Third-Way 2.0: J.D. Greear’s Everyday Revolutionary

And we can't say that someone is necessarily incorrect for voting Democrat. They may have a moral calculus they're using, which is perfectly valid.

That is, in essence, what the third way accomplishes. It softens formerly

Christian conservative groups. It introduces to them the possibility that actually, you know what?

You can be, have a good conscience, be morally consistent, be a biblical Christian, and still vote for the

Democrats because there's some issues they're actually good on. Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast.

I'm your host, John Harris. We are going to discuss the new book by J .D. Greer called everyday revolutionary.

I just read it the other day and I have some notes. I have a slideshow I prepared, and I even have a short little article that will be on my sub stack today.

Actually, I should already have it posted by the time this video is live and it will kind of summarize many of the points that I'm about to make, but I will go through more detail obviously in this particular video.

And if you are a patron, you will have access to my PowerPoint and I do appreciate all of those who support me on patrion, patrion .com

forward slash John Harris podcast. So with that, let's start here.

I have a video that I want to play for you. This is from J .D. Greer, J .D. Greer put this out actually just about a day or two ago.

It's very recent, and it's a clip of him addressing a another podcast that he was on called the

Bully Pulpit podcast, where he backed tracked on a few things. You might call it that, and I'll play you that clip as well.

But in reaction to this, he is asked by an interviewer essentially, is it true that those who go blue, who go

Democrat are potentially on the path to deconstructing their faith, not being

Christians anymore? Is this an off rant from Christianity? Which is something that I said in my own experience, I've of course seen.

And this is how Greer answers that particular question. We have to be honest in the

Democratic party platform are some things that are explicitly anti -Christian, gender confusion and celebration of abortion.

There are people that are attracted to parts of the Democratic party platform that have nothing to do with those issues.

And there are things that are not anti -Christian. In fact, for some of them, they would say, well, this is actually

I think is the more just way. And I'm thinking there of economic policy or foreign policy or race relations kind of thing.

If our concern is keeping this next generation from ending up in unbelief, what is making them be attracted to some of the things on that side of the political aisle?

The number one reason is the evangelical church's silence about the hypocrisies, the inconsistencies of a leader like Donald Trump, things that he has said, things that just the character, the serial adultery, just a number of things that the evangelical church has been silent on because they didn't want to hurt his chances at reelection.

And so they said, we've got to stay silent on this so that we can do that. And so a lot of these younger people are like, well, this obviously is wrong.

And if you're quiet about that, what else have you not told me about? You know, I might be wrong on my opinions on global warming.

I might be wrong on my opinions on gun control. Matt, I don't think I am. If I thought I was wrong,

I wouldn't hold the positions I hold. But see, I'm not wrong about the gospel. And I don't want to let my perspectives on the former keep people from hearing the latter.

So I will often say I'm going to limit myself to saying what the

Bible says and not treating this all like one package. There are a lot of people who grew up in left -leaning political contexts.

And the reasons that they were in those contexts had nothing to do with some of these, what I'm referring to as anti -Christian issues.

And for whatever reason, they were persuaded that, again, economic policy, foreign policy, racial types of things.

And for them, it would not be true that their voting blue is like they're headed down the path of indication that there's some shift in there.

Yeah, I mean, because statistically that is not even true. And of course, I'm thinking about in particular, I'm thinking about a lot of my

African -American friends and the question of whether a person should support a party because they like their approach to economic or education issues when it has these things in there.

That's a valid question. Are we giving too much weight to things in light of what really is at issue here?

That's a very valid question. And I think that's an appropriate question for us to discuss. But we have to say it's not that this is the first sign to going in that direction because their attraction to that has little to do with those issues.

The wisdom of embracing the party, that's the question we should ask. We need more pastoral sensitivity and wisdom.

What do you call it? Nuance, a man in our church who I know of who genuinely believed that there was a 15 to 20 percent chance that if Trump were elected, he was going to start nuclear war.

Yeah, I mean, he really was convinced of that. Now, again, we could challenge that and say, well, I don't know if that's really true, but he was convinced of that, you know, for that to affect him when he goes into the ballot box, we can argue the wisdom of what he's doing.

But you wouldn't say, OK, well, that's a sign that he's headed toward toward unbelief because those are those are different things.

The reason I wanted to start with that particular clip is because I actually think it's a pretty good summary of the book.

You actually don't even necessarily need to read the book if you just hear that clip, because a lot of the elements he talks about in the book he represents in that short little interview.

And what it is, is him remixing, reintroducing third way thinking with a few amendments to it.

Subtle shifts, in my opinion, but it's the same basic philosophy that he's had for about the last decade.

And what he's trying to say is that, look, there are these issues that we can clearly see on the political left that are out of they're in conflict.

They're out of step with our Christian witness. Therefore, we can condemn those things.

But at the same time, we can't say that someone is necessarily incorrect for voting Democrats. They may have a moral calculus.

They're using, which is perfectly valid and maybe even biblical. And they should feel perfectly comfortable in your church, in your pew.

And they shouldn't really be challenged on this. They should be challenged on the issues. They should be challenged on some of the particular platform elements in the

Democratic Party platform. But they should not be necessarily challenged on whether or not they will, in fact, vote

Democrat, because there is a calculus that can be used. There are issues the Democrats stand for that may be well and good, including racial justice.

And so that's a valid thing. So I think that that is, in essence, what the third way accomplishes.

It softens formerly Christian conservative groups, evangelicals who have voted for Republicans who have leaned conservative in their social views and even in their economic views.

And it introduces to them the possibility that actually, you know you can be have a good conscience, be morally consistent, be a biblical

Christian and still vote for the Democrats because there's some issues they're actually good on. And maybe those are the more important priorities, depending on the election.

And you look at Donald Trump and you have to say he's got all these moral issues. He's a problem.

And you know what the real issue is here. The real thing that's driving people away from the church, from the truth, from Christians is we failed to confront

Donald Trump in strong enough terms. Now, whether you believe that or not, I don't

I don't know that it matters. I mean, when it comes to politics, I think people certainly are making calculations based on the person who is going to defend them and their way of life and allow it to continue and the person who is going to try to end that way of life.

And that's really as simple as I think it gets for the national elections. But Donald Trump obviously had some moral failures, still does.

And there's even some positions he holds that are less than desirable, shall we say, for Christians.

And I think what I've said for a long time, and I think this is true, I remember back in 2016 when he entered the political stage and people were first introduced to him, the evangelicals in the primaries were not with Donald Trump.

And eventually in the general election, they voted for him despite the fact that he had some of these issues.

It wasn't because of those issues. Now, as time has gone on and he has been tested and there's been attempts on his life and we've seen the cataclysmic failure that the

Biden presidency was, I think there's even more of a an allegiance to Donald Trump and a recognition that he actually does care about the people he says he cares about, even if you don't agree with all his policies.

And so I think there is a willingness to support him politically, but I don't know that I would interpret that as an unwillingness to call out the sins that he represents.

Now, for example, in J .D. Greer's mind, he represents adultery. OK, and I would say this is as far as I would be willing to go.

I think Donald Trump certainly has been characterized by adultery in the past. And that's not a good thing you want in any kind of a leader.

Has the evangelical church softened their approach to adultery? Have they started to now?

Now, you might say that they've they are softer on it. Look at all the scandals. Well, they've been like that for a long time.

I mean, there's been scandals in the church. There's they haven't been as strong at on the, quote unquote, respectable sins, at least in the upper levels of evangelicalism.

But did Donald Trump really change any of that? Did Donald Trump make evangelicals more accommodating to the sin of adultery?

And I don't I don't know there's any evidence that that's the case, not that I've seen, at least it seems to me that evangelicals voted for him in high numbers.

Despite that, they voted for him because that he was catering to their needs, their wants, their desires and the things that they stood for.

They have a real seat at the table with Donald Trump. They didn't really have one even with the establishment Republican class before him.

And so I think that's really what's driving this. Contrast that with left leaning

Christians who will vote Democrat. Do they start soft peddling things like LGBTQ normalization?

The answer is absolutely. The answer is, of course, they do. Do they start soft peddling things like Marxism?

The answer is absolutely right. Do they start accommodating the climate change alarmists?

The answer is that's usually the reason that they want to vote for a Democrat. It's they're buying into these policies generally, and that's why they do it.

I'm not saying that goes for every single person, but in general, that's what's going on. They they don't have a strong disagreement with those things.

And in many cases, they are willing from the pulpit even to proclaim those things. I mean, I live in a community where there's a lot of churches who will just fly the rainbow flag.

