Bart Barber's 60 Minutes Interview

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. It has been an interesting last couple of days and I've been prevented by some of the circumstances in my life from putting a podcast out there.

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So that's why the first one of the week is kind of late, later than I usually put out a podcast. There will be more though this week.

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I have been under the weather for the last couple of days. And really since I flew in from California, I don't know what it was, but I think

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I've been fighting something. And Sunday morning, it was really bad. Like I just did not know if I was like, do

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I need to go home? Am I coming down with something? But I think sleep deprivation to some extent might've had something to do with it as well.

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I also have been working pretty hard on our Airbnb that we have.

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We have a two family house and we've been renovating the top and we had some company this week, the first time, which is good that we are finally starting to use it.

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But it wasn't done. So I've been kind of burning the candle trying to get things done up there.

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So I have a lot of emails, a lot of issues. In fact, I got a long list of issues.

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We're only gonna probably get to one today. I thought of contrasting the Kanye West interview with the Bart Barber interview because Kanye West was on Tucker Carlson and Bart Barber was with Anderson Cooper.

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And Kanye, I listened to his interview and the contrast would be kind of interesting.

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Here they're both on major media and Kanye seems to do a little, they weren't talking about the same things, but Kanye seems to be a little more aggressive towards, a lot more aggressive, okay, towards the current status quo that is being kind of forced down our throats.

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And his concerns, I think, are more in line with the concerns I have as far as the manipulation, cancel culture, control, just what we're seeing.

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After he did the interview, I noticed on Twitter, one of his tweets was flagged for some kind of supposed anti -Semitic undertones.

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And it's like, it was a tweet that you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have assumed that about the tweet.

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There was no reason to assume that about the tweet. But anyway, so it was an interesting interview with Tucker Carlson.

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And the main point that he made that I thought was particularly interesting was he started talking about people who give like beauty advice as handlers, as he calls them robots,

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I think was the word he used, that they're there to kind of create barriers for celebrities to tell them what to think, what not to think.

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He revealed that his ex -wife, Kim Kardashian, had been influenced by the Clintons and it was, some of the things he said were just things that really weren't surprising, but to hear him coming to those conclusions, being a billionaire in the, being where he's at is fascinating that he's willing to come out and say that.

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It's kind of risky to say those kinds of things. And so I think there was some true bravery there. Bart Barber, on the other hand,

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I didn't see as very brave. Sure, he said that homosexuality and abortion aren't, those aren't compatible with the

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Southern Baptist Convention's views, but he caved on like everything else. He doesn't see it as a cave,

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I'm sure. He would see it as, this is what I believe, and it probably is, but he, I'll put it this way.

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Instead of, I'll retract the cave remark. He went along with the regime narrative, what you're supposed to believe, all right?

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And I just thought it was interesting hearing them both in close proximity to one another. But anyway, we're not gonna talk about the

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Kanye stuff anymore. I'm not gonna play any clips. We're just gonna roll the tape of Bart Barber with Anderson Cooper and make some comments about that.

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Before I did, though, I just wanted to make a quick retraction. I don't do this much, but I felt the need to do it after the last video on the

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Axe 29 network, because I made a statement, and I know it was, it was a small statement in the grand scheme.

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I get that. And some of you might wonder why I'm even saying anything, but I wanna be accurate, and someone made a comment or at least showed that I wasn't accurate in a certain area, and I wanna acknowledge that.

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So I made an offhanded remark. I said that there was, let me set this up.

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Okay, so one of the panelists had said that if you, I'm summarizing, but if you want to go ask a black person for kind of advice, enlightenment is how he presented it, but really just advice on how to navigate racial reconciliation, that's the term they were using, how to understand

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Christians who are black or whatever it is, that whole issue, black culture in particular, then you are somehow complicit in perpetuating the myth of the magic black person who comes out like Bagger Vance and enlightens the white person.

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And I just, I thought this was so silly because I thought like, what is like Lucky Charms?

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You know, is the character on the box of cereal because that's an Irish person?

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Does that mean Irish people? They're gonna always find the pot of gold. So you better never do business with an

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Irish person because it perpetuates a myth. Like it would be just as silly in my mind. So start to make connections like that.

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But anyway, he makes this connection and I had made an offhanded statement and it really wasn't my main point, but I had said, did, you know,

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Al Sharpton, didn't he say, I don't know if I phrase it as a question or a statement, but I said, didn't Al Sharpton also call, he called

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Barack Obama the magic black person, right? Didn't he do that? So like, what, are we gonna dump

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Al Sharpton now as perpetuating this myth? And here's where I wanna stand corrected.

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I don't have any evidence that Al Sharpton actually said that. In fact, I was a young lad at that time, but I think this is probably where I got this impression.

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There's a song, a parody song by Paul Shanklin and it's Al Sharpton's voice, a parody of Al Sharpton's voice, singing a song about Barack Obama.

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And it's Barack the magic black person, but they don't say black person.

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And it was on the Rush Limbaugh show years ago, like a long time ago.

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And I heard it back then. And I think what I did in the moment that I commented on that last video is

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I assumed that it came to my mind and I thought that there was something to it.

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And I don't even think, I don't know if the song came to my mind. It was just more in the back recesses of my mind,

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I thought Al Sharpton had said this. And really what it was, was I had heard a parody of Al Sharpton and I thought that Al Sharpton had said that.

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So I wanna just correct the record. I have no evidence Al Sharpton actually said that. The comment to me on YouTube was that there was this song by Paul Shanklin and whether Al Sharpton repeated it or not, he doesn't know, but it was two white men who,

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Rush Limbaugh and Paul Shanklin, who devised and promoted this concept. But I guess that's a critical race theory must never be mentioned.

