Jarvis William's Gospel

Critical Race Theory as a Framework for Evaluating Jarvis Williams

Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast, my name is John Harris. This is a quick episode, but it's jam-packed. We're continuing the theme of the week and we're going to recite, once again, the seven principles of critical race theory.

I think the more we're familiar, the better we are at identifying it when it comes to when into our church or place of business. And then we're going to talk about how Jarvis Williams, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has syncretized Christianity with critical race theory and developed really what amounts to a false gospel.

That's a strong charge and I realize that. Social justice advocates constantly in evangelicalism charge other evangelicals of having a half gospel or not the full gospel. Really they're saying we have false teaching.

But I want to be super careful when I say that about someone, whether they have false teaching or not. Jarvis Williams does have false teaching. I don't have any reservations saying that. And I'm going to go over that.

Now the sources I use, just for those who are curious about that kind of thing, some Twitter stuff from 2015 all the way up into a video that he put out last year. So there's a number of things in there.

There's a syllabus that I use that he put out or someone screenshotted and put out. There's also one of the main ones is his contribution to a book called Removing the Stain of Racism from the Southern Baptist Convention.

And all those sources are available. If you're a patron, you can download it because I'm not just going to include the slideshow, but I'm going to include a PDF of all the sources. So chapter and verse, here's where Jarvis Williams said it, and then you can compare it to critical race theory.

Here's what critical race theory teaches. So there should be no question. The facts are the facts. I know that this is just for the Southern Baptists are different for some reason than some of the other Christian organizations out there.

They are very defensive and very evasive and willing to criticize someone for lying. They're very quick on the trigger to accuse someone of something, especially not getting their sources right or reading out of context.

I've been extra careful at making sure everything is completely loctite cited, et cetera. So if you're a patron, you can download that. But I'm going to show you in his own words, kind of what he believes and what he teaches.

And this will help us identify it when it comes into other places in Christianity. Because Jarvis Williams is putting out another book. He's still a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He's got the sanction of Al Mohler on some level. And so that makes him influential. So let's review critical race theory, seven principles. Richard Delgado puts this in his book, Critical Race Theory, an Introduction.

Racism is normative is the first one. Second, race is a social construct created in order to allocate privilege. Third, white privilege maintains white dominance. Fourth, colorblindness keeps minorities in subordinate positions.

Fifth, majority groups tolerate advances for racial justice only when it benefits them. Sixth, voices of color have access to special knowledge. And then seventh, history should be reinterpreted according to minority experience.

These are the seven principles of critical race theory. And perhaps no one working in conservative evangelical institutions today has done more work to integrate this philosophy and ethics into the Christian gospel than Jarvis Williams.

Who is Jarvis Williams? Jarvis Williams is a professor of New Testament interpretation at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, which serves as the flagship seminary for the Southern Baptist Convention.

In 2017, he did an interview featured on the Gospel Coalition. And what he said was that Richard Delgado's Critical Race Theory, an Introduction, was a book he wished every evangelical Christian would read because of how behind evangelicals were on critical race discussions.

Williams credited some of his own understandings of race to critical race theorists and believed the ideology could give insights to Christians on the nature of race and racism. These are this is in his own words.

He said this in an interview with the Gospel Coalition. So he believes critical race theory has useful analytical tools. And he said, well, if you look at a side by side comparison of Dr. Williams teaching with Richard Delgado and Stefanik's version of critical race theory, it indicates that Williams has produced a Christianized version of the ideology.

Now, if you are watching, you can see at the bottom of my screen, I have a number of sources cited here that gives you an idea. And I didn't do this with all the slides. It gives you an idea of how many things I'm pulling from here.

It's all over Williams' work, right? It's systemic, to use one of their terms. He has taught that every ethno-racial group outside of faith in Jesus Christ is a racist group, OK? So racism is normative right there.

That race is a construct that people created for the advancing of a racist agenda. That privilege and whiteness keep minorities without a voice in the Southern Baptist Convention. That colorblind theory of race is a myth.

That certain predominantly white churches want a multi-ethnic church as long as they are not required to share privilege and power with black and brown people. There's the interest convergence. That white people need to learn the narrative of different ethnic and marginalized groups to access certain truth.

And that critical race theory and social identity theory are helpful tools for understanding identity formation in the New Testament. Remember, New Testament is a spiritual book. It is also a historical book.

So this is memory studies. This, in some ways, this is the revisionism that critical race theory calls for when he goes into Old Testament passages and then he finds critical race theory can help him understand them better.

And that is exactly what he says. It helps him understand identity formation in the New Testament. Now, it's one thing to promote critical race theory. It does undermine Christian metaphysics, Christian epistemology, Christian ethics.

But it is a step further when you directly apply it to the gospel itself. And that's what Williams does. His teachings are consistent with critical race theory. And basically, he takes those teachings and he calls that racial reconciliation.

