Grove City, SEBTS, Platt, & an Autopsy of the SBC

Opening Banter and Podcast Housekeeping

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We have a few things, more than a few, to get to today. People have asked me to comment on a number of news stories. So I'm gonna be talking fast.

It is a lightning round, evangelical news roundup. It's also gonna be fast because I only had to do this, probably could count them on one hand, maybe even just two or three fingers, where I've had to re-record a podcast because something went wrong.

Well, this is one of those times. So all the information's right here. But some things I wanted to let you know about before we get into all that. Some people have asked me about this mug in particular because it's my favorite mug and it's custom made with the Conversations That Matter logo by Susan Payne.

She's a supporter of the podcast. If you wanna support a good business that believes what you do on many things, then you can go to the link in the info section. And people were wondering when I showed this last time, where can I get one and I didn't have the link and I'm gonna put it in the info section for you.

So the other thing I wanted to mention is a very generous family in Virginia. They say they're Virginia's only organic maple syrup or they make Virginia's only organic maple syrup. Mill Gap Farms sent me some bottles of their maple syrup and it has Colossians 323 on the back, Christian Company.

And I just appreciate so much them sending this to me. So I want you to know there's some good maple syrup out there that believes people that market it and make it believe what you believe. And it's not cracker barrel syrup.

I mean, it's good stuff and it'll go on your blueberry pancakes, your waffles, your French toast. I mean, look, if you live up North, especially. In fact, this week, you don't have to even live up North.

You can live anywhere in the country and you're wanting some good hot chocolate, some pancakes with maple syrup because it's cold no matter where you are. So just wanted to let you know. Of course, the farther North you get, you start calling them flapjacks.

They're not pancakes anymore. They're just flapjacks. I'm not quite that far. But those are the two things I wanted to let you know about. One last thing that concerns this podcast directly is speaking.

There's gonna be more dates added to this calendar. In fact, today I should be starting the ball rolling on an event in Virginia, possibly Maryland, Pennsylvania. Just talked to someone else last night about another Idaho event.

And let's just say there's a lot going on. So I'm gonna be all over the country. And I don't do this just because I like to travel. I do like to travel, but it is a little grueling, especially when I add some more dates to this.

And I do it because I really do believe that there's fruit that's born when there's people that won't read the books. There's people that won't go to the conferences. There's people who they're just living their lives and then they're hit upside the head by the social justice movement out of nowhere.

This is how it happens most of the time. And if I can be there at your church or your political organization, whatever it is, and or someone, it doesn't have to be me, but we talk about this with you, prepare you a little bit, what to expect, how to handle it, especially from a Christian perspective.

I think this really, it helps. And so I've been told that it's helped others. And so that's why I do it is to help. I really think that this is a temporary thing in my life, but it is something that I think is important.

So the next available time to, well, let me just go over the next three. So I'm gonna be in Kentucky at the end of this month, January 29th, 30th, 31st, speaking on all three days at different places in Kentucky.

So the first one is in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and this is Reformation War Room. You might've seen the advertisement on this podcast already, and you can go to fivesoulesspress .regfox .com forward slash war room five.

If that's too hard to remember, just go to worldviewconversation .com. Link is in the speaking engagements tab. So that's where you sign up. This is a men's conference. Now, some people are asking, hey, I wanna come, but I'm not a man.

Well, if you wanna come, you can join me in Caneyville, Kentucky on January 30th, and RSVP information's there, or January 31st in Bowling Green at the Coffee Emporium, Bagels and Artisan Bakery. And I think there's gonna be some of that, some hors d 'oeuvres available there, and you can contact Brian Schutt.

The link or the phone number and email address is right there. So those are the next three dates that I'm gonna be traveling, and I wanna let you know about that. All right, let's get into the subjects for today.

Evangelical News Roundup and the Brian Auten Story

Let me give you a brief overview. We are going to talk about Grove City College. We're gonna talk about Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. We're gonna talk about the Southern Baptist Convention.

