Tony Evan's "Kingdom Race Theology" Won't Bridge the Divide

Conversations That Matter

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The Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk today a little bit about KRT. KRT, what is

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KRT? Has anyone ever heard of KRT? KRT is different, not to be confused with,

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CRT. So many of you know, in fact, all of you probably know something about CRT, critical race theory.

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Well, KRT, kingdom race theology, is a substitute. It is, in Tony Evans' mind, the biblical alternative to critical race theory, and he's preached some messages on this, and this has come to my attention.

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I think, actually, I've had a few people ask me about this. It's because he's, it's been, I think, a few months he's been going around talking about this, and some people have messaged me about it, but I'll show you what really got my attention.

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I'm gonna blow this up for those who are watching so you can see. This got my attention. This is from the

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Liberty University School of Divinity on their social media page. Is there a Twitter page, I guess?

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No, Facebook, Facebook, I guess. Today, Dr. Tony Evans is teaching

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Liberty University Divinity and Liberty University students about kingdom race theology.

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If you haven't heard his sermons on this topic, it is a must -hear message. We are thankful for his service, faithfulness, and leadership.

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Be looking for the video of this event. Now, I don't know if there is a video of this event.

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I was looking on their Twitter feed, and I don't know if they've posted it yet. I can't find it, but not to worry.

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They've endorsed, in this status, Tony Evans' kingdom race theology sermons on the topic, and I did listen to those.

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They're available for free, part one and part two, on YouTube, and I would encourage you to go check those out if you know anyone who's listening to these or thinks this is an alternative to CRT.

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In fact, even after you hear this, if you wanna just check out what I say, go ahead and go and check those messages out.

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I'm gonna give you kind of my version of a crash course in this. I'm gonna explain to you, in a kernel, what kingdom race theology is, and I'm also going to give you the slide, well, for those who are patrons on patreon .com,

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the link is in the info section, you will get this whole PowerPoint, so the timestamps and everything are in this, so that if you have someone you're talking to about kingdom race theology, and you wanna reference it, which is what

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I recommend, by the way, don't just cite John Harris, right? Don't say, well, John did an episode on this. You be the expert, you be the one who's checked this out, and I'm gonna just give you the information.

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I'll give you the sources, so you can look and say, yep, in this video, at this timestamp, Dr. Tony Evans said this.

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I think he's a doctor, Dr. Tony Evans, right? I'll just say Tony Evans said this. So that way, you can have discussions that are informed.

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So that's what we're doing today. We're gonna go through this, because it's being adopted everywhere, and I'm gonna tell you why

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I think that is. And I shouldn't, everywhere, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration. I'm seeing

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Tony Evans and his influence starting to go more broad in evangelicalism right now, because he does seem,

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I think in the minds of many, to have an alternative, a way of bridging the gap, a way of pleasing the critical race theorists, but also at the same time, keeping those against critical race theory pleased as well.

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So that you don't have your church divided, which is what so many pastors right now, unfortunately, I do say unfortunately, are doing.

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They are trying, everything is about trying to keep their church together and from splitting over critical race theory.

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And so they're trying to please both sides. And instead of just taking a firm side and looking, what does the

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Bible say compared to what a critical race theory teaches? They're trying to kind of stand in the middle and being like, well, we shouldn't be divided over any of this.

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And that's a mistake. I've done some videos on that, but that's what many pastors are trying to do. And it's understandable to some extent, and they don't wanna lose their congregation.

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People that come to their church, people that give money, all of that, is you risk factioning some of them off if you take a firm stand one way or the other in many churches.

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And so Dr. Tony Evans is kind of giving a path forward on how to do this. How do you keep both sides intact and from fighting each other and you just have the unity in scripture and he's gonna try to do that.

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So it sounds really good, right? And I will say this before I really get into it here. I will say this, and I have to say this upfront.

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I actually really like Tony Evans' personality. And I haven't,

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I've never heard a whole sermon from Tony Evans. I'm not saying I endorse, I don't endorse Tony Evans. I definitely don't.

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But as you listen to him, it was obvious to me why he's popular. He's got a great personality.

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And that doesn't, I'm not saying there isn't false teaching there. I'm not saying he's not a wolf or any of that stuff.