If you if you drive throughout the Northeast, especially sometimes you'll go through a town and that's the one place you'll see the trans or LGBTQ plus flag is on the church, on the mainline church.

Now it's not even always mainline churches. It's churches that formerly were evangelical that are starting to go in these kinds of directions.

So I would say it's because of those things. It's because of the immigration issue that they really do see this responsibility to the foreigner, to the alien, to the sojourner, quote unquote.

They'll even put it in those terms that they will vote for the Democrats and choose the betterment of these people, these foreign people over the prosperity of their own people that are local, that are native.

And so so I think that's a that's a big difference. I pointed this out before, but. The third way.

Thinking is essentially an attempt to accommodate the political

Democrats, liberals and the political Republicans, conservatives under one church roof, under one steeple, they can both sit there and neither side needs to be offended.

And if they're offended, they're equally offended, at least right, because you're going to call out the sins of one side and you're going to call out the sins of the other side.

And so there's there's no reason to think that you're picking on one above the other.

And this will supposedly keep you from alienating one side or the other so you can have an expansive witness and you can have this open road to both sides.

That's really, I think, the idea behind it. It's a contextualization strategy. It was really specifically for Blue City areas.

I talked about this in the podcast I did with Megan Basham on this. I showed you some of the original architects of this,

Carl Truman, Tim Keller, and in his book, Reason for God, he talks about this. That's really what's going on there.

Well, J .D. Greer opens his book up with saying, look, I live in a purple city. I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, and this is what life is like in the purple city

I live in, and I think it's important to recognize that the place where he's ministering and the idea he has about that place are going to impact,

I think, the way that he ministers and the way that he conceives of politics and conceives of politics in the pulpit specifically and what moral issues he's going to talk about and how he's going to talk about them and how he's going to apply it to political situations.

So I wanted you to hear that clip. Now, I said I would also play this clip. This is a clip of J .D.

Greer, and he is backpedaling on some of the things that he has said over the years.

And as we go through the podcast, as I go through his book and I examine it, I will address some of the things that you are about to hear.

But I thought it was important for you to hear it, lest someone accused me of saying saying to me,

John, you did not do your due diligence. J .D. Greer has repented of some of the things that you're about to talk about.

He does not he's not for DEI. He's not for CRT. He never was for CRT. Well, I'll let you be the judge.

But here is J .D. Greer talking about some of his former support for racial justice, for allowance, for people to vote

Democrat and support the Democratic Party, his leaning left during 2020.

I do feel like in that time I spoke with real clarity on the issues. I don't think I would point to anywhere where I didn't, you know, preach with the

Bible, preach and speak into it. But, you know, there was a growing thing where the last pro -life

Democrat got out of Congress. I think it was seven years ago, maybe maybe give or take or whatever.

You know, it's been a while and there was a growing entrenchment of the transgender

LGBT thing into the Democratic Party platform where they're saying, look, this is this is our vision for America.

And I look back and and I'm like, you know, I should have seen that coming more and been willing to actually make that connection more since it's this is not just an incidental thing.

That's that's a lot. This is now part of the core philosophy, you know, in terms of there's a national sin that we don't know how to repent of.

And we're actually have to repent for things that people did. And I don't believe, Eric, I've ever said that.

Can you recognize certain elements of how the the processes and institutions we have are set up so as not to to favor one over the other and not be guilty of that conflated

Kendi, you know, Ibram Kendi? Yes, I think you can you can recognize that.

I think there's a ways of looking at where I'm like, yeah, I understand that. I mean, I always love a great example.

This is the Rooney rule in the NFL where we we actually practice this at our church.

And I don't think this is unbiblical DEI. When you ask me to look for pastor. New pastors, my network is a bunch of white pastors, so guess who ends up getting the calls to come and an interview for that?

Well, it ends up being white pastors. Well, there are a lot of very qualified black pastors that could actually serve in these roles and would actually help us like we got an outreach to North Carolina Central, which is a large

African -American. There are several people that would be great at that. I just don't naturally have the networks. And so so I have to actually be intentional about dialing into some of those networks and saying, hey,

I'd like some candidates so I can consider everybody just because me in this position of power, my networks end up serving one part of the community that I'm familiar with.

So the NFL said, you know, you don't have to hire. I'm not trying to defend the NFL, but you have to hire the African -American coach.

But you ought to to hear some intentional ways to get them into your orbit for you to consider them.

I think that's a very appropriate way. And we can recognize that I'm persuaded by certain studies, you know, that I've seen that that have, you know, just just the name recognition of what it does and certain things.

I'm like, yeah, those are those are valid questions. I don't know if if you have to necessarily I don't feel as a pastor,

I need to settle those questions. But I can say that those are at least valid. And I can say that there's an intentionality in in seeking diversification that is not unbiblical.

I mean, when, you know, when the Jewish people are being, excuse me, the Grecian Jews are being neglected in Act six, it's very clear they chose specific leaders that had

Hellenistic names, which meant that that race and ethnicity was a factor in how because they knew that it would help them do their job better.

I actually think that's all very biblical and very healthy. I think, you know, D .A. Carson used to say error is truth out of proportion.

And there is a version of this kind of intentionality that becomes idolatrous and unjust.

There's also a wise use of it that is very biblical, very healthy. You know, when

I when I look at our senior adult ministry, when I say that I want to look for somebody to lead that senior adult ministry that's, you know, over 50, that's not ageism.

That's just wise pastoring. You know, it's when I say I've got an outreach here to Africa or a city and I'd really like an

African -American to lead this to help, you know, that's not that's not racism, that's not D .I.,

it's not reverse racism, that's just being smart. It's being it's being act six wise and how

I approach leadership. So like I said in the beginning, J .D. Greer is in this book rehashing the third way, what he's really taught for the last 10 years, but with an addendum, with something that's a little different, slightly different.

And you hear it in that clip where he is, as the political winds,

I think, have shifted. He is also shifting somewhat with them. So you hear two things in there. You hear, number one,

I guess the Democrat Party was worse than I thought. But on what specifically on LGBTQ stuff.

Right. And that's where he focuses in the book, too. It's that's the issue and abortion also.

But I mean, let's be honest, in 2020, wasn't that pretty obvious to everyone that abortion?

I mean, the Democratic Party platform was really bad then on these issues. So, you know, what is he talking about?

He's he's doing the shift as if he was ignorant. He didn't really know how bad the Democratic Party was. And that's the great,

I guess, sin that he had. And it's not really even he downplays it as if it's not that big of a thing.

He was sincere. He was ignorant, but he just had a miscalculation that the Democrats, he didn't know they were going to go this direction.

You know, they were going to get this bad. Well, they were already that bad when he was pushing the third way stuff and drawing moral equivalencies, which he admits to doing.

So I don't know. To me, that shakes confidence, especially with a guy who's the president of the

Southern Baptist Convention, who's leads the largest Southern Baptist church in the Raleigh -Durham area, one of the largest churches in North Carolina.

That's a little bit of a I don't know, just a confident shaker, because you're thinking this guy has tremendous authority and influence.

And you got to be very careful what you say on those levels, because there's a lot of people listening to you and you're setting the tone for more than just yourself.

And you've got something that wrong, like you just really didn't do your research on who the Democrats were.

That's a little concerning to me. Now, the other thing you hear is J .D. Greer talking about DEI and he waffles on this.

He actually waffles a little more. I just I actually cut the clip because it wasn't necessary for you to hear the whole thing.

But he's saying, look, I did support DEI, but I didn't support the bad kind of DEI. Right. I supported it.

But in the same way that you would hire someone who's qualified for a particular task. Right.

If you're going to hire someone who is going to minister to the Latino community, don't you want them to speak

Spanish? Right. That's the kind of thing. And so that's all I was doing was trying to make sure that we had qualified people.

Now, that's not exactly accurate, as you can see from these clips.

So at the Summit Church, we have explored, for example, what are ways that she can lead in the church that do not carry pastoral authority or violate the spirit of First Timothy 2.

We have gone literally through our entire staff directory, through a couple of hundred different positions on staff and just asked,

OK, where have we just traditionally assigned this to a man when it really could be done in a way that a that a woman could lead it where somebody who is not an elder could lead that.

It's led to a redefinition of dozens of jobs in our church where we know that women that are very capable as leaders and capable as administrators and capable of vast ministry, vision and wisdom can lead in those areas in ways that don't necessarily carry elder like authority.

We've asked and this has probably been the most, by the way, I know not everybody here is Southern Baptists, but that's a question that those of you that are

Southern Baptists, we've got to ask in the convention at large, where has this just been traditionally something that men do when it is really something

God intends for the larger body of Christ to be leading together? We've asked whether and this has been the most painful one, whether we are committed at the

Summit Church to empowering women as we are empowering men at our church. If you're a guy and you say,

I want to go into ministry, there are like five different pipelines you can jump into yesterday. And the same is not true for ladies in our church and sisters in Christ.

