Tricking Southern Baptists

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, here to talk about more Southern Baptist -related content today.

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I said yesterday we were gonna do another show on Southern Baptist stuff, and that is today's show. We're gonna talk a little bit about something that happened last

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Sunday, something that I think is small, but it illustrates something bigger. And the thing it illustrates that's bigger is a active attempt,

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I believe, to shield social justice teachers at Southern Baptist institutions from the critiques of Orthodox, regular, ordinary, pew -sitting, rank -and -file, conservative, those who are paying the bills,

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Southern Baptists. And it's unfortunate because I think so many still are under the impression that the money that they put into the offering plate that goes to these

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Southern Baptist institutions is really going for gospel work primarily. And not even primarily, but that's all it's going to.

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And I've made the point for a while that it's not that there's not good Southern Baptist seminarians out there who are gonna preach the gospel, but there's something else going on.

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There's another gospel that's also been preached. And Walter Strickland actually is one of the people who's done this, who's injected another gospel.

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And, well, Professor Mosley, Dr. Mosley, at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I went and got my

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MDiv, said something in a church service last Sunday that I think is a, if what he's trying to do is to defend

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Dr. Strickland's conservative credentials, his theological conservative credentials, then I think he did a good job as far as trying to create a certain impression.

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It's not accurate though. And I think this play is being run a lot. In fact, there's other instances in the past that I know of where this play has been run.

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And I wanna talk about it a little bit. So we're gonna get there. Before we get there though, I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience on the plane when

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I came home from California last Sunday. Going to California six hours, coming home's five because of the jet stream, it's a little shorter.

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And it's a long time to sit. And so the airlines that, I think they all actually now, have a form of entertainment that they give to you and you can choose from movies.

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And so I decided to watch On the Way Home. It's very slim pickings, but I thought,

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I should be able to turn off my brain and just kind of enjoy the flight and just relax by watching a

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Marvel movie. I'm not big into Marvel movies, but there really wasn't much out there that I could justify watching. And I thought, well, this should be at least clean.

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I was wrong. I was wrong. I'm not a big Marvel fan, but I do like some, at least of the origin stories.

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Like I watch the Captain America. I like that. I like the first Thor movie. Well, this particular movie was the latest

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Doctor Strange movie. And let me tell you, it was strange. It reminded me of, I think 15 or more years ago, there was a movie that came out called

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Daredevil. I never saw it, but there was an active campaign against it from families and parents and just family values groups to try to get them to not take their kids, to not allow their kids to see it because the assumption would be that it's a comic movie.

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My assumption, I guess, that I had on the plane. It must be clean. No. And I think now parents are probably just, they can't take that for granted.

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Everything's Daredevil now. And there's just a lot of stuff that you have to be careful of.

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And this particular movie was very violent. I was surprised how violent it was. I wouldn't want my kids at young ages seeing that level of violence.

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It was very social justice driven as well. The themes even were very adult themes, but there was a scene in there in particular that I've noticed that's happening more and more, especially in Disney films, where the main character, whose name is

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America Chavez, I just call her America. And she has kind of Captain America -like uniform, but she's from a parallel universe,

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I guess, but she's Hispanic or Latino. And she's got two lesbian moms, apparently.

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And I just was, it comes and it goes. It's very quick, but it just normalizes that kind of thing.

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And kids are attracted to the comic book stuff, but now they're being exposed to violence, to confusing sexual themes, to adult themes.

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The whole theme was really more geared toward adults, more relatable to adults. The intersectionality just even got down to scenes in which

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I think most people probably wouldn't notice it, but because I'm who I am, I was noticing it. Even the order in which people are defeated by the villain.

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White men were, white men who weren't disabled were the first to go. And then the women, right?

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And then a disabled man, essentially. And it's just, it's in everything.

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It's just in everything. And so the agendas, you gotta be careful, just as a parent. This is a reminder to me.

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I have friends with younger children who say, look, even the children's TV shows now, you just have to be so careful out there.

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And people were able to raise kids before the media age. It makes it harder when their friends are watching media and stuff, but it is possible to give them other forms of entertainment and learning, really, which is primarily probably what kids need to be doing is in their play, they're learning.

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And you just gotta be careful. So screen it. That's just a reminder to parents, I guess, but it was, it jumped out at me.

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And then the other thing I wanted to talk about, I'll probably talk about a little more, is another movie I happened to watch that made me realize, and you can't take what you're seeing about historical events or people for granted as if it's true history.

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I think we all assume if it's a historical biopic or if it's just about an event that they're gonna insert romance.

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That's what Hollywood does. They're gonna insert something to make it more interesting, supposedly. That's not what

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I'm worried about anymore. I'm not concerned about that. I'm concerned about, they're gonna totally ruin the entire story.