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I actually don't know a lot about Tony Evans, to be honest with you. And I know about kingdom race theology because I've listened to that, but I don't know a lot about Tony Evans in general.

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I've heard about him, but I think he's on TBN. I think he's one of those preachers on TBN, if I'm not mistaken.

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But his personality is just really, it's attractive to people. It's very, he just seems like he's kind of in your corner, if that makes sense.

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He's very creative with the language he uses. He seems reasonable. He's funny.

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He's relaxed. He's, I mean, smooth. He's just really smooth.

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And even some, there's a few things he said, that I'll talk about him, that I even agreed with in his message. But honestly, what it is,

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I think, it's not the kingdom race theology. It's not this idea that he's come up with that's bridging the gap, so to speak, that's gonna bring both sides together.

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It's his personality. It's that he's so likable. People from both sides can listen to him. And they're just kind of,

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I think, schmoozed by his personality, to be honest. They like the guy. And he can kind of, and I think this is the temptation for pastors who are listening to Tony Evans, they think like, well,

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I can do the same thing, man. I'm gonna go out there with this kingdom race theology. And we're gonna make sure the people for critical race theory, the people against it, both of them are gonna be able to stay at this church.

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Because this church, our unity's in the Bible, and the Bible, for some reason in their minds, doesn't really take a firm side on the

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CRT stuff. It's kind of both. It's kind of, it's either neutral, or it's got some

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CRT stuff, but some of it it rejects. But it can just please everyone.

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It can walk that middle road. But that's not what's actually doing it.

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And the pastors who are gonna try to do what Tony Evans does, I think are gonna fail, for the most part. Tony Evans, I don't even think

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Tony Evans can pull off what he's trying to do completely. I mean, there's people like me out there who are gonna catch what he's saying, and we're gonna realize that's not right teaching.

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That's, you're misunderstanding critical race theory. You're also misunderstanding the Bible, and that's even more dangerous.

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And I'm gonna bring you through all that. But my main point I wanted to bring up before we even get into it, is that it's his personality that's the selling point.

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I think if Tony Evans got up there and talked about almost anything, most people would be like, I really like to hear that guy. He's entertaining.

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He's funny. He makes me feel good, right? These kinds of things. And there's nothing wrong, necessarily, with someone who's got a nice personality, right?

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But that's not gonna be able to keep both sides intact. And so I think this is yet going to be another path that the

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Hegelians, right? Try to, the synthesizers, those who would merge critical race theory with Christianity, this is gonna be yet another failed attempt.

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But this is the attempt that's being made right now. And so Liberty University's School of Divinity had Tony Evans in.

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A brief, just a really brief word about just, and I don't wanna spend long here at all, just Liberty University, I'll highlight two things

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I just want you to be aware of, some of you. Liberty University is a big place.

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There's, it's like there's a number of departments and each department is its own world.

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There's some really good departments. There's some really good professors. It's not, could we say Liberty University has gone woke or Liberty University is safe from going woke?

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I don't think we could really say either one, really. It's a big place. But I will say this. There are some tendencies that people who go there are noticing in, that are starting to go more, there's some tendencies in the woke direction.

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I don't know how else to say it. I'll just highlight two of them. There's probably some more, there are some more things

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I could highlight here, but I just wanna highlight two of them because they're pretty obvious. One is the Dean of the Helms School of Government, the

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Online Dean, Ron Miller, just recently, like a week ago, wrote a story at nowalls .us.

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And it's basically, this is the article. I'm just gonna quote for you a portion of it. In my, in short, my vain course with the, let's see.

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He has the blood of the oppressed and the oppressor in him. If I am capable of reconciling and moving forward with that inner duality by the grace of God, then so can our nation with God's grace and redemption move forward.

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My life's work going forward is to be a voice for diversity under the banner of unity through Christ. If the church can set an example for the world of what it looks like to celebrate diversity, which is

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God's creation and be one in spirit and truth through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus meant for all of us, without exception, not only could we heal division, but also create opportunities to share the gospel and make disciples.

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Don't presume this task will be easy. The church is complicit in a lot of the atrocities perpetuated on black people throughout history.

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When the church should have spoken out in the name of justice, mercy, and righteousness, too often it remains silent or provided spiritual cover for those determined to maintain white supremacy.

