TheSpace - Episode 5 - Jon Harris - SocJus at Seminary

So you're about to watch a conversation I had with John Harris.

You can find him at the YouTube channel, Conversations That Matter, and he posted a video, this is his most popular video by far, called Social Justice and the Downgrade of SEBTS, which is the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, I probably should've known that before I did this video.

Anyway, it was extremely interesting. He kind of documents sort of how social justice and the woke church sort of infiltrated the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and it's honestly a very, it could probably be applied to seminaries across the country.

What I appreciated about his initial video, which I will link in the comments of this video, what I appreciated about it is his measured tone. He's not trying to lob anathema bombs, he's not trying to put anyone on blast or anything like that, but it is extremely informative.

I recommend you watch that video, and especially if you like the content of the video you're about to watch, go ahead and go over to his channel, give that video a like so it gets more play, and obviously, you know, comment as well if you think it's worth it.

He's got a lot of other very interesting content on his website, and also his YouTube channel, so I recommend that you take a look at it, but anyway, I hope that you enjoy what you're about to watch. God bless.

Introduction to John Harris and the SEBTS Conversation

So, thanks everyone for watching this video. I have John Harris online, and he has put out a video that got a lot of attention about his time at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. John, why don't you tell everyone, you know, sort of where they can find you on social media and things like that.

Yeah, good to be with you, AD. So if you go to worldviewconversation .com, I have all the social media links there, worldviewconversation .com, and you can find YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else I have.

Awesome. Awesome, yeah, and I know I reached out to John after I saw his video. It's almost two hours, I think. It's a pretty long video, and he reached out, you know, he got back to me right away, so obviously, thank you so much for doing this.

My pleasure. Conversation. Anyway, so I've got a few introduction kind of questions. The first question I have for you, John, are you a racist? I am not a racist, no. I mean, I don't like Cleons as a Federation guy, you know, I stick with the Federation, but other than that, no, not a racist.

Do you hate poor people? I do not. I've been one, so I mean, I can't hate myself, I hope, at least. Well, hey, I'm glad to hear it, because, you know, I've heard lots of things about people with your shade of skin, and I heard they were racist, I heard they hated poor people.

I also heard, let me ask you this one, do you oppose justice? No, I love justice. God commands us to do that, right, to love justice, so no, I just don't think social justice, which is the, you know, it's a catch-all word, so it's hard to define these things, but the way it's being used now, I think, is the opposite of what God intended justice to be, the biblical definition.

I gotta tell you, it sounds like I'm listening to myself. No, honestly, I've been told that I adamantly oppose justice, so I wanted to ask you kind of some funny questions here, because at the end of the day, you know, I don't know if you've gotten any of this kind of feedback, but sometimes you'll just get shut down like that, well, obviously John's a white supremacist, or obviously John hates poor people, or things like that.

Have you gotten any negative feedback like that, or? A little bit. I mean, in the past, I've gotten a lot more in various secular classes and things I've been in, but concerning the video that we're talking about right now, mostly positive responses, but there were a few people.

One did, I did see a comment, at least, I haven't seen every comment, but one said that I was being racist because I was insinuating that this school that I went to lowered their standards to let minorities in, so minorities must be stupid, and of course, I never made that point.

I completely disagree with that logic, but yeah, I mean, that's kind of the go-to for most progressives, is let's try to pin him with some kind of label that we can then justify ourselves with. You know, actually, that's a great kind of segue to what I wanted to talk about first, because I've mentioned to, obviously, people who follow me, they know I'm Puerto Rican, and for me, I thought, I mean, at least in my opinion, it feels like it's easier for me to talk about these things, because someone could call me a white supremacist, and they do, don't get me wrong, John, I've been called that numerous times.

I've been told I have white privilege and all these things, but it kind of rolls right off my back, because I'm not white, so it's like, yeah, you're an idiot, but lots of people, this is like the third rail topic.

I mean, there are a lot of white folks that I think are terrified of being labeled a racist or labeled a white supremacist and things like that, even if they know they're not, they just want to avoid that stigma like the plague.

So I'll ask you, John, why did you feel like this was worth talking about? Why did you feel like you needed to speak up knowing, I'm sure you knew, that you would be called these things before you said anything?