And it's something that we've been humbly and repentantly trying to to address. We've done all this while seeking not to minimize, but to celebrate the distinctive roles that God has given to men and to women.

Now, listen, complementarianism is not a box to be checked in the church as a doctrine to be celebrated. It is part of God's beautiful design.

We believe it is a beautiful aspect of creation whereby God reveals more of his glory than he would have if he had just created one gender alone.

When God looked at Adam and he said, not good, if he created somebody else just like him, he would have said, not good, not good.

It had to be something different that was equal, but work together in ways that demonstrated God's glory.

These distinctions are beautiful in creating the woman as the helper. God was not creating a diminutive servant.

I mean, consider the fact that the only other person who's referred to in another being in scripture that's referred to as the helper is

God himself. Through her, God supplies an essential element of all human relationships, relational connectivity.

And that is probably, of course, greatest experience in motherhood, but it's certainly not exclusively there. So in the role that I have as president of the

SBC, I know that one of my main tasks is doing whatever I can to help address that a little bit. One of the things that I do, and this is more about Southern Metropolitan than you'll ever want to know, but one of my main roles is to appoint people on committees who will then appoint trustees who end up shaping the institutions and providing leadership and accountability.

I just tell you of all the appointments that I've made, two thirds of them are either women or they are people of color.

I really do that for two reasons. One, that really is the future. Already, by the way, this is something it's hard through an unbelievable act of generosity.

Already, right now, today, 20 percent of Southern Baptist membership is people of color, which is something honestly, knowing our history,

I do not understand. It is an act of extraordinary generosity. But already, even with things the way they are, the membership is already 20 percent people of color.

Sixty three percent of all the churches that Southern Baptist planted last year were led by people of color.

So it is the present. It is the very quickly coming future. That's the first reason. Secondly, we need their wisdom.

It's not like this act of grace of, oh, from up here, I just want to be graciously share the stage because it's no,

I need the wisdom in a changing, changing culture. There are things that God has put in this part of the body that I would be a much poorer

Christian, a much poorer leader. And there are blind spots I will never see until God has filled his church with a variety of people and the kinds of people that that make up the diversity of the church.

J .D. Greer wanted to find more places for women to be in leadership positions. I remember when he

I think it was after the John MacArthur go home thing, interacting with Beth Moore, that we need to rip down all hierarchies.

And this is the kind of thing that he would do. He'd put out like in a sermon that got a lot of press, how the fall affects us all.

And he's talking about how we should be the strongest advocates for gay rights essentially.

And it's like, what are you talking? You know how everyone hears that, right? Those representing churches will be known as the friends of the

LGBTQ community. And I think the question to us as church leaders, have you drawn the gay and lesbian community close?

Are you an advocate against abuse, injustice and discrimination on their behalf?

Isn't that what you would do for a friend? I do want to apologize to the gay and lesbian community on behalf of my community and me for not standing up against abuse and discrimination directed towards you.

That was wrong and we need your forgiveness. Stand up and be among the fiercest advocates for the preservation of the dignity and the rights of LGBT people.

You have to think someone at his level with sermons that are as vetted as his, that are manuscripted, that someone is with the influence he has, that's got to be something that's going through a process of approval.

Like you didn't just like say that, right? But he did. And there are some things

I know he's backpedaled on, like using preferred pronouns, I think was one of them. But there's a lot of things he hasn't.

And he was a train wreck, in my opinion, for years, a moral train wreck when it came to social, political issues and how to navigate them as a

Christian. And now he's looking back on this and he's saying, well,

I didn't I don't really have that much to to go back on. I just didn't realize the Democrats were going to get this bad on this particular issue on LGBTQ stuff.

And I mean, he was always technically against homosexuality and transgenderism while at the same time trying to kind of soften the way that he talked about them in comparison to previous

SBC presidents, previous evangelical leaders, that kind of thing. And so that was his kind of that's where I would put him.

But he was always technically pro -life, right? There was these things that he always had, but that's where evangelicals were coming from, right, to move if you were going to move them.

And I'm not saying he necessarily is a nefarious plan. A lot of people think that. But if you were going to move evangelicals to the left, you have to exist in their communities first.

And you can't come out saying, I'm pro -abortion or I'm pro homosexuality. You're not going to get to those positions.

You have to do it very slowly and gradually. And that's the only way it'll really happen.

I mean, that's how the left has subverted institutions in the United States for years. It's actually taken them a century or more to subvert some of the institutions that we have, because that is how they operated.

They were progressive, as the name implies. So anyway, Greer looks back on these things and has just a very different rose colored glasses, in my opinion, than what

I remember from this and what his own the words coming out of his mouth seem to indicate.

Now, that's, I think, the defense against guys like myself.

That's the the wall to say, look, I am not a liberal because he's gotten so much bad press for this.

He has been collared that way because of so many things he's done. And I think this is an attempt to say, look, that's not

I'm not that. But then he's going to rehash his entire philosophy that got him there in the first place.

And that's what his book is. So I give you the book called An Everyday Revolutionary, and the subtitle for it is

How to Transcend the Culture War and Transform the World. I mean, that's third way stuff, right? I'm transcending the culture war is what

I'm doing. And I call it a third way remix.

Here you have a political spectrum and you have moderate in the middle, you have on one side, the far right, one side, the far left.

And this is the typical political spectrum. Some people bring this into horseshoe theory and say, well, the far right and the far left, they become the same thing.

I actually have a very different political spectrum. I look at there's God's order on one side, and that's what really a conservative is.

Someone who wants to preserve that it is mediated through tradition. So you're preserving the elements in society where it is mediated.

And there's a the good, the true and the beautiful are present in some form.

There's a benefit to the people who live there. There's arrangements that have been formed organically over time that are for the common good of the people.

All of these is this kind of delicate matrix that takes time to develop. You're trying to preserve the good things in that, recognizing they can be destroyed very soon.

And so it's really a an adherence to the the order that God has laid down on the right.

That's the conservative disposition. And then on the left, you have innovative approaches to man's nature and how we should arrange things that are more ideologically driven, that are essentially intended to reimagine and revolutionize the order that we live in to create a different order, a new order, a better order, an order that will bring about some kind of a utopian scheme.

That's how I look at it. But this is the common political spectrum that most people are thinking.

And the third way, if I could add to this graphic, I would imagine above it, there's this Christian kind of position that hovers over the whole thing and it doesn't really land anywhere.

Right. I think Keller, Tim Keller had corrected this once because he said people were saying that it's moderation, that it's not a principle of moderation.

It's a principle of transcendence, that the Christian view is above all of this. And and so I think

Greer channels this. He says that we should this is really the long and short of his philosophy, right?

We should avoid a partisan label because it's imbalanced. It alienates certain demographics.

We should lean more progressive on social justice and we should lean more conservative on personal morality.

That's basically the third way. That's how it fleshes out when you apply it. So I'll read some quotes here, avoiding the partisan label.

The church I pastor, he says, tries to stay out of most partisan issues unless they involve issues of clear biblical morality.

We want to be faithful to teach all that the Bible teaches. But we also know that if we get labeled, the

Republican church or the Democrat church will immediately lose access to 50 percent of our mission field. Now, this is,

I think, the thing that drives him more than anything. There's in his mind, if you go down this path and you lean towards one side, you're going to be labeled.

You're going to alienate an audience. He says there's a time to bow out of a discussion, even when we know we're right, he says, because taking sides in a certain discussion keeps us from one thing we're supposed to do.

The one thing that only we, as Jesus's witnesses, can do. And I know for a fact that the very few lost

Republicans go to church of my pastor friend who identifies with Democrats. So he talks about a pastor who leans

Democrat and he says most won't even visit his church if they're Republican. And then he says, I got a pastor friend who also has a

Democrat church or sorry, a Republican church. And he says it's the same thing there. Like the

Democrats won't go to my Republican pastor friend and are either fully engaging the communities God has called them to reach.

I'm not their judge. Well, he kind of is. He says, I know deep down they want to see justice and that's a good thing.

But I do know why Jesus said we're here to testify, to be his witnesses, to Republicans, Democrats and independents.

That trumps everything. Now, imagine, you know, even for Greer, think about this in the context of,

I mean, he loves to bring up slavery. Right. And I actually, you know, tend to think that there were

Christians who very much have left us a record of wanting to even end the practice and the abuses within the practice in slavery, but do so in a more responsible, gradual way.