We're gonna talk a little bit about David Platt and McLean Bible Church. We're gonna talk about, first though, this. Now, some of you recognize this, some of you don't. Written by Brian Auten, September 4th, 2019, Notes on the Evangelical Dark Web.

And I include an analysis of this in my podcast. I thought it undercut itself because it was asking, basically, it's in directions to evangelical leads for how to handle people like me. But it doesn't mention me.

It mentions new Christian intellectual, pulpit and pen, sovereign nations, enemies within the church. How do you deal with these people? And it gives a number of actually probably pretty helpful things.

Now, I don't know how ethical some of this is exactly. You wanna minimize, it doesn't say demonize, but it's usually what that kind of goes towards, minimizing the insurgency. I mean, he treats this like you're at war.

And in some ways, I guess you are. But it's very much written from the perspective of someone who knows something about intelligence or is very interested in it. And that's not a coincidence. I'll show you something in a minute.

So one of the things he says, though, is he says to basically make people like myself, make us cite every single fact that we, when we cite a fact, make us source it every single time. Make sure that, let's see if I can find, demand citations and evidence for every assertion.

Now, of course, this whole article, though, doesn't have citations and evidence. So that's why I said it undercuts itself. But there's some, actually, probably some advice that might've helped the evangelical elites.

They didn't take most of it. Some of that happened on Twitter, but it's too late now. And so here's the interesting thing, though. Brian Auten wrote this, and he worked for Patrick Henry College as an adjunct professor.

This is from last year, but I didn't see it till yesterday. And that's because it was being passed around on Twitter. I barely ever go on there, but I went on there for something real quick. And all of a sudden, I'm seeing people sharing this around.

Meet the Russiagate prober who couldn't verify anything in the Steele dossier, yet said nothing for years, March 30th, 2021. And it's a picture. And it says right on the picture, Patrick Henry College.

It's Brian Auten. And I read it, and it's extremely damning. It's just, this is someone who suppressed information. I mean, working for the FBI on research teams, leading them, allowing the mistreatment of Trump's staff based upon lies that he knew were lies, it's incredible.

And it's just one of the most maddening things. And so I remembered, well, people online were actually remembering, and they were saying, hey, isn't that the guy that wrote this? And it's, yeah, it is the guy that wrote that.

Giving directions to evangelical elites on how to handle people like yours truly. And yet this is the same guy caught up with the Russiagate scandal. Part of the Durham probe. Has to hire top lawyers to defend him right now.

This is amazing. Absolutely amazing. And if this doesn't show you where the lines are, I don't know what will. Now, I don't know if he's still with Patrick Henry or not. I would assume no, but who knows?

I don't know. So I wanted to share that with you. I thought that was very interesting. Now let's get into the meat of this. We'll talk about Patrick Henry, not Patrick Henry. We just talked about Patrick Henry.

Let's talk about Grove City. Grove City College supposed to be, from what I understand, not just politically conservative, but a Christian college. And for those who don't know, I'm not gonna take you through the full history, but myself, Doug Wilson, Rachel, or Megan, sorry, Megan, Basham at the Daily Wire, and then Josh Abatoy at the American Reformer, all have said things about what's happening there.

And probably more than I'm not thinking of. Now, it was the American Reformer that started this essentially. Really, before them, it was a bunch of parents who got a petition together and so they had some demands.

But it wasn't starting off with we have demands. It was very nice. It was very loving. It was we are concerned. And we need to see a course correction because you have implicit bias training among the RAs.

You have a course you're offering that pushes social justice blatantly. You have a chapel series that promotes critical race theory with a number of speakers, including those on the faculty at the college.

Very concerning. Now, what happened was what typically happens. The shields go up. And I've seen this. Of course, I've been part of it at Southeastern, at Southern, they attack me. They attack everything they can that they feel threatened by but they will not actually deal with the issues.

And this was no exception. The president made a statement. It was a horrible statement. I went over it. It just did not deal with the issues. It vilified the parents and it was shameful. And then, of course, Carl Truman comes out and then he tries to, I don't even know what to say about this.

