Mega Edition: So I Guess White Horse Inn is Now Woke

Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We are in the middle of examining the White Horse In podcast, recovering the fear of God in the church from August 28th, 2022.

And Michael Horton is giving us some woke ideas. And so we dipped our toe in the last episode.

I'd suggest go watch that or listen to that before listening to this, if you can.

I can give a little bit of a summary, but there was more I said in that last podcast about Michael Horton's views.

And we're gonna get to some conclusions. So we had some analysis, I would say, in the last podcast. Michael Horton gives a bunch of statistics.

A lot of it's very strung together, leaving out things that would hurt his paradigm, downplaying things that would hurt his paradigm.

Just, it's not really approaching the subject of why, and really, actually, it's funny.

The subject Michael Horton's talking about that we talked about last time is why are there black and white churches and different churches for different cultural and ethnic groups?

But the beginning of the podcast, though, the host, which I think is Bob Miller, but anyway, whoever was hosting it,

I don't know if it was Justin Holcomb or Bob Miller, but they said at the beginning that basically the podcast is about why are young people leaving the church?

And then Michael Horton just launches into why are our churches segregated in some way, which

I think he thinks is related to that somehow. So that's kind of the disjointed narrative.

But Michael Horton, to prove his point, gives a bunch of statistics and tries to say it's not social views, really.

It's not theological views, really. It's white evangelicals and their racism.

That's what it is. They just hate these other ethnicities. Now, he doesn't say they hate, but he implies it pretty strongly, that there's some kind of a political agenda the white evangelicals have, which is in opposition to these other ethnic groups that is preventing other ethnic groups from feeling welcomed or coming to their church.

And that's really all it is. It doesn't flow in the opposite direction. And so anyway, we examined that.

I showed you some issues with it. I'll say this at the beginning of this podcast to summarize a thought that I had right after I pushed the button to stop recording yesterday.

One of the things that I just thought, this is rich. We found out from Michael Horton that support for abortion, high levels of support for abortion among black self -described black evangelical or black

Christians, doesn't characterize black evangelicals. According to Michael Horton, that doesn't characterize them.

High levels of support for abortion among black Christians does not characterize. You can't make a statement that that's a barrier to fellowship between black

Christians and white Christians, broadly speaking. You can't do that, according to Michael Horton. But low numbers of opposition to interracial marriage among, and I'm gonna show you the information.

I spent probably at least half an hour this morning looking up some polls just to see what

I could find on this. And I ran into some dead ends, but I didn't spend as much time as probably I could have.

I got enough though for this particular podcast to make the point I wanna make, which is that low numbers of opposition to interracial marriage among white evangelicals, according to Michael Horton, does apparently characterize white evangelicals.

So high levels of support for abortion among black Christians does not characterize them. It's not a barrier for fellowship, apparently, broadly speaking, but low levels of opposition to interracial marriage among white evangelicals does characterize them.

And that's a barrier. The hypocrisy, the using unequal weights and measures is so obvious, it's truly insulting, actually, that you have seminary professors, you have people like Michael Horton, who's a barely educated man, saying these kinds of things and thinking that people are just gonna buy it.

It's interesting too, Pew Research has found, I saw this this morning, I wasn't even looking for it, but I looked at so many different polls that were publicly available that 35 % of white evangelicals apparently are in favor of gay marriage.

And I think that's a fairly old poll. That was from a few years ago, but it's probably higher now. However, they categorize white evangelicals.

And I made this point last time. Look, just because someone checks some boxes off, I believe in God, I believe in prayer.

I mean, Michael Horton was trying to make out like, hey, if you are a black agnostic, you're more likely to pray than white agnostics.

And somehow, or yeah, I think it was white evangelicals or white agnostics, but his point was that black people are more spiritual.

And I'm like, well, you can check all those boxes off, but look at these other stats. Look at the likelihood that you're willing to support the idea that ancestry, praying to ancestors will do some good or reincarnation is true.

I mean, that's also higher in the same communities you're trying to say are more godly or spiritual. You're also seeing these other things.

So I was trying to make the point that, look, just because you check a few boxes off of some basic things, which good,

I'm glad, believe in God, believe the Bible is the word of God. But if that doesn't, if that's not applied in your life, if that's not a reality, if it's just a cultural veneer, and many, look, in my family,

I'll just say this. I have family, my mom's side, Ohio, my dad's side stretches back to Mississippi.

They're both born in California and I live in the Northeast right now. And the last four years I've lived in the South. So that covers the regions of the country,

I guess, except for the Pacific Northwest. But I'll just say for a lot of the relatives

I have in the South, especially, I think every single one would claim to be a Christian on some level, every single one of them.

And they happen to be white, okay? Because they tend to look a little bit like me and they would claim to be white.

They claim to be white, sorry. They claim to be Christian and they would check off those boxes too. Now, how many of them are actually

Orthodox believers following God in their lives? I'm, I mean, I'm not gonna say my deep thoughts about that subject on a public podcast necessarily, but I'll give you enough to say,

I don't think it's everyone. I don't think it's everyone that claims that. And it's just a reality for cultures.

And I said, in the United States, especially, black Christians were very influenced by Southern culture and many of them live in the

South. And it's the same kind of dynamic. And I have to ask this question to Michael Horton, Bob Miller, and Justin Holcomb.

How do you think black Christians became Christians? Identify as Christians.

I mean, Michael Horton wants to champion this idea that there's so much more spiritual than white evangelicals.

Well, how do you think they became that way if that's true? Why is that veneer, even if it's just a veneer of Christianity, why is it there?

They didn't get it in Sub -Saharan Africa, right? If we're talking about those who are descendants from slaves who came here, if we're talking about immigrants more recently, then yeah, it's very possible from other regions that they would have gotten a version of Christianity.

But even if they're from the Caribbean or from other places that aren't the

United States, but the 95 % of descendants of Sub -Saharan

Africans who their ancestors came as slaves to other parts of South America, the

Caribbean, Central America, where did they learn about Christianity? In other words, all those who came on that transatlantic slave trade and their descendants, where would the, broadly speaking,

I'm not saying in every example, but broadly speaking, where did that exposure to Christianity come from? Where did that cultural influence come from?

Is it white evangelicals that gave them that exposure in the first place? See, this undercuts the whole narrative if that's true, and historically it would be, that white evangelicals are just, they're so terrible, they're so racist, they don't allow, and the racism,

I should say, they're racist to the point of not providing any kind of religious instruction or religious opportunities or teaching or evangelism or any resources to black people because they're just so bigoted and they won't let them sit in their churches and they don't interact with them because there's segregation.

Well, how do you think that group of people, black descent, mostly

I'm talking about the descendants of people who came here as slaves, but obviously that doesn't include every black

Christian in the United States, but broadly speaking, for the majority, where did they initially receive that, their ancestors receive that kind of instruction, that kind of teaching?

How did they get exposed to Christianity? That's a question that I think has to be answered for Michael Horton's scheme to work because they would have had,

I would think there would have to be another source coming in somewhere. Otherwise, you end up, even if white evangelicals are racist, let's just assume that for a minute, white evangelicals, racist, horrible people, but somehow along the way, historically, they ended up providing some kind of gospel teaching and influence to this other group, the other social group.

How is that, how did that work? If they're so horrible and racist to the point that they don't allow any black people into their churches, somehow the religious instruction had to take place somewhere along the line, right?

That's an open question. I have more I could say, but these aren't the kinds of questions Michael Horton's asking, and that's the frustrating thing.

That's the, in my opinion, the dishonest weights and measures, and maybe he doesn't even realize he's doing it, but it could be out of ignorance, but that's a question that should be on the table.

Pew Research, 35 % of white evangelicals in favor of gay marriage a few years ago. So if that's the case, white evangelicals today, people who claim to be that, who check boxes off,

I mean, that's a much higher percentage than the whatever the 2009 or 10 survey that he was referencing.

I tried to look for it, and I couldn't really find the primary source, but there was some survey that was done suggesting that,

I think it was like 16 % of white evangelicals were thought that interracial relationships or marriages were bad for the country or something along those lines.

I couldn't find the motive. I couldn't find any of that information. I did find some other information that was interesting,

I'll show you, but Christianity Today had a big article about this, and, but it was like, I think from 2011, and so this is probably dated information at this point, and that's a much lower percentage than 35 % of white evangelicals who favor gay marriage.

What makes you think that all these, quote unquote, white evangelicals are Orthodox believers? And what makes you think?

And they're not, obviously, they answered some, but if we're gonna assume that, which

Michael Horton to some degree assumes, he doesn't bring up this stat, which is to me more telling, why would we assume that people who check boxes who are black are more sincere?

That's the problem with Michael Horton's analysis, unequal weights and measures. The black people who check those boxes are more sincere than white people who check those boxes.

They're more Christian, and this is such an assumption. I was looking yesterday on iTunes just for podcasts on this subject, so I thought maybe someone's gathered some information so I don't have to go find it all, and almost universally, the podcasts on the subject, and I didn't listen to all of them.

I could just tell by their descriptions and stuff, are, like, one of them I actually did start to listen to, and I just, like, okay. They're all just about proclaiming how superior black

Christians are to white Christians, and the podcasts are hosted by white believers, and how about this, guys?

