Trump Cancels CRT Training

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist, my name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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Today is September 9th, 2020 and if you're reading along in our daily Bible reading, today we're going to be reading Titus chapter 1.
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If you'd like a copy of our daily Bible reading list, you can go to our website, it's sgfcjacks.org and you can look up there on our website, our daily Bible reading for 2020.
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We're reading through the New Testament in chronological order, not the order that they appear in your Bible, but the order in which we believe they were written.
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And right now we're in the book of Titus and if you begin with us now, you'll be able to go chapter by chapter, one chapter at a time through the end of the year and finish out the reading with us.
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Today is Wednesday, September 9th and this is what we are beginning to call In the News Wednesday.
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I'm going to begin dealing with some things that are going on in the news and for a moment, I just want to let you know that this is not going to be an attempt to in any way compete with other news programs or news podcasts, especially ones that might be more famous like the briefing with Al Mohler gives a daily news program, news and events from a Christian worldview.
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This is not an attempt to try to compete or anything with that.
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This is simply things that I think are important for members of our church and for those who listen to this program.
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As many of you know, this program is produced primarily for the members of Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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But if you're not a member of Sovereign Grace Family Church, we welcome you to the program.
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And if you are in the Jacksonville area, we would welcome you to come to a Lord's Day service and worship with us.
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And if you do not have a church home, we would love for you to come and learn more about us and maybe make our church home your church home.
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So like I said, this program is really intended to be a help, a daily help for our church members, a way for me as their pastor to speak to them on a daily basis, hopefully early in the morning as they're picking up their Bible and their morning coffee and they're doing their devotions for the day.
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This gives a 10 to 20 minute opportunity for me to speak into their lives and talk about important things.
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Well, today I'm going to be talking about the subject of critical race theory, critical race theory.
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And the reason why I'm talking about this is not because we have not addressed this subject before, either at the church or in even in this program, but because this this particular subject has come back into the news as a result of the president, our president, Donald Trump, has recently told the agencies that he is over that they are no longer to teach any type of training that would include critical race theory or the teachings of white privilege, the teachings of white privilege.
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I want to read a short snippet from an article in NPR.
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This is Natural National Public Radio.
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This is a left leaning.
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Obviously, NPR is more left, certainly more left than I am.
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And I'm hoping to be fair with what they're saying about this.
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I want to read just a snippet from this article.
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It says the Trump administration has instructed federal agencies to end racial sensitivity training that addresses topics like white privilege and critical race theory, calling them divisive anti-American propaganda.
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In a letter to federal agencies Friday, the director of the Office of Management and Budget said the president recently became aware of the racial sensitivity programs, which encourage frank conversations about race in the workplace and discuss potential actions to combat systemic racism.
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The memo issued by the OMB director Russell Vaughn reads in part, all agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on critical race theory, white privilege or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests that either one, that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country, or two, that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.
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The memo said agencies should begin to identify all available avenues within the law to cancel any such contracts and or to divert federal dollars away from these un-American propaganda training sessions.
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So that's just a portion of that article, but basically this is what's being said.
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Trump is coming in and Trump is saying that there can be no longer any training that would include critical race theory and language of things like white privilege.
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And those who believe that critical race theory and subjects like white privilege should be the subject of talking points and sensitivity training are appalled by this.
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They're upset that he would come in, that he would make this statement, that he would demand that these things be removed.
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However, the question that I want to address is how should we as Christians look at this? How is we as Christians? Because I want to say this, there are some in Christian teaching, there are some pastors, some very famous pastors throughout our land who have embraced CRT.
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They have embraced critical race theory.
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Some have embraced the language of white privilege and some have even gone as far as saying that as white people, we should be repenting not only for our own sins, but for the sins of our ancestors.
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There was a very famous pastor just recently stood up in the public square and he stood up and he made repented remarks about his own whiteness and his own white privilege and how he was an inherent racist because of his whiteness and that he was speaking out to repent not only for his own sins, but for the sins of his ancestors.
