Woke Church Chapter 5 - I've Got a Lament of my Own (Part 1 of 2)

The Lament Chapter and the Need for Evidence

Well, church, chapter five, this is the lament chapter. Now, many people who have been reading this along with me, not really with me, but at the same time as me, have been reading faster than I have, and they've told me that chapter five is the real doozy to look out for, and they were not wrong.

Chapter five is probably the linchpin chapter of the book. However, it wasn't unexpected. It's pretty much standard fare. I mean, a lot of you have said, you know, I don't really wanna buy this book. I don't wanna really support Eric Mason's writing it, and I completely agree.

I mean, honestly, the only reason I bought this book is because of the YouTube videos that I'm doing. I feel like I kinda have to. This is a major voice in the evangelical social justice movement, and so I felt like I had to buy it.

I don't recommend you buying it. If you've engaged in this conversation for even just for a month or so, I mean, you don't have to have engaged very long, you would have heard everything that this book has to offer.

There's nothing new in it, and that's not bad. I mean, that's not a criticism. It's just the reality. So I'm just telling you, you have no need. If you've listened to Dr. Eric Mason for any amount of time, there's nothing in this book that you wouldn't have already heard.

I don't suggest that you buy it, unless you're like me. You're engaged in this conversation in a unique way. Go ahead and buy it. It's not the end of the world to support Dr. Eric Mason's work. But anyway, the lament chapter talks about all the things that he laments, and look, I'm not gonna tell somebody what to lament over, but the reality is, though, that it's not just the things that he's lamenting.

He wants everyone to lament these things. In fact, the whole point of writing this chapter is to sort of almost shame people into not caring about the things that really matter according to him. And so if you're not lamenting these same things, well, you're a moral midget.

You're an ethical midget from this perspective. And so what I'm gonna do is there's 10 laments. I'm gonna break this up into two videos. I'm gonna do the first five laments, and then we're gonna talk about the last five laments.

And each one of these, what you're gonna see is that there is just a real assumption, an assumption that this is something that number one, is lament worthy, and number two, is absolutely true. And the expectation is that you're gonna read this and just believe him.

And the reality is that so often, I've written my sort of responses in the margins here, and so often the response is just simply prove it. We need to see the evidence of this. And you know, this is something that I've been saying on my video since the very beginning.

I've been saying this for a year on YouTube. You can't just say things. You gotta actually demonstrate it. And in fact, Dr. Eric Mason, that's one of his laments. He doesn't want to have to demonstrate it.

He just wants you to believe him. In fact, he says he won't even engage with someone who won't believe him, and just pushes back and stuff like that. And that's just a real deficiency. Eric Mason has some real cojones in order to just expect that we just believe you.

We're gonna action on what you say is the case. And so often, these aren't just matters of simple fact and fiction. These are matters of interpretation, and so we need to discuss these things. If we're not willing to discuss these things, then the conversation never gets off the ground, and that's just the reality.

The Black Church and the Question of Whether It Had to Be Created

So anyway, let's just dive right in. I'm gonna start at lament number one. Lament number one is the fact that the black church had to be created. And the story he tells is a very sad story. It's a story of two black brothers who were worshiping at a church.

And it's basically that there's too many black people worshiping at this church, and so the white people at the church decided to kick them out, or not really kick them out, but move them from the white seats, essentially, and put them in the lobby or something like that.

And the two black brothers refused to go. They were in the middle of a prayer, and they were just like, no, I'm not gonna go. We're praying right now. Let's do it after prayer. We'll move, but we'll do it after prayer.

And so the story goes that the white people kicked them out during the prayer. They forcibly removed them. And I have no reason to question the story. I believe it's probably true. I have no problem accepting that.

But Eric Mason says that that forced the black people to create their own church. The black church had to be created because white people were so evil. And I reject that. I absolutely reject that. Nobody has to start a new church.

You see, here's the thing. I'm not saying it was wrong to do it, by the way. Don't hear me saying that. I'm not saying that it was wrong for these brothers to start their black church. What I am saying is he's making it seem like it was forced.