How about this? Christianity. I don't care who is, what tradition or what version,

I'm not saying unorthodox versions, but how about Christianity, the truth of the

Bible? Let's get down to the core element of Christianity, the

Bible being the word of God, truly believed and lived out, final authority and faith and practice,

Jesus Christ, the divinity of Jesus Christ. Salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, inerrancy, infallibility, sufficiency of the word of God, the work and power of the

Holy Spirit, Christ's resurrection, the Trinity. Let's get down to, this is orthodox theology, orthodox

Christianity, okay? And whatever form that has taken throughout time, and it, by the way, started with Jewish people, okay?

It didn't start with black people, it didn't start with, quote unquote, white people, it started with Jewish people, historically.

And it spread, spread to Europe and influenced Europe more than any other continent early on, which is why

Western civilization, one of the reasons, is the way it is, until now. And that Christianity, that powerful,

Holy Spirit -driven, Bible -affirming Christianity, Jesus -worshiping

Christianity, is the kind of Christianity we should be shooting for. It's the aim, it's the mark.

Because we have cultural traditions, which I wouldn't say are bad, I'd say, actually, they're really rich.

Aren't my hymn book? Yeah, you know, it's mostly probably from a Western tradition and an English tradition. The words are in English, they're good hymns.

That's my heritage, that's my culture. It's part of my faith as well, because this is what

I was brought up in. I think that's a good thing. And there's been time given to the particular tradition

I'm in to fine -tune it, to incorporate a richness there as people produce good works of art and liturgies and all of that.

That's all good, okay? That's not the core. And I think genuine

Christians can see the difference between this. You can go to Africa, you can go to Nigeria, and I mean, you can go to Equipping the

Persecuted, look at the orphanage they have over there. You can see the people there, worshiping the same God, using different forms, using different kinds of music and stuff.

They're still Christians. That should be the aim, is we want Christians in whatever culture we happen to be in.

And if there's elements in that culture that are sinful, that have been incorporated into tradition and they're in conflict, then you get rid of them, if they are truly against the word of God, diametrically opposed.

I've always approached it this way. Of course, woke people tend to think, well, that's colorblind or something, but okay, whatever.

I'm just looking at it to the best of my ability in a New Testament way. But at the same time,

I can see a richness in Western Christian traditions because of what I just said, because they've had time to produce great works of art and liturgies, and we should not destroy those things.

That's the work of God over time. It's disparaging to your forefathers, to your ancestors,

Christian ancestors, the shoulders you stand on, to just throw it overboard because it's white or something, which is unfortunately a lot of what

I'm seeing. And I wasn't expecting my opening to be this long. I'm 15 minutes and I haven't even played. Anyway, let me show you just a few stats.

Let's see if I can pull these all up. So yeah,

I showed you this yesterday. Those who attend black churches are more likely to believe in reincarnation and prayers to your ancestors can protect you.

Michael Horton doesn't mention that. You have, let's see here, public opinion on abortion.

We went through this. Let's see if I can scroll down. By race and ethnicity, well, it's a much higher percentage black versus white, but it's even more pronounced when you get to, if I can find the graph, we went over it last time.

On the religion and the differences in religious affiliation, you have white evangelical

Protestants, 74%, think abortion should be illegal. And among black Protestants, it's only 28%.

That's huge. That is absolutely huge. So let me show you some of the intermarriage stuff here, the interracial marriage stuff, because Michael Horton tries to make out like this is a uniquely white thing.

And I have to, by the way, I need to say something. I don't know if this is a retraction. I don't know.

Sure, we can call it that. But I said something accurate. The thing I said that was accurate yesterday is

I kind of, I said, look, I saw something, which is accurate. I saw something that suggested that the levels of opposition to interracial marriage in,

I think it was like the late 60s, were pretty equivalent. Black people, white people both opposed it at fairly similar levels.

But I didn't have it in front of me. And I said, I need to go find it. Well, here's my lesson I learned. I should save things because I can't find it now.

I know I saw it, but I can't find it. And I don't have the time to go searching the whole internet for it. But I will show you what

I was able to find in a brief search. And this should at least show you that Michael Horton's narrative isn't necessarily, it's not balanced.

Black, black people, 18 % of them are more likely than whites, 9%.

Okay, that's double. So double the amount of black people. And Hispanics, 3 % to say more people of different races marrying each other is generally a bad thing for society.

Okay, so black people are more likely to say that different races marrying each other is generally bad for society, according to Pew Research.

Though there are no significant differences by race or ethnicity on whether it is good thing for society. So twice as many black people than white people.

And I mean, it's only 3 % for Hispanics. That's interesting.

Twice as many though think that it's bad for society in racial marriages.

Now, this is from the date on this is 2017. So I'm just wanna, this is just Pew Research.

I'm not saying this. I'm saying Pew Research is saying this. You also have this. This is a

YouGov poll from 2018. And I want you to look at this. Here's the question.

Is it morally acceptable, morally acceptable various behaviors, interracial marriage? Okay, so is interracial marriage morally acceptable or morally wrong?

Morally acceptable, black people, 82%, okay? Morally wrong, 18%.

White people, 83 % morally acceptable, 17 % morally wrong, which is fairly equivalent there.

But black people actually edge out white people in this, in this particular survey. I'm not saying it, the survey's saying it.

That, and this is, I guess, 1500 US adults. So in other words, by a sliver, more black people, or I should say, more white people think it's morally acceptable to have interracial marriage.

And more black people think it's morally wrong. And Hispanics, a little bit more tolerant.

But overall, these, I mean, these are such slim margins. Overall, the mass majority of people are fine today with interracial marriages.

Here's another thing. I was just gonna show you this. This is, I guess this is the main survey that's been done over, across time.

The Gallup News did a survey, Gallup poll. And they found, check this out.

In 1958, this is just an overall, the whole country. They didn't specify,

I guess, in 1958. They didn't include specifically black people in their views, but this is just the whole population.

Only 4%, four, approved of marriages between blacks and whites.

And the disapprove, 94%. 90, so the vast majority of the country, the vast majority of everyone disapproved of interracial marriages.

Now, they did, I think it was in 1968, they did start tracking, yes, what black views are.

So we're 10 years later. And when they start tracking that, it's 56 % are approval.

So just over half the population of black people in the United States approve of interracial marriages, and 33 % disapprove, which is,

I will say, a higher margin than the margin of the 2010 or 11 margin that the

White Horse Inn is talking about of white evangelical opposition. So we're black people in 1968, here's the question, more bigoted than white evangelicals in 2010?

Well, I mean, by Michael Horton's logic, yes. That's, see, but would he really wanna draw that conclusion based off of this?

So you go throughout time, and of course, the percentages just keep going up, up, up, up until 2013, 96 % approval.

Now, among white people in this Gallup survey, 19, where's 1968?

Okay, 17 % are approval. So 1968, 56, that is a big margin.

So I'm not sure where I saw or who conducted the poll that I saw that seemed to suggest they were even.

Maybe it was from the 50s, I thought it was from the 60s. But by at least the 1968, based on the primary source information we have, according to Gallup, assuming they did this poll correctly, there is a gap, and black people are much more tolerant and accepting of interracial marriages.

But over time, when you trace this, it goes up, up, up, up among white people to the point now where it's, statistically, it's not really that much different of views among the two groups.

So this is interesting, too. I came across this. This is from the Black World.

It's magazine, I guess they call it that now. It didn't have that name at the time. It was called

Negro Digest in June 1964. This is interesting, June 1964.

Now, this is not coming from any, this isn't the Fox News channel. This isn't White Evangelicals.

This is a magazine specifically for black people.

And this is what it says. This is, I guess, an op -ed. This is an observer in 1964. The fact is, bluntly, that most

Negroes hate white people when there is, as there will surely be, integration in public life in America, housing and education and politics and jobs and public accommodations, there will not suddenly be a great increase in marriages between the races.

At least, I have detected no greater interest in the subject among Negroes than among whites. And why should there be an interest in the subject?

Nobody is interested in marriage in the abstract. Now, this is an interesting separation to make. The separation is this.

Those who support it being legal for interracial marriage, because it was illegal in many states and pretty much every state at one time, but those who support its legality versus those who actually support it socially.

That's the separation here. And what is being said in this article is that, look, black people hate white people.

They're not gonna go marry them in large numbers. That's not gonna happen. And this is in 1964. But the article is in support of overturning laws against interracial marriage.

So this person is for interracial marriage laws, laws that would make it legal, or at least the laws that made it illegal overturning those.

But this same person is saying, yeah, but we're not interested in marrying white people because we hate them.

It's like, is that really great? So that's why I said last podcast, I'm like, motives matter in this too.

What's the motive? I don't know in this poll, the supposed poll that was conducted that Christianity Today talks about in 2011, whether or not if they tested for that.

Now, apparently this is the, it's, let's see, what is, who is this?

This is Pew Research. I guess this is the poll from 2011 that Christianity Today pulled from.

But nowhere in this poll, if you type in interracial marriage, nowhere in this poll can you really find, that I found at least, where it breaks it down by white evangelicals.

So I don't know where Christianity Today's pulling that from and so I'm just ignorant on it. I can't really provide any more analysis of it with the information

I have. It breaks it down here by political affiliation. You have different groups.

It looks staunch conservatives being the highest, 19%, who are, which is, you know, staunch conservatives.

And maybe that, because I think that was the same, it's not the same percentage that Christianity Today was saying, thought that interracial marriage was negative for society, 19%.