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The modern church portrays itself as a bulwark against unrighteousness, yet struggles with questions about racism and sexism as revelation after revelation of misconduct reveals an institution whose house is not in order.

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And I'm actually gonna close the window right now because you can probably, all of you can probably hear the cicadas or the crickets outside.

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There you go, is that better? Better sound quality. So this is Ron Miller, online dean,

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Helms School of Government and this is what he's writing out there. And this is big stuff in a way.

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I mean, this is his life's work. That's his life's work going forward is to be a voice for diversity. And the church even now is just complicit.

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Its house is not in order. This guy's saying, I'm an activist. I'm an activist. And he is the online dean for the

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Helms School of Government, government. So this is a political position.

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This is Dr. Troy Temple, the dean of the seminary.

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And I'm just gonna give you one small thing. He said, this is from 2019, a must read,

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Kyle Korver on the NBA racism and privilege. So he posts this, he says, it's a must read.

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So Kyle Korver played, I think he still does for the Milwaukee Bucks if I'm not mistaken. And he wrote this story, it's called

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Privilege. That's literally the title of the story. And I'll read for you some quotes.

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Every day I'm given that choice. I'm granted that privilege based on the color of my skin. He's white, I guess. How can

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I, as a white man, part of the systemic problem become part of the solution? I have to contribute to educate myself on the history of racism in America.

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I have to listen. I have to support leaders who see racial justice as fundamental. Fundamental. As something that's at the heart of nearly every major issue in our country today.

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And I have to support policies that do the same. I have to do my best to recognize when to get out of the way in order to amplify the voices of marginalized groups that so often get lost.

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But maybe more than anything, I know that as a white man, I have to hold my fellow white men accountable.

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This is before George Floyd. This is 2019. And I guess, he says, I've come to realize that when we talk about solutions to systemic racism, police reform, workplace diversity, affirmative action, better access to healthcare, even reparations, it's not about guilt.

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It's not about pointing fingers or passing blame. And it's about understanding that black lives matter and movements like it matter.

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Time for me to shut up and listen. This is something that Troy Temple, this is the guy who's the dean of the seminary, said is a must read.

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I'm just gonna let that stand. I'm not gonna comment on it. You be the judge. You figure out whether this is good or bad or someone who thinks this way.

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They're not the only ones. Are there people who are against this kind of thing at the school? Yeah, there are.

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But one of the reasons I bring this up is just a caution, especially parents. Before you send your kid anywhere to any school, you wanna check out where they're going to be.

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Check out who their professors are. Look at their social media if you have to. Check out the departments. Don't just go for one visit, talk to a few nice people who know exactly what to say to you.

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And then leave. Do a little bit more homework on that. I'm talking about undergrads especially here.

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Just do a little bit more homework on that. Look, I'm very pro -Liberty University as far as I think that there are some great departments and great professors there.

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And I went there for my master's in history. So I love Liberty University. I'm just saying be careful no matter where you are.

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At this point, one of the problems is that there is a large pool of people who are woke who need a job and are qualified, at least professionally, for certain jobs.

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And most conservatives who would not be woke have gone into other fields.

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They realize academia is kind of rotting and so they don't go towards academia.

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They'll go towards trades. They'll become engineers, those kinds of things. And so it narrows down.

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It's very hard to find someone who's credentialed and not woke. And so I'm not saying that's entirely what's going on in the instances

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I just mentioned, but that is a big issue right now. So just expect it, expect it.

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Prepare your children, expect it if they're gonna go to the university. All right, let's keep going here because this is not the main thing.

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I just wanted to call your attention to that. This is what got my attention and why I thought, okay, I'm gonna talk about this.

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Critical race theory. Let's do some review before we get into kingdom race theology. Critical race theory, short definition.

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And these both come from Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict, which I just approved the cover today.

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We got the cover done. We got the manuscript done. All that has to happen is it has to be published. That's it. I expect in the next few weeks it'll probably show up on Amazon.

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So we're in the light at the end of the tunnel. We can see that light at this point, but I'm gonna quote some things.

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I'm quoting myself, I guess, but after putting in a lot of research and this is as accurate as I can make it.

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Short definition for critical race theory. The theory's basic teaching is that racism is systemically embedded within the fabric of society and can only be addressed by first interpreting the world through the lens of minority experience.

