SBC Professor Tries to Defend Himself Against Cancel Culture

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris. I will be traveling this week, so my goal is to give you a few very short podcasts.

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I know I gave you a few longer ones last week, but I'm going to try to pack some truth into some little nutshells.

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Today we're going to be talking about reacting to cancel culture a little bit, and I'm going to use as an example, a

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Southern Baptist professor who's reacting to kind of like a social justice mob. In fact,

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I don't think that's an unfair way to characterize kind of what's happening online at least. Some of the comments are just vicious and I won't show you all those.

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I just, I want to have more of a broad discussion about how to handle this or maybe how not to.

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And this particular professor we're going to be talking about, I'm not, my goal really isn't to criticize him so much as just use this situation as an example.

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I think often when social justice advocates go after a person and they target someone, they say, this is the person we're going to go after and you find on Twitter or Facebook, the mob comes out and they start saying all kinds of horrible things, calling for resignations.

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Two things happen and they're very confusing usually. Number one, the person who is being canceled apologizes for anything they may have said that was offensive.

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The second thing is they defend themselves. They say, hey, I'm a friend of the LGBTQ community or I am a friend of,

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I treat women fairly that I've employed or I look at all my minority friends, something like that, trying to kind of offset the mob and that doesn't work.

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It actually appeases the mob even more in many cases. I think there's a place to respond to accusations, but that's really more for the sake of the people that you know and love that you don't want confused about lies and accusations.

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It's not for the mob. Apologizing to them if you're not in the wrong, especially, and if you haven't done anything to them, isn't really right.

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It actually fuels the fire more and then it creates a very confusing message when you apologize and you try to defend yourself because it's like, which one is it?

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I've seen this play over and over and over and it's really people who just want, all they want to do is just be left alone.

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They just want the situation to end, but that doesn't make the situation end. What I thought would be helpful is to go over an example of this that I just saw and we'll talk about it a little bit.

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Before we get there though, I wanted to read for you this. This is an email from someone who is doing some work in West Africa.

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I'm not sure exactly what country, probably somewhere near Senegal, I would imagine. Here's what they say.

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It's in reaction to the podcast that I did last week on slavery and why it was wrong in the

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American context, taking a bird's eye view of the situation, showing how

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American slavery did not match up to many aspects of it, many things that were attached to it, the law of God.

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That was my main thrust of that was that, hey, I agree with the Apostle Paul that there are ways for Christians to follow the law of God in a pagan system in which the law of God is not honored, but Christians are then responsible for stepping in and requiring themselves to follow that law.

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Here's the email I got. It says, hey, John, thanks for the work you're doing in teaching history and worldview to those who have a desire to listen.

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I appreciate your recent treatment of American slavery and where specifically it was wrong. I think it is important to clearly think about these issues and have a solid biblical foundation for our definition of sin instead of just letting culture or our feelings dictate our moral code.

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I mainly wanted to contact you to give a precision on an argument you used in that video. You pointed out the fact that there were black and Indian slave owners, masters, and that African slavery was well -established before Europeans got involved with buying slaves from the slave network and shipping them across the

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Atlantic. You argued, if I understood you correctly, that these facts negate the narrative that slavery was always based on racial prejudice and vainglory, particularly the idea that white people of European descent only ever were involved in slavery because they were racists who saw

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Africans and other indigenous people groups of a different color as inferior or less than human. As far as that goes,

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I agree, especially where people define racism as white versus black or based on a Darwinian idea of different human races, etc.

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Where I would like to add a bit of depth or precision to that idea is to clarify that even in the well -established

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African network of slavery, much of that was based on what colloquially we would call racism, or more accurately, ethnic or people group prejudice and vainglory.

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I'm a white American living in West Africa as a missionary. I also grew up here with missionary parents.

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As we interact with people here and study their language, culture, and worldview, we see the evidence of mankind's natural tendency to let sin rule our interactions with and views of others regardless of the color of their skin.

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Tensions, prejudices, and hostility between people groups here are the norm. Even when they are not overtly acted on, people know that this people group is always like this or that.

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Politics is much more about having your people group's candidate elected and not so much about what they actually stand for, etc.

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More than that though, the traces of intra -African slavery are still very present. People still know, even within their own people groups, which individuals are descended from slave families and which ones are descended from the ruling class.