I did a podcast that was almost an hour, I think, on it. But either he doesn't know what's happening on his own campus, or he does know and he's covering for him and he's engaging in what seems to be a level of, I don't even know what to say because I don't wanna call the guy dishonest, but I don't know how else, how do you categorize it?

If he knows what's truly going on and then he minimizes it, moves the goalposts and excuses it, and it just, it was bad. It was really bad. And so this is what they typically do, though. So I wasn't very surprised.

Now, the thing that is different, there's two things different about this I want you to think about. And when we get into Southeastern, I'll talk about it some more. Number one, the American reformer and the Daily Wire went after them.

And not in a mean way. It was, again, the whole intention of everyone has been to see a course correction. Those preventing it are those putting up the shield and saying, oh, nothing to see here, or you're being mean or trying to deflect.

Deflect, disguise, deny. That's kind of the, that's the pattern. That's what we always see, deflect, disguise, deny. Now, I don't think, someone like a Doug Wilson, someone like myself, they can just ignore us.

Now, not truly ignore us because they have to mention us. They have to say discernment bloggers or they have to say something about the voices online. And you know who they're talking about, but they won't give us the dignity of mentioning who we are.

Once you get the Daily Wire in there, though, they don't have that luxury anymore. They have to kind of acknowledge it. And it's because the pressure's coming from very much outside. It's not in, it's more, it could be read by people in their circles.

And this is one of the points I've tried to make about elites. Doesn't really hit them hard until it affects their social circles. And this is, I think what, it's the tragedy of what's been happening at Southeastern and Southern is, my intention has always been, and others from the beginning has always been, we actually love the Southern Baptist Convention.

We love, look, I graduated from Southeastern. I love the institution. I've said that all along the way from the beginning. Here's some information. And the hope was that they would course correct. And if not, that this would eventually be picked up by more conservative voices with some influence in the SBC.

It would eventually be picked up, if not by them, by political conservative outlets like the Daily Wire, that kind of thing. It doesn't happen though. It doesn't happen in the SBC. I want you to hold this thought and wonder, think to yourself, why is that?

I have some ideas on why that might be, but think to yourself about it. Back to Grove City. So then there's a podcast that comes out, the Anchored Podcast. And they have Megan Bashan, Lee Wishing, Carl Truman on the podcast to talk about Grove City.

And this was very eyeopening and interesting. If you have an hour of time and you're interested in it, Lee Wishing, I believe that's who I was listening, that's what it says on the podcast title here, but he couldn't give specifics about what was happening at Grove City.

Very offended by what he calls, really, he actually used the word I think appalled, about people who were writing in and treating image bearers of God in horrible ways, hate mail, this kind of thing. So people who spoke during the Critical Race Theory series, he didn't call it that, but in the aftermath of the Floyd incident and all of that, he's appalled that he's getting the kinds of emails he is.

And so this is an attempt in my mind to kind of deflect from the issue, because he really goes on about this and it doesn't offend him nearly. He doesn't seem as concerned that Critical Race Theory is being taught, has been taught without any kind of qualification on campus, yet he's very offended that people outside the campus that he doesn't actually have any purview or authorization or influence over are writing in and saying apparently nasty things, he won't share what they are, about people that are pushing this stuff.

This is typical in my mind. This is, it's all about fashion and optics and style and tone and winsomeness and caution and quote unquote respect, but where is truth in all of this? That's the question, right?

When you're way more offended about people you can't control who are saying things that offend you because that's my colleague and he, you shouldn't be up so angry and upset at him for teaching Critical Race Theory stuff.

Instead of getting upset that Critical Race Theory was taught here. So you saw that, you saw that, you know, he kept repeating, we're staying true to our Christian foundation and really just a lot of a wall of words, a lot of taking air out of the room, a lot, I don't know why if it was a stall thing or if it was just nervousness, but very, a lot of repetition.

