Social Justice and the Downgrade of SEBTS

Conversations That Matter

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Hey, it's John with the Conversations That Matter podcast. Today I want to talk about the downgrade of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

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I'm a Southeastern grad, I got my MDiv last spring, but I think I have a unique perspective on the social justice movement, what's happened at Southeastern, but then it has implications,

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I guess, for broader evangelicalism, because I was at Southeastern about four years ago as a student,

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I left for a little while, took online courses, and then I came back, and the transformation that I saw was truly incredible.

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I want to take you through this step -by -step, and I have some preliminary remarks before I really get into the story, because it's easy to take my words and to misconstrue them or to twist them, so I want to be careful, as careful as I can in conveying this.

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I visited campus in 2013, that summer, I attended in the fall, and then

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I left campus, like I said, for a few years, came back in fall of 2017, graduated spring of 2018.

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Unlike many, I can make this video because I did not accept any money from Southeastern, or I should say from the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Many of the students that attend do accept money, I think

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I was one of maybe two that I knew of that didn't, and so a lot of the people that go there are gonna go into Southern Baptist churches or work for missions organizations in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and if they had a problem with what Southeastern is doing, they really couldn't say much about it.

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There is an 11th commandment in the SBC, and that is don't speak evil of a fellow

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Southern Baptist. Of course, I think that started to change with the takedown of Patterson, but especially if they're younger and on the social justice bandwagon, saying anything negative will give you some repercussions, and I'm gonna get into a little bit of that within my story.

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But because I decided that I did not wanna be a Southern Baptist, I was only briefly a member of a

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Southern Baptist church, and I didn't take any money from them, I had the freedom to say what I wanna say without any repercussions to me, at least from the

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Southern Baptists. Now, my background and biases, I think you should know where I'm coming from.

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I'm an American history guy. My undergrad's in that. In fact, I'm pursuing a graduate degree in that right now.

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I taught presuppositional apologetics. I was involved in evangelism ministry at my church, very involved in campus and college ministry on a number of campuses.

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And I've always been politically conservative, and this flows out of my commitment to Christian anthropological, ethical, and economic assumptions.

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So I see those two, conservatism and Christianity, as being complementary of one another, as being consistent with one another.

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That alone, that statement I just made, will be anathema to many at Southeastern.

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I'm already challenging the orthodoxy that is presently there, just saying that. So I need people to know kind of where I'm coming from on these things.

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Now, my reason for sharing this, I have six basic reasons. They're not malicious.

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I don't wanna get anyone in trouble. I'm not seeking to hurt Southeastern. Actually, on the contrary, I want to see

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Southeastern flourish. I wanna see, I mean, I have a love for the campus. I attended there. Beautiful campus, beautiful history.

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And I would love to see the best for this campus. And I do pray for the campus semi -frequently.

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So there's no malice here, any feelings of ill will, but I do think that I need to share my story.

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The first reason is for those who are considering the school. Now, some of you who are on the social justice bandwagon, you may hear what

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I say and you may think, well, sounds great. Okay, that's fine. I'm more sharing it though for people who don't know what they're getting into.

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And I was a little bit that way. And I think if I had decided to go to campus now,

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I would definitely be that way. I'm going there to study the Bible, to learn how to interpret it. And meanwhile,

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I'm getting all the social justice stuff. It's taking away, it's distracting from my main purpose. I think folks who are going there for the purpose of knowing scripture and teaching it, they need to know what's going on at Southeastern that may take away from that focus.

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So for y 'all. Secondly, I think it's important to understand how an academic institution can become liberal.

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And some of you watching this may be curious about that. Southeastern is one of thousands of stories of campuses shifting to the left.

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But because I was there, because I have a unique perspective, I think my story can add to that.

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And I can illustrate how that takes place. So there's this general, this general trend of academic institutions to go in a leftward direction.

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And I'm gonna explain some of that. Specifically, if you wanna understand what's happening in the SBC and broader evangelicalism when it comes to social justice,

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Southeastern's the tip of the sword. I mean, they used to be known as the mission school. In some ways, they still are.

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That is changing, and it's changing fast. They are becoming known. They have a reputation for being the social justice school in the

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SBC. Number four is I wanna offer some encouragement to discern.

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So discernment. Oftentimes, we let our guards down when there's teachers or institutions that we trust.

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And that's very dangerous. The history of the church is filled with once -solid organizations that went heretical.

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And just about every heretical group has some tie back to an Orthodox group.

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And so it shouldn't surprise us, it shouldn't shock us that something like this would happen, even in a solid setting where there's a good statement of faith.

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Jude 4, just a couple things. Verse 4 says, Paul says, Paul says, see,

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I'm so used to saying Paul says because everything in Scripture, in the New Testament, right?

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You're so used to quoting Paul. Jude says, contend earnestly for the faith. And he talks about certain persons that have crept in unnoticed.

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And so it's easy to not notice when bad ideas are coming in through people.

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The book of Galatians, obviously, against the Judaizers. But interestingly enough, the heresy that Paul, here we go,

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Paul again, right? So we can actually say it accurately now. When Paul is writing to the Galatians, the heresy that he is combating was actually in some ways adopted by Peter, an apostle in Acts chapter 15.

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And so it's someone who can be very solid can be deceived. I mean, Peter, when we say that he's not solid, he certainly was an apostle.

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And of course, Paul had to confront him to his face. The history of Israel itself shows a constant drift towards syncretism, mixing worldly things, the things around them in their environment, the pagan nations and their practices with the word of God and the practices that God had told them to carry out.

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And of course, the Bereans of Acts 17 were commended by Paul because they even checked him out, an apostle. So what

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I'm doing, what I'm gonna be walking through this material, my story, I am within the boundaries,

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I believe, of scripture by examining some of the things that I saw in my experience there and then letting you know about them.

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Now, my fifth reason for doing this is to, hopefully this is maybe a smaller thing, but to model how

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Christians who see errors should interact with those they disagree with. We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint -hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone, 1

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Thessalonians 5 .14. So we have a model for how to do this. In this case, there's gonna be probably a little bit, maybe a lot of admonishing the unruly in what

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I'm going to convey to you. There's disagreement and I think it's a serious disagreement, at least the implications of it.

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James 1 .19 says, this you know, my beloved brethren, but everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

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So I don't make this video without having first consulted faculty at Southeastern.

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I've talked to folks about it there. I've sought wise counsel, I've prayed about it. I'm not doing this lightly at all.

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My sixth reason for making this is to give hope. And maybe that's the most important. If you're feeling the way

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I'm feeling, perhaps if you're someone who's signed the MacArthur, it's not really MacArthur's, but it's become known as the

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MacArthur Statement on social justice. If you're in league with me on thinking that social justice is a huge threat to the gospel, at least how it's interpreted by modern evangelical leftists, then you might be discouraged right now.

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You may think they're taking over everything. Where is their hope? I mean, the

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Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, and Desiring God, you know, and the list goes on.

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A lot of these organizations have been compromised. So hopefully I can give you some hope at the end of all this, because I've gone through what maybe many of you have not, and I can see that there is some hope here.

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So I'm gonna actually save the hope part till the end. So just to review, I'm making this video,

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I wanna be very clear about this, to understand how academic and evangelical organizations are being compromised, to help those who are seeking, making the choice whether or not they should go to Southeastern, to encourage discernment, to model how

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Christians should engage these heresies, I'm gonna call it that, and to give hope. A few final elucidations here.

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I am very thankful for many of the men at SEBTS, truly.

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I'm very grateful that they're there. I've learned some from my experience there.

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There are a lot of professors who disagree with the direction of the school, but who cannot say anything.

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And I'm gonna share a little bit about that later. SEBTS is still teaching many good things that are useful.

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And so I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater here at all. They're in transition.

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Like many organizations, they are falling, but they have not completely fallen yet. But I think the seeds of their destruction have been planted.

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And that's what I'm gonna talk about is these seeds that I saw. I don't make this video flippantly.

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Like I said before, I've talked to people on campus, professors, I've gotten counsel about it,

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I've prayed about it. I'm not trying to damage Southeastern. I pray for them, I love them.

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I don't have any desire for revenge. There's no personal issue that I have. What I have noticed though is that there is a lot of aggressive and thin skin behavior by proponents of the social justice theory or gospel at Southeastern.

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And I've decided to be a little vague with some of the names that I could mention.

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I don't think it'd be wrong if I did, but because I have no personal problems with anyone and I'm not trying to start a fight at all,

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I'm not going to be really naming a lot of names. I might talk about Danny Akin, right?

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Because he's the president, he's the public face of the school. But more often than not, I'm gonna refer to him as a, for instance, as the president.

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I might refer to a professor as a professor. I'm probably not gonna be using names. So just wanted to mention that.

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So let's get into it. Let's talk about, I'm gonna go through this chronologically and within that,

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I'm gonna weave some topical considerations. Oh, one final thing. If you're listening on audio, this is gonna be kind of long.

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So if you have the podcast playing, I'm gonna release two podcasts at the same time.

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So if you don't have time to listen to the full podcast, just go to the next one when you're done and have some time,

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I'll post them at the same time. Obviously, if you're watching the video, it's one video.

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So here we go. If you've been following my blog, Conversations That Matter, I've warned about certain ideas, racial reconciliation, social justice.

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On one occasion, I actually did call out a professor that I knew at Southeastern for eisegetical interpretation, but I've never focused my intention completely on the school.

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I've toyed with the idea of doing a thorough piece on social justice and how it's come to dominate places like Southeastern.

