Is It Worth Fighting for the SBC?

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Welcome, once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, as always, John Harris. We have a panel, sort of.

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We have two people, two guests with me today who are going to be talking about Southern Baptist related issues for all you

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Southern Baptists out there. I know there's a number of you in the audience, some of you bitterly clinging to the denomination, trying to keep it orthodox.

00:33

Others, maybe your former Southern Baptist, but you're still interested because you're concerned about the left wing drift and maybe you've left because of that.

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But either way, this is the largest Protestant denomination. And so it's going to still be an ongoing conversation on this podcast, to some extent, at least.

00:51

And I thought it would be helpful and fruitful to have Mark Devine with us, who is a writer who actually is a professor at Beeson Divinity School, teaching the history and doctrine track.

01:03

He's a former pastor. But he's the way that I've interacted or heard about Mark is through his writings in The Western Journal, American Thinker, Spectator and The Federalist.

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And then we also have with us Pastor Richard Henry, who's the pastor at New Harvest Baptist Church in Kentucky. And we've met before.

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He's in my mind, he's kind of probably where your average conservative Southern Baptist is going to be with a church, kind of probably out in a working class area and concerned about what's going on.

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And so he's going to weigh in with his perspective on what's happening as well. So welcome, gentlemen. Thank you so much for giving me some of your precious time.

01:39

Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks, John. Appreciate it. My pleasure. So I want to start with you, Mark. I probably should.

01:46

Can I call you Dr. Mark Devine? No. We've known each other on a personal level a little bit just from correspondence and so forth.

01:54

So, Mark, I just wanted to ask you about your latest piece. You talk about this issue with the federal government, and the

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Biden administration now investigating or saying they're going to the Southern Baptist Convention and the

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Southern Baptist reaction to me. I just was a little surprised. Nothing surprises me. But that was surprising a little that they're just saying, hey, come on in.

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We have nothing to they didn't even say we have nothing to hide. It was more of like almost like a jubilant celebration.

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Maybe that's over overreaction, but they just they can't wait, it seems like, to be investigated. So what do you make of all this,

02:28

Mark? Well, it reminded me of what happened when Donald Trump issued an executive order related to the 1964

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Civil Rights Act and then had the Justice Department send a letter to President Eisgruber at Princeton because they had spent several months doing everything they could to say we are racist.

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And so racist. Well, then that is a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

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And as soon as the executive order was issued, it was the last year of the Trump administration.

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Then immediately, Eisgruber put out a very gracious letter saying we're going to cooperate utterly.

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And that makes perfect sense because the executive branch is the branch that has the guns.

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And one of the mantras that we often hear from kind of the woke

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Tim Keller movement in evangelicalism, they have several of these mantras that they've taken straight from the political rhetoric.

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And one is don't live by fear. But of course, every person who is wise takes precautions against warranted threats.

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And one way to view how they have acted is that they they act according to warranted threats.

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And so when the DOJ, the Department of Justice comes knocking, you're going to have to buck up and deal with them because they do have the power to hurt you greatly.

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And I'm quite sure that is what is in mind here, because if what we're seeing is a

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Marxist movement that was really perfected in many ways by Antonio Gramsci, the head of the

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Italian Communist Party. He was he was imprisoned and wrote his prison notebooks.

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But he saw that we needed to march through the institutions in order to achieve the

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Marxist goals. And he recognized, as Marx did, that the family and the church are the number one threats.

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And there could be no bigger prize for this movement than to fully than to even more undermine the witness of the largest nomination in America that voted 80 plus percent for Trump.

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And so that's how I view what is happening. So you think it's a political move? It's directed against political opposition to some extent.

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And it's not a surprise, it sounds like to you, that they would react in the way that they're reacting.

05:06

I suppose what I thought would happen would be there would be a little self -reflection about this. It's like, how do we get here?

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You know, oops, we kind of did this whole thing with waiving attorney client privilege and all getting on this bandwagon about systemic abuse.

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So, you know, sexual abuse is such a problem. It's just everywhere in the

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SBC. Let's get guideposts to come in. I thought there would be at least some maybe some some just oops, but I don't see that at least.

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It seems like they're sticking to their narrative. And that's surprising to me a little bit, at least.

05:44

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I mean, were you surprised at all, Mark, about any of that? There wasn't self -reflection.

05:51

I think there is self -reflection, but publicly because of the nature of the threat, the

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Department of Justice, which we now know works well with the FBI, the nature of the threat, they only want to present a posture of of of cooperation.

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That's that's what they want to project because they're going to have to cooperate and they will cooperate.

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And so certainly behind the scenes, I'm sure they're thinking and feeling and saying some of the things you said.

06:25

Well, I would be hopeful about that, but hopefully for the right reasons. Well, Pastor Henry, how do you feel being a member of a denomination now in your, you know, your kind of average country church out there?

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You're now part of this big denomination that's under federal investigation. Yeah, yeah.

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I mean, somebody sent me the article, I think, last week and a half ago. And of course, this is right on the heels of FBI going into Mar -a -Lago with Trump's house, his residence.

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And we know that Obama and others have targeted Tea Party groups, you know, 10, 12 years ago through the

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IRS. And I mean, there's there's multiple things. And we have what is eighty seven thousand new IRS agents being appointed by Biden.

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I mean, it's easy to like get all up in arms and oh no, oh no, the government. But it's not unwarranted because there are so many abuses.

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There are so many things that are out here and then they're targeting these particular people.

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I mean, are they going to go after everybody else with sexual abuse? I mean, I know we've got

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Epstein and some of these other guys that are all friends with big Washington and big government, but there's others to Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood.

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I mean, there's so many teachers, Cosby. Right. I mean, exactly. I mean, there's so much overlap with sexual abuse.

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It's such a broad term. It's definitely it's closer to home with the

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SBC. And it is a little unusual. I read an article, the one that was it was Baptist Press and it was yeah, written and like everything's open.

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I mean, I I attended a graduated Southern Seminary. And, you know, he's the president there and he's one of the people that signed it as if they're, you know,

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Biden and his people are going to come to Southern and, you know, look at stuff and write stuff down and look through the files.

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I mean, I don't know what obviously to expect. But it's very, to say the least, unnerving.

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But again, we're a bottom up organization. So how much this would really affect the local church?

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I think most people want it to because they kind of have Roman Catholicism in their rearview mirror as far as how every church works, so -called, but Bible churches, non -denominational churches and, of course,

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Baptist churches are all autonomous. We own our own building. The church appointed me. I wasn't appointed by someone else.

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I don't answer to anybody but the Lord. Right. And so, you know, the SBC president can call me and tell me

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I can do this or that. And you shouldn't do this or that. And I could say, hey, you know, Barbara, you're a nice guy and all.

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But no, thanks. So I don't know how much it'll affect the local church. But it doesn't hurt your brand or your where you're at.

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It's not going to like people aren't going to say, oh, it's Southern Baptist, man. They're yeah, those are a bunch of perverts.

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I'm not going there. I know. No, I don't know. I had a conversation with a former pastor for my channel that's going to drop sometime next month.