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Al Sharpton would never have done this. And so I thought, okay, well, let me just make sure, let me double check that.

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So I just did a little searching just to make sure that this gentleman was right.

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And he was. And this is what I said. I said, point well taken. Manila Silver and David Ehrenstein both promoted the idea that Barack was a magic black person.

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And they both have a black ancestry. So the term is it being applied to Barack Obama in particular, that's where it originated.

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And I said, yes, I did conflate it somehow with the parody, making fun of the concept when Paul Shanklin impersonated Al Sharpton using the term,

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I'll correct the record. So this is what I'm doing. I'm correcting the record right now. However, this is something that Al Sharpton did say.

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And I thought that it was interesting. This is from a long time, it's like from 2008, but he said this. He said, you can't be using the

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B word, the N word, when you have Barack Obama redefining overnight the image that black people want to have.

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Here's the greatest political victory in the history of black America and the thug rappers can't come near it. They will have to change or become irrelevant.

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Now, here's the question I have. Have black rappers become irrelevant? No, they haven't. Has that defined now, the black community now is upholding a different standard of some kind because of Barack Obama.

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I don't see evidence of this, but this is what Al Sharpton said was happening. And in that statement, this is the curiosity

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I'd have. Would that panel at the T4G, or not T4G, in the Acts 29, that panel on racial reconciliation, if they didn't know this came from Al Sharpton and they just heard this, that you gotta get with it.

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There's a new image in town and it's Barack Obama and he's more refined.

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What would they say about it? Would that be perpetuating the concept of a magic black person or a different image projected?

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About what a black person, who a black person should be as opposed to what you get in like hip hop culture.

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And I'd just be curious. I think I know what they would say. Now, if they knew it was Reverend Al Sharpton, maybe they wouldn't make the remarks

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I think they would make. But the point being in all of this, that if you watch the panel discussion and you heard the point that they were making, you're not supposed to go to a black person for enlightenment about the very topic of black culture or what black people are like.

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That's a no -no. So if you're not supposed to do that and you're supposed to shut up and listen, what do you do?

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You're supposed to study, but you gotta figure it out for yourself. It puts you in kind of an impossible situation.

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And if you do try to seek help, then you are perpetuating this myth that you're not supposed to perpetuate about this enlightened black person.

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This, I think, what was the term they used now? This luminescent black person.

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And it's very possible that this whole idea, like the

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Bagger Vance story, there is sort of a pre -modern kind of idea to it that I don't know whether being black has anything to really do with that other than maybe there's some old wisdom or something like that, that some black people, kind of like you would think of like a,

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I'm spitballing a bit here, to be honest, because I'm trying to figure out this concept, but kind of like old, you heard like old wives tales or old remedies for things that have been lost, our ancient wisdom, that kind of thing, pre -modern noble savage type wisdom.

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And it's been lost because of our mechanistic, industrial modernity that we live in.

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But there's still those little pockets in Appalachia where you can seek this wisdom.

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There's still the, and there's media that portrays rural areas that are white like that.

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Like there's some kind of, there's ancient bigotries perhaps, but there's also ancient wisdom. How many

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Hallmark movies take place in these white towns with small town values and stuff?

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Is that paternalistic? Is that luminescent white people? No, we don't view it that way.

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So it is possible, but of course this is more of a positive spin on it, that there is a narrative that exists out there that there are black people who may have access to some ancient wisdom of some kind, that white people who are more industrialized and sophisticated lack.

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That is possible. And if that's true, that's not a slight against black people.

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That's the best approach I have to this. But anyway, I wanted to retract my statement on that. So let's see other things that I wanted to say before the podcast.

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We're doing the podcast, but just before we get into Bart Barber, there was a, no,

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I'm not gonna get into that now. There'll be more podcasts coming later this week. Let's put it that way. So here is

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Bart Barber and Anderson Cooper. And I'm gonna just set it up. Here's Anderson Cooper.

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And this is what he says before the interview with Bart Barber starts. You're about to hear Bart Barber has a lot to say about faith, scandal, and the political extremism threatening

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American democracy. So this is how Anderson Cooper, who's conducting the interview sets the whole thing up. He assumes from the beginning,

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Southern Baptists are in the wrong. They're the bad guys. So we're gonna talk to their leader and see what he thinks.

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Is he gonna join me in condemning them? Or in the assumptions I have about them, or is he gonna defend them?

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And that's really the question I think from the beginning is what's Bart Barber gonna do? Is he gonna condemn or defend? And the issues are political extremism.

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As you'll see, that means people who would be, would think, and if evangelical, conservative evangelical polling remains true for Southern Baptists, then the most

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Southern Baptists would also think this. There is funny business going on during the US election.

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And if you want to hear more of my thoughts on this, then you're gonna have to download the audio version of this podcast, or view it on Rumble, because I can't give you everything that I wanna say here on YouTube, but that would be the view of some

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Southern Baptists. Most, I would say, most Southern Baptists, if the polling that we have on evangelicals remains true.

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And then of course, this abuse coverup because the Justice Department is investigating, and this has put

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Southern Baptists in the wrong as well. And so we've talked enough about that. If you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know what

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I think about that, and that it's mostly a manufactured crisis. This is not something that, for a group as big as the

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Southern Baptists, you're going to have inevitably, unfortunately, because we live in a Sinkhurst world, situations of abuse.

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You're gonna have coverups even on the local level, all the way through the highest echelons at times, perhaps.

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That's possible. But for the Southern Baptist Convention to act like they have some unique problem with this particular issue, and to hire

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Guidepost Solutions, which honestly, their report to some, it was a joke. Even some of the prime stories that they want to tell, the issues they want to bring up, they weren't investigated properly.