Maybe they're making the two equivalent, I don't know. But staunch conservatives, it says 19%. I think it would be a bad thing for society.

But we don't, again, we don't know the motives of why they think that. But look, disaffecteds, 16%.

Hard -pressed Democrats, 11%. So, I mean, are 11 % of hard -pressed Democrats also these horrible racists?

This is the question. And I mean, these are smaller numbers, and I'm sure way smaller now than they were in 2011.

So here's a, this is a little off topic, but big picture here. I haven't heard a lot of good information analysis from especially anti -social justice thinkers in Christianity of late on this particular subject.

Because Michael Horton, as those who listened to the soundbites in the last podcast, Michael Horton wants to make a big, big deal about this, that white

Christians are so racist. But if he wants to make that dog hunt, he has to say that black people in the 60s would have been racist, and the 70s really, because they would have opposed interracial marriage at higher numbers.

He would have to, if he was gonna be honest, look at current statistics on black versus white acceptance of interracial marriage and admit, well, okay, black people are less tolerant by some polls, the polls range, but by some polls, black

Christians are more, black people are less tolerant of interracial marriage. So therefore, they must be more bigoted or something.

I mean, and he's not gonna ever say that, right? So there's hypocrisy here. But the question that I think should be asked at some point is, how come there was a huge switch?

How come there was an absolute huge societal shift in this among every demographic? Go back 100 years, and it wouldn't necessarily be with everyone because they hated other races, but it was just assumed that you don't, marrying outside your race isn't a thing, you don't really do that, that wasn't commonly practiced.

It would have been opposed by most people. And I said in the last podcast, most people throughout time and across, even today, across the civilizations around the world, that's common.

You'll see some, by the way, I should say, you'll see some articles out there, because I ran across a number of them, trying to say that the

US is the most bigoted. And usually drawing from civil rights era polls taken that US white people especially are more bigoted than Irish or English people or something like that.

And I think there are probably some things that might account for that, for instance, proximity.

So living those, for instance, if you live in the Midwest, in an area where you never see people that don't look like you, it's very easy to say that you're in favor of certain things that wouldn't impact you personally if they were implemented.

So you could be in favor of forced busing when your kids won't ever have to be on a forced bus, if that makes sense. So people at the time when some of these polls were conducted in England and Ireland and places like that, across some

Western countries, English speaking countries, it would not have been the same situation. But here's the thing though, across the whole world, if you go to Asian countries,

India, African countries, I mean, look at the tribal animosity that exists there. The United States, guys, is probably one of the most tolerant countries in the entire world.

As it stands today, which is what I meant in the last episode, as it stands today, as far as racial diversity and acceptance of interracial relationships, the

United States is gonna be ahead of the pack worldwide and across time. So that point

I think still stands. And Michael Horton and people like him don't look at the positive side of this.

If they think it's such a good thing for interracial marriages to exist, why don't they look at the positive momentum here?

Instead, it has got to be a reframe of bashing white evangelicals. They have to be the horrible people for some reason.

They're terrible, the problems must be blamed on them. They become like the scapegoat. And I'm not buying it.

That's the central issue here. I'm not buying it. And I don't think because you can then manipulate these things to spring guilt on white evangelicals that therefore now white evangelicals have to change their political stances, change the way they conduct their worship services, change to be more accepting somehow, change the way now you're gonna hear

Michael Horton talk about LGBT stuff. That's the point, is to change the church fundamentally and to manipulate by using these tactics of applying guilt to white evangelicals.

That's the thing I'm against. And I go to a very ethnically diverse church.

I might have many friends who are in interracial relationships. I'm very supportive of them.

I have, in fact, in my immediate family, I can think of two couples, my brother and my brother -in -law, both in, to some extent, what would be considered interracial relationships.

And there's nothing wrong biblically. In my opinion, there's nothing biblically wrong with that.

I do know that there is a minority of Christians out there that do see that as biblically wrong because they take some laws from the

Old Testament. And I'm not here to discuss all that right now. But I think I represent, my views would represent the vast majority of evangelicals in the

United States. And at one time though, my view would not have been represented. And I don't think it's because everyone was racist necessarily.

I don't think that in the sense that they hated other races. I don't think that's necessarily what it was.

They just hated all these other races. And so they didn't want them marrying with their people or something.

There's something else in the water that explains the shift that has taken place among all demographics in modernity.

And I don't know if the motivation necessarily is all good, to be honest with you.

It's become, I mean, you turn on your television, it's become, that narrative is pushed on you to such an extent.

You have to ask yourself, why is that pushed on you? It's not a sin, but why is it so heavily promoted?

Is there another agenda behind that? Another motivation for why secular elites, they want high levels of interracial relationships.

And they're willing to force diversity in all kinds of things. Like the new Lord of the Rings show, it's unrealistic how they force diversity, but they have to force it.

You have to ask yourself, why are they doing that? So that's a separate question from this, but it is related in this sense.

Michael Horton seems to be on that bandwagon of, it's got, that's like the highest moral good or something.

And he even puts that above abortion in a sense, because he's saying that high levels of support for abortion among black

Christians, it doesn't really, that's not a barrier for the kind of fellowship that we ought to have.

But for some reason, a very small number of people in white evangelical circles who at one time, 12 years ago, were opposed to, or thought that it was bad for society to have interracial marriages, that becomes a barrier.

Different weights and measures. And there's something, there's another motive here of some kind.

So let's keep going through this. That's my opening monologue, which is half an hour long.

Now you don't have to listen to the last step. Well, you still kind of do, but let's keep going here. Let's talk about, let's listen to, if I can find the tab again, where this conversation goes.

And here it is, the white horse in. What's nerve wracking in some of this is, at least to me, is that part of the reason there is so much separation in the church, at least from the past couple of decades, is almost by design with the church growth movement, saying we are going to gear our worship services towards particular demographics.

Homogeneous church growth principle. Homogeneous church growth principle is just, I'm not sure if heresy is too strong of a word, but it is the opposite of what the

New Testament teaches. Denies one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We were talking just before the show here, one of the things

Rod Rosenblatt used to say, and probably still does, would it be wrong to contextualize, right?

That's the hot topic, to contextualize your ministry for another nationality, another country, another group.

We're hearing this constantly. I've heard it, at least in seminary, about white evangelicals approaching inner city areas or other cultures.

You have to contextualize. But apparently now you're hearing from Michael Horton that this is denying the one true apostolic church when you do that.

And I would disagree with the church growth stuff, but their analysis seems so detached from the reality out there right now, which is that currently, if you wanna talk about something artificial and forced, it's forced diversity.

It's forced, I just got an email, was it last week from someone at a church, it's so sad to me, who basically worked himself through the process, mentored by the pastor, and he wants to be a pastor, and specifically told, basically, we can't hire you because we have to hire this black person.

Is that biblical? We're not looking at the requirements in scripture for what constitutes qualification.

We are adding something else. And that's currently what's happening all around us.

And yet they're acting as if it's 2006 or 1996, and it's this contextualization church growth strategy, going into these different demographics and giving them what they want or something.

And so it's an odd analysis because it's actually the artificial forced stuff is the opposite of what they're saying.

Let's say is that the greatest divide in the history of the church was between Jew and Gentile. And that was the very thing

Paul is writing against. I mean, Ephesians chapter two, you begin with talking about universal sin, justification on account of Christ Jesus.

He died and rose for us. And then the second part of Ephesians two is the dividing wall being destroyed by the cross of Jesus Christ.

That racial divisions, that ethnic divisions, any division that would segregate one group of people from within the church from another group of people is utterly counter to the gospel.

Okay, why was there a separation between Jews and Gentiles? I hear anti -woke and woke people both try to take these passages to promote their ideology.

But you have to ask a more basic question about the context in Ephesians chapter two and Galatians and the

Jerusalem council. What was the actual issue there? It was the laws contained in ordinances. It was the fact that Jewish people wanted to hang on to the law.

Not all Jewish people, but that was the division. That was the Jew -Gentile division. That was what it was motivated by.

It wasn't, I'm not saying there couldn't have been any racial animus necessarily maybe thrown in there, but we're not given that in the primary source we're looking at.

We're not given that in scripture. You just hate people because of their race or something. It was specifically outlined that it was the laws contained in ordinances.

It was the Galatian heresy. It was this question of whether or not you have to be culturally

Jewish and practice these Jewish cultural practices in order to be part of the church.

That was the question. And it skipped over as if, and then in an anachronistic reading of it, that it's kind of the same thing as today, that it's the same scenario that we're dealing with when we have different ethnicities in different churches.

And yes, if there is a difference between two different churches, and one of them is they're saying that you have to practice these

Jewish things to be a Christian and the other one's not, that's a big problem, but that can cut across any racial divide.

In fact, there's a group now, I'm trying to remember what they're calling themselves.

A number of people have come to me and told me about them. They're Christian, they're claimed to be Christians and they're across, it cuts across every racial distinction, but they think that you should follow these

Old Testament laws. And that's the same problem. That is the modern

Jew -Gentile division, Hebrew roots movement, I think is what it's called. But it's not, there's really not a racial thing going on there, a racial hatred dynamic.

And so this often gets positioned as if it's this racially charged issue when that's not what the

New Testament gives us. We have to apply scriptures where they're, we have to apply them in the context in which they were given to modern contexts that are similar.