Why John Harris Spoke Up About SEBTS

Yeah, the righteous are as bold as a lion, so what people think about you is not as important as what God thinks. So that's right off the bat, I think that's the assumption that I take to this. And I had been toying, I mean, I've graduated from Southeastern, my last class that I took there was last spring, so this has been months in the making of me thinking about my experience and talking to those wiser than me, asking what I should do, and I really honestly put myself in the spot that I was in in 2014 looking for a seminary, and I thought, okay, if there's someone else like me who's looking at seminaries and is considering Southeastern, what are they not going to be told that they probably should know?

And I thought, well, I'm in a unique position to be able to say something about this, at least to inform them. I'm not saying necessarily don't go there, I mean, if your life plan matches what they have to offer, then by all means, but there's some dangers there, and there might be some better options for you somewhere else.

And so I just wanted to alert people to some of those dangers, and if it helps someone, which so far I've gotten feedback from those who have been considering the seminary, and they've actually told me, at least more than one person, they're going to have to reconsider.

So my goal is set, you know, I've accomplished what I set out to do. Absolutely, no, that's awesome. And, you know, speaking of, you know, that, I mean, you mentioned, you know, some of the things that they, you know, people who are considering that specific seminary might encounter, and maybe they should know this before they go, you know, one of the things that you had mentioned was, you know, a lot of different speakers and topics that were being talked about in chapel.

One that was so interesting to me was the one about the Confederate statue controversy, right? And right before we started recording, I told you that I don't care about statues, I live in Vermont, we don't have statues like that here in Vermont.

And so you mentioned that there were some historical concerns and maybe some inaccuracies in what you heard. And you didn't really expand on that in the video online, which by the way, everyone, I will link to that video in the description.

So if you haven't seen it, you can watch it. So I was wondering if you could probably break that down a little bit. What did you hear? Sure. What was wrong with it? Why was it a problem? You know, stuff like that.

Confederate Monuments, Historical Interpretation, and Hermeneutics

Yeah, there are two things I mentioned concerning that, because I think you had just said a chapel, there was a chapel that I was not present for, but it was during this interim where I was away, and I came back to the campus afterward, and wow, the campus has changed.

During that interim, there was a chapel on the Confederate flag. And so I just had pointed out that they had four or five people on stage all agreeing this is bad, we got to get rid of it. It should come down in South Carolina.

So it's 2015. This is when that was a big controversy. And I thought, the context of my video was, there's all these other issues that are actually more important than that, closer to the gospel. And those are big no-nos, we don't talk about those, we don't debate those, we don't bring those up.

But this somehow is an issue that's important enough for us all to unite around and say, this is an essential. So I was just trying to point out, it really wasn't even about the flag, because I could have picked a lot of other issues.

That was just the first one that stuck out to me, because it was the first thing sent to me that made me wonder what was going on. There's a new list of essentials that you have to, a new orthodoxy, so to speak.

So the issue with the monuments, though, that actually came up while I was there. There's a center on the campus called the Center for Kingdom Diversity, and they put out a podcast, actually there's two podcasts, with one of the professors on campus who teaches history in the undergrad.

And essentially, long and short of it is, the Klan was running around, they wanted to intimidate minorities, that's why they put these things up. And then a local paper came and interviewed this particular professor, says, look at this conservative Christian professor who also agrees with us, that we should take these things down.

And that got picked up all over the place. And when I saw that, yeah, yeah, well, we're recruiting people from supposedly across the aisle. And that's, of course, when conservatives ever have any kind of, you know, when they're in bed with liberals, I always raise an eyebrow and wonder what's going on.

This bipartisanship can't be real. But so I read the story and the title was Confederate Monuments Should Go to the Ash Heap of History. And I started reading through this thing. And my main concern, and this is, you know, you said a historical concern.

Yeah, I do have a historical concern. But my main concern is what this does to hermeneutics. There's something driving the interpretation of these things. And it's not looking into the past, finding original sources, creating a paradigm that makes them fit and then giving your narrative, which would be historiography.

It is instead having an outside assumption, present assumption of how we interpret these monuments and then imposing that assumption onto the past. So we're going to get into the minds of the people who erected these things and we're going to pretend we know what they thought because of how we feel today.