He merges that with this concept of racial reconciliation. You hear that a lot. Usually, it means somehow doing some kind of reparations or platforming people. It's some kind of work, platforming minorities, reallocating power.

He says that this racial reconciliation, which is informed by critical race theory, is a gospel issue. A doctrine, he says, that is as important as penal substitution and is part of the gospel message, which Jesus preached.

He knows that because Jesus healed Gentiles. Apparently, that because that's what, you know, and in a broad sense, here's where things can get sneaky. The gospel can be the life of Jesus. And I mean, we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the gospels, right?

But if you're talking about the more abstract teaching of the gospel, that people can be forgiven in Christ because of what he has done for us, and that, you know, I think of Paul when he said, the gospel is the power of God is salvation for those who believe to the Jew first, then to the Greek, that that can not be merged with works at all.

That would be an anthem. That's the very word that Paul uses in Galatians chapter one to describe that kind of a merger. So that would be another gospel. It would be a false gospel. And in fact, Russell Fuller, one of his for years, his one of the professors who worked there alongside of him called Jarvis Williams message, another gospel.

And I think, I think Russell Fuller is correct on this because you look at what he teaches. He's talking about the abstract gospel. I mean, he says he compares it to fighting for penal substitution. It's in a gospel issue in that way.

It's as important as fighting for penal substitution. So it is part of the gospel. And if there's works connected to this racial reconciliation, we have a problem. It's a return to Rome, but worse in a way, because it's not just a return to Rome.

It's linked with this horrible ideology that is also completely train wrecking our culture right before our eyes. So the reason most Christians do not work towards Williams version of racial reconciliation in his mind was because of an incomplete understanding of both the gospel and race.

So there you have it. He even says that people like myself, we don't have a complete understanding of the gospel. Well, then what's your gospel? If mine's not complete, what is it missing? And you're going to find out it's works of some kind.

Williams even used his seven-year-old son as an example of someone who did not fully understand the gospel because he still believed in the colorblind theory of race, which is, I don't know why you would publicly put that.

It was on Twitter about your seven-year-old son, but he did. This was back, I think, in 2015 that he had written that. Williams taught that the unification of all things in Christ included the blessing of racial reconciliation.

Southern Baptists still needed to work towards this though, removing the stain of racism from their churches, their homes, and from every aspect of SBC life. So think about that for a minute. The gospel includes the unification of all things in Christ, right?

And that's racial reconciliation. This is accomplished by Christ, yet Southern Baptists have to work for it. So something Christ accomplished that you need to work for. Just think about that. For Williams, the gospel included more than the entry language of justification by faith, but also incorporated maintenance language, which told one how to live in the power of the spirit.

So this is dangerous stuff. We don't have to maintain your justification, guys. That is maintained for you by Christ. You don't maintain it by your good works. You don't contribute to it by your good works, which is what maintenance would really end up doing.

It'd give you a source to be able to brag of what you've done. You grow in Christ, but that has no bearing on your justification. It's an evidence. It's fruit, and we'll talk about that in a minute. Williams also concluded that one could believe all of the right things about justification by faith and still disobey the gospel by failing to believe the right things about racial reconciliation.

So Williams taught, for example, that the Apostle Peter's error in obscuring the gospel by compelling Gentiles to live like Jews in Galatians 2 .14 was not because Peter misunderstood justification by faith, but rather because he advocated a Torah-observant, Gentile-exclusive gospel.

So he's saying basically Peter's a racist. That's the reason that Paul had to confront Peter, because he was being a racist. But actually, if you read the text, the Apostle Paul clearly attributes Peter's error to causing confusion over justification by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.

That's what the text says. Williams denies what the text clearly states. Similarly, Williams highlighted how Paul did not mention justification by faith in his discussion of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 8.

Yet Paul clearly conveyed the concept of justification in verse 3 when he wrote, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. And that, I mean, that right there is justification, guys. So unfortunately, Williams denies what these passages are actually saying, and his version of the gospel is merged with a law influenced by critical race theory.

That's the only way I can think of to look at this. Now, there's a big part for works here, a role of works in Williams, his retelling here, and we're going to get to that in a second. But first, I want to go over some historic Christian confessions.

Historic Christian confessions have clarified the role of good works in the lives of believers. And I'll read for you from the Westminster Confession of Faith. It says this, these good works done in obedience to God's commandments are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith.

Okay, they're not maintaining it. They're the evidence of it. Big difference. The Heidelberg Catechism also referred to good works as the fruits of a Christian faith. However, as theologian Sinclair Ferguson observed, good works never in any way become part of our standing as justified before God.

Justification is separate from the process of sanctification, wherein Christians are strengthened to the practice of true holiness, as the Westminster says. It is on this point that the theology of the Reformation deviates from both the Roman Catholic Church and much of the social justice-influenced Christianity of today.

That's the difference, and Williams is on the side of the Catholic Church in this. In both cases, the lines between justification and sanctification are blurred, and keeping the law is commonly associated with helping to ground justification.