We can't just take them for our purposes, cherry pick the record and then use them for our own social agenda.

But we have to actually ask ourselves the question, is my worship service, is the way

I talk about church, are there certain overtones or implications that say this looks more like a nice service for people who have a white

German background, or is the way worship is conducted here reflective of the universal church throughout the ages that has encompassed everybody from all kinds of tribes and nations and languages and tongues?

What you're describing, Mike, and what we're picking up on is it looks like there's a white evangelical self -deception taking place.

Almost like they're telling themselves, oh, this is about theology. But all the numbers are saying, it's not about theology.

There's actually something below that. You're deceiving yourselves for whatever reason. A lot of the issues we're talking about with regard to black

Christians also relates to Asians, and just not black Christians, but we're talking about black and church.

So black people, Asian and Latino, Latina, you have some of the things that have been done and said and the harm for Asian citizens because of people's views on COVID.

Masks. Masks, and it's their fault. And similar, because of a certain view on immigration, you actually have

Christians saying things to Hispanic brothers and sisters that are sinful.

There's something below the theology that is animating these responses, and it's self -deceptive to make it sound like it's a theological difference.

When black Christians and white evangelical Christians have more in similarity, and the same would be with many

Asian Christians and Latino, Latina Christians, theologically, what I think is helpful about the point you're making is you're pointing out the self -deception, which is something that is done by sin.

This is Romans 1, that we know the truth, but suppress it. There's a moral decision to suppress and deceive oneself, and that's the tragedy.

This was the big principle of the church growth movement, and Donald McGavern, he was the father of this idea, and he actually came right out and said, people like worshiping with people who are like them.

So you can either have small churches that have integrity over this issue, or growing churches that follow the homogeneous church growth principle.

He's just brazen about it. I think that's called apartheid. South Africa did this, didn't turn out well, and the...

Okay, this is so, this is so insulting. Okay, so it's apartheid when you have different churches that attract different ethnic or social groups.

That's called apartheid, because they're separate. I thought that that was, apartheid would have been the government getting involved and forcing separations.

There's no government getting involved here. This is, so if you naturally kind of filter out, which is what he's talking about, an organic, natural process.

So people generally like worshiping with people like them. Guess what? Most families go to the same churches.

There's exceptions, but most families tend to stick at the same churches. People that would be most culturally, genetically, traditionally associated with one another tend to worship in the same ways, believe the similar theologies, similar habits.

They like their ice cream social, you know, at a certain time every year. They tend to be together.

And guess what that is? That's called apartheid, apparently. That's apartheid right there. So apartheid was forced from the government.

This is more organic. And it doesn't have to be anything sinful about that. Why is that wrong that the

Chinese church down the street has Chinese people in it that prefer to worship together?

Now, I mean, if I come in that church and I can understand the service, let's say I speak Chinese, and they just say that, we hate you, you're white, get out of here.

Well, that would be wrong, right? That would be sinful. But if they're naturally just gonna congregate because we speak the same language or we have similar culture, or we have similar theology, and all these things tend to go together to some extent, why, who am

I to say that that's an evil thing or a wrong thing or something that's apartheid, that's akin to apartheid?

What's being suggested here? What's the alternative? This is my question. What's the alternative to this? Now, I think this is how

I operate, and this is the tradition I was raised in. You go, you preach the gospel, you preach the word of God, and people come from all different kinds of backgrounds.

And I've seen that play out. I have a very diverse church, but I live in a very diverse community. If I was in the Midwest, it wouldn't look that diverse probably.

Guess what? Because that's who the people that live around your church are. They're all German. So if you have a service that, hey, it's pretty

German. Yeah, who lives around there? Well, it's German people. That's apartheid. Well, it can't be. Obviously, that's the most insulting thing to say.

You don't have the option of having necessarily a large group of other people. Or what, are you gonna cater to the style of like the one

English guy in the audience or something? I mean, most people are German. They're gonna, that's how they're gonna worship. This stuff happens generally organically.

The alternative they're suggesting here, though, is this universal approach where you take in somehow all the traditions, all the influences from the universal church across time and across geography, and then that's what your church should look like.

That's impossible. It's not possible to do that. Now, you can incorporate different things from different cultures, but you're never gonna incorporate everything.

And somewhere along the line, someone could nitpick it and say, we were leaving this group out, you're leaving that group out because you have limited capacity.

There's no way to do that. And many of the people aren't gonna understand certain things from other cultures.

They're not gonna understand, if one culture takes very literally, greet each other with a holy kiss, and they take it, let's say, a little far, there's some traditions

I know of, they kiss on the lips. Men with men, women with women, and that's considered, that's the

Christian thing to do. Now, if your church doesn't do that, are you not welcoming to them? The group

I'm thinking of has German roots. So you don't love the German people because you're not gonna do it. I mean, that's where you would have to go.

You'd have to incorporate everything. It's impossible. There has to be a stable set of social customs and mores.

You can color a little outside the lines, but you can't go so far outside that there's all these contradictory mixed messages.

The music that you're using, the mode of worship is not complementing the message of the worship, which can often happen because sometimes different sounds, even, and different,

I know there is a universal good in bad art, I think, but there's also a subjective element to art, and some things can be taken as offensive, and they don't complement worship, whereas other things can be very complementary depending on the culture or subculture you're in.

So what they're suggesting is impossible to actually do, and it opens the door for constant nitpicking.

It actually destroys the church itself, because as soon as you cater to one group, then pretty soon there's this marginalization of a marginalization of a marginalization that's not being catered to.

You can't cater to everyone in the same way. There's no way, because you have limited capacity. So that's what they're suggesting, and of course then the accusation is that it's

Asians, blacks, and Latinos. It's not just black people. It's Asians, blacks, and Latinos that the white people are bigoted against, because there's something below the theology.

Now, is that a conspiracy theory? Something below the theology, resting there, and it's

Romans 1 self -deception. Well, Romans 1 self -deception is pretty serious. I mean, that is a really serious charge, trading the truth of God for a lie, worshiping the creation instead of the creator, and going down,

I guess we're on the road of homosexuality at that point. I mean, that's a pretty serious charge to level, and that's exactly the charge they just level.

Self -deception in literally the white evangelical church, because they're not diverse enough, they are worshiping, they are self -deceived, and they think that their differences are about theology, when in reality, they're just a bunch of horrible racists.

That's what you're getting from this podcast. Well, what about the Asian, or the

Latino, or the black churches that are monolithic? Are those churches also somehow self -deceived in a

Romans 1 style, or is it just white evangelicals? Why is the attack against white evangelicals specifically?

You have to ask the question. The church there actually underwrote apartheid in political terms, in society, and you look at the church, the church in America also has had a very large hand in all of this, and you say, again, okay, why can't

African American people, Latino people, Asians, and these are different demographic communities.

With each community, there's a different history. But why can't they just come to our church?

And the more, the merrier. Here, we would have to bring in a sociologist and ask them about the history of redlining, where chambers of commerce and real estate developers kept non -white people out of white neighborhoods until not that long ago, legally.

And now it's still done, but not legally. So, whites were never kept out of African American, and Latino, and Asian neighborhoods, but non -whites were kept out of white neighborhoods, and so now we have white churches, very distinctly white churches.

I mean, I can understand, I preached in 100%, nearly, Asian congregations, because everybody's from Korea, or China, first or second generation.

Okay, you can understand that, but there's no reason for a church that has no recent immigration history.

Whoa, hold on. What did I just hear? So, if you're a recent immigrant, it's fine to have a church for people that are just like you.

Why, Michael Horton? Why is that fine? We've just gotten done talking about how, if it's not a theological difference, apparently it's

Romans 1 self -deception to have a church that's monolithic. We've just heard about how horrible white

Christians are because they're too monolithic, and now you're saying that if it's

Asians, though, that are first or second generation, that's fine, apparently, and you'll even go preach at those churches, and it's fine.

Why did they get a pass? So, if it's a white group of, let's say, explorers who came to this country, pioneers who were the first Europeans to come to what is now the

United States, if they formed their own churches, and then those churches, over time, promulgated themselves, became what they are today, traditions were passed down, their children and their children's children kept going to that church, that somewhere along the line, it became evil.

At what point, I'd really like to know, what was the date, what was the year that became evil? Was it 1799?

Was it 1850? Was it 1960? Was it 2010? When did it become evil? Please give me the moral principle that makes it okay for the first couple generations to be in their monolithic church, but then generations after that, it's not okay, if you're white, apparently, because we still haven't heard that it's apparently okay for black people to do this, or Asians to have monolithic churches, because it's all white people's fault, because now redlining is being brought in.

Well, guess what? I mean, Michael Horton says, redlining's still done. I'd like to see the evidence for this.

I talk about this in Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, which you can get at worldviewconversation .com,

because I go through Phil Vischer's narrative and Jamar Tisby's narrative, so I talk about it, and it's much more nuanced and complicated than it's often made out to be today, but the bottom line with redlining is that there were insurance, mostly insurance decisions that were made, that that was the motive behind most of what is complained about as being redlining.

There were covenants on certain houses, and we're talking years ago now, there were covenants in the contracts that affected other minorities, that you weren't supposed to sell it, necessarily.