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They're gonna tell a story that's fictional. And that's what they did with the latest Elvis movie. And I wanted to watch it just because I took a course in college called

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Elvis in Pop Culture. And so I thought, I know something about Elvis. I actually, I kinda like Elvis's voice.

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I think he's interesting. I'm not a big Elvis guy, but I just, I thought, well, if it's like the Johnny Cash movie, you know, it'll probably be pretty good.

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And the Johnny Cash movie was. I Walked the Line was a good movie, except for the fact that they cut out the Christian elements that Johnny Cash gets lost in a cave.

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He receives Christ, his life changes. They just, they end the movie right before that and make out like his wife. June Carter's the one that saved him.

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That's just not accurate. But the movie, for the most part, was attempting to be accurate.

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And this movie just wasn't. It was terribly inaccurate. And I'm not gonna go through all the things that were inaccurate about it, but let me give you at least some of the agenda -pushing things that were inaccurate.

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They highlight in the movie the things that Elvis did to offend the culture of the 50s and 60s.

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The ways he pushed the boundaries. And there were ways Elvis pushed boundaries, but they completely exaggerated it in the movie.

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Just even the movements that he was doing. Yeah, he did do some movements, but they went, it was way overly dramatic.

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And they wanted to make that, that's who Elvis is. He's this rebel that just pushes these boundaries. And he was, because now that's palatable.

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Now people like that. Yeah, offend those prudes, you know, back in the 50s. And they wanna make

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Elvis out to be like some kind of civil rights sympathizer. And more than that, almost like a leader. That he was held back a bit by his manager, but that he was in league with MLK.

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I mean, he has a line in the movie that MLK spoke the truth. That he was really drawing all the inspiration for his music from black artists.

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And he felt more at home with them. And he would, that's who his people really were.

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And there is some truth to this, in the sense that Elvis did grow up at a

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Pentecostal church, which by the way, was integrated in the movie. It makes out like he just happened to sneak in as the only white kid in this black church.

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He went to an integrated, if you wanna call it that, Pentecostal church. And at least from the study

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I've done, and that's where he picked up a lot of the moves that he used. And it's true when he was, he moved to Memphis.

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He did shop at the places. A lot of blues artists would shop. He dressed like them. But he was inspired also from music that wasn't uniquely rhythm and blues or black.

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He, his first charted single, I believe, was Blue Moon of Kentucky, which is a bluegrass song. He just rock and rollified it.

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So Elvis had inspirations from multiple streams. They wanna make it in the movie like it's kind of one stream.

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And here's this rebel Elvis. He's siding with all the black people and offending the sensibilities of the white people, especially those evil segregationists and those corporate executives who happen to have a

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Stonewall Jackson picture on the wall. And they, that's just, that's just about as close to mythology, at least in the way they're emphasizing that narrative, as you can get.

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Because here's the thing about Elvis. When he was a regional singer in the South, the hip shaking and all that wasn't controversial.

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Guess when it became controversial? When he gained national recognition, was going on these television shows in the North. That's when that started to be offensive.

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In fact, Southerners, a lot of Southerners were more used to the Pentecostal and kind of the movements

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Elvis did would not have been as shocking. So in the movie, they try to sort of portray that because Elvis gets up and he says,

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I'm not gonna be like those people in New York want me to be. But they try to make the arch supervillains, these segregationists who are down the street from Elvis when he's at a concert, having a rally with these big

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Confederate flags, decrying rock and roll. And then they juxtapose it with Elvis speaking out against them.

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It's just about as close to fiction as you can get. And I was thinking to myself, why is this?

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This is the narrative? Like the real, if you wanna portray the people who opposed Elvis for those reasons, it was mainly the

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New York executives and the people on those television shows who are trying to market their product to clean cut, in a clean cut way to family audiences.

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But that's not what they focus on. They have to have an arch villain and they choose segregationists,

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Confederate flags. They show Elvis in two occasions in the movie singing the battle hymn of the

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Republic. Guess what? Elvis sang Dixie. They don't show that in the movie. In fact, when he sang the battle hymn of the

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Republic, it was called American Trilogy, look it up on YouTube. He sang Dixie first and then he sang the battle hymn. They just cut out

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Dixie, like it never happened. Elvis played in the first movie that Elvis was in in Hollywood, Love Me Tender.

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He plays the part of the son who stays home while his three brothers go to fight for the

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Confederate army. Elvis was a Southerner. He was not ashamed of it. And when he was asked about political things, you can look up the interviews on YouTube.

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He will say, I'm an artist, I'm a singer, I don't get into the politics of it. In the movie, they make out like his manager just didn't want him to get political, but he was really political.

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It's nonsense, it's absolute nonsense. It's creating an Elvis that didn't really exist and trying to recruit him to the team of social justice and make him palatable today.