Also, like the Pharisees, they both, both the woke Church and the Catholic Church, require adherence to follow an extra-biblical law of their own making. The only way for the Pharisees to maintain their social status was to establish a new metric by which they focused on keeping a set of man-made traditions instead of following God's commands.

In the 2018 book, Removing the Stain of Racism from the Southern Baptist Convention, Jarvis Williams, along with many prominent Southern Baptists, including Al Mohler and Danny Akin, advised readers on keeping the gospel's demand to work against the racism which they maintained characterized the denomination.

Something you work for, guys. And here it is, the social justice works. In Williams' chapter, he gave 15 exhortations for removing the stain of racism from the SBC. His instructions included silently listening to voices of color.

And as I go through this, okay, just think about all the works I'm about to mention to you. These are all part of the gospel in Williams' mind. These are all part of racial reconciliation. They're all part of the gospel, okay?

So you tell me if this sounds like the gospel of the New Testament. Listening to voices of color, supporting multi-ethnic church plants, attributing racism as the cause of certain disparities within the denomination, applying anti-racist principles to a broad spectrum of minority groups, sharing leadership and influence platforms with Black and Brown people, interacting more with Black and Brown believers, recognizing the wisdom of Black and Brown people, organizing conferences predominantly led by Black and Brown individuals, erasing images of white Jesus, white disciples, and all white children learning at the feet of Jesus, incorporating more Black and Brown people into denominational leadership, rejecting colorblindness, promoting diversity in personal lives, befriending Black and Brown people, lacking celebrity status, recognizing as legitimate the mistrust Black and Brown people may have toward evangelicals on race relations, and remembering the Black and Brown Southern Baptists need to become more diverse and inclusive as well.

That's all part of the gospel apparently. Many of Williams' admonitions are generally represented in the multitude of sermons, lectures, and books which promote strategies for accomplishing an ideal multi-ethnic church, which generally attributes white supremacy to be the major obstacle in this achievement.

There was a guy who graduated a few years ago from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary named Rick Hardinson. He wrote a great dissertation on the multi-ethnic church model, and this is what he says.

The Bible contains no particular command, theological reason, or normative pattern that calls churches to strive to become as ethnically diverse as their communities. Now, today that almost sounds racist, right?

But that's the truth. The Bible doesn't command this. It's something that Christ accomplishes. It's the eternal church in heaven, the universal church. It's not your local church needs to do something, and that's part of the gospel, to have some quota or something.

So simply put, Williams' exhortations are extra biblical and inform more by an understanding of critical race theory than an understanding of God's commands. And to me, that's just plain sad. That's what we have as far as a New Testament professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

This is where Al Mohler presides and sanctions this kind of behavior, and he's running for president of that denomination. I know Ed Linton, I think is how you pronounce his name, is very woke. He's running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention as well.

But Al Mohler, to me, also has a problem here, that he gives sanction to someone like Jarvis Williams. We're going to talk more about Al Mohler in the future. I have some thoughts. And Al Mohler may not be as far away from Jarvis Williams' theology as you might think.

In fact, he may be a lot closer than many of you think, and we're going to explore that a little more in another episode. But for now, I just want everyone to understand, especially if you're a Southern Baptist, this has been taught now for a few years in some of these institutions, and pastors who are graduating from Southern Baptist colleges or seminaries may have been influenced by this.

It's a very strong possibility, actually, they have. And you've got to be aware of it. When they're coming into your church, when they're candidating, when you're looking for a new pastor, you've got to be aware of this kind of stuff, that when they use terms like racial reconciliation or even the gospel, they may mean something different than you.

And it takes a lot of digging. It took me some digging to read Jarvis Williams in his own words and understand what he was saying, and then to compare it to critical race theory and to compare it to what the Bible states about these things.

Again, you can go to, in fact, I'll put the link in the info section for those who want to access this particular post. It'll be on Patreon. It'll have all the sources there. If you're in the Southern Baptist Convention and you're concerned, you want to share this with your pastor or someone, don't believe it because I said it.

I say that all the time. Don't believe things because I said them, right? Some people want to make out who are in the Southern Baptist Convention, in the elitist more circles, that if I said it, I'm motivated by some kind of hatred or I'm motivated by some kind of racism inside me or something, to try to discredit this kind of information.

But the reality is the information is out there, whether I, it doesn't matter what I believe, that information is true. And you can go do your own homework and check it out yourself. And I will gladly give it to you.

So go to the links in the info section if you want to find out more about that. I hope this was helpful. And I hope as we've been doing these episodes this week, you're starting to see more and and how to identify in Christian circles.

And the whole goal of this is so we can be Bereans, so we can compare what we hear to the Word of God, and so we can look out for the false teaching that's out there. And if you're an elder in a church, you're required, it's one of the qualifications, you need to be able to refute those who contradict.

Jarvis Williams is one of those people and he needs to be refuted. So with that, God bless, and we'll have another one coming out soon. Bye now.