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To some extent, this has become banalized into a way of interacting with other ethnic or family groups in a joking manner.

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If your family name is Scylla and you encounter a Camara, you can tell them that all

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Camaras are thieves or that they are your slave and they need to respect you. A Camara can tell you that he will beat you if you don't respect him because the mother of the

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Scyllas was a Camara, etc. As I said, this is often used as a way of finding a connection with someone from a different family or group and strangely to our eyes, as a way of easing tensions between them.

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However, there are also true prejudices and tensions that still run deep. We have been told that a certain presidential candidate here would never be able to win because he has a slave family name.

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People still tell us with pride that their families were the kings of the area and which families were their slaves.

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Once we had a man tell us that his daughter was in the U .S. and wanted to marry a black American. We thought he would be happy about that, but he said he would never give his permission for her to marry the

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American. When we asked why, he said it was because the young American man came from slaves, whereas his family were the royalty that had sold the slaves and why would he want his daughter to marry a slave.

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We were a bit stunned, to say the least. On a side note, this prejudice is also one reason that the idea of freed slaves returning to their countries of origin would have been complicated on many levels.

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One caveat. What I have written here reflects our current level of understanding of the cultural and worldview realities here.

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We are still learning and there will likely be further nuances and background realities to this issue that we will discover as we progress.

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All this to say, there could have been and was sinful prejudice and vainglory involved in the black on black slavery in much the same way that there could have been and was in white on black slavery, even though it wouldn't be based on race exactly.

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The fact that black on black slavery existed doesn't in and of itself mean that there was some slavery that was not based on sinful prejudice.

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I still believe that the fact of black on black slavery and the existence of the intra -African network of slavery pre -European involvement are both extremely important to bring into the conversation.

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I also do believe that there were, as you argue, white slave owners, masters, who did not have a sinful prejudice toward their slaves.

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I merely wanted to give a bit more context to the conversation since it is, after all, a conversation that matters."

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And he gave me some links to a couple of inter -family ethnicity joking relationships in case

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I was interested. So some of the culture there. It's interesting and I read this just because it further,

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I think, backs up some of the things at least that I was saying. This is a problem that has affected humanity forever and it still will and it still is.

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It's just that we don't identify it sometimes that way. In fact, right now, instead of a genetic inferiority or a superiority, there is a moral inferiority or superiority accompanying some races in the way that elites think about quote -unquote race or ethnicity today.

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And the lighter skinned you are, the more European you are, you have some kind of a moral inferiority or an epistemic knowledge inferiority.

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You don't know about oppression. You're not qualified to speak about it. Even if you were an orphan and had people abuse you, you still can't really speak about it as knowledgeably as someone who's a minority.

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And so that's kind of what we're in now. I mean, you don't think that that is some kind of prejudice. Of course it is.

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So very, very interesting email that I got there and wanted to share that with you.

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Now, on to the subject at hand. I had written this and actually this isn't the subject at hand.

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I just wanted to share this with you. It actually goes along with the email we just read. Then we'll get to the subject at hand. I wrote this yesterday,

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I think. There are certain wrongs that cannot be rectified this side of heaven. Yes, the perpetrators get away for a short time until they stand before God.

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Punishing a group of people who were not the perpetrators creates two injustices where before there was one. This is precisely what the modern social justice advocates seek to do.

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White people, straight people, and males become the scapegoats for an ethic of revenge, pretending to be justice. There is no ultimate justice in the temporal realm.

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Governments are required by God to do the best they can based upon his law. In the times in which they exist, but they are finite and will never completely have the moral fortitude or the capability of punishing all those within their respective jurisdictions who are guilty of crimes.

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We should not expect them to have this capacity either. We seek justice to the best of our abilities in this life, knowing its ultimate fulfillment will come in the next.

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We do not substitute bigoted revenge for justice. This is my stance, guys, on all kinds of things, but this would include to some extent the abuses that accompanied

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American slavery. You don't correct an injustice or injustices that took place by creating more injustices in the here and now.

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And I think this is where there's a huge separation between the way Christians think about justice and today how the secular pagan social justice movement operates because it's a totally different conception.

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And Christians believe that ultimate justice is going to happen in heaven. It's going to take place there.

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There's an eternal realm and we don't expect complete perfect justice this side of heaven. We think governments are instituted to wield the sword and to punish evil, but the government can't be everywhere and it shouldn't be everywhere.

