A Review of Eric Mason's "Woke Church"

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk today about a very important book to the evangelical social justice canon.

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It's called Woke Church by Eric Mason. And I've been receiving requests to talk about this for probably the last year, here and there, and decided now's the time because a lot of people are recommending it.

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I'm sure Eric Mason's raking in a lot of profits unless he donates them to a charity or something.

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Last, well, it wasn't last week, it was this week, I guess, that Paul David Tripp, the Christian counselor, a popular author and speaker, recommended it.

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Eric Mason is his pastor. It's a Bethany Christian Fellowship. And so I decided now's a good time, let's talk about it because there's some really concerning things in this book.

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And after I give you an introduction to Woke Church and tell you about it, we're going to hear from Ronnie Nall. Ronnie Nall was a member of First Baptist Church Naples.

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And for those who don't know, this is a church in Naples, Florida, a big Southern Baptist church that had a big kerfuffle last year over Woke Church.

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Oh, really? And you may say, well, no, Woke Church didn't play into it. And the reason I say Woke Church played into it is because the pastoral candidate who did not receive the approval that was needed to elect him as the new pastor, he came into that church and people in the church had found out that he endorsed

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Woke Church by Eric Mason. That was one of the big problems. Now, of course, those who voted against him were called racists from the pastors at the church.

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And then, of course, this got picked up by people like J .D. Greer, Russell Moore, and they denounced the racism happening in Naples, Florida.

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But really, it wasn't racism. It was people who disagreed with the principles in Woke Church. And so we're gonna talk about that.

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Let's talk about Woke Church and let's hear from Ronnie Nall. He's read the book so many times, he's lost count. And so he's gonna tell us kind of what that was like to be in that situation and then kind of what his problem with the book is and his advice for churches that might go through something similar to what

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First Baptist Church in Naples was going through. So let's start out with the book itself. Woke Church by Eric Mason.

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Now, Eric Mason, some of his influences, this isn't exhaustive, but some of his influences in the book are

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James Cone, John Perkins, Michelle Alexander, Sun Chan Ra. Now, Sun Chan Ra has been on the board for Sojourners, or was,

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I don't know if he still is, but there are very Marxist connections in Sojourners. Michelle Alexander, of course, even quotes critical race theorists in her book.

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We've talked about Michelle Alexander. John Perkins, the three Rs used by the

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Crew Urban Project, Crews Urban Project. It's a reconciliation, relocation, and redistribution.

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And then James Cone, liberation theology. All these guys have what I would call new left connections, which do trace back to Marxism, ultimately.

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Eric Mason is influenced by people that have been influenced by people who have been influenced by Marxism. There is, you can draw the lines.

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And I think it comes out in the book. And so he says on page 91 that during college, there were groups that had black power ideology.

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And he says that much of their content was pro -black and anti -Christian. Some of their content made admitting you were

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Christian embarrassing. And he says he was in college at the time, and he admired them.

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He said he was drawn to these ideologies because of their commitment to black dignity, right? Not the people themselves, the ideologies.

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And because of their commitment to black dignity. Now, of course, pagans don't understand it. They're not a

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Christian. If you're a Christian, and you're looking at someone who's coming from a false religion, they don't believe in the image of God.

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They can't have a concept of black dignity. That's part of the problem with Black Lives Matter. Where's the black dignity there?

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These people don't, they don't have any understanding of any dignity. They have nothing to ground it. We're just animals, right? But Eric Mason's saying, no, they had an understanding of some kind in black dignity.

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However, he said he didn't understand that he was actually yearning for the dignity that God gives all people, and he was willing to hear it from anywhere.

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And so apparently, these guys, the dignity that God gives to all people, they were somehow forwarding that.

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I mean, this is, I mean, you can't make this up. This is already, red flags are going up.

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He said, I sat in black history classes, talked on the quad, read books, and studied non -Christian religions to find it as I swept through many black mystery cults and ideologies.

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Black mystery cults, he says, he was part of. I could agree with the sociology and some of the practical desires, but something seemed off.

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So he's saying, look, I agree with their sociology. I agree with their practical desires. In college, you see this so often.

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I've been studying the new left evangelicals in the 1970s. You see this even with people like Tim Keller.

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They have this crisis of faith where the faith tradition they grew up with was it's terrible, it's racist, it's not socially engaged.

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But look, these pagans over here, they really understand justice. They really understand.

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And we're gonna take those ideas, I'm gonna take them back to Christianity. And this is what essentially it looks like Eric Mason did. He agrees with them on their ethics, but something was off.

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So he says, in many ways, he says, I have one foot in conservative Christianity, the other foot in liberal Christianity, but I don't feel secure in either boat.

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This is like what Tom Perkins said at Urbana in 1970. This is like what John Alexander and his father,

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Fred Alexander, were trying to perpetuate in the other side, which I think was mostly in the 1960s.

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And then I think they changed the name in late 60s. But what they were trying to do is say, look, there's a social gospel and there's fundamentalism.

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Fundamentalism has an individual gospel. We're gonna just combine those things. Both of those things come together and that's the perfect balance.

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That's the whole gospel. And what they do is they actually corrupt the gospel. They take the social gospel and they fuse it with what they call the individual gospel, but it's actually the true gospel.

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And then what they end up with is, because the gospel plus anything is not the gospel, they end up with the social justice gospel, which is what we're dealing with right now.

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So there is a corruption of the gospel going on. I think Eric Mason is one of the chief proponents of this, in my opinion.

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Here's what Woke means. He says that most African -Americans have had at least two life -altering experiences that are burning in their memory.

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The moment they realized that they were black and the moment they realized that that was a problem. So they have a double consciousness. And he says, in reality for minorities in this country, this is what they live in.

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But I would like to add a third consciousness to this conversation. Okay, what's the third consciousness? This third consciousness is what being truly woke is rooted in.

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Being truly woke is rooted in Christ consciousness. Our Christ consciousness elevates our awareness to our responsibility to care for the love and love our brothers, even those who don't look like us.

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So here's what he's saying. You can understand that America is just a terrible place for black people to live.

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I mean, it's just, it's a bad thing if you're black in the United States. But if you're Christ conscious, if you understand the problem in America, the problem and what being black means, you understand those two things.

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And the problem that America has with people being black, then add to that Christianity and voila, you should have woke, right?

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And who's a good example of this? My friend, he says, Matt Chandler. He sent an email to a couple of black pastors, including

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Eric Mason. He said, yo, he starts out with yo, yo, E. So I guess he calls

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Eric Mason E. I'm sorry about what happened. I don't know what to say. I'm broken hearted, love you guys.

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He's talking about a black shooting that happened. He said, I'm sorry. And so Eric Mason says, yeah, you know,

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Matt Chandler, he was sensitive to how every time one of these events takes place, it re -traumatizes our communities. That's a woke brother.

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So there's, you know, they just keep getting re -traumatized. This is a story of the black community in America in Eric Mason's mind.

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They're starting to get better and then boom, police shooting, they're all re -traumatized. And Matt Chandler, he's sensitive to that.

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He understands that that's a problem. And it's because he's a Christian that somehow plays into this. And so his

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Christ consciousness, right? So I guess if you don't do that, if you don't have that, you must not, I don't know, you don't have Christ consciousness.