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And he's my pastor in California. And he moved around a little bit. Him and his wife are in Kentucky now. They're east and east of Louisville.

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And so I sat down with them face to face. And he pastored a church or pastors, a church that was in the

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SBC, changed their name and ended up leaving the SBC. And it made sense. I mean, he's very convictional and just kind of straight to the

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Bible, doesn't care about all the politics. But that was one of the things that he addressed as far as people calling the church and like, oh, is is anchor

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Bible church, is that a is that a SBC church? Yeah, yeah. We're oh, oh, thanks.

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You know, and so he's witnessed that they're east of Louisville. I haven't. But, you know,

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I don't advertise it either. You know, it's a Baptist church. I like the SBC enough. But, you know, to quote

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Tom Askell and others, it's God doesn't need the SBC. You know, he doesn't need any denomination really.

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He doesn't need us at all. So. Right, right. Yeah. Well, it's going to be

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I think moving forward. I don't know how this is all going to play out, but it's certainly I think the concern that people

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I would think would have who are kind of laymen, Southern Baptists, your average pew sitters is going to be, you know, what does this do to our denomination's reputation?

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You know, and the other thing is what when the federal government comes in, especially the

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Biden administration, and they investigate this, are they using the same metric Guidepost uses? I mean, are they going to see abuse and things that there really isn't necessarily evidence for?

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But there was a power disparity and we must believe women. So therefore, this is a case of abuse.

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That's, you know, Mark, what could happen? I mean, what if they come in? I'm just scenario here. They come into Southern, let's say, since Pastor Henry brought that up and they say we're going to investigate

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Southern, oh, guess what, you guys have a problem here. The Jennifer Lyle situation or maybe they find other things that really don't constitute situations biblically that would be considered at least provable, you know, sexual or at least the evidence, let's just say, isn't there for a sexual crime that's been committed or something.

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But they're going to go with it anyway. What I don't know if you know what happens in that scenario. What can they do to Southern Seminary or to the

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SBC in general if they if they operate by the metric I just laid out?

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Well, they will find problems. It's a large domination and the DOJ will find problems.

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The domination has already found problems and admitted to those. And this this is not warranted in any way.

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All you have to do is look at the Southern border and look at the defund police and the disinterest that the

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DOJ has in those to understand what what is happening.

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It will continue to damage the brand, the brand of Baptist, whether Southern is on it or not, whether it's

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Southern Baptist, has been greatly damaged for decades. For most people that we're trying to reach with the gospel, they think of Westboro Baptist Church.

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I saw someone from, oh, it was Australia or somewhere. And I don't

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I've forgotten what is what had happened. But because they were taking some conservative stand and this was like,

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I don't know. I think it might have been Finland and this woman in Finland who's a conservative and she was accused of being a fan of Westboro Baptist Church.

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So the brand is already very deeply damaged. And that's a media driven.

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Part of that is that we haven't had people in our denomination who sought to protect the brand.

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And they've given up, they gave up the brand a long time ago. The seeker movement did that. And the non -denominational mindset that it has that we've got to, if any group has a history, then their brand is going to be messed up because sinners are involved.

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And so that's happened to Southern Baptist. And so let's go with a generic Christianity.

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And that has also come into the churches where there's not a sense of ownership, bond, esprit de corps about the denomination that I had when

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I was 12 years old. Right. That's all gone. It's generic Christianity. It's us and Jesus and maybe

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Luther, Calvin, whatever. But it's not anything with any any any meat and bones on it.

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And so that's a problem with motivating pastors, you know, to to to vote that combined with local church autonomy, because the convention cannot hurt a church.

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They cannot threaten a local church. The issue here are the assets and what those assets are going to do as long as they are there in the convention.

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It's more about caring about someone other than your local church, the involvement in the convention, the local churches don't need the convention to be a local church, but America has gained a lot of benefit from there being a very large evangelical conservative denomination.

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And if Paige Patterson had said it's too bad, I'm going, well, then I and a whole really two generations of pastors, of professors who were conservative never would have been hired, those those those thousands of students would have never come through through our classrooms.

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And so it's really not the issue of the SBC is not about the local church per se, but it is about thousands of people who will be educated and will pastor churches in this country.

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Yeah, that's the concern I have now. I think you very rightly said, and I hadn't really thought of this, is that they gave up on the brand that's quotable.

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They gave up on the brand years ago. And that is something that I think is so true, Mark, because I remember even just being a seminary student at Southeastern, people were more loyal to Danny Akin or to even there.

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They I mean, you had your kind of your Al Mohler wannabes and people seem to follow their celebrity pastor.

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J .D. Greer is in that area. A lot of people like J .D. Greer and nothing wrong with having role models, obviously, but I just sense the loyalty was not to the denomination or even to the church, sometimes local church, as much as it was to these powerful individuals who have power in the the denominational structure.

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And now we've come to a point where I think it's so divided.

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You have people on one side who can't even find fellowship with people who are across the aisle politically in the convention.

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And so it's sort of by default splitting out. Let me ask you this question, either of you on this.

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I so I keep hearing from this is a conservative, more critique of this whole the Southern Baptist Convention direction, the elites and where they're taking it, especially with the

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MeToo stuff. And I keep hearing it's just all pragmatism. It's pragmatism. It's pragmatism. It's pragmatism. How is this?

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Here's the thing. How is this pragmatic? I just feel like you see what I'm saying. Like you go down this sexual abuse path.

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Our denomination stinks. Let's give up on our brand. We're awful. Come on in Biden administration.

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Oh, who could have predicted this? I don't see anything pragmatic about it. I just see that this is like you think this is like a really dumb move if you're trying to preserve the denomination, but maybe that's not what they're trying to do.

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So what do you guys think of that? What's the motive here? If it is a pragmatism, is it not?

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What is it? The word pragmatism is a little thin. I will say this, that.

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Seven years ago, when the scales started falling off my eyes and I began to discover close friends of mine and others who were buying into some of the woke language and things for a while,

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I tried to make sense of what was happening through, for example, the taxonomy that H.

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Richard Niebuhr produced in 1951 about how the church, the various postures the church has taken with regard to culture, politics and the two of those those elements,

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Christ against culture, more of an Anabaptist stand apart, that's a stream in the

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Baptist movement, but also for the Reformed and even for Southern Baptists, as opposed to Anabaptists, the

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Christ transforming culture, Kuyperism, this kind of thing. But over time, what

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I discovered is when you try to impose a coherent view of the church as over against culture and politics, it doesn't work.

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What makes more sense of more that has happened to me is this.

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It's that they saw that they believe that the arc of history is moving to blue areas.

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It is. We're living in a world that is getting more and more urban, more and more blue, Democrat voting.

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And unlike the Seeker movement, but well, like the Seeker movement and the church group movement, they they studied a target population that they wanted to reach.

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And for the Seeker movement, it was suburban populations. But for this movement, it's what

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I call blue communities and their college educated Democrat voting citizens of our these metro areas and then anywhere around a university and increasingly everywhere because social media.