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And we're given the template for a limited government in scripture where it's not supposed to be everywhere.

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In fact, you're supposed to have evidence, two or three witnesses before you can convict anyone of a crime. But in the social justice conception, it's the worst thing in the world for someone to get away with some kind of injustice, even if it's not a real injustice, because they of course think of injustice for any egalitarian way.

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And if there's a disparity, there's an injustice. Whereas Christians think of it more as inequality before the law, everyone must be held to this particular lawful standard.

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But either way, it's the worst thing in the world if someone gets away with something because there is no afterlife.

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They don't think about that. And so if there is no afterlife, if justice must be done here, that creates a totalitarian state that has to know everything that takes place.

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Because I mean, it'd be horrible if an injustice happened and it wasn't punished. So the state must know about everything and everything must be investigated and punished.

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And sometimes you're not going to be able to tell sometimes who the perpetrators were. And it's horrible. What do you do about the people that already got away with it?

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You got to punish their ancestors or people that look like them or have some outward attachment to them because we must create utopia here on this earth.

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And that's what separates social justice advocates from Christianity. So let's get to the issue at hand, keeping those thoughts in mind.

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Kyle J. Howard is a student who just graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where Al Mohler is the president, flagship seminary for the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Here's what he says. I graduate with my master's in theology today.

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I won't be there to walk down the aisle to get my diploma because even the sight of my seminary's campus is trauma triggering me and my wife.

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Seminary was a dehumanizing and traumatic experience for me, for my family. Lecrae, the

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Christian rap artist, said, Congrats and consider yourself Moses being schooled by the Egyptians so you can help with the

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Exodus. Lecrae comparing the Egyptians who were very cruel in their form of slavery, obviously, not comporting with the law of God and what

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God laid down for the Hebrews at all. Very abusive, very evil. And they were not worshipers of Yahweh.

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And there is Lecrae comparing them to those at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, if you can believe it, who would have trained

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Kyle J. Howard. And Kyle J. Howard calls himself a racial trauma counselor.

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This is kind of his shtick. He said many, many things over the years that are just outrageous.

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But I show you the Lecrae comment just to show you that there are celebrities who take him seriously. There are big names, even like Beth Moore, who take him seriously.

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And interestingly, there's a lot of information out there. I'm not going to give you all of it. I don't want you to be overwhelmed.

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But I want to show you this. This is one of the professors at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary named

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Michael Haken. And he said, this is what I just sent to Kyle Howard on a

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Facebook message. Dear brother, I spoke publicly about the matter, though I did not name you, as you had spoken very publicly about the matter as well.

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So Kyle J. Howard has talked about a situation involving his professor,

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Michael Haken. And Haken goes on, he says, and if you recall the incident in class, the story, not a joke, was about the ongoing impact of the

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Civil War. So Haken made a joke in class, something about the Civil War. And Kyle J.

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Howard didn't take it right. So Haken said, and as I told you at the time, if you had stayed for the whole class, I attacked and criticized the entire institution of slavery as deeply racist.

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I was not and would never tell a funny story about chattel slavery. It was about the ongoing influence of the

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Civil War. I am not saying there is no racism at Southern Theological Seminary among the students.

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I'm sure there is. How does he know that, by the way? How does he, I mean, I guess, I mean, would

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Kyle J. Howard be an example of that? That's the question I have. But I do not believe the school is part today of the systemic racism that bedevils the

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United States. Okay, this is where I think he's especially giving away the farm.

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He's buying into this notion that there's systemic racism that is ongoing in the

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United States. And this, and I'm gonna show you some more things from Michael Haken that I think show you kind of what he means by this.

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But it is, I would say it is in line more probably with this idea that it's just normative, like the critical race theory assumption that racism is just normative.

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It's everywhere. It's, I mean, it's bedeviling the United States. It's just, you know, it's not, the media is not being overblown about this.

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It's actually true that, you know, these police shootings, et cetera, are the products of racism.

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I go on though. He says, I was deeply disturbed by your post. I should have said nothing. I apologize deeply for hurting you.

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Forgive me. That was not my intent. I love Southern and I hate to see her attack. Thanks for reading this. Okay, so here's, you have this in one post that what

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I was talking about earlier, which I think is so illustrative. You have at the beginning, Michael Haken is saying, defending himself.

