Missouri Synod Nazis?, Anglicans on Same-Sex Marriage, & SEBTS gets Woke on Climate Change

Southern Baptist Convention, Guidepost Solutions, and Planned Parenthood Comparisons

Welcome to Conversations, The Metta Podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We're gonna jump into it, because I got a lot of ground I wanna cover in a short time to do it. SBC stuff, and then we'll talk some Anglican stuff, and then we'll talk some Lutheran stuff.

And I may in the future need some help on the Anglican and Lutheran stuff. So I have some Lutheran contacts, but if there's any one who knows good conservative Anglicans, let me know. I've met a few, but I just don't travel in those circles much.

So here's what I wanna start with. This was a tweet. I put out a post about this, and I just said, what are we gonna say? That Planned Parenthood is now, it's okay to work with them, because only a percentage of what they do is abortion.

They also do helpful things for women's health. I did that sarcastically, and someone said, you should talk about this in the podcast, because I think enough people just didn't get it. But let me explain this to you.

This is from last week. A lot of this stuff is from things that while I was traveling, I couldn't get to last week, and I wanna talk about them now, because I think they are relevant. And this is from the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

It's a tweet, and the tweet says, you have heard it said that Guidepost Solutions takes your SBC money and uses it to fund LGBTQ events, but I tell you that the most leftist cause to which Guidepost has ever contributed is a police association.

Bunch of commies, those boys in blue, they're lying to you. So he's accusing people of lying who have a problem with the fact that Guidepost Solutions, hired by the SBC to investigate sexual abuse and make recommendations, happens to be very pro-LGBT.

And they post about it, and they're public about it. And that should be relevant, and that should be important to think about, because that's in the neighborhood of sexual abuse. They're literally against the Southern Baptist sexual ethic.

And Barbara here wants to, I guess, make a joke about how because they support the police, I guess that means they're not woke. And he frames it in the kinds of words, in Jesus' language here, you have heard it said, but I say, I mean, this is like from the Sermon on the Mount or something.

It's just, it's crazy. This is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. It is a joke. Southern Baptist Convention is, it's like having Biden as the president and Bart Barber of the Southern Baptist Convention, it just makes you wonder what world we're living in.

But I think my point holds true here, that if you're gonna justify Guidepost for something as fundamental as that, then, man, why not justify working with Planned Parenthood? I mean, I'm not saying that it's, what Planned Parenthood does isn't more evil.

I think it certainly is. But I mean, it's an abomination. It's to eva in the Old Testament to support homosexuality. They're supporting an abomination. So there you go. That's the president of the Southern Baptist Convention justifying it there and saying, they're lying to you.

Yeah, they're not lying. I mean, I don't know about the LGBTQ events, but we've shown the screenshots here before. Guidepost Solutions celebrates Pride Month. They're pro-LGBTQ. End of discussion. I don't even know what else to say about that.

Saddleback, Female Pastors, and Abuse Allegations in the SBC

All right, other Southern Baptist stuff. I wanted to point this out to you. This is from last week, but it is in the wake of the whole Saddleback Church thing and the Southern Baptists Executive Committee kicking, disfellowshipping Saddleback Church over having a woman pastor.

And it's, so let me just read for you some reactions that went somewhat viral. I went to bed after hearing Beth Moore recount the shadow that terrorized her childhood. I woke up angry knowing that there are hundreds of abusers in SBC pulpits, yet some in our convention have prioritized removing female shepherds before going after men who are wolves.

Here's another one. Priorities on display. This is actually from Krista Brown, who I think has contributed to the Caringwell Project in the SBC. But she says, priorities on display. The XBC Executive Committee disfellowships Saddleback and for more churches because women pastors, but they don't even add Johnny Hunt to the list of abusers.

And they applaud Morris Chapman, who stonewalled SBC to survivors for years because job well done. This is the SBC. Ben Marsh, one of, and this is, again, I don't know who Ben Marsh is, but Beth Moore follows him and he's got a lot of likes on this.

One of the most ironic parts of the SBC kicking Saddleback out is that they have proven that they can reprimand churches that do things they don't like. That's going to play out very interestingly in the numerous lawsuits by sex abuse survivors against the SBC.