It had to be created. They were forced into it. Nobody's forced into it. Nobody's forced into it. So I left a church in New York. And the reason I left is because they were kind of dabbling with some of the charismatic sort of, what's it called, Bethel church type stuff.

They weren't doing the kind of things that Bethel does at their meetings, but they were starting to sing Bethel music and they were starting to kind of dabble in some of that stuff. And I left the church.

Now, did I have to leave that church? I think you get different opinions on that depending on who you ask, but I don't think so. And furthermore, it would not have forced me to start a church. Do you see what I'm saying?

So you have choices. You always have choices. I hear stories about people who are willing to stay and accept abusive leadership for the sake of the church, for the sake of the gospel. I'm not saying you have to do that, but nobody's forced into anything.

So no, the black church didn't have to be created. It was created in that you could see, some people see that as a good thing. Some people see that as a bad thing. I don't really care. I think it's totally fine that people make churches that welcome and cater towards certain ethnicities.

I don't have a problem with that, but this idea that it had to happen, it had to be created, it's just false. It's just false. There's nothing in the Bible that says, well, if X happens, then you need to create a new church.

There's nothing like that. So anyway, that's lament number one. He's lamenting the fact that the black church had to be created and it's all the white man's fault, which is a common theme in this lament chapter.

Everything's the white man's fault. So that's his lament. I say, it's just simply not true. It's just simply not true. It didn't have to be created. There you go. Here's lament number two. It says, evangelicals dismissal of the black church.

One Church, Many Ethnic Churches, and the Regulative Principle

And here's what, listen to the first paragraph. I was so confused when I read this. It says, I often hear from evangelicals that, quote, there is no such thing as the black church. I grieve this statement.

And you know, people always say in this movement, we gotta be truth tellers, right? We gotta be truth tellers. And I gotta say, why is Dr. Mason pretending like he doesn't know what people mean by that?

Like as if when people say there's no such thing as the black church, what they're actually doing is denying the fact that there are churches that are predominantly black or churches catering to black people.

Like that's not what's happening. Like, let's be honest about this. Why pretend like you don't know what people are saying when they say that? What people are typically saying when they say there's no such thing as the black church or there's no such thing as a Latino church or the Asian church or the white church is that biblically speaking, there's just the church.

That's it. From a theological perspective, there's only one church and it's of every ethnicity, every tribe, every tongue, every nation. That's all that they're saying. That's all that they're saying, typically.

They're not denying the existence of churches that are predominantly black or churches that are predominantly white. Why pretend like that's what they're doing? I just don't get it. I just don't get it.

Why do that? Trying to score some kind of points. I mean, Dr. Eric Mason knows better. I don't know why he's misrepresenting things like that. The rest of the section talks about the dangers of sort of integration and how black people are suspicious of integration because basically what they think it means is that they have to conform to white culture and they have to lose their own culture in order to integrate.

And to be honest, I'm sympathetic to that kind of a situation because I personally don't see a problem with there existing a German church or a Korean church or a church that predominantly caters to white people.

I don't have a problem with that. I don't see any reason to say that that's a bad thing. And so likewise, I don't see any reason that it's bad that the black church exists, that there's churches that are ethnically typically black and maybe even culturally to some extent.

All I care about though is that they're practicing church the way God practices or the way God commands it. So if the black church in general is doing something that's against the scripture that does not conform to the regular principle, well, they need to change those things.

Likewise, if the white church is doing that, they need to change those things. I just preached a sermon on Sunday about the second commandment. And I know people have different interpretations of the second commandment, but one thing is crystal clear.

God cares about how he is worshiped. God cares about how he is worshiped. Now, I come at this from a reform perspective. And so I look at the regulative principle. And so I say, if the black church is doing something that does not comport with the regular principle, they need to change.

Likewise with whites or Asians or whoever. So I don't have a problem with churches catering to certain ethnic ethnicities or cultures. I don't have a problem with that. And so I kind of agree. I see that the problem or the potential pitfalls of that, like Eric Mason does, but I'm holding things up to the standard of the scripture, right?

And so if a Latino church tends to be very charismatic, they need to change that. You see what I'm saying? So anyway, I know people would disagree with me on that. That's totally fine. Lament number three is about tokenism.