And I actually think that it was totally permissible and fine to have those

Christians in good standing in a church. Right. But I know Greer doesn't agree with that. Greer thinks this is the worst kind of thing, any compromise that that would be a compromise with it in his mind.

That's a compromise with slavery. Yes, we had tragically inconsistent and sinful beginnings with our forefathers even affirming the right of slave owners to be ordained to ministry.

But eventually the gospel corrected that. Anything short of absolute immediate abolition is just a compromise.

Take this into 1850, though, I don't think Greer would. Right. Or take this into another time period that, you know, 1960s, you know, you've got

Dixiecrats or something. Right. Would Greer say, well, I don't want to alienate everyone. I got to have those parties involved, too.

I got it. I don't think he would say. All the other parties in those time periods should be you should like sort of cater to them, make sure that you don't go too hard against their political philosophy, because if you do, you might alienate them.

He has his limitations. You know, that's the funny part to me. I don't think this is an absolute kind of philosophy, but it's treated as an absolute philosophy because it's part of being a witness, part of being a witness, knows no boundaries.

Right. As far as time and context, like time and place, you've got to be a witness.

So there is such a thing as being wise. But there's also this principle and Greer gets into this.

Actually, this is kind of funny to me. There is this principle that when the Bible speaks clearly about something, you have to speak clearly about it.

You have to come down morally where the Bible comes down morally. And Greer will even admit this later.

Right. And so there's this, I think, tension in the way that he approaches the whole topic, which will become even more apparent,

I think, as we go through this. But he thinks there's you're going to alienate an audience. You just don't want to do that.

And as soon as you make alienating an audience the standard, I think you've lost it. You're going to get in trouble because you're going to let them determine what you say and what you don't say.

Also, it'll make you imbalanced. He says truth without grace means you are a culture war hero for the right. Grace without truth makes you a beloved religious pundit for the mainstream left.

Both are worthless in bringing salvation. Put them together, though, and they become gospel salt. So to be gospel salt,

I guess it takes a little bit of the right. It takes a little bit of the left. It takes that truth. It takes that grace. I don't buy this at all.

You really think the left is just full of grace, right? Not truth. I mean, come on, I don't think I don't like the party that is thinking that it's

OK to kill your baby. And that's one issue is the party of grace. They may use toxic empathy to get their way, but really, come on.

And this just gives seeds way too much to the left here. But this is part of being rational, balanced, nuanced self that can appeal to both sides.

And he says, essentially, we need to lean more progressive on social justice and conservative and personal, personal morality.

And I give you a few issues here, gender ideology. And he says, I put out a video explaining what was being voted on on school gender indoctrination, and I urged our members to reject the measure.

So he gets some blowback from this from local press. And he says, look, I made the right stand here on gender ideology.

But then look what he says about the American dream. He says he was a keynote speaker at the MLK Jr. Rally in Durham.

He says, I explained how it was the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that transforming a middle class congregation devoted to the

American dream into one seeking to love and bless its city. Now, listen to that line. He says the entire city council, plus the mayor and all the staff, gave our church an extended standing ovation.

So look, we got all the standing ovation. And what did I what was the message I brought them? I said, look how the grace of our

Lord transformed the people in my church from loving the American dream to loving Jesus. Now, it's like either that's the worst, most poor way you can phrase something that's legitimate or that's just not legitimate.

And you know what you're doing. The idea that the American dream somehow this goes back to David Platt's radical and that whole.

Movement that came out of that, that the American dream is somehow the opposite of Jesus, the opposite of the church, the opposite of righteousness, it's associated with sin, it's evil somehow because it represents some kind of a selfishness.

It's wrong to want the picket fence and the house and the financial freedom and.

The stability that comes with all of that, you shouldn't really pursue those things, apparently. And whereas Proverbs even talks about laying up treasure for your children's children so that they have an inheritance.

To me, bashing this now, you could bash someone's misplaced priorities if they're if they are pursuing that over Jesus, if they're disobeying

Christ or cheating or whatever it is so they can have financial security. But the

American dream is basically having taking your own responsibility, being able to grill on the weekends.

I mean, call them grill Americans and mow your own lawn. And I mean, it's actually a kind of a healthy thing in a way.

It's you're not relying on other people. This is sort of a bulwark against socialism is the aspiration that I want to control my own life and destiny.

And to juxtapose that with Jesus, it's some people reading this might not catch it, but I noticed it right away because I'm so used to hearing this kind of thing from progressives.

They hate the American dream. And it stands in the way of socialism. Basically, that's why they hate it. Greer doesn't say that's the reason, but I mean, he's look at the audience.

He's this is a Democrat audience. Primarily, this is the MLK Jr. Rally.

And again, we're not supposed to be offending certain sides. We're supposed to be appealing to everyone on across the political spectrum.

But did MLK Jr. do that? So he's speaking at this event of an activist honoring an activist.

And this is what he says. And then what does he say about the Democratic Party says maybe for economic reasons or because of social justice or foreign policy concerns or for some other reason, you lean more to the political left and people know that about you.

If so, your voice must be the loudest in speaking out against the degradation of human life. The destructive nature of gender redefinition narratives and the other destructive ideologies explicitly embraced by today's

Democratic Party platform. I'm glad he said that. However, what do you notice about this? If you can still be a

Democrat and vote Democrat for economic reasons, for social justice and foreign policy concerns, perfectly fine to be a

Democrat. You just got to make sure if you're going to be a Democrat, you got to draw some lines and say that there's these other things they stand for that aren't good.

And he says the same about Republicans. So on the topic of the Democratic Party, he's not he's willing to say that there's all these issues they stand for that are potentially good.

When it comes to American heritage, it's been another issue here. He says our Bible must never be wrapped in an American flag and the

Jesus testimony must never be conflated with the American history or his mission equated Jesus's mission with American success.

Flawed human government charters do not belong adjacent to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he cites this poll where I guess a large group of Christians, I don't remember the percentage, say they believe the

Constitution was inspired by God. Now, I don't know how this poll was conducted, exactly how the question was asked.

I can think of a way in which you could say that the Constitution was derived from people who had biblical ideas and concepts because that's the world they came from.

And in a in a loose sense, you could say inspiration, just like an artist is inspired by God in their minds to write a

Christian song. That's not the honest us. That's not God breathed like we know scripture to be.

But I seriously don't think a majority of American Christians think the

Bible and the Constitution are on the same level. There may be Christians who do think that the Constitution is inspired in that way.

I think there probably are, whether it's, you know, 50 percent or whatever the number was he cited.

I don't I doubt that. But here's the thing, what's the proper way to navigate something like this?

Is it to say that, well, we just can't associate the Bible and Jesus with our heritage?

We just we got to be careful conflating the purposes of Jesus with the purposes of our country.

I mean, how would you look at it this way? What would that be like if you put this on the home level and say, well, you got to be careful.

There's the purposes of Jesus. And then there's the survival of your family. There's and your

Christian family, right? You can't conflate the purposes of Jesus in the Bible with the purposes of your

Christian family for existence or the inspiration you draw from your Christian heritage because your father and grandfather were pastors or good

Christians like you would say that's well, that's really silly. Obviously, there's some commonality there.

Obviously, Jesus has impacted our family, and that's why the family's going in the direction it's going.

That's why we're stable. That's why we have all these blessings. You can say the same thing about America, a nationality, even an empire composed of nationalities is essentially the extension of a family or families.

There's a purpose. There's a telos. There's an identity. There's a history.

And yes, we have a Christian history. And to do this whole Russell Moore style like, well, the cross and the constitution are obviously there are two different things that have different purposes, but there's a relationship that we can recognize here.

Why would we not do that? Right. So I just think it's like stretching. But that's just a few issues he comes down on.

And what you'll notice is that there's an effort to kind of be progressive sounding on one issue and then kind of conservative sounding on another, which is kind of how third wayists do it.

And I think a lot of his motivation is to overcome the image, right, there's this image that the media has of Christians, he says on page 44, failing to apply our

Christian worldview to political questions has been one of the things that has most tarnished our witness, the persistence of the institutionalized discrimination and Jim Crow laws in those parts of the

South or evangelical churches where the strongest, for example, has undermined gospel testimony for multiple generations.

The United States popular media outlets still depict strong evangelical convictions and racial discrimination as synonymous.

On page 52, he says, when our name is associated with a political party, our hearers associate us with whatever evil that party practices, just as the early missionaries did.

We have to distance ourselves from political corruption associated with our name. Otherwise, our gospel is undermined.

That's our loudest protest should be against abuses associated with our tribe because the reputation of Jesus among Babylonians is paramount in our objectives.

