A Crash Course in CRT, SBC Pastor Tells White Church Member He's Guilty for Last Name?!

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Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Well, it finally happened.

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The governor of West Virginia has invited counties in the western part of Virginia to come and join his state where they will escape the tyranny currently unfolding in the state of Virginia and enjoy pro -life representation, gun rights and pro -business policies.

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And for those of you like myself who live in Virginia, we can hold out. Maybe this is more symbolic than anything else, but still, we can hold out.

00:30

We can try to see if maybe we can join West Virginia and secede. Jerry Falwell, actually,

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I saw was talking about it about an hour ago on the radio. I think it was somewhere in Virginia. So, you know, the

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Democrats control Richmond and the Beltway in D .C. So they are part of the hegemony now.

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I mean, look, majority culture now in Virginia, if you're counting by population, I mean, they're left now.

00:55

So does that boost our intersectionality points? Those of us who are conservative, who we enjoy maybe the sport of shooting or we just want firearms for self -defense or hunting.

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Can we now be an oppressed class? I don't know. We'll see. Doesn't seem to be happening, though, in the eyes of the mainstream media.

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And speaking of mainstream media, some things never change. I noticed a couple of minutes before going live. I'm not going to give all the details of this because I want to actually do an episode in which

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I interview the person who was speaking at this event. But long story short, there was an event that I happened to attend a few weeks ago.

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And one of the speakers who was there, he did a speech and there was a journalist there to do a story.

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And it's in The Washington Post on partially on this man's speech. And the journalist just made something up that did not happen.

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I was there and, you know, I looked at the article from The Washington Post. I looked at an email that was sent from the speaker who had spoken that day.

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And he said, I don't remember this certain event ever happening. I said, I was there. I watched the whole thing. It never happened.

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So a journalist still not not necessarily the most honest profession. But, you know, there's there's a lot of good people in bad professions.

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So it doesn't mean all journalists are necessarily liars. But but anyway, it was I've had a few instances in my life where I've been at an event.

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This, I think, is the third major one I can think of where I was somewhere and I read the news story about it and it was completely untrue or it got certain facts wrong that were just inexcusable.

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It wasn't something like, well, you misheard. It was actually you fictitiously made something up. And and this is the third time in my life

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I've seen major media do that. So I, you know, a little bit of mistrust for the media. You know, yeah,

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I think there's a justifiable reason some conservatives feel that way. But anyway, and in other news, and this is what we're going to talk about mainly today, some major Southern Baptists figures have come out pretty strong against critical race theory as of late, which is a very good thing.

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Owen Strand, and that is Strand, by the way, I know it looks like Strachan if you're watching, but Owen Strand, who is a professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, put out a four part critique of critical race theory through the

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Pathios blog. Jason Keith -Allen, who is the president of the seminary where Strand teaches, and Albert Moeller, who is the president of Southern and also running for president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, both retweeted this four part series. And I did read it. I skimmed parts of it, but it was good.

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It was, I think, kind of entry level stuff, which is really good and important and foundational.

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And so I just want to commend that. I do though have a concern and I want to flesh this out for you the same way that the

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Baptist faith and message has been used as a shield against legitimate critiques, criticisms, concerns.

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I think that it is possible that something like Strand's four part series or similar blog yet to be released could also be used as a shield.

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Let me give you an illustration. Imagine you're part of an organization and this organization has a problem with infidelity.

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It's prevalent. Perhaps it even goes to the point of sexual abuse in certain circumstances.

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And let's say that you're concerned, you're part of this organization, you work for it. And so you put out a four part series on biblical fidelity and you want to claim that biblical fidelity is the right way to go.

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Infidelity is wrong. And let's say that those who are employing abusers and people who are not faithful to their wives, let's say that they retweet your four part series and they say, this is a must read.

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I agree. I approve. I hate infidelity, but they never actually take actions to correct and to, let's say in some cases where it's bad, fire those who are unfaithful and perhaps abusive.

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We would say that's hypocrisy. And so this is my encouragement. It's been now we're over two years out since the

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MLK 50. I mean, the Dallas statement, I think now what are we, you know, that's a year and a half ago or so where time, a lot of time has been given.

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And there are still folks who are employed at some of these institutions who have not read.

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I don't know of any that have actually recanted any of their beliefs. They're still teaching there.

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And, you know, in some cases I know we're told, because I've been told that there's been correction behind closed doors.

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And I don't know the nature of that, but there's no public display of correction because perhaps it would be embarrassing.

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I don't really know why, but, but the statements that were made that are concerning and really exemplify a pattern of statements made in favor of critical race theory ideas.

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These have not been at all revoked, recanted, addressed sufficiently.

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Not even like 1 % sufficiently. I mean, we have a long way to go as far as those who are running this denomination actually coming to terms with the errors that are right under their nose.

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In fact, there was an article I mentioned last week when I did the podcast of an instance at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where a certain aspect of critical race theory potentially was being advocated there on campus.

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And so this is the kind of thing that I think concerns me a little bit. And I want to say I'm very approving of this and we should all approve of this, but we shouldn't rest and say, oh, good.

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They're against critical race theory. Well, maybe they are in theory, or maybe it's a good political move to make right now, but time will tell.

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And the way that you need to measure this is those who are preaching critical race theory, are they correcting their ideas?

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Are they preaching against it? And it's not enough to just not preach anymore. Are they actually undoing the damage they've done?

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This week I received word from students, and I've heard this from more than one source inside Southeastern, that there are certain classes, and one of them in particular is taught by someone who has taken a lot of heat for promoting liberation theology, where you're not allowed to record anymore.

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And I'm not here to discuss the ethics of that or the legal policy. That is a change though.

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I was a student up through 2018. I never once saw a classroom where you weren't allowed to record.

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A lot of students did just because that's how you take notes. In fact, I've been at five academic institutions.

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I've never once heard a professor ever say that you can't record anything. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but this is a change.

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And those are the kinds of things that concern me. Is this movement going underground now? It looks like in some ways it is, because people who have been public about it now have been hurt in the social media world with a layman in the

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SBC. And there's no correction though. There's no actual coming out against it and affirming that this is wrong.