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And we've talked about this on the podcast, so there's no use reinventing the wheel. But of course,

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Anderson Cooper is buying into the narrative. Of course, the Justice Department has come on in. They're investigating based off of this narrative.

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And so from the beginning, the assumption is just that Southern Baptists are guilty. They're abusers. At least they give safe haven for abusers.

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They cover it up. They are deniers of the truth when it comes to the 2020 election.

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They're political extremists, dangerous people. Let's see if Bart Barber defends them.

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He's their leader, right? President. Or let's see if Bart Barber joins Anderson Cooper in the same assumptions that cast them in a negative light.

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That's the real question here. And we'll see how Anderson Cooper conducts this and what

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Bart Barber does. When Bart Barber was elected

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SBC president in June, it was just four weeks after an independent investigation revealed that some former members of the

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SBC's executive committee, which oversees budget and organizational issues, had for decades ignored hundreds of credible accusations of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches and seminaries, partly to avoid being held financially liable.

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Now, remember from the beginning, this debate was about whether or not the Southern Baptist Convention was an institution of churches, entities, local church entities that control the rest of the hierarchy in the

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Southern Baptist Convention by coming together, pooling resources for missions, Christian education, et cetera. Or is it actually a centralized body with a hierarchy in which the executive committee and entities have control over state conventions and over churches?

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That's really the question here. And unless you're gonna change Baptist theology on the local church, the autonomous nature of the local church, then the

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Southern Baptist Convention, since its inception, has been an organization composed of local churches. They're the ones that make the decisions.

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So when the local church has a predator, let's say, or a potential predator, whose job is it to ferret that person out?

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Well, you can certainly get help from other people. There's nothing wrong with that. Local churches should be sharing information, but that's not something the executive committee has ever had as one of its defined responsibilities.

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It's not the executive committee's job. They don't have the insurance or the coverage for liability.

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They don't have the responsibility. They frankly are not even in a position to be able to make decisions for these local churches, other than kicking them out if they're not in good cooperation with the

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Southern Baptist Convention, which is a very low bar, and it's a theological bar. And so other than that, they really have nothing that they can do about something like this.

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And if they get into the job of investigating these situations, then they have now changed the very nature, the very

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DNA of the Southern Baptist Convention and what it is. It's the responsibility, this is what the other side, opposite Anderson Cooper, at least, was saying, is the responsibility of the local churches to get in touch with their local police, to make those calls, to make sure that if there's a local state convention or something, maybe there's a little more responsibility or at least a little more accountability,

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I should say there. But when it comes to the executive committee, that was the whole debate.

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Do we change the very nature of our organization? Anderson Cooper doesn't present any of that to you. It's not about being for or against abuse.

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We've said this so many times in this show. It's not about that. It has nothing to do with that. Of course, both sides are against abuse.

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They're against predators. There's no question there. But the assumption is, well, if you don't wanna centralize the

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SBC, if you don't wanna give more power to the executive committee, if you don't want lawyers to line up, waive attorney -client privilege and have lawsuits and now have the

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Justice Department investigating and have higher guidepost solutions to do their own analysis, even though their sexual ethics are completely out of step with Southern Baptist views, then you must be for abuse.

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That's been the assumption from the other side. The side Anderson Cooper seems to be on. And that is not the side, at least it's not the side that should solely be represented.

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There should be, if you're gonna have balance, if you're a journalist, you should present both sides of this at the very least.

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And the strength of argument and I think tradition and theology are gonna be on the side,

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Southern Baptist theology, of the side opposite Anderson Cooper in this. But it's not even acknowledged that that side exists.

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Instead, the assumption is you have the executive committee shirking their responsibilities in favor of abuse somehow, allowing abusers to run free and rampant and covering it up.

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Isn't that horrible? They covered it up. That is what you're hearing. When you read that report and to read accounts of people who are brave enough to call in to the executive committee to report abuse, for them to be ignored, that's not a strong enough word.

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We didn't just ignore them. Sometimes we impugn their motives. Sometimes we attack them. The reason why

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I'm president of the Southern Baptist Convention is because our churches do not agree with that and have taken action to correct those things.

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Yes, that's right. When the abuse report came out from Guidepost that already contained a lot of publicly available information that the

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Houston Chronicle had covered that already talked about cases that were known and called into question like the

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Jennifer Lyle situation. And let's just say it was, at best, it was sloppy.

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When that report came out, apparently Bart Barber was just angry about it or upset or disturbed.

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And that's part of the reason he ran for the president of Southern Baptist Convention was so he could put an end to this madness.

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That the pastors who were against fundamentally changing the nature of the Southern Baptist Convention and making now the executive committee liable for predators in individual churches and having the goal now in the role of having to police these kinds of things, rather than having the police be the ones, primary ones to investigate, for the churches to call, et cetera.

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That whole thing, that whole argument that was given to us, which really started only 0 .5

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seconds ago. And before that, in hundreds of years of, not even just Southern Baptist history, going even before that, this was not really a thought.

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But now it's push, push, push. We need to change the nature of the SBC so that the executive committee has this power, has this liability, all of that.

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Put that in your own category of what that is. The Me Too movement, let's say. Bart Barber looked at that whole thing and said, yes, those people, those people who are pushing all of this innovation, all these innovations, they're the ones in the right.

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They're the ones who aren't covering up abuse. They're the white hats. The black hats are the people, the pastors, who would impugn the motives of those good -hearted people, those good -hearted

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Me Too activists. And it's, again, not fairly representing what happened here.

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It's creating a scenario in which you think, if you're an outsider watching this, wow, there must be some really bad people in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. He uses the personal pronoun we, like the whole convention's kind of behind this. It's at least characteristic of the convention of covering up abuse.

