T4G Panel on Critical Race Theory: Part 1

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T4G Panel on Critical Race Theory: Part 2

00:12

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. As promised, we're gonna talk about the T4G panel discussion on critical race theory.

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I haven't listened to it and I know that helps some of you. If I go through it with you for the first time, I'm gonna pick out questions and observations and things to bring up that I would maybe bring up in the moment.

00:31

And many of you are in situations like that at church or at conferences where our seminary classrooms, you're gonna have to bring it up right there.

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You know, how does John think about this stuff? I don't have a million years to pour over these things and categorize everything.

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I need to, in the moment, kind of look for certain things. And I'll tell you what those things are as we go through this.

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So I'm hoping it's gonna be a good panel, but I have my suspicions that it might not hit all the right notes. And one of the reasons for that is because I know it's gonna have to come from Kevin DeYoung.

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It's not gonna come from Mark Dever. It's not gonna come, who's the other guy on this panel? The other guy on this panel is, oh, it doesn't say.

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I guess I'll find out in a minute. There's three people on this panel. So it's gonna, my suspicion, though, is if there's gonna be pushback against CRT, it's gonna have to be from Kevin DeYoung.

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Now, the thing is, Kevin DeYoung has been negligible, irrelevant, in my opinion, mostly, to this whole issue.

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He wrote one good article on reparations, from what I understand, but everything else has just been either too general or too vague.

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He doesn't name names. He doesn't give specifics. He's not an ally for critical race theory, nor is he an ally for the anti -critical race theory folks, and it's just confusing for people.

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Let me show you what I mean by that. Here's, and this isn't exhaustive, but let me just show you some of the articles by Kevin DeYoung and videos and stuff.

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Is social justice a gospel issue? Whole article, it's short. He says, if pastors in our day let cultural concerns crowd out the preaching of the new birth, repentance, and justification by faith, it wouldn't be the first time in the church's history that the gospel became more social than gospel.

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Okay, great quote. Guess what? Pretty much all the woke people in evangelicalism can agree with this. Guess what?

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All the orthodox people in evangelicalism can pretty much agree with this, because the woke people don't think that they're compromising the gospel.

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They actually look at conservatives and say, they're Christian nationalists letting cultural concerns crowd out the preaching of what

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Kevin DeYoung talks about here. They're the ones doing that, and the people more on the conservative side of the political spectrum are gonna think, no, it's those woke people.

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So it's an article that doesn't move the needle that both sides will just use to say, well, that's what the other side's doing.

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If he was specific and said, this is what Russell Moore is doing or something, it might move the needle. But again, there's nothing specific here.

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10 Reasons Racism is a Sin, Kevin DeYoung, 2019. Again, you could be a segregationist and you could agree with all of these.

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You could say, well, yeah, the body of Christ universally speaking isn't, is every tribe, tongue, and nation, but in our local community, we need to have it split.

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We need to have it segregated. You could also have really woke people that say, yeah, that's a great article.

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I agree with all of it, but yet they're the most ethnically partial people out there. So this, it doesn't help move the needle.

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And that's the thing I've seen with Kevin DeYoung. Here's a sermon he did called Let Justice Roll Down. Not like David Platt's sermon, it's on Exodus 22.

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It's about not having partiality. It's actually, you know, from the little I listened to it, a decent sermon, but again, it's just not, he doesn't go after, he's not going after the people that are in violation of partiality and all that kind of thing.

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So you have that kind of stuff. You have this, Across the Race Divide, 2016, by Kevin DeYoung.

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It's a whole article where he talks about how he's read a chapter in a book called

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Don't Shoot One Man, A Street Fellowship and the End of Violence in Inner City America. And he understands now more the relationship of the police with the black community and why this is a problem.

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And it's, you know, if you're social justice minded, you might think that, ah, David, you know,

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Kevin DeYoung's on my side. You know, he seems to understand more. But at the same time, you could read this, and he has a section on police, about listening to police.

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And you could think, well, no, he's more on my side. And he did this article, though, and this is where things,

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I think, started to change a little bit. People on the more woke side were like, wait a minute. I don't know if he's with us, because he critiqued a book by Duke Kwan, who's really woke, called

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Reparations, a Critical Theolog, Reparations, a Christian Call for Repentance and Repair. So he did this whole critical approach to it and basically argues against reparations.

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And look, it's a longer article. And this, I think this is actually more, this is who David Platt really is.

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I think this is probably more who he is. And then, of course, some woke people, some of the hardcore woke people started raking him over coals for this.

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But in general, the more soft woke crowd and the theologically more conservative crowd, they're still, they don't have much of a problem with him.

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He just hasn't been around for this. This is really the one thing he did that maybe moved the needle a little bit.

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And I know people like I would love to see more of it. In general, my opinion of him politically is he's more of a neocon from what

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I've read. In fact, there's this whole article he writes called With Liberty and Justice for All. And he does, he strikes a lot of the same notes.

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He plays the same tune that the Republican Party elites are playing today with connecting the slavery issue and slavery debates over slavery with racism and making it like the

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Republican Party was the better option. They're the good guys in this. And almost like they're the ones that weren't racist.

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When in reality, that's just not the truth. Republican Party was probably three quarters or two thirds of the

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Republican Party at least where they weren't the abolitionists. They were against the black people coming into the

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Western territories, partially because they didn't like them. They didn't want them competing with white labor and they didn't want them there.

