not Democrat.

He doesn't make that really explicit here, but let's assume that. He is not near as aggressive as he is now with saying, look, there's evangelicals out there that are justifying voting for evil and they're arrogant about it.

He's not doing that. He's saying, can't we all just get along no matter what we believe about our vote? It's a little bit different, right? I think, I think I'm onto something there, right? So this was Andrew Walker.

Yeah, it's conceptual clarity says, terrific tweet by Andrew Walker, amazing since he has been a big Eva guy himself. And I'm gonna go into that a little more. And I would say, yes, bravo, bravo for that.

I don't think, I'm probably not making friends with him by talking about this, but yes, I mean, I support what he's doing now, absolutely. But that certainly hasn't been always what he's been doing. So I just wanna point out a few things.

This is not comprehensive at all, but Andrew Walker, right? He co-authored, these are what? Eight, nine, nine different books. And he's actually a series editor with Russell Moore, Randall Walker and Russell Moore on the gospel and marriage, racial reconciliation, religious liberty, adoption, same-sex marriage, et cetera.

All these cultural issues. Him and Russell Moore had enough common cause that they were able to be series editors for these things. Now, I just wanna read for you. This was one introduction. This is an excerpt from an introduction by Andrew Walker.

This wasn't even that long ago, it was a few years ago on racial reconciliation with Russell Moore. And he said, recent events, whether in Ferguson, Missouri or Charleston, South Carolina, remind us that America's wounds on race are still deep, but we cannot allow our failures as a society to simply simmer.

In every age, the prophetic imagination must be engaged in hopes of making progress. We saw this in MLK and we must, and we are seeing it in our own day. The church must be on the frontier of racial reconciliation in America.

In recent American past, it was the church that was one of the greatest impediments to racial justice in America, but it was also the church that helped inspire America and Americans to do what Dr. King said, to cash this check and check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.