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And what I specifically, what was said at my institution or what this professor has said was wrong.

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It's just kind of like cover it up. Don't talk about it. Don't talk about that professor. Circle the wagons around those professors and then affirm something like this four -part series from Owen Strand.

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That's what concerns me, because if you don't root it out at the grassroots level, then it's still there.

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And it's just as dangerous as it ever was. It's influencing future pastors. It's just that we don't know about it as much as we did before.

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So that's my concern about that. And I wanted to mention that in light of this recent development,

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I thought today would be a good day to do something I've been asked a few times to do, which is to do a little bit of a crash course on critical race theory.

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And I want to connect some of the dots for you to just show you where this is showing up in perhaps your church or your denomination, your institution, your part of your seminary, because I don't think those dots are being connected.

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We're dealing with this on a very abstract level. I want to get a little more concrete with you and show you where this can show up.

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Now, the danger of doing this is critical race theory is developing. It's kind of in flux.

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If you, let's say, did a critique on critical race theory, you may have to update it five years later or even sooner because terms are changing.

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More information is changing the way that it operates. And it's not like a

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Mormonism or an Islam where you look at a solid state, sacred text, and you say this is diametrically opposed to what we know to be truth and you can engage it on rational grounds.

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This is a new paradigm for how to think, for truth itself.

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It changes literally everything. And so it's so fundamental. You're taking 12 intellectual steps back to argue with someone of this postmodern critical race theorist persuasion that I think it confuses a lot of people.

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And that's maybe why it's hard to sometimes connect the dots. But I'm going to do my best to, in layman's terms, as much as I can, provide you with some simple definitions.

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And I'm taking these from Richard Delgado's Critical Race Theory book. You can read Derek Bell. I recommend

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Richard Delgado's book because it's the fullest treatment I know of. But I do that with the recognition that things are changing even now.

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And that book has to be updated, probably. So hopefully you understand at least the basic principles that are being utilized.

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And at the end of this video, you'll know how to recognize them when they show up in your church, identify them, and then maybe to some extent refute them.

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Also, at the end of this critique, I'm going to play a video for you, which some of you might find shocking.

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There was an occurrence a few years ago, and it's related to Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I went with a church plant that was close to the seminary.

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And this particular church plant, like honestly a lot of the churches in that area, was on the social justice bandwagon.

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And I am going to connect this to my critique of Critical Race Theory. I want to show you how this occurrence, which was essentially a family being told that they were in generational guilt, generational sin, because of really the fact that they were white and they had a last name, which also was shared with another congregant's family who had the same last name.

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And that family happened to be a minority family. And the implication was, well, they were white.

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They had this last name. They must have owned this other family. And this created all sorts of problems.

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And there was an interview put out today by Enemies Within the Church. It's a shorter interview, but I have talked to the person,

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James Heise, his name, who agreed to this interview. And I'm going to put the uncut version out there.

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It's about 18 minutes, I believe. And you can watch that. You can watch the effects of Critical Race Theory thinking and how it shows up in a very concrete example.

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So that's my goal in putting that out there. And I'm going to talk more about that. But let's go through Critical Race Theory first.

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Let's do the crash course here. What is Critical Race Theory? What is it? Well, Critical Race Theory builds on the insights of two previous movements.

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I'm quoting from Richard Delgado's book, Critical Legal Studies and Radical Feminism.

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So Critical Legal Studies and Radical Feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt.

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It also draws from certain European philosophers and theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci, Mikhail Foucault, Jacques Derrida, as well as from the

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American radical tradition, exemplified by such figures as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W .E .B. Du Bois, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King Jr.,

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and the Black Power and Chicano movements of the 60s and early 70s. So there, you already can see that one of the difficulties with labeling something

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Critical Race Theory is there's so many different ideas and traditions and figures that are sort of flowing in to this attempt to systematize a worldview, which is still developing.

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So you have all these different traditions. And I think part of the confusion over this whole battle in the

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SBC is when Resolution 9 passed, that was a gift in a way, because now we had

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Critical Race Theory intersectionality to blame for a lot of the social justice concerns that we had.

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And we could trace those things back to Marxists. And the issue with that is that it's kind of broader than just Critical Race Theory in a way.

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Critical Race Theory is an attempt to build off of all these other ideas. And so if someone who doesn't know much about Critical Race Theory, but they're a part of this

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American, as Delgado said, radical tradition, they do something that they think is affirmative action, let's say.

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And then the conservatives will sometimes say, well, this is Critical Race Theory. And they'll say, no, it's not. I don't even know about Critical Race Theory.

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Well, the fact is it's consistent with Critical Race Theory. It is. But that person may not have been aware of it.

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So whether they're aware of it or not, yes, they are forwarding something under the right calibrations, at least, is a facet, is an application of Critical Race Theory.

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But it doesn't mean that person is thinking in Critical Race Theorist terms about everything.

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It just means in this one instance, they utilized this tool that Critical Race Theory certainly approves of in order to create a situation in which the oppressed or the minority cultures have more of a shot.

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And perhaps you can implement a quota, and there's more of them now. And it is being done all over the Southern Baptist Convention in everything.

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It's just kind of part of the lay of the land. People don't recognize it because they don't associate it with Critical Race Theory. So all that to say, when we are using these terms, we have to be mindful of that.

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And we have to explain it to people and say, well, look, I'm not saying necessarily that you are in every sense of the word a

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Critical Race Theorist. What I am saying, though, is the ideas that you're pulling from are consistent with Critical Race Theory, or they come from Critical Race Theory, or Critical Race Theory has the same goal.

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So I'm not saying that there aren't some real dyed -in -the -wool Critical Race Theorists in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, because I believe there are, and I believe I've witnessed some of them. And they probably need to be witnessed too.

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But there are a lot of people who just, they don't know, and maybe they're purposely ignorant. At this point, they probably are.

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If Resolution 9 has passed, and you haven't tried, and I'm not talking about working class people,

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I'm talking about academics. If you're an academic and you haven't tried to really figure out what this whole Critical Race Theory business is,

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I mean, you couldn't pick up Delgado's book and read it in a couple hours, then, you know, that's a problem.