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You're not a brother. I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure exactly what would Eric Mason say to that. Here's some of the steps to becoming woke in the book.

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Be aware. Be aware of the abuse that happens around you. Be willing to acknowledge. So this is involved in lamenting, apologizing.

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If you're in part of majority culture, you're part of the problem. If you're part of the church, you've been part of the problem.

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Apologize and be accountable. So this is the activism part. You need to do some kind of political activism, some community, social activism, and that's part of this.

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So there are three kinds of justice in the book. He talks about intervening justice, which is charity.

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We believe in that, right? Would we call that justice? Not necessarily. I mean, justice is more,

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I would say, I mean, you could say righteousness and justice can be even, depending on the passage, you could even translate them as the same word.

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So acting in a charitable way in the sense of you would act this way towards anyone in need without taking into account their external factors like their color of skin.

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In other words, if you had a poor brother come to you and say, look, I need a car. I don't have a car. And you had an extra car.

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Would you start thinking, well, are they black? Because if they're black, I'll give them a car. But if they're not black, no,

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I mean, true justice, right? If you want, in the sense of justice being equality before the law and equality in treating people, that would mean you're giving based on the need, not based on the external characteristic, right?

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So we can agree on this. I wouldn't want to phrase it that way as intervening justice, but look, that's fine.

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Let's go for it. Preventative justice, that's the second kind of justice we talked about. That means curtailing potential bad situations, counseling people, being involved in the community, creating relationships, making sure that the motivations for crime and things like that are kept at bay because you're investing in the community.

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And then number three, this is the most important one, systemic justice. So this involves when the church or Christians are supposed to react to this in Eric Mason's mind, in changing the system, developing programmatic approaches to address systems that have historically worked against the principles of justice, page 35.

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So things happen in history that were bad, we're gonna work to change those things. We're gonna work to make up for those things.

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That's the job of the church. So there you go, three kinds of justice. Now here's the problem.

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Here's some of the problems that Eric Mason's outlines. This isn't necessarily exhaustive, but these are the things that stood out to me as I was going through the book.

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He talks about the increased racial injustice in our country. So it's not getting better, it's getting worse.

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Despite the fact that there's less police shootings, there are no laws on the books that discriminate that I know of on the basis of race.

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In fact, it's against the law to do that. Still, racial injustice is just getting worse. I guess maybe that's under Trump, I don't know.

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He says, in the church, here's the problem in the church. He says, since we are children of God, we must be peacemakers.

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We can't be peacemakers and ignore injustice. Ignoring injustice isn't a sign to be an authentic believer, particularly ignoring systemic injustice.

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So how is the church doing this? Because the church, he says, is ignoring systemic injustice. How so? Well, here's some examples. The church perpetuates stereotypes, right?

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They talk about North Africa, and they assume Latin or Roman, not African or indigenous to the continent.

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And this is peculiar to me. Perpetuating the stereotype that people like Augustine, the great theologian, they're not really

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African because even though they lived in North Africa, people like him, they were really, they were

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Latin, they were Roman. And here's the reality of the situation. They weren't Sub -Saharan Africans.

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So I get so confused with this because I think, where do you draw these lines? What's your identity,

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Eric Mason? Is it with Sub -Saharan Africa? Is it a particular country? Is it accumulation of countries? Or is it just the geographic?

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It's the whole continent of Africa. And if it's just geographic, then does Mozambique figure into this?

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I mean, where do those lines go? What about Egypt? Egypt, I mean, they're the bad guys in the story of Exodus.

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They enslaved the Hebrews. So is that part of your heritage as well? I mean, you wanna claim people like Augustine because he's respected in the church, in the early church.

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You wanna claim him because of that. That's what I think. But look, there are cultural differences.

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There are ethnic differences between you and Augustine, just like there are between me and Augustine. And the reason that I respect for Augustine is because he's part of my

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Christian heritage, not because he's part of my cultural heritage or ethnic heritage, and that's okay.

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But to Eric Mason, it's not. He needs, these people need to be claimed somehow.

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It's almost like he's got a sense of inferiority that needs to be overcome. So recruit people like Augustine.

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Now, the other thing that they stereotype that's perpetuated is the belief that all black preachers do not preach the prosperity, that they preach the prosperity gospel or social justice.

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And they believe that's the content of the gospel. He says, that's not true. And of course that isn't true. But in general, is it true,

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Mr. Mason? I would say for most quote unquote white people in the United States, it's probably true that they are believing or go to a church that believes some kind of a false gospel.

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I haven't run the numbers on this. I'm just thinking a lot of the prominent preachers on the radio and on television, who are they?

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Black and white. Now, in the quote unquote black community, I'll give you a little story about this.

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When I was at Southeastern, a lot of the push for racial injustice, racial reconciliation, I should say, was immense.

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And a lot of people who went to churches in the area who were professors, even Danny Akin, I mean, they would talk about, well, the church needs to be this great multicultural center, right?

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Inclusive, diverse. Revelation, all tribes tongue nation, right? You hear this all the time.

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All the white people hang their head low and they're guilty because they go to a white church. But Danny Akin goes to a quote unquote white church.

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Yeah, there are some families in there who aren't probably. I mean, this was years ago that I was there, a couple of years ago. I visited these churches.

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I knew where the professors on campus went. They went to some of the whitest churches in town usually. And then they complained about how white the church is.

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Were there black churches? Yes, there were. There were churches where if I walked in, I probably would have been the only white person.

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And you know what? My wife and I were very open to going to a church where we were the only white people.

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And part of the reason for that was because the social justice nonsense in that area, because it was so affected by Southeastern, was it was almost, you couldn't get away from it.

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It was very hard to find a church that was solid, very hard. And I was totally willing to go to a church that was primarily black.

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And I was fine being the only white person because what mattered to me was understanding the truths of scripture and having biblical authority and sharing my spiritual gift and being ministered to.

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And I can do that in any church, as long as they're believers. I mean, it'd be nice if we spoke the same language.

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But look, there's a reason that I didn't. And there's a reason that people that would claim, we need to be diverse.

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They wouldn't go to a black church. It's because the theology was different. I'm just telling you,

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I lived in that area. I know the theology was different. It was, a lot of it was prosperity gospel.

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And that was stuff, even for those who are social justice at Southeastern, they didn't like the prosperity gospel. And so in things that might've changed down there, this was a few years ago, but look, to think that in general, a lot of these more cultural centered churches white and black really are doctrinally in error.

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There's nothing wrong with that. Eric Mason seems to think, yeah, that's a big problem. He really wants to show that the other black church in his mind, and this is his category, not mine.

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I don't even like talk. I like to talk about the church. He says the black church though, they have something to contribute, right? They're not just involved in heresy.

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They've actually, maybe they're the ones that are theologically correct in some situations. So he says, the other thing that the church has done is promote colorblindness.

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Colorblind theology denies Christ's power to heal racial divisions, disparities, and injustices by ignoring their ongoing impact. Well, this is ridiculous.

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Colorblindness, I mean, look, seeing someone for who they are on the inside, instead of who they are ethnically speaking, or other outside, curly hair, short, tall.