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And they were a Republican Party was a white man's party. And there are many quotes I could give you along those lines from the early days, but that's not the mythology the

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Republican Party wants to propagate today. And so he quotes the cornerstone speech by Alexander Stevens, which it just shows that he hasn't read what

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Alexander Stevens wrote later, which basically as Alexander Stevens says, yeah, the reporter who copied this down got it wrong.

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And there's different versions of that speech, which are different. And he just kind of tries to make like, here's the bad guys, here's the good guys.

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And the good guys are more the Republican Party. And it's just not that simple. And I've said this before and I'm not gonna reinvent it all, but he says the genius of Lincoln and MLK is that they appeal to the best of America instead of the worst.

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Well, I mean, Lincoln wanted to send all the slaves back to Africa.

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And he even was trying to construct a plan how to do that. Lincoln did not believe in equality, the racial equality by any stretch of the imagination.

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He was very against it and made that clear on numerous occasions. Lincoln didn't even wanna interfere with slavery in the first inaugural.

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He said they'll invade if the forts are made to surrender, and then if the revenue isn't collected.

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So it was more about finances than anything else that the North invaded the South. Lincoln talks about, you read the first inaugural on this stuff.

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But there's a certain, I would say, mythology today, oversimplification that has been perpetuated by a lot of big

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Republican Party folks. And I think Kevin DeYoung buys into some of this from what I can tell to some extent.

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I mean, he even had Alan Gulzo talk about his book on Robert E. Lee, which, I mean, gets off on the wrong foot, assumes all the wrong things.

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It's complete nationalist interpretation. And that's where Kevin DeYoung is at,

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I think. He's more on that side of things. So I wouldn't be on that side of things. But certainly, if he's even establishment

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Republican in any way, he's gonna have some issues with critical race theory, at least the radical elements of it.

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And so he's gotta be uncomfortable with some of the TGC stuff, to some extent. You would think he's gotta be.

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He says this in an article. This is an article from, when is this written? 2021,

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October, this wasn't that long ago. He says this, the fundamental problem with CRT is not its assumption that worldly systems often favor the powerful.

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Listen to this, the fundamental problem is limiting power to the one axis of race, class, and sex when power does not always work according to an intersectional spreadsheet.

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Power can be conferred by education, by money, by skin color, by victim status, by intellect, by beauty, by fame, by having the right opinions, by signaling the right virtue, and by a thousand other things.

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Sometimes people use their power for good, often they do not. So is that really the fundamental problem though with CRT?

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I mean, I just, I'm thinking like, wow, there's way, way more fundamental issues with CRT. The postmodernism that undermines biblical revelation, the way that in Christian circles, it's fused with the gospel to create a works righteousness thing going on, because the whole thing is a false religion based on works righteousness and man's achievements.

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I think, what else? I mean, it's the whole ideology thing and how, I mean, that's kind of what he's critiquing here is the fundamental thing is this ideology that limits the ways in which people are categorized.

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But I would even say that when it comes to ideology, the problem with the ideology that critical race theory advocates, and also, by the way, it's ethics.

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That's the other issue with this. But specifically, it's ideology is that it completely flatlines people into categories of oppressor or oppressed.

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And Marxism has run along different veins. Today, it's this intersectional framework and it's skin color.

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Well, it's race, it's education, poverty. I mean, race, class, sex are the three big ones.

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But he's saying that there's so many others and he's right about it. But the fundamental issue isn't that there's so many others.

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The fundamental issue with ideology is that it flattens people.

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It devalues them by making them this one thing. It doesn't take into account all of whom

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God made people to be. And it really denies the humanity of people. They're the image of God in them.

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It challenges those things at the end of the day by making some people the recipients of basically an original sin because of their social group that they're from.

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And then other people don't have that mar, that stain of original sin upon them. That's what it ultimately does.

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And so the problem is it really comes into conflict with the doctrine of original sin and where to locate the problems.

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Jesus said it's inside the man. Not outside. So that's the root issue. But this just seems weak to me.

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And it's a fair critique. I'm not saying it's not. There's good things here. But that's been kind of my experience with Kevin DeYoung.

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It's like, come on, man, take the full punch. And it's like you get a slap that's not even as committed as Will Smith's slap.

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And then you have, here's some clips from Kevin DeYoung. You have like, he's on this panel for the Gospel Coalition in 2019.

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Jesus and justice. We must love our neighbors in word and deed. Here's, and the people around him are putting out all sorts of really woke opinions.

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And here's what Kevin DeYoung, well, I'll give you actually, here's what he says at that event.

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And then what he also says in a sermon from 2020, Haters Gonna Hate is the name of the sermon by Kevin DeYoung.

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And here's what he says in those two particular, those particular, that panel and that sermon.

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Most of us here who are a part of the majority racially, ethnically in this country have a lot to learn from those brothers and sisters who have been in the minority.

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Because minority brothers and sisters have always had to navigate two worlds in this country.

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They've had to feel as if I'm not quite sure I entirely fit in in majority space.

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Especially the black church in this country has had to endure suffering for its whole existence.

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And the rest of the church is catching up to understand what it looks like to live, if not as an ethnic minority for many of us, then as a cognitive minority.

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I'm a conservative guy on most things. And yet I guess he's some of my conservative folks who they wanna, you know, they're gonna do something for sanctity of human life

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Sunday. And they're gonna pray about abortion and they're gonna advertise the right to life. And then if you talk about something else though, that's political.

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Well, okay, we need to be honest about what we're doing there. At the same time, and I think we would agree on this.

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Sometimes we think we're talking about this issue from the Bible and we're talking about these biblical principles and we're actually talking about some stuff down here, which is really important down here, but we're not talking about the same thing.

