Social Justice and the Downgrade of SEBTS

Southeastern Seminary’s Downgrade and the Speaker’s Background

Hey, it's John with the Conversations That Matter podcast. Today I wanna talk about the downgrade of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. 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, I guess, for broader evangelicalism because I was at Southeastern about four years ago as a student.

I left for a little while, took online courses, and then I came back, and the transformation that I saw was truly incredible. I wanna 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 wanna be careful, as careful as I can in conveying this.

I visited campus in 2013 that summer. I attended in the fall, and then I left campus, like I said, for a few years, came back in fall of 2017, graduated spring of 2018. Unlike many, I can make this video because I did not accept any money from Southeastern, or I should say from the Southern Baptist Convention.

Many of the students that attend do accept money. I think 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 Southern Baptist Convention, and if they had a problem with what Southeastern is doing, they really couldn't say much about it.

There is an 11th commandment in the SBC, and that is don't speak evil of a fellow 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, but because I decided that I did not wanna be a Southern Baptist, I was only briefly a member of a 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 Southern Baptists.

Background, Biases, and Why I’m Sharing This

Now, my background and biases, I think you should know where I'm coming from. I'm an American history guy. My undergrad's in that. In fact, I'm pursuing a graduate degree in that right now. 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, and I've always been politically conservative, and this flows out of my commitment to Christian anthropological, ethical, and economic assumptions.

So I see those two, conservatism and Christianity, as being complimentary of one another, as being consistent with one another. That alone, that statement I just made, will be anathema to many at Southeastern.

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. Now, my reason for sharing this, I have six basic reasons.

They're not malicious. I don't wanna get anyone in trouble. I'm not seeking to hurt Southeastern. Actually, on the contrary, I want to see Southeastern flourish. I wanna see, I mean, I have a love for the campus.

I attended there. Beautiful campus, beautiful history, and I would love to see the best for this campus, and I do pray for the campus semi-frequently. So there's no malice here, any feelings of ill will, but I do think that I need to share my story.

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 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, and I was a little bit that way, and I think if I had decided to go to campus now, I would definitely be that way. I'm going there to study the Bible, to learn how to interpret it, and meanwhile, 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, so for y 'all.

Secondly, I think it's important to understand how an academic institution can become liberal, and some of you watching this may be curious about that. Southeastern is one of thousands of stories of campuses shifting to the left, but because I was there, because I have a unique perspective, I think my story can add to that, and I can illustrate how that takes place.

So there's this general trend of academic institutions to go in a leftward direction, 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, Southeastern's the tip of the sword.

I mean, they used to be known as the mission school. In some ways, they still are. That is changing, and it's changing fast. They are becoming known. They have a reputation for being the social justice school in the SBC.

Number four is I wanna offer some encouragement to discern, so discernment. Oftentimes, we let our guards down when there's teachers or institutions that we trust, and that's very dangerous. The history of the church is filled with once-solid organizations that went heretical, and just about every heretical group has some tie back to an Orthodox group, 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. Jude 4, just a couple things. Verse 4 says, Paul says, Paul says. See, I'm so used to saying Paul says because everything in Scripture, in the New Testament, right?

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

The book of Galatians, obviously, against the Judaizers, but interestingly enough, the heresy that Paul, here we go, 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, and so someone who can be very solid can be deceived.

I mean, Peter, would we say that he's not solid? He certainly was an apostle, 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.

And of course, the Bereans of Acts 17 were commended by Paul because they even checked him out, an apostle. So what I'm doing, what I'm gonna be walking through, this material, my story, I am within the boundaries, I believe, of scripture by examining some of the things that I saw in my experience there and then letting you know about them.

Modeling Christian Disagreement and the Six Reasons for the Video

Now, my fifth reason for doing this is to, hopefully, this is maybe a smaller thing, but to model how 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 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 I'm going to convey to you. There's disagreement, and I think it's a serious disagreement, at least the implications of it.

James 1 .19 says, This you know, my beloved brethren, but everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger. So I don't make this video without having first consulted faculty at Southeastern.

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. My sixth reason for making this is to give hope, and maybe that's the most important.

If you're feeling the way 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 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.

You may think they're taking over everything. Where is their hope? The Gospel Coalition, Together for the Gospel, and Desiring God, and the list goes on. 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. So I'm gonna actually save the hope part till the end.

So just to review, I'm making this video, I wanna be very clear about this, to understand how academic and evangelical organizations are being compromised, to help those who are making the choice whether or not they should go to Southeastern, to encourage discernment, to model how Christians should engage these heresies, I'm gonna call it that, and to give hope.