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That's a problem in and of itself that perhaps needs to be addressed. But let's define it, though.

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And I'm doing this more for those who don't have the time to go over all of this. Let's talk about Critical Legal Theory, and we'll also mention feminism, civil rights thought, and ethnic studies.

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But since Delgado said Critical Legal Theory and feminism were the two mainstreams influencing Critical Race Theory, we should understand them.

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Critical Legal Theory, according to Delgado, is from the Critical Legal Studies. And the group borrowed the idea of legal indeterminacy, the idea that not every legal case has one correct outcome.

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Instead, one can decide most cases either way by emphasizing one line of authority over another or interpreting one fact differently than the way one's adversary does.

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Now, you see how this already is destroying the concept of truth. Think about it.

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So you have a plaintiff, you have a defendant. You can just switch those roles, I guess. It just depends how good your lawyer is. So lawyers are just hired guns that work the angle for you.

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And truth is just absolutely destroyed. Evidence? Who cares about that? You can just interpret it differently.

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This is scary because we're seeing it show up in courtrooms. We're kind of used to that idea.

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In fact, it was one of the reasons years ago, and I respect Christian lawyers, but I just, I was going to go to law school.

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And I remember the first week when I was there, I was like, I don't know if I can do this.

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And it's not against the legal profession. I think there's some good lawyers out there.

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But we've come to a point where, you know, it is like you're a hired gun if you're a lawyer in certain legal fields.

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And, you know, how much of it is due to critical legal theory? I mean, I think that probably does contribute.

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There's new strategies that are needed to combat settler forms of racism that we're gaining ground. The strategy was to invent a language and use storytelling to revolutionize the legal system.

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Now, I want to talk about this for a minute because I know of a major Southern Baptist church, which I am not going to mention, but it is a church in which they had a blog a couple of years ago.

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And I read the blog as well. I was at Southeastern. And in this blog, there was a case made for, it was a young man who had killed someone who was a murderer.

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And as I recall, and the case was made in this blog written by someone who worked for the church on the church website, that the jury should have taken into account police discrimination in the area and other factors that may have contributed to this crime.

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Now think about that with me for a moment. What does that do when you start allowing the stories, the quote unquote experience, and that experiences can be subjective into a court of law.

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Now I'm not saying there aren't tragic stories of discrimination and some of them can't be verified. That's just the truth.

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But that's the way that this whole thing advances. If you can get someone to listen, that's why listening is so important to critical race theory.

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If you're in the majority culture, you just need to listen. You can't say anything. If you can listen to someone's story of being oppressed, you're required to believe them.

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That's why the believe women hashtag was so popular during the Kavanaugh hearing. You just got to believe them because they're part of this social class.

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They have their own truth, which cannot be questioned. And it should factor into legal proceedings.

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That's how this stuff is dangerous. Now, feminism, it says from Delgado's book again, feminism's insights into the relationship between the power and the construction of social roles, as well as the unseen, largely invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up patriarchy and other types of denomination.

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So really what the point of this is, is that it's not enough to just get equal pay.

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You got to realize you're in a man's world, right? And it's been the patriarchy.

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This man's world has been around for thousands of years, and it's just ingrained in our language and our habits and everything we do.

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We assume the dominant role of men. That's the theory, at least. And so feminism has given us this gift of noticing that basically these oppressive structures, they're systemic and they may not even be encoded in law anymore.

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But because of the habits of culture, they're still there.

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And we need to root them out. We need to find them and root them out. Well, now according to critical race theory, and I realize that's, you can't say according to critical race theory, but according to this hodgepodge worldview that is currently in formation, that is trying to be formed, not only can we apply that logic from feminism to other social classes, but we can apply it to race specifically.

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So it's not just that women have been oppressed by men, but white hegemony has oppressed all the other minority cultures of the world.

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And it's in ways that we don't always notice, but we need to find them. We need to root them out. They're deep within our hearts.

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I mean, they're on a McDonald's menu, I guess. They're everywhere and we got to find them. And so that's what they got from feminism, critical race theorists.

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Then there's conventional civil rights thought. The movement took a concern for redressing historical wrongs, as well as the insistence that legal and social theory lead to practical consequences.

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Critical race theory also shared with it a sympathetic understanding of notions of community and group empowerment.

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The main thing that this gives critical race theory is the understanding that there is an experience.

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You've heard the term black experience, for instance. There is a monolithic culture that,

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I mean, if you deviate from the ideology of the culture, you're kicked out. If you're Clarence Thomas, well, you're not. You're an

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Uncle Tom. You're not part of the black experience, but this is the black experience assumes you vote Democrat in the minds of the liberals who like to use that term.

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And it assumes a lot of things, but it's a identity that is rooted in a culture that has experiences of suffering and many of them very legitimate experiences of suffering.

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It has a musical tradition. It has a way of speaking.

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It has all these things. And so it takes that cultural element and then it says, well, they also have, not only do they have their music and food and all these things, they also have a way of viewing truth.

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They also have their truth. And that's their experience. That's the black experience.

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And you could say the Asian experience or pick whatever group you want. Well, that's what conventional civil rights thought gave to critical race theory.

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And then you have ethnic studies. It took notions such as cultural, national group cohesion, and the need to develop ideas and texts centered around each other and its situation.

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So I'm going to try to explain this briefly if I can. The best example I can give is in formative elementary school years, students used to have to learn something like American history.

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This produced group cohesion, patriotism, this identity of being an

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American that everyone shared. And now what we have more often than not at social studies, but there's also another movement.

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And depending on the school you go to, you could take something like African -American history or Hispanic history, or you could take now in some cases, especially out in California, an

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LGBTQ plus history course of some kind. And they're not even histories as much as they are social studies courses and group identity courses.

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Because it's not just, here's what happened. It's also, and here we're going to distill for you some of the ideology that this group belongs to or supports.

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And usually it's something left -wing and that becomes part of it, how they behave.

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So sociologists have gotten involved in history, very much so. And so the critique that used to be made about this is you're going to create all these little pockets of people with different identities who instead of having like an

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American identity, as far as under your religion, hopefully, right? You have your religion, your

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Christian, American identity. And then under that, your family tradition, or if you're part of, you came from another place, that tradition will play into it.