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You get the impression that there's these horrible pastors that are mocking and making fun of those who just care about abuse.

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And that's the moral play that you're seeing. It's not a moral play, which would, it's not a situation which would be accurately presented in which you have two sides, both caring about abuse, but both seeing different ways of approaching that particular topic.

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Instead, what it is, is those with this innovative solution, this centralized solution, are the only ones that are allowed to gain the status of qualifying as caring individuals, as loving people who just wanna stop sexual abuse.

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That's what you're getting from Bart Barber. He's parroting what Anderson Cooper already believes. He's not challenging any of this.

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He's not presenting any kind of dilemma that was the real debate that was actually happening.

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It's a fake debate that he promotes here. And he knows better, that's the thing, he knows better.

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Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen? No. You believe Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the

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United States? I do, absolutely. I pray for him consistently as the president of the United States.

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I believe he was legitimately elected. Bart Barber told us that he doesn't believe the election was rigged.

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He does believe that Joe Biden was duly elected the president of the United States. That's a big deal. 60 % of white evangelicals believe the election was stolen in 2020, and many, many

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Southern Baptists go to church every Sunday believing that. Southern Baptist pastors have been afraid to speak about that from the pulpit, because they know lots of people will oppose that in the pews.

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How many people, how many voters is Bart Barber in a position to influence? At least 70 million people identify as evangelical today.

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He can have a huge impact when it comes to who they vote for and why they vote for that candidate. Okay, now we're seeing, I think, what the real interest in this is, the primary motivation for doing a piece like this.

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I don't believe they do it because, let's just cover the Southern Baptist Convention and they have an abuse problem or something.

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They're looking at this more, I think, because the Southern Baptist Convention, evangelicals in particular, pulled hard for Donald Trump.

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And if you want to try to create a scenario where someone like a Donald Trump never rises to power again, if you want to put a nail in that coffin, there's multiple avenues to it.

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One is you can severely hamper the efforts of evangelicals to get out the vote for Republicans or conservatives.

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You can try to make it so evangelicals are influenced in another direction. And Bart Barber here is saying what the regime, the people that would be more supportive of the current regime, what they believe.

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Bart Barber is carrying their water for them. Bart Barber is the leader of the largest denomination representing evangelicals in the

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United States. And he is agreeing with Anderson Cooper and the media and the

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Biden administration and the Democrats and saying that, no, no, no, it was legitimate.

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Everything was good there. And this is at the point in which, for those who want to hear me say more about this, are going to have to go to the audio podcast or to Rumble, and I'll put links in the info section if you want to see more about this particular issue.

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So there you can see Anderson Cooper's big question that he asks repeatedly is about Donald Trump.

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Are you gonna support him again? What are evangelicals gonna do? Can we somehow pour some cold water on this guy? Can we make sure that he doesn't make it to be in the

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White House again? It's interesting to me that despite even, for those who listened on the audio and heard what

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I had to say about the 2020 election, for those who see what happened during that particular election, there's still a nervousness there about what's gonna happen in 2024.

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And I mean, there was a book I think that just came out I saw about Trump returning.

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I think it's called The Return. There's a lot of excitement that Trump could get back in the

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White House. And there's a bit of a nervousness there among the elites. And so if you can get the president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention to come out against Donald Trump and signal to all the people that are under him that you should not vote for Donald Trump, then maybe that'll carry some weight.

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I think that's probably what's going on. But Barbara brings up immigration as the reason, legal immigration apparently.

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Legal immigration, Donald Trump stood opposed to legal immigration. I don't even know where he gets some of these talking points.

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Donald Trump repeatedly said, because I listened to a number of his speeches, not because I'm obsessed with Trump, just because I listened to what the president says sometimes.

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And I heard it enough over the last four years that we need people to come here legally. We can't, and by the way,

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I will say this, this isn't Trump, this is me, but you can't have a legal immigration system that's either too easy or even if it's not easy, it has too many people coming in.

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There is a human scale issue. And when you overwhelm communities and you sow seeds of mistrust that communities that have lived together for generations and they're gonna, let's say, deposit a group of people there who haven't taken, don't have those experiences, those shared memories, those bonds from marriages and business that take a lot of time to form, and you just put them there, it's gonna cause a problem.

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We're seeing that in Europe. And to some extent, we're seeing it in the United States. So even if it's done legally, you still have concerns, but that's not, that wasn't the issue with Trump's presidency.

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It was Trump trying to stop illegal immigration. Maybe Bart Barber's talking about those seeking some kind of an asylum from Middle Eastern countries and Trump wanted them vetted, and if they couldn't be vetted, then he didn't wanna let them in.

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I don't know, but it's so vague or it's so general that you can't really, like, specifically what policy is what

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I would wanna know that Trump advocated, because I don't know of any where he was against legal immigration.

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He was very much in favor of legal immigration. He was against illegal immigration and he was against unvetted immigration.

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Of course, Anderson Cooper repeats the often, oft -repeated things that are said about Southern Baptists, that Southern Baptists are very in favor of slavery or were, they were very in favor of segregation, and that's the whole basis, basically,

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I guess. So it's the, if you peel back all the onion layers, when you get to the heart of it, the root of it, that's what the

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Southern Baptists are, and we've talked about that a little on this particular podcast, that that's a misunderstanding of even the way the

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Southern Baptist Convention was formed. Yes, sure, the issue of whether or not slavery was a sin in and of itself and people from slave -holding churches were able to serve as missionaries for the convention did play a part, but it was not the only reason, and it was more, to be honest with you, it was more of a symptom or an occasion for conflict rather than the cause of the conflict.