A few final elucidations here. I am very thankful for many of the men at SEBTS, truly. I'm very grateful that they're there. I've learned some from my experience there. There are a lot of professors who disagree with the direction of the school, but who cannot say anything.

And I'm gonna share a little bit about that later. SEBTS is still teaching many good things that are useful, and so I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater here at all. They're in transition.

Like many organizations, they are falling, but they have not completely fallen yet. But I think the seeds of their destruction have been planted. And that's what I'm gonna talk about is these seeds that I saw.

I don't make this video flippantly. Like I said before, I've talked to people on campus, professors, I've gotten counsel about it, I've prayed about it. I'm not trying to damage Southeastern. I pray for them, I love them.

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-skinned behavior by proponents of the social justice theory or gospel at Southeastern.

And I've decided to be a little vague with some of the names that I could mention. 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, I'm not going to be really naming a lot of names.

I might talk about Danny Aiken, right? 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. I might refer to a professor as a professor.

I'm probably not gonna be using names. So just wanted to mention that. So let's get into it. Let's talk about, I'm gonna go through this chronologically. And within that, I'm gonna weave some topical considerations.

One final thing. If you're listening on audio, this is gonna be kind of long. So if you have the podcast playing, I'm gonna release two podcasts at the same time. 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, I'll post them at the same time. Obviously, if you're watching the video, it's one video. So here we go. If you've been following my blog, Conversations That Matter, I've warned about certain ideas, racial reconciliation, social justice.

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

I was gonna maybe make it broader and talk about Southern and Southwestern as well, but it was honestly just too much. 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, it obviously goes way further than that. Articles, blogs, chapel messages, statements made in class that are supportive of social justice. 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. Like I said before, I visited SEBTS in the summer of 2013. I was impressed with the prayer that the person recruiting me gave. 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 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. 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.

And that was encouraging to my heart. He's probably still there, probably still saying the same thing. And he rocks. I mean, that's just great. And that did a lot for me. 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. And from my tour, I got the sense that they were.

And my recruiter knew that that's what I was looking for. He never said we are a reformed school, but he definitely pointed me in, I mean, he would quote people that had been reformed, that had spoken at chapel and how much they liked the school.

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

And so I'm learning this on the tour. I love Francis Schaeffer, especially at that time. And I thought, well, this is reformed. They understand the relationship of the church with the culture because Francis Schaeffer.

And they had a lake nearby and I liked fishing. So funny thing is I actually never did go fishing there when I went to campus. I always thought that I was gonna go fishing and that played into my decision, but alas.

So the first semester was the fall of 2014. And I realized right off the bat, this is very important. I might repeat this. I realized that Southeastern was a very big tent, meaning their beliefs were very broad on some things.

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

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

So it almost seemed like to the point of uncertainty, this broad tent, this big tent was there. When I first got there, I mean, it was in like the first two weeks, I ended up going to a Sunday or an old Sunday school.

It was a Bible study that the president of the university, of the seminary was leading. 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.

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

And because of that, he was given a slot to speak in chapel. And it was on a certain eschatological view that he was speaking. And so the president tells me in a personal conversation, 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. And I don't want a certain eschatological view holding sway or being perceived as this is what Southeastern believes. I want people to feel comfortable with whatever view they choose.

I thought, okay, I had nothing against that. That sounds good. But that was in regards to eschatology. I found out later, creationism is pretty much the same thing. There's three professors that I knew of at the time.

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. 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. And so he taught us growing up the different beliefs or tenets, 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. But I was a little surprised I'm on campus and I'm hearing other things about that. And in fact, one professor told me that Ken Ham was a charlatan.

And so I didn't take that too well. 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, I guess, because I thought this was a theological issue that really impacted the gospel directly because of having death before sin.

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

There was a professor that, there's two of them that I know that advocated Molinism, one in particular, I know wrote a book on it and was pretty high up at the university. So there's also these Arminian beliefs that are swirling around on campus, depending on which professor you have.

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

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. Now, because of the Big Ten, there were not one that I can remember.

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

So they had a very unified message to the world through their videos, to the school. This is what we believe. If ever they were gonna talk about a social topic, even a political topic or a theological topic.

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

I mean, that used to be what universities did. That's what a university is, right? You're hearing all these different viewpoints. You're thinking critically about them. The Socratic method. Well, that was not at Southeastern at all.

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

I'm in a grad program now where most of the program is, this is how graduate school should be, is people disagreeing with one another. 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. And we're all together on that journey. Southeastern's not like that. It's you have the view and that's the accepted view and everyone gets together and they adopt that.