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Guess what other things were left out? The fact that when he started dating his wife, Priscilla, she was 14.

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Now today, it would have been a little more acceptable back then, but it was a controversy back then. It was a big controversy.

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Today, that would be an even bigger controversy. Look what happened with Roy Moore a few years ago when he ran for Senate in Alabama.

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And the accusation was that he was going after 14 year olds when he was like in his 20s. Well, that's what Elvis did, but that's not even, it's a totally ignored in the movie.

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And I realized after watching, and there's a number of other things I could just tell, that were horribly inaccurate

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I could talk to you about. Like, I don't know, even the scene where he's running, he runs out of the house and he's upset.

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So he goes to hang out with his people, right? The people in Memphis at the Blues Club. And he gets advice from B .B. King. I mean,

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B .B. King knew him, but it wasn't like B .B. King was this sage in his life and he just ignored the people at home because he wanted to go out and be with black people.

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And that's where he belonged. Sure, he would be with black people. And in fact, Elvis, they don't even show this in the movie, which is interesting to me, but Elvis was, before there was civil rights legislation, his concerts were integrated.

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That was actually one of the things that led to opposition to segregation was Elvis concerts were segregated.

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And then at the end of the concert, everyone's at the stage and no one cares. Just no one cared.

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Who cares where people sit, right? So this is actually one of the kind of cool things about Elvis. And one of the things you can look at to say, wow, trust was built in these concerts and things.

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They don't show that though. And I have a suspicion why. It could be that the narrative is the federal government comes in and does the whole civil rights and rights for ethnic minorities were forwarded by the federal government.

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And anything outside of that is suspect. Because if you start to believe that building trust between different ethnic groups is possible without the federal government, that's not an acceptable narrative.

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So I wonder whether that's the reason that that wasn't shown. I'm not sure, but that is true about Elvis. And Elvis had an entourage that he often traveled with.

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They would rent out like carnivals at night and things like that. He became kind of nocturnal.

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And guess what? They were white. They were white. That's who he hung out with. So it makes out in the movie, like he doesn't hang out with those people.

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They're just taking advantage of him. His manager's just taking advantage of him. Making him do things he doesn't wanna do.

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Holding him back from saying political things he wants to say. Making him, drugging him, as if Elvis wasn't complicit somehow in the drugs he was taking.

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And he died from ODing. So it's, they make him out to be kind of this victim almost who was empathetic with civil rights.

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And with, he wanted to speak out against the forces that were at work murdering people like JFK and his brother and MLK.

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And it's just, Elvis wasn't this political figure. And they're trying to stuff him into this political mold.

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Downplaying certain things. Upplaying way, way upplaying other things. It's just not accurate.

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Even his Christmas special. They show his Christmas special in the movie. His 1968 special he did. And they make out like there's this big tug of war between him and his manager.

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And his manager wants him to be more Christmas. And look, he sang Christmas songs. He sang gospel songs in that particular special.

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They don't show any of that. They make out like Elvis is just this rebel. This counter -cultural rebel listening to the hippies now.

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It's, I don't know. It's so frustrating watching a movie when you know the history to some extent.

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And then you watch Hollywood's recreation of the history. The thing is, if I didn't know this about Elvis, if I hadn't done the research,

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I probably would have just kind of been like, oh, that's probably true. And I would have just moved on.

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And that's what a lot of people do with history. They watch a movie. They think they know what it is and they move on. We can't do that, guys.

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We just can't assume we know about something because we saw the movie. And it's sad to me because I think there are some really good historical movies out there, but those times are past.

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Major Hollywood studios don't seem to be very interested in making accurate historical depictions.

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They would have actually had a much more interesting movie, I think, if they had tried to accurately portray Elvis with his flaws that we find unpalatable even.

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They could have made him a much more relational character and they don't. And I think part of it is they want to kill this kind of good old boy

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Elvis, southerner Elvis in the movie. And they want to show you this counter -cultural

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Elvis. And we're just not that one -dimensional. So they had a one -dimensional

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Elvis. It's not accurate. It's kind of, in my mind, the movie's kind of trash, to be honest with you, from a historical standpoint.

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But most of you don't listen to me for movie reviews, but I kind of just had to share it because I was kind of ticked after I watched it.

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I felt insulted that people thought that they could get away with such an inaccurate portrayal.

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But I thought it might be helpful too, as a reminder, just be careful with that stuff.

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Find a good book on the subject maybe first. Find primary sources are always the best, but there's some good secondary sources too.

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Find some good stuff on it. There's, in fact, the Elvis, there was a biography I read of Elvis.