And then the last but not least, Lori Adams Brown. Dear Southern Baptist, you raised me in the faith to have integrity and to care for others. How is it possible that instead of addressing Saddleback for a pastor with years of abuse allegations, you oust them for letting women use their God-given gifts?

Now, y 'all, this is not complicated whatsoever. It is not complicated. It is a lot easier to apply the rules than it is to create a revolution against the rules. And that's what's happening with the Me Too stuff.

It's not, it's fundamentally altering the way the Southern Baptist Convention itself functions. It's no longer a network of autonomous churches once you have this body to police and to intake complaints about sexual abuse and to try to provide lawyers and all the rest.

It's just not the same thing. And that takes a long time. They're doing it actually fairly quickly, but it should take a while to, you would think, under normal circumstances, to fundamentally change an organization like that.

And to come up with now very different ways of approaching, I even see it with the way people are treating John McArthur, not the SBC in particular, but approaching abuse by preponderance of evidence instead of innocent or beyond a reasonable doubt.

The preponderance of evidence means 51%. If you think evidence suggests, right? 51 of the evidence seems to suggest that John McArthur did something wrong. Well, he must have done it, rather than a very higher threshold, beyond a reasonable doubt.

And that is fundamentally changing the way that things are done. And that's what Guidepost recommends. That's what the SBC is getting when they hire Guidepost and they want the recommendations from Guidepost and their sexual abuse task force is trying to implement these Me Too style policies.

It's gonna take time. And I don't, I mean, I'm against it. I think that there's not a perfect world out there and the best thing is call the police. That's the police's job, in fact. And then after that, it's, of course, you take measures.

I go to a church that we do, we have a class. If you're gonna work with children, you have to take the class. There's cameras. We take precautions. But why should a church like myself, like the one I attend, it's not SBC, but let's say it was, be punished because another church didn't take precautions or because they did take the precautions, but because of some bogus Me Too standard, they're liable or they're called into account.

I mean, that's the problem. And we've gone over this before. I don't wanna beat the dead horse and go into all the details so you all know. But anyway, that's, I wanted to show you that just to make the point I just made and also to highlight the fact that there seems to be not much of a concern about female pastors.

In fact, it's almost, in some of these tweets, it's like a negative. It's like, dear Southern Baptist, you raised me in the faith. Let's see, how is it possible that instead of addressing Saddleback pastors with years of abuse, you oust them for letting women using their God-given gifts?

So as someone who's a convictional Christian here, let's say this is all true, right? And Southern Baptist Convention, let's say, should have ousted. I mean, this is generally something that you would leave to the law enforcement.

And it's something, if you don't have all the facts, if it's not beyond a reasonable doubt, if you don't know, you don't weigh in. But let's just, for the sake of argument, because I don't know all the details of this situation, let's just say that this is a legitimate case of abuse, and maybe it is, and that this was, it wasn't handled properly, and Saddleback Church is, let's just, for the sake of argument, say they're pro-abuse.

Yeah, abusing women's great. We should do it. And let's say the Southern Baptist Convention fails to kick them out, and then they kick them out, though, for having a female pastor. The Orthodox believer would say in this situation, both of those things are bad.

Both of those things are wrong. They're against God's will. And you don't, you could point out, I suppose, a level of hypocrisy if you wanted, but the fact that they're being kicked out for something that is also wrong, according to God, I mean, it's not, this is not my opinion.

This is what the Word of God says. Then, you know, I just think that there should be a support for that. And that's not what I'm seeing. I'm not seeing a support. There's a condemnation that they're doing this.

It's like they were more against abuse before they ousted Saddleback for having a woman pastor. Once they did that, it was like, well, they'll do that, but they won't, yeah, they will do that. That's directly in violation of the Baptist faith and message.

Of course they'll do that. Why would you think they wouldn't? They're just applying the rules. Anyway, I'm beating the dead horse. I just, I can't, well, it passes for logic sometimes. People who have, like, followings on social media and a level of prominence, I just don't understand how some people get to that point.