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I mean, seeing someone for who they are, their interests, their personality, what they believe, honestly,

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I think that should be the primary thing that you look at someone through. And if you're a brother and sister in Christ, then of course, the primary thing is your

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Christian identity. Eric Mason wants to put up this big banner that says, I'm a black person,

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I'm an Asian person, I'm a white person. These become these primary identities. For Eric Mason, it is a primary identity.

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I'll just say it, I think Eric Mason's racist in the sense of the word that I grew up with, right? And I don't throw that word out there, like some people do, just to demonize someone without any evidence.

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When I say this, I'm saying, Eric Mason seems to treat certain ethnicities different than others.

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And I'll give you some examples of that. But look, colorblindness, looking at people for the content of their character instead of the color of their skin,

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I mean, this is more of the basis for unity, I think, within the church. He says, ignoring the needs in the community, that's a problem.

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White churches, I guess, the church in general, that's what they've done. The black church, he says, in the past, they've engaged the issues of racial injustice, theologically and practically.

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But he says, I'm not sure why we seem reluctant to do that today. We ask our community, what are the top three needs in the community?

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So at his church, they're asking the community, tell us what your needs are. Of course, if you're part of a church, you should kind of, wouldn't you know kind of the needs of the community?

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Go into all the world, preach the gospel, make disciples. That's our mission in the community.

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Eric Mason seems to really want to find out what the community wants the church to do. And he says, yeah, the black church is good at this, but we're not.

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Somehow we, I guess he's including himself now in the white church, or I guess in the church in general. He says that the white church or the church in general,

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I'm not sure exactly, he gets sloppy with these terms, but he says that they don't participate in activism.

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And that's one of his laments. He has all these laments in the book. The church didn't create or lead the Black Lives Matter movement. In the eyes of many,

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Black Lives Matter has become the voice of black dignity. There's that word dignity again. Now think about this.

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Again, do people who don't believe in the image of God, I mean, Black Lives Matter movements started by trained

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Marxists, do they understand dignity? Real dignity before God, image of God?

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No, no, they don't. And he's saying the church should have been the one to lead that because, you know, they're the voice for black dignity.

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That's what Black Lives Matters is. He's not talking about the movement. He's talking about the organization.

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It's not making the distinction J .D. Greer does. Have you looked into the organization, Mr. Mason? Pastor Mason?

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I'm not even sure what to call you exactly, but Eric E., as Matt Hall says,

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I don't know where you, I don't know. I mean, by the time we're done with this, I don't even know what to say about Eric Mason.

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It seems like he corrupts the gospel. The more and more we get into this, Black Lives Matter and Christianity together, those who claim that they are

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Marxists, who wanna get rid of the family, the nuclear family, return to a village model, those who want to end cisgender privilege, you're with them?

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It's disturbing to me. I think he's talking more about racial injustice here, but, you know, this is careless.

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Here's some other things. He says that, this is a problem with the church, I guess, he says that they'll tell people who don't have jobs that are hungry to get a job.

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And if they're homeless, he says that, you know, they'll tell them to get a job, not knowing that they might not have a mailing address.

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They condemn people on public assistance, and they don't know the story of those people, page 135.

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Now, I have to wonder, what does he do with those who don't work, shouldn't eat?

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Obviously, everyone has a story, but there are a lot of people on welfare who they didn't get there because they're just victims.

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There are people who are victims who have gotten there. Both are true. I will regularly give out money, give out charity, but a lot of times

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I do try, when I'm trying to be generous to someone, I try to find a way sometimes that, hey, you can do this for me.

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It's a way to restore dignity. People that just get a handout, or just charity, a handout from the government,

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I'm thinking, there's not much dignity in that, oftentimes. Now, if it's a gift, and someone you know, it's a gift, look, just be grateful for it, but the law of God is very clear on this, that if someone does not work, they shouldn't eat.

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There needs to be some kind of effort made somewhere. Nothing wrong with that, but Eric Mason wants to defend people,

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I guess, that might be on welfare. And look, we shouldn't broad brush, and I would agree with him on that.

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We shouldn't broad brush, but it's just interesting to me. He doesn't bring in biblical principles on this.

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He says, in communities of color, oh, in communities of color, this is one of the issues, he says, here's where racism,

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I think, comes out. My appreciation and legitimate pride in my race, listen to that, my, it's

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I, I, I, my appreciation and legitimate pride in my race was not provided me by my study of Christian theology, pages 91 and 92.

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So I guess, this is a problem. There should be some pride in his race that is legitimated by Christian theology.

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It should be allowed, it should be legitimated, I guess it should be fostered in some way. Would that apply to any other race?

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What about an Anglo person? What about someone from another European country, like Germany? A lot of bad things happened in Germany in the 1940s.

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I mean, but there's some good things too. Should someone, that happened in Germany before the 1940s, not in the 1940s necessarily, but there's, you know,

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Martin Luther, right? We would look at some, as Christians, see some good things happen in Germany. Someone be proud of their

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German ancestry, their German heritage, their German, the word he uses, their race, their racial identity, their ethnicity.

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He seems only concerned about one thing, black identity. That's interesting to me. And he doesn't bring in general principles here about the church should just foster, you know, or legitimate having pride in ethnicity.

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No, it's specifically black ethnicity. So that's interesting to me.

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And then he says that in reintegrating blacks, there's a fear that they will lose the last truly

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African -American institution, their churches. So he says, you know, there's all this segregation, right? And he says, there's black churches, there's white churches, and he wants to, we got to reintegrate here.

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We're one body in Christ, we got to come together. But there's a fear, if we do that, are we going to lose our leadership and our culture and our

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African -American churches? We control those things, are we going to lose those? You can't win.

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If you're segregated, that's racist. If you come together, that's also racist, because unless quote unquote black people are dictating everything, then you lose the identity of the black church.

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So then how do you win? He doesn't say. This is the problem.

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This is the conundrum. This is how wokeness leads to just perpetual guilt. There is no way to win.

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Here's a few things I just thought of when he, you know, I've done episodes on the historical narrative that social justicians will push, so I'm not going to belabor these points, just a few things.

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He says, in 1776, only one denomination in America, the Quakers, had declared slaveholding a sin. So this is about the founding of the country.

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That's why he uses 1776. He says, hey, the only guys that, only those

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Pennsylvanians, I guess, the Quakers, that declared slaveholding a sin. This is the problem.

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Now, I want to submit to you, he talks in this book about Philemon, and I happen to know

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Jesus and Paul never condemned slaveholding as a sin in and of itself. Now, there are many things in American slavery that we can condemn as sin, and in Roman slavery, yes, there are, there's things attached to those things.

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We can talk about how, you know, Africans themselves were engaged in tribal warfare and destroyed tribes and captured people to sell them into slavery.

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That was wrong. It was wrong for people to go and buy those captured slaves. I believe that that was wrong for them to, for the slave merchants from mostly

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Massachusetts and Rhode Island, most people don't know that, but they would go over to Africa and they would bring them, and then they would sell them initially in the

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North, and then the South became the place where the vast majority of slaves eventually went.

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And so he wants to take, and I didn't read you this part, but he wants to take people like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield and condemn them, say, yeah, they were involved in that, as a sin, as a sin.

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Now, there's sins attached to it. There's sins attached, look, if you pay your taxes in America, some of that money could be going to Planned Parenthood.