How universal this was, I don't know. It affected certain areas more than others. I know in California, in,

I think, San Francisco, there was a number of cases of this, even modern cases where people are looking back at old contracts, and they're like, wait a minute, our house isn't supposed to be sold to someone who's not white.

So yeah, that kind of stuff did happen, and there certainly, I think, was some racial animus associated with that.

A lot of the concern, though, with redlining was insurance -related, and I'm willing to concede that it's,

I'm fine with saying that in some of this, I'm not, I don't concede that all of the motivation was just hatred for other minorities, but I'm willing to concede that that could have played a part in some of that.

However, it has been a while since redlining has taken place. It has been legal.

In fact, there's measures to make it illegal. In fact, even some of the measures that led to the financial downturn in 2008, 2009, housing market problems and stuff, trace back to attempts to rectify giving loans to certain demographics because of historical discrimination and that kind of thing.

And so loans were given that people couldn't pay back, and it led to these bundled securities that ended up taking down our financial market.

We've, if anything, there's been a way over compensation to attempt to rectify this.

And I would just say that I think a lot of other policies, crime policies, education policies, have caused a lot of what's typically called white flight.

So these urban areas that then a lot of the infrastructure has left, a lot of the money has left because of rising crime rates and low education standards.

And you could interpret that along racial lines, but you can also just look at it as like, look, my family needs to have a better life.

I'm moving to the suburbs. I can't live here anymore. And so there's a complex array of things that have caused there to be different groups of people living in different areas.

You see in New York City, I live not far from New York City, different ethnic groups who came to New York City settled in different areas, and they kind of stayed there.

Sometimes they move a little bit, but it's still like very segregated, but not because of legal impositions of segregation, but because the people who ended up settling there just organically live together.

That plays a big part in this. So when you're talking about why churches look the way they are, ideologues want to make it about one thing, you know, it's red lining, it's racism behind that, and it's still happening, and it's just as bad, and it's, and that's why.

No, no, people, there are vehicles today. People can, not everyone, but a lot of people can get public transportation.

They can drive. You can, there are ways to overcome these things. And there's a lot of places that, in fact, a lot of suburban places have a vast array of different kinds of people living in them.

So, you know, Michael Horton's asking, you wonder about Michael Horton's church. Is it pasty white? You know, is that his problem?

My church isn't. We don't have this issue that he's talking about, but Michael Horton seems very concerned, you know, and it's all based on, you know, white racism in these churches.

Is Michael Horton part of that? He's white. I would assume probably, is Justin Holcomb and Bob Miller, Hiller, are they white too?

I mean, are these people all part of the demographic that's so terrible? What have they done then? Are they dealing with their own guilt?

And is that why they're lashing out against everyone else? That they have their own issue?

I mean, could I say that under the surface, there's something else motivating Michael Horton and for my own conspiracy like they're doing?

I don't know why not, if we're gonna be consistent with the rules of this. So bottom line here is that there are super unequal weights and measures because Asians get a pass somehow because, well, you know, we can give them a pass.

They're a few generations in, but it's uniquely the guns are pointed at white evangelicals, uniquely to bear the weight of all of these things.

And it's like they just keep pulling things out of a hat. Example after example, they can try to use to blame white evangelicals somehow for the state of affairs they're complaining about.

Which it's funny too, I was thinking the church growth movement, I know the Omega Church, there's several news stories on this from a few years ago, that the

Mega Church in the United States is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the entire country, social life, the

Mega Church, which is what the church growth movement was trying to produce. So it's interesting to me that they're blaming the church growth movement here, but the church growth movement,

I would say a lot of that was focused on like middle -class people and people of all different races in that demographic.

You go to like Saddleback Church or something, you're gonna see that firsthand. It was more class driven than it was racially driven.

And more probably age would have played a bigger part than ethnic makeup.

But they wanna find something to blame, so they're blaming that.

All white. It has to be that in ways perhaps we don't even recognize, partly because we don't even know non -white people, we are off -putting and -

Speak for yourself, Michael Horton. Speak for yourself on this. You may not know non -white people.

I know tons of non -white people. So I don't know, what are you talking about here? Put things in a high exalted position over Jesus as the bond of unity in the church.

Now I'm not saying it's intentional. I'm not saying it's a sort of overt heresy, but it is assuming that it is okay for us to do things, quote, the way we've always done it.

German Lutherans, Dutch Reformed, white evangelical. It's called tradition.

It's kind of inescapable to some extent. You're gonna have a tradition. Episcopalians, the way we've done it all these years it's not okay.

The way we've done it has obviously not been conducive to that picture in Revelation 5, 9 of people from every tribe and kindred and tongue and nation worshiping around the throne and the lamb.

Okay, so then we gotta rethink it. Okay, so here's the point. We've gotta rethink it. We have to, based on all this analysis, we now have to apply it.

And applying it means dismantling our churches. Some, the traditions of our churches.

He takes a shot at tradition. We can't do it the way we always do it. We have to do something different. So what is that?

And that's what we're about to jump into. But the goal here is we gotta look like the church of Revelation, but that is descriptive, not prescriptive.

It's not a, Revelation's not telling you this is what you need to do for your church. This is the stated objective is your church looks like this.

The Revelation is about the universal church, which look, you have your local church and, or some, you have the invisible and the visible church.

You have the visible church, your local church. You attend, some people there might not even be saved because there's wheat and there's tares, but you all attend this local church.

Then there is the invisible church or the universal church, the holy Catholic church, Catholic in the universal sense of everyone who's part of the family of God.

And guess what? I have unity and fellowship with those who are truly saved in the

Armenian church, in a black church, in a church where the

Smurfs go. I mean, I don't, whatever church it is, if it is people who have a relationship with Jesus Christ or part of the family of God, I do have unity with them, even if I don't go to their church.

Because by nature of being part of the family of God, that on its, in itself is a certain kind of unity.

And it's an important unity. So it doesn't mean that I have the same proximity as people that attend my own church, but I do have an attachment to them.

So there's a category error when Michael Horton tries to take the universal church and revelation and what it looks like.

And he said earlier, the holy apostolic church, and then impose it that this, what it looks like should be the same as your visible church in your local community, which may be composed of only

Germans, or it may be in an inner city, maybe even in a Southern rural area where it's, you know what, who lives here?

It's black people, or it's migrants, it's the Gullah people that live in here, this area.

So your church is probably gonna reflect that to some extent. And it's not, there's no worthy scripture that says that's sinful.

Honestly, what I'm talking about here is not about how do we resolve the problem of race in America?

That's way above my pay grade. The only focus that I have here, and I'm passionate about this, the only reason

I have it in the book here is because it is a gigantic chunk of the fear that white evangelicals are displaying in the culture right now that makes it hard for people who've grown up in it to listen to it, much less for people who haven't to give it one second's thought.

And just going back real quickly to something you said a moment ago, Mike, that's really important, is the gentleman, the church growth guru that you quoted,

I forgot his name. Donald McGavern. Donald McGavern, and he said people just like to worship with people who look like them.

That's true, that's the problem. I mean, that's not something to be embraced, that's something to be worked against so that we can begin to embrace the church

Catholic, small C Catholic, the universal church. It is hard, and it should be hard, but -

Good luck with that. In the same way that interracial dating and marriage were taboo 70 years ago, now cross -political marriages are taboo.

It wasn't taboo for a Republican to marry a Democrat. Now that is taboo for, so you're gonna have, something is going to serve as a identity marker, something that confers identity, and there is going to be, it's just part of, you're gonna kick against the goads if you try to make it so that we lack identity somehow, or our only identity is going to be necessarily a

Christian identity. Christian identity should be primary, but it's not, or important,

I should say, but it's not the, there are other things that confer identity, and to act as if it's so sinful that people who are similar culturally would congregate with one another is, it's not just unbiblical, it's impossible.

Because we're going long, I won't tell the full story, but I just, I know of churches where the pastor basically chides the congregation that you're not out there with people that aren't like you.

You need to go to hang out with people that don't do your hobbies. Well, guess what, God, the mission field God's given you, the souls that will exist for eternity that you get to minister to are most likely gonna be in places that you're, that you have proximity to, that if you're a fisherman, you're gonna probably be able to reach fishermen.

You're probably gonna be able to reach people in your family better than others. You're probably gonna be able to reach people in your community better than others. Driving 20 miles outside of town and to be with people that don't do what you do, or like what you like, it's not wrong, but it's not like it's a higher good or something, or it's so much superior.

I mean, if it's people who haven't heard the gospel ever and you're the missionary, then that's one thing, but that's not what they're talking about.

So yeah, this is not gonna work out. Turns out following Jesus is a death to yourself. It's okay that it's hard.

You're gonna have - You're gonna have your life back in droves because you died to yourself, but you now are part of this body of Christ, which is so much more impressive than you.

Yep, that's right. Congregations love to talk about how welcoming they are as congregations, and that is good.

I'm pro welcoming congregation. The problem is the goal of the congregation is not to be welcoming.

The goal of the congregation is to preach Christ who welcomes everybody in, and so it's His welcome we wanna look to, not how nice we are, though that's a good thing to have.

It's a fruit of the Spirit, but rather that Christ welcomes in people from all tribes, nations, languages, and tongues.

Baptism is for Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, and female. It's for all of us. I thought we just heard that white evangelicals were not welcoming, and that's the whole problem.

That's why we have these different churches that are... So yeah, okay.