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I was gonna maybe make it broader and talk about Southern and Southwestern as well, but it was honestly just too much.

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I mean, just the Twitter feeds alone from these schools, it would be a book just trying to catalog all the increasing amounts of tweets and I mean, obviously it goes way further than that, articles, blogs, chapel messages, statements made in class that are supportive of social justice.

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So that's an enormous undertaking. I don't have time to do it. And I think it's more powerful for me just to share my story.

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Like I said before, I visited SEBTS in the summer of 2013. I was impressed with the prayer that the person recruiting me gave.

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He said that if the Lord's will was for us to go anywhere else, I was visiting with my brother, that he prayed that the

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Lord would take us there and as far away from Southeastern as possible. That impressed me. I went to a number of different universities and I never heard that.

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They were always trying to give me all the perks to coming and this guy right off the bat, I want you to be where God wants you to be.

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And that was encouraging to my heart. He's probably still there, probably still saying the same thing.

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And he rocks. I mean, that's just great. And that did a lot for me.

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I was looking for a school that had a broader range of opinion, especially on eschatology. I was under the belief at the time and I'm not really under that anymore, but I had this idea that as long as they're reformed, everything else should be good.

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And from my tour, I got the sense that they were. And my recruiter knew that that's what

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I was looking for. He never said we are a reformed school, but he definitely pointed me in,

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I mean, he would quote people that had been reformed, that had spoken at chapel and how much they liked the school.

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And he tried to emphasize that aspect a bit. So I was under the impression, this is a reformed school.

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It really helped that they had the Center for Faith and Culture there. And they emphasized without me even bringing it up, that they had the

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Francis Schaeffer Collection. And so I'm learning this on the tour. I love Francis Schaeffer, especially at that time.

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And I thought, well, this is reformed. They understand the relationship of the church with the culture because Francis Schaeffer.

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And they had a lake nearby and I liked fishing. So funny thing is I actually never did go fishing there when

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I went to campus. I always thought that I was gonna go fishing and that played into my decision, but alas.

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So the first semester was the fall of 2014. And I realized right off the bat, this is very important.

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I might repeat this. I realized that Southeastern was a very big tent, meaning their beliefs were very broad on some things.

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All right, very big tent. I was used to a seminary before this that was very narrow.

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They had defined beliefs right down to your eschatology. We were told in orientation, if you have a different eschatology than what the seminary professes, then we'll recommend other places for you to go.

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And which was fine, they were just trying to warn us. Southeastern could not have been more opposite.

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I mean, every flavor of eschatology was represented there. My theology teacher, I remember said that half the week he was one conviction and half the week he was another conviction.

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So it almost seemed like to the point of uncertainty, this broad tent, this big tent was there.

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When I first got there, I mean, it was in like the first two weeks, I ended up going to a

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Sunday or no Sunday school. It was a Bible study that the president of the university, of the seminary was leading.

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And I had a personal conversation with him afterward. And in that conversation, he actually told me that because there were so many broad views on eschatology on campus, that he was against a certain speaker who was coming to campus.

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And this was years ago, so I feel comfortable sharing it now. I wouldn't have said it. He probably shouldn't have told me at the time.

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But there was a speaker, I'm not gonna say his name, but he was in charge of giving

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Southeastern a sizable amount of money. And because of that, he was given a slot to speak in chapel.

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And it was on a certain eschatological view that he was speaking. And so the president tells me in a personal conversation,

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I really wish that we didn't have him come. I don't want him to speak on that because we're such a big tent.

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And I don't want a certain eschatological view holding sway or being perceived as this is what

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Southeastern believes. I want people to feel comfortable with whatever view they choose.

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I thought, okay, I had nothing against that. That sounds good. But that was in regards to eschatology.

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I found out later, creationism is pretty much the same thing. There's three professors that I knew of at the time.

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One of them was my theology teacher who believed in some kind of compatibilism between creation and evolution, which honestly shocked me a little bit.

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I mean, I grew up in a very creationist household. And not to go into details, my dad had a science background and he had gotten into it while in college.

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So he taught us growing up the different beliefs or tenets,

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I guess, of a literal Genesis and that whole theology. So, I mean, we were friendly to Answers in Genesis, Institution for Creation Research and all the rest.

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But I was a little surprised I'm on campus and I'm hearing other things about that.

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And in fact, one professor told me that Ken Ham was a charlatan. And so I didn't take that too well.

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I didn't think we should have a big tent on that issue because, and I'm not gonna get into it now, but to summarize,

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I guess, because I thought this was a theological issue that really impacted the gospel directly because of having death before sin.

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But maybe I'll make another video on that at some point. But I also found out that Calvinism or Reformed theology was not as dominant as I thought it was.

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There was a big tent when it came to that. There were Arminian professors. In fact, I don't think I ever heard a professor maybe once, one professor told me he was

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Reformed. But other than that one time, I can think of a number of professors who told me that they were two -point

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Calvinists, three -point Calvinists. There was a professor that, there's two of them that I know that advocated

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Molinism. One in particular, I know wrote a book on it and was pretty high up at the university. So there's also these

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Arminian beliefs that are swirling around on campus, depending on which professor you have.

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And I started to think, man, this is a little more broad than I thought I was getting into. I really wanted

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Reformed and I don't really even have that at this campus. And again, that's fine that the campus is broad and that's the way they want it.

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But remember that I said all this because it's going to have implications for the social justice movement that I'm gonna talk about soon.

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Now, because of the big tent, there were not one that I can remember.

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There was never a debate when I was on campus. There was only panel discussions in which everyone pretty much already agreed.

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And this would signal to everyone in the audience, if it was a chapel or just some kind of symposium, that this is our stance.

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So they had a very unified message to the world through their videos, to the school.

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This is what we believe. If ever they were gonna talk about a social topic, even a political topic or a theological topic.

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But of course, their consensus was not built around things like Reformed theology, creationism or eschatology.

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It was built around other things. I'm gonna get into what those things were. But all that to say, it would have been nice if some of these professors who disagreed with one another had debates or just discussions that students could come in and hear them.

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I mean, that used to be what universities did. That's what a university is, right? You're hearing all these different viewpoints.

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You're thinking critically about them. The Socratic method. Well, that was not at Southeastern at all.

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I mean, a disagreement itself. And I've learned this, especially since I've left Southeastern and been at other places.

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There's just a lot of thin skin when you cannot have a disagreement with someone or you think that they're personally, they must hate you or they're challenging you.

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I'm in a grad program now where most of the program is, and this is how graduate school should be, is people disagreeing with one another.

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Or if they're not disagreeing, they're arguing. They're going back and forth. They're looking at ideas. They're trying to figure out what truth is.

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And we're all together on that journey. Southeastern is not like that. It's you have the view and that's the accepted view and everyone gets together and they adopt that.

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And if you don't adopt it, don't say anything against it because that's the view. And of the things that obviously we disagree with, like I just mentioned, eschatology, creation,

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Calvinism, you keep that stuff to yourself in your classroom maybe, but be aware that that's not as important.

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So those actually, that stuff became secondary. And in my mind, that stuff actually, especially reformed theology and creationism, that stuff is actually primary.

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That stuff is really important stuff, right? But that became secondary to social concerns.

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And I'm telling you the direction I'm going here because we have a situation where the bottom's the top, the top's the bottom.

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So tertiary issues, secondary issues have become primary issues at Southeastern. And I got to see that transformation.

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If there was any unity in an Orthodox sense, broadly speaking, it would have been a very broad gospel and then a missions focus.

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Those are the things that kind of kept people together at the time I was there, right? Now they're social things, but at the time

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I was there in 2014. The academic environment wasn't the best when

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I first came to campus. Like I said, we weren't challenged to think very critically in my mind, at least in the classes

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I was in. Even questions could be seen as divisive sometimes. Academic standards were very low.

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And I know this just because I can compare it to other places I've been. I don't know,

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I've been to, I don't know, about maybe five different undergraduate institutions

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I had credits transferred from. And then maybe one, two, three, four, four. Yeah, I think four different graduate institutions that I've had credits transfer from.

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Southeastern's one of the, in my mind, academically, one of the last or the bottom of the list, academically speaking.

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They're just, it wasn't very challenging. A lot of the material was on a high school level.

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A lot of classes I think were on a high school level. Some of the reading material, honestly, was on a junior high level. Not all of it.

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There was a class I later took that, one class I can think of that actually had some college level material, but a lot of it was very high school.

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And so I figured I'd mention that to those who want to be academically challenged. And I already talked about the environment that I saw as an environment of people with thin skins.

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Some professors, like I said, were not, I think I said this, they weren't like this. Some professors were adults. They had thick skins.

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I had actually a really good ethics professor, I think. But I noticed that some professors were defensive, even if you asked a question.

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And they were not used to being challenged. And I think part of that is the celebrity preacher model. It kind of affected the way that professors even viewed themselves in their own classrooms.

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There's this mentality, and academia tends to go this direction. It's one of the reasons academia tends to go towards the left.

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There's this idea that I'm a specialist. I know my field. And don't question me.

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You're the student, right? And that is completely, that is a new thing in academics.

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I mean, within the last 150 years. I mean, pride's not a new thing. But this whole idea of specialization.

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And maybe I'll make another video about that at some time. But I think the celebrity preacher model, the idea of specialization, it just created a lot of professors who they weren't used to being challenged.

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So I didn't care for that necessarily. And then when it comes to social justice, and this is in 2014, there were some hints, some foreshadowing of what was to come.