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So in the same household, you'll have Bible believing grandparents, parents, but then the children have been captured by the culture.

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This makes more sense of what they've done is they're they keep they unlike Protestant liberals who rejected their doctrines and their confessions of faith like the

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Seeker movement, they kept their Orthodox confessions of faith, but their branding, messaging and platforming is all geared towards the sensibilities of the target population they're trying to reach and the target population they want, the blue communities.

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Then go back and see how their rhetoric is adjusted as events happen.

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George Floyd, the rise of Trump, how to handle the Me Too movement.

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And then you begin to have a key, a lens that helps to make sense of a lot more than any other posture towards what has happened.

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So so pragmatic, yes, pragmatic. But but in what way pragmatic? And I'm saying pragmatic in the sense that they decided we're throwing in with young people coming up.

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And that's why they have worked so hard to to to groom and to woo people like David Platt and Matt Chandler.

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And Matt Chandler could get away with calling Southern Baptists fools and morons, but he's not kicked aside, even though that's not very winsome, is it?

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But he's kept because he represents that population that they believe is the key to the future.

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And years ago, when I was friends with Darren Patrick, he's he's dead now. He's not alive.

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And but we were planting a church in Kansas City. And Al Mohler was having Darren and many of these other

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Driscollites and others, and they were they were they were casting their lot with sort of the killer target audience.

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And I think that helps us understand kind of a more complex understanding of pragmatism, where they think history is going.

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And they said these people that that built these institutions, they're old, they're dying.

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And we'll we want to keep as many of them as we can because they give a lot of money. But the future is is with the blue communities and that's where we're going to cast our lot.

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Yeah, that's fascinating. And it does make sense of a lot of the things that we've seen, I believe, at least when

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I was at Southeastern, I remember I had a friend who was on the Southeastern Society, so these are the donors.

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And in their donors meetings, they're telling them we have to get minorities and young people into the fold or else we die.

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It can't be a denomination of old white men. And so that was why we need kingdom diversity. That was the whole plan behind that.

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And you can go back to 2010, the Great Commission resurgence. And I'm all we're talking about the

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Southern Baptist Convention doesn't diversify, then it'll die. And and I don't know along the lines what all the chain, the links in the chain are.

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But I know that this that thinking has kind of permeated and become the policy of the various entities in the convention.

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So, Pastor Henry, I mean, you you're more in a rural working class area. And I mean, you went to Southern, though.

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I mean, do you see what Mark's talking about? And then how how do you relate to this as someone who's

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I mean, you're just where most Southern Baptists probably are, you're not going to be interacting with these highly indoctrinated,

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I mean, educated people from the big city who have progressive ideas.

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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's I didn't see too much. I mean, I was Southern from late 14 to 19.

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And, you know, I didn't see a lot. There was a few classes, really just one class and a couple of books in the bookstore.

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I never took like Jarvis Williams and a few people like that just because it just didn't work out that way, but kind of late to the game of maybe 2018

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MLK stuff and MLK 50. Right. I think that's what it was. And then at Resolution Nine in 2019.

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And, you know, it was like, wait, what's going on? Like, there's this and like, sure, we want the Gospels for everybody.

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And sure, there's roles for everybody. And, you know, great. But like, you know, you'd hear this kind of what we need reconciliation or racial reconciliation.

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You're like, well, like reconciling to win and like Babel, Genesis three, like 1960.

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Like, where are we supposed to go back to to reconcile? You know, that's still a question I've never really had an answer to as far as I don't know.

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I mean, in one sense. Yeah, I get what Mark's saying for sure is the blue and the this.

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And I remember as a 20, 21 year old unbeliever, I called myself a Republican where I was still pro -life.

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But I didn't really care about taxes and who got married or whatever. And this is before Obergefell and other things.

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And but I still was like, well, I don't kill babies. I don't want to do these other things like and I kind of had this

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Christian upbringing ish, but I wasn't a believer at all. Although I would have said I was a Christian, but that didn't mean anything really.

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But I think it's just I think that's always the case, though. You know, we hear people, well, nobody wants to work these days.

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I found a meme and it was multiple clips back to the 1920s about how people are lazy, how young people don't want to work, how people this you can't find good work.

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Well, we hear that all the time today. And in one sense, I think we this is why history. And I was, you know,

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Mark probably knows this even better than me with knowing history there, there's trends that this age group does this.

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Prosperity brings this poverty brings this. Men act this way in this situation.

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Women generally act this way in this situation. And there's. It's not cyclical like we're in some infinite loop, but I think human nature only goes so far and being blue sounds great when you don't have a mortgage, right, when you don't have a wife and children.

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And then as soon as you get married, you realize, oh, that's really stupid. Why would I do that? You know, I know blue people who are far more red in their 30s and 40s, not believers than they were in their 20s because, you know, you're young, you're healthy, who cares?

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And so I think there is that level of capturing the youth. But I think that happens with the gospel.

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When you have actual conviction, you actually preach the word, then you're going to capture those people, even if they are blue or tinted blue, that those seeds are going to bring fruitful righteousness and the oaks that will blossom far later, as opposed to pussyfooting around, well,

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Adam and Eve weren't really real fallout global flood. Jesus, maybe he's not the only way.

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And you do these things. You stay firm on the conviction of the word that centuries of people have. And I mean, just look at history.

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It might be hard, but the truth always wins. And so I don't think having a blue direction,

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I love Doug Wilson. I know he's post mill, but, you know, what does he say? Stupidity isn't isn't a strategy, you know, and it's like, yeah,

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I mean, some of these and I get it. They still have media and Hollywood and all these other things. But you can only go so far.

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And I mean, the gospel will prevail. Christ will win. It might be hard, but I think there's just that level of you're going to get my opposition.

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You're going to get fighting. There's going to be problems. But when people get reality slapped in their face, they're going to say, oh, yeah,

26:35

I can't I can't not work. I got to work. And you have children. You're like, well, of course, do the job, do the work.

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And then you're like, wait a second. I can't I can't be a socialist. I can't do these things because this doesn't even work in my tiny little family, let alone in the church, let alone in my city.

26:49

The point you're making, I think, is that, you know, you can try to get on a jump on the bandwagon, but ultimately you don't know where this whole bandwagon is actually leading, because these young people that you're thinking you're going to attract and save your denomination with actually in 10 or 20 years may not be as blue as you're anticipating.

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And so I don't think there's much foundation in there really isn't much foundation in the blue. I mean, what is Francis Schaeffer saying?

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I mean, the unbelievers standing on thin air, they steal from Christianity. They steal from God with morals and ethics.

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And that's wrong. I mean, if you're a true blue person, you're an atheist. You don't believe in God, but you have no way to stand on actual morals to say that's wrong and this is right.

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And we need to stand for racial justice. There's nowhere to stand. And young people, they might be captured by that at the university because that's all they hear.

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That's why you need to have apologetics and university ministries and YouTube online.

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I know you've got a big influence in that way, too. And constantly having that second or third opinion against those who are indoctrinated from K through 12 and up into the university.