Maybe I do, but it's frustrating sometimes. All right, so a little bit of SBC stuff. Let's talk about some other denominations, though, here. I wanna get to, I wanna talk about the, no, we'll get to that in a minute.

I wanna talk about the Anglicans here. This is a story from Fox News. Anglican leaders reject Archbishop of Canterbury after same-sex marriage decision. Call it false teaching. Anglican leaders rejected the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury in a scathing letter after the Church of England voted earlier this month to offer blessings for same-sex couples.

The statement against Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was signed by archbishops from 10 of the 42 provinces of the global Anglican communion who represent conservative provinces, mostly in Africa and Asia.

So again, these are, aren't these, according to a Western standard, racial minorities just asking? That believe homosexuality goes against the Bible, the Church of England has chosen to break communion with those provinces to remain faithful to the historic biblical faith, said the statement from members of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches.

The archbishops claimed the Church of England has departed from the historic faith, passed down from the apostles by this innovation in the liturgies of the church and her pastoral practice, and drifted into false teaching.

It is therefore disqualified from being a leader of global Anglicanism, the letter stated. The archbishops further said that they were no longer able to recognize the present Archbishop of Canterbury as the first among equals leader of the global communion.

Welby has sadly let his house of bishops, that's the archbishop, Welby, to make the recommendation that undergirded the general set in motion on living in love and faith, so that's the pro-marriage, same-sex marriage proposal, knowing that they run contrary to the faith and order of the orthodox provinces in the communion.

The statement was signed by the GSFA Chair Archbishop Justy Badi of South Sudan, along with archbishops of Chile, the Indian Ocean, Congo, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Uganda, Sudan, Alexandria, and Melanesia.

The archbishops said that they would continue to work to reset the communion and to ensure that the reset communion is marked by reform and renewal. Only then will the Anglican Church as a whole be able to be God's channel of light and transformation.

The letter comes amid deep global divisions among Anglicans regarding gender and sexuality following two days of extensive debate. Now, this is so interesting to me just because, well, not just because, but one of the reasons is because it's, the synod, so the UK, this is what's happening in the UK.

They're voting to lament and repent for not being welcoming towards LGBTQI plus people. So they're playing the social justice game. And it's members of the church from the global south, from all these places that are supposed to be, right, places we listen to because they're victims and have received colonialism and they should not be colonized by our ideas, et cetera.

They're the ones that are holding true to orthodoxy. But yet, the way it's even framed, there's not like a colonial angle to this that's being exploited. There's not a opinion that, well, these are the innovations of these white men foisting it upon these colonial or, you know, trying to support them in these areas in which they would be not welcome that they, that what you would think would be there and it's not because, again, this, for obvious reasons, this runs contrary to the social justice narrative.

And that is why. So that's going on. Here's something else. This is the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod president calling for the excommunication of white nationalists. Now, this is very interesting. We had Brother David Ramirez on to talk about the Lutheran Church, the Missouri Synod specifically, not long ago.

And let's see here. And what he said, I thought was very interesting because he was very hopeful at the time. He thought that maybe there was a way to stop some of the changes that were being made to the catechism.

I think it was a catechism. And the president of the denomination had taken pause and said, we're gonna review this. Well, I guess this is part of the answer to that review process. The president of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod has called for excommunication of unrepentant white nationalists in the church's ranks, rebuking an extremist effort to exert influence within the denomination.

In a letter on February 21st, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod president, Matthew Harrison, said he was shocked to learn recently, shocked, I tell you, that a few members of the LCMS congregation have been propagating radical and unchristian alt-right views via Twitter and other social media.

Now, this is one of the reasons I want someone to weigh in. I was just watching some videos and stuff on this from some people who are claiming, they're saying there's no evidence for this. Like the people that they're excommunicating aren't, they're not Nazis, they're not alt-right, they're not any of those things.

They're just being smeared this way. So I will reserve judgment on that. The suspicion is, right, like nine times out of 10, that's usually what happens. But I don't know, maybe they have a problem with this.

But the fact that he's shocked about it, shocked, I tell you, when he didn't seem shocked about some of the pro-LGBTQ stuff in their literature that they were putting out with the catechism, it's just, it's interesting, you know?