And the Bible is completely open for that kind of misuse, a bad interpretation. And if we're going to do it with over here, with monuments, it's not a very big logical leap to say it's actually not a logical leap at all to say, let's do it with the Bible.

Let's just destroy the text that we have and impose modern views on what justice and what righteousness is. So political correctness and we'll just say Paul is a sexist, right? Well, so it's just very easy to do.

He's a homophobic as well. Yeah, he's all. Yeah, he's so. So, yeah, I think in my critique, this is my main critique with the monuments is that and this would be my historical concern. You reduce interpretation to absurdity because if you look at these monuments and you say, OK, 100 years ago when these things were erected, erected by a bunch of racists to intimidate people, but on their interpretive plaques, which are written right there in front of you, they say things like to honor to those who didn't come home, to sacrifice the country.

There's nothing on any of them. I've seen hundreds of these that suggest any kind of intimidation against minorities or any group. And then you have to assume that a bunch of these people secretly thought that we're going to intimidate people, but we're not going to put that on the plaque in a culture that was supposedly so racist there shouldn't have been anything prohibiting them from doing this.

So it's just absurd. You know, and for someone who has a Ph .D. in history, this is just I mean, I've come to the point now with a lot of different fields, not just history, where if someone has a Ph .D. and they write a book and I see the word Ph .D., I just say I'm not going to read this.

They don't know what they're talking about because because honestly, I mean, so many years of school, sometimes it makes you a little foolish, like so many obvious things you just miss because you're in a special narrow field and people give you the title of professor.

And so anyway, yeah, that was my concern, was that we're letting this secular interpretation come into a seminary and it's going to be acid on other things, theology and the Bible. Oh, I hope that explained it.

Yeah. No, no, that does explain it. And I completely agree. I mean, one of the things you also mentioned in your video, and I won't ask you a question about this, I don't think, but you mentioned this idea of these secular, anti-biblical categories being embraced by theologians and things like that.

And if you embrace these kinds of categories, it might not like you might not take it as far as some other secularists go, but it is battery acid to biblical interpretation in general. And so just because you don't go as far as some people would, why would someone that you're teaching not?

There's no logical reason for them not to. And that's every first generation of any heresy. That's every time this happens. They say that the modernist controversy, which the SBC became kind of liberal in and then they had a conservative resurgence.

The first generation would say, we're not trying to tamper with any of these doctrines. We just think science has something to say over here. And German higher criticism has something to say. But I'm a committed Christian.

I believe in Jesus. That's always the first generation. And then the second generation is what takes it to these heretical points. And then by the time the third generation comes along, no one wants to be a Christian.

Why would you want to join a religion that's not true? Doesn't you're a bunch of racist and sexist and bigots if you adopt this. And who wants to stand in that legacy? So that's my concern, too, is that, you know, this is we're looking at the beginning of this, but I'm looking 50 years in the future.

What's going to what's the Southern Baptist Convention going to look like? Because their children are going to want to join this racist, sexist, homophobic institution. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, exactly right.

You know, you mentioned in your initial video and you just said it just now about this this kind of new orthodoxy. And there are some things that are that are non-essentials that are becoming essentials that seem a lot less important than some other things.

Like in your video, you mentioned creationism, you mentioned Calvinism and Arminianism. And I know that you said, you know, you've got Arminian brothers. You're not saying they're out of the faith, but these are these are closer to the gospel and more important, you would think, than a statue.

And yeah. And and so what do you attribute the fact that these kinds of things important to the gospel creationism, you know, Calvinism, that kind of these are these are really more important things that a seminary should be more involved with?

Yeah. You attribute the fact that those are kind of downplayed, whereas this kind of I mean, honestly, it's nonsense in many ways is is is played up. Yeah. So social justice is the buzzword, right? That's what this is driving this whole movement.

We're for justice. So how fundamental is justice to the gospel, to Christianity in general? It's very fundamental. So so now that we've hijacked this word and we've infused in it all these categories from critical race theory, sociology, socialism to some extent, and we're going to use social justice to now, you know, get rid of every inequity that we have.

We can call it a gospel issue. So so here's here's the main argument or the point I'm trying to make. The gospel is essential. And they would say, oh, of course, the gospel is essential. What are gospel issues?