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There were a lot of minority speakers. And when I say minority, I don't think there was Hispanic speakers.

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I remember it was black speakers. People that were African American were speaking in chapel a whole lot, which

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I am all for. And I don't care if you're purple. Some of the best pastors are black.

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Some of the worst are white. And there's also some good white pastors. I mean, to me, skin color does not matter when it comes to preaching ability.

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But the point that I'm making, the reason I'm bringing this up is that a lot of these speakers were not

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Southern Baptists. And they'd come to the school. And most of the people on campus, professors and students, the vast majority, and it's this way to this day, are white.

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And it was just a curious thing to have so many just seem like, I mean, this is just me remembering how

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I felt, but it seemed like about half the chapels included a black speaker of some kind. And so I wondered whether the reason for that was just because they were black.

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I couldn't think of why. I mean, sometimes they were not even talking about scripture. They weren't preaching a sermon.

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Sometimes they were just talking about the African American experience, and that was it. And I thought, why in the world?

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They're not Southern Baptists. Why are they here? I came here to know the word of God.

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This individual, and I would say the same thing if they were white. It doesn't matter what color they are, but I got the sense that Southeastern wanted more people speaking because of the color of their skin.

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I'm not making the accusation. I'm telling you how it was perceived, the possibility.

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I'm raising the possibility. So my roommates, I remember talking to them, and we all had a kind of a similar reaction.

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We came there to study, to know the scripture, and we more or less, one of my roommates actually in particular, he told me he'd just kind of tune out.

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And I did the same thing. I wasn't, I'm not here to learn about the

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African American experience. As great as that is to study, I'm here to know the word of God.

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And it was hard sometimes paying attention in chapel when you heard those things. And I remember one of my roommates had admitted that to me and said so in a very, just very much trying to also give the caveat that, hey,

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I'm not against black people. I'm not racist. And I'm giving the same one that has nothing to do with it.

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It's just, we have a purpose in attending this school. And so that kind of confused me a little bit when

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I noticed that. I remember my ethics professor telling me that he had noticed over the years, this is in 2014, that the younger evangelicals coming into the school were less pro -life and significantly so.

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And he noticed every year less passion towards the pro -life movement and more passion towards things like alleviating poverty, which isn't wrong, or the environment.

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And I thought that was interesting too. So there's kind of like the issues that the left tends to be known for or that they want people to be concerned about.

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Those are the issues that younger people were gravitating more towards. And the issues that the religious right, the conservatives were concerned about socially were issues that were being abandoned.

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And so I thought that was very telling. It's not my words, but those are the words of the assessment of my ethics professor at the school.

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I went to a church where the pastor actually was an adjunct professor at SCBTS. And this was one of the things that I think really started to make me think about what was going on on campus in regards to the social justice movement.

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And as I'm saying this, I'm having other examples flood my mind, but I'm gonna stick towards kind of,

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I'm gonna hit the high points. This was a high point for me. I remember in church, this was after the Michael Brown incident.

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And of course, those who remember 2014 remember there was different, the Michael Brown thing went on for months as far as what happened and the rioting and everything else.

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And I remember, and I don't remember what month, but I think it was in the fall. My pastor had prayed from the pulpit.

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And in his prayer, he talked about how, I'm putting this in my own words, how

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African -Americans were unfairly treated in general. And he prayed a prayer.

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It was a prayer of repentance that we would wake up to the racism around us.

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And he specifically, he said, it was something about the cops and how cops targeted African -Americans.

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And he basically just endorsed full -fledged on that Sunday, the interpretation that has since then become to come to be known as false, that the police officer was, this was a murder basically.

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And that Michael Brown was innocent and everything else. So without all the facts even coming out, this pastor took a side.

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And I was, that really, and he was an adjunct professor at Southeastern at the time. And that really bothered me.

31:40

And it was not the only reason, but it was one reason that I started to feel a little uncomfortable with.

31:46

I said, do I really? There was other things I noticed at the church that were along those same lines. Said, I don't know about this.

31:52

There's a lot of really good things about this place, but this emphasis, this willing to condemn before hearing everything really bothered me.

32:03

So that was my 2014 fall semester. I left campus after that.

32:09

And I took some time away from campus. Now, during my time away, I was hearing things every once in a while, things that were related to the changing of the system of the campus.

32:23

This is a very important one. And one that made me think about whether I really wanted to go back.

32:32

Danny Akin, who is the president currently and was the president then, made a video in 2015 for Openly Secular.

32:41

And in this video, he talked about having a common cause, a common love, and a common belief with secularists.

32:49

It's an atheistic organization that put this out. And he talks about their common cause.

32:55

He said, I'm the president of a Southern Baptist. In fact, you know what I'll do? I'll put the link to this video in the description so you can see it.

33:02

But he basically said that we have common cause with secularists because we care about poverty and environmentalism, and we can join hands on this.

33:13

And then we have a common love because we can work together with love and respect, not only as friends, this is a direct quote, but as good friends.

33:20

He's saying this to an atheist organization. And then they have a common belief. He says, no one should be coerced.

33:27

No one should have, everyone should have the freedom to express their belief. No one should be put down because of what they believed.

33:34

It's interesting with what's going on at Southeastern Now with people being targeted for what they believe in a sense that these statements were made.

33:46

But joining hands with a secular organization like this for the purpose of secularism, and the video is called

33:53

Openly Secular, was really concerning to me. I thought, what in the world is going on down there?

34:00

Now at the time, I didn't really have much of a choice, but to go back to Southeastern.

34:06

I had transferred credits from other places and I needed to finish off. And so I didn't have the option of really not continuing there, but that bothered me.

34:16

And I was wondering about the direction of the school. Then, and I don't remember, I think this was the summer, but the summer of 2015, there was a chapel service in which it was basically against the

34:28

Confederate flag, the whole entire chapel service. And no one was on the pro -flag side.

34:35

I think they had a panel of four or five people. No one up there was gonna defend the flag. They were all condemning it.

34:41

And as a history guy, I watched the first couple minutes and they were already making historical blunders and errors that I just thought, this is awful.

34:51

They should get someone who knows what they're talking about. They didn't. And it's interesting because in 2014,

34:59

I mean, there was a guy, a maintenance guy, I think it was on campus. He had a little Confederate flag on the back of his truck. It wasn't like seen as a huge deal.

35:08

Maybe some people would raise their eyebrow. I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit here, but I'll come back to this time away from campus.

35:15

But when I came back in 2017, I remember I had a little bitty flag on the back of my truck in honor of my ancestors.

35:26

I have ancestors on both sides. I honor them both. I think they were both commendable. They both fought for commendable things of that war, but I have a little flag.

35:35

And I remember my wife telling me that there were some students who came by and were just looking at my truck and just couldn't believe that's how it looked to her that I had this flag and were standing there and making all sorts of motions, pointing towards it and talking with one another.

35:49

And they were really loud. And she said they were condemning it, I guess. And it's only a couple years later, you know?

35:56

And of course, the guy with the little flag who would be driving around campus, I didn't see that truck anymore when

36:02

I came back. But anyway, they had this chapel service. Now, my concern with the service isn't that they're anti -Confederate.

36:10

It really doesn't have anything to do with it. My concern is it's a chapel service. What are you doing talking about this issue?

36:20

I mean, chapel services, I mean, usually, traditionally, they're devotional.

36:25

They're to help the spiritual, the life on campus, to help people with their walks with the

36:32

Lord, to maintain a right focus. How is this worth your time? How is this,

36:38

I mean, you can be a Christian and be on both sides of this issue. And that was my main thing, is why are they expending so much energy on this?

36:49

They had a whole panel. They got a bunch of people, people from the community, to come up there and talk about this as if it was a real problem.

36:57

Now, I want you to start remembering what I said before about Danny Akin not wanting someone to come express a different eschatology.

37:06

And there are different beliefs when it came to Calvinism and when it came to creation. Now, look at, you know, put that in perspective when it comes to doing a whole chapel on the

37:16

Confederate flag, the battle flag. Why is that something that everyone, that we can get a bunch of people, we can all agree, is not a debatable topic, this is a topic for us to join hands on and condemn, when those topics aren't as important?

37:30

Now, do you see that it's an issue of emphasis, right? And that's what

37:36

I'm trying to get at here, there's a hard issue underneath all of this that says that's more important than these other things.

37:44

And that should be somewhat concerning. So, continuing here, that chapel happened.

37:52

And I was realizing, like I just said, that it was okay to be dogmatic only about certain topics, other topics not so much.

38:01

So the non -essentials are becoming essential, the essential is non -essential. And I wonder what these things,

38:06

I wondered at the time what they had to do with the mission of SCBTS. They weren't directly gospel -related.

38:12

And whereas the other topics, like even eschatology, I mean, these can be gospel, these are gospel -related, they're directly related, actually, especially

38:21

Reformed theology, directly related to the gospel. So why are these things, you know, we should just have grace on others, they're not essential, but the

38:30

Confederate flag, no, that's essential. I came back to campus in 2017.

38:38

And during that year, this is where I'm gonna spend probably the majority of my time in my story, because there's a lot to say.

38:47

But there were three statements that year against either Trump or the alt -right that had some involvement with professors, leaders in the administration at Southeastern.

38:59

And this was a curious thing, because, I mean, I actually tried to look. I couldn't, unless they signed the

39:05

Manhattan Declaration, during the whole eight years of Obama, there really wasn't anything. Southeastern didn't put out anything against President Obama.