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I think it was called Fortunate Son. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe that's the Vietnam music, let's see, music book

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I read. Oh no, it is the right one. Yeah, and it was pretty good. The Fortunate Son, the Life of Elvis Presley. If you wanna know about Elvis Presley, that was a good book that I read that I would recommend to you.

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All right, well, let's, now that you're all movied out, let's talk about some other stuff.

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Let's talk about some Southern Baptist stuff, shall we? Some ERLC stuff. So this happened last

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Sunday at a conservative or known to be more traditional conservative church in the

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Raleigh area. And I want you to listen. I'm gonna play two clips from it, and then we'll analyze it some.

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This is from a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, an older professor who most people wouldn't suspect would be bringing in social justice stuff, right?

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Here's what he has to say. Many people in our culture expect even followers of Jesus not only to approve of sin, but even to celebrate sin and to embrace ideologies that contradict the truth of the word of God, ideologies that are literally ludicrous to any thinking person.

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And yet they are affecting the direction of our culture.

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So if we do not embrace the lives of the devil and of our culture, then we are branded with labels like fundamentalist or narrow -minded or even oppressive and hateful.

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And those labels serve to discredit us and to marginalize us.

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And if you work in the marketplace or attend school or university, you know this to be true.

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You know how you are received in certain circles when you say things like,

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I love Jesus as my savior, or I believe the Bible is the word of God.

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I'm not making this point, you know, just so we can collectively throw up our hands and ask what is this world coming to today?

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No, I think it's important for us to see the parallels between what we experience right now and what the early church was experiencing as well.

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Because like the early church, we will see God bless us and use our faithful witness as well, but we will also see opposition from this world.

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This is the situation of the early church. It is our context as well.

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We should acknowledge the extent to which it is no longer politically correct to be a faithful follower of Jesus in some segments of our culture.

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But here's the question of today's message from the word of God. What do we do when we're not politically correct?

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How do we behave when we feel like outsiders because of our commitment to Jesus?

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The answers are very simple, but they take a lifetime to live out.

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And they arise directly from the text before us. Peter, John, and the other

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Christians in the early church were also politically incorrect, so much so that they were arrested and threatened by the leaders of that time.

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And they were told not to preach anymore in the name of Jesus. Now that sounds really, really good, right?

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I mean, I'm listening to him and I'm thinking, yeah, I mean, BLM, the totalitarian

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COVID stuff, the Me Too agenda movement, the environmentalist movement, the

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LGBT movement, of course, the worldly philosophies opposed to Christianity.

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And we need to take a stand against these things. That's what I think he's talking about, right? So like I'm with him.

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And most of the people at the church are probably with him. Then he says this, listen to this.

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We need a place to run after we've taken another one on the chin.

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If you know and love Jesus this morning, if you believe the truth of God's word, look around you and you will see a lot of other people like you.

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These are your people. This is where we go. A dear friend and colleague of mine at the seminary is named

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Dr. Walter Strickland. Dr. Strickland is an African -American.

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He was born in Chicago and his parents were believers and they went to a predominantly

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African -American church in Chicago, but when Walter was still a child, they moved to Southern California.

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And his dad had heard a Christian preacher on the radio preaching and he knew he preached the

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Bible. And so he wanted to visit that church as they look for a new church home.

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And so they visited that church where that preacher was preaching. And Walter said he was there as a child.

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He felt very uncomfortable because there were only five African -American people in the service. It was

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Walter and his two sisters and his parents. And that was it. But they worshiped there.

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They went back there the next Sunday. He still felt uncomfortable. The next Saturday, his dad announced they were going back again.

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And the kids began to complain. And Walter says his dad hardly ever raised his voice, but he said, everybody on the couch now.

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And he gave to his kids a little speech. He said, those people love Jesus and they love the

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Bible and believe it and preach it and teach it. Those people are our people.

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Go to your rooms. That's what he told his kids. He made his point. And that church, that was their people.

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And that's where they joined. And that was Walter's home church until he graduated from high school and went to college.

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And then he came to Southeastern to go to seminary. He's one of the brightest Hebrew students I ever had.

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And now he teaches on our faculty. They were his people.

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Those are our people. Where do we go when we feel like we don't fit in this compromised culture?

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Like Peter and John, we go to our own, go to our own. I have a lot in common with various groups of people in our culture, like you do.

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You know, I root for the University of Alabama football team. And to my fellow fans,

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I say, roll tide. But those are not my people.

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Not my people. I'm a Caucasian male and I have certain things in common with other white men in our culture, but those are not my people.

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Now, if you didn't know anything about the SBC, you would think that sounds pretty good too. And I think if I'm sitting there and I'm giving money to the

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Southern Baptist Convention, I'm feeling pretty good about my money. Because you got Alan Mosley, who's a professor there, saying at Christ Baptist Church in Raleigh, who's a more traditional church, that we got a professor who's bright, who's brilliant, who he values the things you value, sitting in the pew there.