And then Carl Truman tries to introduce us to the possibility of maybe they're, you know, the teaching Critical Race Theory course, maybe that's just teaching the Critical Race Theory, you know, as a way, not teaching it, but teaching about it, right?

This is a defense I've seen many times before too. You know, we're, you know, we have to read the Communist Manifesto, but we're not communists. Well, of course, but the problem is that's the whole issue from the beginning was not teaching about it, it was teaching it.

And then he tries to baptize the motives of the chapel series that pushed Critical Race Theory and invited Jamar Tisby by, well, you know, it's worth taking risks to talk about race. You know, we might make some mistakes, but it's worth taking the risk, really?

Worth taking the risk? Does he understand what this stuff does, what it actually at the root level implies? And we'll talk about it as we get into this more, because I have an opportunity, I think at the end to talk about this, but the root issues are not being discussed.

And then the context seems to justify what Grove City did. Well, everyone was questioning about the Floyd incident. Everyone was, in fact, Lee Wishing even talks about, you know, well, you know, I'm concerned about systemic racism, or maybe it was the host.

I think it was the host said that, the host of the program. And, you know, here's the thing though, that I would want to say to Carl Truman is, not everyone was doing that. Not everyone was doing that.

I wasn't doing that. A lot of people listening to this program weren't doing that. I don't think half the country was doing that. We weren't sitting around thinking like, oh, maybe the police are systemically racist.

Maybe that's just characterizes them. If you're a police officer, that's what you are. You know, maybe that is fundamental to what America is. Every region of America. And we need to take down historical monuments, and not just the ones in the South, but the ones to Lincoln and Columbus, and some of the past presidents like McKinley, and some of the missions out in California.

I mean, maybe that's really what America is. It's just systemically racist. And no, half of us weren't saying that, in fact. So there's, it's very concerning to me that Carl Truman tries to go down this line, and he says some very true things.

But like Carl Truman, I've said this many times, he's very good in the abstract. And then when it gets concrete, and the closer it gets to him, the closer the proximity, it's like the wheels come off.

And I don't quite understand it. He can describe what wokeness is in the interview. He can articulate why we should be concerned about it, and then the wheels come off. And I think Megan Basham did an excellent job trying to keep things on track, and catching them in all the kinds of deflect, disguise, deny things that they tried to do.

Now, one of the things you'll notice about this, would we, you know, would this kind of thing ever happen? Would there ever be like, we gotta do damage control, you know, get AD Robles and JD Hall on a round table discussion?

No, it wouldn't. And that's my point. One of my points I'm trying to make is that the pressure came from a social circle in which they want to have some measure of clout and respect. They respect Megan Basham in the Daily Wire to some extent.

And so they can't, they have to try to clean this up. Well, after that, this happened. Grove City College's supposed wokeness National Review. Horrible article, just terrible article. Basically the long and short of it is, hey, conservatives who are concerned about what's going on at Grove City, they don't believe in freedom of speech.

That's my summary, my 30 ,000 foot view of that article. Megan Basham had a very good analysis of this. And she says, having reported on the dust up at Grove City, I can tell you this essay at National Review is disturbingly disingenuous.

And she gets into all the details of why, and she's 100 correct on all of them. I'm very impressed with how she's handled this. Because I can't imagine, there must probably some pressure on her. I understand what that pressure is, but you have the Daily Wire and the National Review now contradicting each other.

If you think there's a war in Christianity, there's also a war in political conservatism. It's fractured and fracturing is bad. Once you're fractured, an all powerful globalist government is very capable of doing all kinds of things.

And so it does, well, National Review was just plain wrong on this and they need to be called out for it. But it is disturbing that you're seeing these conservative, quote unquote, conservative organizations kind of splitting off.

And I don't, National Review is just, I don't even know what to say about it anymore. It's not worth the ink that it's printed, the paper it's printed on. I just don't even, I used to, thing is I used to actually get it years ago and I stopped and now I'm just so disappointed with the direction of it.

