Willy Rice Denounces CRT?

Conversations That Matter

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00:12

Hey everyone, welcome to Conversations That Matter podcast. This is a follow -up video.

00:18

Someone sent this to me, and I thought it was interesting, and I thought, you know what, I have a few minutes.

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My wife's making dinner right now. Before dinner is served, I'm going to just play this clip and just give you a few thoughts.

00:32

This is Willie Rice, who's been nominated, and I've already said this, I believe the progressive faction in the

00:38

Southern Baptist Convention, I don't even know if it's a faction anymore, it's certainly at the higher levels, the majority, they're the ones that seem to be behind Willie Rice.

00:49

It doesn't seem like there's a problem with Willie Rice. Of course, if Bodie even hints that he might be running, there's all kinds of problems.

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But I went and did a video, I guess last week or so, and showed you a,

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I think I reduced it down to about 16 minutes, it was about an hour and 21 or 22 minutes panel on, it was critical race theory,

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I don't know how else to put it. White privilege, systemic racism, standpoint epistemology, it was basically the whole nine yards.

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Recommending Robin DiAngelo, it was this whole panel. Why do you do a panel like that anyway, where you have your diverse opinions on the stage and the pastor, in the normal time, you'd have an evening service or something.

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This is the time for the pastor to hold this kind of a forum. A lot of people were doing that in 2020, and it was from June 2020.

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So if you want to check that out, go to last week and just type, I think it was the only video

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I have on Willie Rice, so it should be pretty easy to find. So I highlighted that,

01:53

I talked about it, I showed you it, and I also showed you a blog that Willie Rice had written, and he's not in the habit, at least from his pastor's blog of writing blogs about politics, but he happened to do one right after the incident on January 6th, and he gave his thoughts, and I pointed out, this is lopsided, way lopsided, and it's not just that it's politically progressive, you have a guy here who is very concerned about the reputation of the church, but the concern is that they're going to be lumped in with these

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Trump supporters that are crazy, and then while saying,

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I don't want to bash Trump supporters, he goes on to effectively do that, and specifically

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Christians, though. It's not Trump supporters, it's Christians who tied, they wedded politics and religion too close together, and you just can't do that.

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Of course, that's what he did in the 2020 Woke panel that he hosted, so most of you who've listened to this podcast, you already know all of that, and I'm only hitting the high points.

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So someone sent me this, and it was like, hey, John, you're wrong about this, Willie Rice, he's not a progressive, he's against CRT, check out this video, and I thought,

03:13

I'm totally open, and if Willie Rice has truly changed his opinion on this stuff, then what

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I would expect is there would be a public retraction, because he said and did these things publicly, and he'll say, look, here's the problems with what

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I did with that Woke panel I hosted, I don't believe in white privilege like critical race theorists frame it,

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I don't believe in the kind of systemic racism that they're talking about, that it's just this inertia from the past is still with us, and you can be racist without being racist, because you're benefiting from this system, and you have a responsibility to just get rid of these disparities, and you're somehow in sin, or it's related to the gospel, that was wrong, by the way,

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I just want to clear up, works and the gospel, they don't go together, there's ethics, there's discipleship, but look, let's not frame this in a way that this is somehow part of the message of the gospel,

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I just want to be clear on that, right? I don't believe that there's subjective truth,

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I believe in objective truth, and there's no barrier because of your social location and understanding that the message of the gospel and the message of scripture, like, if he would have gone out and started said these things, then, like,

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I was like, Oh, wow, okay, like, he's, he's done a 180, like, you know, he's apologized. I have no evidence of this.

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So hey, if it's out there, send it to me, I have no evidence of this. And I thought this was a great example of something

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I've seen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over, which is that organizations, people with platforms in evangelicalism who have pushed this narrative, when the narrative becomes unpopular, and they're called out for it, or even if they're not called out, but it's just becomes the narrative falls on hard times, critical race theory is falling on hard times, especially in evangelical circles, and more conservative circles, people are catching on, they change their tune.

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I've seen this. So it's just, it's so I got so many names are coming to my mind right now of people who do this.

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Grove City College, their administration, right is a good recent example. Some of the professors at Southern Seminary, that I mean, one of them like totally ripping

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Russell Fuller a new one, and then going and preaching a sermon against critical race theory, like, and I've warned about this.

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I'm like, look, you can preach against stuff in the abstract, you can say everyone's gonna say they're against critical race theory, it does no good if you're on a pastoral search committee to ask the question, hey, do you believe in critical race theory?