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And you know what you value? You value that we're all one in Christ. You value that ethnicity shouldn't divide us.

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We should all be one. These are our people and that Dr. Walter Strickland, he shares those values with you.

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Now, for those who have listened to this podcast, for any amount of time, you know something though, that maybe some of the people in that audience might not.

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It's very possible. You know that Dr. Walter Strickland is not necessarily, as he is not being portrayed perhaps in an accurate fashion by Dr.

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Alan Mosley in this particular sermon. You know that Dr. Walter Strickland is a professor who teaches

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James Cone's theology without saying that he's doing it. At least that's what he told the New York Times.

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That's liberation theology. You know that Dr. Walter Strickland has actually, on multiple occasions, misrepresented what the gospel is by adding social justice driven works to the gospel message in a way that would be consistent with liberation theology.

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And you can go back in the archive. I've done many podcasts now on what Dr. Walter Strickland thinks.

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I itemize it in the book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. It's not a secret. I'm not the only one that's even done this.

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It's out there. And he is probably one of the more controversial figures in the

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Southern Baptist Convention simply because he is doing this, because he is importing liberation theology ideas not to discredit them, not to argue against them, not to shine the light of biblical truth on them to expose their error, but instead to fill the minds of young seminarians with that ideology in a positive way he's teaching it, to show them the good things they can glean from it.

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James Cone has good things to glean from. J. Deatis Roberts has good things that you can glean from him.

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He himself, neither of them really, had the gospel. And Walter Strickland has parroted a version of the gospel, a compromised version that would be consistent with their thinking.

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In addition, Dr. Walter Strickland himself recently said this.

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I really want to serve my own people, so to speak, my kinsmen in the flesh, to use that sort of Paul language.

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But I said, but I seem to be given some favor in these spaces that I'm in right now to build those bridges.

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And so as long as the Lord gives me favor and the opportunity to do work over here that I think is productive,

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I'm gonna remain and build those bridges. And so if it ever came to the point where I felt like it was a true stalemate,

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I would go and minister to those who I identify with, you know, ethnically speaking.

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So that's a question that came along several times throughout my own journey, but the Lord has kept showing me, okay,

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Walter, there are spaces within evangelicalism, predominantly white evangelicalism, where moves can be made.

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As long as the Lord allows me a place where I can be productive and I can see fruit being born from not only this general gospel ministry, but also the gospel applied to specific areas that plague

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African -Americans and our relationality with our brothers and sisters in Christ. As long as I can see fruit in some spaces, then

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I'll stay. One of the challenging things is that I haven't seen fruit in all spaces.

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And even more than that, I've experienced resistance, even questions about my own doctrinal fidelity because I'm asking questions that are very pertinent to a group that haven't been able to ask questions within white evangelicalism.

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And because I'm asking questions that are similar to those who have been labeled as unorthodox, perhaps, about how the gospel relates to, redemptively to social, cultural issues, about what political issues

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I have to deal with very acutely and trying to apply the gospel to those, because of my inquiry into those things and because of just having read broadly, sometimes people take that as a license to say that I'm outside the bounds of orthodoxy.

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And that's just hurtful because it's false. I mean, I was elected to the faculty at Southeastern Seminary.

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I signed the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Enthusiastically, I'm very comfortable with it.

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I'm grateful to be at a school where we have the four confessions that we have. And so I would say that being called into question because I'm grappling with the gospel with sometimes a different set of issues than the average

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SBCer, that's been hard. I don't think everyone has to be in a white evangelical space who's a minority, but I do think that there are people that God is sort of shaping to really be able to do work like this.

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And so I do think that's the case. I do think the Lord has given me the opportunity to do some work in areas like this.

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But the reality is, is that I really see a genuine desire for people to move forward on these issues.

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I do think that there are people who are crying out for a biblically based voice that they can trust.

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And so, and we just have to be able to say, hey, this is how this works. And so I've been given the opportunity to let folks know this is how this works, biblically, theologically.

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There are folks who are excited about moving forward and they need direction, biblically oriented direction and not just pragmatism and not just getting their answers from other theorists who are out there who are not

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Christian. You have to have a good biblical theological rationale for this so that those people exist. And there's also people who,

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I mean, so basically because those folks exist, because I have seen real progress on these issues, despite some of the frustrations that are there, that's why

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I stay, man. Well, there you have Dr. Strickland in 2020. This is December of 2020. So within the last two years saying that the reason he's in these white evangelical spaces, his term, not mine, is because he sees progress being made towards a goal that he has.

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And he says it over and over in this particular podcast. I'm putting the links, by the way, in the info section. So you don't need to ask me for them.