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The cause was a different reading of the Bible, a different understanding of Christian ethics, and whether or not the rules of the convention itself should be followed or not by the

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Boston Mission Board. So this isn't, to oversimplify it into one side was for slavery is doing the same thing that they're both doing on this issue of abuse in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. One side's for abuse. No, that's not an accurate depiction.

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And they do this though all the time. And for someone who knows the history, who's read enough about it, it doesn't take that much.

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It's so frustrating because it's like, it's just accepted. It's believed by the very president of the convention apparently, it would seem at least.

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I hear it repeated often enough. It talks about, what else? Homosexuality and abortion.

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And it's interesting to me, I'm gonna show you some reactions here in a minute, but this is where, you know,

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Bart Barber didn't cave on those things. And I thought to myself, yeah, but that's kind of like,

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I don't know, I think there's a different standard at play here, like in my mind, and probably most of your minds, I would think that's like a super basic bar to meet.

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Like you're not supposed to, those are Southern Baptist views, official Southern Baptist positions on these topics exist.

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And if you were just to buck what the Southern Baptist Convention says about these things, it wouldn't be like, that's not something most people do.

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They do it in more subversive ways that they're gonna do it. But it's kind of like a low bar to meet.

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And my assumption would be that at the very least, no matter who the president of the Southern Baptist Convention is, they're going to say orthodox things about homosexuality and abortion.

31:50

They're gonna be against abortion and they're gonna be against practicing homosexuality.

31:55

So for people to be, this is the interesting thing to me, for people, some people to be impressed that Bart Barber did that shows you how far we've fallen.

32:03

That's what it shows you. To me, it's not a reflection of Bart Barber doing anything courageous or significantly brave.

32:15

What it says to me is how far we've lowered our expectations and I say, it's not our,

32:22

I shouldn't say our, cause I'm not included in that. I haven't lowered my expectations. I'm not impressed by it, but apparently some people are.

32:29

And some people who have more prominence in the convention on a more conservative side, they seem to think that that is a display of bucking the culture, bucking the world somehow.

32:46

It's like good for Bart Barber or something. And I don't get that. Like at the very least, if he's asked those questions, he should make those statements.

32:52

And of course it kept coming back to Trump. So for the media, this was very political, but I think that the reactions from people in the

33:00

Southern Baptist Convention are, and some, perhaps a few aren't in the

33:05

Southern Baptist Convention here. I think most of them are. To me, this was the interesting part more so because we know what the media, what they want to do.

33:13

They want to show their controlled opposition, I think. They want to show that you should listen to Bart Barber. He agrees with us on some of these things.

33:20

And if they can press him to even take more progressive stands on certain issues, they're going to do it.

33:26

Of course, he can't, if he went beyond what he already said, if he started saying things to really soft pedal homosexuality, and I mean,

33:36

Anderson Cooper is talking about same -sex weddings and things, then you would have a real problem.

33:41

And I don't think Bart Barber believes that anyway. I mean, I think he, I take him at his word when he says that he supports the

33:47

Southern Baptist's views on those things. But of course, that's been the third way tactic from the beginning is to try to look at very obvious, at least now they're very obvious views and positions that are outside the scope of orthodoxy and say, we don't agree with those, but yet can't we just look at immigration?

34:08

Can't we just look at some of these policies concerning policing and race and monuments and just find something else, the environment, war, try to find another issue that you can then say, well, but we're, look at us, we're not your stereotypical evangelicals.

34:26

We actually have nuance. We actually do think that there's a point to be made and we transcend the left -right divide because we're followers of Jesus, right?

34:34

That's been the thing. We've talked about it many times. Here is some of the reactions though from rank and file or they're not rank and file.

34:43

These are tweets that most of them picked up some traction or they are people who are influential in the

34:49

SBC. So we'll start here with Jimmy Scroggins. You've heard

34:56

Will McCraney talk about Jimmy Scroggins before because a few years ago he had published a book with LifeWave and at the same time gave,

35:07

I guess it was about a million dollars, something like that to Tom Rainer, who is the outgoing LifeWave, I guess,

35:14

I don't know what the title they use is, but the CEO or the leader of Life, whatever. And so there's a conflict of interest issue apparently, but Jimmy Scroggins, I would say, part of the

35:24

SBC elites, that whole network, pastor of a church, but also has a few books published with LifeWave.

35:33

He is a visiting professor at multiple seminaries, including Southeastern and Southern.

35:39

He is serving on the board of trustees for LifeWave, at least he was, I think he still is.

35:45

So here's his reaction. Just watch Bart Barber interview on 60 Minutes. My opinion, Bart represented our churches articulately, clearly, helpfully, empathetically, and most important, biblically.

35:58

Yes. So very positive about what you just heard. Next we have

36:04

Luke Stamps. Now Luke teaches at Oklahoma Baptist University.

36:13

He is the chair of religion there and he went to Southeastern actually.

36:22

So where I went, it's funny because I went there, I immediately have a suspicion when

36:27

I'm like, oh man, if they went through what I went through, did you get out okay? Is everything all right? But anyway, so Luke Stamps, I would say, yeah, part of that SBC more elite network if you're teaching at Oklahoma Baptist University.

36:40

And here's what he says. Christian nationalism stands opposed to 400 years of Baptist history and everything I believe about religious liberty.

36:46

I object to it because Jesus says my kingdom is not of this world. Now this is one of the things, and he references

36:53

Bart Barber on 60 Minutes. It's one of the things though in this particular presentation that was,

36:59

I've said it before about this Christian nationalism stuff is you've got to, you can't just make general statements.

37:05

You gotta define it. And the fact that Bart Barber doesn't define it, Anderson Cooper, they just assume we know what we're talking about.

37:11

It's in the context of Trump and the election of 2020 and extremists.

37:18

And that's, you're supposed to just know from those few clues what Christian nationalism is.