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Well, now it's no longer, American identity can't be the primary identity.

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This is really the big battle in America right now, to be honest with you, is can we all come around and we're using things like symbols, like the flag and the national anthem and so forth.

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Can we all come around these things and say, we can unify, but there's so much division because there are all these subcultures that now are the primary ways to identify groups.

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And it's interesting, in 1960, 90 % of the country would have traced their ancestry back to Europe somewhere exclusively, pretty much.

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And there's a reason that most of the presidents, they were white. Most of the people that were in control of the levers of industry and other fields, they were white.

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And it doesn't mean there weren't barriers to minorities becoming involved in those things. There were, and those were wrong in many instances, but just about probably every instance that a barrier went up, it would have been wrong.

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But the point is that if you just study the prominent figures in different fields and in the

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American experience, quote unquote, you're mostly going to be interacting with people that their ancestry traced back to Europe.

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And that's not slighting anyone. That's just the way this particular country developed.

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Well, you can't really say that anymore. That's in and of itself now is racist. And part of the reason is because of critical race theory, but it was informed by ethnic studies.

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So this is where we're going to start to get a little deeper here. The critical race theory movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship between race, racism, and power.

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The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, setting, group, and self -interest, and emotions, and the unconscious.

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Unlike traditional civil rights discourses, which stresses incrementalism, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of the constitutional law.

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This is one of the concerns that James Lindsay and Peter, and I can't remember his last name.

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It starts with a B, but they're two guys. They're actually, I think, agnostics, but two agnostics who have done a series of videos with Michael O 'Fallon from Sovereign Nations.

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This is their concern. They're not Christians, but they're looking at what's happening in Christianity and in pretty much every other facet of the culture.

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And they're saying that this stuff is eating away at something that they're very concerned about. And one of the things is enlightenment rationalism.

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And I think as Christians, we wouldn't maybe attribute that to the Enlightenment as much as we would to the Reformation. But the idea that you can approach things using a scientific method, that mathematics actually works in the real world.

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I mean, these very things are being questioned as, well, did white people, did white European oppressors use these tools to discriminate in some way or oppress?

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And if they did, then we can question those tools. We can question the correspondence theory of truth.

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We can question fundamental things that we all have to take for granted in order to live. In fact, fundamental things that critical race theory itself must assume.

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So it's kind of circular. These tools, if rationalism was given by white

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Europeans somehow, and critical race theory then can't be rational if it's trying to deny that.

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So we're kind of in this conundrum, but it's post -modernism. And so it's a battle that we have allies, as far as Bible -believing

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Christians, we have allies that are approaching it a little bit differently. In fact, in some cases, a lot differently, and their concerns are different than ours, but they're seeing some of the same things.

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And I would recommend those videos to you if you haven't seen them. Intersectionality means the examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination plays out in various settings.

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So very simply put, if you're someone who is, let's say, a minority, racially speaking, you already are oppressed in some way.

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If you also are a sexual minority, which is the new term that's being used, if you're someone who is not a cisgendered person, or you don't have romantic feelings for the opposite sex, well, then now you're oppressed doubly.

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And if you're left -handed, forget it. I mean, you could really add in everything. I think there's a reason that, and look,

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I have two brothers who have celiac, so this is not a knock on gluten -free. I know there's legitimate concerns in the gluten -free movement, but it seemed like overnight, all of a sudden, all sorts of people that don't actually have a problem with gluten, they want to act like I've seen extreme cases where people want to act like the gluten is oppressing them or something, like corporate

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America is, I guess, oppressing them with all the gluten. And so they have this, it's kind of like they want to be a victim. This is the victimology mentality.

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I've even seen this with people that want to be introverts so bad, and some of them are, some of them aren't, but they like to claim that they're somehow, they almost act like they're oppressed, like they're at such disadvantage because they're introverts.

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This is not the way that your parents or your grandparents thought about anything, but this is the new victimology, and this is where it comes from.

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So you can go back and look at those quotes if you have any questions about that. I do need to move along here a little bit and give you some terms.

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Terms, microaggression, a mini -racist event, interest convergence or material determinism, intersectionality, which we just talked about, or anti -essentialism, white privilege, nativism.

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I'm just throwing these terms out there as terms you may have heard. Some of them were academic, like interest convergence.

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Some of them you probably heard in just your normal day -to -day, like white privilege.

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In case you're wondering about interest convergence, this comes from Derek Bell, a critical race theorist who wrote a book on it in 1980,

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I believe. And the idea is that a court case like Brown v.

31:16

Board of Education wasn't really the great moral development that it's made out to be.

31:22

Actually, it was necessary by the hegemony to win the Cold War and to quell resistance that African Americans, people of color at the time, were the complaints.

31:34

It was to shut them up. There was other motivations in this, and so their interests converged, but it wasn't the moral breakthrough that we think of it as.

31:46

Ideology. Here's where we're really getting down into the nitty -gritty. If someone says, what is critical race theory?

31:52

Well, here's some ideology. I don't know why it says five. It should say four.

31:58

One, two, three, five. But then again, perhaps PowerPoint, when I put this together, was realizing the racist way in which

32:06

I use numbers and counting. Did you see that? Just a little tangent here. I posted it on Conversations That Matter on Facebook the other day.

32:15

The professor who wanted to say that math is racist.

32:21

Yeah, yeah. So anyways, PowerPoint corrected my racist math. But there's four points here that are critical, fundamental to critical race theory.

32:32

Racism is ordinary, not aberrational. So you just assume racism is everywhere, right?

32:38

Our system of white over color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material, for the dominant group.

32:46

So we're getting a benefit if we're part of the majority culture. And so we have an interest to not fight the patriarchy or the white hegemony.

32:58

Social construction thesis, number three. Races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient.

33:09

So there's a postmodern angle to this. How many times have you heard, and I've played the

33:14

Southern Baptist professors who say, you know, you don't understand. Race has nothing to do with biology.

33:22

It is all about power relationships. So that's where that comes from. And then number four, the voice of color thesis, which is intersectionality, basically.