27:54

So I don't know. I mean, it's it might be somewhat pragmatic for SBC to answer the question. You know,

28:00

I grew up in upstate New York. Now is a red area. New York red is different than red, though, where y 'all are coming from.

28:08

I think it's very you know, a New York Republican tends to be pro choice, tends to be, you know, we should have some taxes.

28:16

They're a little more to the left of even some Democrats in some rural areas in the

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South. But there anyway, it was Republican, we'll say. And, you know, it's it switched recently.

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But the the major city near me or the larger city in our county at least was totally blue.

28:38

Right. And that's where I went to my first experience with college was a community college there. And I was in a

28:45

Christian group. I was actually a leader in the Christian fellowship on campus and stuff. And, you know, this is the thing that really

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I don't know, just it. I don't know if this is a disconnect with Southern Baptists because they don't understand this or I don't know what it is.

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But it was obvious to me that if you're going to be in a an environment that is against what you believe,

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I mean, it's exactly what you just described, Pastor Henry, I mean, they were, you know, the atheistic, secular

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LGBT, the whole nine yards. Right. If you're going to be ministering in that, it doesn't it's not to your advantage to then try to go halfway with them on those right.

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And to try to and that's that's what I've seen. But we didn't run our group that way. Our Christian group was very unapologetically

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Christian and Orthodox and and even the political implications of that.

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It's not like we wore that on our sleeve. But yes, we are against the profaning of marriage.

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Yes, we are against abortion. Yes, we believe in taking personal responsibility.

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We believe each of the whole nine yards. And and I think that actually created more.

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We became like the second largest group on campus because people can see, especially other Christians who are sheepish in class, class, who didn't want to stand up.

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All of a sudden they see those guys are willing to stand up. You know, the members of our group, when we would take classes even together, we would hold firm together in class against the

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Darwinism or whatever. And that was attractive because young people want something solid.

30:29

They want conviction. Exactly. It's either this or that. This mushy middle that we've had for like Mark brought up with the secret sensitive and all that.

30:37

It's not worked, obviously. I mean, and you have megachurches now that are still very much churches so -called.

30:44

But what do they what do they believe? What do they stand for? Are they really? Did they rejoice at the overturning of Roe v.

30:50

Wade? Are they rejoicing at these other things and mourning these other things? No, they're just kind of just keep doing their whatever.

30:57

And it's either either know what I believe or what you believe or what Mark believes.

31:03

And like, yeah, I want to know more about this, Jesus, or I hate Jesus. And that's it.

31:08

And you know that there's this this this stark contrast versus like, which Jesus are you talking about? Well, you know, all

31:14

Jesus's are the same Jesus. I mean, I like to say everybody has a Jesus, right? Mormons, Muslims, the secular person,

31:21

Hindus. They all have. We all have a Jesus. The question is, which Jesus do we worship? You know, and and I don't know.

31:27

I mean, if they don't be a threat, then you're not actually doing anything. Or as a friend to say, yes,

31:33

I want to hear more about this bread and that's living water that you're offering, because this atheist, this agnostic crap that sorry, my my parents gave me as a kid,

31:43

I didn't ever know what to do or what was right. What was wrong is kind of whatever be myself. And now,

31:49

I mean, we see this with gender transition stuff and and kids already coming out of that and young young adults.

31:55

And I don't know. I mean, we look at Prager U and there's there's Daily Wire and there's other organizations that aren't necessarily

32:01

Christian. Jordan Peterson, like they're more firm in the truth and just common sense that God has written these things on the heart.

32:12

And yet you have others that you're like, really? This is our denominational leaders. This is the president of the convention. This is the this is the guy

32:17

I'm supposed to read. Like, what is where are the men to stand up and say, right, this is right. And this is wrong.

32:22

Like the courage to lead or these weird, right. Exactly. Yeah. Strong, strong titles. But then they go halfway.

32:28

That's the thing. They go halfway or they go part of the way with me to movement. In this case, we can accept some of these.

32:35

We can even have an organization that's pro LGBT do a rundown of our denomination and give us a report and recommendations.

32:43

We can accept the premises that are totally unbiblical streaming from that whole movement.

32:50

And and then when it comes back to bite us, I just don't see the clarion call somewhere to say.

32:57

That was wrong. Actually, this is what we believe we believe in in two or three witnesses.

33:04

We believe in a civil procedure here, a due process. We're not we're not anarchists where if we're just held to the tyranny of the accuser, you know, just because someone says something doesn't mean it necessarily happened, we know no one seems in a position of leadership seems to be able to say that and it's having the opposite effect,

33:25

I think, because the people who are on the left politically and are accepting all of these, let's just say anti -biblical ideas, many of them, you know, they just keep ripping the

33:37

Southern Baptist Convention, a new one. There doesn't seem to be any nurturing or care for the convention.

33:43

It's almost like they're the enemies of the convention and they even posture themselves that way. Yet they somehow have the reins of power.

33:49

And then people that are that grew up in the convention, that love the convention, that don't truly do,

33:56

I think. They they they don't want it to change the way that it has been changing.

34:02

They're kind of just left out high and dry. And I don't know how this thing rectifies itself. I mean, what do you predict is going to happen,

34:07

Mark? Well, first of all, you're talking about what works and what doesn't.

34:14

Well, the gospel is always the gospel. And a healthy church that is rooted in the

34:20

Bible is always a healthy church that's rooted in the Bible. But a compromise of the gospel has been very successful, measured in buildings, books and bodies.

34:35

Protestant liberalism dominated Europe and America, running from Henry Ward Beecher in America to Harry Emerson Fosdick.

34:46

And it was many decades and it had impact on many, many churches. And it provoked the fundamentalist modernist fight.

34:58

Famous people and presidents and politicians wanted to hear

35:04

Henry Ward Beecher, they wanted to hear Harry Emerson Fosdick. And when the church growth and seeker movement arose, it had enormous effects on all churches, even that didn't just embrace it, the music change, the loss of denominational education and nurturing of esprit de corps and a sense of a covenantal bond with people who are who are not alive and people that are not yet born.

35:32

It had enormous effects. And and now this one is it's not it's not, in my view, warranted to be that positive because we know the gospel is the gospel and that some young people at some point see it and then they go the other way.

35:53

What's happened is, is that the institutions of the largest Protestant denomination in America that educates about a third of all pastors in America are in the hands of people who are compromising the gospel.

36:07

So our side is not winning and there is nothing that indicates that's going to turn around.

36:12

I hope it does. But but but working in one of the ways

36:17

I described what's happening is is by focusing on the target audience. And that's the wave of the future.

36:23

Another way to think of it is which is the way the seeker movement did is we have products and services that we're offering to people who are shopping for products and services.

36:36

And in Birmingham, of course, there are many more churches that are full of people who voted for Trump and who believe the

36:44

Bible than there are people in the handful of large formerly skinny jeans churches.

36:54

But they've had barbecue and they've gotten a little bit bigger. But but but what what is true is is that is that those churches are much better at reaching and retaining for a while the younger people.