To unite us as one. The problem is if we are worshiping in a way or preaching in a way that sort of separates us out as the holier than thou, like we are the elect and we are the right ones, and everyone else can either become like us or they can't join us, and that's not the way the

New Testament speaks at all. And Mike, you brought up, and you said your passion on this is that this is difficult for those of us who've grown up in these types of churches to hear it.

How much more for those who haven't been churched when they hear this? And that's the point that we start out with is that there are some increasing numbers of de -churched and unchurched.

People are leaving the church because of the way positions are communicated and held.

Okay, so now we're finally back to actually... 22 minutes, 23 minutes into the podcast. We're finally back to the initial point of the podcast itself, which is why are young people leaving the church?

But look how scrambled they are. They're going from thing to thing. Well, it's redlining. It's still happening.

It's because white evangelicals, they oppose refugees, and they are less likely to think that there's systemic racism in the police.

And these are the things. It's their political views that are really the problem, or it's because they pride themselves on being so welcoming, but actually they're not preaching

Christ who welcomes. They're running all over the place, finding reasons, some of them kind of in conflict with one another.

So they're super welcoming, but yet they're not welcoming, right? To blame white evangelicals.

It's like anything that'll stick, let's blame the white evangelicals. You have to ask yourself why this hatred of one's own group or one's...

I mean, they're admitting here, like, these are the churches. We're talking about the churches we grew up in. Why? Why is this such a...

It's one thing, I think, to point out a flaw for the purpose of bettering or improving a church or a tradition or something you love.

I don't get the impression in this conversation, I wonder if you do, that they love the church they're talking about. Do they love these churches?

Is this a Pauline type, I'm gonna correct you, but man, I love you and grace to you and stuff, or is this just like scorched earth?

I mean, you're Romans oneself deceivers. This is, it's incredible the hatred they have for their own, for their own.

Some have called this oikonophobia, where oikos being the Greek word for house. They hate their home.

It's the hatred of the familiar. And it's very odd.

It's not something that I think that it's often motivated by a guilt one has and a shame they have themselves.

And it's motivated by a, and again, I don't know this 100 % with them, but often I think that what would make sense of it is they want to separate themselves from the group that they're ashamed of.

And so things like this are an attempt to do that. They're leaving because they're not hearing words of eternal life.

They're hearing someone shredding in the pulpit for punditry. They're handing over proclamation of good news for the drivel of being a thought leader for a cultural moment.

That sounds like projection. What would that description describe if not the

White Horse Inn? Isn't that, and I wouldn't be that severe in my analysis, but if they're gonna say that about white evangelical churches, isn't that very similar to what they're doing?

Where is Christ being exalted in the White Horse Inn podcast or is it they're trying to be these culture warriors?

I mean, this whole podcast is they're being culture warriors. We're not doing some type of radical dualism as if it doesn't relate to now, but it relates to now in a different way than I'm a thought leader on this particular moment and you need to hear my thoughts.

The pastor should be repeating the words of eternal life, not trying to create up some type of guru image for themselves.

This goes with what both of you are saying. I remember one of my seminary professors saying that in the liturgy, you're not welcoming people into your living room.

This is not your show. This is not your house. This is

Christ's house. This is Christ's body. It's his show. It's the thing he's performing. Your job is to get out of the way, be a means of Christ welcoming people to him,

Christ. Not yours. And that would mean

Christ draws people without my cultural peculiarities getting in the way of that as much as possible.

And that's why Paul says in Ephesians four, make every effort and it's

Greek. It's a very emphatic verb. Make every possible human effort to preserve the bond of unity, the bond of peace.

Make every effort. You gotta work at this very hard. You gotta think what is it that is keeping this unity from being made more visible.

And when the world comes after us to put a microphone in front of our nose to talk about masks, we shouldn't be surprised.

I think we're getting to the application now, what they want white evangelical churches in their minds, this demographic that tends to vote for Republicans, tends to be more conservative politically.

We're getting to what they actually, the guilt, the hate to pick a 1984 term has taken place and now it's what do you do?

So here we go. Don't put a microphone under our nose to talk about the greatest story ever told.

The only use we have in this country for news reports is the role we have in the culture wars.

I mean, we really have become the deer in the headlights where we just don't reflect at all. CRT, as if we know what we're talking about on either side.

Everyone's a Marx scholar all of a sudden. All of a sudden, oh my goodness, really? Because you listen to this podcast?

I don't know about you. I mean, I've seen this. I have seen people get so irate about masks and yet I know they tolerate all sorts of stuff when it comes to theology.

It's not really about Christ and the church. Quote unquote, white evangelicalism has become a sociopolitical demographic.

So there is something to be said here for the way in which what we're hearing from the pulpits on Sunday morning, what is it that is being preached?

Should the pulpit, maybe ask it this way, should the pulpit be addressing issues like masks or perhaps bigger, broader, deeper issue,

LGBTQ plus issues or things of this nature? Should we be addressing those things from the pulpit?

And I would suggest to you, yes, but the way in which they are addressed must not ever sound like CNN or Fox News.

That's the problem. Let's take the mask issue, for example. If your pastor's going to preach on it, his preaching on it needs to be, you need to die to yourself and live for the sake of your

Christ. You need to die to yourself and love your neighbor as yourself. And if your neighbor has a different view, how are you still going to love them?

Not really any other part of the conversation. People should be able to come to the church and have differing views of masks.

What ends up happening is people start coming to the church and they say, hey, listen, this church has a different view of masks than me.

If it's coming from the pulpit, they believe that that must be this church's view of God's view of masks, as if God ever said anything about it.

And so then they leave because I'm not a part of that side of the aisle. I'm not a part of that side of the conversation.

We definitely see this happening with the LGBTQ conversation. I'm going to, let's, that's, this is more serious.

So let's wait on that. But I want to make a few points here. So masks, CRT, the

Fox News or CNN narrative about masks. And he mentions

LGBTQ. He's going to get more into detail. These are not about Christ. So, and this might be the radical or the reformed, sometimes they call it, but the radical two kingdoms view, which to me is probably the worst view.

You have the classical or the Protestant two kingdoms view. You have the radical or reformed two kingdoms view, and then you have one kingdom.

The radical two kingdoms view, I think is probably what might be motivating this to some extent.

And it's this understanding that the government and the church are so separate that the church must, to some extent, acquiesce to, the church should stay in its lane to an extent that it, one does not have to do with the other.

The secular realm is secular. And it ought to remain secular.

And what you're hearing here is that if the church is going to address any of these, quote unquote, political issues, it only must use this general moral principle of loving neighbor.

And that's it. As if loving neighbor doesn't extend to other things. Here's why that's impossible.

Loving neighbor, so here's what I think about loving neighbor. Loving neighbor means I defend their rights. Loving neighbor means

I tell them the truth. These things aren't working for you. Sorry, government might be telling you, but they're lying to you.

Loving your neighbor, I think if you're gonna defend their rights and tell the truth is going to mean upholding

God's law. God has responsibilities for the church and responsibilities for the government. And when the government overstepped its boundaries, then

I think it is a responsibility of the church to say something about it. Pastors should be saying something. They should have been up in arms about this.

It is a big issue. And I think the people who are so concerned about it can sense it's fundamental because there is a religion right now of statism that is on the rise and that was a manifestation of it.

Are we gonna worship God or are we gonna worship government? Does the government have attributes of deity? Do we cry out to the government when there's a problem and just sacrifice all our rights, pinch the incense to Caesar?

Or do we say, no, there's some things that actually we have to give to King Jesus, meaning we have to actually worship him.

He's commanded us to do that. Part of that means we actually, we sing to him. Part of that means we don't participate in lies.

There's so much more to even the principle he's bringing up of loving your neighbor that would apply in the civil realm. And I think it's funny in a sense because if they were going to be consistent with this, let's go back,

I don't know, 70 years. Does that mean the churches should have just acquiesced to anything the government did at that time when in regard to race relations, let's say, when many states, or let's go back even more, let's go back 150 years when it would have been illegal just about everywhere for interracial marriage to take place.

I mean, you can even go back, by the way, just a side note here, you can go back to the 1850s or 60s.

Like William Lloyd Garrison, right? Chief, one of the most popular abolitionists out there was against laws that prohibited interracial marriage.

But guess what he said about it? It's not because he was in favor of miscegenation, the word they commonly used back then for races getting together.

He just thought that the law should be changed because that's just.

But he wasn't in favor of black people marrying white people, right? Far be it from him.

So it's, I'm just telling you, even the views of the people back in those days who would have been considered heroes by the left today, their views would have been more insensitive in the minds of the modern left than the conservatives of today.

That's how radically things have shifted. So in those, in that day and age, I mean, not to get on a huge tangent, but I mean, you had

New York City, there was a riot when there was a rumor spread,

I think it was in the 1830s or something or 40s, but there's rumors spread that there had been an interracial marriage and it was a riot in New York City.

There was a riot in Philadelphia over pretty much the same kind of thing during that time period. It wasn't uncommon for people, people were pretty universally opposed to it.

And would Michael Horton then come in and say, well, that, it's with the government, man.

It's government just says it. So, I mean, the church just has to say, you know, love your neighbor and that's it.

And kind of let the government do its thing. I mean, I think he'd be aggressive that this is evil. It's morally wrong. We got, so where are the lines is the real question here.