33:32

There's just these unique perspectives that need to be listened to. They have a unique way of seeing truth.

33:38

It's standpoint epistemology, which I'll talk about in a minute. And white person or male or straight person, you just need to listen because they have truth.

33:51

They have a way of looking at something that you don't have because you haven't had their experience. Experience determines truth. And that works in the culture we're in now.

33:59

So that's the ideology of critical race theory. Now, how does this conflict with scripture ethically?

34:06

I'm not talking epistemologically. I'm talking ethically. Legal cases should be decided according to group identity instead of equality before the law.

34:18

Now, that's what critical race theory says. Our Bible says Exodus 23 .3, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in a dispute.

34:28

Justice is blind. We used to all believe this in Western culture. Now that's becoming a thing of the past.

34:37

Biblical hierarchy is oppressive. Of course, in Ephesians 5 .22 through 6 .9, we have descriptions of differing responsibilities attached with relationships of husbands, wives, parents, children, and even slaves and masters, which

34:50

I usually apply to employees and employers today. But there is a hierarchy. God has ordained it, and we're supposed to live under it and work within it to be salt and light.

35:01

But critical race theory wants to overturn those things in a revolutionary way. And I've pointed this out before as well, but the only hierarchy that exists when critical race is through is basically the state, so the government, and the individual.

35:17

Same with socialism. You don't get rid of hierarchy. You just trade one hierarchy for another, and it's a more oppressive hierarchy.

35:25

Number three, children should pay for the sins of their parents. So this comes from the idea that across even time and space, these different cultural groups, there's a cohesion that they all have the same way of looking at truth, because they have the same experience.

35:43

They're all responsible for the same kinds of things. This is why you can have someone who never experienced slavery or segregation not once in their life.

35:53

That was their grandparents and their great, great, great, great, great, great parents, grandparents. And they will say, but I am very oppressed though.

36:02

I am oppressed. You don't understand. Because across time, these experiences are kind of like handed down to you, and you are now part of them.

36:11

It's part of your experience. And so if you've done something, if your parents did something wrong, or people who look like your parents, well, then you need to pay for it.

36:20

But of course, Deuteronomy 24, 16 says, fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers.

36:26

Everyone shall be put to death for his own sin. Number four is morally imperative to de -center majority cultures.

36:32

This is a really key one, really key. De -center majority cultures. So this would be the idea of if you're in the hegemony, the white hegemony.

36:42

So this is the power structure that controls everything. And all the assumptions of the culture or the society, they all come from this power structure.

36:53

If you're part of it, well, that needs to be knocked down a couple inches, maybe a couple feet, maybe a couple miles.

37:00

And those who are oppressed, they need to be brought up so that things are more egalitarian, more equal.

37:08

There's equity. Now, Deuteronomy 15, 15, though, says, as for the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the alien who sojourns with you.

37:18

This is the idea that in ancient Israel, Israel applied the laws of God to those who did not grow up in that.

37:27

It wasn't their culture. They had different practices, but they were still required to keep the same laws.

37:33

And so this is not a biblical concept to just de -center because usually this is the critical legal theory angle.

37:39

Usually it comes back to certain principles and laws. This is how they're trying to get us to forsake the constitution even.

37:48

Well, that was just part of a bunch of white guys who were just concerned for their own interests. It was the patriarchy that set up this country and those founding documents, they need to be overturned or reinterpreted.

38:00

Critical race theory supports that idea. Now, there could be a lot more said here.

38:07

I'm saving some of it because like I said a few weeks ago, I have a plan in place right now.

38:13

We're just coordinating dates to have a professor actually from a Southern Baptist church, but someone who knows a lot about this has published many books.

38:21

And he's going to talk with me about standpoint epistemology. So I'm gonna give this a quick treatment, but there's a very basic philosophical conflict between critical race theory and scripture.

38:31

And that is that critical race theory relies on standpoint epistemology. Standpoint epistemology, and this is, again,

38:37

I'm quoting all of this from Delgado's book. If contextualism and critical theory teach anything, it is that we rarely challenge our own preconceptions, privileges, and the standpoint from which we reason.

38:50

So there's an awareness. This is why it's almost like a conversion experience.

38:55

Have you ever heard anyone say, wow, when I was reading Derrick Bell, or wow, when

39:01

I went to the State University, or wow, when I worked with this oppressed group of people, you know, pick whichever experience you want.

39:09

It was the most eye -opening experience I've ever had in my entire life. I didn't realize how much privilege

39:16

I had. I didn't realize it. That's because of this idea of standpoint epistemology, that you perceive everything based on the social group that you are from.

39:29

So truth goes through this filter. You see it through this filter. And essentially you go through life without challenging it until someone who's challenges you or indoctrination for hundreds of hours in a semester in studying all these things.

39:51

It wakes you up. So you see all the ways that you benefit. Oh man, I can get a job more easily because man, my hair is the way it is.

40:01

Or I'm right -handed, man, things are made more for me. Or man, I can go on those roller coasters because I'm 5 '10 and I'm not 6 '8.

40:08

It would be really hard if you were 6 '8 to get on that. Man, I got privilege. And you start picking out all the advantages that you have, right?

40:15

And you can do this with anyone. This is the interesting part to me is there are pros and cons to pretty much everything, almost.

40:24

I mean, there's exceptions. If you're permanently paralyzed, it's hard to see maybe why that can be a pro, but talk to Johnny Erickson Tata.

40:33

See what the spiritual development that it has brought about in her life and forced her to think through and grapple with things she never would have.

40:41

And this is the beauty of Christianity where when you're in Christ, all things, every single thing that you encounter is for the edification of the believer, for the building up of that believer.

40:54

All things work out together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. And that's the beauty of Christianity, really.

41:03

But I'm just saying in the world, there's advantages and disadvantages to just about everything. But this awakening experience gets you to focus on just one little slice of the pie.

41:13

If you're in majority culture, just the advantages you have. And then we're going to then go to someone who's in minority culture or oppressed culture, and we're going to just keep reinforcing all the disadvantages they have.