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If you go to Walmart, you could be buying stuff from sweatshops or supporting an institution that buys stuff from sweatshops.

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You know, the welfare system, you know any Christians who are social workers? I mean, look, that's a horrible system that's anti -biblical and creates all kinds of generational dependence.

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I mean, we could just go on and on, the prison system, you wanna talk about some unbiblical justice model, let's talk about the prison system and how it runs in this country.

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I mean, the list just goes on. And these are things presently with us. Eric Mason, I mean, he mentions racialized stuff, but there's a lot of things he doesn't mention.

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And so my only point in bringing this up is that to condemn men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards with your one finger means there's three fingers pointing back at you.

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And it's not necessarily a sin for them to own slaves in and of itself. I should say to hold slaves in and of itself.

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You can't find me, the Bible verse is on this. You can try to connect them to other sins, but whenever you do that, you're condemning yourself.

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You're condemning yourself if you live in this country and pretty much any country because there's abuses all over the place.

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And that's just a normal part of existence. We get rid of one, we replace it with another. That's just usually how it goes.

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We're humans. We are involved in some bad things. That's why we need the gospel and that's why we need grace, all right?

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It just, it really bothers me to take men like Jonathan Edwards, theologically orthodox men, and most of all,

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Edwards said some crazy things, especially towards the end of his life, but mostly theologically orthodox stuff, the writings that we usually look to,

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George Whitefield, these guys that they had their flaws, but they did some amazing things and then just to condemn them.

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Yeah, they were sinful for this. Not necessarily, you don't know that.

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The question is, did they follow biblical regulations in so far as they were able to in the control that they had when they had slaves?

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Did they treat them in the way that Paul says to treat slaves? And Paul was writing in a very unjust

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Roman empire, gladiatorial arenas, that was connected to slavery.

27:58

Couldn't be a slave if you weren't a Roman, if you were a Roman citizen. There were distinctions there.

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A lot of them captured in warfare, sex slavery was common, it was accepted in the culture.

28:11

That wasn't accepted in American slavery as much, but this was the reality of Paul's day and this is what he writes.

28:18

Did Jonathan Edwards follow that instruction? That's the real question. And look, this is a hill

28:24

I don't mind dying on because this is a sola scriptura thing to me, is what does the scripture say about this?

28:30

Not what does your sociology say, well, not what do you think, because based on your arbitrary opinion, what does

28:35

God say? We're Christians, right? That's what we should be going back to. Now, obviously, we're all glad slavery ended.

28:45

Most of the founding fathers, they agreed that it should end. That's why part of the reason it was, even the slave trade was phased out.

28:56

But all that to say, Eric Mason, he's got his own list here of sins.

29:03

He says slaveholders came to see Christianity primarily as a means of social control. Now, these are very blanket black and white statements.

29:10

I happen to know that's not true. Yeah, there were slaveholders who believed that. There were, I'm sure there were.

29:16

But to broad brush it, no, that's not true. I can actually, and I'm not gonna do it in this video because we're running out of time, but I can point you to a lot of publications,

29:24

Christian denominational publications from that time, expressing concern, instructing masters on how to instruct their slaves.

29:33

And it wasn't all submit to your masters. It wasn't. That was actually, what was it, 15%,

29:38

I think, of that literature. There was a study done on it. I've already done episodes on this stuff, but this is part of the problem.

29:48

It's a black and white absolute kind of understanding of history that just follows a thread, links it with other things, and creates a narrative.

29:56

It's very sloppy. He says that the Nation of Islam members, they saw their purpose as the restoration of black dignity and respect.

30:03

And these are huge needs in the black community. And an appeal is made much stronger against the specter of a church that is still divided along racial lines.

30:10

So you know what? Nation of Islam, they made inroads because the church was divided along racial lines. It's church's fault. Church has got a problem here.

30:18

Now look, should churches be divided along racial lines?

30:24

I don't think in every sense, but I don't. Look, here's one of the things. Most people think that this should happen organically, that this kind of thing, that as people interact and people get to know each other, and that you can start integrating these things.

30:41

But there's a recognition that there's different cultural things at play as well. There just are.

30:47

I just talked to you about Wake Forest, but most quote -unquote white churches,

30:52

I wouldn't go to. And part of it is cultural. Part of it is theological.

30:59

Many times those things get mixed. Because theology gets into a culture and that culture changes the way that they act based on theology they believe, et cetera.

31:08

But am I gonna be going to a lot of Pentecostal churches? Probably not. Well, I speak it.

31:14

There's some brothers I have in Christ there, absolutely. But that's not really my theology.

31:19

And there's cultural things that come with that sometimes. And it's not my theology either. That's not my cultural understanding of my expression of how

31:28

I express worship. And sometimes those things aren't even wrong. Am I gonna go to a

31:35

Presbyterian church? They have their cultures too. They don't ever raise hands. You notice that?

31:41

It seems like that, at least the most that I've been to, unless it's like the end of the service that they put out their hands for an offering kind of thing.

31:47

But I don't know, it's not, I like people to be free to raise their hands, possibly, if they wanna do that.

31:53

I don't like to be forced into it necessarily, but there's cultural things that we don't even realize sometimes that will affect the churches we go to when we have an array of options.

32:07

And it's not all racist. This is what I really want people to understand. It's not racist to make that choice, to go to a church.

32:15

And if it is, that's wrong, but it doesn't have to be. And I think for most people, it's not. He's saying though, that's the problem.

32:24

Nation of Islam was able to make inroads because of the divisiveness in the church. He says, we must repent of the teachings that the church has overtly and covertly communicated about blacks in the narrative and theology of American history, because there was

32:37

Christian participation in creating false doctrines about black humanity. We must have open dialogue and repentance about this until these false ideas are eradicated from Christianity.

32:46

Let me ask you something. Let me ask you something. A lot of people, a whole lot of people have immigrated here, quote unquote, white people.

32:54

Europeans immigrated here after slavery. A lot of people that participated in slavery or lived during antebellum times did not all believe in bad theology necessarily.

33:07

And in other words, they weren't heretics. Eric Mason's trying to say that this false theology they perpetuated, like saying that,

33:14

I guess black people are inferior and there's a curse on them and that kind of thing.

33:22

Not everyone believed that. Were there people that did? Yeah, there were, there were. In fact, when I was doing a study of the denominational divisions,

33:28

I hardly ever, in fact, I didn't really come, that line of thinking, I didn't even find it in the debates about whether slavery should be, whether the church should get behind the immediate abolition of slavery.

33:41

And that was the job of the church. Those were primarily what the debates were over. Didn't see anything really even hinting at that argument.

33:49

That doesn't mean there might be some sources I wasn't aware of, but the major sources, that argument wasn't there. And this is another example of where this black and white absolutist understanding of history, where you just broad brush and just say, yeah, you know, all white people, they're just responsible.

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We're all church, the whole church is responsible. If you weren't teaching that theology, you're not responsible. I'm sorry, you're just not.

34:13

Son shall not bear the guilt of their fathers. Even if it, look, for a lot of these people, their fathers didn't even believe that.

34:20

Where's the responsibility in all this? Cause he wants to put the church is just responsible for all these horrible things.

34:26

Church is the villain in the story. Well, who's not the villain? I quote from page 156.