And Babylonians are just basically the world is watching. Do you agree? It was like always saying the world is watching at the

SBC convention. He's saying those are the Babylonians. They're watching us and we got to make sure that they see us rebuking our own political side, which apparently he presumes is the

Republicans, which is funny. He says, I'm the former president of the SBC. Most everyone assumes, therefore,

I'm a Republican because statistically SBC people, though overwhelmingly Republican, thus

I feel especially compelled to be clear about any weaknesses and consistencies or right evils associated, whether rightly or wrongly, with the political rights, since people associate me with it and associate

Jesus with me. He doesn't say he's a Republican, by the way, you notice that I don't know if he is or not, but he's saying

I'm associated with it because I'm the president or was the president of the SBC, so I got to be even harder on the Republicans.

That's my job because the world's watching. I'm thinking if the world's watching, what are the sins of the world? And he's talking specifically to,

I think, about the media. This is a media image. If you're going back to Jim Crow and stuff and you're saying, well, that's what the media thinks

Christians are. This is a media derived image that they have. For example, the media doesn't highlight the negative stereotypes and perceptions that would attach themselves to progressives, to secularists, to atheists, even though the 20th century is the century where there are more mass murders by atheists than any other century.

And I mean, those were the culprits. Right. So they don't but they don't do that association thing, really, because there they accommodate that.

They really want to smear Christians, though. They want to make they want to highlight all the negative stories they can about things like Jim Crow and slavery.

They want to try to emphasize the fact that these were in areas that were heavily Christian. They don't talk about the other social dynamics at play.

For example, I mean, if you read the C. Van Woodward on Jim Crow, he talks about this started in the north.

It came south and the south is where you had the large populations of former slaves.

And so this is where you're going to see the most friction because of populations. As the Great Migration happened, you actually saw quite a bit of real bad friction in northern cities.

I believe there's a quote where Martin Luther King Jr. says the people of Chicago can teach the people of Mississippi how to hate something like that.

And so I don't know if you just and I don't have time to get into all of it, but if you go through just the history and all the social dynamics and what was happening at the time and why it went down the way it went down and how race relations were poisoned during Reconstruction, et cetera, the story makes a lot more sense.

And you can understand why Christians came down the way they did and why even the priority they had in the 50s and 60s was the way it was when they're more concerned about the

Cold War and thinking that communists are fomenting division and including in the civil rights movement than they are about civil rights itself.

That would be majority Americans, not just Christians. I know there's been some polling on this. And so anyway,

I'm just saying you can contextualize this and show the media narrative isn't exactly accurate. They just want you to associate

Christians with deprivation, with injustice, with bigotry, and they're going to paint it in the worst possible light.

Well, the question is, why would you cater to them? That's the question I have. If the world is watching, if the media is the one that's curating this image, they're not your friend.

You're not going to convince them. I don't think you need to just stick a needle in their eye necessarily. Donald Trump does that a lot, right?

I mean, I don't think you as a pastor, you have to do that. But I think. If anything, if they're the ones that are watching and that's your audience, these

Babylonians, you got to preach against their sins, right? Like, I don't know, I feel like I can make an argument for like we got to I got to be harder.

I mean, I got to be harder against all sin, but I got to be hard against the people that are supposedly watching me, like at least the sins that they accommodate, the sins that they think are somehow.

OK, and normalized and so forth, I mean, what is the prophetic voice do in scripture? What does

Jesus do? He he calls out the sins in the audience to which he's speaking, you know, and you can.

You can do that with Christians in the church, you can do that with those who are outside the church who are watching. But Greer's emphasis is the world watching this.

And so they got to see you correcting your own people. Right. And this is what, you know, this is what Russell Moore does all the time.

He goes to David French, you know, go to the New York Times and write the op ed against and reinforce how bigoted those evangelicals are to the people who already think they're bigoted.

It's like, well, that's really accomplishing a lot, you know. So he wants to overcome this image, this image that sees.

And, you know, look, I mean, it's we know what this is. This is the Republican Party's Donald Trump. It's evangelicals voted for this guy.

And so we really need to let people know we're not for him as much as you think we're for him. At the same time, we have to we can't be social justice activists.

So I know you're going to think this is muddled as I'm going through it. And it is that's that's because it is we got to recognize that the countercultural witnesses were supposed to be are that's more important being countercultural witness than being a social justice activist.

Now, in light of what Greer has said in the past, this is kind of rich because Greer really did carry the water for social justice.

I would say he was a social justice activism within the in the constraints of the Southern Baptist Convention.

He went about as far as I think you could go in the social justice direction while being in that particular denomination.

And here's what he has to say about it now. Activism is not sufficient. Activism is imprudent. Activism is a distraction.

And if anything, activism is a byproduct of the gospel, right? It's not really what you should be involved in directly.

It's a byproduct of witness. So here's some quotes. He says Tim Keller has noted the overall project of mainline protestantism has failed.

It overly adapted to Western secular culture. And as such, it can't offer our society an alternative or counterpoint to what the dominant culture already offers.

He goes on to say, get ready to be weird like Daniel. Believers in Babylon today will be tested in everything we do seek to demonstrate the beauty of our home country.

So this sort of like this world is not my home. I'm just passing through and I'm passing through as a witness. And I can't do what the mainline

Protestants did because the mainline Protestants, I mean, they're basically just carbon copying the Democrat Party.

And of course, there's nothing then to contrast that. Why would you go to their church? And that's a good point. He's making a good point here.

Tim Keller is making a good point here. That's true. So we got to still keep our doctrine, some of our doctrine at least.

Right. So that we're not the same as the world in every sense. We don't just like become a practical atheist in every way.

But, you know, you can't just like carbon copy the world on these things. Activism is insufficient.

It's not going to get you. We have to have something else in addition to it. Right. And this is true. I agree with this point. I do.

He then these are the points that I think are even more interesting, though. So you're going to be weird. OK, he says you're going to be weird.

That's part of the, I guess, being like Daniel being countercultural. You're going to be weird. Now, Daniel was pretty countercultural, right?

Got thrown into a lion's den for it. He says basically that activism is also imprudent.

Maybe you'd say that if I'm going to be involved politically, I should start by marching against systemic racism or on behalf of the poor.

And it's just funny, J .D. Greer saying this, because I'm thinking J .D. Greer is the guy who said Black Lives Matter, the phrase, at least that is a gospel issue.

And he goes on to even say in the same message that this is something that should rectify disparities in policing.

A priority. We realize that especially in a moment like this one, we need our brothers and sisters of color.

We need the wisdom and leadership that God has written into their community. We know that many in our country, particularly our brothers and sisters of color right now, are hurting.

Southern Baptists, we need to say it clearly as a gospel issue. Black Lives Matter.

Of course, Black Lives Matter. Our black brothers and sisters are made in the image of God. Black Lives Matter because Jesus died for them.

Black lives are a beautiful part of God's creation and they make up an essential and beautiful part of his body.

And we would be poor as a people without them and other minorities in our midst. Let me echo my friend,

Jimmy Scroggins, pastor down in Florida, and saying that Black Lives Matter is an important thing to say right now because we are seeing in our country the evidence of specific injustices that many of our black brothers and sisters and friends have been telling us about for years.

And by the way, let's not respond by saying, oh, well, all lives matter. Of course, all lives matter.

But I've heard it described this way. Say you're in a group or with a group at a restaurant and the waiter brings the food to everybody except for one guy at your table, your friend

Bob. And so you say to the waiter, hey, excuse me, Bob deserves food. And somebody at your table corrects you to say, no, no, all of us deserve food.

Well, that's true. But you're missing the point. Bob is sitting there by himself without food. And so we are saying we understand that that that that that many of our black brothers and sisters have perceived for many years that the processes, the due processes of justice have not worked for them as they have for some others in our country.

And by the way, like Jimmy, like Dr. Scroggins says, let's spare each other the quotation of stats right now.

You know, if you talk to some black friends, you'll know that they can tell you about their experiences and how some of them can be quite different from from others in our country.

We want rights and privileges to be extended to everybody. So we need to examine our policing, our police departments, because Black Lives Matter.

And this is somehow part of the gospel, the gospel issue. And at the same time, it's like I'm not endorsing the organization, but I'm basically doing what the organization wants.

That's what they want. Look at these disparities specifically in policing and we need to address them.

So like, how is it different what he's saying? He's just not going as far as they do on some things like LGBT stuff.

But he says activism is essentially also a distraction. And Luke 12, instead of giving a specific, you might even say political answer to his social justice complaint, which was dividing an inheritance,

Jesus withheld his opinion, involving himself in this question would have taken Jesus away from his primary agenda, seeking and saving the lost.