You'll go through a review process upon further consideration, but shocked when it comes to learning about the alt-right, that's one of the things that I find curious for Christians. If you wanted to do the moral comparison, right?

And you wanted to say, okay, which is worse? What does God really hate more? And of course, sin is sin, but we know that there are different civil penalties. We know that it's gonna be greater judgment for those who rejected Jesus' ministry, cities that rejected Jesus' ministry than it is for Sodom and Gomorrah.

We know there are different punishments and so forth. That gives you a little bit of an indication that there are certain things that are more evil than others. Romans 1 points that out, and that there's a twistedness, there's a level of depravity one reaches in false worship that you don't reach, that you're not experiencing further up the line.

So given that scale, we know some kind of a scale like that exists. Everyone's obviously condemned before God for whatever sin, but knowing that there are some things God hates that are more evil or have fallen to that depth, do you think LGBTQ, so do you think someone who's a practicing homosexual or transgender, do you think God looks at that and thinks, well, that's kind of understandable?

At least they're not a white nationalist. Does that make any sense to someone whose mind is shaped by the Bible? Point out the Bible verses. I can give you a number of Bible verses on sexual ethics. I can give you a number of Bible verses specifically on homosexuality, and even cross-dressing.

I mean, we can go there. The other side is gonna have to say, well, it's some vague notion of love your neighbor. It's all those love your neighbor passages. It's the Good Samaritan, and it's Revelation 7.

They're gonna go to passages that don't really directly deal with white nationalism, quote-unquote. They're indirect, and the emphasis in Scripture is not that. If you're gonna see an emphasis, if we're comparing these two, it's gonna be against homosexuality, like clearly, and that's the thing that just proves to me, too, that people's minds are so, their priorities are just so out of whack.

Obviously, the version, well, I don't even wanna say versions. The problem with even navigating terms like white nationalism, white supremacy, racism, is because we don't even know what the definitions are anymore because they've been so diluted, and they've been applied to everything, but let's just say hating someone else because of their skin color or their genetics or something.

Yeah, that's wrong, and it would be, in that case, you're denying, if you really are denying, saying they're animalistic, a Darwinian logic or something, you would be denying some biblical teaching, right?

So I'm going to worst-case scenario, someone who hates others, racist, thinks they're beneath them, they're not even human, they're animals. I mean, there are people in the history that have been like this.

All right, that's wrong, right, clearly, and I don't know if anyone would argue otherwise, but the way this is vaguely thrown around, and the way people are just so shocked that someone would think that is a little shocking to me when they're not shocked about these other things, the sexual anarchy that is before us.

So anyway, it goes on, it just says, Matthew Harrison's just so shocked. They were causing local disruption for congregations. It's a serious issue. This is evil, we condemn it in the name of Christ. Harrison went to rebuke the horrible and racist teachings.

I mean, this is just, and it goes, it says, white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, women as property, really, fascism, death for homosexuals, even genocide.

It's a villain list. It's like all the villains that the left thinks they're fighting, all in one list. Death for homosexuals, even genocide. So here's the question I've been holding myself back from, but I gotta say it now.

What would Martin Luther be in this? I'm just curious, where would Martin Luther, this is the Lutheran Missouri Synod. I mean, where would even God be in this? Death for homosexuals. I don't, I mean, where would anyone get an idea that there's a death penalty for homosexuals?

I don't know, maybe the Old Testament. So this is like a good way to cancel your own Bible if you really wanna go there. But Martin Luther himself, I mean, and I have read his book on the Jews and their lies.

I think it is the title. He wouldn't fit into this too well. And I don't know, it just wouldn't be that shocking to me. Now, see the thing, I did a whole paper on Martin Luther. I presented, actually on this YouTube channel, I presented in defending him against the accusation that he inspired the Nazis and so forth.

They cherry-picked him and used him because he had a status in the German culture, but he would not have approved of what they did or the logic they used in doing it. But that said, I mean, he says some very, very harsh things and he would not fit in.

I mean, if Martin Luther was here today, he would be disciplined from the Lutheran church that has his name, Missouri Synod, there's no doubt. He noted that while the LCMS is not a top-down institution, he should work with local pastors.