37:08

It has an enormous impact, even if later down the road they become the nuns. It's not the case that most of them eventually their eyes open, they become

37:16

Christians, they become the nuns. You know, Bill Hybels infamously did one of these longitudinal studies at his church to see are people becoming more

37:28

Christian, they had these indices that were good indices, people becoming more discipled, and he found out that they were they were not succeeding.

37:37

They had a big front door, they had a big back door. People weren't understanding their Bibles better.

37:43

They weren't witnessing and all of these kinds of things. And you say, see, it doesn't work.

37:49

Well, it worked in the sense that that model spread throughout the country and pastors all over copied parts of it because it did work in terms of buildings, bodies and books for a while.

38:03

And when you want to be seen as successful and you want to be able to pay salaries, you do that and you rationalize it.

38:10

And our pastors have done that. And I think that's part of the problem with motivating them to go to the convention, because they would have to bring in cultural and political messages where they haven't had any.

38:24

And it would feel like something alien. And they would have to get their people to care about the denomination the way many generations were and mine was in a way that they haven't been.

38:35

And it feels like something it feels like something from Mars. And so compromising on the gospel does work in the sense of having tremendous power and tremendous impact.

38:49

Now, we know who's going to win in the end. Jesus is going to win. But for the next 15 or 20 or 25 years.

38:56

Jesus is still going to be the winner, but it might mean watching the church decline. The Southern Baptist Convention, it is in decline.

39:05

Christianity is in decline in this country. And and I think that for a while they could point the entity heads of the

39:14

SBC and the Keller movement, it did have an incredible vitality. I worked in it.

39:19

I supported it. And it had incredible vitality and incredible preaching and all sorts of good things were going on that I saw firsthand.

39:29

But what I didn't see was that the people with the levers in their hand were hypersensitive to these blue community sensibilities in the same way the

39:39

Seeker Church was. They said, we saw what the Seeker Church did and we're not going to do that. We're going to put theology in the center.

39:46

And Seekers didn't say that. They kept their conservative theological confessions and said, we believe it all.

39:53

But the Keller movement said, we're going to make that mistake. But they did. And they did because they were high and they still are hypersensitive to the sensibilities of the audience that they targeted to grow in.

40:07

And eventually, though, that sensibility included, you better virtue signal that you accept this new anti -racism and you better virtue signal that you hate

40:18

Trump. And that's why the Overton window went that way. And so then they followed.

40:25

And that has created this incredible divide that's there. What they'd hope to do is keep the majority of these older people who aren't woke at all.

40:38

And they'll die off. Al Mohler said that in a panel a few years ago.

40:43

I saw it. Matt Chandler. And he said, look, the future is yours. It's not going to be the people that are 85.

40:51

It's going to be the people in this room. And he was doing that because Chandler had just said they asked him, what do you think about?

41:01

I just feel like there's always a chance that these Southern Baptists are going to make us all look like fools. You see?

41:07

Yeah. And so the message was, just wait. And they'll be dead. Yeah.

41:14

Well, I mean, I remember going to a prominent nine marks church in Raleigh area was in Durham, I guess, and attending there and they hearing things when

41:25

I was at the church, like, well, you know, we keep this American flag in here and the American Christian flag kind of typical set up on both sides of the the sanctuary.

41:36

Because if we were to remove it, we would just offend too many old people. But wink, wink, nod, nod. Of course, we want this removed, you know.

41:43

And that was it was this sort of transitionary, transitionary posture that I just found to be utterly unattractive.

41:52

Like it was just I didn't know there was so much mixed messaging in my mind. I didn't really exactly know who stood where, what the church was actually about.

42:04

And to me, the whole Southern Baptist Convention and Mark, maybe you can confirm or deny this, it seems if a historian was going to come, let's say, a hundred years from now and look back at this whole era, look at the seeker sensitive movement, look at now the woke church movement.

42:20

I would think that you could go back to the origination of the even new evangelicalism with the uneasy conscience of modern fundamentalism and just see that there is sort of a strategy laid out in there by Carl Henry, who with well -intentioned strategy.

42:40

But we're going to reach these kind of educated urban leaders.

42:47

And what modernity has taken from Christianity, what the pastors who have lost their prestige, the churches that have lost their place as cultural influencers, because now people are going to their psychologist instead of their pastor, right, for advice and that kind of thing, we're going to recapture all of that.

43:09

And the way we're going to do it is we're going to be Christians with the best psychologists and we're going to train Christians who are pastors who are going to be trained in psychology.

43:18

And then that fanned out into more social justice type concerns. You can look at the curriculum at Fuller Theological Seminary.

43:24

I did that once I went to their archive and I just looked at their curriculum over the period of like 15 years just to see what classes and programs they started adding and what they took away.

43:34

And it was just it was kind of like a mini or a on a smaller scale, a look at exactly what's happening in the

43:42

Southern Baptist Convention over a shorter period of time. They lost Orthodoxy in like 10 years.

43:48

Like it didn't take long at Fuller, but it's because they started out with this posture of where we're not going to be training just and it was a seminary.

43:58

Remember, it's not a university, it's a seminary. We're not going to just train pastors in the Bible. We are going to train the next generation of equipped psychologists so people will respect pastors more now and they'll go to their pastor more and we'll get that prestige we lost back.

44:13

And I just I don't know what you guys think, but I would think a historian years from now is going to look back and sort of see that as one big enchilada like that's that was like a hundred year period in which the church was desperately trying to find, quote unquote, relevance that they had lost, but using all these mechanisms and mechanisms and strategies that utterly failed, that basically destroyed the church's identity and just made it so, well, you have nothing to offer us if you're a psychologist and he's a psychologist, why don't

44:44

I go to the psychologist who's more acclaimed in the world, you know, I don't need to go to the pastor to get my problem solved.

44:53

And so it's like we we weren't different anymore. We just became the same the same all the same stuff that's happening in the world is just now being transported into the church, the same music, the same advice, the same everything, you know, and that's

45:09

I mean, that's big picture, I see. So so I'll ask you guys this and whoever wants to start can start. But in the

45:14

Southern Baptist Convention, as a result of all of this, and you can tell me whether you agree with my analysis or not, but you have now we don't know what a pastor is.

45:22

We have critical race theory masking. You know, now they're using all kinds of other terms like cultural intelligence and denying they're doing it.

45:30

But it's still being taught. We have the the soft peddling still of LGBT stuff in very creative ways, honestly, happening in certain quarters of the denomination.

45:44

We have the me too stuff that's ripping the denomination apart right now. I mean,

45:50

I don't know. The list just goes on. What give me the argument, because I know both of you kind of want to stay in the denomination or recapture it to some extent.

45:58

What do you tell pastors who are just saying, you know, I see all this and. I'll just pick up my ball and leave.