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Hey, I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't say anything racist. I'm not a racist. Um, then he switches.

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He agrees with Kyle J. Howard's narrative. By the way, I agree. There's systemic racism. Bedeviling the United States just characterizes this country.

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So he agrees with that and he says, Hey, it's that Southern too, somewhere. Doesn't give an example. And then at the end he apologizes.

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So it creates tension. It's like you didn't do anything wrong, but you're apologizing and there's this systemic racism that's everywhere.

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So why can't that include you? And maybe your joke. So it just, it's so awkward and maybe he doesn't mean for it to be that way, but it's trying to please everyone.

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And in this situation, you just can't, you have to take a stand. If you didn't do anything wrong, I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not apologizing.

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I didn't do anything wrong. And I understand sort of the, uh, the desire to, even if you didn't do anything wrong, apologize for just for deeply hurting you.

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You could say, I wouldn't even say apologize. You might be able to say, so I'm sorry you were hurt, you know, or something like that.

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I didn't intend to hurt you. But when you say, I apologize deeply for hurting you, um, it lends credence to kind of what

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Kyle J Howard is saying. Um, so anyway, let's look at Kyle J Howard's response because Michael Hagan got raked over coals for this.

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And, um, by a lot of people, I'll show you a one comment, but I'm just telling you a lot of people piled on and just basically called him a racist call.

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It was, it was terrible. And then you have the response from Kyle J Howard and it's long. He says, uh,

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I might skim some of this. He says, Hey, Michael Hagan, I'm assuming you're talking about me, uh, though it's impossible though it's possible.

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You could be speaking about a number of different black students given that many I know had similar experiences I have.

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It's kind of odd seeing this statement from you considering you are the one of the professors who demonstrate a racial insensitivity in your class by making jokes surrounding chattel slavery.

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I confronted you about, and by the way, I'm going to stop here. Remember that letter that I read at the beginning where in West Africa, they're joking with each other about this hundreds of years later.

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Interesting. Anyway, I confronted you about that after class, you acknowledged and apologized.

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And now here you are bearing false witness against me, calling me a liar. That's you. That's unfortunate as I have esteemed you in the past.

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This however, is D R D A R V O. Okay. Um, how could you possibly know all

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I've been through? Here's the standpoint theory coming out. How could you know? Right? I never shared with you all that I endured on campus.

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I shared with you what I endured by you, which was minor, but I didn't tell you about all the things that occurred to my wife.

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And I, uh, I shared more with Matt Hall. There are other professors who know more, some who are fully aware of the trauma and therapy my wife and I required after leaving

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Southern and Louisville. I have, however, at numerous times, even a few days ago, reaffirmed that the issue was largely the peer culture and that I had many amazing and godly professors.

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I would count you among them prior to you bearing false witness against me and having the audacity to tell me after all the work

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I've done in trials, I've been through that I should not claim the reward for my hard work. 60 years ago, black students like myself, couldn't even attend

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Southern. I'm not about to, to let a professor, especially a non -black professor, tell me what

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I can and can't receive based upon my labors in 2021. I mean, this is just the entitlement in this.

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No, no gratitude for being able to get through this. I don't know if he received scholarships or not, but like, I mean, look, the, uh, it's just amazing to me that what people, what, what social justice advocates think they're owed, um, and, and what they, you know, what constitutes trauma to them.

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And, you know, think about all the places I've been in liberal education. Think about, uh, the, the very progressive education where I did not fit in and I was called out and I was,

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I mean, I have stories, uh, that I could tell and I've told some of them, but I don't, you know, we don't do this, uh, normally.

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And when I say we, I mean, Christians, we don't do this kind of thing where, where, you know, really just been out of shape about, uh, people that didn't like us or said things, minor things that might've offended us or something.

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We kind of move on and we, we are thankful for the things that the opportunities that God's given us, but let's, let's keep going here.

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With that said, Kyle G Howard says, let me be clear where I stand, elder brother, and hopes that having a clear account of my stance will preserve you from further libel.

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So he's a, he's accusing Michael Hickenlooping here. I experienced a profound degree of racism at the school, uh, and I'm going to just going to skip through some of this at his church.