If you can't talk about masks or shutdowns, if you can't talk about CRT, and they're making fun of, ah, ha, ha, people are experts on CRT.

I mean, it's insulting. I mean, you could hear an elitist laugh going on there in a way that, you know, all these people who think they're experts, they're not experts.

Well, look, I've written two books on social justice. The last one, I definitely got into CRT and I had to read

CRT. I had to read Derrick Bell. I had to read Kimberly Crenshaw Williams. I had to read some of the pop CRT people out there.

I didn't understand it. And it doesn't take a lot of work, guys. It really doesn't. If you, I tell everyone just read

Delgado's book, Critical Race Theory, and you get it. It doesn't take a lot of work. This stuff has been around for a long time.

It's new left ideas. It doesn't take a PhD. You don't have to bring a sociologist in, but they are sounding like elitists of the rankest degree in my mind.

There's some stats that you have in your book, Mike, that I think are very important for us to hear. Because by the way, we haven't said enough about controversial issues today, so let's keep going.

86 % of LGBTQ plus people who were raised in a faith community, 86 % were raised in a faith community with more than three fourths in mostly evangelical, theological, religious, conservative communities.

So that is to say a large majority of people who identify with that acronym, they were brought up in conservative

Christian churches. And they have left. They've left the church.

Why have they left the church? My guess is that the conversation from the pulpit was here are the evils of that sexual orientation, that temptation, that sin that are ruining our culture.

And if you're a part of that group, you're them, you're out. And if you identify that way in our church, we're gonna kick you out or send you to camp until we fix you.

And then you can come back and join us because apparently that's how we've ever dealt with sin in the church is sending someone to a camp.

So what ends up happening is you start preaching against the culture more than to the 13 year old boy who struggles with his sexuality in your pew, who's sitting there worried that he's praying against this thing and he's terrified

God's gonna send him to hell. And you from the pulpit just affirm that for him.

And so he says, God hates me anyways. I don't need to hear it every Sunday. Why go back instead of saying to him, the

Lord Jesus Christ took up a cross to die for you. He is raised for your salvation and your justification.

He has promised you new life. You have a cross you're gonna have to bear. And we as the congregation are gonna bear it with you.

We're not going to approve of homosexual activity in the church, of course not. But we're also not going to kick you out because you think that this is something you can't overcome.

We're here to bear the burden with you, to carry you in our arms up to the altar to receive the body and blood of Christ with us.

To remove that preaching from the ears and the hearts of the people in the pew so that we can fix the culture is to miss our calling as pastors and as the church altogether.

Okay, so what you're seeing here is I think in some sense a false dichotomy. And it's the vacating of the prophetic role that a church or pastor has.

So what you have is Christians being salt and light in the community. Jesus wants us to do that.

But if you just focus on the people in your church and there is no upholding a moral standard that the rest of society is in disapproval of, then you aren't discipling your people well and they can't go out and then be salt and light.

They can't be different. They can't reflect the law of God, which is by the way, love. The law of God is loving.

Jesus summed up the whole law with love God, love your neighbor, and that's the summation. So the laws, even of the Old Testament, these were loving laws.

So there's a dichotomy here of like, well, you can't like be aggressive against homosexuality.

If you have a 13 -year -old, they're struggling with it. I would suggest actually, yes, you can and you should.

Would we say this about other sins? Would we say, well, you can't be aggressive against pedophilia. Maybe you have someone in the congregation who is a sex offender who's struggling with that.

You can't be aggressive against robbery. I mean, you have someone who struggles with being a thief. You can't be aggressive against adultery because you have an adulterer in your audience or someone who is tempted by adultery.

We need to know they're loved. How about this? You can be aggressive in the very ways that scripture is aggressive against these things.

You can say all liars will have their part in Lake of Fire. I didn't say that. God said that in Revelation. You can say that and at the same time say, but there's forgiveness for sinners of which we all are.

There isn't a conflict between these two things. These two things must both be preached. Law and gospel, law and gospel, law and gospel.

And to vacate the prophetic role a church should have of being salt and light, to become this therapeutic community where everyone is just so affirmed and there's no hard preaching.

It's just, well, we're not gonna condone homosexuality, but we're not gonna preach hard against it is probably how we got to 35 % of evangelicals favoring gay marriage.

I mean, it's a problem. And so absolutely the fear of God must be upheld.

The problems in our society mostly relate back to people don't fear God. Thinking of that 13 year old boy, think of a pastor who wants to make a statement about sexual ethics for the culture.

And they say that statement so clearly, unaware that a same sex attracted teen is gonna be four times more likely to consider suicide.

The idea that we've traded in proclamation of good. That is manipulation.

That is absolute manipulation. Four times more likely to commit suicide, why? That is the question that must be answered.

Why is it that they might be four times more likely to commit suicide? Because they're being shamed? Because the law of God is being put before them once again, and so it makes them wanna kill themselves?

Or is it because of the sin itself that's causing the shame? In other words, is it someone reminding them that it's a sin?

Or is it the sin itself that's causing this? I hear this all the time with transgender stuff.

It's like, if you say anything against, if you don't use personal pronouns, you are reinforcing the commitment that one might have to commit suicide if they consider themselves transgender.

That is absolute manipulation. How about they were made in God's image a certain, and they were designed a certain way by him, and they have purpose and worth, and if that can be recovered, they will be less likely.

If they can realize they're not transgender, they are either male or female, then that will abate this desire to commit suicide.

Why can't that be an option? Now, that's trans -shaming, that's hatred. You hear all this. But all of that is meant to neutralize anyone who would uphold truth.

So truth just gets destroyed. Truth doesn't matter as much as what? As much as someone's feelings getting hurt. Would you do this with any other sin?

Would you say, well, you know, if people who struggle with pedophilia are more likely to commit suicide, so you better not mention it.

You better not talk about it harshly at least. No, in fact, we need to try to prevent more people from going into, from sliding into these sins when that are being normalized.

There's no doubt that there's an uptick in people who think they're transgender or think they're homosexual, huge uptick.

Is that all because, well, that's just how they're made? Or is it because monkey see, monkey do? Is it because there's so many positive examples of it put before them?

It's because there's positive examples. So the one place during the week they can go, for some people, and hear that that's actually not a positive example, don't follow that road to perdition and death.

They are, we are now told, actually, if you do that, if you prevent them, if you put

God's law before them, you are the one that is causing the suicide. It's disgusting. This is not

Christian at all to say this kind of thing. News, to make a political moment, to be careless with your words, and to make a sheep of his flock think they need to not live is a moment for deep repentance for them.

This guy needs to repent. This guy absolutely needs to repent. Yeah, no, I'm sorry.

Putting God's law before them, and the way that God puts it before us, it's strong, it's direct.

And then to say that that person is causing someone else's death, I mean, this is probably the worst cringe take of this whole thing.

This is absolutely so important. We're definitely not saying that any passage in the

New Testament needs to be revised. Homosexuality is still forbidden.

And those who practice it, that is, those who say this is, I have a right to this, this is who I am, and I don't believe it's wrong,

I'm not going to repent, I'm not going to confess it as sin. Oh, and by the way, those who practice gossip, practice envy, and all of the other things in that list, now we're all kind of between the eyes, will not inherit the kingdom of God.

We can't, as Christians, practice any of these sins. We sin.

It's not like a lawyer practicing law. We don't say, this is my sin.

This is what I do, this is my occupation. We say, this is my cross.

This is the offense against God. Are you allowed to say that homosexuality or sexual sins in general carried a capital fence in the

Old Testament, and that, many of them at least, homosexuality definitely did, and that, can you say that they are unnatural or against creation desires, and that there's, that puts them in a certain category?

Are you allowed to say that, or do you have to flatline it all, like every sin is the same, and we all, look, all sin is damnable, but it's, there is something,

I'm not saying just homosexuality, but there is something about sexual sins that are against the body. Scripture says this.

There are different levels. Murder is worse than lying about something. It carries a greater offense.

So, or a greater punishment. So, this whole, like, trying to flatline it all, to try to make it all, like, not so bad,

I mean, that's not gonna work for, honestly, the secular transgender activists. They're gonna just say that Michael Horton is still causing suicides.

He can't escape it, and I fear that some of these guys are just trying to do that.

Let's appease as much as we can. Let's try to do this halfway thing. You're not gonna do it, guys. And my own struggle that I'm going to have to say no to for the rest of my life, and sometimes fail, and Christ still loves me, we are treating sheep like wolves.

John Calvin had a great line where he says, every pastor needs to have two voices. One for the sheep and one for the wolves.

That's good. And we have only one voice when it comes to these issues, and it's everybody's a wolf.

We are so terrified, deer in the headlights, we are so afraid. Well, I think to Michael Horton and the gang, only white evangelicals are the wolf.

That's how they talk. Of them. Here's some statistics that just blew me away on this topic.

While only 9 % of the general population is open to returning to the faith they've abandoned, 9%.

I grew up in it. I'm willing to come back. 76 % of LGBT people are open to returning to their religious community and its practices.

And only 8 % of these said this would require a change in theology or convictions about sexual ethics.

While the remaining 92 just wanted to be loved and given real time instead of being shunned or ignored.

In other words, this study concluded 92 % people who were raised in Christian conservative churches and are

LGBT today, 92 % would be open to return even without that faith community changing their theology, end quote.