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That's the short definition. All right, you got the Marxism and the postmodernism both there. The Marxism is the systemically embedded in the fabric of society.

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The postmodernism is interpreting the world through the lens of minority experience. Long definition, right? This comes from a critical race theory and introduction by Delgado and Stavansic and it identifies seven basic teachings.

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Number one, racism is normative. Number two, race is a social construct created in order to allocate privilege.

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This is called the social construction thesis. Third, white privilege maintains white dominance.

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Fourth, colorblindness keeps minorities in subordinate positions. Fifth, majority groups tolerate advances for racial justice only when it benefits them.

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It's called interest convergence. Derek Bell, who's the father of critical race theory came up with that. Sixth, voices of color have access to special knowledge.

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That's called standpoint epistemology. And seventh, history should be reinterpreted according to minority experience.

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That's called memory studies. Now, I'm gonna show you what kingdom race theology is and this is what

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Tony Evans preaches and this is assuming, this is what he taught at Liberty University recently, kingdom race theology.

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A number of these elements show up in it. I would say, at least in his series that he gives, his two part series on kingdom race theology, he says some things that would support some of the critical race theory beliefs and I'll give you some of them.

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He accepts the idea of interest convergence. Here's what he says at the seven minute mark in the first part one of that series.

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He said, when the laws changed, the system had already been infiltrated with the previous unrighteous laws and unjust laws so that even though laws changed, the effect of those laws did not automatically and to varying degrees still today, did not change with it.

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So the fruit, like Adam's sin, carries fruit. And pay attention to that, by the way. He's saying the fruit of racism, of racist laws, just, and he compares it to Adam's sin, right?

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How, original sin, he's comparing this to. So that racism's like original sin.

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It's like Adam's sin carries fruit. The fruit of unrighteous laws still express themselves in the structures of society, whether they're educational, whether they're political, whether they are social, whether they deal with criminal justice issues, whether they're economic, because the laws previously affected all of society and therefore infiltrated all of society, the argument of critical race theory goes so that even today, many people have to struggle with the issue of racism, not because it's a law, but because it's an environment that was affected by laws.

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Well, this is interest convergence in a way. I mean, is it textbook

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Derrick Bell interest convergence? No, but how do you get to the point of thinking what Tony Evans just said? You have to kind of adopt interest convergence to get there.

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That look, none of these laws are on the books, like segregation laws, but because segregation was in effects for so long that today, it's systemically embedded in everything.

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That it's kind of like the abuse, the evil of it is all still there.

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The sin, and he compares it to Adam's sin, like the original sin never went away. It just gets passed down. So you can never rid yourself of it, if that's the case.

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It was just like Adam's sin. So he adopts, this is an element of critical race theory. And he's describing critical race theory here, but he never argues against it.

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He basically says that, look, critical race theory originally, it's this. This is the idea. And the problem, the controversy today, isn't this.

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This is fine. This belief is totally fine in Tony Evans' mind. If you listen to a series, that's the impression you get.

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He also accepts white privilege. He said, you could come out and argue, I am not a racist. And you could be absolutely right, but the system that you are part of is.

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And because you're part of that system, you get swept up, even though you're not a personal racist. Well, what does that mean, to be swept up?

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Are you, I mean, are you guilty? Are you, you're part of that system. So the system's evil. I guess you're evil, you're, what, like.

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So this is the white privilege stuff. He doesn't use the term white privilege. And I think it's on purpose. He doesn't use a lot of these buzzwords that would make people think, oh no.

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Tony Evans is going off the deep end here. He doesn't do that, but he gives you the same concepts.

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I want you to watch out for that. If you know the concepts, you don't need the term white privilege. You hear it and you said, that's white privilege.

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He rejects colorblindness. He says, God is not colorblind. We need to be, he mimics someone.

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He's like, we need to be colorblind. And then he says, no, you don't, emphatically. 35 minute mark of his, of the first lecture.

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He affirms that Black Lives Matter, the Black Lives Matter movement. Now he distances himself from the organization, but he says the movement said the lives of black people matter in the same way white evangelicals would say the lives of the unborn matter.

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And it's interesting, he says white evangelicals would say, because the, I know for everyone who talks about the black church, the black church, the black church, we need to learn from the black church.