Tokenism, Kooning, and Claims About Diversity

And this is basically a section about Kooning, essentially. I mean, we heard about this. We heard about this in the MLK 50 speeches from Dr. Mason and also Matt Chandler about how, well, if somebody is not woke enough, they're not really that qualified to be in the position that they're in.

And so therefore it's Kooning or therefore it's tokenism. And that's just one of the most racist things I've ever heard. I mean, just because somebody is not woke doesn't mean they're not qualified. You know, that's what Eric Mason's standard was.

He says, we not feeling them, therefore they're not qualified. And that's just not the case at all. I mean, there's no wokeness qualification in the scripture. It's just that simple. And the reality is like, there's just so many, listen to this, listen to this quote, where's this from?

He quotes this from, let's see here, Brian Loritz, more about leaving white evangelicalism. It was an article that he wrote and he says this, I'm tired of recommending young minority leaders to serve on white church staffs, full stop.

This is just a racist statement, but anyway. And quote, watching them get used as tokens to show how serious the church is about diversity, only to see it end very badly. I'm tired of the silence of other minority leaders who in their pursuit of climbing Mount Significance are scared to speak the truth for fear of not being invited to some conference, missing out on a book deal and not having their brand established or extended.

Do you hear the assumptions there? Do you hear the assumptions? If you're a minority leader, you're not speaking out on this stuff the way Dr. Eric Mason is or the way this writer is, well, then you're just doing it because you're trying to climb Mount Significance.

Chandler said the same thing. Chandler said a racist statement in that ERLC conference. He said the same thing. Well, if you don't agree or if you're speaking like a conservative, well, that just means that you're just trying to get influence or power or just trying to curry favor with the white man.

You see, there's just so many assumptions, racist assumptions, I might add. These are racist assumptions. And so it's just like, we need to see the receipts here, prove it. If you're telling me somebody's just trying to climb Mount Significance or somebody is just a token, they're just there because the church wants to put this idea forward that they're for diversity, prove it, prove it.

How do you tell the difference between someone who's actually for diversity and so they hired a black guy or someone who's just trying to hire a token? How do you tell the difference? I'd like to see the receipts on that.

Whitewashed History and the Ethnicity of Church Fathers

Lament number four, racial insensitivity in the academy. This is just, I just find this, so this is Lament is about how history is whitewashed. This is what he says. He says, quote, much of Christian history is painted white.

It's almost the norm for Turkish, Mediterranean, African or biblical characters to be assumed to be white. I just say, according to who? Who's assuming this? Who is this that's saying all these people are white?

Then he says, but many of the most notable church fathers were of North African descent, Augustine, Clement, Origen, Tertullian, Phoenicius and Cyril. My cry here isn't for diversity, but just honest portrayals of history.

We need healthy research that communicates fidelity to God, others and history. If we aren't, listen to this, if we aren't clear on a historical figure's exact ethnicity, the default color shouldn't be white.

With respect, why does this matter to you when you're reading them? Why do we need to know the exact ethnicity of someone as we are reading them? Most people aren't racist and so they don't care. It's just Jimmy crack corn and I don't care.

If Augustine was black or tan skin or maybe he's a little olive skin or something like that, what is the difference when you're looking at what he writes? You see, this is assumed as sort of a racist, white supremacist thing, it's just not.

It's just not, everybody does this. I've been to Ethiopia three or four times and what I noticed is what, they have the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, they have images of people, against the regular principle by the way, but anyway, they have images of the apostles and Christ and things like that and guess what?

They're typically black. All the apostles were black, Christ was black, all of the saints were black. Why do you think that is? Is that because they're black supremacists? No, this is just what people do.

They, in their minds, they have a certain idea of what people look like and they're often incorrect. They're often incorrect. You know, in my mind, I have a certain idea of what people look like and it's probably different than what Eric Mason assumes about the apostles and Dr. James White assumes about the apostles, but guess what?

Nobody's saying anything about how that matters. He presents this as if, well, if we just, if we were to present Augustine as black, people would have a problem with that and so we don't. We present him as white so that people will accept what they say.