Anyway, here's what I think, and Doug Wilson made this point first. So I think this is what they could do. Crown College leader pushes to display torn down controversial statues, okay? Monuments that have been torn down.

And of course, in the article they're saying, let me see if I can find it. There's a whole thing here. Here it is. Dr. Sexton at this particular college would include Nathan Bedford Forrest, because it's in Tennessee.

Nathan Bedford Forrest was taken down from Memphis. And his grave and his wife's grave were dug up. He was a Confederate general and he defended the city of Memphis. And they literally dug up his graves.

And so Dr. Sexton at Crown College says, we'll take it, we'll take any of these statues. And of course the media says, well, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan who enslaved black Americans and killed union soldiers during the civil war.

That's the only thing they have to say about him. And of course it shows, guys, I just wanna make this point to you. Even on things you don't know about, you haven't read books on, it's almost good to start off.

No, it is good. Start off with this assumption anytime you're dealing with the media at this point. I'm just, I'm serious. Assume they're lying to you. Assume they're lying. They're giving you half truths.

They're not giving you the full picture because they're doing it here. They're doing it here and they do it all the time. They're pushing an agenda all the time. Anyone who studied Nathan Bedford Forrest, even a very slight study of Nathan Bedford Forrest reveals the fact he's the one that called for the end of the Ku Klux Klan.

He was an early civil rights leader in Memphis, kissed a black lady on the cheek and pushed for political equality, quote unquote, at the time, which meant basically that they should have the right to vote.

They should have the same kinds of rights that everyone else does in Memphis. Yes, Confederate general, his slaves were his cavalry. He freed them. They were some of the most notorious and feared units in the entire war.

And if you want to talk about he killed, he killed you Northern soldiers. Guess who killed more of them? His slaves. And after the war, former slaves sharecropped on his land and loved him. There was one story about a slave who tried to basically get Forrest in trouble and claim that he was abusing him and all this stuff.

And it was the people, the former slaves that worked his, sharecropped with him and stuff. They, and then the people that lived around him all knew it was an absolute lie. They all defended him because they knew the character he had.

He converted to Christianity. This is not someone that is, you can paint with just the one color. And so this is what they're doing. And they're trying to ring, put that around the neck of Dr. Clarence Sexton.

But I'll tell you what, I don't think it's gonna work. And I think it's actually gonna really work in favor of Crown College, because you know what? This is a bold move. And if you're gonna send your kids to college, I don't know much about Crown College, but do you want to send them to Grove City where they just deflect, disguise, denies the wokeness?

I happen to know one thing. I will say this about Grove City real quick. They are inviting someone to chapel who is the opposite of wokeness and social justice. And I don't know if it's to do more shielding, if it's to deflect.

I don't know if that's the motive or they legitimately wanna provide a countervailing voice, but it should concern you. It took all this pressure and time to get it done. And it's one voice to come in.

I mean, they should be doing series against social justice, knowing that it's like being in Mormon country and like having a bunch of Mormon speakers show up at your Christian college and push Mormonism.

And you don't ever lift a finger to oppose it until the rest of the country and the parents sending their children start raising the roof about it. So would you rather send your kids there or would you rather send them to Crown College where they're saying, yeah, we'll have a monument garden.

We'll take these stats. We're against social justice. I mean, what proves that you're against social justice? Your words or your actions? And I say Crown College is leading the way on this and Grove City should be doing this.

And Doug Wilson suggested it. Why don't they do a monument? You could call it the diversity garden because you'd have union and Confederate soldiers, explorers, presidents. You'd have all kinds of people, a diverse array of people that have been canceled.

Why don't you do that? And I agree with Doug Wilson on that. But guess what? Most modern conservatives don't have the guts and if they even are conservative or the understanding to be able to even do something like that.

We lack leadership. We lack courage. And when people are afraid of being called names and they wanna be liked, especially by the left. And that is what keeps moving the Overton window left, left, left to the point now you have some of the January 6th folks when the FBI raids their house, taking copies of the constitution and declaration of independence in for evidence of extremism.