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The black church has orthodoxy. If most of them are voting Democrat, most of them have been, you want to talk about, it's just, it's amazing to me that, you know, white people are systemically this.

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The black church for the last, since Roe v. Wade, if you want to talk about them as a whole, which these people want to talk about them as a whole, they've been voting for abortionists.

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You tell me what's worse. You tell me. So I just think it's interesting.

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He says white evangelicals here, but white evangelicals care about the unborn. Okay. Just like Black Lives Matter says the lives of black people matter.

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We know that's not a fair equivalent. We know that Black Lives Matter movement does not care about aborted black babies, does not care about gang violence in the inner cities.

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And I mean, look, in the last 10 years, in just Chicago alone, you had more people dying from gang violence and homicide than you did in the entire history of, you know, what we're told about lynching.

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It's unbelievable, but that's Black Lives Matter don't really, doesn't really matter to Black Lives Matter. They don't really care about black lives.

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It's a Marxist narrative. We've gone over this, we know, but Tony Evans, again, false equivalency here.

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So he's winking and nodding at Black Lives Matter movement, winking and nodding at what he thinks would be the authorial intent behind critical race theory, critical race theory in its pure form originally.

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And then it also, he kind of possibly, he doesn't, it's vague, it's hard, but I'll just put it out there. He possibly affirms memory studies.

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He says, what we need is people who will tell the whole truth about history. And then he goes on and says, talks about all these things, even things that are like kind of tangent, well, not tangential, but they're just, if you're doing a survey of history, it's not like you can cover everything, right?

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I just need to make a point. So I'm gonna, here. If you're covering history, let's say in a high school textbook or something, you can't cover everything, you just can't do it.

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There's a lot of things you're gonna skip over. In fact, how many of you know about the range wars that happened out West between cattlemen and farmers, ranchers and farmers?

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Now, if you've seen the movie, Oklahoma, some of you know a little bit about that, right? But how many of you actually went over this in your textbooks in high school?

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Probably most of you didn't. How many of you know about Spanish flu? You do now, because of COVID. Was it in your high school history book?

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Did you learn about it? Probably not, maybe a sentence. There's just, there's a lot of things in history that we could say are really important, really formative.

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They didn't make it in because you only got so much time. And yeah, someone has to go through and figure out what's important.

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And they're gonna use a standard to do that. The assumption though is that today among critical race theorists is that it's all controlled by white privilege and white supremacy.

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So whatever benefits white people is the story that gets told. And it's this big coverup to try to not talk about atrocities against black people.

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Now, look, when I was growing up, and I think part of the reason a lot of people today are the way they are and woke is when we were growing up in the 90s, even

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Christian school textbooks emphasized, a lot of them emphasized the prominence and importance of the

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Klan. Now, should you mention the Klan? Yeah, I mean, if you should, it's part of history. But I remember, was it, there was a book

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I was reading, the 48 Liberal Lives About American History or something years ago. It was okay. There's some things in it

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I didn't agree with, but it was okay. But I remember it had this, this study had been done about a number of textbooks and the percentage of time they devoted to the

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Klan. And it was like, I don't remember the number, but it was like they were really emphasizing the

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Klan way past the importance and prominence it has. They were making it like, this is fundamentally what

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America is about. And that's what I think people my age grew up with. And so no wonder they're going woke.

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I mean, they were kind of, the soil was tilled years ago and parents weren't paying attention, a lot of them.

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Some of them were, but a lot of them weren't. And so anyway, memory studies. So you get to this point where you have to recontextualize everything.

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You have to redefine everything according to what an aggrieved minority group today, a victim group thinks about history.

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That's, in a nutshell, that's kind of how memory studies is working today, or revisionism. And they're not the same thing, but they're very related.

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So Tony Evans says, we shouldn't ignore, and he goes through a list of all these things in history, but some of them are kind of like, it's not like anyone's trying to ignore them.

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What I'm trying to say is the assumption behind even Tony Evans and his thinking is that there's racism at play in ignoring certain things.

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And could there be in some, has there been? There may be somewhere, yeah. I'm sure there has been things that have been de -emphasized here and there.