Man, he just goes on and on about these hateful ideologies, how horrible it is. Here's the key part. Here's what I want you to hear. The letter comes in the wake of an article published this month by anti-fascist group alleging the rise, so it's an anti-fascist group.

I think this is like an Antifa group. Anyway, the rise of white supremacist faction within the Lutheran church. The post single by Corey Mahler, who has reportedly been active in far-right circles for years and has posted about whiteness and white genocide on Twitter.

So here's the, Mahler also identifies as a Christian nationalist. Here's the funny thing to me. If you, in all these scenarios, if you have a quote, quote it, right? If you have, this is the guy, this is the person, this is what we're shocked about.

Give the really bad quote that says he's a Nazi. Here's the summation of the quote. Wow, he's concerned about a white genocide. Well, I don't know. When you look at South Africa, I could see why someone might be concerned.

Asked whether Mahler would be excommunicated. A representative of the church, he allegedly attends in Tennessee, said that the matter was being handled internally, but declined to comment further. All right, so this goes on.

The, earlier this year, the president asked Concordia Publishing House, the denomination's publishing partner, to pause distribution of the new Luther's large catechism with annotations and contemporary applications, citing an online disturbance.

The move came out of an abundance of caution over concerns expressed about the content of the essays. We talked about this on the podcast. There's pro-LGBT stuff. And it talks about Ryan, I gotta get Ryan Turnipseed on the program.

His name came up again here. In particular, a popular Twitter thread by Ryan Turnipseed takes issue with the essays acknowledging economic and societal privilege and same-sex attraction, as well as suggesting a Lutheran approach to social justice.

The effort has stoked responses throughout the nomination, including some buying for the denomination's leadership. All right, here's, so there's two things. Number one, man, getting their cues from an anti-fascist group.

Red flag there. Working with an anti, if this is like an Antifa-type group, which I think that's, I mean, anti-fascist, that's Antifa, I would think. But let's just, you know what? I haven't done this, but let's just, let's search it.

Let's see. Do-do-do. So here's their Twitter. Ah, 98 followers. It doesn't seem like a very big following there. Well, it looks like they're pro-abortion. I mean, I don't know if they're linked to Antifa, but whoever this group is, I guess they're digging up dirt.

They're trying to, at least. And that's, so the thing is, you know, the anti-fascist group brings this to the attention of the Lutheran Church, and that's what's shocking to the president. And then the second thing is that Harrison says, extremist efforts were also the genesis of a recent controversy over a new edition of larger church catechism.

So he's connecting it, saying, yeah, you know, this controversy over this larger church catechism, which embraces, softens LGBT stuff. Yeah, well, that's the motivation here. I mean, it's, that's the thing that concerns me, is the attempt is to smear.

I think that's what's going on. There's an attempt to smear here. This controversy is, it's the extremists came out of the woodwork to oppose this new edition of Luther's larger catechism, and now we're on the hunt for white supremacists, now, and Nazis, and et cetera.

So, and people apparently who wanna bring back slavery, yeah, because that's the only thing that could possibly motivate one to be really concerned with the larger catechism, I am sure, or the essays accompanying it.

All right, well, that's what's happening in the Missouri Synod. So I hate to say that I was expecting this, but I kinda was. I was, you know, hopeful a little bit that fortunately there was like a review process, but this doesn't surprise me that the president's now signaling this.

Anglican Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage and the Global South

Now, let's talk about the, let's go back to the Anglican stuff real quick. I want to, I probably should have done this in a different order, but oh well. We're gonna talk about that, the Anglican Church, and this is an Oxford, 11 days ago it was posted, Oxford Student Union.

This is 12 minutes, we can't watch the whole thing, but I want you to be encouraged. This young man, I don't know much about him, but he's a, I guess he's a, I don't know what, a rector, would that be what they call him, in the Anglican Church?

And here's what he says in a, I would say a hostile environment. So let's listen to some of this together, see how far we get.

I was going to say thank you for the warm introduction, but I think instead I'll say thank you for the invitation. That's far more charitable. It's a genuine pleasure to speak here this evening, it really is.