Yes, that's where we're heading. And it's because of courageous conservatives, in my opinion, supposedly, who keep kowtowing to the left. I would send my kids to Crown College before Grove City any day of the week at this point.

Now that doesn't mean Grove City can't course correct and we should pray for them that they do because it's been embarrassing the way they've handled this so far. It should be an admission of we goofed.

There's been some bad things that have happened here and this is what we're doing. Our actions are showing what we are going to do to course correct and maybe that will still happen. Now let's get to another college now.

This is Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary where I graduated from. And we're gonna talk a little bit about why the pressure on Southeastern has been different. The reaction has been different than the pressure on Grove City.

I've known about this information now for a little while. And so I don't, I just say that to let you know that I've seen the primary sources on this. It's not just because of these blogs, Capstone Report or Reformation Charlotte, where they've organized some of this.

I actually do have the actual emails and everything that they're citing here. But this is where you can go to find it online if you wanna go find it. SBC Seminary requires admissions trips to graduate and all valid trips require proof of vaccination.

By the way, the SBC Convention in California looks like it's kind of going that direction as well. But Southeastern has put out a policy and they're just completely giving in to the quote unquote OSHA requirements that are illegal that the Biden administration is handing down that have not even gone through the court system yet.

But Southeastern is going along with it. And so you have to get regular testing if you're an employee and don't want to get the jab and you, otherwise you have to get the jab and you have to wear a mask if you're not gonna do that.

And you have to report your status. I mean, talk about draconian. And then you have the, I guess this is the, I don't know, vice president or something of the institution emailing the student body. This is the students.

Encouraging them all to get the jab and mocking those who have concerns. You know, he says, I've been fully vaccinated at this point. This is Ryan Hutchinson, the executive vice president. On a positive note, I've started to regrow hair in my head, although it's a glow in the darker green color.

And he goes on about this. You know, he's got like an extra, his right foot accommodates an extra toe. Google tells me this is temporary. There's nothing to worry about. He's mocking the people who say that the vaccine has issues.

And let me tell you, every day the evidence mounts more and more and more. You wanna help grandma? You wanna stop the spread? Then maybe the best thing to do is not to get this because the people getting this, it's proven now, are the ones that are susceptible to getting the variant and spreading the variant.

So there you go. That's Southeastern. And then of course, Reformation Charlotte did this last month. More proof critical race theory is being taught at the seminary. And I've said this for a while. It just went underground.

They didn't stop. Matt Mullins, Walter Strickland, these guys, they never stopped pushing their either critical race stuff or liberation theology. It just went underground. And so you can see that this is, I guess, fairly recent within the last year or two, you have the Invention of Whiteness, Unit 2.

And I think this is American literature. If I remember correctly, I have the source of this. But it's a link to, there's a link to a video called the Changing of the Gods, the Invention of Whiteness by Johnny Powell, professor of law, UC Berkeley.

And yes, if you watch it, the whole premise of the video is that really no one ever thought of race. Race was never, it was complete social construct. No one thought of it until a bunch of elites got together and said, you know how we can really oppress people?

We got to divide them along race. And then if we divide them along race, they're easier to control. And the history of, if you want to talk about the concept of race and the history of it and stuff, and the term itself and where it originated, sure, I'll give you a, during colonization when Europeans started exploring the world, they noticed people were different.

I mean, hey, some tribes had polygamous relationships. They didn't have the same technology. There was cannibalism. There was all kinds of things that, and sometimes horrific, read, I just read of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford.

And some of the things described that the natives would do, some, not every tribe, but the ones that they were familiar with and William Bradford was writing about were horrific, absolutely horrific. Just the worst kind of torture you can imagine.

And anyway, this kind of thing didn't really give Europeans the impression that they were arriving and encountering a civilization that had advanced more than they had. They saw their technology and their economy, the way they arranged their civilization and they saw room for improvement.