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But to make a broad statement like that, that that's just what's going on, that all of America is just complicit in trying to ignore things that are inconvenient,

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I don't think so. There's a lot of things that, in fact, there's things I wish were kind of talked about more that aren't, that would be,

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I don't know, eugenics. Wish it was a little more emphasized in general high school surveys and stuff.

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At least we talked about it. Labor unions. And I mean, the labor movement gets mentioned, but how about the abuse and the racism in labor unions?

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It doesn't get talked about. It's only the stuff that fits the narrative that can be used today that seems to make it in. And I submit to you, there are people, and there are

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Marxists behind the narratives that your kids are learning today. And I don't have a problem citing chapter and verse on those things or naming names on those things.

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But the assumption that it's a bunch of white supremacists are still, even now, just trying to get people to ignore history, that is an assumption that would go right along with the memory studies.

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Because the assumption is that a certain social group is winning out in this almost Darwinian -like struggle between social locations.

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And we can't let that happen. We can't let that happen. So I'm gonna say possibly affirms memory studies.

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So let's just say that all these things are true. He, interest convergence, white privilege, colorblindness,

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Black Lives Matter, memory studies. That's five of the seven things that define critical race theory, that make up critical race theory.

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And Tony Evans is basically endorsing them. So are we really getting kingdom race theology, or is this a rebranding of critical race theory?

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That's the question I wanna ask. And I think the answer is pretty obvious. This is a soft critical race theory posing as Christian theology.

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And I wanna develop this more. Let me give you some quotes. Tony Evans says,

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I define kingdom race theology as the reconciled recognition, affirmation, and celebration of the divinely created ethnic differences through which

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God displays his multifaceted glory, as his people justly, righteously, and responsibly function personally and corporately in unity under the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ. Okay, that sounds pretty good. Like everyone can come around that, right?

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Like, well, we all want the affirmation and celebration of ethnic differences,

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I guess, right? I mean, God created people, so okay, I can get behind that. I can get behind responsibly functioning under the

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Lordship of Christ, right? And that's, I think, the point, is to make something so broad that hardly anyone who, even cults, anyone who just says, hey, we kinda like the

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Bible, they're going to be like, yeah, I agree with that. So it's very broad.

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But then when you start unpacking what he actually says, what he thinks, his concept of this broad, vague definition, what it actually is, you'll find, okay, you're gonna start deviating.

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For example, he says twice that, well, I'll start here. He teaches that a parallel exists between the white privilege and Jewish privilege in Ephesians.

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So basically, the Jewish people, hey, they're like the white people today. They're just lording it over the Gentiles, which is not quite,

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I mean, look, what about the Romans and what they did to the Jews? But, okay, all right. That's where he wants to go with this.

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What's his evidence? He states that the term uncircumcision is parallel to the N -word. I kid you not.

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The term uncircumcision is parallel to the N -word. Now, I should have done this before. Let's just do it now.

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Let's type in, on a Bible word search, uncircumcision in the

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Bible. And let's see what we come up with. Okay, so there's a whole bunch of references.

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I mean, it's just, there's a whole bunch. Let's just talk about a few of them, right? Romans, which is where he's reading from, talks about uncircumcision.

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For circumcision indeed profits if you are a doer of the law, but if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.

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I mean, is this Paul using the N -word? Is that, okay. Let's just, there's a bunch of times in Romans.

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Let's skip past Romans. Has anyone, let's see. Galatians says, but to the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the good news for the uncircumcision, even as Peter with the good news for the circumcision.

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So this is like, hey, Paul's saying in a positive way, I'm carrying the gospel to the uncircumcision. Is he, is that like the

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N -word? How about, let's skip ahead. Let's go to the

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Old Testament, shall we? Leviticus, and when ye shall come into the land, ye shall have planted all manner of trees for food.

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Then ye shall count the fruit thereof as their uncircumcision. Jeremiah nine, behold, the days come, says

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Yahweh, that I will punish all those who are circumcised in their uncircumcision. I just,

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I'm not seeing like the N -word jumping out here. What about, you know, circumcise your hearts?

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Deuteronomy 10. Is this, you know, basically you're implying they're not circumcised.

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What I'm getting at here is, this isn't, this is a stretch for Tony Evans to say this, to say that calling someone uncircumcision or referring to uncircumcision is a parallel to the

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N -word. If that's the case, then several of the biblical authors are guilty of something that in our society we think of as terrible now.