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They're there in the info section if you wanna check them out. And what is that goal? Well, he says he's applying the gospel.

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To what? To issues white evangelicals haven't applied it to. Well, what would those be? Race relations. He's the head of kingdom diversity.

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And reading as much of Walter Strickland as I've read and viewing lectures of his, I know what he's talking about.

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I know he's talking about forwarding this multicultural, this diversity initiative, this agenda, this liberation theology would be in league with, at the

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Southern Baptist Seminary. And as long as he sees progress in that, he's staying. That's why he's staying.

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That's why he's in these, quote unquote, white evangelical spaces, because he says that he identifies with his kinsmen according to the flesh.

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Now, that runs counter to what you just heard Dr. Mosley say about Dr. Strickland, doesn't it? Dr. Mosley is saying, look,

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Dr. Strickland, this wonderful man at the seminary, wonderful man who, he just, he views the kingdom of God as his family.

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And he doesn't see those things. He's a Christian. Those other identities, those aren't his people.

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Those aren't my people, he also says. It's Christians who are my people. And then you hear Dr. Strickland literally say, my people.

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He says, my people, my kinsmen, according to the flesh, are who? Black people. I would believe what

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Dr. Strickland says about his beliefs instead of what Dr. Mosley says about what Dr. Strickland believes. But it's very palatable to those sitting in a church in Raleigh who are helping fund

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Southeastern listening to Dr. Mosley. They're thinking, well, it's just great. Yet Dr.

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Strickland, he's not fairly representing what Dr. Strickland actually believes. Dr. Strickland is saying in his own words that there's only one reason

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I've been afforded opportunities here and I can make progress towards the agenda that I have. This race -driven agenda, the kingdom diversity agenda, whatever you want to call it, racial reconciliation.

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There's so many different terms that have been used, but this importing of black liberation theology, he's seeing progress in this arena.

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If he didn't see progress, he wouldn't stay. That's what he's saying. So, and it's not, by the way, it's not wrong that Dr.

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Strickland feels an affinity for his kinsmen according to the flesh. Paul did. There's nothing wrong with that. If a white person said it though, they'd be canceled.

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But I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Whether a white person, a black person, anyone says, you know,

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I feel kind of an affinity for my people and what they mean by their people is a cultural group, an ethnocultural group or whatever.

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There's nothing really wrong with that, to have an identity in that way and have a special care and concern in that way.

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Obviously your identity though, when you become a child of God is you are a Christian and the people who you now are worshiping with, you have a bond with that transcends those earthly bonds.

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It doesn't mean they replace those earthly bonds. We talked about this before on the podcast. Two things can be true at once.

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Dr. Mosley wants everything now, it seems like, to be about. It's your spiritual identity and all those other things kind of go, they're gone.

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But that's not really the case. They still remain. They remain for Paul and they can remain for Dr.

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Strickland. But I think it's telling that the representation that is being given about Dr.

35:12

Strickland isn't really accurate to who Dr. Strickland is. And I, just for curiosity, I decided,

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I know I've done a lot of work on Dr. Strickland's theology and you can get the book in Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

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You can look at some of my other videos on it where I go through his lectures and I go through all of that.

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But I thought, well, you know, what if he's changed a little bit over the last few years? So within the last year, here are two theologians that he recommends.

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One of them I wasn't, I was familiar with. So one of them, though, I wasn't as much.

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Here are two theologians, I just want to show you, here's Dr. Strickland recommending two theologians that are not

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Orthodox in any way, shape or form, as far as I can tell, at least their soteriology.

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Garner C. Taylor, he was a pastor in the Northeast and he was in his heyday, really during the

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Civil Rights Movement. He was a wonderful exegete. He would actually send vehicles down to Montgomery as they were executing the

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Montgomery bus boycott. And so they had these large vehicles that would take people from home to work, and especially people who were more advanced in age to make the bus boycott successful.

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And then he's just a wonderful leader as well. So he and Martin Luther King Jr.,

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Martin Luther King Sr., Benjamin Elijah Mays, George Kelsey, they were all a part of the

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National Baptist Convention under the leadership of Joseph H. Jackson, but then they really wanted to engage culture, especially as it pertains to racial reconciliation issues in a different way.

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So they began a new denomination in the early 1960s called the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

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The word progressive probably has negative theological overtones, but really they were trying to make progress in the public square as it pertained to racial reconciliation.

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So Garner C. Taylor, I think, is a fantastic pastor theologian for us to be able to read. He'll challenge us in many ways with his pulpit ministry.

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Liberation and Reconciliation by J .D. Otis Roberts. I really appreciate how he's trying to do these two things at once.

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Make a move towards liberating black people in particular, and others as well, from suffering, from oppression, but it's for the sake of allowing people to be reconciled one to another.