37:23

And these kind of takes are kind of worthless if there is no actual definition to it.

37:29

If you don't know what you're talking, if all you mean is we should have Christian principles displayed in government, or that part of being in America means that there is a respect for Christianity and every citizen should at least acknowledge that to some extent, or like those are competing versions of what

37:47

Christian nationalism is. And then you could get up all the way to this hypothetical person who thinks that everyone must be converted by the sword or something.

37:55

But I don't even know who that person is, but Luke Stamps, very adamant, is an educated person, right?

38:02

He's teaching future seminarians or future pastors and Southern Baptist youth are going there to get an education.

38:13

He's teaching people who are gonna be the next generation and telling them, well, I don't know what he's telling them, but he's certainly telling them that Christian nationalism is not an option because it stands, again, opposed to 400 years of Baptist history, according to Bart Barber, and Bart Barber's correct on this point.

38:30

And so, what is it that is uniquely Baptist that would stand against Christian nationals?

38:36

And the only thing I can think of, here's just my take on this whole thing. What Bart Barber is trying to say, and what you often hear people on the left in the

38:42

Southern Baptist Convention try to say is that Baptists are in the same, they are persecuted people.

38:50

They are the Roger Williamses kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. We have particular convictions, even though Roger Williams, you're not really

38:59

Baptist, Southern Baptists aren't in that lineage, but they try to claim it. So, they try to claim, though, that the unique contribution they've made to public theology is this separation of church and state position that is defined by the absence of a state church.

39:22

And so, and for the purpose of avoiding or evading, avoiding, really, persecution of some kind that could come from the combination of civil magistrate power and the power of the ecclesia.

39:36

So, that's what they will claim. And there is a bit of truth to this in the sense that, yes,

39:43

Baptists had been persecuted. You look even in the history of this country and see what happened in particular states like Virginia, where it was

39:50

Anglican, and see what they did to Baptists. It was not that great. Some of my forefathers are in that.

39:56

So, they were persecuted, and because of that, they had a suspicion for the power of the state when it was combined with the official power of an ecclesiastical branch.

40:07

And so, they didn't want a denomination to hold sway. That doesn't mean in any, here's the separation I wanna make.

40:13

That doesn't mean in any way, shape, or form that they were opposed to the influence of religion in the government.

40:20

Christian principles, Christian morality, Christian ethics, that didn't mean that they weren't opposed to that.

40:26

They would have assumed, everyone pretty much would have assumed at the time of the founding, even into the federal period, that the

40:34

Christianity, some kind of Christian morality, needed to guide the government.

40:39

What other kind of morality are you gonna get? So, it was more just, don't create a relationship in which certain denominations are, and they may have used the term religion at that point to describe this, but that they would be in the position of holding some official power in which they could persecute competitors.

40:59

That is the issue. And they act like that particular issue, for some odd reason, is now put into question because of Christian nationalism.

41:10

As if Christian nationalists and the people calling themselves that, like Stephen Wolfe just came out with a book.

41:16

It's sitting on my desk. I haven't read it yet. The Case for Christian Nationalism. Stephen Wolfe. Does Stephen Wolfe want to go jail people, persecute people, have an official state church supported by taxpayer dollars that engages in that kind of activity?

41:29

I doubt it. No, I can pretty much say no, no. But that's the boogeyman that's out there.

41:35

That's the boogeyman the media wants you to believe is out there. And these guys are just playing into it. That's what's annoying about it.

41:41

So, you have Bart Barber playing into it. Luke Stamps playing into it here. But he's positive on the Bart Barber interview. You have

41:47

Griffin Goolidge here. And this is what he said about it.

41:52

No matter how gracious, how nuanced, how faithful, or how biblical, how consistent with our historic theology and practice,

41:57

Bart Barber is on 60 Minutes. He is going to get killed for it on Twitter. That's how it is now.

42:03

Let's not get into the scum. Let's follow his example. Now, if you remember from this podcast, we've talked about the fact that Griffin Goolidge was the one behind both with this last

42:16

Southern Baptist Convention, or he seemed to be the first one saying that there was this plan by CBN to go and move the stage to vote early on the presidential election, thereby giving it to Tom Askell.

42:30

And this was a horrible thing. It was retweeted by all these bigwigs in the Southern Baptist Convention. I can't believe CBN would do that. He was the one the year before that was the first to go out there and trot out this allegation that Mike Stone had talked to a survivor and was basically rude,

42:45

I guess, and that Hannah Kate was crying and this whole thing.

42:51

Griffin, he shows up in these spots, these unusual spots, and he was in Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

42:59

I think he was like, it's part of the media coordination or something. He worked there. I don't remember exactly what he did. I think he's a pastor now, but this is his take on this, that Twitter's gonna kill

43:10

Barb Barber for this. I mean, and he was great. He was just nuanced and faithful, and of course he wasn't nuanced.

43:18

Biblical. This keeps coming up. He was biblical. Where was he biblical? He wasn't even quoting

43:24

Bible verses. I don't know what they're talking about, but it's the narrative. And the funny thing about this is

43:31

Griffin Goolidge is totally wrong. He wasn't killed for it on Twitter. That's the interesting thing.

43:36

I was looking all over Twitter. I was trying to find, okay, that was a terrible interview. Did anyone on the right say anything?

43:43

And it's like Tom Buck, and if you want to consider Denny Burke on the right, I guess, but I don't know if I would consider him that, but okay,

43:50

Denny Burke and Tom, but that's it? That's it. There's, as far as people with more clout in the convention, pastors, people with a little more institutional power,

43:59

Tom Buck, G3, Denny Burke South, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I mean, you have like, you know, Protestia saying some stuff, but I mean, it's like not getting traction much.