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Everyone will say they don't believe in critical race theory. What you have to find out is like, okay, do you think you have to ask quite good questions?

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Like, do we get a better interpretation of the scripture, the more social locations or the more races, ethnicities represented?

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What will that help us? You know, those are the kind of questions you have to ask. And I made a video where I talked about the 10 questions

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I would ask to really nail down what someone believes on this stuff, because you can't ask that question. You can't ask like, hey, are you like social justice?

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They'll say no, they know. They know the lingo, they know what's popular and what's not and how people are catching on.

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So so anyway, it's so easy to say I'm against critical race theory, and then like, kind of wink and nod at it, implement it, you know, without going without going by the name critical race theory, and well, they don't like white privilege anymore.

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And so I won't say that, but like, has anything actually fundamentally changed? My belief is, things, things change.

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Sometimes there's over the course of years, we develop and we become we actually sometimes convictions can actually change.

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And I get that. I understand that. And if someone ever calls you out, then you're like, yeah, you know what I said, like 1020 years ago?

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Yeah, you know what, I don't know if I agree with that now, like, I have changed. That's a little different, though, than like, in the course of a year or two, or three, and you're like, you're doing a 180, like your rhetoric is completely flipped.

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And one minute, like he'll write Robin D 'Angelo's book is helpful. And like, I want all these woke brothers to share about their experiences.

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We can't question because, you know, we're white, they're black, like, that's one thing to do that. And then within within the space of about 12 or 13 months, immediately, critical race theory is wrong.

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Like, I don't agree with that, that, you know, we ought to be against that as Bible believing Christians, like that, that's, you'd think that the same audience, which is, you're giving it to the same audience, they would they would sort of spot something there to be like, wait a minute, hold on.

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So you'd think that would accompany there would be some kind of repentance or like some kind of an explanation that like,

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I've changed my position on this, by the way, I'm sorry, something. So we're not seeing a lot of that.

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But we are seeing a lot of pastors who, for various reasons, possibly related sometimes to people leaving their church, which is

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Willie Rice talks about that in this video before I play the clip I'm going to play, leaving their church over this stuff.

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You know, they they start to realize like, okay, this is we're losing members, you know, which which means we're losing other stuff as well, possibly.

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And, and there's a something happens in that something happens sometimes.

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And there's the attempt has been I pointed this out many times the attempt has been unity, unity, unity, peace, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

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Keep the church together, keep the church that's becomes the sole goal is just keep the church together. And they see it as like a political thing.

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And when they don't, when actually, this is a new religion, if you understand that this is a new religion, or not even a new one, but it is a religion, it's just a new packaging for an old religion.

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It's, it makes everything much different. Right? I mean, if you look at think about this way, if you had like half your church that's either attracted to or implementing certain aspects of Mormonism, they're like, you know what, the

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Book of Mormon's got some good insights. And we're getting together we're doing, we're studying our Bible, but we're also having like a special night, we're gonna talk about the

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Book of Mormon, you'd be like, wait, hold on, hold on. Right? You wouldn't be like, well, unity, hey, the pro

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Mormon anti war Mormons, like, let's keep them in the same building. Let's get like, that would be ridiculous. No, like when when you have issues of false teaching, you don't call for unity with false teachers or false teaching.

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You identify it. And as a good shepherd, you shoot the wolves, and you protect the sheep.

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And that's unfortunately, what's not going on in as far as I can tell, most churches that have any kind of influence, it is a an attempt to help the organization survive, navigate rough waters, and sidestep political differences in so in so much as one can.

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That's kind of what's going on. And so this is just in my mind, this is video is a great example of a pastor who really did buy into the

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BLM narrative on a certain level, like a honestly, a deep level, just just from that one panel, you can tell that, you know,

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I encourage you go look at the video. Don't comment on this video until you go watch at least this the clip the the 11 minute or six 16 minute series of clips that I put together, preferably go watch the hour and 2122 minute video.

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And I'll put links in the info section. I would encourage you go check that out and then compare it to what you're seeing here.

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And also read the article that Pastor Rice wrote on January of 2021.

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And just and then compare it to this. It's incredible to me. So let me just give you some some background here.

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Pastor Rice is talking about First Corinthians, chapter three, I'm Paul, I'm of Apollos.

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And really, the only thing he uses from that is, there's divisions, and we shouldn't have division, right? And, okay, that's kind of a surface level division in a way.