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So criminal justice reform. Hopefully everybody who's a Christian and has the spirit wants a criminal justice system to treat people fairly and equitably.

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And then we say, well, is that happening? And I think you'd have a whole lot of people say, oh, you gotta ask the question.

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Of course that's not happening. And I think you'd have other people say, well, I'm sure it's not perfect, but I think for the most part in a fallen world, it works okay.

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So then we may not be disagreeing about justice. We may not be disagreeing about the

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Bible getting us involved. What we need to talk about then is helping each other see what maybe we're not seeing.

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And then we're having a discussion about, okay, what's going on? And then you're moving down from the

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Bible, which doesn't mean it's unimportant, it's important, but it means then you're looking at, I'm sorry, then you're looking at studies and then you're figuring out, well, is this the war on drugs from the 80s that is locking up people for lesser crimes?

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And is it doing it, locking up minorities at a higher rate than it is for whites?

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And then you gotta look at a lot of criminal justice studies and sociological studies, and then you start talking about, well, what's the answer to that?

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And then you have even more deviation in what the proper answer might be to it. Now, none of that means unimportant, don't talk about it, who cares?

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Christians shouldn't be involved. Read something about John Calvin and put it to bed.

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No, but it does mean that we need to have some sense of caution as Christians and as the church that before we start doing this, we're understanding we may agree on the most important, the things that the

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Bible is saying, and we haven't begun to look at the issue here in the same way.

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I don't think that's unchristian that you have borders and you have immigration policies.

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Also clear in the Bible is the sort of rhetoric that treats all immigrants as would -be drug czars and rapists waiting to happen is wrong and horribly unfair and does nothing to open up doors to love and to share the gospel with people.

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So I don't have a lot of confidence that either party on either side has a genuine interest in solving this as much as they do as scoring points with whatever their base might be.

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I hope that somebody does, probably good people that really do. So people could hear that and think like,

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Kevin DeYoung's on my side, if I'm on the left, if I'm on the right, you get Kevin DeYoung's on my side. It's just not, he doesn't take big whacks at critical race theory.

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Like in the abstract, he kind of does, but like when it comes to, like especially that panel for TGC, he could have really taken that opportunity to be like, what have we been doing?

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But he doesn't. He lets the guys on that panel who are awoke more so at least kind of say what they have to say without any disagreement, any pushback whatsoever, just nothing but appreciation for them.

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And then he makes some good points, but he's, you know, and maybe in his mind, he's keeping them from going further.

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He's kind of the anchor for like TGC. It would be much worse without him. He could, maybe that's true, I don't know, but he doesn't take the opportunity to really knock it out of the park.

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And this is his last opportunity in my mind, this T4G panel, because T4G is ending. And honestly, the dust is just settling.

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It's just about settled. And Kevin DeYoung has sat out, in my mind, most of the battle as far as really taking a big whack at the issue that we all know, the elephant in the room.

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So let's see if he does. And I'm hoping he does, but let's see if he does, because I don't think it's gonna come probably from the other participants.

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So here is the video panel, why we should be critical of critical race theory, and let's listen to it.

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I'll stop it along the way. Friends, we wanna talk in this panel, particularly about issues raised by critical race theory, and that had been just so hot in parts of the evangelical world and beyond.

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And Bobby, a lot of us have been thinking about 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. There've been messages that have mentioned it.

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Alistair preached the first half of your message you said last night. And so then you picked up the second half today.

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If we go on over into 2 Corinthians chapter 10, you know,

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Alistair talked about last night not picking up the fluff of this world in the way we communicate and being addicted to the forms.

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Bobby, you were talking about this morning, or just now, about keeping the gospel message central.

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When you keep the gospel message central, does that mean that you don't think about anything else?

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And I'm thinking particularly about the verse we were just talking about in 2 Corinthians 10, verse five, we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey

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Christ. How do you keep gospel centrality, and at the same time, think about something like critical race theory?

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Thoughts for the pastors? Yeah, I would say that as a pastor, that we don't have to be an expert in everything.

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You don't have to be an expert in sociology. You don't have to be an expert in history. You don't have to be an expert in various race theories.

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This is a legal theory. You don't have to be an expert in any of that. You do have to be an expert in your Bible. And when we're an expert in our

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Bible, this becomes how we filter everything. We have to filter everything through the

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Bible. Whatever ideology, left or right, we have to filter it through the word of God.

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And we also recognize that our sovereign God is, he gave us truth with a capital

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T, and he gave us truth with a lowercase t. So two and two is four because God, when he made everything, he measured everything.

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Everything has a relationship spatially that can be defined mathematically because God did that.

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And if we recognize that rightly, then we're saying truth with a small t. So we have to look at every theory, this included, through the lens of the

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Bible. Kevin, thoughts on that? How many thoughts do you want? Brother, we got like 20 or 30 minutes, just go for it.

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Three thoughts relative to critical race theory. Number one, it is possible, and not just possible, but it has happened that critical race theory becomes a quick accusation to silence discussion.

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Somebody quotes from Frederick Douglass, somebody is preaching from Amos, someone brings up oppression, words like that, critical race theory,

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CRT, end of discussion, are you a liberal, you're a Marxist? That happens, it can shut down conversations, it's not helpful, and that's number one.

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Pause, on your number one, couldn't any of those three examples you gave be part of somebody who is using an anti -Christian ideology?

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Can I go on to my other two points? Yes. And I'll try to hit that? All right. Yes. Just trying to make sure I'm focused. And then you can say whatever you want.