So he sat this one out so he could stay on mission. And I'm thinking, J .D. Greer didn't sit out the

COVID stuff, the BLM stuff, the Me Too stuff. He didn't sit out any of that.

So like, what are you talking about? Probably we need to be able to give some talking points because somebody will say like a white friend said to me that was hundreds of years ago.

I'm good. So what do you say? What can what talking points can we give besides just maybe a verse, a script or something like that to just say, especially if they really want to know?

Karen, I think that's a great question because I think that's where particularly a lot of those that are in the majority culture are like, what do we say here?

We've talked about the parable, the Good Samaritan, that just because I'm not the one, that doesn't mean that I'm relieved of responsibility.

But I think in the United States, it even goes a little bit deeper because we recognize that because certain people defined by race were in power for so long, they created some of these systems that have worked better for them, quite frankly, than they have for other people.

And just if you go back and look at the history of whether it's Jim Crow laws or practices like redlining and some of the long term damage, there's a political commentator and he's very conservative.

Let me just add that. So this is not just sort of a left wing talking point. He says the word systemic used to really bother me because I thought it meant that the laws themselves were bad.

And he said, we got that correct in the civil rights movement. And so why are we talking about systemic laws? Here's how he defined it.

And I thought it was really good. His name is David French. He says a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations and things like movies and books and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity.

It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with the color of one's skin, whiteness and disadvantage associated with color to endure and adapt over time.

Structural racism is not something that a few people or institutions choose to practice. Instead, it's been a feature of the social, economic and political systems in which we all exist.

Yeah, that's really good. And I think it's a great summary. I would, however, say that we also need to understand that the systemic racism is not just that the due process is not just happening.

It has been an intentional thing because even in the text, it talks about this matter arose because false brothers infiltrated our ranks to spy out the freedom.

So it's also in a very intentional very thing that has happened over the 13th

Amendment, after the 13th Amendment and what minorities and African -Americans are saying is still happening today.

So it's not just that it's happening and the system is not working for African -Americans, but we're talking about a system that when we talk about systematic racism, that is intentionally still trying to oppress.

And I think that that's really what's important about these types of conversations is being able to have these conversations where we can begin to talk and have real conversations where we can speak the truth and love.

Right. And in speaking of the truth and love, there may be some things that may not sit right with us, but we have to stay in the fight.

Right. Because what you see is Paul willing to travel all the way to Jerusalem to stand before the powers that be to be able to address and to advocate and to fight for to fight for and to give voice to a group that did not have voice in, you know, in the church.

And so throughout this time, ultimately, that's really what we want to do over these next five sessions.

When you first read these stories in The Houston Chronicle, what was your immediate visceral reaction?

Oh, it's one of an absolute horror to think that this was happening in churches around the country.

I mean, we've known that this has been an issue for for decades. In fact, this past summer, the

Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution condemning abuse and and calling churches to take this very seriously and take the precautions.

And so I'd appointed a study group back in July of last year that was really going to study this issue from top to bottom to try to analyze, like, what are the where are the best practices?

What are the places that we are missing the mark? How can we do better? And so this study group's been working for six or seven months on, in fact, it was getting ready to issue a report on their findings tonight at an immediate of the executive committee of the

Southern Baptist Convention. It's just rich coming from him because I'm like, you know, meet J .D. Greer, J .D. Greer. He says activism is essentially a byproduct.

So it shouldn't be like our primary focus, right? Because the Roman Empire was filled with the political problems, institutionalized injustices, far worse than anything we currently deal with in Western countries.

He's right about that. And yet the apostles devoted very little. Well, he's right. Yeah, I'll just say he's right about that.

Technology does enable us to do certain things that the Romans weren't able to do because they lack the technology.

But we'll give him that. And yet the apostles devoted very little canonical ink to addressing any of them.

The gospel they preach laid the bedrock for the most needed reforms, but the apostles did not lead them. Like, OK, well.

This could be used to justify a pastor who wants to stay silent on. Moral issues, even ones that J .D.

Greer thinks are a big deal, saying, well, look, I'm just trying to be a witness, not be an activist.

So it's like, which one is it, are we supposed to be activists, are we supposed to be witnesses? I mean, got to be a countercultural witness, but that's more important than being a social justice activist.

But we're also supposed to engage the culture is why I say this whole thing's kind of a mess. We have to realize

Christians are outside the Overton window, which is good that he realizes that cultivate a theology of place and then motivate change as a witness, not a warrior.

So he says the new reality and he invokes Aaron Ren's three worlds changes the rules of engagement, meaning we're in a negative world where Christianity is viewed as a negative now and that we should have an exile identity, understanding our exile identity, meaning we have a place in heaven and that's our final home.

That identity is key to understanding our role in our new society as well. OK, so I got to think of myself as a citizen of heaven.

But then he says also, well, we have to have a theology of place. So we've got to prioritize being a witness in our place, a theology of places and awareness that wherever you are,

God placed you there for an ax when a purpose right to be witnesses. We have to have realistic goals, he says, as my friend

John Mark Comer says, I may not be able to solve the great systemic injustices of our time, but I can cook some of the best pizza you've ever had.

Well, I wish 2020 J .D. Greer thought about this. I don't it's just so weird to hear it coming from him.

Like if he would have said the same stuff in 2020, it would have been viewed as counter signaling the social revolution.

And then we have to motivate change as a witness, not a warrior, the apostle Paul did not march around the Roman forum with a sign saying slaves lives matter.

Yet the words he wrote in Galatians three that in the Messiah there is no longer slave or free, there's no longer male or female that lay the bedrock for the abolition of slavery and the founding of feminism.

Now, he thinks these are like really good things to be found in Galatians three.

This is the foundation of feminism is in Galatians three. Who would have known? And the foundation of abolishing slavery.

Now, I don't have time to get into a whole long thing about this, but don't the question you should ask yourself.

Is especially since feminism is very kind of enlightenment invention, this is a very new and I know there's the

I know the feminists who go back in history and try to find it in all these other places, but feminism as an ism is a new thing.

It really doesn't go back any farther than the seventeen hundreds, not in any serious form, and it didn't really even have social.

Mobility until the 19th century, so this is feminism is very new.

You really think that for that amount of time, for centuries, people just didn't really understand what

Paul really meant there. And all of a sudden, you know, a bunch of Christians in name that weren't

Christians in doctrine who weren't Orthodox, who were mainly heretics, people who were transcendentalists and Unitarians and Quakers and some of them atheists.

This group who met in Seneca Falls and created first wave feminism, like they finally realized what

Paul really meant in that. Or do you think maybe the context of Galatians says what he really meant, you know, and it motivated the abolition of slavery?

I mean, if you view your slave as someone who is made in the image of God, who you are responsible to treat well, which is nothing new in a sense, the

Old Testament had laws about this, but you had to practice those laws personally in an environment where there wouldn't be retribution if you broke those laws because it was a pagan slave system in the

Greco Roman Empire. This, I mean, you know, did, would that stops abuse of slavery?

Sure. Would that stop, um, recognizing this as your brother in Christ? This isn't an animal.

This is like, sure. Would that destroy the labor arrangement itself?

I mean, it didn't in the apostles time that continued, they didn't seem to connect that dot, but again, it's like, so centuries later this was connected or, or, or were there other economic, uh, and other social reasons that this, um, came to be?

I mean, slavery has existed in every, just about every society throughout time up until fairly recently, it wasn't until really with modern technology that you've seen, uh, the abolition of chattel slavery.

And as that's happened, we've had the introduction of other forms of slavery.

Uh, we have more slaves in the world now than ever. We have sex slavery. We have, um,

I would say debt slavery is off the charts for, if you're an American, I mean, you, you are just, you have the national debt and then you have your own consumer debt, and that is a form of slavery.

You're not your own person. Essentially you are owned by other people. And, and, oh, it's not the same

John. Well, no, but it is a form of slavery. So it was the welfare system. It is especially generational welfare and the prison system and the way that works.

And there's the, there's all these other forms that people just don't seem to think are slavery, but they function that way.

And I just, I don't know. I don't, I don't, I'm really skeptical about this, that we can get on our high horse so much about modern life when, yeah, like I I'm, I want self -government.

I want, I think that's the thing, if anything, that Christianity has contributed to ending of chattel slavery would be the idea that, uh, each person ought to be free to follow the commands of the

Lord. And that promotes the idea of self -government, which we're losing because of people not limiting their decisions and making bad decisions.