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It's, I'm not saying it doesn't affect things, it certainly does. But it's not over like fundamental core teachings of Christianity or things that affect those, it's, it's a personality driven thing more, it's, and that kind of factionalism is wrong.

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But to compare that to what's going on now, is just, I don't know,

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I don't have the words, honestly. Irresponsible is what I want to say. Maybe ignorant, maybe lacking on,

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I don't know how to, I don't know what's going through people's heads, when they think that this is something that Christians can just transcend.

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This is not something Christians can just transcend and work together, you're gonna have to pick a side on some of these things, because they're, there are fundamental disagreements about Christian ethics,

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Christian, and in some places, Christian epistemology, Christian, Christian metaphysics, and the gospel.

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But at the very least, Christian ethics, you're gonna have to, you have to teach on that. You're talking about biblical truth here.

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It speaks to that. So this is the sermon, apparently, that shows that it's on July 4th, 2021, that Willie Rice is against critical race theory.

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I want you to hear this, and we'll, I'll stop it as we go. And we're not gonna play the whole sermon, I'm just gonna play a clip in the middle. I have listened to it, but I just want to play this, this clip in the middle, to see how he's, how he processed, and I don't know where he's at now, but how he, less than a year ago, processed this whole issue, and how he navigated the stormy waters.

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And, and, and by the way, I should say, he also talked about getting texts and stuff, of people disagreeing with him about the

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COVID stuff, and, and how there's all these divisive issues. And so he hinted at, you know, this is affecting their church.

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All right, so let's play the clip here. But I want to know, you say, well, my party's platform is,

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I don't care. What does Jesus think about it? That ought to be the overriding issue for every one of us.

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Remember, I already... All right, let's stop there real quick. What does Jesus think about systemic racism, going back to his panel from 2020?

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Did Jesus say evil came from within? Did Jesus say evil was external? Where did, where did Jesus locate the evil in man's heart?

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So you could be, I mean, there was, on that panel, you had people saying things like, well, you're not, you, you can not be a racist, but you still, implying there's some kind of a guilt you have, and a failure to stand against racism, because you benefit from it, and you're ignorant, and you're responsible to basically humble yourself, and just, you listen to these other experiences that you can't possibly know about, because you're white.

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I mean, that's against, I'm sorry, like, pick Jesus, and what he said about evil, and where it's located.

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It's in the heart of man. Or pick, no, there's like this external evil that you can somehow kind of be guilty for, even though you don't have hateful thoughts, racist thoughts.

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Like, and I could fan that out to a whole bunch of things that, pick Jesus, or pick critical race theory, right?

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So, so I like where he's heading, but where does, so let's compare what Jesus says to what critical race theories teaches, right?

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Like, isn't that where we're going? It's not. It's not. Number two, we need to remember our unity, the source of our unity.

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Our unity matters, and without gospel unity, our gospel witness is tarnished.

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This is not a unity at any cost. It's a unity that is grounded in eternal truth, and it must be contended for.

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It must be worked for. It must be preserved. We are part of a divided culture, and yet we are a united church.

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I want to... United in what? United in what? This is the big question. Is it united in the gospel?

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Is it united in biblical truth? Is it united?

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What, what is it by nature of being in Christ? What is the unity? Because this is what we hear so often.

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The gospel, the gospel, the gospel, nothing else matters. That's the unity. It's like, wait a minute. The Bible talks a lot about a lot of things, and I mean, think about it this way.

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Like, would any of these guys go back to like 1940, 1942

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Germany, and be like, well, look, this person really anti -semitic, totally on board with the

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Nazis, but has the gospel, so therefore unity with that. They would say no to that.

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They would say no, and in fact, Willie Rice has previously done, has basically said, we don't have unity with the

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January 6th folks. He wrote a whole blog on it. We don't have unity with these crazy Trump supporters that share conspiracy theories and stuff.

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He just totally reigns on that parade. I had a whole panel I showed you where we need special knowledge if we're white to understand this ethical issue.

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The Bible should help us navigate. We don't really have unity until we sit down, and we listen, and we shut up, and so here's the question is like, where does the unity come from then?

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And what you see throughout the New Testament is in Christ, in Christ, in Christ. The unity is by nature of being in Christ. What does it mean to be in Christ?

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Well, one of the things that is part and parcel to being in Christ is a new relationship with his commandments.

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If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Abiding in him. We have the same spirit.