41:26

And if you're on social media, the algorithms will work this way. If you're concerned about racism, now this will give you a never ending stream, mostly bogus, racist, quote unquote events, but it'll keep reinforcing.

41:39

I'm at a disadvantage. I'm at a disadvantage. I'm at a disadvantage. Forget that that's like a 30 second clip from something that happened in Utah that you weren't there to see, and you don't even really know what happened, but it's reinforcing this idea that you're oppressed.

41:52

And so standpoint epistemology. Yeah. When that's challenged, then you have this awakening experience.

42:01

That's when you get woke. Guys, that's what woke means. And you're borrowing from the perspective of someone else because from their standpoint, they're seeing all the privileges you have that you didn't see.

42:15

Perspectivalism, the insistence on examining how things look from the perspective of individual actors helps us understand the predicaments of intersectional individuals.

42:23

So perspectivalism, standpoint epistemology, they're pretty much talking about the same exact thing there.

42:29

And I will note that nowhere in scripture do you find this concept that some cultures have a greater access to truth than other cultures because of their level of oppression.

42:41

In fact, even in Israel, you have King Solomon at the top of the world writing scripture. You have the prophets during the captivity, and Jesus doesn't say, well, they were oppressed during the captivity.

42:50

So listen to that scripture more. No, all scripture is inspired by God. All scripture is profitable. Truth is invariable.

42:57

It's absolute. It's unchanging. It applies to everyone because it really flows from the nature and the person of God himself.

43:06

And he is the one that has created the uniformity of nature and set up the laws of logic and laws of mathematics, which apply to everyone and everyone can access.

43:17

This would just break down everything. It would break down our whole approach to scripture. And really what it does, because it goes off of this idea that experience determines truth, it breaks down into smaller and smaller social groups.

43:32

Intersectionality does this. I mean, think of someone who's white, who lives in Appalachia. Parents, let's say, were on drugs.

43:38

They don't have access to medical care. They wouldn't feel like they have white privilege, not like the guy whose parents sent him to Harvard and he grew up in Massachusetts and Boston or something.

43:47

There are so many variables. If you take it internationally, it gets ridiculous. There's so many variables that this will break down into.

43:56

Each individual's experience is different than another individual's experience. And we're just going to gauge,

44:01

I guess, their level of oppression to find out whether we should listen and believe or whether we should speak truth to power or whatever.

44:10

So this is just an attack on truth on its face. And I'm looking forward to having a professor on soon to get into more depth on this, but it would destroy the very foundation of studying scripture, which, of course, we all care about as Christians.

44:26

Now, here are some examples. And I want to do an episode where I get into this more. I don't have time to get into it very deeply, but ideas have consequences, guys.

44:35

And this is what I'm afraid that folks like Al Mohler and folks like Greenway, perhaps

44:41

Danny Akin, Jason Allen, you know, and maybe outside the SBC even, we might start finding these people who will say things against critical race theory, but then they're okay with these specific concepts.

44:57

This is where there's a disconnect and we have to show the relationship. So the multi -ethnic church model, well, that is consistent with critical race theory.

45:08

I mean, I grew up in a church that had multiple ethnicities and we had the greatest potlucks. I mean, I loved it.

45:14

But the multi -ethnic church model basically says as an end in and of itself, you need to make diversity a priority in your church.

45:22

And if it's not, somehow, sometimes people will say you need to repent because you're in sin.

45:28

Somehow, it's totally outside the scope of what scripture says a church should be doing. Diversity happens as you preach the gospel, but to make that part of the mission of the church is it must look like the church in heaven now.

45:41

I mean, there's a reason it's in heaven, that the church looks like every tribe, every tongue and nation. I mean, if you have a church in the middle of Iowa, you're not going to get remote tribes on the other part of the earth to come.

45:53

Now, some will say, well, it just needs to reflect your community. But again, hopefully it should. I would love that.

46:00

I grew up in a church that I would say did reflect the community more or less. It may be even more diverse than the community, to be honest.

46:08

But still, if you're trying to somehow decenter majority culture by this multi -ethnic church model, and that's your purpose for pursuing it, it's like, hey, we live in an area that's mostly white and our church seems to be mostly white, and that's wrong, and you're raging against it, which

46:27

I've seen numerous examples of, then that is consistent with critical race theory. And I'd like to do an episode sometime and get into more detail on why

46:36

I think that. But I'm just going to give you some specifics here to just think through. Quotas for influential positions.

46:42

How often have you heard someone like Beth Moore say, I'm trying to diversify my library. I don't want all those straight white

46:47

Europeans teaching me theology. I mean, that's where that comes from. The centering of majority culture. We need these other perspectives somehow to know what the

46:55

Bible really says. And of course you see this now in the hiring practices of denominations in many cases.

47:04

I mean, it's a well -known fact, pretty much. If you're not well -connected and you're a white guy and you have a

47:10

PhD, you don't have as much of a chance of getting a job based on your qualifications because it's not based on that.

47:18

It's very partially based on that. There's other things now, other outward things you need to qualities in order to get the job in many cases.

47:30

And of course that brings me to affirmative action. We need to, I mean, that's the kingdom diversity program.

47:36

I've talked about that before. Again, same kind of basic goal here. The de -centering of majority culture, disparaging majority culture's heritage.

47:45

So this goes back to there seems to be a practice as of late.

47:51

I've seen more of it. I haven't focused it on as much as perhaps I should, but I've seen many lectures about, and sometimes it's even offhanded remarks.

47:59

It's not the lecture topic isn't about this, but the founding fathers are disparaged or the race to get rid of monuments.

48:08

I mean, some prominent Southern Baptists have been involved in that. And that is part of the same thing.

48:15

It's ripping down the hegemony. Calling for punishment without evidence.

48:22

I probably at some point should have someone come and do a whole Paige Patterson episode. I mean, look, I'm not going to pretend to know every detail about that, but what

48:30

I do know is initially with the accusations against Paige Patterson that came from an incident that happened,

48:37

I think it was like 20 years ago at Southeastern. There really hasn't been, there's really no way to verify everything that took place there.

48:44

But I do remember immediately there was a rush to judge Paige Patterson. I was on campus at the time.