And so decisions will be limited for them. We're going to get bigger government when there's anarchy, but the, I think the general, um, flow of a

Christian society is going to be, if people actually become Christians, take Christianity seriously, practice the principles of Proverbs is going to be towards more and more freedom because people are going to take responsibility for themselves and treat their neighbor with kindness.

And in a world like that, you don't, you don't need slavery, right?

You people, uh, don't have to be managed as closely because they are managing themselves.

They're limiting themselves. And that's really, I think ultimately with Christianity, if you want to say there's a contribution, it's that personal virtue that has enabled, and I'm going too long on this, but, um, but I, I just think it's really weird and it reflects poor biblical teaching to say, well, yeah,

Galatians three is where the foundation for these things that I guess that generation didn't know were in there.

That's where it is. Um, when the point of Galatians three is that when it says you're no longer slave or free and there's no male or female, it's not saying that female cease to exist.

It's saying that no, you have, all of you have access, equal access to the cross, the ground is a level at the foot of the cross, your brothers and sisters in Christ on a spiritual level.

He says at the end of the day, we must remember that each Babylonian is an individual, which questions about the world are keeping her up at night.

It's funny. He uses the female pronoun here. How does the gospel provide better answers to the questions she is asking than the ones she has now?

She is not merely, uh, she's not merely a culture warrior to be defeated, but a soul to be one.

Wasn't that nice. Um, so yeah, this is so weird to me.

Cause like the, we just got done with this slide where I have all these quotes where it's like, you gotta be a counter -cultural witness, not necessarily a social justice activist.

And now we're, we're seeing, well, we're gonna, we need to work on these things, but we're going to do it in more of a sort of disruptive witness kind of Jake Mead or Tim Keller way.

It's a subversive way. So we are going to work towards those things and we really got to focus.

It almost sounds pietist. This last quote, we really got to focus on the personal needs, right. In the ministry sense of the people who are non -Christians, right.

That's gotta be our main focus and what giving them the gospel. And, uh, we, we're not just gonna be culture warriors here, but then this is where it gets strange to me.

Like we're supposed to be a culture warrior on some things. So, um, he's critical of the church being involved in activism, but he praises

MLK jr. For activism while condemning George Whitfield for a lack of activism. So he says in his letter from a burning

Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King jr. Chastised American Christians for sitting on the sidelines while injustice reigned.

Well, what do you want us to do? J .D. Greer? Hey, like, what are we supposed to do then? Like injustice is raining. We can't sit on the sidelines.

We gotta be in there, but at the same time we can be so subtle that no one really knows until maybe centuries later that what we were really saying, we were sowing the seeds to something that would, it sounds like the guys who say that like the founding fathers were really just sowing all these egalitarian seeds that they would never see the fruit of like, yeah, right.

Okay. Like that's what the Bible is. We're just sowing the seeds of these things. Um, then he says,

I still find myself wanting to quote George Whitfield in sermons or wanting to share some profound insight I've learned from his life, but usually

I don't, at least when I do, I keep his name out of it. So he can't even quote George. We can't say George Whitfield said, and then give a moral lesson because George Whitfield supported slavery and didn't say enough against it.

So it's like, so what if George Whitfield was just subversively laying the groundwork for the eventual abolition of slavery, that's why he even, you say, well, he introduced slavery to Georgia though.

And he had, yeah, but I mean, he was, this was a donation. He was gifted these slaves and he still was preaching against the evils of abusing slaves.

I mean, he was, he was saying the same thing Paul was saying about slave master relationships. Right. I mean, it wasn't, wasn't

Paul laying the foundation for the emancipation. So why wasn't George Whitfield also why he said the same things pretty much.

Right. We say, well, that was, that was race -based chattel slavery. They'll, they'll come up with something to say it's, it was so much worse in America when in the

Roman empire. I mean, I actually actually just put a post about this out there because slavery came up again.

It makes the rounds every now and then. Right. Even though we're so far past chattel slavery, but it came up again.

Cause Phil Vischer was going after Doug Wilson. Anyway, in the Roman empire slaves, they don't have rights. They could not have a real family legally.

So punishment for crime is generally more severe for them than for free men and kidnapping to obtain slaves with not uncommon and masters could kill, rape, and use them for prostitution with social approval.

So that's slavery in the Roman empire. I don't know, kind of bad, kind of like maybe worse than even like what we think of in the

American context, a gladiatorial arenas where they fought for the amusement of people, you know, but, and, but Paul could still apparently be laying the, the, all the foundation for emancipation in that.

Not George Whitfield though. Um, so again, Martin Luther King champion, that's the right way to do it somehow, but he was a social activist and he was clearly on the political left and it's like, well, why doesn't his moral failures?

I mean, he's going after Donald Trump's moral failures. I'm somehow MLK gets a pass here, even though he's, he was a serial adulterer.

Ah, I don't get it. I don't get it. And impossible tight rope is how I, what I, how I frame this next section from Greer, um, or, or this, or sorry, the summation of what

Greer believes. He elevates public witness above social justice activism. Okay. We already talked about that while also insisting that the church should engage in social activism on clear biblical issues, whether those issues lean to the right or left, as long as the church's reputation remains as nonpartisan as possible.

Now, does that seem confusing to you? Yeah, it does. And this is an actual quote from Greer.

He says, these waters can be a little murky and we should be gracious to one another as we attempt to figure it all out.

Just keep in mind our overarching goal in Babylon to provide a faithful witness to the distinctiveness of Christ and his kingdom, because we're challenging the central truth claim of the age, the right to self autonomy, and we should expect fierce opposition.

All right. Well, the waters are murky. And that is probably the truest thing he said about the book.

It's murky. It's just hard to know. There's really, you don't get any moral direction at the end of it.

You're left confused. You're left thinking, well, I could stay out of these political, social, moral fights, and that will be about that.

I'll be preserving my witness where I could very subtly kind of introduce something that maybe centuries later will lead to a social overhaul of some evil, and that will be consistent.

And that's what I should be doing. And I shouldn't get my eyes off the main thing, which is being a witness and being an activist could do that.

But at the same time, I do need to be an activist and speak out on very clear moral issues, but so long as I don't alienate certain political parties.

Well, good luck. Good luck, luck, walking that tightrope. Good luck trying to make heads or tails of that.

How about this? This is much more simple. Ditch the third way of thinking and just do this.

Make wise decisions that are biblically informed by the ethics of scripture and applied to the context in which we live.

How's that? If it offends a political party and members of that party, so what?

If you are perceived by the media to have more alignment with a certain political party, so what?

The Bible says what it says. You can still call out the sins of the

Republicans and people on the right. There are many there to call out. You can, but you can at least be honest about the situation we're in and say, look, there's being a

Democrat is not really an option. You have the party platform, but you have the fact that on these other issues, which

Greer seems to think either favor the left or aren't important enough to weigh in on there's the

Bible says stuff on that too. The Bible has things to say on immigration policy. The Bible has things to say on economic policy.

Uh, and even the global warming alarmism, the Bible actually has things to say on this. Um, The, the

Bible has a lot to say about issues like even gun control and self -defense that Greer, you know, and these have to be applied to various situations that you're working with principles, but there still is,

I think wisdom that a pastor can give on these topics. Now there's going to come points where there's like political strategy and there's, you know, very specific issues that are local in nature that it's like.

It, you know, maybe the Bible there's principles there to work off of, and you can even give people those principles, but, um, it's not like a, uh, a clear moral issue.

Right. Okay. So, and I've given the example before of like an apartment complex in your community, cause that's one that's real for me and it'll be good for people who come into my community.

It'll be bad for the people who live in my community. Right. I'm going to stand with my community, but, and so that's like where I can find an order of Morris principle to apply there, but for someone outside the community who thinks this is a good deal for them, and, or maybe there's even people in my community who thinks this is good economically, like that's actually, that's a discussion that it's a wisdom issue that you can work out.

Um, I don't think a pastor has to go up on Sunday morning and take an issue on, take a stand on every single issue necessarily, but some of these issues like self -defense, you may say guns isn't okay, self -defense is what's the responsibility that men have?

What's and then to defend their families. And then in addition to that, in our context, what does that look like?

Pastors can give moral evaluations of these things. They don't have to get into the weeds on it, but. You know, they're immigration.

Where's your responsibility lie to foreign people or your people? Should we do unwise things and bankrupt our children so that we can have some cheap, uh, farm goods in the here and now,

I mean, these aren't moral issues. It's not like the Bible is just silent on giving any direction on these issues.

So I don't know, Greer seems to think like there's only a few issues that are the Democrats believe in that are somehow.

Christians should be against that are really evil. It's like, you know, their whole platform is pretty evil. The whole thing is the whole thing is a direct.