46:05

I just want to do ministry. I don't want to get involved in a political fight. Well, I am writing a book in which

46:12

I'll. Try to position the young restless and reform movement and how it developed in an arc that runs back to Schleiermacher, the father of Protestant liberalism, and I'll compare and contrast them, what they all have in common is that they end up, even though they wouldn't have used the word branding in the early 19th century, but they they are responsive to a an identifiable target audience.

46:43

And for Schleiermacher, it was the sensibilities of a modern man who'd had his his ability to trust the

46:54

Bible undermined by certain substreams in the

47:00

Enlightenment and the seeker movement and church growth movement. It was suburban populations and now now it's it's blue communities.

47:10

What we haven't had an opportunity to see in the Southern Baptist Convention lately, we did with the rise of the conservative resurgence under Page Patterson.

47:21

And so it hasn't been a straight line. This was an enormous anomaly, really, in church history for for denomination to be as far gone as it was and to turn around.

47:34

And so that's really probably unprecedented. The world, the Worldwide Church of God did.

47:40

But that was a few people deciding, whereas Page had to do it the hard way, you know, motivating people to go and vote and do that ten times in a row.

47:49

What we haven't had the opportunity now is like Pastor Henry was talking about is stand firm.

47:57

And part of this is not just a not just bad leadership, but lack of leadership.

48:03

And here's what I mean. It's one thing to put your finger up, wet it and put it into the cultural air and see how you can adjust yourself and remove barriers and be winsome and have something that has vitality for a while.

48:18

Leadership that we need is a person that says this is where I stand and here is why.

48:23

And they take people with them. They actually lead people, you see. And we haven't had a chance to do that.

48:30

The person who had the resources to do that was Al Mohler. When we look at the content of the briefing over decades, he had the resources to do it, but he chose not to.

48:46

He chose to go along and play ball enough.

48:53

And now all of these men that he made, you know, they were under him and they went and they had all these entities.

49:00

They won and they eventually decided, you know, when he when he said, I'm not

49:05

I'm not going to vote Democrat anymore. And when he put together the statement against critical race theory, although he left out systemic racism, that was a compromise they made.

49:15

And, you know, within 24 hours, Aiken was out there saying, well, we didn't say we don't agree that there's systemic racism, but I know those things.

49:26

They said, that's it, Al, you're done. And that's when they tapped Litton to scuttle

49:32

Mohler's. But here's what you say to people. Why not cut and run?

49:38

I don't expect anybody who hasn't experienced what it's like to be invested in a denomination.

49:46

And to have that esprit de corps, it's like a person who's never been in battle and been bonded with those they fight with or in sports.

49:54

But it's that kind of thing. It's a multigenerational thing. And you end up feeling there's an emotional thing here that's not to be dismissed because it's emotional.

50:07

God invented those, OK? And part of it is loving and caring about other people and our country and the gospel.

50:15

The emotional part that is not reducible to emotion, but it's this, is that I feel a sense of protectiveness.

50:26

And duty and loyalty to the people who built the $30 billion in assets that are going to continue to have effect on all of us, no matter whether we leave or go.

50:42

And so the prospects of success is one factor in why we do things.

50:51

God called some prophets to go speak to Israel and said, they're not going to listen to you. And we could say, well, if it's not going to be successful, just don't do it.

51:01

No, I'm going to use what you're going to say to judge those people. But you're still going to go preach.

51:07

OK, the other thing is the more right in front of us thing. If we win, and I think the prospects are very low, but if we do, it's an enormous win for America and the gospel.

51:24

And if we let them have it, they will have those assets to do damage.

51:30

Now, it's a cost benefit. There's things in both columns. It's already bad for us branding just to be a

51:36

Baptist. OK, and the way the Southern Baptists have been the last ten years, it's not a good thing.

51:45

But again, we have local church autonomy. And people don't understand that, but people in the churches do understand it, we do understand.

51:54

In fact, they understand it more than I did because now they don't even think about the denomination because their pastors don't nurture that in them.

52:03

Like God doesn't need the Southern Baptist Convention, he doesn't need either of you, but I'm not going to shoot you today.

52:09

No, that's good. It's point well taken. Yeah. Wow. So, I mean, no, those are good points.

52:16

And I really, I think, resonate with what you said about having a bond or an obligation to the past, because that's you could say similar things about the

52:24

United States. Of course, we don't get an option to be part of the country we're in. We're just there. So, yeah.

52:30

So I think sort of depending on what you look at, how you view the Southern Baptist Convention, whether it's simply a tool for ministry that you could keep, you know, if it doesn't serve its purpose, you can let it go, you know, people who who view it that way, they're not viewing it,

52:44

I think, the same way you view it, Mark, whereas it's kind of like I was born into this. I have an obligation. I and maybe that is part of the difference between those who would say, look, what fellowship is light with darkness?

52:55

I'm leaving. And then those who say, wait a minute, I have an obligation here. I have a responsibility.

53:01

I mean, Pastor Henry, I mean, did you do you resonate with that? Do you feel that that obligation or what are you thinking as a pastor of a,

53:10

I would say a typical Southern Baptist church who's concerned? Yeah, less so.

53:16

I mean, I grew up loosely in the church. Like I said, I didn't come to faith till probably twenty three in California.

53:22

So there are Southern Baptist churches there, but it wasn't they're not predominant. And so I grew up in going to Baptist churches.

53:30

But I mean, I love history. I'm a history guy. I really appreciate learning from history and trying to apply that even today, similar to how we do regular preaching.

53:40

Right. What is it? What's going on in the text and how does it apply to us? And so there's less of a connection.

53:46

When I visited Southern in twenty thirteen, I didn't realize how much things were just horrible.

53:53

You know, twenty, thirty years before that, forty years before that with the denial of the virgin birth and the crucifixion.

54:00

It's cosmic child abuse. There isn't a real Adam. There isn't a real Noah. There isn't a real Abraham. And the Canaanite conquest and all these other things were just all denied.

54:08

And these are people teaching at seminary. I mean, I think it was I had a conversation with somebody and he was Southern in the or Southeastern.

54:15

I think it was Southeastern in the 80s. And he was in the Navy, a real nice guy, really just bold, strong man, young man.

54:23

And he used to cuss like a sailor until he went to seminary. And it was cussed like a seminary professor like in the classroom.

54:30

And so this is the this is the world and the air that the

54:35

SBC was. And I don't think a lot of people today know that. And then it was turned around.

54:41

And so that's what drew me to Southern and the appointment of Al Mohler. And, of course, others. And I learned that along the way. And it just the

54:47

Lord opened up the door. And I'm thankful we're here and we moved eastward. But so there's less of a conviction of history,

54:54

I would say, just for the truth, though, just in general, you look at history again, the

54:59

Reformation, the split in 1054, even all the way back, what does the text say?

55:05

God has given us his word. There is a book, as the new phrase is. And what does it say? And how are people saved?

55:11

And this doesn't mean we don't have problems. It doesn't mean we don't have governments against us. It doesn't mean our neighbors may hate us or love us.

55:19

But what does the text say? You're going to be dead a lot longer than you're alive. And is it worth fighting for?