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

So those actually, that stuff became secondary. And in my mind, that stuff actually, especially reformed theology and creation, that stuff is actually primary. That stuff is really important stuff, right?

But that became secondary to social concerns. 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. So tertiary issues, secondary issues have become primary issues at Southeastern.

And I got to see that transformation. If there was any unity in an Orthodox sense, broadly speaking, it would have been a very broad gospel and then a missions focus. 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 I was there in 2014. The academic environment wasn't the best when I first came to campus. Like I said, we weren't challenged to think very critically in my mind, at least in the classes I was in.

Even questions could be seen as divisive sometimes. Academic standards were very low. And I know this just because I can compare it to other places I've been. I don't know, I've been to, I don't know, about maybe five different undergraduate institutions.

I had credits transferred to a few. And then maybe one, two, three, four, four. Yeah, I think four different graduate institutions that I've had credits transfer from. Southeastern's one of the, in my mind, academically, one of the last or the bottom of the list, academically speaking.

They're just, it wasn't very challenging. A lot of the material was on a high school level. A lot of the 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. 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. 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. 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. I had actually a really good ethics professor, I think. But I noticed that some professors were defensive, even if you asked a question. 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. There's this mentality, and academia tends to go this direction.

It's one of the reasons academia tends to go towards the left. There's this idea that I'm a specialist. I know my field, and don't question me. You're, there's student, right? And that is completely, that is a new thing in academics.

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

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 foreshadow, foreshadowing of what was to come. There were a lot of minority speakers.

And when I say minority, you really, I don't think there was Hispanic speakers. I remember it was black speakers. People that were African American were speaking in chapel a whole lot, which I am all for.

And I don't care if you're purple. Some of the best pastors are black. Some of the worst are white. And there's also some good white pastors. I mean, it doesn't, to me, skin color does not matter when it comes to preaching ability.

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

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

I couldn't think of why. I mean, sometimes they were not even talking about scripture. They weren't preaching a sermon. Sometimes they were just talking about the African-American experience, and that was it.

And I thought, why in the world? They're not Southern Baptists. Why are they here? I came here to know the word of God. 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. I'm not making the accusation. I'm telling you how it was perceived, the possibility. I'm raising the possibility.

So my roommates, I remember talking to them, and we all had a kind of a similar reaction. 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.

I did the same thing. I'm not here to learn about the African-American experience. As great as that is to study, I'm here to know the word of God. 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, I'm not against black people. I'm not racist. And I'm giving the same one.

That has nothing to do with it. It's just, we have a purpose in attending this school. And so that kind of confused me a little bit when 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.

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. 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. 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.

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

This was a high point for me. Remember in church, this was after the Michael Brown incident. 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.

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. And in his prayer, he talked about how, I'm putting this in my own words, how African-Americans were unfairly treated in general.

And he prayed a prayer. It was a prayer of repentance that we would wake up to the racism around us. And that, and he specifically, he said it was something about the cops and how cops targeted African-Americans and how the, 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, and that Michael Brown was innocent and everything else.

So without all the facts even coming out, this pastor took a side and I was, that really, and he was an adjunct professor at Southeastern at the time, and that really bothered me. And it was one, not the only reason, but it was one reason that I started to feel a little uncomfortable with.

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

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

Openly Secular, Confederate Flag Chapel, and the Shift in Priorities

This is a very important one, and one that made me think about whether I really wanted to go back. Danny Akin, who is the president currently and was the president then, made a video in 2015 for Openly Secular.

And in this video, he talked about having a common cause, a common love, and a common belief with secularists. It's an atheistic organization that put this out. And he talks about their common cause. 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. 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.

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. He's saying this to an atheist organization. And then they have a common belief.

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

But joining hands with a secular organization like this for the purpose of secularism, I mean, the video is called Openly Secular, was really concerning to me. I thought, what in the world is going on down there?

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

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 Confederate flag, the whole entire chapel service.

And no one was on the pro-flag side. 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. 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.

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

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. 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 we're standing there and making all sorts of motions, pointing towards it and talking with one another.

And they were really loud. And she said they were condemning it, I guess. And it's only a couple years later, you know? And of course, the guy with the little flag who would be driving around campus, I didn't see that truck anymore when I came back.

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

I mean, chapel services, I mean, usually, traditionally, they're devotional. They're to help the spiritual, the life on campus, to help people with their walks with the Lord, to maintain a right focus.

How is this worth your time? How is this, 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? 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. Now, I want you to start remembering what I said before about Danny Akin not wanting someone to come express a different eschatology.

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

Now, do you see that it's an issue of emphasis, right? And that's what I'm trying to get at here is there's a hard issue underneath all of this that says that's more important than these other things.