Eschatology, that's not a gospel issue ever. We can disagree on eschatology. Not important for the gospel. Calvinism or Arminianism. Well, we both have the gospel creation evolution. We can both have the gospel justice.

No, we we have to have that's essential. We have to understand justice. And if we can smuggle in all these secular categories into that word, then now we've hijacked the word and it becomes part of the gospel.

That's why this is really important and dangerous. So we look at this and we say, OK, monuments, which is what we were just talking about, or, you know, let's pick the football thing, because that was an issue in southeastern the kneelers at football games.

We could say that, OK, Christians can disagree about this. Right. I mean, I don't I don't think they should be kneeling. I don't think that's the place where. But, OK, I have a brother over here that thinks that's perfectly fine.

That's their free speech. All right. Let's disagree. But that's we're not going to talk about this in chapel. That's not a big deal. Well, in their mind, that is a big deal because that's justice. So they put this stamp on it that says gospel issue.

And that's actually the real issue is what is a gospel issue? What's not a gospel issue? We would say, no, you know, a football game is not a gospel issue. Calvinism, yes, gospel issue. So so there's a categorical disagreement that we have Orthodox Christians, I would say over here.

And then those who are starting to go away from orthodoxy. Yeah, that's great. In your more recent video, you did a series of reasons why the social justice narrative is kind of antithetical to the actual real gospel of Jesus Christ.

One of the things that you mentioned was this sort of hamster wheel of works and indulgences and things like that. And, you know, I'm sure you know that that's a very serious charge because that's a it's a different gospel.

Why do you say that that the social justice is sort of this hamster wheel? And let me ask and I'll ask you another question. Are you saying that people that are proponents of social justice are not Christians?

Social Justice, Gospel Categories, and the Hamster Wheel of Works

Yeah, so I'll answer the second one first. I don't think that those two are proponents are necessarily not Christians. And I give an example a minute ago, like in the modernist controversy. I think a lot of those who are on the liberal side of that controversy 100 years ago, they were within orthodoxy in the sense that they in their personal life, they made a decision, whatever you may call it, to follow Jesus.

They repented. They put their trust in him. They knew him. The Holy Spirit was there. We see, you know, I made this example in my original video. Peter, right, is adopting the Judaizer heresy on some level, but it's not a level in which it is affecting his eternal destiny.

He is still a Christian. He's been deceived. And so ignorance is correctable. There are people who are very smart, like Peter, an apostle that can be ignorant. So that includes people who are Ph .D. professors at a seminary that can be ignorant.

It is very possible. And they don't realize the implications of what they're adopting or they've just compartmentalized it away so that, you know, over here is my faith. Over here is my academics. And I can be completely orthodox over here with my faith and not realize that this is going to influence this.

So that's their second question. So, no, I'm not charging heresy. What I'm saying is that, though, if these ideas are taken to their logical conclusions, then we're going to end up in heresy land before long.

And I don't know how long, but if you have, you know, you said hamster wheel. I think that's probably one of the main critiques I made is that and there was 11 of them that I made. But the hamster wheel is this idea that we have to keep giving grace, that it's just it's not dispensed in justification once for all.

Jesus paid for it. I'm forgiven. Praise God. I'm going to live for him. It's every five years I got to put out another statement saying I'm not racist. I have to constantly be like in Hebrews, the priests that are exhausted from giving sacrifices.

I constantly virtue signal how good I am so that the world can approve of me. And that's just not the grace that we see in scripture. So so I think it is a hamster wheel. You'll never quite be there. You'll never be justified from the stain of white guilt because which is a parallel to original sin.

Right. Because that's your sin. That's your color. That's who you are. It's so intrinsic to who you are. And so so, yeah, I mean, I can expand on that if you want, but I think that's that's what I meant.

No, I appreciate that perspective very much. And honestly, I I struggle with this myself. And, you know, I've I've been criticized by some people that say I don't take a hard enough line. So, you know, I'm willing to sort of say, hey, you know, these these guys are brothers.

I think that what they're teaching is dangerous. And, you know, I agree with what you said, John, that taken to its logical end, it's it's going to be outright heresy. There's no question about that. Right.

But I've hesitated to sort of, you know, mark them and avoid them. You know what I mean? Because it's a sloppy group. It's like there's some that are. Yeah, they're the diehards. OK. Yes. Those guys might be heretics.