55:25

At least for now, I would say fighting for the truth even beyond just the SBC, because, you know,

55:32

God can use the SBC. He cannot use the SBC. Like Mark said, he could judge the SBC, which, if nothing else, hey,

55:38

I'm sticking around and say that's wrong. That's that's racist. That's evil. No, that's sin. This is what it says.

55:44

What are you guys doing? Aren't you Christian? You know, and at least somebody, you know, a group of us, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, going to the convention and so on, at least pushing and saying,

55:55

I'm not going with this, at least for now. And, you know, we'll see after New Orleans and maybe the year after that and how things go.

56:02

But I think for the truth, for the gospel, for how sinners are saved and redeemed,

56:08

I think it's worth it to just not say, well, whatever, I'm just going to go start my own denomination because, again, you have less influence, less power.

56:15

Yeah, the brands the brand is tarnished, but don't be a tarnished brand. Be a pastor, be a professor, be an author that's

56:23

Christ centered and not just Baptist centered or SBC centered, but be focused on Christ and him alone.

56:30

And yes, this is my heritage and I love my heritage, but at the end of the day, it's still sinners. And that's why we that's why we need

56:36

Christ. Right. So. So so what I hear you both saying, and I'll just boil it down here is you can be a prophetic voice in the

56:41

SBC, whether you know, and with Mark, you have you have that obligation to those who came before to some extent playing into this.

56:48

But that that's that's the reason to stay and be a beacon for the truth. Say it like it is, you know, let people know that when wrong things happen, that those are wrong things according to the standard that we've been given.

57:03

I'm going to say something blunt. Obviously, people who listen to this podcast know I made the argument to leave for now a year and a half or more, but I'm still

57:10

I'm open to hearing what you guys have to say, and I want because I do have listeners, I think, on both sides of this.

57:16

I want them to hear these things talked about and wrestled through. But so here's the thing.

57:22

And we can probably sort of land the plane on this particular point. I'll get your reactions. I don't see leadership from the conservative side in the

57:30

Southern Baptist Convention, I'm just going to be blunt about it. And the reason I say that is because when if you compare the two and I know they're often compared the efforts now and then the conservative resurgence,

57:41

Adrian Rogers and Paige Patterson, at least from what I've seen, maybe you you live through it, Mark, so you probably can correct me.

57:48

But it seems like they they were straight talkers. They were unapologetic, uncompromising.

57:56

People knew exactly what they were about. And they didn't have a problem calling out the other side right now with the leaders that we have,

58:07

I see incredible weakness on the conservative side for the most part in general. Just a failure to recognize the threat for what it is.

58:16

You said, Mark, earlier that this is a false gospel that's going forward. And I agree there's a false gospel.

58:22

I don't hear that language coming from the conservative wing. I don't hear them calling out people by name, really.

58:30

In fact, I hear the opposite. It's I remember the person who ran before the last time said that there are no liberals.

58:36

And I think by that they meant there are no like modernist type liberals in the

58:42

Southern Baptist Convention who are running for president. But, you know, the effect that when you when you say that, but you don't say, but we have these heretics who are pushing a false gospel, that's a problem.

58:52

When you have the person who ran last time on multiple occasions complimenting

58:57

Bart Barber as if he's a step in the right direction somehow, even though it's not as good, but it's still good.

59:02

I don't know what to say about this kind of stuff. And I realize I realize this might come off as blunt and I mean, no disrespect whatsoever.

59:09

I have a lot of respect for anyone willing to stick their neck out and run. But the kind of leadership, Mark, you were saying could come from an

59:16

Al Mohler hasn't come from anyone else that I can see. So help me out on that. I mean, where is there a light at the end of this tunnel?

59:23

Is there someone or a group of people that the Southern Baptist can look to and say that's where the real uncompromised leadership is coming from?

59:31

Well, we don't have we don't have a Paige Patterson or an Adrian Rogers. And there are other there are other challenges, too, that are different this time.

59:41

Before, it was very easy to to bring up quotes from those on the other side, the moderate liberal side, showing them saying they don't believe in the authority of the

59:55

Bible. And so the Bible, that was a great, great help. The other thing

01:00:00

I've already mentioned, so I won't belabor it, but the the membership of Southern Baptist churches at that time were far more interested in the denomination.

01:00:14

So they wouldn't do like Pastor Henry, our church, our gospel, the truth, maybe the

01:00:20

SBC, that they couldn't think that way. They all their lives, they've been nurtured in it. And so when when they were shown what was happening, they went in mass for 10 years straight to turn it around.

01:00:34

And so that that's a factor. That's not it's not just a matter of leadership. It's that they were lead a bull because of their sense of investment in and ownership of that that denomination.

01:00:48

And we we don't have that now. And here's the other thing that we have. Is that in during the conservative resurgence, the opposition, they were not saying, man, we believe these confessions of faith utterly.

01:01:08

No, they said things like that was good for their time, but we're in a new era and we don't have that now.

01:01:16

Now, when you or many other people who are out there exposing what is happening, one of the one of the tactics they use is,

01:01:25

OK, let's have this professor sign the confession of faith. They're not saying, well, yeah, we do differ.

01:01:32

You know, some of these things we're saying about, you know, the division of the world between oppressors and oppressed really doesn't square with the

01:01:41

Baptist faith and message 2000. They're not saying that they're saying we're rock solid on that. And so this is the how we got here,

01:01:50

I believe is very much anchored in what Protestant liberalism is. And the

01:01:55

Seeker movement is is it's it's hyper alertness. To a target, target audience and then adjusting your branding and all of that for that, but but these differences that I've pointed out, they don't help us motivate people to go vote.

01:02:14

You know, I don't think anyone with any knowledge of the SBC imagines for one minute that if we could vote online.

01:02:23

It would be no contest. Yeah, the denomination would simply be taken back and the liberals would never have a chance until they change the voting system.

01:02:33

Oh, that's another that's another conversation. We'll get brand new Dominion voting.

01:02:39

No, it's right. No, you know, it's a I see what you're saying there,

01:02:45

Mark. I guess, you know, when you're someone like myself who's been immersed in some of these quotes and listen to hours of some of these heretics who have been indoctrinating the young minds of future pastors in our seminaries and I can see where there's clearly mixing works with grace when it's a

01:03:05

Galatian type heresy. And that's just one of the issues. But when it's so clear in my mind, I suppose we probably all suffer from this when we know something very well, we wonder how come everyone else doesn't seem to get this, you know, how can we all can't just condemn this full stop?

01:03:21

But it's still a struggle. It's still I still run into it, you know, on a biweekly basis, probably at least with someone being like, hey,

01:03:29

I I heard there's a problem with the gospel coalition or like I heard Southern Baptists are like not biblical.

01:03:35

And I'm like, yes, you know, well, there's just there's still a level of ignorance sometimes out there, which, you know, it's

01:03:43

I'm not like angry at people who say that, but it's like somehow the word isn't getting out like it should.

01:03:52

it's you know, I think there's some people all know. I think that there's something wrong, but they don't know how bad the cancer is, is what it is.