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Second, critical race theory is a thing. I mean, it is a thing, it's not just a label, it's not somebody affixed it to it, people didn't like something and will give it, it is a thing, it has a history, it comes out of legal theory, it's become something more than that.

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I don't purport to be an expert, it's not my dissertation on critical race theory, but it is a thing, there are whole books, there are readers on critical race theory, proponents saying, here's what critical race theory is.

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And to the degree that critical race theory can help people see...

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I just have to stop right here. I have a lot of thoughts, but there's one that I think

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I need to say. The fact that his second point is that critical race theory is a thing shows me the cultural moment that we're in, where we live in Realville is not the same as what's happening at T4G.

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If you feel the need to have to explain to people that this is a real thing, that's been an objection that I've run into from people who really, frankly, are more pro -CRT, but deny it.

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They tend to deny, what they'll say is, like, you could bring up, here's the seven elements of CRT and you're all present here at your institution and whatever, and then they'll be like, well, that's not critical race theory.

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And it's like, you wonder, well, is anything ever critical race theory? So that's,

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I'm torn. I'm glad he's saying this to some extent, but it shows, like, we're past that, man.

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Like, critical race theory is, there's a pop version of it, obviously, but that happens inevitably anytime there's an academic discipline that ends up becoming popular.

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There's gonna be pop versions of it to explain it to the masses. And we're so far past this in the real world, like, the secular world knows about critical race theory, but we're still having conversations on whether it's a thing or not and trying to show people that it's a thing.

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That's, it just, it's symptomatic. It just shows that there's, like, what are we, for organizations supposedly on the cutting edge, like, what are we, trailing five, 10 years?

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Like, we're really behind the curve ball. The experience of minorities in this country has often been worse than the majority thinks, harder.

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Racism has been more pervasive, that we didn't do away with racism in 1964 or 1968, that it continues to exist and exists more pervasively than whites may think.

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All of those are necessary things to be said. I wanna say that without clearing my throat.

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Third comment. I'll just say this too. That's, that observation, now this is more of what he's looking at on the ground and what

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I'm looking at on the ground, but I would say almost the flip side of that, that it's, you know, it's not as, it's so much worse than whites think.

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The way that it's been portrayed in popular culture, with billions of dollars, by the way, flowing to it, at your streaming service, companies that you frequented, every institution actually, just about, it seems, that has any authority, that has had to make a statement on systemic racism and apologies for it.

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And the intention has been to paint it as it's everywhere.

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It's present with us today. It's characterizing all the American institutions. It must be eradicated, even though you can't even find it in some institutions, as far as people actively hating, or even disparity sometimes, or generating disparities.

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Even there, you have to somehow do something to ameliorate racism.

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I mean, it's gotten so ridiculous that it's like companies that make tractor parts or stuff. Like, it's just, it's insane.

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Everyone has to take some ownership in perpetuating racism.

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And that is an indication that actually it's the opposite in some ways of what Kevin DeYoung is saying. It's not that it's been under -emphasized.

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It's that it's being over -emphasized. It's being over -emphasized. It's being, the decisions on what to focus on historically are bending toward now cherry -picking situations, making them even worse sometimes than they are of racial injustice, and making that, or injustice motivated by some kind of ethnic partiality, and making that the fundamental definitional thing that applies to America, or whole industries, or regions, or symbols.

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So I think Kevin DeYoung is just wrong on this. And it's like, as far as the emphasis of this, and you don't have to know a lot about history or sociology to know this.

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You just have to like look around you and see like, okay, everywhere is telling me systemic racism is affecting us today, and it's such a horrible problem.

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And there's cancel culture witch hunts for anyone who might be possibly a racist, and stretching things to make them a racist.

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Of course, it's being over -emphasized. If there's any emphasis in a direction, it's not that it's been under -emphasized, and it's just so much worse than white people think.

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It's not as bad as all of us are being led to think. And so anyway.

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However, I don't think that is the essence of critical race theory.

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I think those insights can be found, and need to be heard, and can be found and heard elsewhere.

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I think critical race theory from its own purveyors says much more than that.

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It has, by its own definition, a revisionist view of American history. It has a view of intersectionality that all of these things should converge.

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It has a view of interest convergence, which says that whites have only supported means to ameliorate racism in this country when it serves to work towards their own benefits.

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I think there is in critical race theory, by their own definition, a presumption that disparities, by definition, are the result of racism.

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That's not to say racism hasn't contributed, but presumptively to say disparities equal discrimination is,

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I think, wrong and not helpful. And I think most of all, most damagingly of all, I think it pushes us in a direction that is not gospel, meaning it pushes us rather than to see all of the things that we most have in common with one another.

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And I'm not advocating a sort of ignorant color blindness. I don't see color.

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I don't even know that anybody's black or Asian. Of course, that's silly, and to the degree that people say that, that's really unhelpful.

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Yet critical race theory pushes an aggressive color consciousness so that the neutrality before the law is seen as suspect.

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I think that is anti to the sort of impetus we should have as gospel ministers to say, we have the same sinful nature from Adam.

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He was our father. We're the same need of the same savior. That doesn't mean that we don't have other earthly identities, but the way to transcend and to acknowledge centuries of hurt and pain is found in those things that we have most in common, not in identities that most divide us.

29:30

That was actually pretty good. And I think, so if this is the thing that I'm hoping they do it,

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I'm hoping he gets to it. But again, I mean, the guy leading the panel has recommended

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Divided by Faith, hosted the MLK50 panel, at T4G is against the single issue voting of white evangelicals who care about abortion too much because they ignore racial issues.