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We have the same authority. There's so much more than just...the unity we should have is a unity that is connected to being part of the same family, the family of God, okay?

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But there's rules to the family. There's ways that distinguish the family from other families.

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There are...Christians ought to approach each other when there's sin and when there's false teaching in certain ways.

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We stand for the truth that God has given us. Without it, we don't have any unity. We wouldn't know about the glorious gospel or any of that if we didn't have the revelation of God.

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So things that undermine that are the challenge to the unity, right? So that's the real question in all of this is, where's the unity?

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If the unity is just, hey, sit down next to each other during service and don't fight with one another and don't complain about the people with the masks and the mask people don't complain about people without the masks and CRT people don't complain about...like

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if that's the unit, that's not a real unity. That's the shallowest thing ever. It's like, well, we can be part of the same stadium and sit next to each other and watch the ball game.

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We're both Yankees fans. That's pretty superficial, isn't it? But that's what church is becoming,

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I think, is very superficial, very shallow. So the unity has to drive down really deep into the core of who we are and a willingness to submit to Christ, even if it goes against our political preferences and to then shape, be willing to be shaped by him and transformed by him and take firm stands when there's something that challenges that or is opposed to it.

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We don't find that here, though. I want to do a little drawing that I saw a pastor do,

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Mark Vance, a friend of mine who's at Cornerstone Church in Iowa. I saw him do this in a message a couple months ago and I thought...somebody

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shared it with me and I thought, wow, that is so helpful to me. I'm going to share it with you. Now, if it bores you, just take a nap, okay?

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It's like, okay, he's going to draw on the board, take a nap, tell the guy next to you, wake me up when it gets good, okay?

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But here we go. I want to deal...I want to just show you kind of some divisions along probably the most controversial issue in our culture today, which is race.

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Let me just show you a little bit and let me tell you why I'm drawing this. So I've got like eight categories here and it's kind of a spectrum.

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But doesn't that strike anyone as a little weird? Take a nap. I guess it's kind of a joke, but it's going to get technical and boring, but I mean, if this is really the most divisive issue and he's about to, like, in the vein of let's be unified, preach biblical truth into this, you'd think like everyone listen up would be what you'd want to say.

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Like everyone, this is really important. We don't want our church to be divided. Listen to this. This is going to help you.

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I just, it's just odd to me. From left to right and over here on the far end,

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I'm going to draw two positions that I think, and the reason I'm coloring them in is because they are outside,

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I want you to hear me, these are outside the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. I don't believe you can understand and believe the

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Bible message if you hold these positions. If you hold these positions, you do not understand the message of the

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Bible. You might misuse it, but you don't understand it. So on one side over here, I'm going to just, let's just call this white supremacy or racism.

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There, I'll just RA the rest of it. Racism. This is a person who honestly believes that one race is superior to another.

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They honestly believe, I mean, this is like KKK stuff. This is a person who honestly believes that there are racial superiorities of one race to another.

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Some races are more prone to criminality or other things, and this is, so this is a racist position on this side.

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Can I just put some more meat on the bones, if I may? Let's be clear about this.

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If you in fact believe in some kind of a genetic determinism that says that certain races of people are superior in their worth because of the genetics they have, or they have, they're closer to being a man and then other races are closer to being an animal or something along those lines, and so you're denying the actual image of God and man, and so it really is more of an evolutionary way of looking at it, then yes, that falls right outside biblical orthodoxy.

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You can't hold to that and then hold to what the Bible teaches on the nature of man and mankind.

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So one of the things that probably, now this is maybe not the place to do it, but I would maybe parse out that, look, we do believe there are civilizations that have been more influenced by Christianity and have, they have certain advantages because of centuries of that or something like that, you know, but, and that gets, that just gets thrown into the white supremacy bucket.

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It all gets thrown in there. So there's a sloppiness to this, but if I could just kind of put some meat on those bones and let's just say that that's what really

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Rice, and I'm sure it's part of what Willie Rice is talking about there, then yes, we agree. Absolutely true, and I'm glad he said that, right?

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Let's keep going. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna use the letter CRT. Now that's a big cultural issue right now, and there's,

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I have, CRT is a theory called critical race theory.

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It comes from critical theory, which is an idea of, it's a, it's a way of looking at society and societal relationships.

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Critical race theory basically looks at all of society through the lens of race, and whereas in the past, justice was this transcendent idea.

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It like, and when you work in relationships, you were trying to work for justice. What is right?