That's how he presents this, it's just irrelevant. I said this before and I'll say it again. If you're reading a book and you're like reading it and you're like, oh yeah, that's pretty good, right on, right on, Augustine, yeah, but then in the back of your mind, it's like, I really wonder what the ethnicity of him is before I can fully accept it.

Like, honestly, I just, so every character, every biblical character and every author of church history needs to be presented ethnically and racially. The first thing we need to know about them is not, you know, what they wrote, not the impact they had on church history, no, no, no, no.

What we need to know is their ethnicity. I just find this so hard to believe. He's lamenting this and I'm not gonna tell him what to lament, but the reality is the fact that other people don't lament this is actually a sign that it's a good thing.

They don't care about these people's ethnicity. Whether Augustine was jet black or lily white, it makes no difference to his contributions to the church. That's just it. We love what Augustine wrote. We love what these brothers wrote because of the merits of what they wrote, not because of their ethnicity.

If you're obsessed with ethnicity, that's your problem, not mine. So I'm not gonna lament this. I don't care about this. When I read books, I don't care what the ethnicity of the author is. I don't care that you're a black man, Dr. Eric Mason.

I would hate what you're writing here, your ideas, whether you're a white or black or Latino or whoever. That's the reality. I think your ideas are terrible, not because of your ethnicity, because they're terrible on their own merits.

And if you read books and you just, you look at the back cover, let's see if he's white or black, so I can interpret him correctly. That's your problem. That's your sin that you need to deal with, not mine.

So I'm not gonna lament that with you. Let's just read here. Hold on a second. He says here at the end of that lament, he says, the mistrust that many blacks experience in evangelism and gospel mission flows from this.

I grieve as I talk to Hebrew Israelites, people in African, Kemetic and Yoruba religions, black atheists and agnostics. They all point to the ways that they see Christian scholarship as married to the history of prejudice that seeks to destroy our black dignity.

So here he is saying, well, the reason why these black atheists and these Hebrew Israelites are rebelling against Christianity is because, well, they were taught that Augustine was white, which I don't believe.

But secondly, it's not the white man's fault. Their rebellion against God is not the white man's fault because they misapply history, which again, I don't believe, but even if they were, even if all of these people were whitewashed, that's no excuse for your rebellion against God.

That's no excuse for your rebellion against God. So much of black rebellion against God in this book is blamed on white people. And I say, that's a theological problem, Dr. Eric Mason. That's a theological deficiency that you have.

People hate Christ because people hate Christ, not because they hate white people. They might hate white people too, don't get me wrong. They might hate the church too, don't get me wrong. The people rebel against God because they hate him.

That's a theological problem, Dr. Eric Mason, but hey, no problem. Well, I'm at number five. This is the last one for today. The evangelical perception of black preachers. I remember being on a panel about race.

Perceptions of Black Preachers, Spurgeon, and Gardner C. Taylor

This is a quote. A well-meaning brother mentioned how encouraged he was to see so many young black leaders in the room who are being raised up to preach the robust gospel finally. Three of us at the event didn't see that as a compliment.

This is a chapter about how certain white people assume that there are no faithful black preachers. And here's the thing, I'd like to see these people, first of all, and I wish you would have called them out.

I believe some people would probably say something like that. And that's a matter of ignorance. That's a matter of their experience. But the reality is, let me read this. He says this. He says, at another conference on Christ-centered preaching, there was a strong argument that a sect of white evangelicalism known as the Neo-Reform Movement was recovering Christ-centered preaching.

I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that that's not how it was presented. That's how Eric Mason's racially-focused mind perceived it. I'd be willing to bet every dollar in my bank account that the person who said this did not say white evangelicalism, a movement in white evangelicalism called the Neo-Reform Movement is recovering Christ-centered preaching.

I'd be willing to bet everything in my bank account that that's actually not how it was presented. It was presented that there's a new movement refocused on Reform preaching and a focus of Reform theology, which is very Christ-honoring.

That's just the reality, right? Now, he's saying, well, it was white evangelical. Now, that's because you have a racist mind that you're thinking of it that way. That pastor wasn't thinking of it that way.