01:04:00

You know, they're like, well, I heard they kind of went leftist, but they don't know that they're actually like creating gospels that can't save people, that, you know, make people like the priest in Hebrews, you know, continually trying to renew their pledge of anti -racism or something.

01:04:17

But they can never quite get forgiveness. They don't see that. John, the education that you and many others have done,

01:04:26

I believe, has reached. I don't want to say I don't want to exaggerate this, but but deep enough to the pastors that we're in a very different place than we were a few years ago, many, many pastors do understand now what is going on.

01:04:45

But that does not mean they will motivate and educate and mobilize people in their churches to go to the convention.

01:04:54

The education has not been a waste. But now it's the question is, will pastors?

01:05:01

Are they mobilizable and will they mobilize the people in their churches?

01:05:07

And I know pastors who they understand now and they know what is wrong and they don't like it.

01:05:15

But I don't think they will do what is necessary to take back the convention.

01:05:23

I hope I'm wrong. Why do you think that, Mark? If I know this is John's show, but let me ask a question. Why do you think that that's the case?

01:05:30

Just because they're not reared Southern Baptists and kind of what you're saying earlier, two things, one.

01:05:36

And this is something that's happening for us as Americans, not just as Southern Baptists, is we're all discovering how rare a virtue courage is.

01:05:47

People are afraid. And who are they afraid of? They're afraid of the left because the left will hurt you.

01:05:54

Nobody's afraid of conservatives. And here's the second reason. It's what I've said before. They have, many of the pastors your age and others, they never experienced this fully orbed, esprit de corps, proud in a healthy way for what we were doing around the world, our seminaries, our heroes of the faith.

01:06:19

They've never experienced it. OK, so it's more of a generic Christianity. It's, you know, it's

01:06:25

John Piper, whoever it is, Jonathan Edwards. It's not our church involved in this domination, the largest in the nation, sending all of these missionaries, going on those mission trips, being taught the history of the domination.

01:06:40

These pastors have never known it. They would never even think to implement it because they didn't have it coming up.

01:06:46

And now you've got a congregation that that pastor who sees what's going on, they know it's wrong, but they've never brought denominational issues to the fore in any part of their leading of the church.

01:07:00

It's real Christianity, but it's generic. And the denomination is something that just comes up every now and then, whereas there were generations after generation that were steeped in it.

01:07:12

And we knew what the Southern Baptist Convention was and we knew that our pastor would go there and he would come back and report back to us and we would be so proud and we would send things to missionaries.

01:07:23

That's not at their disposal. So now if they're going to have to be courageous and bring something into the pulpit, they're not doing it.

01:07:34

Now, I can't get inside their heads because I'm not them. I am doing this in the places where I preach.

01:07:40

Yeah, well, Pastor Henry, I have to observe it and try to understand it. Yeah, well,

01:07:46

I need to unfortunately land a plane. We've gone actually quite a bit of time and I know we could probably go along a lot more, but I'll give you the last word,

01:07:53

Pastor Henry, since you have addressed these things from the pulpit at your church, final thoughts. Yeah, I mean,

01:08:00

I do agree that there isn't a lot of good leadership at all, for sure. I mean, I'm loosely a part of the

01:08:06

CBN and just kind of following them a little bit and trying to pay attention. And I've had some conversations both on YouTube here on my channel, not here, but on my channel and and personal conversations and stuff.

01:08:17

And, yeah, there's definitely a lack of leadership. And I think the difference is it's more hidden.

01:08:24

I think you've said it before, too, John, just the subversiveness of, oh, we are this guy's a

01:08:29

Calvinist. This guy's this. Oh, they oh, they signed all the documents. Well, of course, we're all conservative now. And you think, but you're not, though, right?

01:08:38

Why did you support this thing and why don't you stand for this? And how are you condoning plagiarism, et cetera, et cetera?

01:08:45

So I don't know. I mean, it is I think it does look grim. But this is why history is such a good teacher, because it's often been grim and not just with the

01:08:54

Southern Baptist Convention being turned around. But there's been a plenary amount of places that churches have been restored, both the local church in America, in the

01:09:02

West in general. And there's been people that have left. Right. And there's been people who do leave that aren't good.

01:09:08

Right. Henry VIII leaves because, you know, he wants to get a divorce. Well, that's not the best way to leave a denomination, you know.

01:09:13

But there's other reasons to go and start Rhode Island. And that's why it's a Baptist and Providence and First Baptist Church of America.

01:09:20

I mean, so there's there are distinctions there that sometimes it's good to leave, sometimes it's good to stay. Of course, the Puritans trying to purify the

01:09:26

Church of England and end up coming to America. And so I don't know. I think people be encouraged, ultimately be encouraged.

01:09:34

And like Mark said, I appreciate your your thoughts. I hadn't really thought about that as far as having the generations before being so Southern Baptist and soaking in that.

01:09:44

That's good. So if a pastor's watching this, then teach on that. And I'll probably have a series.

01:09:50

Now, I'm actually doing the denominational series for Sunday school right now for the church. I pastor and just looking at different splits and denominations and things.

01:09:58

So we're going to have to do a deep dive into the Southern Baptist. So thank you, Mark. More work for me, but I like it.

01:10:03

So I would just say be encouraged and ultimately go to the convention. Right. I think I personally think now is the time to fight.

01:10:10

We haven't really fought like we did in the 80s, late 70s, in the 80s and turn the ship around.

01:10:16

I would say at least let's fight. Let's go play the game and see how it goes in the next five to 10 years.

01:10:22

And if well, if God says no, oh, all right, well, Christ is still King. And if he says yes, then you were part of that.

01:10:30

And you at least said, hey, there's problems along the way. Let's fix these problems and not just be quiet and go hide.

01:10:35

Not like you're hiding or others are hiding, per se, John, just because you've left. You're still calling it out and shining a light on it.

01:10:41

So I just don't happen to be a member of a Southern Baptist church now. That's all. Right. And that's OK. I mean, you're still you're immensely helpful to your audience because it really is is a lot of people don't have the time to really investigate these things.

01:10:54

Try to be John Harris and join a Southern Baptist church. Hey, you can join our church anytime.

01:11:00

Thank you. Thank you. And so I just want to finally to end this. And I appreciate both of your contributions, gentlemen.

01:11:06

I just want to get websites or where people can find your work. Mark, where can people go to look up your articles or wherever you want to send them?

01:11:15

Well, I've been I've been publishing at the Federalist, American Spectator, the

01:11:20

Western Journal and America, American Thinker for the last seven years, and you can go there and just put my name in and you'll find my pieces.

01:11:29

All right. And Pastor Henry, the easiest is Richard Henry dot com.

01:11:36

Richard Henry dot com. That's I've got YouTube pages there as well as it's a new website. So I've also got a blog that's coming in writings and you can follow me on and that's where you're launching your campaign for Southern Baptist president, right?

01:11:50

Yeah, no. All right. Well, I like my quiet life. Yeah, that's I understand.

01:11:56

Well, I appreciate both of you coming on and thank you so much once again. And please check out both