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Martin Luther King's speech is an example of this. I dream of a day when people will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

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That is, there's a transcendent idea of justice, and everybody ought to be treated right, but critical race theory basically analyzes society on power structures.

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Somebody's in power, somebody has the power, some other group doesn't have the power, and critical theory analyzes society by who is having, who has the power, who doesn't have the power, and who's the oppressor, and who is the oppressed, and basically says what you've got to do is you got to flip that upside down.

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You've got to, you've got to turn that, so it's kind of like you got to take racism and then turn it over, but it's okay to be racist now the other way.

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So all white people are like this, or all black people are like this, or all races are like that. So critical race theory tries to thrust upon society this hard racial bifurcation, and, and that's about all

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I have time for there. I'm going to be honest with you, if this clip is discovered by certain people in the

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Southern Baptist Convention who are on the left, it could, I'm not saying it will, because maybe he's going to be the progressive alternative to whoever's running from CBN, but that could get him in trouble a little bit, because they would be quick to say that he's mischaracterizing

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CRT, that that's not what CRT is in fact trying to do. I do find it interesting though that this is the same guy who one year before literally hosted an entire panel that sought to basically do what he's describing in a way, like to guilt white people for their white privilege, that they can't know certain things because they don't have the experience, that there needs to be some kind of acknowledgement of this, and fight for this, and churches need to rearrange or change the way that they're doing their music or whatever else because of this, their worship service, different ways of looking at interpretations of scripture because of this.

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It's, we need to just kind of hang back if we're white and listen, and this is so important, and we need to attribute these police shootings that took place last year to, or two years ago now, to racism, that just has automatically assumed that that's what was causing it, and that there's an, we should be understanding of people who are really upset about that because they have a different experience than those of us who are white, and there's systemic racism that must be challenged, and we won't see it unless we put on the right glasses, and we're somehow beneficiaries if we're white.

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I mean, this was all packed in. This was all packed in to what he said last year, and hosted last year, and didn't correct last year, and now he's saying this.

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I just find it fascinating to me. It's like, what happened? Is this a change? Is this a rejection of what he previously believed?

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Is this, like, what is this? Or is this just, like, a political, now we're going to navigate this challenge because, well, people didn't like that, and now, you know,

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I'm more of a moderating position. Like, I don't know, but it's kind of weird.

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I'll be honest with you, and so my hope is that someone like Willie Rice can, this is my hope for anyone in this, like, look, just admit, hey,

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I was wrong about that. You know, I don't know everything. I got swept up in that. I was wrong. Here's specifically what

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I was wrong about, and I'm gonna correct it. I'm gonna preach against that now, and, you know, thank you for those who pointed that out.

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You know, that's the kind of thing I would really just hope for, and this is the kind of thing for myself. I've had to do it on this podcast before.

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Like, hey, I was wrong about that. It shouldn't be beyond any of us to do that. Unfortunately, the example

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I've seen in the Southern Baptist Convention is that's an impossibility, so I hope that that takes place pretty soon, because if not, then it just, it's a bugle with a sound that is not clear, unfortunately, and who knows what you're voting for when you go to the convention, and Willie Rice is on the ballot there.

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Who is Willie Rice, right? So what's important, though,

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I think is what's coming next. ...to deal with that another time. I'm just gonna say there's a view over here that these views are outside the box.

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How can you believe that all men are created in the image of God? That God wants all people to come to Him?

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That we are commanded to make disciples of every ethnicity? That we are to treat all people the way

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God wants to treat them, and love them the way we want to be loved, and believe either of those positions? So this is really good.

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I just commend him for this. This is good. He's right. This is really good. Now, this is like where I think, this is where the good part of this kind of ends in my mind.

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This is like, here's the errors. We draw the line. Biblical truth stands, and we reject these things.

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Not just, we have to realize, though, there's false teachers that bring in this kind of stuff, and let's be honest, it's not white supremacy, the way

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I've described it before, that's really taking the church by storm one bit. It's CRT, and it's everywhere, and Willie Rice has contributed to this.

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So that's what wouldn't, there would need to, if you're going to focus on something, that would be the thing to focus on, to target, to identify those false teachers, just like people do with prosperity preachers.

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Point them out. Here's where it gets interesting. So they're outside.

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Now, the next group is like, they're not outside Christian orthodoxy.

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Like, this is like the weird uncle at the family reunion, okay?

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You got him, right? You know who it is? If you don't know who it is, that's a problem, because it could be you.