39:14

And you'll remember that President Obama, I mean, not only is he completely against what

39:21

Christians believe, especially towards his later years, at least, his last term, when it comes to gender, when it comes to sexuality, but he's for unlimited, unrestricted abortion.

39:34

And he, I mean, this shouldn't be, this should go without saying that Obama's policies, socially speaking, were not

39:41

Christian at all. They were very antithetical to directly what the Bible says about issues of sexuality and murder.

39:50

And yet, no statements against him. But three statements in one year against President Trump or the alt -right.

40:01

Now, one of these statements was actually written by someone who is very popular on campus, one of the professors there.

40:09

At least, he was one of the collaborators who helped write it, and it was signed by a number of the faculty. It was called an open letter to President Trump from America's religious leaders.

40:17

We need you to speak. And it was in reaction, I believe, to Charlottesville and what happened down there.

40:24

But a couple of things that really bothered me about this, because this happened either right before, kind of right as I was showing up on campus for that fall semester.

40:35

It shows that it is more grievous to these men that a president has some people in his cabinet who

40:44

CNN calls racist or part of the alt -right than it is for a president who pushes transgender bathroom policy and unrestricted abortion.

40:52

That's where their priorities are. I'm just, I'm saying their deeds say this, not their mouths, but their deeds say this, because they're making and signing statements against the president.

41:03

Now, I did not, I should say this, I didn't vote for Trump, all right? At least last time, I did not vote for Trump. So I don't really have a problem if they want to say something, be a prophetic voice.

41:15

I think there's a place for that. But why in the world are you going after people in Trump's cabinet who are alt -right, supposedly, and telling

41:24

Trump he's got to speak out against them when you were silent when it came to Obama, just about?

41:31

So that bothered me, first of all. The other thing is they were interviewed, and Danny Akin actually was interviewed about this, and he couldn't name, in the statement, they said there's three people,

41:45

I guess, who are part of the alt -right in Trump's cabinet. He couldn't name them. The only one they kept coming back to, it was him and it was another guy,

41:52

I'm not gonna say his name, on campus, who helped write it. They couldn't name the three alt -righters.

41:58

They kept coming back to Bannon, and Bannon wasn't even in the Trump administration at the time. So that was kind of a fail.

42:07

And you will only find, if you read the statement, you will find only one place that scripture is quoted, and it's actually just in quoting

42:14

Abraham Lincoln, the house divided against itself. So it's not even taken in context, and it's eisegetical, the only scripture that was used.

42:24

There's assumptions about the Constitution that it's an egalitarian document. So the people behind this didn't really know their history, and all

42:35

I could conclude after reading what I think was honestly a mess was that it was impossible for this sloppy open letter to have been written by careful historians or exegetes of scripture.

42:46

I couldn't conceive of it. People who know the Bible just wouldn't have written this. People who knew history just wouldn't have written this, but it was written, and it was written by some prominent folks on campus and was supported by prominent people on campus.

42:58

And I had asked myself, what was the purpose of this? Why are they doing this when they were so silent on things that were more directly tied to evil when it comes to what scripture calls evil?

43:11

And the only thing that I could come up with is it must be virtue signaling. They must be trying to tell the world that, hey, we're running in the same lane as you on this.

43:20

We agree with you on some of these things. And of course, that's a little discouraging. So that was kind of one of the first things that I noticed when

43:29

I got to campus. The Kingdom Diversity Department, I guess, or their,

43:36

I don't know what you would call it. It's their kind of like affirmative action segment of the school.

43:42

They have an office for it, Kingdom Diversity. They have a staff. I don't know exactly when this department came into being.

43:50

I think it was 2015. That's when their blog seems to have started. I didn't hear anything about this in 2013 when

43:57

I was touring campus. In 2014, I didn't hear anything about it. But all of a sudden, I'm hearing about it everywhere.

44:03

And this is one of the big things that I saw that was such a change. Kingdom Diversity, Kingdom Diversity, Kingdom Diversity. Every time

44:09

I go to log into my student portal, it seemed like something from the Kingdom Diversity was on the Twitter, on the blog.

44:16

So I couldn't really even avoid it. And I'm not gonna get into the details of what that is, but here's a high point for you.

44:25

I think it's the director, the person who's the head of the Kingdom Diversity. I was reading one of his blogs.

44:30

I did not read him extensively, but I just wanted to know, what is this? Who is this guy? Why is this being sort of shoved in my face all the time whenever I log into my student account and even going to chapel and so forth,

44:44

Kingdom Diversity's hosting things? What do they believe? What's the point? Well, the director actually, in kind of a roundabout way, endorsed

44:54

Hillary Clinton in the previous election. Very against Trump, that was clear. But at the very least, opened up the possibility that you could be, or said, that you could be a

45:06

Christian and with a good conscience, look at Hillary as the lesser of two evils. And I kind of thought, well, that's probably all

45:12

I need to know about Kingdom Diversity. I couldn't believe that that was even a thought, given

45:21

Hillary's policies, again, just like Obama, that are completely antithetical to Christianity. So that was

45:28

Kingdom Diversity. And I remember someone, a friend of mine on campus had actually told me he wanted to go to this, but that they were hosting a lunch.

45:38

And I didn't know about this until he told me, and I did not attend, but they were hosting a lunch to talk about the

45:45

Kneelers at the football games. And I can guarantee you, it was not to condemn them. I guarantee you, given everything else that they put out there, they weren't condemned, and nor should they really have been because they shouldn't probably be even having a lunch on the topic.

46:01

It's a seminary, again. So you wanna talk about mission creep or mission drift from the

46:09

Great Commission, what does this have to do with our mission? It's a seminary, but there's a place for talking about what the

46:18

Kneelers are doing and forming a position on this. Somehow in the minds of those at Kingdom Diversity, there was, and the university, the seminary supported this fully.

46:33

The Center for Faith and Culture, which was there before, and I was very attracted to, was also cranking out social justice articles,

46:39

I noticed. And one of them in particular, I believe it was Center for Faith and Culture, I don't think it was Kingdom Diversity, cranked out an article that I saw as I logged into my student account.

46:48

And it was something like, I couldn't find it, I was looking for it. It might've been since deleted, or it's on one of their websites and I just couldn't find it.

46:57

But it said something like the 10 reasons you might be racist. It was something along those lines.

47:03

And it went through these different, it was eight or 10 things that should clue you in to the fact that you might be racist and not know it.

47:13

And I thought, oh goodness, I might be a secret racist. I should click on this.

47:18

I should find out whether I'm racist or not. So I clicked on it and I was with my wife and we started going through a few of them.

47:25

And a couple of them, here's a few that stood out to me. One of them was if you look around your job and you find out that most of those in corporate leaders are white, that you don't see minorities around, well, you might be a racist.

47:42

And I thought, you know a good example of an institution that has a lot of white leadership.

47:48

Oh, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. So it's just ironic to me. Southeastern was pushing this thing, retweeting this thing, or they're liking it, whatever.

47:57

And it condemns them. But if you live in a suburban neighborhood and you notice people around you in the suburban neighborhood are higher income and they're white, you might be a racist.

48:13

Again, I know where a lot of the professors live. Not all of them, obviously, at all. But I know where some of them live and they're in nice areas.

48:21

They're in Wake Forest, North Carolina. So I thought, what in the world is this doing?

48:29

It's a seminary. Why is this even being written about? But just the hypocrisy of it.

48:36

And I'm gonna get into why I think these things are happening a little more deeply later, but these are just some of the incidences for our consideration.

48:44

In class incidents. I noticed in one of my classes there was a bigger one.

48:51

I'm not gonna say what class it is, but there was condescension when it comes to congregants or people, so Southeastern is training pastors to go out, right?

49:00

And there was one of these pastors, these future pastors being trained, who had said in class, he talked to, again, the football thing, he brought it up, but he said, there are people in my hometown who would judge me because I watched the

49:15

NFL. Because I guess, probably because presumably they're boycotting the NFL because of the kneeling thing. And he went on to basically denigrate them.

49:24

They don't really know what they're talking about. They're not consistent with Christianity for that view.

49:31

And I thought the professor might say something. I thought someone else in the class might stand up, and no one did.

49:38

In fact, the professor seemed to be nodding along. And in the same conversation, same class, we had watched a video where a prominent

49:49

Southern Baptist was on a program with a Jewish rabbi. And this

49:55

Jewish rabbi was accusing Christians of antisemitism and that they're the cause of it.

50:01

And the professor asked people in the class how they would deal with this. How would you teach your congregation differently given this argument that is being posed against Christianity?

50:13

Now this is, it was not an apologetics class, but this is a great place to use your apologetics, right?

50:20

And I did say something. I said, I really think that Christians should understand a Christian historiography, that children should not just get a secular idea of education.

50:30

They should have a Christian idea of education, and they should be taught the truth about history. And the fact is,

50:38

Christians are not the sole people, which is what this guy was saying, responsible for antisemitism.

50:44

There were times Christians were involved in antisemitism for sure, but it's not obviously part of Christianity.

50:54

And especially, you know, in regards to the Crusades, there's a much bigger story going on here.

50:59

It's, you know, it's not being anti -Muslim or antisemitic that necessarily motivated some of the things that were done during the

51:07

Crusades. There's just a way bigger story here. And people are people. And so, and I went along this vein and said how important it was for Christians not to be taken in by such an argument.

51:20

Well, someone else in the class basically said, we should just apologize. And not only that, we should apologize for slavery, for racism, for, you know,

51:27

Christians are the authors of all these things apparently, which is not true. And my professor said, he endorsed that and said that, yeah, you know,

51:38

I think today, in today's climate, that would be the reaction. And that's what we should do, was his implication.