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Roberts would say that liberation is not the end goal, it's liberation to have people who are equals come together as the family of God.

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And so I think liberation and reconciliation are two concepts that he begins to tease out throughout the book in very robustly theological terms that really allows people to hold in tension what it means to make progress, but unto a goal that's commensurate with scripture.

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Now, I need to be crystal clear here because this can be easily misunderstood, but here's the thing. It is okay to admire flawed men, sinful men who excelled in certain areas, who made positive contributions, who showed good character.

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It's okay to wanna pass that down to your kids. Here's what's not okay, and here's, I think, what

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Dr. Strickland, to some extent, is doing. Taking the negative qualities of flawed men, the things they did that actually were wrong, and not everything that these men did,

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I'm saying, is wrong in all circumstances. In fact, some of the things that I think Dr. Strickland is pointing out about Dr.

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Gardner C. Taylor may have been very noble, but taking things that they were not just wrong on, but very wrong on, the gospel being really the most important thing, that if you get wrong,

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I mean, it's just, it doesn't get worse, okay?

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So, he's in, think of it this way. Dr. Strickland is in a Christian forum in these particular videos.

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It's a Christian publishing company asking him, and go to the links in the info section if you wanna see it, about African -American theologians, about his favorite theological books, and he's answering these questions by recommending to this

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Christian, presumably, audience, Gardner C. Taylor, J. D. S.

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Roberts, two people who did not have the Orthodox gospel. They had a false gospel, and he doesn't even give a qualification.

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He just presents it as if these are people to really emulate, to really look to, to really study what they were preaching and teaching, and it'll be good for you, and this is obviously, in all the things

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I've talked about with Dr. Strickland, these are not the most egregious things that Dr. Strickland's ever said. They're just the most recent things that I saw on YouTube, and I just thought, man, it's still, he hasn't changed as far as, he's still saying the same kinds of things.

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He's still recommending things, and this isn't fundamentalist second -degree separation that, oh my goodness, he's associated with this person who's associated with this person.

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It's not that. It's that he's specifically recommending these particular theologians for the wrong reasons.

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This is what Gardner Taylor said about the gospel.

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But we may come to the place where we can say it is finished.

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But that we must come by the I must way. I must do my task today.

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I must teach this class. I must plead this case.

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I must minister to this case. Say it is finished.

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Now, what did Jesus mean when he said it is finished? Of course, he was talking about the payment for our sins being made.

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He had done it all. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. That's all he was saying. It is finished.

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He had completed the suffering, the sacrifice that was needed in order to make a way so we could be right with God.

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So our payment, our debt of sin could be completely 100 % satisfied. That's what

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Jesus meant when he said it is finished. However, Gardner C. Taylor, when he says it is finished, he says it means we must follow the

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I must way. That we work ourselves to the bone and then when our hands collapse from being limp, then we can say finally it is finished.

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Well, that is the way of death and destruction because we will never be able to work ourselves into the point of paying for our sins.

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Jesus is the only one that could pay for our sins. There's nothing, the I must way is the road to perdition.

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It's works righteousness and it's not inconsistent with other things that Gardner Taylor said.

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I have a few books, snippets that I went online and I was looking around to see if I could find where he defines the gospel.

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Here's one of the books he wrote called Our Sufficiency is of God. And here's what he says in that particular book.

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Humor, like all components of communication, lies shrouded in mystery, yet it penetrates even to the recesses of the heart.

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No wonder one theologian says angels break through us when wholesome laughter abounds. In genuine mirth, we experience as God's grace.

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In fact, humor possesses the capacity to brighten the hard demand the gospel makes on us Christians.

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Whoa, the hard demand? Well, the gospel makes a hard demand on us, really? The way not easy despite what some assert requires focus and serious attention, discipline too.

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Biblical preachers project that hard truth. Yet if both preacher and listener live out the requirement of the gospel, balance must characterize lifestyle, perspective must refresh the soul, a good laugh helps.

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Man, that really doesn't jive with my burden is light. That really doesn't sound like good news, does it?

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It's a works righteousness gospel. It's a social gospel. Here's another book by Gardner C.

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Taylor called Faith in the Fire. And in that particular book, he says this, God to be our

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God must enter the arena of our troubles, the theater of our operation. This is the heart of the good news we call the gospel.

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Now, let me stop there. That it sounds exactly like liberation theology. I'll keep going. We have a God who comes where we are.

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We can hear in the distance the cry of one who has stood over a fallen and wounded race and has watched the

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God of all the earth feel their loneliness, participate in their heartbreak. We have no less a gospel than that God is kin to us.

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One hears the word of the brave old book and takes hope for our heart weights for a God who can feel our sorrow and share our heart's desires.