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I just, this is a serious thing. Like, there are things, there are times to joke.

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This is, if this is really like, you're in danger of, you know, you're out, you're in orthodoxy, but you could be outside.

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Like, this is kind of, this is important, right? I think, though, notice the way that categories are being set up.

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There's these extremes, right? Remember the Hegelian dialectic, for anyone listening to me for any length of time, you know what

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I'm talking about here. You have thesis and you have antithesis and you have synthesis.

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Like, you have a board right here that, hey, one extreme CRT, one extreme white supremacy. Like, where do you want to fall in this?

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Well, you can't be on the extremes. That's wrong. So it's going to be somewhere in the middle. And so what

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I've heard from the way that I've seen pastors, people with platforms in evangelical elite circles try to portray themselves is that they aren't, they never were with CRT.

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Oh no, I never bought into that. Never, ever. No, I was always like, you know, the biblical truth was always there.

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You know, Matt Hall come to mind as someone like that. You know, he does a whole interview like, oh no, no, no, we reject

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CRT completely. We can't. I mean, it's going to atheistic foundation. We got to, what the

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Bible says is what we need to go to after blatantly preaching what CRT says, blatantly.

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And that's the thing that there's this categorical shift of like, so what even is

30:06

CRT then? How do you know if someone's in that category? If they're talking about systemic racism or talking about white privilege, if they're, if they believe in standpoint theory, you know, if they think that there needs to be some kind of revisionist history or memory studies is the term used now.

30:29

If you're seeing all these elements, then like, if it looks like a duck walks like a duck, what do you, what is it?

30:36

Right? So this is where I think the battle is, is like, oh no, that's a good brother.

30:43

He doesn't believe that. And you pull out all the quotes. It's like, well, you're just aligning a good brother. He's, he didn't believe that.

30:49

He didn't. So you have, we have to figure out like, what is CRT then? What, what is it? If it's, if it's really that dangerous, it's outside of orthodoxy, we need to really know what this is.

30:59

And, but if you put a full definition on it and you're going to be in trouble.

31:05

So you see what he did was he gave it kind of a, it was, it was a very simple and almost cartoonized kind of see, you know, you believe in racism, the opposite direction.

31:12

Well, yeah, not really. That's a simplistic way of trying to understand it. But it's, it's really more of a, a different metaphysic, different epistemology, different ethical system.

31:25

It's about equity. The God of equality drives it to get rid of these disparities. It's subjectivity when it comes to truth that certain social locations have more access to it than others.

31:37

And it's an ideological metaphysic that flattens things. He kind of hinted at that, that, that it flattens reality into power relationships and reduces people down.

31:48

So he did, he did hint at that, but if so, so to get the full, the full definition, the full understanding of what

31:55

CRT actually is and how it's, it's kind of like the, in some ways, like the five points of Calvinism or, you know, the solos or, or any other system of thought you can think of that kind of goes together,

32:08

CRT is like that too. Like you have principles that like they, they, they walk together in some kind of a consistent pattern.

32:15

So some kind of a holistic pattern. So that, that, that then is kind of like a, a net overall of society.

32:26

It defines everything in existence. So, so you have cartoon,

32:33

I'm just going to call it kind of cartoonized CRT over here, but at the very least you have, you have a cartoonized white supremacy, cartoonized or simplistic, you know,

32:41

CRT. So what's in the middle? What's this acceptable middle? You have danger zones here, but then there's the, this is all within orthodoxy in the middle here.

32:49

So, okay. This, this person over here is the person who says racism is everywhere.

32:57

By the way, that's a tenant of CRT, that racism is normative. It's not a question of where or if it's a question of where.

33:07

That's a, that's a tenant of CRT. That's what they believe in. That's like, so how do you distinguish

33:13

CRT from the idea that racism is everywhere? That's, that's, you're literally taking a tenant of CRT and then moving it and saying, well, that's not

33:21

CRT. That's, that's close to it, but it's not it. This, this, this is a way of, of possibly, because it does this, of some of the

33:30

Southern Baptist folks, some of the, the evangelical elites who have really bought into CRT or did for a time, it's kind of a way of rescuing them of like, well, they weren't quite

33:39

CRT, you know, when they just talked about systemic racism and racism is normative and white privilege and, you know, that wasn't

33:46

CRT. It was just, they were in this category, right? Like when you walk into a room, you don't ask, is it possible that somebody is racist?