34:31

There is an attack on the black male on every front. From mass incarceration, undereducation, social and psychological genocide, and self -hatred, black men experience an attack.

34:42

We must find ways for the church to engage these dire issues. Now look at what this means. The black male is the one being attacked.

34:49

Who's the passive and who's active? The black male is passive. He's saying black people are passive in this. They're being, they're the ones that are under attack.

34:56

Mass incarceration, undereducation. In other words, there's no, he doesn't talk about responsibility in the quote -unquote black community.

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You get, you know, you commit a crime, go to jail. It doesn't talk about, you know, yeah, we need to get our act together.

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We need to teach the principles of the word of God because you know what? People are making sinful decisions in some of these communities.

35:18

Bad decisions when it comes to their education in some of these places. There's opportunities even. There's affirmative action opportunities to go to schools and they're not taking advantage of them.

35:27

And he doesn't get into any of this. He doesn't wanna, the only, the positive cultural things are all attributed to the black church.

35:35

Black church has positive cultural attributions. White people and the church in general, bad, bad attributions.

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They're the villains. And the victims of the story that don't really bear responsibility are black people in general.

35:48

That's the narrative Eric Mason's weaving. It's the same narrative we're hearing in the general culture. It's no different.

35:57

So you can't just promote people taking responsibility, making wise decisions, living according to biblical precepts.

36:06

Instead, you need systemic change. So the mission is this. So we must continue to work together to hold

36:13

America accountable for what it promised to do. Page 50 of the book.

36:19

So America's the problem too. And we in the church, we're gonna continue, we're gonna work together.

36:24

We're gonna hold them responsible. When it comes to public witness, people are waiting literally for the church to say something but we're asleep on what is happening and are expending our energies arguing about things instead of emphasizing with one, empathizing with one another.

36:38

This is a huge missed opportunity for the church. So he's saying, look, this is page 69. The church is missing out because we're asleep.

36:47

And the culture, the people out there that aren't inside the church, they're waiting for the church to do something. This is just, it's so interesting to me how he views the relationship of the church and the world.

36:59

The church, so the church needs to go to the world, find out what the world needs. And the world's just sitting there,

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I guess they're the passive, but they're just sitting there waiting, waiting for the church to do something. It's just, it's fascinating to me how he views this.

37:15

He also says this, you need to get involved in prophetic preaching. Prophetic preaching is the bridge between the solid doctrine of conservative

37:22

Christianity and the Christian ethics of the liberal perspective. This is so key. Doctrine of conservative

37:28

Christianity with liberal ethics. That's what he wants. He thinks the problem with conservative

37:34

Christians are their ethics are off. What do ethics dictate? Ethics dictate your political position.

37:41

He's saying the political position of the church, the way that the church thinks about right and wrong is off.

37:47

Liberal Christians apparently get it right. Conservatives who have good doctrine don't. So we need to mesh these things together.

37:55

I mean, it's kind of like, how dare he? Because conservative Christians, Christians in general,

38:01

I mean, they are the biggest givers of charity and emissions and I mean, they give of themselves.

38:07

I mean, I've been all over the country and been known Christians and been part of churches and conservative ones.

38:12

And man, it just breaks my heart. Their ethics are wrong apparently.

38:19

And so we need prophetic preaching. So that's what prophetic preaching is. It's you're gonna preach the social goals of liberals, right?

38:27

His word, liberal, not mine. And you're gonna take the doctrines of conservatives, solid doctrine.

38:34

Whenever I hear those social justice guys saying, well, you know, conservative and liberal, those are just political things, categories.

38:41

Stop bringing them into theology. Show them this passage from Eric Mason, where Eric Mason's using these very same categories.

38:49

Page 116, or I'm sorry. Oh, I didn't put, did I put the page? Yes, I think I put the page.

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116 to 117, yes, of his book. All right, so here's some systems that need to be challenged in Eric Mason's mind.

39:02

The criminal justice system, because of police brutality. Finance, because of redlining. Black businesses, or business, because there's not enough black businesses.

39:11

Church needs to encourage that. The church itself, because of segregation. They don't have practical theology to meet urban needs.

39:18

By the way, interesting part of the book, women's ministry. The church does not have an expansive understanding of what women should be doing.

39:23

Women should be serving communion. They should be, there should be all sorts of things women should be doing, they're not doing. African -American discipleship.

39:30

So now we're getting back to segregation. We need a special kind of discipleship for African -Americans. So are we just going back to segregation now?

39:37

Is that what this is? But Eric Mason, that's what he wants. We need spheres, he says. He used the word spheres for discipling

39:46

African -Americans. And racial trauma is part of this. We need counselors, psychologists.

39:51

He used the word psychologists, who understand racial trauma. I wonder if Kyle G. Howard's gonna work at Eric Mason's church.

39:57

In education, black teachers are underrepresented. We need to get more black teachers in there. And you know what some of this stuff came from?

40:06

His church has a think tank for figuring out these solutions. Think tank at his church.

40:13

Talk about getting off track for the mission of the church. And of course, most importantly,

40:22

Christians need to listen. He says, I encourage majority culture churches, so he's saying white people, to listen.

40:28

So to find, he says to find an ethnic minority church in your region and humbly say to them, we want to come to the table, we want to understand what's going on.

40:36

That's the standpoint epistemology coming out. That's what he's saying, you can't understand, the Bible, you just don't whip out a

40:42

Bible and start reading it and trying to apply things. No, you need to find someone who's a different race, different ethnicity than you.

40:50

They'll be able to explain to you what's really happening, and then you'll be able to respond to it. I think

40:57

Eric Mason's got some racism going on, guys. Does it work both directions? If you're gonna plant a church in the suburbs,

41:05

Mr. Mason, do you just go to majority culture churches and start asking them all about, I mean,

41:10

I should say, if you want to know how to carry out justice, because that's what you're talking about, you go to a majority culture church, if it's a white area, if you're in Iowa or something, come on, come on.

41:23

Here's his biblical justification. Philemon, now this is interesting, this is dialogue with Philemon and someone else.

41:29

He says, Philemon could say, I'm glad you asked. It's kind of entering mid -sentence here, but someone who's basically saying,

41:35

Philemon, why would you treat Onesimus, your slave, as a brother? So I'm glad you asked. God has been dealing with my heart about slavery, dealing with your heart.

41:43

What about your pockets? No, man, if I lose, I lose. But God is able to reward even when you give stuff away.

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Not only did I send him away, he had to get there. He was broke, so I had to give him some resources so he could get there.

41:57

We took up a church offering for him. You change a system by converting the poor and the elite at the same time.

42:04

Pages 63 to 64. This is an imaginary dialogue that did not happen with Philemon.

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Did Philemon free Onesimus? Do we have evidence of this?

42:20

Is it part of the book? Is it part of the biblical narrative? Did Paul instruct you must free him? Or was it just, accept him as more than a slave, he's a brother now.

42:31

I mean, the book of Philemon is a wrench in the gear system for woke theologians, it just is.

42:39

Here you have the apostle in an oppressive system saying to someone who is a slave owner in that system,

42:47

I'm sending you, your slave back, and treat him as he's a brother now.

42:53

He's more than a slave, he's a brother. But he didn't say he's not a slave anymore. He didn't say free him.