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It was toxic. Um, he said that he had students, um, tell him, let me ask you, does this sound,

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I mean, I'm not, maybe this happened, but does this sound like something that would normally happen? He said he had students tell him, you probably don't know what reform theology is because you are black.

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Let me tell you. Really? Um, he said, um, after the deaths of several unarmed black people by the police, he had numerous summary friends cut him off for speaking about them and they would say,

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I thought you were one of us. You shouldn't talk about these things. Um, they, he challenged them on racial insensitivity.

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Some were humble and received correction. Uh, he says though that, uh, he says you are respectfully not black.

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And even if a black professor student like, uh, Toby above didn't experience any racism, praise

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God for that. Still, it doesn't nullify my reality as another black man or my wife's as an Asian American. So, you know, he's got his reality, his reality is postmodern.

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He's got his reality. He gets to live in this world of victimhood, um, and it cannot be subject to any scrutiny.

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Even if it's a situation Michael Haken was there for, like whatever this joke was, it must not be subject to any outside scrutiny because he gets the, he is the only one qualified to talk about it because he is the victim.

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Um, he keeps going. Uh, most of this isn't worth me reading. Uh, he says, um, all right, so that's pretty much, that's the gist of it.

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So he's going after my, he's accusing Michael Haken of lying, this professor. So, um, I just happened to remember, and I don't know the full amount of things that I could have dug up about Michael Haken.

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Uh, but I just remembered there was two things that I wanted to share with you. In 2019, Michael Haken, uh, was interviewed for the gospel coalition.

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And one of the things he said was this, what about the charge that some evangelicals emphasis on social justice reveals them to be a species of Marxism?

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He said, I personally find that a ludicrous statement and tantamount to fear mongering in a cultural climate for which socialism is an ever present bugbear.

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Michael Haken, Southeast, uh, South, Southern rather Baptist Theological Seminary. So that in 2019, social justice, um,

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Marxism, linking it to Marxism, uh, that's a bugbear. And of course it is linked to Marxism, uh, critical race theory is linked to Marxism.

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So, I mean, I, I show this in the book that I'm writing right now is this, this is just the fact that he can say this, just,

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I don't even know. It's just either you're knowingly saying something that's false or you just haven't studied it enough. They're totally linked, completely linked.

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I mean, the way the term social justice itself, the way it was introduced and where it was popularized,

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I'm not talking about the Catholic church and how they used it, but the way that it was actually popularized first was really marketing the idea of Fabian socialism to the, to people in the

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United States, especially. Uh, it was a Christianization of Fabian socialism, um, which is yet affected by Marxism.

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So let's keep going here. Uh, there was another thing I remembered. Michael Haken had put, reposted, uh, the myth of the kindly general, which

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I think is, this is the Atlantic piece. Uh, he says a very sober analysis of Robert E. Lee, June 4th, 2020.

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This is right when everything's right, right when mobs are lawlessly ripping down statues in Richmond and trying to, and in desecrating the

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Lee statue, uh, this is when he posted. And of course I had responded at the time. I said, look,

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I've read several Lee biographies. The critics even have a hard time painting him as evil. He was extremely disciplined.

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He never had a demerit at West Point. He was extremely accomplished. Churchill said the greatest military mind in the Western world has ever produced.

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He was a faithful Christian, constantly quoting scripture, uh, cared about the spiritual state of his men. He was an honorable foe.

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He harbored no resentment after his defeat, but sought a reconciliation. He never fought dirty or treated civilians poorly like his opponents.

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He was against slavery. He treated his slaves. He inherited very well while paying, praying for the abolition of slavery and pursuing a gradual means to do it like granting freedom to slaves who fought for the

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Confederacy. He was very, um, chivalrous, uh, see, I can't pronounce anything today.

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Uh, I'm not, I'm just going to even skip it. I can't, he had chivalry. There you go. Toward women. He was somewhat of a gallant officer during the

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Mexican American war and women loved his company. He was exceedingly forward thinking in his treatment of minorities in general.

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There's a story about him after the war. You'll see, uh, if you watch my last podcast and the list goes on, modern retellings tend to come to be complete revisionism.

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I'm talking about the Atlantic piece here. For example, the myth that he beat a slave and was never taken seriously until very recently and was first printed by Lee's detractors or that he had a foot fetish based on psychological readings of his writings or that he knew about lynchings, but did nothing.