And then there's a lot. And most of them are in this middle kind of where they're they see a point to social justice, but it's maybe not their main thing. And they'll mention it sometimes. And, you know, those could be I mean, I'm not sure if John Piper fits this, but the John Pipers, the Mark Devers.

Yeah. David Platt's. These are guys who like, OK, yeah, they're Christians, right? Every everything is crossed there, you know, the checklist. But then they'll kind of wink at these social justice guys.

And that's what is concerning because it gives them legitimacy. Yeah, I agree. I completely agree. And so I'm kind of stuck in this place where I'm like, I want to be faithful to the scripture where it says, you know, warn them once, warn them twice, have nothing more to do with them.

I want to be faithful to that. But I don't want to jump the gun either, you know. And so I do. I definitely appreciate that perspective. And the other thing I appreciate about you is that, you know, you're very serious in your first video.

Well, it wasn't your first video, but the first one I saw might as well be my first one. It's the one everyone watched. I knew me before. My mind that was like that was about the MLK 50 conference. I had done a number of them, like 20, 30 videos before that.

Nobody watched them. And then I did one about Nat Chandler's MLK 50 speech. And it just kind of like 5000 views, something like that. Anyway, so no, but the point is, one of the things I appreciated about your perspective was that you were fair.

You weren't trying to call people out, but you were being forceful. You weren't like shying away from that. And so what I want to ask you next is about, you know, and look, there's no right or wrong answer here.

It's strategy. Like, what should somebody do, right? So you're in seminary, you're getting a lot of good instruction. And then you're getting some instruction that you're just like, you know what, that's not really biblical.

You know, how should a student handle these things when they have teachers that are teaching doctrines that they know are not correct about social justice? So call your teacher a heretic in the middle of class.

No, that's probably not going to get you that far. Don't do that. Don't do that. No, I actually had a few students, even from Southeastern, reach out to me, and we've kind of tossed around strategies.

How Seminary Students Should Respond to Unbiblical Teaching

So if you know, this is the first thing I'll say. If you know anyone on campus who can be a support structure for you, including a professor, there's kind of a list, a running list of professors that do not toe the line.

Of course, I'll never make this public, and the other students who know about it won't. But there's little hints that you'll hear in class. Try to cozy up to one of those professors in the sense that you get some encouragement, because it can be so exhausting.

You get so discouraged, and you don't want to be discouraged when you're in a theological education setting. You want to be motivated to go out there, preach the gospel. That's why you're there. You're here to learn.

So try to get some encouragement if you can. And the other thing is, of course, that's if you're already there. If you haven't gone to a seminary yet, choose wisely, right? So that seminary's reputation will be your reputation.

And the kinds of churches that like that seminary are going to be the kinds of churches that you're going to have an opportunity to go minister to. So if you don't want to minister to, let's say, Southern Baptist churches, don't go to Southern Baptist institutions.

So, you know, that's just pragmatic, I guess. But there's that. The other thing is, there's two kind of different ways to approach this, I think, if you're in the middle of it, which is where I was when I finally woke up to all of this.

I could have either played the, I'm going to, I kind of actually straddled the line here. I could have been super quiet about everything, not raised a fuss, just gotten out of there. And then wherever I ended up ministering or teaching or whatever I ended up doing, just keeping it quiet.

You know, in my classroom, in my church, maybe saying things to the people that are there before me, but not going public with it. The other, obviously, side of the coin, the other thing someone can do is they can, you know, shout fire.

And which would be the most extreme example, what I joked about, which I don't recommend doing, calling your professor a heretic, don't do that. But or you can just try to be a resistance effort on campus, try to wake other students up to the fact that, hey, this isn't cool.

This is going to be acid on the Bible that we love. So you have to be wise as serpent, innocent as dove in this and the way I did it. And I, you know, I'm not perfect at all, but I tried my best to be respectful as possible, especially to professors.

So those in authority, be absolutely respectful to them. Ask good questions, learn how to ask questions instead of making statements, because that's how people are going to sort of solve their way out of this problem.

I think is if they start applying critical thinking skills, obviously pray the power of the Holy Spirit needs to be part of this, but try to be a light to those you can't influence. You can't influence everyone, but those in your inner circle, maybe a professor who really likes you will listen to you talk to them.