51:46

We should be doing these things. We should be apologizing. And I thought, okay.

51:53

You know, it was confusing a little bit at first. I thought, yeah, there's a place for taking some responsibility.

51:59

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was exactly what the world is saying to do.

52:06

This is what the world wants. And it never ends. It is an everlasting hamster wheel of apologies.

52:12

And we're never granted forgiveness on any of these things. And most of the things we're accused of, we didn't do.

52:19

And it's not us who did them. It might've been our ancestors, spiritually or ethnically. But, you know, even in the cases where they did do bad things, it's not really ours to apologize for.

52:33

And I started thinking about what the implications of this. And I thought, this is actually not good. This is getting into, this is tampering with the

52:41

DNA of what forgiveness is. And it's along a Neo -Marxist line. It's along a class warfare line.

52:48

Or a Neo -Marxist would be oppressors oppressed, and it could be race, it could be gender, it could be all sorts of different things.

52:54

But there's these categories. And these aren't biblical categories, really. So I noticed that, and I started seeing it everywhere.

53:05

So it's not necessarily bad to apologize, or to at least admit,

53:10

I should say, admit that bad things have happened. But here's the thing.

53:16

We don't apologize along the lines of the world's own critique against us. I'm gonna repeat that.

53:21

We don't apologize along the lines of the world's own critique against us. The world doesn't say, well, you did this wrong.

53:28

Okay, young world, we agree with you. You're right. The world's judging the world, judging these things based on egalitarianism, which the

53:35

Bible finds to be anathema. The world is looking at this not through our lens. Unfortunately, I think what's happened is we have started to adopt and place emphasis on, and when

53:48

I say we, Southern Baptist evangelicals in general, we're starting to place an emphasis on those sins that the world says are sins.

53:55

And those are becoming the primary sins, rather than the things that God says are sins. So I'm gonna get into that more, but chapel, same thing.

54:05

Social justice being promoted. I remember one chapel in particular where Tabeti, I can never pronounce his last name,

54:13

Anabyle, something like that. Anyways, he had made some controversial remarks at the MLK 50.

54:19

This is before the MLK 50, though. He had come to campus, and he did this whole thing on justice.

54:26

And rather than going into what justice is, what justice meant, the

54:31

Hebrew and what it meant biblically speaking, he just kind of assumed what really is a neo -Marxist definition of justice, and continued on with his lecture.

54:43

And in his lecture, he said that people needed to be liberal. If you think justice is liberal, you need to be liberal.

54:51

And of course, what he meant by justice was social justice. It wasn't justice being blind.

54:57

It wasn't, I believe the Hebrew was shofot. It wasn't shofot. It wasn't the righteousness, the law of God, and applying, justice is applying the law of God without discrimination.

55:07

Social justice is literally the opposite of that. It is looking at everyone through the category of race, gender, and whatever else.

55:14

And Tabeti was saying that's what justice is. And because justice, that word is, he smuggled in a whole

55:20

Marxist definition into that word, and then said, the Old Testament says it's important, therefore, we should feel it's important as well.

55:28

And it's not enough to just tweet about justice. You have to go do justice. What is that?

55:34

I mean, the only thing I could think of is, okay, adopt the Democratic Party platform, affirmative action.

55:40

They're already doing that at Southeastern. I guess that's what he's talking, I don't know. But somehow everyone's made to feel guilty in the room that we're not doing it.

55:49

And he even, I remember, as a history guy, just this made me sick a little bit, but Edwards and Whitfield were condemned because of their association with slavery.

56:00

And I don't know how in the world he deals with slavery in the Old and New Testaments, but to condemn men of their time who were trying to do this as biblically as they could with what they knew, it's presentism is what it is.

56:17

So that was one chapel message, but that was not unique. There were a number of chapel messages about social justice.

56:24

And since then, since I've left, that has just increased from what

56:30

I know. There was silence though, and here's maybe a more important point. There was silence on issues like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism.

56:41

Now these things, they're important too, wouldn't we say? Maybe even more important in some ways.

56:46

I mean, millions of babies getting murdered, that's kind of important. I'm not saying it never was spoken about, but I never heard it, never, not once, that I hear it spoken of in chapel.

56:59

But social justice talked about quite a bit. It says something, where the priorities are at.

57:07

Some of the buzzwords, this gives you a flavor for campus. These are some of the things that I heard terms when

57:12

I got back to campus. Gospel issue, that's not a gospel issue.

57:17

That is a gospel issue. Most of the time, it would be in a sentence like this. Racism is a gospel issue.

57:23

Justice is a gospel issue. Racial reconciliation is a gospel issue. I'm gonna go later into why this buzzword was not helpful, but that was a word that I hadn't really heard before.

57:41

I think maybe I heard it a couple of times when I was there in 2014, but in 2017, oh my goodness, it was just running off everyone's lips what a gospel issue was.

57:50

The other issue, other buzzword, and this one I think I might've heard more, was engaging culture.

57:57

We need to engage culture. And it meant being a voice in the culture primary.

58:06

So Southeastern's mission, right? They were the mission school to go out, the great commission to the tribes and nations of the world.

58:14

Well, engaging culture now is somehow fused with this. That's part of the mission of Southeastern because you hear it all the time.

58:23

It's not their official motto, but it's everywhere. And I really do think this is a buzzword for wanting to be loved by the world because gospel issues are immigration, racism, poverty, things like what

58:37

Danny Akin said in his video for Openly Secular. These happen to be the gospel issues.

58:44

I didn't really hear abortion being talked about as a gospel issue. It wasn't brought up. But immigration, yeah, that was brought up as a gospel issue.

58:52

Opposing Trump's wall, yeah, that's a gospel issue. How are these things gospel issues?

58:58

So that was one of the other terms that was brought up. The other thing, and I heard this phrase multiple times, so I might as well mention it.

59:08

Republican doesn't mean Christian. This was kind of a, I don't know if it's virtue signaling, but it felt like it.

59:14

I remember one night in class, I turned to a classmate. Hey, the election's going on right now, the

59:20

Virginia gubernatorial election. I've been watching this thing. Man, I'm really hoping the Republicans can pull this one off.

59:27

And he looks at me, he goes, well, Republican doesn't mean Christian. I'm thinking, no, I didn't think it did.

59:34

Now, obviously, the Republican Party, though, allows Christians a seat at the table. Republican Party forwards a lot of moral things that Christians find morally acceptable and denounces things that Christians find morally repugnant.

59:51

There's really no contest between the Republican and Democratic parties when it comes to that. The Democrats booed God at their convention a couple years ago.

59:58

I mean, there's just no contest here. But to a lot of the younger evangelicals, it's definitely, it's not a binary choice.

01:00:05

They, and their outrage is for the Republican Party. Now, why would that be? I think that a lot of it has to do with rebellion against their parents.

01:00:15

And the parents might've been part of the religious right. They're embarrassed by that. I'm gonna talk about that more later, but that's kind of my explanation.

01:00:23

But that was said a lot. I wondered who the marauding group of people who said Republicans were

01:00:29

Christians were. And because there are older people in the religious right who see voting

01:00:35

Republican as your Christian duty, that's maybe what they're thinking of. But to a lesser extent,

01:00:42

I definitely heard white privilege talked about. But I, yeah, I shouldn't say a lesser extent. I heard it talked about.

01:00:48

Empowering women, yep, that's a phrase. In fact, right now, if you go to Southeastern's, their college at Southeastern's, their website, you're gonna find a woman holding a sign that says,

01:00:57

I am going to empowering women. So usually you would put like something like a nation, or you're gonna go preach or teach.

01:01:03

You're gonna teach something related to the Great Commission, specifically what the Great Commission says to do, to go out and preach the gospel and to all the tribes and tongue of nations.

01:01:10

Well, this woman stepped outside of the language of the Great Commission to put, I'm gonna go empower women. And she may mean well by that, but that phrase obviously has a sort of a toxic origin.

01:01:21

And its meaning is derived from those who, the authorial intent, right? What we're supposed to learn in hermeneutics.

01:01:28

So those phrases are definitely on the campus quite a bit.

01:01:34

And that gives you an idea of what campus life is like, what people believe. Now, I went to a professor about these issues because I said,

01:01:42

I can't, I don't know if I can be part of the Southern Baptist Convention. And I was more and more thinking that I would just have to forget about being a pastor or a leader in any organization that was run by Southern Baptist because I couldn't endorse this stuff.

01:01:58

And if this is who Southern Baptists are, then I mean, it's not me. So I asked a professor about it. I said, what do you think?

01:02:04

And he said something that should shock and scare anyone out there, because we're used to this on secular campuses, but have this on a

01:02:14

Christian campus. He told me that they'd fire him if they knew what he really thought. He said, if I told people what

01:02:21

I really thought, they would fire me. That is startling. And that gave me the answer that I was looking for.

01:02:28

He didn't tell me not to be involved with Southern Baptists, but he told me what the conditions were like.

01:02:36

And that's frightening, to put it mildly. And it was in the context of talking about the social justice stuff.

01:02:45

He kind of encouraged me to keep my mouth shut about this. And for the most part,

01:02:50

I actually did when it comes to Southeastern. I wasn't speaking out against anything at Southeastern, hardly at all, but I did make an exception.

01:02:59

And I'm gonna tell you about that a little bit. So I was down there, and I think it's still going on, but it was really full.