43:01

He could have, that was his opportunity. Eric Mason wants to take this and somehow create this imaginary dialogue saying that, you know,

43:11

Philemon, he just, he wasn't caring about his pocketbook anymore. He didn't, you know, where is this?

43:17

It's not there. So I just, I gotta point that out. You need to be careful, you're not straying from scripture itself here.

43:24

He says, we are called to advocate for the poor as an outworking of being a wise covenant community. Page 125.

43:32

Advocating for the poor in scripture, whenever you find it, it is actual advocating for real needs, right?

43:40

So if there's injustice, advocate for them. If they're not getting equality before the law, advocate for them.

43:47

It is not just because they're poor you need to do something for them. It's because they're being mistreated in some way, there's some injustice.

43:54

So if you spot the injustice, a real actual injustice, then yeah, we'll be on the side of the poor, absolutely.

44:03

But if it's just this invisible, it's out there, and we just have to assume America is a horrible rotten place, we need to just get rid of our police force, we need to, or reform the police force, we need to get rid of all historical monuments, we need to, and there's no systemic, no real injustice

44:18

I should say, no actual systemic in the sense of there's laws or there's really corrupt judges that we can have a say in, we can say, look, let's take a stand, let's not reelect this judge.

44:33

I mean, they're not going for that kind of thing. They're just going for, right now in the greater culture, greater society, it's basically, let's just bring in all these socialist ideas and these

44:45

Marxist ideas. That is not the same as biblically advocating for equality before the law for everyone.

44:54

You're also not supposed to take the side of a poor man and dispute just because he's poor. Is that not being on the side of the poor?

45:01

No, being on the side of the poor is about equality before the law, all right? He misses it.

45:09

Remember those in prison, he says, as though you were in prison with them and mistreated as though you yourselves were suffering bodily.

45:16

And he says, this scriptural imperative clearly includes those who are unjustly imprisoned.

45:23

This is from Hebrews chapter 13. And this is such a bad application of this passage.

45:33

I don't even know quite where to start. Let's just read though, the beginning of the chapter because this is pretty,

45:44

Hebrews chapter 13 and it's page or verse three that he's quoting.

45:49

Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them and those who are ill treated since you yourselves are in the body. But go back to verse one, let love of the brethren continue, setting the context.

46:00

This isn't just those incarcerated because of their race or something like that.

46:07

This is other Christians who are in prison because of their faith, remember them. That's what he's saying.

46:13

How can Eric Mason do this? How is this man a pastor? This is terrible exegesis.

46:22

And he says, the people in Jerusalem had economic wealth but the people in the countryside or the surrounding areas around Judah were living in poverty.

46:29

So Micah called out the governing authority about its responsibility to address the needs of the poor.

46:37

So again, being on the side of the poor and we just went over that, but he's trying to use Micah as another example of that.

46:44

It's all about this disparity between wealth and poverty. And if you read Micah, it's not about that.

46:51

Look, oftentimes, wealth, when you look at wealth being negative associations with wealth in scripture, it's not the wealth that's the bad thing.

47:04

Wealth is an evil in and of itself, right? The love of money is the problem, not money itself. But there's a tendency for those who are in power, who have money to oppress those who don't.

47:17

That is a human tendency. And it's a tendency happening in our culture right now.

47:22

And it's not along the lines that Eric Mason wants you to think they're along the lines of. It's people that are elites in Hollywood, entertainment, media, education, business, all four of those influential segments of our culture pretty much controlled, even corporate interests.

47:44

They're all singing the same tune right now. They're singing the same tune, Black Lives Matter. They're all on board.

47:50

They're all cashing in on this, right? They're the ones with the money and the power.

47:56

You say, well, Donald Trump's in office right now. Yeah, you got Donald Trump in office, right? I guess you have, there's one, and he's not even,

48:03

I wouldn't even call him a conservative, but you have one person who's not in that guild who's in some semblance of power.

48:10

And if he loses the next election or the election after that, then everything will just about be people that are liberal in their thinking and progressive and Marxist, really, and they're gonna be the ones controlling.

48:24

That happens in our culture too. Who's the person with the least amount of voice in the United States, probably?

48:31

Who's the person, I'm not even gonna answer that question. What's the demographic that if they say something, they're the least likely to be listened to?

48:38

Think about that. Now, this is so,

48:46

I mean, this could work just in both ways. You could cut this however you, you could assign rich and poor in this context in a way that's different than the way that Eric Mason assigns them.

48:58

But Micah is concerned about people breaking God's law. That is scripture. You'll find that throughout scripture, it's people breaking

49:05

God's law. And oftentimes, yes, rich people will do that, but it's not because they're rich.

49:10

It's not vilifying rich. It's not the rich are evil just because they're rich. Here's the most concerning part, in my opinion, of the whole book, all right?

49:22

And I wanna preface this a little bit. I've been doing a lot of research on, like I said, the 1970s social justice movement, and there was a real awakening at that time in the minds of these social justice warriors, these pioneers in social justice warrioring, that the gospel was just, it was just bigger.

49:42

It was bigger than everyone had thought. Everyone thought it was this individual thing. And no, they realized, nope, gospel applies to everything.

49:49

And they used Neo -Cyperian and liberation theologies primarily to forward that kind of thinking.

49:55

The gospel's supposed to redeem culture, supposed to redeem everything. Prison system should be redeemed by the gospel.

50:00

Art should be redeemed by the gospel. The gospel's a lens through which you look at everything. The gospel just became, and what is the gospel?

50:06

Gospel is the grace of God through Jesus Christ. That's the gospel. It's the story of Jesus and what he did, what he did on behalf of sinners.

50:14

That's the gospel. Now, that is not what you find in Eric Mason's understanding of the gospel.

50:21

Look at this. The goal of this book, he says, so here's the point of Woke Church. The goal of this book is to shine a spotlight on one of the aspects of the gospel that has been neglected or dismissed as inappropriate for discourse.

50:33

So he's saying, my book's about the gospel. Apparently everything we were just going over, yeah, that's about the gospel somehow.

50:40

Somehow there's grace in that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where that is. I don't know how that's good news. In Western theology, we tend to lack a comprehensive view of God's perfections, particularly righteousness and justice, and even our understanding of justification.

50:53

So he's saying our understanding of justification, how Christ justifies sinners. Yeah, Western theology, it just lacks the comprehensive view.

51:02

Justification's so much more. Not only are we talking about the gospel, we're talking about justification when we talk about Eric Mason's version of social justice.

51:09

Being woke is about justification. Page 47, we are to proclaim the gospel, to change people within systems.

51:19

Why tag that on there, within systems? Justice is a core message of the

51:25

Bible, page 51. Core message of the Bible is justice. It's in there.

51:31

Justice is very important. I'd say grace is the core message. Gospel that cries out for a woke church.

51:41

It's the gospel. The gospel's crying out. The grace of God through Jesus Christ given to all men is crying out for a woke church.

51:53

Page 99, the separation between black and white flowed from the white church's unwillingness to preach and live out a full gospel.

52:02

How astounding is it that the black church exists, not as an entity that was born out of willing missiological effort, but out of heretical theology and practice, saying the white church are a bunch of heretics.