I'm happy to be back at the Oxford Union. It wasn't too long ago that I was based here myself. And I'm very happy to be part of an organization that is still standing up for free speech, still standing up for diversity of thought and opinion, going against the approved narrative of academia in the 21st century.

So well done to you all for that. Now, I genuinely struggled with this one. I've struggled sleeping this week, actually. I don't get stage fright, I never get nervous when I go on television. I recently debated at the Cambridge Union and the Durham Union, no problem whatsoever.

But this, there's something different about this one. It's been causing me anxiety. So someone kindly sent me Luke, chapter 12, verses 11 to 12, saying, and when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself and what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

I know there's something a bit ironic about me coming here with a pair of speech after that, but why do I feel anxiety about this? Well, we are up against the authorities. Three bishops from the established church.

That means either I am wrong, and Christians have been teaching incorrectly for the last 2 ,000 years, or Jews and Christians for the last 4 ,000 to 6 ,000 years, or we have church leaders attempting to drag the church into apostasy.

Neither way is good. The consequences are severe. This debate is not just happening in this chamber. This debate is happening in real time in the House of Bishops as we speak. There's a growing number of vocal bishops who want to change the church's teaching on marriage.

The result being the spiritual neglect of Anglicans up and down this country. Now, I may have trained at the last remaining sound Anglican seminary up the road at St. Stephen's House, but I am a newbie deacon, so perhaps I am wrong on this.

Let's consult people wiser than myself, starting with the church fathers. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, quite clearly identifies matrimony as being between one man and one woman, beneficial for begetting of children.

Okay, so he goes on like this.

He quotes the church fathers. He quotes the Book of Common Prayer. He quotes the Bible. Here's a portion that gets replayed a lot, so let me just play this for you. Looks like we got an ad. All right, so once the ad's done.

Replacing his authority with our own. If marriage is no longer between one man and one woman, are we open to the idea of polygamy? We disregard the heterosexual aspect, so why not the monogamous aspect too?

If love is love, as we keep hearing, who's to say that three men loving each other is not more love than two men loving each other? Shame, degeneracy. And I'm sure someone in this chamber has echoed the words love is love tonight, and this is not about love being love.

This is about marriage, the sacrament of holy matrimony. It is directly connected to love, but it's not the definition of love. Too many people utter those words and confuse the meaning of love. Agape, the biblical context of love, is a divine love, it's a sacrificial love.

It's not lustful. People often conflate sex with love. It's very disingenuous. We've heard quite a bit of that. But then of course, atheists often pirate the words, God is love, and we've heard that one tonight too.

Again, without any understanding. Yes, God is love, but he sets the terms, not us.

Another one we've heard. I just, I can't, I can't tell you how much this guy encourages me, and I don't even know him, anything more. I've just heard this one speech. I think I've seen him before, because he's got kind of an iconic look.

For those listening, he's got, I guess that's kind of an afro, and he just looks, I don't know, iconic. You don't, we wouldn't confuse him with anyone else. Thick-rimmed glasses, black glasses, and you know, clerical outfit.

And anyway though, he goes on for a while. This is his conclusion. Let me just play you this.

Embrace gay marriage. Who is calling for the Quran to be updated to modern societal norms? It is the same, mind your language, it is the same patronizing attitude of people, of other, that treat other faiths, patronize other faiths, while being intolerant towards Christians at the same time.

It's a shame, but in the words of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, if the world is against the truth, then I am against the world.

Thank you very much. Yeah, this guy, who is Calvin Robinson? Reverend Calvin Robinson is this guy's name. And so much respect for this guy. And I thought that would be encouraging for you just to know, hey, I wish I could hear guys like this in our evangelical denomination stand up.

I mean, this is a bold guy, and we need a whole lot more Calvin Robinsons around. Okay, last but not least, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. So circling back, we made a full circle back to the Southern Baptist.

Now, at first I wasn't gonna talk about this, and then I thought, you know, I will, because here's the thing, the Southern Baptist, or the Southeastern, where I graduated from, that's where my MDiv is from, I have showed numerous hours of evidence, pages of evidence, more than any probably other institution, I have shown evidence that Southeastern has, certain aspects of Southeastern have gone woke.