01:03:06

There was a lot of heat towards this issue, the Confederate Monument debacle in North Carolina.

01:03:12

And of course, the Republicans were fighting with the governor about what to do. And there was a podcast put out by the

01:03:19

Center for Student Diversity. And then there was an article in a prominent, well, it was a secular paper, and it got picked up in a couple of papers.

01:03:29

And it was from, it used one particular professor on campus. And the article had said, it was something along the lines of Confederate Monuments should go to the ash heap of history.

01:03:41

And obviously the journalists who picked that title out.

01:03:47

But if you read the article, that's exactly what it said. It said that Confederate Monuments were erected at a time when the

01:03:56

Klan was running around and they were to intimidate blacks, and that's their purpose. And that's basically my summary of it.

01:04:05

Now, the thing that concerned me when I read this was that there's implications when it comes to hermeneutics.

01:04:16

If you're going to interpret a statue or even just take any historical book or anything, a monument would be included in this.

01:04:24

The Bible would be included in this. And just impose your meaning onto it.

01:04:29

Say, the Bible was written at a time when a lot of sexists were running around trying to intimidate women. Roman Empire did slavery in it, and they were pretty brutal.

01:04:38

And when Paul writes this, I mean, clearly he's just trying to intimidate women when he doesn't want women to preach.

01:04:43

Or pick your example. But it'd be very easy to take the same logic this professor applied to Confederate Monuments and apply it to scripture.

01:04:51

And the thing that makes this even more obvious is I've seen hundreds of Confederate Monuments. They all pretty much say the same thing.

01:04:57

To duty, to honor. I mean, it's to ideals. It's to sacrifice. It's to those who fought and paid the ultimate sacrifice.

01:05:06

And there are interpretive markers, the plaques that were put on these monuments by those who erected them.

01:05:12

So if we're gonna apply authorial intent, which is one of the primary rules of hermeneutics, is to look for authorial intent.

01:05:20

Then we would have to conclude that when the author said what these monuments meant to them and the original audience that they were making them for, that's what they meant.

01:05:31

Otherwise, I mean, think about it this way. It's ridiculous if you think about it any other way. If you say, oh no, they were to intimidate blacks. It was all racism.

01:05:38

Okay, so let me get this straight. In a culture where everyone's racist already, right? All the white people, they hate the black people.

01:05:44

There would have been no problem with them putting up a marker that said, hey, we're erecting this to intimidate blacks.

01:05:49

Or just to put some racially charged language in there. They could have done it. And there would have been no consequence, right?

01:05:57

Because everyone's racist. Yet they didn't do that. So that leads us to believe that what they were saying when they said the reasons for why they erected these monuments are actually true.

01:06:08

And if we interpret them according to what the media believes about them, what we're doing is we're taking modern interpretations and we're imposing that upon statues that are over a hundred years old.

01:06:23

Well, what if we did that with the Bible? What if we took modern interpretations and just impose them back onto what the text meant?

01:06:30

It would destroy the whole of scripture. That's why this is important. It has nothing to do with confederate union.

01:06:36

You can be against the confederacy as you want. They should concern you. Because this would destroy biblical hermeneutics.

01:06:43

And so I wrote a little blog basically saying that. And I said that seminary professors should interpret exegetically.

01:06:52

Now I never had had this professor in any class before. He was an undergrad guy. But a couple of days later, it was two days later,

01:07:00

I had a message from, I believe it was the vice president of the school. And he said that I shouldn't have done that.

01:07:09

I shouldn't have posted this thing. Now I realized this is on my personal blog. And I'm writing about a bigger political issue.

01:07:15

This just happens to be, I thought, a good example of the error of presentism and eisegetical interpretation when it comes to history.

01:07:24

So I'm using this as an example. I wasn't trying to just, I was upset that the school,

01:07:31

I did put in there, I was thankful for people at the school, but I was upset that my tuition money is going towards things like this.

01:07:37

But my purpose was to illustrate the bigger political point on my personal blog. Vice president of the school reaches out to me.

01:07:44

And he said something, I think, very telling. He talked about the reason that I was wrong to write what

01:07:51

I did was because I'm treating this professor who's a history professor as a Bible guy.

01:07:56

And I wrote back to him and I basically said, look, it doesn't matter whether you're a Bible guy or not.

01:08:02

Everyone should interpret eisegetically. There's not a distinction between this field and another field.

01:08:10

The rules apply either way. And this made me realize something, something that I'll probably develop a little more later.

01:08:18

But this school, this is how schools become liberal. Other influences outside that people that don't have, perhaps, maybe they're not even aware of it, but they don't have a

01:08:31

Christ -centered historiography, let's say, or pick whatever discipline you want, science, whatever.

01:08:37

They will infiltrate and then maybe they're not even trying to infiltrate, but they become professors out of school.

01:08:45

And because maybe they're very involved in their church, they could be even strong Christians. They love the

01:08:50

Lord. But they've been taught from the point that they were a little kid all the way through high school, through college, graduate school,

01:08:59

PhD, they've been taught a worldly philosophy. And now because they have a personal relationship with Christ and all the rest, they can go teach at a seminary.

01:09:09

So there's a compartmentalization. There's this discipline, which is, we're gonna use history as the example here, but we could use any number of, philosophy could be one, any number of disciplines.

01:09:23

But there's this discipline. And I learned about this discipline in these secular places.

01:09:28

And I adopted secular philosophy. That's the point that's dangerous.

01:09:34

It's not necessarily going to these places, it's adopting their philosophy. And then though, because I'm a Christian, I can sign the statement of faith at the school and everything's fine.

01:09:44

And I'm being involved in my church and be looked. And so the guys over here, who are the seminary professors teaching

01:09:50

Bible, who are church guys and pastors, they're saying, oh, when it comes to this field, counseling, history, science, go to this guy, cause he's the specialist.

01:10:02

He's the expert on this. I know this field. And so different rules apply to the different fields.

01:10:09

The problem is these rules that apply to different fields are different. And so they actually contradict one another.

01:10:15

They don't mesh. And I think that's one of the reasons that schools tend to go liberal.

01:10:21

I mean, the Ivy leagues were started as seminaries. They went liberal because other final authorities came to dominate disciplines within the university.

01:10:34

And it's impossible for those influences is not to seep in to things that directly affect

01:10:41

Christianity. So social justice can seep in a neo -Marxist idea, critical race theory.

01:10:47

These things can seep in into theology and introduce categories that aren't even in the

01:10:52

Bible because so -and -so the specialist over here or group of specialists say that these things are true or important.

01:11:02

And so you have now generations that grew up under secular thinking, public school.

01:11:09

It is a secular religion. They start teaching at Bible schools, seminaries and so forth. They train the next generation of pastors.

01:11:16

Those pastors grow up and those pastors have adopted a compartmentalized view. Here's Christianity over here and here's these other disciplines and they have different final authorities and they're okay living with that apparently.

01:11:30

And this process continues and it gets worse and worse and worse. These guys who got trained at the seminary, who have a compartmentalized worldview, then they go back and they become the

01:11:38

Bible teachers. So you can see how this problem becomes exasperated.

01:11:45

And I think that's kind of what this gentleman revealed in a sense.

01:11:51

And I'm sure, I don't know him very well, but I'm sure he's a very nice gentleman. I'm sure, I'm assuming he loves the Lord. I have no ill will at all, but it was a very telling statement that he made that there's

01:12:06

Bible guys and then there's the experts at these fields. So I'm not gonna go into full details on this, but I did end up meeting with the professor that I wrote about or that I used as an example.

01:12:18

I wasn't writing about him in particular, but I probably met with him for an hour.

01:12:24

I don't think it'd be wrong for me to share details about everything that transpired but I don't want it to distract.

01:12:31

It's a petty personal situation kind of, or it became that. It wasn't on my end, but it sort of became that way.

01:12:38

I don't want that to distract. But what I do think the important point of this is I was told that someone from academic affairs wanted to meet with me about something

01:12:47

I had said on a personal blog. And I didn't meet with them. I kind of headed it off partially because of that meeting that I had with the professor, but it reminded me of what my professor had said, another professor who had said that if I said what

01:13:03

I really believe, I would be fired. He works for the campus. I don't. I'm paying the campus to learn.

01:13:09

I'm a student. But a student posting on his personal blog, his personal views was reached out to by higher ups, was told that he may have to meet with academic affairs.

01:13:23

That's concerning. That doesn't sound like a place necessarily of learning. That sounds like a place where you need to toe the line.

01:13:31

Guarantee you, if I had written about, said, hey, I had this professor in class and I disagree with him about eschatology.

01:13:37

Here's why I think he's wrong. Here's why I think I'm right. Or if I said, hey, Calvinism, or hey, creationism,

01:13:44

I don't think I'd be having someone reach out to me. I mean, I didn't do those things. So I don't know, but I really don't.

01:13:51

But because this is an area that there's an orthodoxy set up now.

01:13:57

You're a heretic if you deny social justice and the gospel of racial reconciliation.

01:14:04

Because of that, it was an important deal. So that gives you some idea about the environment at Southeastern.

01:14:13

Principal pluralism. I want to talk about this. We're kind of closing up now with my experience.

01:14:18

But one of the, I'm not going to name him, but one of the young kind of new guys who's popular at Southeastern and blogs a lot.

01:14:31

He did a chapel message. And this is actually the message that he gave.

01:14:36

I've heard this idea disseminated around Southeastern and other places. But he said that conservatives idolize their country.