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So it's kind of difficult to like call out Mark Dever, but I really, it would be awesome if he starts saying like, even

30:00

Russell Moore, like one name, like just this, cause he admits it's happening.

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That's what you heard him say, that he said it pushes us away from the gospel.

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Well, if it's pushing us away from it, he does think that there is a drift. He does think there is a problem.

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He sees it. And in order to put some meat on the bones and tell people where it is, he's gonna have to start name dropping or at least talking about books, something.

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That's gonna make it awkward. But if he doesn't do that, I think it's, you can sort of have this, we're abstractly against CRT because of what he just said, but we don't know anyone who's promoting it.

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It's, where is it? So I would say for it, this is a really good start.

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And I disagree with how he framed that whole thing about what that I just explained before this. But in general,

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I think this is a good start to the panel. Now, the question is, where is it going to go? I think there probably are, see, the thing about this is

31:06

I can, you can tell there's calculation going on as well there would be, because this is a controversial topic.

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And so there's an attempt here to try to, hey, look, racism is really bad.

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It's in fact, it's worse than white people think it is. And it's, you can almost hear him saying systemic, but he doesn't say it.

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And it's out there and we need to heal these racial wounds.

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He doesn't say racial reconciliation, but you can almost sense him like wanting to say it. And we need to work towards healing this stuff.

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But then kind of like 180, I'm against critical race theory. And here's the reasons

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I'm against critical race theory. And so like, even in this, I can sense a bit of a, like,

31:57

I don't want to quite, I want everyone in the room as much as possible, I wanna appeal to all of them with my message here.

32:04

And that's not a wrong thing, but it can become that if you are leaving out certain things that are necessary to understanding the threat.

32:12

And that's gonna be what I would look for in the rest of this. Is he gonna name the names?

32:17

Is he gonna like talk about where he sees these things? Cause he obviously thinks that they're in evangelicalism.

32:23

So where? So in that, since you're saying critical race theory, even among Christians has been used wittingly or unwittingly to displace the centrality of the message

32:35

Bobby was just talking about. Yes, I don't think the response to that is usually, well,

32:42

I don't know anybody in my church who's reading Delgado who's reading Crenshaw, who's reading, and that's probably true.

32:49

But many of these ideas have filtered down into mainstream culture.

32:55

It's in public schools, it's in major universities. You're gonna see it on ESPN. I think critical race theory has often been a detour because then we end up talking about this other thing over here and then we're debating, well, that's not really

33:10

CRT or it is CRT. I'm more concerned about what are the things downstream from that that are divisive and unhelpful and theologically problematic.

33:23

That's not to discount all the other sorts of things that we need to, this isn't the only part of the conversation we need to have, but it's the title of this particular panel.

33:33

And so, yes, I think we ought to be critical of critical race theory. Okay, so what would that look like?

33:38

He's concerned about the stuff downstream. That would be like multi -ethnic church model where it's an end in and of itself to have a multi -ethnic church as if that's a command and not just an example given in Revelation 7 of what

33:52

Jesus does, but it's what we're supposed to be doing in the here and now, immunitizing the eschaton and making our churches as diverse as possible with the assumption, if we don't, that we have a racism problem.

34:05

That's the multi -ethnic church model. How about diversifying theological libraries?

34:12

Because, well, we just don't want the opinions of old white men or something as if social location is what determines truth.

34:18

Or what about something like attempting to, I don't know, diversify, like Matt Chandler said, like I don't give me your,

34:31

I would take your black six over your white seven or something, like this sort of affirmative action quota thing for leadership in churches.

34:39

Or marching with BLM or, I mean, the list just goes on, but these were the things that you could point to and say like, this is going on, here's where it's going on.

34:47

And that's what I'd be curious about. Does he actually get there or does it just remain kind of in this theoretical realm?

34:53

Bobby, you agree with that? I would qualify a lot of what Kevin just said, and I would qualify it this way.

35:01

I'm not a critical race theorist and I don't mean that to disparage it, I'm just not. I'm a pastor and I think as pastors we have to deal with these things.

35:09

And we have to deal with the problems, I think, with our Bibles open and I think we have to deal with it with our eyes open and finding where these little t's are.

35:17

I always say this, and I'm gonna be pretty biographical and I know there's problems with that because we wanna be objective and have facts.

35:25

I was born in 1964, so you're literally looking at the first generation of African Americans born with the rights of an

35:34

American citizen. You have to swallow that for a second. My mom was the movie to help.

35:40

She rode on the back of buses across town to clean houses in white communities. And so the question that I think that critical race theory is trying to get at, and you can just say, is it a bad question or is it a decent, helpful question?

35:53

The question it's trying to get at is that how did we racialize our country? How did we racialize our country to make it work through slavery and Jim Crow?

36:03

There was a legal component to it. There really was a legal component to it where my dad, when he went to apply for a job in the north in New Jersey, he was told in the 1960s that,

36:15

Robert, you're black, and because you're black, you're not smart enough to pass the test.

36:22

And so there were jobs, middle -class jobs that were for whites only, and my dad, he sued, and he got a chance to take the test.

36:32

He passed the test, and he said, well, Robert, because you're black, we know that black people are lazy.

36:38

They drink on the weekends, they party, and they don't show up to work. So we're not gonna train you in this job to be a telephone installer because we're just gonna turn around and fire you.

36:46

So you have to work in the mailroom for a whole year. So my dad worked in the mailroom for a whole year, and then he got the job that he was hired for.