52:16

Segregation is heresy, is what he's saying. Now look, segregation's wrong, but these are very strong words that Eric Mason is using here.

52:28

Can someone, I'm gonna ask you this, think about it yourself. Can someone believe, let's say, that they don't believe in interracial marriage, let's say.

52:38

Now, I'm not one of these people, obviously, but if, let's say that you know someone who believes that.

52:47

There are people out there who believe that, right? Black and white. They don't believe two people of different races in their mind should get married.

52:54

As my Uncle Fred used to say, but we all got off the same boat. That's how I think about it. But there are people who think that way.

53:01

Are they then, if they claim to be Christian, and they believe, you know, you go through the creeds and everything, they believe all of it, but they just don't think that, there should be a separation, they think, between races for some odd reason.

53:12

Are they a heretic? Are they not saved? Are they not saved?

53:22

Do they not believe the full gospel? And these are questions that really do need to be answered.

53:30

And clearly, you could say that they're wrong. You could say they're getting an ethical issue wrong in scripture.

53:37

You could try to make your case. You could talk about, you know, how we're one in Christ, and you could try to show that the laws in the

53:47

Old Testament against Hebrews intermarrying don't apply today in the current context. You could, I mean, you could whip out your

53:56

Bible. You could talk about this. But are you gonna say, well, you're just not a Christian then. You're just not a

54:02

Christian. If you think that black churches and white churches, there should be different churches. Well, you just must not be saved. Must not believe the whole gospel.

54:09

You must be a heretic. What kind of gospel does Eric Mason believe in?

54:15

I, you know, and I'll die on this hill. I believe in a gospel that can save everyone. It's true.

54:22

I believe in a gospel that can save someone who is black, white, Asian, Hispanic, blue, and they can have wrong things in their thinking, ethically speaking.

54:33

Are we gonna go to the reformers and say, well, yeah, Martin Luther, I guess that guy didn't believe in the gospel, clearly. Look at what he wrote about the

54:39

Jews. Look at John Calvin. Look what he thought about civil penalties for Anabaptists.

54:44

Man, I guess he's not a Christian, that guy. John Knox, have you seen what he wrote about women?

54:50

I mean, that guy can't be a Christian. No way. Are we just gonna do this?

54:56

I mean, we're doing it with Edwards now in Whitfield, apparently. So we're just gonna, how far back do we go? I don't know.

55:03

The heroes of the faith can all be ripped down now. We can rip down Paul. Why don't we just rip down the Apostle Paul? Did he not understand his responsibility in the culture he lived in to crusade for social justice against the oppressive

55:15

Roman system? About Jesus. That's what they wanted him to do.

55:22

Haven't you come back to overthrow the Romans? Where do we draw these lines,

55:29

Mr. Mason? There can be people in error, certainly

55:35

Jesus and Paul were not, but there can be people in error, reformers, who you,

55:41

I would think, respect in some way. You respect their theology. You seem to. I thought you liked, quote unquote,

55:48

Calvinist theology. Are you willing to just throw John Calvin under the bus and say he's a heretic?

55:55

I'm curious. But if we let this cancer continue, that's where we're going. Page 110.

56:03

We are reaping the bitter fruit of a black identity crisis that I know the gospel is sufficient to fill.

56:10

I don't know what in the world that means. I don't know what in the world that means. What kind of, how does the gospel, these categorical errors are throughout this.

56:20

Look up every time he uses the word gospel in woke church and then apply your understanding of what the gospel is, the true gospel, the grace of God, the good news that Jesus Christ has paid for the sins of his people, that they can be in a right relationship with the

56:35

Lord. That solves the black identity crisis. I mean, it can solve an identity crisis.

56:43

It can give you an identity if you're in Christ and you receive the gospel. But how is it black?

56:51

I don't know. But Eric Mason, Eric Mason, I think, has a problem.

56:57

There's some bitterness there. Some bitterness towards the quote unquote white church, majority culture, America itself, and things need to be changed.

57:07

Education needs to be changed, criminal justice reform. You can go through all the lamentations he makes and all the changes he proposes.

57:15

A lot of them are kind of in general, they're kind of vague, but it looks like, in his words, these are liberal ethical understandings.

57:25

These are, and I'm gonna let Ronnie Nall say what I'm not gonna say here, but they seem like there's a political agenda behind this.

57:35

Merging the gospel, our precious gospel, with the ethics, liberal ethics,

57:41

Marxist -infused ethics. And that's my take on woke church.

57:47

So be very wary if you see your pastor or your leaders reading this book, because what could happen at your church might be kind of what happened at First Baptist Church of Naples.

58:00

Now, with all that, I would like to now introduce to you Ronnie Nall. Ronnie Nall is someone who's a friend of mine.

58:08

I've had the privilege of meeting him last year. He is a businessman, he's an author. He wrote this book called

58:13

Beyond Inquisition. So the reason I wanted to have you on to talk about Eric Mason's book is because I was very impressed when

58:22

I met you. You had read the book, I think you told me at the time, three times. Now, I don't know, has that number increased?

58:27

How many times have you read woke church? I've lost count. I have it highlighted and all my notes in it, because I've been approached by people that really, they understand what they believe and why they believe it, but the major flaw with evangelicals is that they don't know what they don't believe and why they don't believe it.

58:53

And I think maybe that's infected our seminaries too. Based on the results that I am seeing from the leadership, they don't understand what they do not believe and why they don't believe it.

59:06

You're committed to the possibility of starting a conservative seminary. I wanna tell everyone a little bit about that.

59:12

My wife and I have been wanting to do this for years. And so, I'm willing to move where the spirit leads and we would love to open a biblical

59:23

Christian seminary. And my wife and I have committed seven figures to doing that.

59:30

If people wanna help you or just get involved in that, is there a place that I should send them? They can email me.

59:37

So, my email is my proper name with my middle initial. It's ronaldenall,

59:46

N -A -L -L, at gmail .com. Excited about that.

59:51

Let's talk about Woke Church a little bit, if you don't mind. What is the point of the book?

59:56

What's he trying to get Christians to do? Right, so I'm gonna discard the $10 words and break it down.

01:00:05

Here's what they want. They want the church to become leftist Democrats. Okay. That's what he wants.

01:00:12

During the first three quarters of the book, it's we versus them, us versus them.

01:00:20

And frankly, I thought I had a solid grasp of a biblical

01:00:25

Christian worldview and what I did not believe and why, including Marxism. I have never read a

01:00:31

Christian so divisive over skin color. It was shocking to me, but it's us versus them.

01:00:38

Then after three quarters of the book, when he starts listing his programs, all of a sudden it's us. Marcus Hayes had endorsed this book.

01:00:45

I think that's what put it on your radar. And you're saying that Eric Mason, who's the author of the book, he creates the formula, if you will, for what happened at Naples.

01:00:53

Is that correct? Absolutely. After the failed vote of Marcus Hayes, after he failed to get the minimum percentage to become our pastor, within hours, this letter was sent out.

01:01:12

17 members, all conservatives, were terminated without a

01:01:18

Matthew 18 process. We started to get involved.

01:01:24

I was appointed as one of three emissaries by the terminated to meet with the pastors, to meet with them and speak about restoration.

01:01:38

One of the things I probed was where's all this racism? Because I don't want to go to church with racists.