If you're gonna come here and tell me that there's a Reform Movement in the black church, then that's great. Then that's great. Maybe this pastor didn't know about it because I don't know about it. I didn't know about it.

And so you seeing this in a racial term, that's probably not how this pastor was seeing it. He was seeing it as a Reform thing. There's a new Reform Movement going out there, which by the way, I wouldn't call Reformed, by the way.

It's Calvinistic, yes, but not Reform. But you see, he's just laser-focused on race here. Probably you're one of the few people in that room that were saying, oh, oh, he's saying white people are the savior.

Listen to this. He says, when we study Spurgeon, we call him the Prince of Preaching. Oh wait, hold on. Listen, quote, page 105. I was confused about this narrative that suggested that white evangelicals are saving the history of Christianity in the West.

Again, you are probably one of the few people in the room that was focused on race there. I guarantee it wasn't presented like that. Well, look how great these white people are. I heard Chandler talk about this too.

He said, well, in history class, you probably learned all about how great white people are. And I'm like, no. That's not how it was presented. That's how your racially-focused mind has interpreted it.

That's an interpretation, not actually what's happened. And so when someone said here the Neo-Reform movement was saving Christianity, let's just say they said it that way, which I doubt. But let's just say they said it that way.

They say Neo-Reform people are saving Christianity. For some reason, your brain interprets white people are saving Christianity. Where's the problem in that? Is it with the person who said Neo-Reform people are saving Christianity, or with you who interpreted that as white people?

I'd be willing to bet that the problem is actually in your mind, your mind. He says, he goes on. He says, we study Spurgeon and call him the prince of preaching, yet the greatest preacher of our generation, and my estimation is Gardner C. Taylor.

He is known as the dean of black preachers. I put two question marks next to this in the margin. This is the last thing I'll say about this. This is a lament for Dr. Eric Mason saying, well, I don't really think Spurgeon was the best preacher.

I think that this guy was the best preacher, this black guy. And I'm thinking to myself, fine. I don't think Charles Spurgeon was the best preacher either. What does that have to do with race? What is that?

Why is that lamentable? Because people don't agree with your opinion on who the best preacher is? Some people call this guy the prince of preachers. Some people call this guy the prince of preachers. You know what?

My favorite preacher is an unknown. There's an unknown person. Is it okay for me to lament that people don't agree with me on who the best preacher? This is what I'm talking about. This is just, in Eric Mason's mind, what he believes is fact.

So this black guy is the best preacher ever and the only reason other people don't see it is because they're racist. No, Dr. Eric Mason. No, Dr. Eric Mason. You're the one obsessed with race. You're the one that's looking at the person's ethnicity when you're reading their book to decide how to interpret them.

You're the one who's looking at the person's ethnicity to decide how to treat them. That's partiality on your part. You show partiality almost every single day on Twitter. You show partiality in this book so often.

The sin is with you. It's not with the person who said, well, the neo-reform movement is saving Christianity. Again, I don't believe that they said it that way, but let's just say they did. You're the person with the problem there because you hear that and you hear white people are saving Christianity.

Dr. Eric Mason, you are a racist. It's very clear to many of us as we read this book. You interpret everything in this lens of race and then you lament that other people don't do the same thing. Well, let me just tell you this.

I don't lament that I don't do the same thing. We're about to get to the next five laments and those are even worse than the first five, but the first five is simply you complaining and being sad that people don't see everything through the lens of race like you do.

I don't and I'm not sad about it. I wasn't taught to do it and I don't do it today. Do you see what I'm saying? If I were to look at all the Latino books that I have about reformed theology and then I'd say to myself, wow, there's just so few Latino books, but then there's all these white authors that must be white supremacy.

If I were to think like that, I would be like you. I would be a racially focused partial person like you, but I'm not like that and I don't lament that. I have my own problems, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I'm perfect or this great guy, but that's one way that I wasn't taught to think.

You were taught to think this way. You admit this in your book, but I'm wondering why you don't sacrifice that at Christ's feet. Why don't you put that to death? Because partiality is a sin and so that's what I have to say about that.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful. God bless.