36:52

So the question I think that critical race theory wants to get at is that did we actually effectively change a structure that we codified with laws?

37:05

Blacks can't read, blacks can't have these jobs, blacks can't own these properties, blacks can't do this, and blacks can't do that.

37:12

Did the passage of laws change that? And I think one of the questions that Bell was asking when

37:18

Brown versus Board of Education was passed, okay, so now we're gonna desegregate the schools, and we'll desegregate the schools.

37:27

The law was changed, and so legal theory, I mean, I don't even, critical race theory is legal theory, and I don't know jurisprudence.

37:35

So in Brown versus Board of Education, so when that struck down, now schools can be segregated, all kids can get the same education, all kids therefore will be able to get the same kind of employment opportunities, same income, live in the same communities, on and on.

37:50

That was 1954, and I would just say, that didn't happen. And so critical race theory, it doesn't have my hermeneutology, so it may impose.

38:02

It doesn't have Bobby's doctrine of sin. Yes, so it may impose false guilt and consciousness, reading to consciousnesses of people that it can't do, but the question is, did the laws that segregate us end when, in the course, desegregation was struck down?

38:22

Plessy versus Ferguson, 1985, segregated us by law, and then we desegregated, but are we desegregated?

38:29

I've always lived in a black community, I've only always gone to black schools, and so we're still fairly segregated.

38:35

I don't mean this as a slight, but the seminary that I graduated with, with my second degree, and I loved them, and they loved me. They voted me student body president, it's predominantly white.

38:43

That was a wake -up call for me, like, wow, so I, I mean, so they just looked at Bobby as a leader.

38:50

But when I graduated my second degree, no one else noticed this but me, I was the only black graduate. And there's, and so, and even people look here, that we still are fairly segregated.

39:02

Sunday morning, we're segregated all over, and that has, if separate is different, then it will have different outcomes.

39:09

So critical race theory might be a helpful tool in that sense, of trying to figure out why are we still separated, and if, and if I use my

39:17

Christian voice, we have a calling to reconcile. We have a ministry of reconciliation, and we can grade ourselves, since 1964, have we done a good job with that?

39:28

Have we really reconciled? Do our churches look like it? Do our communities look like it?

39:33

Do our schools look like it? And there's a secular and a Christian answer to those. And I think from the Christian side, I think we could say we could,

39:39

I could just look out here and say, ah, we might be able to do better. Well, that is the end for today, because I want to get

39:45

Kevin DeYoung's response tomorrow, and we'll finish this up. But what you hear from Pastor Bobby is essentially this emotional kind of, and I'm not degrading it, because it's emotional,

39:55

I'm just saying that's the appeal it has, this emotional sense in which he's trying to grapple with his own family history,

40:02

American history, what's happening currently, and he thinks critical race theory is trying to come up with a paradigm to make sense of all of it.

40:08

So there's an emotional appeal to this, of we need to help Bobby navigate this, because this is affecting his dad, this is affecting him.

40:16

And then you have, on the other side, you have Kevin DeYoung, who's kind of coming at this more cold and calculating with things like, well, implicit bias, or what did he say?

40:25

Interest convergence assumes the motives of people, and that's wrong. And so you have Pastor Bobby on the other side, well, we need a paradigm that makes sense of it.

40:33

So critical race theory comes along and does assume the motives of people, that from the beginning, these straight white males set up this country to benefit themselves, and that's what's still happening.

40:41

And so that's the mechanisms that they've put in place. I want you to hear something, though. Even in Bobby's story, he was voted what?

40:47

He said class president? Class president. And he admits he's the only graduate who's black. Well, that means a bunch of white people had to have voted for him for class president.

40:55

And yet, there's a problem of racism in his institution because they don't have black people represented.

41:02

So doesn't that seem like there's some tension there? You have all these white people who apparently aren't racist, in the sense that, and I should say ethnically partial.

41:10

They're not partial. They can recognize someone who's got good talent, who's not a white person, and yet, it's racism that's causing the situation in which other black people aren't showing up.

41:23

Well, it could also be preference. There could also be other things. It could be traditions. And I mean, look, if you're Lutheran in the

41:28

Midwest and you go to a Lutheran seminary, aren't you gonna be with mostly German, Scandinavian, Northern European people?

41:35

You're not probably gonna have white people from Appalachia there. And it's not because of racism. It's just because that's just not where they go, to seminary.

41:43

And so some of this stuff that's attributed to racism may not be racism. And that's something that we have to consider.

41:49

And critical race theory doesn't really allow us to consider that. It gives us a simple answer that makes us feel maybe good about ourselves because now we can identify white privilege as the issue and strike out against white privilege.

42:02

And if we do our work against it, then we can feel good, but it doesn't really actually solve the problem because that's not the problem.

42:09

And if you look at American history fairly, that's not what you're gonna find. In fact, what you're gonna find is broadly speaking from a 30 ,000 foot view, yeah, some straight white men came to the

42:19

United States. And by the way, 5 % of the slaves who came from Africa came to the United States.

42:25

95 % went to Central and South America. You don't hear about that really. You don't hear about all the slaves that went to the

42:30

Muslim world of which there were more from Africa. You don't hear about what the Ottomans did with, it's where we get the term slave, with Slavs, with Janissaries that they trained to go fight their own people.

42:42

You don't hear about any of that. America's made to bear the brunt of slavery as if it's a uniquely

42:47

American thing. Critical race theory is applied to that and to the West and not to these other areas and issues.