The administration there went woke, after Donald Trump's election, certainly. And there's some montages, citations, I don't know, I provided all the evidence, and you can even find some of it in the last book I wrote, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, I point out that there's even heretics there, Walter Strickland is a heretic, I don't know how else to say it, how else do you say that now?

I mean, he conflates the law and the gospel, and he does it more than once, and he is pro-liberation theology, which is the kind of error you would assume from someone who's pro-liberation theology.

So why would I have to beat the dead horse? Well, I don't have to, but it's a reminder, guys, they're still woke. And one of the things I keep seeing is that people seem to think that, well, there's like a expiration date, like, oh, well, they were woke, and now they're not, or they haven't heard a lot of woke things, so it's kind of settled down, so.

But if there's no retraction, if there's no admission, if there's no apology, if it's just this course correction, sort of, it's not real. And I don't spend time perusing Southeastern, but a number of people sent this to me.

So I wanna just play for you some clips from it. This is a recent lecture at Southeastern from Jonathan Mu, and it is a climate crisis lecture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. It was posted recently, but I guess it's from October, so I don't know why they posted it recently.

Telling students to buy carbon credits if they take any flights, recommended. All right, so let's just play some of this. This is woke preacher clips has given us some choice clips here.

We're thinking about living lives of personal virtue that reflect our commitments, obviously thinking about our transportation, driving less, walking more, bicycling more, the basic things. We're onto the list that I said I wasn't gonna give you earlier on.

When we do fly, as I have done with no little sense of irony and questioning in myself, well, at least let us not simply excuse ourselves, but acknowledge the cost by paying for it with carbon credits.

There's a great organization, Climate Stewards, linked to Arasha, this Christian organization that is doing fantastic projects in the majority world that qualify for offsets, for carbon offsets. So at least acknowledge more the cost of the things that we do, the life that we're a part of.

I mean, it's great stuff to tell future pastors, right? Young skulls full of mush, as Rush Limbaugh used to say. They're sitting there learning to go and preach to their churches, and you know what you should tell your congregation to be like Jesus is, when they fly an airplane, in an airplane, you maybe wanna purchase some carbon credits.

Oh, from a company that Jonathan Moo is a board member of. That would be good. Just go purchase some carbon credits there and get your indulgence. Here's, this is what more made me do this when I saw this clip.

Argument this evening, which is pretty obvious, I guess, for my somewhat perhaps controversial title. That is that in order to be faithful to the gospel, we must care well for God's creation. It's not an option.

It's not just something we might add on to lots of other programs we might do. It's not even just a clever strategy for evangelism. Although I do consider it one of the ways in which faithful Christian witness must be lived out in our time.

And one that many people around us, many of my students are longing to see the church do more fully. And the reasons why this is absolutely vital and should be woven into all that we do and proclaim is first and foremost, because it is part of the gospel.

It is part of what it is to love God and neighbor. If we love God. All right, we're done.

It's part of the gospel, yeah. Part of the gospel is loving God and neighbor. It's, no, that's the law. That's the law. That's not the gospel. This is the conflation. It's what Walter Strickland does at Southeastern.

This is, it's so common though. It's just, people are never called out for it though. Rarely. It's podcasts like mine that are saying, this is a problem, guys. This is what Paul would condemn and say anathema to.

No, that's not part of the gospel. Jonathan Moo, you don't understand the gospel and you're lecturing future seminaries. You're telling them this is their duty to be faithful to the gospel. They have to, I guess, purchase carbon credits.

I mean, because that's part of taking care of the environment. This is sick. It's sick stuff. That's not the gospel. It's not the good news. It's what Jesus did, not what we do. All right, oh, there's so much more.

Should we keep going here? Let's, yeah, let's do just one more clip. Let's just do this one.

Means I think, and here's a spiritual discipline that I think is absolutely essential for us today. Setting aside our technology for a time. Spending time in God's word and in God's world and reminding ourselves that though our technology would make us think we are at the center of the universe, but actually God is at the center of the universe.