01:01:47

I don't want to go to church with anybody who would support the theology of a Votibacum, but then if they find out he's black, say, well, he can't be my pastor.

01:01:56

See, that's what I care about. What do you believe and why do you believe it? So as I probed the pastors, where's the racism?

01:02:04

Where's the proof? Who did it? No evidence. They had one anecdotal story of a man who walked up to a woman secretary of Spanish speaking background and used a slur with her.

01:02:25

No evidence was presented. They had ample opportunity to give the three of us evidence.

01:02:34

I submit that they didn't have any. Most people don't realize it, but they do suffer from Marxian thinking.

01:02:42

There's this power struggle, there's this privilege, and we don't have the goodies.

01:02:49

We want goodies and we deserve the goodies. And if you love Jesus, you'll give us the goodies.

01:02:55

Okay, flesh that out for me a little bit just to, because people are going to ask, okay, where is this in his book?

01:03:01

What kind of goodies, quote unquote, is he looking to achieve or receive? Or that's the last 25 % of the book, it's program after program.

01:03:09

Given his eight pages of acknowledgements where he quotes

01:03:14

Marxist after Marxist after Marxist after social Democrat, you have to extrapolate that he means the government.

01:03:26

Let's presuppose there is a patriarchy or a structure or intersectionality or critical race theory.

01:03:34

His solution is not salvation in the finished work of Jesus Christ, of God's working

01:03:43

Christ. His solution is redistribution and materialism. Eric Mason now has become, he's kind of a guru.

01:03:50

He's someone, he's one of the top three guys that people point to now and say, you wanna know the way forward for the church, look to Eric Mason.

01:03:58

He's gonna teach you how to do justice at the church, which is really the job of the government.

01:04:03

He's gonna teach you how to do education at the church, which is really the job of the family. We're gonna make a woke church.

01:04:09

And so when people hear these kinds of things, when they're handed a copy of Mason's book, you're saying they should be concerned.

01:04:18

How should they respond? If there is a chance that they could have a reasonable dialogue with someone, what would your advice be?

01:04:25

I try to learn about the person a little bit. What's their starting point? What questions do they have?

01:04:32

Where do they hurt? What question has not been answered for them?

01:04:38

So I'll ask some general questions. They don't know I'm asking about epistemology and ontology.

01:04:44

They don't know I'm doing that. I'm just kind of learning about them. And then I'll follow up with sharper questions.

01:04:50

And let's say if you had Eric Mason right in front of you, author of Woke Church, and what kind of questions do you think you'd ask him?

01:04:57

So I would start with, did God reach down to mankind in verbal propositional form, the

01:05:09

Bible, and is scripture sufficient and inerrant? Why or why not?

01:05:17

And he's gonna say yes, right? Great, let's, great, great. Then we have the same starting point.

01:05:24

Then, then all of scripture comes into play. If he says yes,

01:05:30

John, it is game on, in a good way, in a biblical way. All of scripture comes into play.

01:05:38

If they weasel around and well, you know, it's anecdotal and, you know, like they don't use reason.

01:05:48

So you try to, you try to figure out their starting points and can you keep them within reason?

01:05:53

What other good questions could you ask that might draw someone out and expose anti -biblical thinking?

01:06:00

Right, so what I would do is I would, I would, with my questions, I would lure him in to the

01:06:07

Jesus plus statement and that's where he has to go. So my question was,

01:06:15

I repented of my sins. I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior and I was baptized.

01:06:23

I have been redeemed. I have been forgiven of my sins.

01:06:29

I am trying, for you Wesleyans out there, I'm trying to live a sanctified life.

01:06:35

I'm trying holy living. I'm trying. Why do I need woke church?

01:06:42

What is not sufficient about the finished work of God in Christ? What is not sufficient?

01:06:49

See, they've got it turned around. The scripture is the analytical tool for this.

01:06:58

So why is the blood of Christ not sufficient, John? What, why do I need, why do

01:07:03

I need all these programs? I think they would say, I think they would say, Ronnie, because you don't understand because you're sitting in your white privilege, how bad it is for minorities in this country and historically how bad it's been.

01:07:15

And the church needs to do something about it to make their lot better, to reach out and make sure that they are also not left out, you know, that kind of thing.

01:07:25

And that's, I think where the Marxism would come out, right? Yes, so great question.

01:07:31

Unfortunately for Eric Mason, my family was amongst the poorest of the poor.

01:07:41

My great -grandmother was a full -blooded American Indian. We got slaughtered.

01:07:48

I don't cling to that. I don't hold pure bred white

01:07:54

Anglos. Let's use Curtis, Curtis Woods, let's use his term. I don't hold them accountable for the sins of their fathers.

01:08:03

While I don't believe in standpoint epistemology, I would use it against Eric Mason.

01:08:11

Look, man, you don't know where I'm from. I was a rough kid. I was in the poorest parts of the community.

01:08:21

I went to mostly black churches. I played college basketball.

01:08:28

I had numerous friends with bullet hole scars. I had friends that were division one players and they went to run an errand and got shot dead on a drug transaction.

01:08:44

So I can match you standpoint epistemology for standpoint epistemology.

01:08:50

If you wanna go there, but it gets us nowhere, John. It becomes a measuring contest of intersectionality.

01:08:59

So please, I would prefer not to go down that road, but I can match you. I have friends stabbed to death, shot to death, in prison, strippers, all wearing crosses, by the way.

01:09:15

So that would be a bad starting point with me. I think you're 100 % right.

01:09:20

These people in inner city Chicago, the people that you knew, that you play basketball with, they don't need another program necessarily.

01:09:30

They need people to come in and show them real tangible love, the love of Christ, and to teach them about the gospel of Jesus Christ and how they can be forgiven.

01:09:40

It's as simple as that. So I think any final thoughts that you have? Well, I think that for these, just one last thought,

01:09:50

John, and I'll close with this. For those churches that are facing a woke takeover, these leaders, they've learned by what happened at First Baptist Church of Naples.

01:10:11

And so if you look at some of the other churches that are undergoing change, it happens quick.

01:10:19

They've learned from what happened in Naples, and it happens very quick. So you need to find someone in your church that knows what they believe and why and what they do not believe and why.

01:10:31

And biblically and scripturally, you have to confront, be bold, be firm, but you have to confront.

01:10:41

The other thing I would say is that you've got to pay attention to your beliefs. And I think that's a big part of the reason these types of business meetings. It matters who's on these boards.

01:10:49

It matters who's on these committees. And so the roots of what happened at First Baptist Church of Naples, it was five to eight years in the making.

01:11:01

So, and I'll answer questions from anyone. I'll answer questions from critics and questions from believers that are confronting a change to WOKE in their church.

01:11:17

And thank you so much for having me on your podcast. Thank you. No, thank you. You're doing so much for the church, and I appreciate you being transparent and open to give your email out to people who may have questions.

01:11:29

That's very kind, and I will put that in the info notes for the show. If you want to email

01:11:34

Ronnie, hear more of his thoughts, get advice from him. He saw firsthand what happened at FBC Naples, and he may be able to help you if your church is starting to go down that path.

01:11:43

Avoid some of these pitfalls. So Ronnie, God bless you. God bless everyone. All right, bye now.