44:09

It's not making the same kind of waves. So anyway, you have St. PJ, that's his

44:16

Twitter name, Saint. So it's PJ Tobion, and we've talked about him too. He's woke, we'll put it that way.

44:24

And he says, a decent job by St. Bart Barber. President of Great Commission Baptists. So he won't use the term

44:30

Southern Baptist. On 60 Minutes, I wish they would publish the whole interview in a separate link to get the full context and the whole answer to some of these loaded questions.

44:37

So yes, he's positive about Bart Barber. We have Daniel Patterson. He used to have a prominent position in the

44:48

ERLC. He's written for them, he's a pastor. So yeah, because of the

44:53

ERLC connection, I would say part of the Southern Baptist machine. And here's what he says.

44:59

This was a God -honoring masterclass interview from Bart Barber. It's not in 60 Minutes, it's impressive on its own, but all the more when you understand what goes on into making of a segment like this.

45:08

I'm speaking from experience here. And it's just, it goes on.

45:14

You have Daniel Dickard. And Daniel Dickard is, some of you might not have heard of him.

45:21

He is also a pastor and he is the one that I guess out, he beat

45:33

Votie Bauckham by not a large percentage, but he did beat Votie Bauckham last year in being the organizer for the pastor's conference next year at the

45:44

Southern Baptist Convention. So yes, because of that part of the SBC machine. To some extent, he said,

45:49

I enjoyed listening to Bart Barber's interview on 60 Minutes and I thought he represented Southern Baptists well. So this is, and you didn't see a lot more.

45:56

It's interesting, the guy goes on 60 Minutes, president of Southern Baptist Convention, and there's hardly any people of any prominence weighing in.

46:03

The people who do though on, I would say the left, are really positive. Now you have, here's someone from outside,

46:10

I think, evangelicalism just saying, she weighed in. This is of somewhat of no account as far as their position is concerned.

46:18

Just her tweet got a lot of traction. Pastor Bart Barber and president of the Southern Baptist Convention just said, if your 10 -year -old baby girl was raped and became pregnant, then she would be forced to have a baby.

46:28

Picture your 10 -year -old fourth grade daughter, not only raped, but forced to give birth. Rovember is coming.

46:34

And so you can't, I just wanted to show this to say, you can't, please, you cannot satisfy the left.

46:39

They are never impressed by your nuance, by your, they're gonna keep pushing you like Anderson Cooper did.

46:45

All right, so immigration. All right, so you're against Trump. Now tell me what you think about homosexuality and abortion.

46:52

They're gonna keep, they're not impressed by that. They may be surprised a little bit. Oh, I didn't know he was with us on these things.

46:58

Good, now let's press him on other stuff. You can't appease these people. You can't attract them to your church.

47:06

Once they find out your other positions, if they're consistently on the left, then they're not gonna, it doesn't make them, endear them to you.

47:14

All right, so here's the right side more so of the aisle. Tom Book, I listened to this interview with Bart Barber.

47:20

Overall, I think Bart did an excellent job, particularly about the issues of homosexuality and abortion. He took a bold and biblical stand on abortion and I commend him for that.

47:27

He also was bold on his answers about homosexuality. Bart was asked, can someone be a good Christian, a member of the

47:33

SBC and married to a person of the same sex? And of course, I should stop right there and say, look, that's not about same sex attraction.

47:39

This is like a full -on, this activity, marriage, profanity marriage.

47:45

And this is what Tom Book tweets. Bart Barber boldly said, boldly said, no. I'm thankful for this and asked

47:51

Bart Barber to address the fact that FBC Orlando is practicing this and the North American Mission Board is partnering with them to plant churches.

47:57

So good for Tom, he's at least, but this, you know what it seems like?

48:03

It seems like there's that political kind of maneuver here to try to show

48:11

Bart Barber some good faith here. Look, I think he did a good job. I think the stand you took is good now.

48:18

Go after these people that are inconsistent with what you just said you believed and what the Southern Baptist Convention believes, but yet we're partnering with them, go after them.

48:26

And that may be the angle that he's doing. That's what it seems like at least. But these are, his words are that overall, he thinks he did an excellent job.

48:34

And this is what I don't understand because if we just, if you watch the interview, did you really think Barber did an excellent job? That's what

48:40

I don't quite get. And it's a universal praise from people with any standing in the

48:46

SBC, it seems, for those who have chimed in. Denny Burke, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Bart Barber sat for an interview with Anderson Cooper.

48:52

You can watch or read the transcript, really well done. Grateful for how Dr. Barber represented Southern Baptist.

48:58

So Denny Burke, really grateful for that. So this is what you have going on as far as the reactions that I am aware of in the, on the interwebs, as they say.

49:12

And it doesn't give me a lot of hope for the Southern Baptist Convention, to be honest with you. I don't know, like, what should

49:19

I expect from this? It's been so long that I've been looking at these things over the last couple of years that it doesn't surprise me, but it did surprise me a little that there weren't more reactions to it since it was national television.

49:31

But it just highlights, I think, something that I've come to believe over the course of years now.

49:37

And really have believed strongly for the last year and a half. And that is that the Southern Baptist Convention, I just don't see how you really recover when that's your president, so out of step with the rank and file

49:48

SBC pew sitters that are paying his salary, or not his salary, but sorry, paying the expenses of the denomination.

49:58

When you don't have an effective resistance against this kind of thing, when it's, maybe it's just so baked in the cake now, people don't feel the need.

50:09

If you're even conservative and have standing, why go out there and even bother? Why publicly post your views on something like this?

50:17

They're just gonna do it anyway. It's not gonna give you anything but grief from the other side. It could be that, I don't know.

50:23

But I don't see effective pushback at all in these things. And there does need to be. It's, what it probably shows is that the bar is very low.