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And I took great issue with that personally, not only as a pastor, but as a Christian and as a man, as a white man, I heard him say that and I said, stop for a moment.
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One, you can't repent for someone else's sins.
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The Bible doesn't use that language.
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The Bible doesn't use the language of repenting for other people's sins.
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So right away, the whole foundation doesn't work.
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But secondly, you're agreeing with a premise that is not proven.
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It's argued, but it's not proven.
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And the premise is this, just because you are white, you are automatically a racist.
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And this is really the foundation of critical race theory.
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The idea that critical race theory in a nutshell is that it's a view that examines society through the lens of power and privilege.
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And it divides people into those who are oppressed and those who are the oppressors.
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So you have the powerful.
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They are the oppressors.
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You have the powerless and they are the oppressed.
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And this is how you have to see the world.
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This is how you have to understand everything falls down into this.
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Everything has to be looked at through this critical theory of racial discrimination.
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So you begin to then look at the subject of power and you begin to look at the subject of privilege and you say, OK, what makes someone a privilege? Well, white automatically is privilege.
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And so white gets put into the category of privilege.
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So if you're white, you're automatically on the part of the privileged.
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And if you're not white, you're automatically put into the category of the oppressed.
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And so right there you have the the the oppressor is the white and the oppressed is the nonwhite.
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But then that even goes further because now you have to say this is where the subject and maybe you've heard this term, the subject of intersectionality.
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Intersectionality is when you take multiple levels of oppression and you begin to stack them on top of one another.
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So if you have a white man and a black man, they're both men.
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So man, male is an oppressor.
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But because he's black, he gets to be that's a section, an intersection of of his oppression.
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So he's a black man.
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So he's oppressed.
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But if it's a woman, a white woman, she is also because of being a woman is is oppressed, but she's white.
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So there is there a distinction.
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But if you have a black woman, now you have two intersections of oppression because she's both black, which is which is one lack of privilege.
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And then you have she's a woman.
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So she's that's too like so that's an intersection.
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And then you get to the section of, well, what if she's a black woman who's also homosexual, who's a who's a lesbian? OK, well, there's a third intersection.
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Or what if it's a black man who believes he is a woman and so therefore he would be a transgender black man who's actually a woman.
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So now you have all of these intersections of.
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Oppression, and so the more oppressed a person becomes, the more social capital they have, the more the more ability they have or more ability they should have to speak out, the more help they're going to need, the more because they're so unequal.
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And so this is critical race theory in a nutshell, looks at everything through the lens of race.
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And Trump has said, no, we're not going to do that.
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Now, here's one thing I heard.
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I heard someone say this.
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And so this is not unique to me.
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This is not me coming up with this.
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I heard I heard someone say this.
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They said, it's amazing that Trump is taking a stand that many pastors won't take.
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And I tell you, I said, I was like, wow.
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I said, that's true, because many pastors are folding under the idea of critical race theory.
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Many pastors are folding under this idea of white privilege.
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And then out comes the president.
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He says, no, we're not going to do this.
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See, many pastors are preaching critical race theory.
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They're preaching.
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In fact, I mentioned this on a program just a few days ago.
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There was a letter sent to a friend of mine who is a pastor.
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And it said, if you're not preaching social justice, if you're not preaching white privilege against white privilege, if you're not preaching these things, then then you are part of the problem.
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Then you are you're part of the issue.
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And you are you are a white supremacist, essentially.
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You believe in white supremacy.
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And this was the letter sent to his church.
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And so when I think about this, I think Trump is doing something by saying we're not going to accept critical race theory.
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We're not going to accept the language of white privilege, because what that is saying is that saying that they're just because someone is white, they are inherently racist.
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And that is simply not true.