33:56

You walk into a room and you look at race. There's racism everywhere.

34:03

You think it's everywhere. You're, you're just trying to find out where it is. And there are lots of people that teach it.

34:08

It's, it permeates our culture and you just have to assume it's there. It's CRT. That's what it is.

34:15

It's CRT. It's not, don't just, it's not like different than CRT. Like, oh, it's one step to the right of CRT.

34:20

That is CRT. You're describing it. The people over here are people that say racism is nowhere.

34:27

Like that was in the past. Nobody suffers now. Nobody discriminates against anybody now.

34:33

So it's nowhere. So these, these people, by the way, do you know anyone?

34:39

I'm just thinking of your personal life. Have you ever met one person? I haven't. Maybe there they exist, but I've never met one person who said, yeah, there's no such thing as racism or it's nowhere.

34:47

It doesn't exist anywhere. Maybe in the distant past, but nowhere, not one person. Come on. Like I, now maybe that's a position that's hypothetically on the board, but I'm just in reality, like, what's the real threat here right now in our moment, what's really threatening

35:01

Christianity. I'm just, I'm just wondering. Could be like followers of Christ, but they're like right on the edge.

35:08

And, and again, it's the kind of person because it's like, you try to change the subject.

35:17

All right. Now within this group, there are four categories.

35:23

I want to give you more. By the way, I just, with this racism is everywhere thing. I mean, this is, you know, it's basically what he, this is the, that was the woke panel that he hosted last year,

35:33

Willie Rice, that it's, it's everywhere. We need these special glasses to, for white to understand that it's pervasive.

35:41

It's all over the place. It's at least it's common. It's just, it's in front of us and we can't see it because we're white. I mean, he's, this is very close to a position that he advocated a year before.

36:00

Okay. So here's, here's, I want to just point this out for you. He just mentions Dottie Lewis came up with this category for four categories in the middle that are acceptable in orthodoxy.

36:10

And he says, Dottie Lewis is great African -American pastor. Dottie Lewis is a false teacher. Okay. Let me hear it.

36:16

Let me just say it loud and clear. Dottie Lewis is a false teacher. Dottie Lewis, go look up Dottie Lewis, the great requirement.

36:23

You can probably see what preacher clip says a clip of it. Dottie Lewis and his brother, is it show

36:30

Baraka, if I'm not mistaken, they're, they're both like heavy on total in my mind from everything

36:40

I've seen from Dottie Lewis, totally on that CRT side of things and social justice, social gospel, false gospel.

36:48

The fact that Willie Rice thinks Dottie Lewis is this great African -American brother. We got to use his, his four categories here, apparently that are orthodox in the middle that he came up with.

36:58

And he's that, that shows you where Willie Rice is at. I mean, Dottie Lewis is, is on that, is on the left end of this spectrum, whatever spectrum he's trying to figure out here.

37:10

It's not a very exact spectrum, but that's Dottie Lewis. And so this is the thing

37:16

I've, I've suspected and I've been concerned about is when CRT becomes unpopular, which it has.

37:24

And I said this, I'll just back up. I said this, I want to say like two years ago, maybe even longer. We, there was a whole discussion

37:31

I was having with some guys who were higher up conservative. They like, you know, maybe we could take back the

37:37

SBC. What could we do? And one of the things, and I brought this up and I was like, look, and Russell Fuller, by the way, completely is like, this is what he thinks.

37:46

If you, if you switch, like you're right, if it becomes popular to be conservative, if that's how you get the power, if that's, if that's where the winds are shifting to, these guys are just going to moderate.

37:57

And that's the problem of, let's say a Southeastern. You have all these guys in the administration, in the, in the, the teachers, their professors among the faculty who are pushing the leftist agenda.

38:09

Right. And then it becomes like, it's not in favor to push that anymore. It goes underground is what happens with a lot of, a lot of these guys.

38:16

And they keep their jobs. They stay at the institution because it's the institution. It's that, that they have an allegiance to, and that supports their, their family and their retirement and all of that platform.

38:27

They have their identities caught up in it often. So like, they're not going to risk being at odds with the institution.

38:34

So if you put a conservative president in place, you know, it's overnight, you're going to see a, that rhetoric is going to go underground.

38:42

It's already starting in some places, but it's going to change. It's going to. So, so do you actually accomplish anything?

38:48

Cause then they'll all come up again when you have a progressive president. Right. So, so how do you, how do you locate the people who actually believe this?