50:34

What would cause an outrage? That's what I wanna know. What would cause people to be upset enough to, even those who are more in leadership in the convention on the more conservative side, what would cause them to get up in arms?

50:46

I guess Bart would probably have to go out there or the president of the SBC and say something like, I don't believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman alone.

50:55

You know, that would do it, I guess. But I think we're a ways, I'm not saying that's never gonna happen, but I think we're a ways from that.

51:03

There's an attempt to keep trying to kind of push the third way of some kind.

51:09

And once the third ways goes down, I mean, that's how the Hegelian dialectic works. Then you can then, that's the new norm.

51:14

That's the new right side of the Overton window. And now you can advance more. And they haven't been able to do that quite with the people.

51:24

And I should say, I'm not saying that Bart Barber in particular, or anyone in particular, I'm just saying as a general, you know, kind of zoom out, look at it from a bird's eye view, that's a general tendency, that's how it operates.

51:34

You know, Bart, that may be his conviction. I think it is that marriage is solely between a man and a woman. But what

51:41

I'm trying to say is that the way it often works over time is it's incremental.

51:47

That's how progressivism works. It's insidious, it's subversive, and it's not something that they've been able to shove down the throats.

51:56

The people who do believe that the SBC and evangelicals need to really not just moderate, but liberalize their views on these topics, they haven't been able to get the rank and file to accept something like that.

52:12

That's a hard pill to swallow in a very short period of time. I mean, it's only been seven years since 2015 and Obergefell decision.

52:22

I know things move fast today, but that is a very monumental thing to change very quickly.

52:27

I think though, I think that in 20 years, that's probably, it's gonna be different.

52:34

I do think that there will come a time that kind of thing is very possible to overtly state that, you know, marriage, we need to be inclusive on it.

52:41

And the Southern Baptists, if trends continue as they are, will be in the same place that many of these other mainline denominations are on the issue.

52:49

It's gonna take time though. It's gonna take a lot of pushing. It's gonna take just a lot. And the denomination will probably be significantly smaller by the time they're able to do something like that, because there are some people with actual convictions who are paying the bills, who are sitting in the pews.

53:04

And, but on these other topics of immigration, the integrity of the election, on whether or not someone should vote for President Donald Trump, on whether those who oppose the changing the very nature of the polity of the

53:21

Southern Baptist Convention are in advocates for abuse somehow or cover it up.

53:27

You know, these are topics, these are situations where somehow now it is acceptable. You can just kind of make the assumptions that the left makes and still get praise from people who are on the right.

53:36

And that's what's interesting to me. The third way is no longer the third way. That's what's happening.

53:42

Can you see that? The third way is no longer, what I talked about three, four years ago, three years ago, and this third way that was happening.

53:51

And people were starting to figure it out. Wait a minute, my pastor sounds different. What's going on? He went to this T4G conference and he came back and this is what he's saying.

53:59

And there was a lot of just confusion. The dust hadn't settled. And I started explaining, well, there's a third way.

54:04

I saw it in seminary. This is what Tim Keller's advocating. And people were thinking, oh my goodness, this is exactly what

54:10

I'm hearing from the pulpit of my church. We need to do something. And the third way was pretty classic, like abortion and homosexuality, wrong.

54:18

And then we can alleviate poverty through socialism, some kind of social mechanism of some kind, redistribution scheme.

54:26

Immigration policy needs to be a lot looser. We need to make sure that we're letting all these refugees in, even if they're unvetted.

54:32

We need to make sure that, I don't know, we're caring for the environment somehow. And that means government action in particular ways.

54:39

And so you had all these things that they could try to use to bolster their credentials of being,

54:46

I am nuanced. I am authoritative. That now, that position though, that third way that was being implemented at that time, that's now seen as more, it's more to the right.

54:56

What it was seen as a very leftist move. I still see it that way. It was a leftist move to try to get Christians to move on these other issues.

55:03

Cause you know, they can't move on abortion. That's kind of, so let's try to make, let's make 11 things, abortion issues, life issues.

55:11

Abortion is one of them. And then smoking is one of them. And nuclear proliferation and all these other things are racial justice, all life issues.

55:20

And so we can work on in this way. We can kind of till that soil. And then eventually we're gonna get some

55:25

Democrat voters here. That's what it seemed like the political play was. And now that political play just doesn't seem as radical, does it?

55:35

And cause Barbara's advocating it in this particular interview and ho hum. So man, things are progressing.

55:44

I don't know what it all means. I really don't. And I'd be curious to hear your comments in the info section. There's lots more we need to get to.

55:50

I got a whole list of things to talk about, but time is not on my side today.

55:56

So I appreciate everyone's patience with me as I attempt to get some more information out there.

56:04

And please pray for me this week. I have a lot to do. I got to write a number of things. I need to start writing another book and I need to actually two books.

56:13

And I really need to get ready for speaking in, in fact, I should plug this.

56:19

I am going to be in Indiana next week. And you can come see me if you want.

56:25

There's a place to RSVP if you're into that kind of thing. Or you can just show up.

56:31

I wouldn't recommend it. They haven't given, organizers haven't given me authorization to say you can just show up.

56:36

But if you do, the problem would probably be there might not be room for you. So you should probably let them know, but go to worldviewconversation .com

56:44

if you're interested and you're in Indiana and go to Syracuse. Let's see, Syracuse, Indiana and Kendallville, Indiana.

56:51

And man, in eight days, I will be in Kendallville and then 10 days in Syracuse and the

56:57

RSVPs are right there. So I look forward to seeing you, but I got to write some stuff for, just prepare a little bit for that.

57:04

So had a lot going on. So I appreciate your prayers and I just thank you for the continued support and more coming,