And I think this is what he doesn't recognize. And all third way is stone. They think that they can go through the line, like it's a cafeteria and just say,

I'll take a little bit of that from the Republicans, a little bit of that from the Democrats. I'm going to ignore that when in reality you have two competing, overarching philosophies in conflict with each other.

And the, the Christian is not given a, the

Christian is given principles, which is going to be a general philosophy. But as far as how that's mediated through tradition in a certain context, uh, you are going to have on the ground political movements and identities that are going to be perfectly acceptable options for Christians to be involved in.

Maybe even what Christians should be involved in. And you're going to have ones that are philosophically not even an option.

And the Democrat party is not even an option at this point. There's no point in their party platform where you can say, well, there's agreement between that and the

Christian understanding of things. Um, and so that's really the issue in my mind. It's like you, as the things progress over the years, and especially if the

Democrat party maintains their current stances, and if things get darker, it's, you're not going to be able to do this.

You're going to have to be able to, you have to offend people who are members of the Democratic party. You just are. And I know he brings up African -American

Christians as if that's like a silver bullet, like, well, look at them. They're they're Christians and they vote for Democrats. Well, whoever said they were being consistent and they're not, all of them are right.

Some of them aren't voting for Democrats. I are in high numbers. They do, but their church and churches, you know, a lot of their churches are a mess theologically.

You don't think that's like, uh, somehow related. I mean, this is part of the problem.

You're just assuming that all of these people who say they're Christians are necessarily Christians in, in consistent

Christians. There's cultural influences, but there's also theological influences that are weak and a weak church with weak theology is going to be weak politically because they're going to be weak morally.

Um, so I don't know. I have a book on my shelf somewhere. I, I don't remember the, I'm trying to remember the title of it.

It's about, uh, this communist subversion of African -American pastors and churches in the 1950s.

And it was really interesting read, uh, read it a few years ago. I think I have it cited in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, but it, it tells a story and I, and this story, this story goes back even before that, but I think during the cold war era, uh, there was a special, um, sort of foothold that the liberals got and they really, the

Marxists got into the traditional African -American churches and so forth. And they use cultural, um, conflicts to do it.

And because black pastors were the leaders in their communities, uh, they were targeted.

I think if you're going to be honest about why black Christians go in that particular direction and higher numbers, you're gonna have to take that into account, you're gonna have to take into account why there's a cultural conflict there, how political forces that have wanted to revolutionize and rip down the center, uh, have, uh, tried to appeal to that demographic and you're going to get closer to the truth.

It's not because it's not out of like, it's just like, oh, they're just have such good biblical convictions. And I don't want to say anything about it.

Cause it's all motivated by the Bible. It's not, doesn't work that way. It's that's naive to think it works that way.

Anyway, I'll end with this career's background. Now I'm not going to read this whole thing, but he goes over his kind of background as in a fundamentalist, more legalistic setting where he wasn't allowed to listen to rock music.

And there was these legalistic rules that he had to live by. And he basically says that we were afraid of being apostates.

If we would, you know, miss church for a ball game and we misappropriated the verse, be separate in the

King James, we didn't know what be separate men. And so he's going to try to tell us what being separate from the world really means being this disruptive witness, being this, uh, this sort of revolutionary, who's not really a social activist, whatever that is.

I think though, this may be a window into who Greer is as a person. And I wonder if it's a window in a more than just Greer.

I wonder how many people have grown up in more right -leaning settings.

Sometimes that were maybe too strict. Maybe they were legalistic. Maybe they, they really did try to conserve the 1950s or something like that.

And, um, misattributed certain actions to sin that weren't sin.

Because I've seen this before where I'm just noticing something, the people who come from that background, oftentimes when they deconstruct, they are like the hardest deconstruction, they are the most anti -Christian, the most social justice, and I think people who come from that background who don't go hard, that direction at the very least feel a sense of like shame or that they are kind of they're weird, but their, their weirdness is, um, out of step with the culture and they really, they were tired of not being cool.

And it's like their chance to kind of be cool. And they want to prove to everyone that Christianity or the church or Jesus isn't what you think it is.

Cause I'm a real authentic bill. And the, what you saw, what I grew up with was a counterfeit.

And so I'm going to be the real thing now. And part of that is not just me, um, coming to you with, you know, an

ESB Bible instead of a King James. It's also me wearing the stylish jeans and going casual and having the more contemporary setup and the churches that don't like, look like churches and that have drywall everywhere, and there aren't hardly any

Christian symbols and it's all corporate logos and bank photos and. The whole package, you know, what comes with that.

And it's like trying to dispel this idea that we're this stuffy old grandma's church.

And, you know, I, I don't know. I think it's okay to, um, to be yourself.

It's okay. But I think yourself needs to also honor the Lord and give the Lord your best.

And the goal shouldn't be to not be grandma's church either. It shouldn't be like, we're going to try to get away from that as much as we can.

And that's what I see coming from guys like Greer. The fact that he grew up in that context is interesting to me.

I just did this documentary on first Baptist Nightgale a few months ago. And to see that more traditional leaning church, uh, have a threat to it where they were going to essentially, if they called it a merger, but it was really a takeover from summit church where they would have a pastor on a screen and it would all be this bland, uh, gray color.

And they got rid of the things that made the church a church, the choir, the American flag and the

Christian flag in front. And, uh, the, the children's room that had all the crafts and activity things that decorations that used to be there.

And it made it look like a bank made it look so boring, made it look just bland and, and, um, like it wasn't even a church.

And it just strikes me because people said, Jason little also that knew him said that he came from kind of a background like that he went to Bob Jones.

And I'm like, why does that happen to people who go to those places? Why do they feel the need to overcompensate to, to try to show the world they're not what, what they came from and why not just appreciate where you came from, you know?

I mean, what does J .D. grew say here? Like he goes, I grew up weird, not Netflix documentary weird, but weird.

I mean, there's this sort of like understanding like I I'm, I grew up odd. I grew up weird. Well, maybe you did, but I don't know.

It's just like, that's an identity thing to me because it's, I mean, anyone can look back on their past and say, well, there's things

I wish were different or there's things that, uh, I don't know, maybe I'm a little embarrassed about this or that I'm trying to think now

I don't have any, actually, I'm pretty proud of everything, but I'm sure if I thought long and hard enough,

I could think of something, you know, I had some hairdo I had or something and like, oh man, that's cringy, but like, why feel the need the rest of your life to try to get away from that, to, to do things like lean progressive and dress differently and dispel the myth that that's what

Christianity is. Now, am I saying that that is what Greer is doing? I mean, I'm insinuating it.

I don't know is the bottom line. I really don't know if that's the case or not. I'm noticing though, there is a pattern that I've noticed with that.

And it could be that that is partially what's motivating someone like Greer. And you know, Lord save us from that.

Lord save us from the people who just want to be too cool for school and they're not that cool. I mean, he's, it's just not like just, if you're going to be a

Christian in this world, you're going to be out of step with the prevailing pop culture because that's just how it is.

You can't reconcile yourself to it. It doesn't mean you have to like have all the legalistic rules you might have grown up with or anything like that.

It just means don't make that the new barometer. Like I'm just anti this or that and overreact to everything.

I'm psychologizing it, but I figured I'd throw that out. There's a possible explanation. So I hope that helps.

I hope, um, I guess the long and short of it is this. Maybe don't listen to JD Greer.

I don't think he has anything worthwhile and on political social issues here.

He just doesn't think clearly about it. Understand that what he's saying now, isn't that much different than what he's been saying for the last 10 years?

I think some people are thinking there's this big change that's happening and there is a rehab going on. Some people said that him being on the bully public podcast was a rehab.

I don't know about that. Maybe, I mean, they push back on them on some things. I mean, those guys though, are most of those guys on that podcast have gone through their own rehab, right?

They were more or less woke in 2020 on some things, and now they're coming out of it. And any of them have not owned the fact that that's what they did.

And now they're trying, they're, they're veering more to the right. There things are shifting. And I think

Greer is also shifting with that to a, to a little bit of an extent. I wouldn't reach too much into it though.

I don't see that there's a big shift here. Even his calculus on the democratic party hasn't changed that much.

And so I think that's really the message of this is I hate to pour cold water on anyone who is excited.

So anyway, I'm getting over a cold. I appreciate all of you who weigh in.

You can weigh in on the comments on the YouTube video. Thank you for those who support my work on Patreon. I am now on Substack as well.

If you want to support me there, I appreciate it. But you can go to, let's see, this is very new for me.

You can go to Substack .com forward slash at John Harris, and you can read my article, which summarizes some of the points