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And I don't know if you want to put the biblical authors in that position. I mean, you're giving, you're sawing off the branch you're sitting on.

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You're trying to preserve the Bible here, but now you're saying, well, if you use that term, that's like using the N -word. You really want to go down this path,

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Tony Evans? I mean, this is a great way to get your children to start rejecting the Bible if that's, if they think that that's what it actually is.

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But we know that this parallel doesn't exist between white people and Jews, not in the way

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Tony Evans is stating. It's not, or the way critical race theorists today think of this.

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It's not like the Jews were, it was based on religious. This is what

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I'm trying to get at. It was based on religion. It wasn't based on ethnicity. It was based on, are you going to follow the law?

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That was the whole Galatian heresy in the Judaizers. That's what that was all about. And I've heard this done so many times.

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It drives me nuts. But this parallel of like, well, that was just racism. No, it wasn't racism.

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It was a disagreement over the law and whether one ought to keep it or not.

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All right, so, and whether it contributed for salvation is really what I should say. All right. He says this, God corrected

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Peter when he was a racist. Okay, there you go. You're just saying full out, Peter's a racist because he sat with the

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Jews. He was a racist. Had to do with keeping the law, guys. God corrected

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Miriam when she objected to Moses marrying a black wife. God turned Miriam white because of a rebellion against a God -ordained,

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God -authorized relationship. So God judges sin. We don't really know whether Miriam's objection to Moses's wife had anything to do with the color of her skin.

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Yes, it is mentioned that Moses married a wife who is a Cushite, right? So it could be part of that,

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I guess. But I think there was more to it than that. It probably had more to do with nationality, a non -Jew, not just something ethnic.

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Could it be related in some way? I guess it could, but again, you're stretching here. And this is what

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Tony Evans does with the Bible. He's stretching it to try to make it fit the context of today.

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And you don't have to. You go to other passages, by the way, that to try to correct and interpret and come up with an alternative to the

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BLM and critical race theory stuff. You don't have to go to these passages and try to stretch disagreements over the law and then say that, well, that's the same thing as white people and black people today.

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And what critical race theorists think is really happening with systemic racism. That's kind of like Peter and sitting with the

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Jews. No, it's not. No, it's not. How about this?

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He says, the good work you should lead out in is the work of racial reconciliation. He refers to Ephesians two.

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No, this is about the law. Gentiles don't have to keep the Jewish law.

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It's not about racial reconciliation, not in the sense in which we think about it today. He downplays victimhood and emphasizes black pride in the

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Bible. So I wanted to say something about this because I appreciate it. He had a whole part where he down, you're not a victim. And it's like, well, that's great.

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But a lot of the other things he says seem to contradict this. And I'm gonna show you in a minute why there's more tension even than I'm letting on here.

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He emphasizes black pride in the Bible too, not white pride, black pride. And I'm wondering, does the shoe fit on the other foot?

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Black pride's all throughout the Bible. He says, I wrote a whole book on it. We should get our black pride from the Bible. What about white pride? What about Asian pride?

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What about any pride? This is the question I have. Is there really a case to be made for any of those other things?

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As soon as you say that, wouldn't you be guilty of racism? I'm not even saying, I'm not saying they're white.

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Look, when some of these white supremacist types, the few that there are out there, try to say like, oh, white power, white pride.

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It's actually, it's almost comical in a way in my mind, just because of how different Europe is. Like, yeah, you know, there was like two world wars in the last century that people in Europe fought with each other.

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And you know, it's not really, yeah, they're very different, very different languages and cultures and all that. It's, you know, yeah.

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But anyway, I'm just saying, is there, why just emphasize black pride?

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So here's my summation of all of this. I think it's, there's an inadequate, I think there's an adoption of critical race theory, some of the teachings of it, and then there's an inadequate critique of it.

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Tries to distance from the whole victim narrative, tries to distance himself from that.

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But at the same time, he says things that would contradict it. Evans blames confusion and failure to agree on terms for disagreements over critical race theory.

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Evans teaches at the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter Organization were controversial additions to critical race theory, but not critical race theory in its pure form.

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That's his first thing. Hey, it's not critical race theory, that's the problem. It's what people think about it now.