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Nothing about propitiation, nothing about adoption, reconciliation, nothing about sins being paid for, that transaction.

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This is the liberation theology type gospel. It's a social gospel and it's works righteousness.

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And this is who, without qualification, Walter Strickland recommends this person and not as this is a great civil rights leader and I'm in a civil rights forum and this is someone, he's recommending this in a

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Christian forum on Christian publishing. And it's so consistent with what he's done in the past with James Cone.

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And he does it with, again, with J. Diotis Roberts. And I don't want to reinvent the wheel with J.

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Diotis Roberts, but you can go to the book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. I know this is like the third time I've mentioned it, but I have a whole section in that particular book on Walter Strickland.

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And I talk about J. Diotis Roberts and I show that this man was not preaching the true gospel.

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He was preaching a really what amounts to a social gospel as well.

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And so this is who Walter Strickland is still out there promoting. And that's sad to me.

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And it just shows that despite all the work that's been done out there, and I'm not the only one, but the correction that's been made, the information, the attempts to just show where this is an error, it's fallen flat and he's continuing to go in the same direction.

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And he's aware of it. He talks about being aware of it, but he's going in the same direction. And you have people like Alan Moseley running cover for this, using

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Dr. Strickland as this example, this glowing example of just such a great person that's teaching at the seminary who really just views everyone as his identities in Christ and these other ethnic things don't matter.

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And they clearly do to Dr. Strickland. They clearly do. Of course, the most important thing isn't that, it's the theology that he's advocating.

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So the reason I bring this up, John, why'd you bring this up? I bring this up just because this is a play that I think

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I'm just getting so tired of. And I get messages from people quite regularly where it's not as much now as it used to be.

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There was a period, I think, from 2020, 2021, where I was getting a lot more of this, but I still get a lot of it, where they're saying, look, my pastor is running cover for this false teacher.

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You've talked about him, John. You've shown his false teaching. And my pastor's saying none of that is true. Someone I trust is saying none of that is true.

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They're promoting him. And it's discouraging because people that may have an orthodox view of the gospel,

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I'm not sure, I don't know much about Dr. Mosley other than he was well -respected and he's part of the old guard.

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But this is a guy though who is, he's using that respect he has to really shield.

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I think that's practically at least how it's working out. It's shielding Dr. Strickland. And it's making a space for Dr. Strickland to operate in these ways and to continue to pump in this stuff.

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In my heart would be that Dr. Strickland just repents of it. There's nothing wrong with him. Here's the thing too.

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I need people to hear me say this. There's absolutely nothing wrong with him being proud of who he is. Being a black person, being an

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American, a black person in America, there's nothing wrong with him identifying that way, being proud of it, wanting to minister to what he calls his people.

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There's nothing wrong with even being interested in the history of his people and wanting to teach about it and talk about it in the proper venues and looking at flaws, looking at things that have taken place that are wrong.

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I don't have a problem with any of that. My critique has always been a theological one of Dr.

48:48

Strickland. And yeah, I pointed out historical things here and there when he brings up things that don't exactly jive.

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Like when he talked about in 2020, I remember there was a panel he was on where he was talking about the police and understanding the rioters and kind of needing to understand them first when they put a brick through a window.

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And I remember him talking about how the slaves had a pure, more pure gospel than slave masters because of their experience in slavery.

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But even that was not a historical critique I had. There was a historical element, but it was a theological critique.

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And that's all I've ever had. And it concerns me because I've been to Southeastern. My end is from there.

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And I've seen what this kind of thing can do. And the students tend to get more radical than the professor often.

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And these places are still training social justice warriors to some extent. And that's what the people at conservative churches in Raleigh and across this country,

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I don't think all seem to understand. And it's because they have people like Dr. Mosley coming and saying the glowing things that he's saying.

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So if they don't find out through podcasts like this, they're not really gonna find out. So anyway, now they know, maybe some of them do.

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But you can go to the links in the info section and there's a whole lot more resources because for some of you who are new to this, this may be raising more questions than it's answering.

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And I would just advise you, what I say is inconsequential. Go to the sources and go to the word of God and compare them.

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That's all I want you to do. I'm helping connect dots, but you can connect those dots yourself. You don't need me to do it.

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I'm just helping you see where to look. So go to the info section. If you need to do more research, it's all there.

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And I hope that helps some of you in situations in which this is a concern. Cause I know it's a concern for many of you in the

50:41

SBC and you don't get a lot of answers and it's unfortunate. And in all humility,

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I just want to say to people who might be watching from the other side, cause I know they watch, they keep an eye on me,

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Dr. Strickland included, that man, all I would, my deepest longing and desire would be to see repentance.

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And I have no ill will. There's no ax to grind. There's no hatred on my part. It's just the purity of the gospel is worth defending.