01:14:46

And he kind of blasted nationalism. It was very bad. And to his credit, he has said liberals, they have their idols as well.

01:14:54

And he was using the story of Daniel. And when I was listening, I was kind of like, okay, he doesn't understand what traditional conservatism is then.

01:15:04

Because conservatism is literally the idea that there's God. And then God has given responsibilities to government.

01:15:10

They're a ministry of justice. And government has this narrow lane of justice. Whereas the family has the ministry of education and the church and ministry of grace.

01:15:19

God's law applies to all these institutions, but different laws apply. They apply in different ways.

01:15:25

But yeah, justice is given by God. And conservatism rests in that idea.

01:15:31

That's the government's role. It's a limited role, limited government, right? Liberalism says, no,

01:15:37

God is the government. So literally making government an idol. And so in this speech, he was like, no, they're not.

01:15:44

He made out like liberalism and conservatism are equally guilty of idolatry. And you're making an idol out of your culture.

01:15:51

This is such a big problem. And I thought, that's not conservatism.

01:15:59

And even I think he had a distorted view of what nationalism is. I mean, we're supposed to love our countries.

01:16:04

So where do you draw that line? At what point? Yeah, sure, anything can become idolatry. But there's a proper place for loving one's country.

01:16:11

But today in evangelicalism, I guarantee you at Southeastern, nationalism is bad.

01:16:16

Very bad thing. Don't, you shouldn't, it's to the point where, I mean,

01:16:22

I think it's a reaction to Trump probably. But yeah, it's every tribe, tongue, nation.

01:16:27

You're constantly told every tribe, tongue, nation. Of course, of course it is. But the idea behind this thinking, the conclusion of this chapel message was that we should have what basically was a principle of pluralism.

01:16:43

That we should all get along in this secular country where we have our beliefs and we have our

01:16:48

Christian beliefs. And other people can have their Muslim or their Hindu or whatever.

01:16:54

Everyone can have their beliefs, but we get along because we have a principle pluralism. And this idea,

01:16:59

I mean, this speech wasn't necessarily the, that wasn't even the main point of the speech. But I noticed this idea was in it.

01:17:05

And I remember I had to read a book from one class that was all about this. And this idea is on campus.

01:17:10

They think that we're going to, I don't know if it's save Christianity or what, but we're gonna have principle pluralism, which means we can survive.

01:17:20

And so the problem is that leftists are totalitarian.

01:17:26

That doesn't work. People on the left view government, like I said, as God, and they will stifle your free speech.

01:17:33

And we're watching that right in front of our faces. We're watching obviously bakers and florists and photographers get targeted because they won't do a gay wedding.

01:17:46

Liberals are totalitarian. You cannot, there is no secular middle ground where we can all just kind of agree.

01:17:55

The country itself was formed on generally, general Christian principles.

01:18:01

And those principles are what made possible some range of belief because of freedom of conscience.

01:18:09

Those principles being gone, Christianity not, America rejecting Christianity as its religion.

01:18:15

And if someone's gonna say, oh, it was never, America never had Christianity as religion. Nine of the 13 states had official churches when the constitution was ratified.

01:18:23

And I mean, I can give you, I'll save that for another blog. But yes, America very much built on Christian assumptions.

01:18:29

George Washington, gospel made, the constitution was made for a moral. And George Washington, I think said, he said a version of this, but I think it might've been,

01:18:39

I'm thinking maybe I'm thinking of John Adams, but the gospel was made for a moral and religious people inadequate for any other.

01:18:46

And we don't have that kind of people anymore. So principle pluralism is the solution. Southeastern, I would say advocates, or it's just in the, you swim in it.

01:18:55

It's just what people assume. And that's not feasible, but it's important for me to mention this because it's gonna play into kind of my conclusion here.

01:19:07

Two last things, the academic standards, actually, this is important, have gone downhill.

01:19:12

Hermeneutics was dropped as a requirement for the MDiv. Now they still teach it, but you have to use it, unless you're doing an advanced

01:19:19

MDiv, it's gotta be an elective. That is frightening. So now you got a bunch of pastors, I mean, no wonder they're having a hard time interpreting historical monuments and so forth.

01:19:31

I mean, if you're not gonna teach hermeneutics, that's the foundation for a seminary education. One of the theology courses was dropped and they're replacing them with what

01:19:40

I would consider fluff. Classes that, I don't wanna name any of the classes, but classes where you're learning strategies for church growth and how to do spiritual disciplines, things you probably should know whether you had a class on it or not, things you should have gotten way before probably even coming to seminary.

01:20:00

But I empathize a little bit. Southeastern is noticing, I think, that a lot of guys get out there on the field, they make a mess of things and wow, they weren't praying or they weren't doing their spiritual disciplines.

01:20:10

Well, they did something stupid, we gotta have a class for that. I think that's probably what's going on partially, but cutting from hermeneutics, there's something at play there.

01:20:20

I can't fathom why you would cut that out of your program as a requirement. The other thing

01:20:29

I wanted to say was I've heard that there's a brain drain going on on campus, not my word, it was someone else's, but that older professors are leaving partially because of the social justice.

01:20:41

There's rumors floating around there about professors being asked to leave and professors looking for other opportunities because of the environment there.

01:20:51

I don't know whether that's true because I haven't spoken to anyone personally except the one professor that I mentioned earlier, but I wouldn't be surprised.

01:20:59

I have noticed that the places of prominence, which means what shows up on Southeastern's Twitter, their blogs, who speaks in chapel, the symposiums they have, the young professors that they're promoting more or less are not intellectually, from my interactions, anything like those who are leaving.

01:21:22

So I'll leave that there. That has to do with the academic standards. So to review, here's my conclusions and my explanations for why this is all happening.

01:21:31

My conclusion is that Southeastern has adopted principle pluralism as a way to share something in common with the world.

01:21:38

Now, they may not be conscious of this, but that is at least the effect it has. It's like Danny Akin's video.

01:21:46

We can agree, we can work together on this. There's this middle ground that we can kind of, this neutral territory that we can meet on.

01:21:54

So principle pluralism plays its part. And critical race theory, feminism, and things that are really, they introduce categories that are outside of scripture.

01:22:04

These things are, I think, because of principle pluralism opening that door, because of people that have been educated in secular institutions, those things have been brought in now.

01:22:15

And it's syncretism. I mean, it's been wedded to scripture. There's Bible verses sometimes that are used to support them, but you look and it's just not,

01:22:23

Bible verses isn't talking about the same thing you're talking about. And this has twisted the mission of the school as engaging culture.

01:22:32

And really engaging culture means it's a way to make peace with the world. Because every time cultures engage, like I said, it's all the leftist things.

01:22:41

It's all the, it's being for unlimited immigration and being for affirmative action and welfare things.

01:22:51

And I mean, every time it's brought up, it's never, it's not brought up for conservative topics or things that conservatives tend to care about.

01:22:59

It's always things media cares about. So, and then the gospel is essentially, because of all this is redefined as a way, using a term

01:23:10

I should say gospel issue, not the gospel, but the term gospel issue is defined as a way to stifle those who disagree.

01:23:19

So if you, let's say, I'll give you an example, right? I disagree with unlimited immigration.

01:23:28

Even that word, I shouldn't even be using that, illegal immigration. It's not even immigration, migration. See how the word, controlling the words really controls the argument.

01:23:37

But I disagree with that. I don't think anyone without being vetted should just come in this country, right?

01:23:42

I think a barrier is a good idea. So these are my beliefs.

01:23:47

And I would rest those things on the idea, this Christian idea that government is supposed to protect its people. It's responsible for its people and protecting them is the number one goal of government.

01:23:57

And especially if people are breaking the law, I mean, justice must come to bear on this. Well, that's a very simple explanation.

01:24:04

Maybe I should do a longer video sometime on that topic. But because I believe that, and because that is, let's say not compassionate or they'll twist, there's a scripture that's often twisted in the old

01:24:15

Testament about how to treat strangers. And this is somehow endorsing illegal immigration. Because those, because I'm out of step with the thinking on these issues,

01:24:28

I'm somehow not in keeping with the gospel because I am not forwarding a gospel issue.

01:24:35

I am opposing a gospel issue. A gospel issue is feed all the hungry that come here. And that's, you know, which is a confusion of the responsibility of church and state.

01:24:44

But people can say that I'm basically against the gospel because that's a gospel issue.

01:24:51

And so this is used as a hammer to quell people who disagree.

01:24:57

So that's what's going on at Southeastern. Why is this going on? Well, I explained this a little bit before, but I think the compartmentalization is a big part of this.

01:25:07

There's a Christian truth and then there's, well, there's these various disciplines with secular truths. I think wanting to be loved by the world is the motivation behind most of this.

01:25:16

I think, especially younger evangelicals embarrassed by their parents, embarrassed that the media made them out to be buffoons when they were following, let's say,

01:25:24

Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or some element of the religious right. They're trying desperately to prove to the world that we do not believe what our parents believed.

01:25:35

We're not the crazy right -wing anti -abortion people. We also, you know, yeah, abortion is not good, but let's talk about immigration.

01:25:42

Let's talk about climate change. Let's talk about, especially the favorite topic now, racial issues.

01:25:49

Now, that's gonna change, I predict. That's gonna change. That's not gonna be the only issue.

01:25:55

There's gonna be sexual issues that come into this because you can't escape the logic of it. But it's gonna be these issues of the left and they want the world to know that they're not crazy like their parents were, at least how the media portrayed their parents.