42:55

I mean, China right now is economically attempting to enslave the world and going into second and third world countries by giving them infrastructure in return for their minerals and stuff and really exploiting them.

43:07

And yet apparently that's not talked about. Critical race theorists don't have anything to say about that even though it's ethnic Chinese people in Africa and in South America.

43:15

And I'm just trying to say that critical race theory is a key that fits into America and into the

43:20

West. That's what it is. It doesn't apply to these other areas. And if you look at our history, you have these straight white males, yes,

43:28

Christian males primarily who came and they saw different races, indigenous peoples. They saw the ones who did engage in the transatlantic slave trade, saw people from African tribes, and they would have seen them as different races, not because of a power dynamic, which is what critical race theory says, but because in the age of exploration, they just observed there's differences between people.

43:49

In fact, if you grew up in a region, you'd have different cuisine, different religion, different habits, different genetics, everything would be different.

43:56

And you'd look fairly similar to others in that region and behave pretty similarly. And guess what? That would build trust because you had similar experiences and values and you could get your issues adjudicated by people you both mutually trusted.

44:09

And so it built trust. And so if you come into that society as a stranger, guess what? It's harder for you to navigate.

44:15

That's why there's laws in the Old Testament about don't treat the strangers different because look, you could take advantage of them.

44:21

They come into your land, they don't know all the rules, they're different. And so when you have commonalities with other people, it is much easier to build trust.

44:29

It takes work to build trust when you don't have that. And the story of American race relations, if you want to call them that, is a story of building trust.

44:36

Every group that's come to the United States of America has had to build trust and it's taken them time. The Irish had to build trust.

44:43

It took them time. And it wasn't that they were the only ones building it. It just organically had to form.

44:49

The Germans, the same thing to an extent. You had the Know Nothing Party against these immigrants from different parts of Europe coming who weren't from the

44:59

Anglo -Saxons. And you had even Benjamin Franklin saying things like,

45:05

America should be kind of a haven for Anglo -Saxon people. So it was against other

45:10

Europeans. And yet trust was built mutually over time. It didn't take as long with certain groups as it did with others.

45:18

Chinese, I mean, they suffered some of the worst discrimination coming here. They had to build up trust over time. Jewish people build up trust over time.

45:25

And guess what? In every case, America was the land of opportunity. It was the place that you could do that.

45:31

In some ways, there were some barriers put up for people from Africa to build up trust over time because of a number of factors

45:39

I don't have time to get into. But one of the main ones was the way Reconstruction was handled after the ending of slavery and how political interests, mostly the

45:47

Republican Party, unfortunately, attempted to use black people in Southern regions in many areas to control the rest of the population, paying for votes, the whole nine yards.

45:59

And this created a lot of resentment and a lot of pushback, which, unfortunately, was wrong.

46:05

And we're still, to some extent, we're dealing with because it's being brought up as a reason to mistrust white people in general.

46:17

You have a basic mistrust that formed. That's one of those. There's a lot of other things that cause mistrust.

46:26

You have white people mistrusting black people. You have black people mistrusting white people because of the way they were treated.

46:33

Why can't we go into the North initially? And when we do go into the North, we face more discrimination and we're segregated, but not by law necessarily in some of the areas, but by just, it's just the way things are done there.

46:48

And we have economic barriers if we try to move to another area. And some of the stories that you just even heard, these are the things that created some mistrust.

46:56

But guess what was happening? And this is the story that gets missed. Things were actually moving in a good direction over time.

47:02

Trust was being built. Even in segregation, trust was starting to be built. Public opinion shifted.

47:08

You would never have had the civil rights stuff pass in the 60s if public opinion wasn't already supportive of it. And it wasn't just a bunch of liberal hippies.

47:15

You had, during the rockabilly years in the 1950s, preceding this, the concerts, like Elvis concerts, start out segregated and end integrated.

47:25

Everyone's at the stage. No one cares. People are building mutual trust.

47:30

They're evaluating people differently. They're realizing you enjoy the same music I enjoy. We're more similar than we are different.

47:39

I've asked a lot of older people who live through the civil rights era, what, whether race relations, and what

47:46

I mean by that, whether the ways that people across racial lines treated each other was better then or better now.

47:53

And in almost every case, in fact, in every case I can think of, I am told that it was better before.

48:00

And it doesn't mean that there weren't situations, specific situations that were much worse, but it just means that in general, people had more common courtesies.

48:10

And we don't have that today, which is insane to think about. I grew up without any of that.

48:15

And to think of like, wait, you had legal segregation, but people treated each other in general with a little more respect than they even do today.

48:22

So yeah, and that's just from people I've talked to about this issue.

48:28

But these are people who in their memory are thinking of the 1950s. Some of them might remember the 40s to some extent.

48:35

Yeah, it's pretty old people. And they're living through a time when there's trust that's being built.

48:41

You just had World War II. You had, even in a segregated army and segregated units, you have people, you have black people proving that they are actually, they care about the same things.

48:54

They're willing to defend this country and stuff. And that's actually a beautiful story of what was happening.

49:00

And I think during the Bush years, you had probably the peak of that, where mutual trust was really being built and then the

49:06

Obama years. And since then, it's gotten worse. We've taken, we've gone down a cliff.

49:12

And I don't think it's a coincidence. This is the time when critical race theory is gaining ascendancy in elite circles.

49:19

That's what seems to make sense of it more than anything else. These issues are being fomented once again, and things from the past brought up, and something's made up, and it's just creating all kinds of strife that doesn't need to be there, that never did need to be there.