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And the fact that we can look back at our past and we can see certain aspects of our history that are bad in regard to race and racism, that does not mean that we can look right now at any white person and say, you, sir, you, ma'am, are inherently racist and we live in a racist system and we live in a because here's the thing.
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When you ask the person who teaches critical race theory, well, what's the what's the problem? The problem is oppression.
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And it's always oppression from the white or from the powerful.
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So oftentimes it's Christianity, too, is considered an oppressor group because Christianity is the largest religion.
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So it's an oppressive group.
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And then this is why oftentimes you'll see in these things that the groups that are opposed, the groups that are saying, you know, we have to believe in critical race theory, they'll also reference the Muslims and they'll say, well, we have to we have to hold on to them, too, even though the Muslims would disagree with the homosexuals.
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They put themselves all in the same group because they consider all of themselves oppressed.
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And the core problem is that they're being oppressed.
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And the solution is that you need to become woke.
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That's the solution.
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And that's the being woke is essentially meaning become enlightened to the idea that you are, in fact, in a situation where you are.
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An oppressor, you are wrong, you are a sinful oppressor and Trump has said we're just not going to do that.
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Trump has said we're not going to play the game.
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We're not going to use the language.
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And I posted a picture.
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I thought it was a very insightful picture.
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It was a picture of a woman teaching a class.
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And I'm sure this is what Trump has on his mind.
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There's a there's a picture of a woman teaching a class.
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She's a black woman and she has on the board behind her a list of all of the privileges that white people have and a list of all of the oppression that black people and the people of color have to deal with.
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And then beside that on the picture, big, bold letters, all white people are racist.
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And this, again, is the problem that Trump has recognized.
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And Trump is saying this is an un-American thing.
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It's un-American to to label all people of one race as being one way.
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In fact, that is a racist thing to do, to say that all white people are ubiquitous.
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They are all the same.
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They are all racist and they're all wrong.
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And so they all need to repent.
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They all need to seek to make some type of restitution.
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And there needs to be some type of reparation for the errors of simply being white.
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And Trump has said he's not going to do that.
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And something else that came up, too, is the subject of the 1619 Project.
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And if you've never heard of the 1619 Project, this is a project that was developed by The New York Times Magazine in 2019, which, according to Wikipedia, aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the United States national narrative.
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The project was timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in the Virginia colony in 1619 and suggests that this date represents the nation's birth year.
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It is an interactive project directed by Nicole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for The New York Times, with contributions by the newspaper's writers, including essays on the history of different aspects of contemporary American life, which the authors believe have roots in slavery and its aftermath.
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See, it's an attempt to say America really began with slavery.
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America really began with the oppression of black people.
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And America is founded on oppression of black people.
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And the problem with this, the problem with the whole.
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And by the way, the reason why I bring up the 1619 Project is Trump has said we're not going to allow this to be taught either.
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This is not going to happen.
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In fact, this is this is what it says.
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And I'm I hate to quote CNN because I don't care for CNN as a news outlet.
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But this is what CNN says.
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It says President Donald Trump is continuing to wage battle against interpretations of history, which he claims are un-American.
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Nice opening, CNN.
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Not not at all biased there.
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But it goes on to say in a Sunday morning tweet, the president said the U.S.
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Department of Education would investigate whether California schools are using the New York Times 1619 Project in public school curriculum.
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The Pulitzer Prize winning collection reframes American history around the date of August 1619 when the first slave ship arrived on America's shores.
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Department of Education is looking at this.
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If so, they will not be funded, he wrote on Twitter, citing a message from an unverified account saying it was being taught in schools there.
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So this is Trump saying not only are we not wanting critical race theory taught, but he's saying we don't want the 1619 Project taught either.
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And you say, well, why not? Because it's not good history.
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Because it's framing history from a particular perspective, which is saying that this is the result of understanding this history.
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All of America's history and roots are all based in ugly, prejudicial, racist, racist bigotry.
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And all white people are guilty simply because of the color of their skin of this great evil of racism.
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Now, let me say this.