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That's not true. Critical race theory is a problem. And so he, again, that's the adopting certain portions of critical race theory.

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Evans then tries to separate color and construct by attacking critical race theory for the confusion it promotes when teachers tell children they are racist because of their skin color.

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Most people think it's wrong to tell kids that they're racist because they're white or something. So he, that's a popular position.

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Evans, in part two, the 41 -minute mark says, you know what, we gotta separate this.

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We gotta separate color and construct. Just because someone's white, that doesn't mean they're an oppressor. But they could, but again,

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Evans also teaches that they could be in this construct of being an oppressor because of the color of their skin. So I don't think you can separate those two.

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That is a tension, and he's trying to have it both ways. That's the whole point of this, in case you didn't realize it.

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That is the entire point of all of this, trying to have it both ways. We can satisfy the critical race theorists, we can satisfy those against critical race theory, and everyone can just get along, and no one has to leave the church.

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I think that's the entire point of it. I think that's why pastors are attracted to it. I think that's why he's being invited to places like Liberty University and speaking, because this is gonna be the key forward.

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You know, we don't wanna go with those radicals, right? Even Votie Bauckham, right? Don't wanna go with the Votie Bauckhams of the world, oh man, but you know, we don't really wanna go with,

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I don't know, the Jamar Tisbys of the world either. Can't we have something in the middle? Can't we have something that satisfies both sides?

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Doesn't the Bible give us something? And Dr. Tony Evans is the one who's answering that call, providing the product that is in demand right now.

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It doesn't work though. And that's the point I wanna make. It does not work. He adopts critical race theory, aspects of it, then he tries to critique aspects of it, they're inadequate critiques, and he calls it kingdom race theology, but he has to stretch the

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Bible to make it work. And I would suggest there's a better way to go about this.

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Just reject critical race theory. Just reject it. Just say, look, we're rejecting it because number one, it's postmodern.

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And we don't agree with that. We don't agree with the standpoint theory. He doesn't even touch that. We don't agree with the standpoint theory.

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We believe that the word of God and truth is accessible because God gave us sense perception.

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He gave us minds to think. He has, and for Christians, he given us the Holy Spirit. We don't think that there's an advantage someone has just because of the color of their skin or their social location in understanding the word of God, right?

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We disagree with that. We disagree with these firm designations given to oppressed and oppressor. Disagree with that.

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We don't think that that's right. We think reality is a lot more complicated than that. And we don't harbor bitterness.

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We also aren't going to be involved in reparations or any of these schemes that would turn justice on its head that would actually are anti -justice.

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They're schemes by which we actually look at external qualities and judge people based upon them and then figure out what we're going to do.

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No, instead we should do what Exodus teaches, what the law teaches. Don't favor a poor man in a dispute.

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Don't favor your brother. Don't favor a relative. Don't oppress someone who's a sojourner because they don't have connections.

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They don't have, they don't know their way around and they don't know how things are done in your country.

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Don't oppress someone who is, doesn't have a husband, a widow or an orphan, right?

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Treat people equally, equality before the law. That, why not just say that that's how we should do things?

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Equality before the law. And yes, there's hierarchies within that. The Old Testament has that, there's hierarchy.

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Look, they had slavery. They had hierarchies. They had, there's biblical teaching on all these things.

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But the main point of justice is to rightly apply the law in an even fashion.

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That's the equality that Christians should be striving for. And then when it comes to race, then you just emphasize the fact that we are one in Christ.

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In the church, I'm talking about, in the church, we are one in Christ. Out there, if, you know, where there isn't a communion table and you're not coming to the communion table, then you just say, look, everyone's made in God's image.

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We try to treat people with respect and judge them to pick a famous quote by the content of their character.

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I don't know why this is so difficult, but it is. And actually, I do know why. The reason it is, is because there is a desire to satisfy people who are into the critical race theory thing.

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And Tony Evans is playing right into it. And Christian institutions are more than happy to join him in that. So wanted to make you aware of it.

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Wanted to help you. If you're a patron, go to the link in the info section. You can click on it and you'll get the PowerPoint with all the timestamps so that you don't have to go back and reinvent the wheel.

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If you're talking to someone about this and you don't have to cite my video if you don't want to, you can just say, look, here's where Tony Evans said this.