That's stunning. I think this is another moment of self -deception that we talked about earlier. I don't know about this statistic.

I haven't looked it up, but if in my own interactions with homosexuals, and I have had friends who are, it's,

I think there's a great insecurity associated with that community. And oftentimes when you start getting into the stories, there's often there's parental abuse.

There's all kinds of things that led to where they are. And so anywhere that they would find in their minds what constitutes true acceptance, they are willing to go to.

I remember I had a friend who was homosexual who wouldn't go to church with me because he was afraid and he knew nothing about my church other than he assumed it was against homosexuality.

And he was born that way, he said, and he couldn't change it. And of course, like within two days, he's telling me actually he wants to change it and he wants to try.

And I mean, the identity issues are just palpable. And he ended up going to a church that was affirming.

And I don't even know if they were like super affirming. I think it was more, they were just like super seeker sensitive and just, they avoided the issue kind of.

And that's where he went. But I just remember he was looking though, he was totally fine with church. In fact, he wanted some kind of spiritual something in his life.

He wanted some assurance of something beyond himself. And so many fractured relationships, rejections, just that community tends to be, have just a load of experiences that lead to insecurity because they've been rejected so many times.

And they're used to viewing things in such a ultra physical kind of will it gratify me sexually way that.

So I wonder if that plays a large part if that statistic is accurate in why that might be the case.

But yeah, I think the implication is and what they're trying to get us to draw from this is that it's not the theology in white evangelical churches that's turning people off.

It is the, it's the attitude. It's that they're so, they're too political.

And if they weren't so political, if they weren't preaching against that sin so harshly, then they would come back.

And they don't have to change their stance, I guess. Just don't change your theology.

Just don't preach your theology, I guess. I don't know. But of course not ignoring or downplaying passages of scripture that are harsh against sexual sin is not an option.

So big, whether the stats say one thing or another, he keeps bringing up these stats.

The Bible is gonna be solid and consistent no matter what stats say. If stats said that if you just do this formula and say these things on Sunday, then everyone will be a

Christian. And it's not what the word of God specifically declares or says to do, then you have to ignore it.

You have to do what the word of God says if you're a Christian. Which is that you'll hear sermons on biblical marriage.

Usually when people are talking about, hey, we have a biblical doctrine of marriage, they're talking about not same -sex marriage. That's the point.

But imagine being a same -sex attracted person, hearing that and then seeing the hypocrisy when the man who has unbiblically divorced his wife and gets remarried at the drop of a hat because he's a big donor, because he's known to the pastor or whatever.

And so the hypocrisy of the way that biblical doctrines of marriage is even used is fascinating.

We've lost the integrity to talk about biblical doctrine of marriage when it's used as a weapon against the them, but it doesn't apply to one's own group of people.

And that's the other thing that is just shocking of doctrine being used as a weapon and not being thought about how self -deceiving that is for the person who's trading in proclamation for punditry about a cultural moment.

They're not reading all of 1 Corinthians 6 and Romans 1.

They're underlying one piece and magnifying that and not reading the rest of it. This is key.

We do it to fix the culture and pick on a particular sin or a particular issue or whatever, but that's never the goal of...

Guys, what's the sin that's being pushed in the greater society right now?

The sin that has protection around it? I mean, look, we have to all mask up and social distance according to the government and shut down our economy, but the demographic that seems to be spreading monkeypox around no regulations on what they're doing at all.

What's the protected sin? Let's be honest. What's the pressure of the society right now?

It's to pushing the envelope to normalize deviant behavior.

So is there going to be a stand against that that is maybe more directed because that's what we're surrounded in and swimming in?

I think so, yeah. And of course you shouldn't approve of adultery or divorce without biblical grounds.

And obviously, in fact, we just had a disciplined situation at the church I attend last year for divorce without biblical grounds and adultery.

So it's not like it's something that is ignored, where I've been at least, but if it is being ignored, then that's wrong, obviously.

But I think there is going to be more because of the pressure is so high everywhere to normalize and accept sexual deviant behavior that's in vogue right now, that is going to be something that churches are gonna be focused on or should be focused on to some extent, because look, you got young people in the church, but even if they're not young, you have these pressures.

You have to hear a counterbalance to it. So at certain times in history, there's going to be certain sins,

I think, that are going to be probably more spoken against. This is why, what, Whitfield and Wesley were preaching so much against drunkenness, because guess what?

The context in which they live, that was a real problem, and it was very accepted, and it was growing in acceptance, and they preached against it.

Preaching. Sins need to be addressed from the pulpit so that Christ can be delivered from the pulpit.

The goal is getting to Christ. The goal is not merely behavioral change.

That is a fruit. That is not the goal. The goal is Christ. So what if we risked preaching

Christ crucified every Sunday and not see if people from different demographic backgrounds start showing up?

See if people struggling with same -sex attraction start repenting of their sin and turning to Christ.

What if we just preach Christ and let the Holy Spirit start cleaning up the mess for us? Could we actually trust him to do this from the pulpit?

When we're proclaiming God's word, we're proclaiming all of the scriptures, even the scriptures that are very explicit and clear about other things.

Somehow, those pieces of the puzzle are part of a mosaic of Jesus.

It all fits into that story, the unfolding story of Christ and redemption. Second thing, if, for example, the

Trinity is a major doctrine, I think we can say that safely, the

Trinity is a major doctrine, but evangelical theologians are divided over it, but totally agreed on some of these issues we're talking about.

We have to handle the ethical issues or doctrinal issues that the

Bible does address with the proportion that it gives to those doctrines or practices.

Then the third thing is, if it's not in the word at all, you don't have authorization to talk about it on Jesus' time.

Today, we're having a lot that is not only focused on disproportionately, but is actually made more a bond of unity than doctrines like the

Trinity and justification and the two natures of Christ united in one person and a whole host of other important matters that the surveys say our churches are having trouble finding unity on.

And there is no biblical position on anything that doesn't ultimately get you back to Jesus. That's where it's always gonna end, is with Christ.

Yep. What the world needs to see most right now is not people who are absolutely sure of how they would vote on every possible policy prescription.

What people need to see most right now especially is

Christians on their knees as that part of a fallen world that is confessing its sins and receiving absolution from a forgiving

God. All right, so we're done, finally, wow. Okay, so what's the end game?

What's the result of all of this? Well, you gotta preach just Christ, just Christ. So that basic message, forget about these other things.

And we have examples, too hard on LGBT, the mask thing. Don't do that.

And then ignore the things the Bible doesn't address. If you're gonna address subjects, keep it proportional to, so if the

Bible preaches about homosexuality four times and it preaches about greed 20 times, preach about greed more, that kind of thing.

So here's the thing with all of this. If you look at the different epistles that Paul wrote, he focused on different problems, guess why?

Because the churches he was writing to were facing those problems. It was application of biblical principles, but he was applying these things to unique situations.

The seven churches of Revelation didn't all need necessarily the same rebuke or the same message.

They needed, there is some, they need to know the full counsel of God, but there are certain things, if they're disobedient, that they need confrontation on.

And so, it doesn't mean that every, you have to be proportional in the sense that, figure out how often the

Bible talks about something and only talk about it that often, despite the fact, I mean, you know this with raising children.

You know, how often are children disobedient in one area? And you have to harp on that area to some extent, right?

So, this is the goal. And really what it is, is to neutralize what they're calling the white evangelical church.

To neutralize it, so that it doesn't do these political things. And if they do that, then they'll attract more people.

That's the whole thing. And every biblical position should get you back to Jesus.

Well, I guess in the sense that we're upholding his law, but some things are just gonna be upholding Jesus's law. So, this was a terrible episode.

There's no sugarcoating it. The whole thing started with a shaming of the evangelical church, trying to grasp at anything to shame the white evangelical church.

And then, in order to get out from under that shame, you gotta do these things. Don't confront the totalitarian government we have.

You know, kind of downplay that one. Don't take such a hard stand against LGBTQ. Be careful of that.

You might be causing people suicides. And here we are.

So, Michael Horton, I would say, I think I feel confident saying, guy's kind of woke.

Guy's kind of woke. And I appreciate you all staying with me for this mega edition of the

Conversations That Matter podcast. The last thing I wanted to just say is if you're looking for a good organization to donate to, for missions, there's so many bad ones now,

I would suggest going and checking out Equipping the Persecuted. You wanna go to equippingthepersecuted .org, and it says

Galatians 6 .10, it says, therefore, as long as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

And of course, your giving should be primary, primarily your local church first. But there are believers around the world suffering in ways that we can't even imagine yet.

I mean, we might soon, but I mean, we don't have terrorists coming to our town and blowing up our churches on Sunday when we're meeting.

And so we have brothers and sisters in Nigeria who could use our help.

And so I would suggest checking out Equipping the Persecuted, they're doing a work there, they just built or they're building an orphanage. You can check who they are, their statement of faith, their financial integrity, all of that stuff is there on the website.

And they're doing a work that I know other groups aren't doing. Other groups, like even Voice of the

Martyrs, they're not in Nigeria doing the kinds of things Equipping the Persecuted is actually doing. Giving the bulletproof, that body armor, the walkie talkies, they're not just giving the gospel, they're helping

Christians, actual brothers and sisters in Christ defend themselves. So check out

Equipping the Persecuted, go to equippingthepersecuted .org. God bless, until next time, bye now.