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How would I respond to this from a Christian perspective? First of all, I want to say this.
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I do believe racism does exist.
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I believe there are people who hate other people simply because they're different, simply because of the color of their skin.
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And I do believe that such a thing is unbiblical.
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I believe that we do need to be very clear in our gospel presentation that Jesus died for people of all tribes, nations, and tongues.
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And that would include people who are white, people who are black, people who are of any color.
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And therefore, the gospel is not the gospel of the white man.
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It's not the gospel of the black man.
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It's not the gospel of any other color.
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The gospel is for all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.
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Having said that, when we consider the idea of critical race theory, intersectionality, white privilege, the 1619 Project, what these are is these are attempts to divide people across all kinds of lines and to see themselves as oppressed and see the others as the oppressors, and therefore create division and hatred among people.
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Rather than overcoming differences and encouraging one another in love and unity in Christ, all this does is teach us to continue to see our differences and to understand that as certain people we have been oppressors, and therefore we need to beg forgiveness for having oppressed and been oppressors.
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And I think that, again, I think this is something that should not be happening in our schools.
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It should not be happening in the government.
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And I'm thankful that Trump has recognized this.
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Again, he's an imperfect man doing an imperfect job, but he does have one of the hardest jobs in the world.
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And I'm thankful that he came out against these things.
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He may change his mind next week, and I may have to record a retraction, but as of right now, I think he's doing the right thing.
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And I think that those pastors who are supporting CRT and supporting other things like this are wrong.
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And I'm saying this knowing that I'm not going to be popular with a lot of people for having said it, but I do not care, because ultimately, and I'm going to begin to draw this to a close by saying this, what this comes down to really is cultural Marxism, Marxist thinking, the idea of separating people in the classes of oppressor and oppressed, and the idea of the oppressed overcoming the oppressors, and therefore creating a utopia.
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A utopia is not going to come through this means.
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Utopia is not going to come through Marxist means.
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If you want a utopia, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be saved, and one day there's going to be a new heaven and a new earth, and all these things are going to be put behind us, and then we will have a perfect world to live in.
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But until then, please don't think that Marxism is going to lead to an earthly utopia, because it is not.
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I'll give you a few things to read, a few things to think about.
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If you're very interested in this subject, and you want to look into it more, now I'm going to give you two sources that are not Christian, but are still helpful.
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One is a book.
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It is called Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell.
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I'm remembering this, so forgive me.
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Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell talks about the history of slavery in America, and how it's often misunderstood and often misrepresented, even in standard textbooks, and he is very good at explaining the history, and how we often misunderstand it.
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So Thomas Sowell is a great author.
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The next one, and you may be surprised to hear me recommend this person.
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I know he's not a Christian, but Jordan Peterson has a very good video on the myth of white privilege and sovereign nations, which is Michael O'Fallon's group.
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He is a Christian.
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Michael O'Fallon is a wonderful Christian brother, and he had Jordan Peterson speak about the myth of white privilege.
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I would recommend that video.
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It's available on YouTube.
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I would encourage you to go and listen to that, if you want to dig deeper.
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So those are two resources.
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I also want to mention that as I was going through talking about critical race theory today, I was using a chart that was produced by Teach for the Heart, which is an online resource, and it's a chart that anyone can find.
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Look for Teach for the Heart, Critical Race Theory versus the Gospel, and it explains more in depth some of the things I was talking about earlier.
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Also, Dr.
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Vodie Bauckham has a great message that he did for the Founders' Ministry on the subject of cultural Marxism, so I would recommend that, definitely looking at this issue from a Christian perspective.
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So this was a lot to get through today, a little bit of a long program.
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I hope it was encouraging to you.
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I hope it was helpful to you.
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If you have questions on this subject, please send them to me.
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I'd love to be able to address them on a future program or maybe interact with you through the comments section.
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So again, thank you for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for joining in for today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening.
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May God bless you.