01:26:09

So they emphasize these issues that the world also finds palatable. And then thirdly,

01:26:15

I think white guilt has a lot to do with it. And the reason I say this is because in the chapels, especially, there is a constant effort to denounce segregation.

01:26:26

Why are our churches so segregated? We need to stop this segregation. Meanwhile, you know, all the professors that I know, because I've visited all the churches in the area, they all go to white churches and they won't join black churches.

01:26:36

So the reason for it is because a lot of the black churches have different theology.

01:26:43

Then they wouldn't agree with that theology. They're not Pentecostal. They're not, there's all sorts of reasons for that.

01:26:49

It has nothing to do with race. But a lot of these guys who are saying, you know, they're saying, well, we need to change so that we get, we need to adopt social justice.

01:26:56

So African -Americans, and it's usually African -Americans. There's a lot of other races out there, but usually that's the race they focus on.

01:27:02

You know, they're gonna come to our churches if we adopt social justice and we're being bigoted if we don't. And meanwhile, they're all going to these white churches and harping on them.

01:27:12

And so I don't know if this is purchasing white guilt, purchasing your indulgences to say, I go to this church,

01:27:17

I'm guilty for everything I'm doing, but because I took this stand, because I said this, I'm somehow okay. But it's weird.

01:27:25

And they, you know, another focus is the, obviously the sins of previous generations are harped on a lot, a lot of talk about the civil rights movement, a lot of talk about slavery and how bad these things were.

01:27:38

And of course there's horrible things, absolutely horrible. Don't let me sugarcoat any of this.

01:27:45

But that being said, these are the sins of at best fathers.

01:27:51

Sometimes they're not even fathers. Sometimes you have no connection to any of these horrible things that took place, but there's an intense focus and obsession with those sins of the past.

01:28:05

And of course it's perpetual. We should always be apologizing. It's like Hebrews 10, 11, always offering sacrifices.

01:28:12

These exhausted priests, never able to get forgiveness. So when's the day that we're forgiven?

01:28:18

I mean, do we need to get a spokesperson to come up and say, I represent all people from this disenfranchised group and the homosexuals forgive you and minorities forgive you.

01:28:28

It never runs out. There's always a new statement being made. There's always a new effort to somehow prove to people that we're really sorry.

01:28:39

The SBC is really sorry. Southeastern's really sorry. So they're not taking their comfort from the cross that the cross in Jesus, all the sins of the world were nailed to Jesus when he was up there on the cross.

01:28:52

And that's the reason I went to seminary. It's because I wanted to get that message out there. I want to learn how to interpret the word of God in the original languages, not having it academically dumbed down.

01:29:03

I wanted to know Jesus better and his word and have others know him better.

01:29:09

And that grace is step one. And it seems like we're taking a step backwards at some of these institutions because that grace is not paying for what amounts to sins of our fathers at best.

01:29:24

So that's why I think there's white guilt going on. Now, why is this all happening now? For those who have gotten whiplash and thought, man,

01:29:31

I didn't know this was all going on. MacArthur seemed to be reacting to this after MLK 50 when some crazy statements were made.

01:29:40

Yeah, MacArthur had James White, he had Doug Wilson. And Doug Wilson actually, to fair to him, he's been writing on this for a while, but there were others obviously that saw this as a problem.

01:29:53

They drafted the social justice statement against this. Their heads were spinning. How did this happen so quickly?

01:29:59

I think one of the reasons, it was there before. It was there. When I was there in 2014, I saw glimpses of it, but it was kind of under the surface.

01:30:08

I think when Trump got elected, 80 % of evangelicals went for Trump. 80%, so the vast majority.

01:30:16

And now, and the leaders, the elites, I should say, academic institutions, they were not recommending

01:30:22

Trump. They didn't like Trump. And I think that's really upset a lot of them.

01:30:27

I'm not saying that's the only reason, but I think that's really inspired a lot of them to take action now and to say the things that they're saying.

01:30:35

They want control back. And they might get it to some extent.

01:30:41

I'm going to make a couple of predictions here. I think they're going to be split within the SBC because pastors being trained at these places are going to go out to their congregations, and their congregations are conservative.

01:30:51

And they're going to try to impose some of these things. In fact, I just talked to someone not too long ago who went to a church,

01:30:58

Southeastern guy, and he tried to impose this stuff, and this guy had to leave. That's why are we talking about social justice all the time?

01:31:07

And why are we losing focus? So that's going to, there's going to be a split somewhere along the line.

01:31:13

Another prediction, I think they'll adopt integrated counseling, meaning psychology with biblical counseling.

01:31:20

And the reason for that is some of them have kind of cozied up to the,

01:31:27

I forget the gentleman's name, but there's a, there's a counselor out there who counsels racial trauma, like people that have,

01:31:37

I guess, experienced discrimination supposedly, and he'll counsel them. And that's specific to what he does.

01:31:43

Kyle G. Howard, that's his name. Some of them are friends with his or, you know, along those lines.

01:31:48

Well, that is not possible. It's not possible to do that from a biblical counseling model.

01:31:55

Those categories aren't in the Bible. You counsel someone because of the heart issues they have, and it doesn't, those heart issues aren't red, yellow, black, green, whatever.

01:32:05

And so I do think integrated counseling will, if it hasn't already, will become part and parcel of the

01:32:10

Southeastern. I think in 15 years, I'm saying 15, 15 to 20, I really want to say 15 to 20, they're not going to be orthodox anymore in, either in their practice, it'll be obvious that they're not, or in their statements, they'll actually change them.

01:32:25

I don't think it'll take that long. I'm hoping I'm wrong about that. I'm hoping that they turn around, but if they adopt this stuff and it continues, there's no way.

01:32:34

The academic standards, I think will also continue to plummet just because that's the trajectory.

01:32:40

Here's my encouragement, okay? So I've said all these things that might have you down, or if you're a social justice guy, you're like, yes, but let me give you encouragement.

01:32:49

If you're not a social justice guy, not everyone at Southeastern believes this stuff.

01:32:56

Let me say that again. Not everyone believes it. I just had a guy on social media, reach out to me who said that they were a

01:33:03

Southeastern student. And in fact, I wish I, I'm not going to say it anyway.

01:33:09

I was going to say something that might, it might describe them though. So I'm not going to mention it, but they, they are very much against the social justice stuff and discouraged.

01:33:21

And I encourage them. And there are professors there who do not tow the line, but are, like I said, they're muzzled.

01:33:28

They can't really say much. So be encouraged that you're not alone, even if you are on campus listening to this and you have to finish.

01:33:37

Also, God will grow his church. That's what Jesus says, right? That he is the one that grows the church and the gates of hell won't prevail against it.

01:33:47

So Jesus says he'll build his church. Southeastern is a parachurch organization, just like every other parachurch organization,

01:33:54

Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, every other seminary, they're parachurch.

01:34:00

They're not the church. Very important distinction. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that seminary really ought to be, it ought to be like Master's Seminary or Expositor's Seminary.

01:34:10

There should be a church attached to this thing. Not just having a church or a chapel on campus. No, I mean like the church is the authority in theological education.

01:34:19

And I think we're gonna be going that direction here soon. I think online education and other things, I think are gonna make theological education more accessible and the church will be the primary.

01:34:30

I mean, secularism is gonna kill this stuff anyways. If secularism continues, it's gonna be like in Canada where recently a

01:34:38

Christian college couldn't start a law school. And Canada is gonna get worse too, but they're not gonna be able to comply with the anti -discrimination measures and everything else.

01:34:47

And I think theological education is gonna be left up to the church. I don't know if we will have accrediting agencies in the future.

01:34:53

So as much as I don't wanna see persecution, I can see that there might be some good points to it because these guys are gonna lose their authority in that case.

01:35:03

And it's gonna go back to the church. So God will grow his church and he's gonna go around these institutions to do it if they're trying, if they're going against his plan.

01:35:14

And yeah, the third thing, I already mentioned it, but the seminary model may fall. So those are the things that I wanted to encourage you all with and leave you on that high note.

01:35:26

And I do, if you are looking, I do recommend looking into masters.

01:35:32

I do recommend you looking into expositors. I think academically speaking, I've had some connection with Westminster Theological Seminary.

01:35:42

And I know they're Presbyterian, you may not. But them, Reform Theological Seminary, there seem to be some good things going on, at least in some quarters.

01:35:52

And of course, maybe things have changed. It's been a few years since I looked into them, but they seem at least academically good.

01:35:58

And so I'd encourage you to go look at those places if you're looking for seminary as possibilities.

01:36:04

But be involved in your church if you're gonna do this. And I hope you gleaned from what

01:36:10

I said. And I know it's controversial. I almost didn't even wanna make this, but I felt I needed to.

01:36:16

And so I have. And if you're listening to this, then you probably are on,

01:36:24

I said there would be two, there's probably now, with how long I've gone, there's probably three podcasts now out there on this.

01:36:32

But hopefully you got something out of it. And maybe you listened to it on double or triple speed so you get through it faster.

01:36:38

But that's all I got about that topic. Next week, we're gonna be talking about something different. I'm gonna change it up a bunch.

01:36:45

As you can tell, there's always different topics. Last week was hiking. This week is this.

01:36:52

And next week, I've been toying with different things. I wanna take a little break,

01:36:57

I think, because this was, it's kind of exhausting to go over the controversial stuff, the stuff that's controversial now.

01:37:03

So why don't we go over stuff maybe from 100 years ago? I don't know. But I'll probably do something that has to do with history or church history, something that's interesting that you haven't thought of before or haven't studied.