Doesn't mean that there were some things that the natives, depending on the tribe, may have had or things they may have valued that were superior to the Europeans. I'm sure there definitely were. But the concept, you wanna talk about the concept of race, you're seeing not just an ethnic group, you're seeing religion, you're seeing culture, all kinds of habits that, and formed by the region they were in.

There's all kinds of streams running into this lake. And they saw that and they thought, this is different, this is different than, and we need to account for this. What is it, Christianity, what is it?

And I'd say for a lot of Europeans, it was. That's why they sent in missionaries and I mean, Christianity was the element that made sense. That was the missing element, the fundamental thing that, now, when you have the proto-Darwinists come along and scientific races who are genetic determinists, they start saying, no, it's not religion, it's their genetics.

That's what makes sense of the state of affairs. And critical race theorists though want to, they wanna act like it was, no one ever thought of race until some people wanted to use it for power. Some elites wanted to use it to control and then they started categorizing people by this.

No, it just kind of naturally occurred as observations were made, as people interacted. And that's the thing that they're missing. And ideology tends to do this, ideologues, everything's abstract, they don't have room for organic development.

So that's what's happening at Southeastern. Now, this is the question I have for everyone. Why, why the pressure on Southeastern? Why has it not worked as much? What's the difference between Southeastern and Grove City?

Grove City, this all happened very quickly. You know, parents got involved, you have parents petition. So you had pressure from the, what I would say is the bottom up, okay? Then you had pressure from the top down.

Not with, so I shouldn't say the top down, let's say, we'll say outside. So you have pressure from the bottom up, parents, students, pressure from the outside. And they thought, we need to respond, we need to do something.

And so they come out and they start responding. With Southeastern, it was different. You did not have pressure from the bottom up. You didn't have parents. There's a few here and there, but there was never any organizational attempt.

And that's one of the things that is different about the SBC. When you're in that guild, there is an unspoken hierarchy. You are not supposed to rattle that cage. It's not the local church. It's not the hierarchy you see in scripture.

It is the SBC machine hierarchy. I've faced this firsthand. Hey, parents even contact me, or more often, not students. I remember one time there was like 10 students or something like that there. Wanted to, one of them had a great idea.

You know, let's make a petition. Let's really, and I thought, great, let's support this. And there's a hesitancy. When you get to the edge of the cliff to jump, you're so hesitant because am I going to bring disrepute upon this institution?

And there's a loyalty to the institution that people that go to Grove City, I don't think, they don't have that as much. There's more of a loyalty to truth and to their principles and their families or the communities of their country.

And in the SBC, there's a different loyalty that trumps those things sometimes in some situations. So you have that. And then you also have the fact that outside political organizations, if they were interested, I've been told on good authority by people that I trust to some extent, at least, that you get the call from someone like an Al Mohler.

I've also been told Danny Akin does this. You'll get the call preemptively. Even if they find out you're thinking about, you're upset or anything, a wine and dine strategy comes out, there's a big incentive to not go that direction, not rattle the cage, not disrupt things too much.

And so they have a larger network. There's more money there. And there's, let's just say, more of an incentive, not to disrupt that and to make an enemy of this entire group of Christians, because that's the threat.

Now, the reality is you're not doing that. It's just the elites, but that's what you think is gonna happen. So that's one of the things I think. So you don't have, there's two kinds of pressure being brought to Brown Grove City that are not being brought on Southeastern.

And they need to be, frankly, they need to be. I don't know how to make that happen. And it's not something that is within, I'll talk about it more at the end when we talk about the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole, but that's, I think, the major difference.

And they're a lot more impervious to outside forces as well because their feeder churches are within their network that send them students. And at this point, Southeastern's got a niche. I mean, it's known to be more of the social justice school.

And so you're gonna get people who are of that mentality coming to the school. And if you change that image too much, you won't get them coming now. So I think there's a number of reasons that this is the case why things at Southeastern and other Southern Baptist schools have not worked in the same way that things seem to be working a little more at Grove City, though we'll know more in time.