49:36

And so when you look at the American history, there's really a couple different ways that you can look at things, but this is the way that I've seen it.

49:44

I think there's a positive story to tell that is being missed in all this. And unfortunately now is dying because of the race baiters who are fomenting things to such an extent, not focusing on what we have in common, but trying to focus on differences so much.

50:01

And they want to stir up conflict. And so that's the big picture in my mind.

50:08

Critical race theory has nothing to offer to that kind of a discussion. It's not gonna get you that kind of a view either that I just advocated.

50:13

It's gonna give you a view of resentment. It's gonna give you a bad view that shows that one class of people is to blame for all of this, or white people in general, and that there needs to be some kind of a payback.

50:27

There needs to be some kind of a settling of scores here. And that's the sad part to me is it's created this situation rather than viewing it as over the course of history, through many sinful things and many regrettable things, trust has been built.

50:45

People who are enjoying the blessings that don't exist in the areas in which they came from are now enjoying those blessings and having those opportunities extended to them.

50:55

Thank God that they're in America. Instead of that, it's become, well, it's just an oppressive place.

51:02

Yeah, an oppressive place everyone's trying to get to from different races too, all over South America.

51:07

Everyone's trying to get here because it's just so oppressive. Makes no sense. This is a story of actually people being included and over time, building up trust and becoming part of, an accepted part of what

51:27

America is and who American people are. And sadly, I think that's the world my parents grew up in more than it is.

51:35

It's the world that I got maybe a taste of the tail end of. And that world has changed in the last decade especially.

51:42

And it saddens me to some extent. But if there's anyone who can cure it, it's Jesus Christ. And it's going to be a common, this is why

51:49

I think the Christian nationalism thing is so popular. It's gonna be a common faith. You're gonna have to have some kind of glue to keep people together and to build mutual trust.

51:58

And if it's not tradition, race, heritage, et cetera, I mean, heritage is kind of an essential part of that, but a strong, robust Christianity that has a

52:09

Christian heritage and has Christian identity and Christian morals and ethics and ways to operate and behave is going to be your best option.

52:17

If you don't have that, you have nothing, you have no glue and we're just gonna be fighting amongst each other. And that's what critical race theory has fomented and trying to pit people against one another.

52:29

So anyway, I think of America in very positive terms. I think the rest of the world, human nature is to look at your group and have trust with people in your group and be suspicious of people from the outside, which is why in the

52:43

Old Testament, you're commanded, treat the sojourners well, because if you don't, it's very easy to take advantage of them.

52:51

They don't know how things work in your area. And when I was in Turkey, I saw this. I mean, I stood out like a sore thumb.

52:57

People all knew I was American or British or something and probably thought I was rich as a result. They treated me differently.

53:02

And I expected that. I think the people who live there, like the Armenians especially, and even the

53:09

Byzantine and Roman histories and stuff are trashed. I mean, homeless people live in the

53:16

Byzantine wall and Roman ports that have been excavated and stuff. And the Turkish people don't really, the government even has no interest in preserving any of these things.

53:26

It's not them, it's not Turkish. And so that would never happen in the United States. In the

53:31

United States, we're like recovering ancient native indigenous people, burial grounds or excavating relics and things from Indian or Native American villages, that kind of thing.

53:48

And looking at those things and preserving them and trying to learn about them.

53:54

And it's just so different. And a lot of countries around this world, most countries aren't gonna value things that aren't connected to them.

54:02

The United States has been a little bit different in that way. And in the Western world in general has been much more inclusive as far as who they're willing to allow come there and share in the blessings that they have available.

54:14

And it's just, it's kind of sad to me that the microscopes are only out for people in the

54:21

West and particularly in the United States, but that's where we're at. So anyway, I don't know why I said all that, but I did.

54:27

And you'll have to deal with it. It's my podcast, so I guess I get to say it. But we're gonna continue this tomorrow and talk about how

54:37

Kevin DeYoung reacts to this. Because I'm telling you, this is kind of how I would react to it. I would agree that, man, it's terrible.

54:44

Your dad had to go through that. I'm so sorry. It's definitely was a barrier. Isn't it so good that we've overcome some of these things and mutual trust has been built.

54:54

And I fear that the very thing you're embracing to try to explain this is actually the very thing that's creating the wedge that we have today, in which people are looking at each other once again with suspicion.

55:05

And getting to the point now where you actually, if you're white and you have the same level of education as someone who's a minority, in many corporations, all things being equal, you're not gonna get the job because there's an incentive to platform minority voices to show that you're not racist.

55:23

So it's no longer about who can do the job. And that's unfortunate because now my children and myself, we're subjected to a discriminatory treatment.

55:33

And I didn't like it to see it in your dad. And I don't like to see it. I don't like to think that I'm gonna raise my children in a world in which that's gonna become more prevalent.

55:41

I'd love for us to ditch the critical race theory. And of course, ditch the scientific racism that preceded it and stuff like that.

55:50

And let's come together on the fact that we are both Americans. And I would love to do that kind of thing, but there's a barrier and critical race theory is causing that barrier.

56:01

So that's how I would probably respond. And I'd probably also just emphasize on the church level that the gospel does apply to every individual, every individualist sin.

56:16

And that in order to have theology books and elder boards and all the things that are necessary for a church to function, we need to be evaluating those things based on the standard given in scripture, godly men, good materials, good sources, instead of whether or not there's a racial quota.

56:39

And I think critical race theory motivates us to do this multi -ethnic church thing and try to have quotas. So that's what