But otherwise, I think it's probably wise to just, you know, don't don't make a scene. Don't try to in the middle of class, say something like, you know, jerky to your professor or to another student.

You know, just just be a kind Christian person and realize you have your own areas of ignorance. And, you know, you may have issues that are the Lord is going to reveal to you in time. And they're just as serious.

So be humble. And then, you know, what I did, obviously, is after I was done and, you know, I waited a few months and I made my video. But I was very careful not to name names as much as possible. And it was for the purpose of warning others.

So you got to have your purpose, I think, set, which which is I'm not here to promote myself that I'm the crusader here. I'm here to help others. And, you know, whatever capacity I can help others, I'll do that.

But if there's no clear road to doing that, then I'm gonna keep my mouth shut. And so that's all I got. I mean, it's a hard thing to try to balance. Yeah, it is hard. And I know you mentioned kindness.

You mentioned humility and things like that. And honestly, there's nothing about kindness or humility that that means you can't boldly tell the truth in a very serious, straightforward kind of way. You can do that.

You just have to pick your spots and show respect. And like you said, you know, professors in a position of authority, you've got a you've got commandments to keep here, right? I mean, you, you have to honor God by keeping his moral law.

And so that's one thing is to respect those, those people. Do you have any, any recommendations in terms of, you know, things that they should topics they should study or maybe classes that they could take or anything like that, that would be helpful to study hermeneutics, make that your first semester first class, I don't care if it's not required, like, it's not required now at Southeastern, unless you're doing an advanced MDiv, take it anyway, use your electives, take that class, you're going to learn the principles of interpretation, and that's going to apply to every single other class that you take, from that point forward, obviously, take the languages, try to know the languages, know hermeneutics.

Past that, I think it's really, you know, every, every other class, I feel like is just honing those skills that you've learned in those classes. So you're applying this knowledge of hermeneutics and languages to biblical texts, you're disseminating it to congregations through preaching.

So I mean, that's the application. But before you start doing application classes, like evangelism, get your core beliefs straight. Theology would obviously be part of that as well. So yeah, I would say hermeneutics, theology, languages, focus on those things when you first go to seminary.

Seminary Priorities: Hermeneutics, Theology, and Languages

That's very, very good advice. I do appreciate that. Hey, listen, I thank you again so much for talking to me. Before we go, I just want to make sure that this is abundantly clear. You're not, you're not for taking down every confederate statue and you're saying you're not a racist?

I'm not a racist. No, I yeah, I have, you know, I'm not gonna do the typical, like, here's the picture of me with all my black friends. Yeah, right. They're like, why look at the picture. I can't be racist.

Look at this. Um, that never works. No, it works for me. All I got to say is look at the skin, I'm not racist. Well, you know, I could start naming family members that I have that are of different ethnicities.

But you know what? I've been hesitant to do the ancestry .com thing where you send in your DNA test because I know they're going to send me back a cracker, just a saltine cracker. There won't even be a test, like result.

It'll just be, here's your cracker. Yeah. And so I'm going to, it won't help me. Yeah, I'll put some peanut butter on. It'll taste good. Amen. Listen, I really do appreciate this. If you have anything that you want to leave my audience with, I'll let you do that.

But otherwise we can just end that right here. Yeah. I mean, um, I think your audience probably, you know, they know the gospel. I'm sure you're, you're preaching that as much as you can. So Adam, I'm thankful for you and thankful that you gave me a hearing and God bless you.

And I'll pray for you as you come to mind. Absolutely. Hey, thank you so much, John. I appreciate it. Well, there it is. I hope you did enjoy that video. Um, if you are interested, if, you know, hearing a little bit about it, that was only half an hour or so, but he has a long form, like 90 minute, two hour video about kind of what was going on at Southeastern when he was a student there.

It's super interesting. He has a few other videos about social justice as well. So if you find it interesting, definitely go give him a like, go ahead and watch that video. I think he has a podcast as well, but I do recommend it.

Extremely eyeopening. And especially if you have someone that is going to be going to seminary soon, or maybe you yourself are going to seminary anyway, I hope you enjoyed the video. I hope it was helpful.

God bless.