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That's complete speculation and goes against all we know about him. Brian McClanahan wrote a good response to the revisionist myth of the kindly general piece called

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Robert E. Lee versus Twitter historians. If you want a good book, Douglas Southall Freeman's Lee, um, you could read that or Robert E.

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Lee on leadership by Crocker is good. So I wrote this response. Basically, I, seeing everything that was happening,

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I wrote it right at the day after Michael Haken had posted this. And so I'm just thinking like Michael Haken has fed the woke mob a little bit.

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He's, he's kind of, even in his little apology there, he's feeding them. He's giving, he's giving them things. He's saying, Hey, I'm kind of,

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I'm with you. And then where did that get them? Got them nowhere. He's, he's being brutally treated.

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And let me give you, this is not the worst one of all, but this is a prominent pastor in the Southern Baptist convention. Dwight McKissick is what he says.

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If Haken is currently a professor at SBTS, um, and African -Americans need to remove him.

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Oh no, Al Mohler, sorry. Al Mohler needs to remove him. Very sad to say to a graduate celebrating his graduation, you ought to be to give your degree back.

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Um, African -American professors are forced to sign a document written by white supremacists there.

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Students attend classes named for them. So he's calling for the removal of Haken.

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This is cancel culture. That, and giving into the mob didn't do anything for him. And this is the kind of person that Haken's dealing with here.

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He's trying to cut, kind of get some kind of a deal going here where an apology that Kyle G Howard's going to accept.

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And these are the kinds of things Kyle G Howard posts. He says, I'm convinced white evangelicalism doesn't want black people in heaven.

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It wants them in hell. Why else would there be such a concerted effort to present Christianity as a white supremacist religion with a

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Christ that despises them? It can't stand the idea of sharing heaven with us. This is an accusation and it's a disgusting accusation.

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And it shows the hypocrisy that the people that are crying racist are the ones that are actually exercising some kind of prejudice based based on ethnicity.

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And this is just a clear cut example of the wrong way to deal with this situation. So John, how would you deal with this?

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What would you do? Well, let me show you something. Let me show you what scripture says. First Thessalonians 5 .14 says this.

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We urge you brothers and sisters, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone.

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First Thessalonians 5 .14 gives us the template. Where does Kyle G Howard fit? The word for unruly could be translated disorderly.

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And it means out of order, out of place. Kyle G Howard's disorderly. He's unruly. He's not faint hearted.

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He's not weak. But that's what he wants you to think he is. He wants you to think that he's the faint hearted. He's the weak. He needs encouragement.

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He needs help when really he's the one that's being the unruly here. He's making these false accusations and he needs to be treated as such.

28:26

And you admonish someone who's unruly. You don't encourage them. You don't help them. Um, here's another problem that came to mind.

28:32

Proverb 29 .25 says this. The fear of man brings a snare, but he who trusts the Lord will be exalted. And this is what

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I would encourage someone like Michael Hakin to do. Not that he's listening, but fear the Lord. Don't fear man in this.

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Don't give in to the demands of the social justice mob because you fear them. Don't apologize for things that you have, you've done that aren't, if they're not wrong, if they're truly not wrong and you're justifying yourself, don't apologize for them.

28:57

Um, stand your ground, stand firm in your ground. And this is what I've tried to exercise. So, you know, sometimes

29:02

I understand you need to, someone accuses you of something. You need to explain what your position is if it's been mischaracterized, but you're not doing that to the mob.

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You're not going to the mob and saying, approve me. They'll never approve you. You have to admonish the unruly.

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You have to, you have to take it to them and saying, you're the ones that are being wrong in this.

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Kyle J. Howard, it's wrong for you to falsely accuse me of this. You need to repent, brother. If you want to even say brother with Kyle J.

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Howard, but you need to repent. And that's really where it ends. You cannot give in.

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And Michael Hagen has given in multiple times to this. And now it's not getting him anywhere.

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And in fact, it's just, it's kind of like sharks when they smell blood in the water. You don't, you don't want to show a little bit of a weakness there by granting their assumptions when you don't really believe them.

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If you don't, if you start granting their assumptions, start apologizing for things, then they're going to just, it's like giving a moose a muffin.

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They're going to want to take more. So there you go. That's the podcast today. I hope that was helpful for you. We'll have more material later in the week.