48:51

And it's the rush that I'm talking about. Patterson's not really the issue. It's the, you know, we heard this sad story.

48:58

It came, I think it was the Washington Post judge right there. This is what happened, even though, and punish, it's not just judge, it's punish.

49:09

So anyway, soft complementarianism. I do view that as a kind of a synthesis.

49:17

It's a halfway measure getting us towards egalitarianism, but it's a way to kind of de -center the patriarchy.

49:23

The concept of generational sin, that flows from this idea that there's this cohesive, cultural identity that people carry with them.

49:36

And whether they weren't part of crimes that some of their ancestors may have been part of, or not even crimes, but just things that they were on the oppressor end of the scale, somehow they bear the weight for that and vice versa.

49:48

You know, generational, I guess, favor, or if you're not, if you're an oppressed class and, you know, 200 years ago, your ancestors were oppressed.

49:59

So these are all specific instances. And I could probably sit here all day. I could probably do an episode three hours long, where I just give examples of these and show the connection to critical race theory.

50:08

It doesn't mean everyone advocating this is a critical race theorist, but it means that these ideas are consistent. And the people who do advocate them are advocating an aspect of critical race theory as it stands today.

50:20

And they could be pulling from another tradition that critical race theory borrows from, you know, but it's still part of this post -modern idea that critical race theory is.

50:32

So with that being said, I want to highlight something at the end here. And this is probably the most important part of this video, perhaps.

50:42

I was privileged, for lack of a better term, to travel down to North Carolina in my old stomping grounds by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

50:57

And I did some interviews. One of them was with a gentleman named James High. And James and I had talked on the phone beforehand, and I respect him very deeply for doing this.

51:13

He was, I think, nervous. But I talked to him and his wife about what had happened.

51:19

And I just told them, guys, this would be really beneficial to hear your story. I hear a lot of stories.

51:25

A lot of email gets sent to me about crazy things, even crazier than this one, guys. And a lot of the times, you know,

51:32

I want to talk about it, and I can't, because there's just no way to verify any of it, or the person just, they don't want it talked about.

51:39

Usually nine times out of ten, that's what happens. John, this is what happened, and I don't want anyone knowing, because I've just been through too much, and I don't want to be attacked more.

51:48

And it breaks my heart, to be honest with you. But James was brave and decided that he would do an interview with me.

51:57

And I'm going to show you that interview. But it relates back to this idea of generational sin, and disparaging a group of people because of their skin tone, because of things allegedly that their ancestors may have done.

52:16

In this case, James, his last name is High, and it was shared with another member of the congregation who also had a last name named

52:23

High. And it was insinuated that, well, his ancestors must have owned this family's ancestors, and it's ridiculous.

52:32

Historically, it's ridiculous. It doesn't mean that. And James actually went and looked it up, found out, no, he doesn't have slaveholding ancestors, but this was the charge that was made against him.

52:45

And essentially, he should apologize. This is something that he did, a guilt that he carries with him because of allegedly what his ancestors may have done.

52:57

And this is tearing at the unity of the church. I know that this church plant doesn't exist anymore.

53:03

James did not want to give the details as far as at this point, that may change. But at this point, this is a part of his life he's left.

53:12

This happens, I think now we're talking two and a half years ago or so. But it was during a time I was at Southeastern, and I knew the social justice fires were raging.

53:21

And it doesn't surprise me that this happened. In fact, I've had numerous people from that area contact me and tell me things that happened at their church.

53:31

And so James is one who was brave enough to come on camera and talk about it. He doesn't want to talk about the pastor either at this point, and who the pastor was, just because he doesn't have a personal conflict, and he doesn't want to really revisit that.

53:47

Him and his family have moved on at this point. But this is about highlighting where this ideology, this critical race theory can lead.

53:57

And it's not pretty, guys. And there's many more examples of this. And you're going to be seeing some more of them in the coming weeks and months as we lead up to the release of the

54:07

Enemies Within the Church film. And by the way, there, I should say that there was about a five and a half minute version of this interview posted at enemieswithinthechurch .com.

54:17

You can go there, while you're there, give them a donation for providing the cameras for this.

54:23

But this is the extended cut. This is the long form interview. And I'd like you to hear what

54:29

James High has to say. And that will be the end of the show when the interview is over. So God bless you.

54:34

Thank you for all your support. And before I forget, also, if you become a

54:40

Patreon supporter of mine, you will get a free book. You're going to get Mark David Hall's book about the

54:46

Christian founding of the United States. So message me. If you become a Patreon supporter, you can find the link in the info section.

54:54

You can also find the links to Owen Strand's articles. And you can find the link to the short version of the interview

55:04

I'm about to show you. Here we go. What is your name? My name is Troy High.

55:10

And Troy, where do you live? I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. And Troy, you went to a church in Raleigh, North Carolina area and experienced some issues.

55:22

How many years ago was this? About two years ago. Okay. What happened?

55:28

My wife and I had joined a church plant in Raleigh that had broken off or been sponsored rather by our church in Wake Forest that we'd attended for many years.

55:39

And as time passed, we started to see changes in the way that people talked about what was on the news and how that influenced their conversations, how it influenced their discussions of the gospel and how they saw the gospel influenced by things they saw in the news that were distressing to them.

56:02

My wife and I were very open about being conservatives. We certainly didn't push for any political agendas or candidates, but it was known to everyone in the congregation that we seemed to have a difference of opinion than many others.

56:18

Eventually, it came to a climax when one of the church elders and his wife met with me and my wife in our home to try to resolve some issues and to discuss them.

56:31

We unfortunately, instead of coming to a point of being cathartic or helpful, it really brought things up to a point where some very harmful things were said.

56:43

I mentioned to him that as a result of our small group meetings that I didn't think that he really was a complimentarian because of the way that he had described how he runs his household with his wife and daughters.

56:58

He was very angry, and I think in that moment he turned to me and said, you are in generational sin because your ancestors owned the ancestors of another congregant who had the same last name as me and my wife.

57:15

Now, this was a pastor who told you this. In your home, you're involved in this church on some level?

57:23

Were you leading Bible studies or what was your level of involvement? We were community group leaders.

57:29

I think of one of four community group leaders and held the meetings in our home. Did you have a good relationship with your pastor before this occurrence?

57:39

I think at times there was friction because of this particular pastor and his wife attending our community group.

57:48

There's some friction in that they were wanting to influence the teaching or to try to change the way that we did things.

57:57

I think part of the tension was feeling very much like we were told we would have freedom to teach but not feeling that it was really there.

58:09

This is a night when community group happened and your pastor brings this up.

58:15

Is this in the middle of the group meeting or just afterward with just you and your wife? This was just with my wife and with he and his wife that were there.

58:26

It's both couples, he and his wife, you and your wife. This is when he brings up this idea that you are in generational sin because you share a last name with someone else in the church who is a minority.

58:41

Is that correct? That is correct. After your pastor had said this to you, what was your response?

58:49

I was almost speechless to be honest. This was as the conversation was drawing to a close.

58:58

It was almost like a parting shot as he was leaving. I did not have a good response.

59:05

I think my mind went to what if it is possibly true that there was some connection in the past.

59:14

But I did not at all feel that I was in sin. I did not believe that at all.

59:21

Ironically, this couple was one of the couples that we were very close to that we shared meals with many times.

59:28

My daughter had gone over and been like a mother's helper in their home. There was absolutely no indication that there was any ill will whatsoever between us.

59:39

This pastor seemed to be, I do not know, he seemed to be the one that had the ill will.

59:44

I really was shocked at this accusation that I was somehow in sin that was not covered by Christ's atonement.

59:54

That is understandable. After this took place, did your relationship change with your pastor?

01:00:01

I do believe that this was an event that really made me feel that I was not welcome in this congregation.

01:00:10

This particular pastor was one of two. He was very influential and worked at the seminary.

01:00:20

That seminary is Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary? That is correct. He worked at the seminary.

01:00:27

Did the other pastor at the church also share his concern that you were in generational sin?

01:00:36

I never heard anything related to that at all from this pastor.

01:00:43

We were very close to that pastor. Unfortunately, I think the nature of the church plan and its finances and the dynamics, and I believe the influence from certain parties, made this particular pastor be influential in the finances and the running of the church.

01:01:02

Did the family that shared a last name with you, were they expecting an apology?

01:01:09

Were they concerned that you had wronged them, or were they oblivious to all of this? I believe that we were oblivious to all of this.

01:01:15

They may know nothing about this exchange that occurred.

01:01:22

Did the pastor or anyone else encourage you to apologize or bring this up later on after it was brought up that night at your house?

01:01:33

Not specifically. I do think that after this event or this exchange occurred, we could tell being in the church services that the other people in the congregations, many of them seem to have taken a different attitude towards us, and we're very standoffish at that point.

01:01:53

We don't know for certain, but we believe that there may have been discussions that went on behind the scenes where we were somewhat marked out or somehow labeled in some derogatory way.

01:02:06

Did you approach your pastor or leadership after the night that you had heard about it and talked to your pastor later or no?

01:02:16

So the other pastor who noticed that we were not attending as frequently as he had been, did come to our home and met with us and was inquiring about what's going on.

01:02:30

We did give him some feedback regarding concerns that we felt that we didn't fit in with the congregation anymore, and that was maybe somewhat related to the fact that we were conservatives politically and we're not ashamed to say that, but we did not specifically mention this conversation with this elder directly.

01:02:53

We felt like we were going to break the church up if we were trying to set about some kind of church discipline.

01:03:03

What kinds of other things did you hear, either from the pulpit or from church leadership, that made you feel that you did not fit in as a conservative?

01:03:15

I think that there were definitely events that occurred starting in 2014 up into 2016 where things that would be trending on Twitter would be mentioned, especially some of the more prominent news stories.

01:03:34

Police shootings. Police shootings, Trayvon Martin. As the election cycle began leading up, there were many comments around us where people were very clearly opposed to what we believed and were not afraid to state it very vocally.

01:03:55

Was there an effort at all to openly vote Democrat or get involved in reparations or some kind of a leftist cause, or was it just opinions that people held?

01:04:07

I would say it was more the opinions that people held about the role of government, redistribution, immigrants versus sojourners, versus the documentation status of various people.

01:04:25

That was definitely brought up. Would you say that leadership was favorable to illegal immigration and forms of socialism then?

01:04:39

I don't know that I ever heard a real direct statement about socialism, but certainly the idea of a welfare state and redistribution was talked about, that that was a good thing, and that the government role in terms of helping people financially was something that instead of being the family and the church, the government should take a central role or should be a prominent role.

01:05:05

Was there any outside involvement from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary or neighboring churches in influencing this situation at all?

01:05:17

We did have seminary professors that were guest preachers that would do a sermon.

01:05:25

I believe that there was some influence due to one of my fellow congregants that was,

01:05:35

I guess, completing an MDiv at Southeastern who had a particular professor. He shared with me some of his papers that had been graded, and it was difficult not to read that paper and the marks in the comments and not feel that social justice was being defined as a positive thing that the church needed to push and advocate for.

01:05:56

So you see the influence of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary as a contributing factor to this pastor's willingness to accuse you of generational sin?

01:06:12

I do think that because this person was an employee of SCBTS, and I do believe that he was influenced in some ways by teaching or maybe the spirit of what was going on there that influenced his decision to bring these matters up.

01:06:36

How did this impact your family, your wife and your children? We were devastated.

01:06:44

It was very difficult because I would often come home from church and sit down with my wife and kids and try to deconstruct some things that had been said or some things that had happened that I felt like were above and beyond the pure gospel message and try to deconstruct it.

01:07:05

I would definitely feel that because of my ethnicity, that if there was something going on in the news media, that there was a blanket treatment that I was somehow associated with people that were not even believers.

01:07:21

Living in another state, some incident occurred, but yet it was brought up in a manner that made you feel that you need to search your heart.

01:07:29

You need to search your mind and find sin that seemed to be assumed to be there.

01:07:37

Over time, it was difficult to stay in the congregation because of the need to listen to the sermon and then try to sit down with my family and show where I disagreed and try to keep that from influencing them.