38:58

There's, this is the thing with Marxists. Marxists have been like this for centuries. They're subversive.

39:04

They're subversive. That's how do you think they got into education and entertainment and all the rest? They're subversive.

39:11

And once they get in control, they lock the gate behind them, but not until they're totally in control. So this is the, the thing

39:18

I'm concerned about is this, like, Hey, we're against CRT in the abstract, but like Dottie Lewis, he's great.

39:23

He's great brother over there. Like Dottie Lewis, right? The guy who thinks like fighting anti -racism is part of the gospel, part of the great requirement of the

39:33

God, like what? But Pastor Rice thinks Dottie Lewis is a great African -American preachers in his words.

39:40

So it, it, I don't think this solves anything, right? This, this, this he's telling you to,

39:46

I think here, like, what would he be like if he were to be the president of the Southern Baptist convention? Let's say he really is against CRT now.

39:53

And you know, but what are his, what's his discernment like? In our churches that are operating, these people believe the

40:05

Bible is true. They believe Jesus is the only way to God. They have repented of their sins. They've trusted in Christ.

40:10

They believe all that. They're brothers and sisters. Yeah. And you could have said that about the

40:16

Galatians, right? That they, the false teachers, the Judaizers, they believe in all of that. Plus they added something, right?

40:22

That's the issue. And if you're just as I see this so often, it's like, well, they're confessional. They signed the

40:28

Baptist faith and message. They, oh, big deal. Big whoop. Postmodernists can do that very easily.

40:33

But even if they believe all this stuff, what are they adding to it? That's the issue. You, we have to, we have to do what

40:38

Paul did and exercise a little bit of discernment on this stuff and point it out where, where they're, they're actually contradicting what they say they believe.

40:47

He says the first group, he says the first group, we'll just call this group as the fairness category.

40:54

These are people who think, look, what we need to do is just treat everybody fair. Just treat everybody the way you would want to be treated and everything would be fine.

41:05

That's what Jesus wants us to do. And there's a lot of truth in that. That's exactly what Jesus wants to do. The second category, he said, he calls them the hospitality group.

41:15

They go, look, now it's, it's fairness is good, but we need to go a step further. This group would say, look, there are some people when they come into our churches, they have to come further culturally than other people.

41:30

Like I'm a white Southerner. So when I step into a Southern Baptist church, I, it's very comfortable for me.

41:37

Like the music's comfortable. I kind of know the routine. It's, it's very comfortable. But if you come from a different culture, it might, it might not be as comfortable at times.

41:47

It's like, you might say, Hey, everybody likes me there. Everybody loves, they're all very, very nice people, but it still feels a little weird.

41:55

Like my music would be a little different or I would do this a little different. I would dress a little different, whatever.

42:01

And, and hospitality just says, look, if we're going to be a gospel presence in our community, we have to, we have to take the extra step for people who have come extra far culturally to show them hospitality, that we are one body in Christ.

42:17

It just says, we got to go next step. Here's a group and he calls this group, the multicultural. These are people who say, you know, we need to do a little bit more than that.

42:26

These are, these are the folks among us who are saying we need to work harder at being more multicultural.

42:33

We need ethnic diversity on our staff. We need ethnic diversity on the state. We need to, we need to make sure everybody feels completely welcome in our church, which means we've got to do some extra things.

42:44

We've got to lean into this idea of cultural diversity. And then the last group, he says, are, he calls them the justice group.

42:51

These are people who are just highly motivated by the issues of justice. They don't think it's the only gospel issue, but that ain't, it's a big gospel issue.

43:01

And they are wired to contend for and speak for and fight for justice issues.

43:08

Can I just ask everyone, we just listened to these four categories. Is there, is there major differences between, like what, what's the significant thing they have in common and the differences between them?

43:23

These are all, these could all be personality types almost. Like, so on one end we have heresy, on the other end we have heresy apparently.

43:32

And then we have in the middle, like Myers -Briggs, like personality types, or just tendencies people might have.

43:43

It, it's, it's a weird mix of, it's just, it's a, it's a bad table.

43:49

It's a, it's a bad way of trying to figure this out. This isn't really a political spectrum. This is like a political spectrum sort of mixed with personality types.

44:00

I don't know how to make sense of this. I don't know that this was so well thought through, but what does it do?

44:06

How does, how does telling people that in the middle, this orthodox positions between CRT and white supremacy, are these, you know, hospitality and, you know, fighting justice.

44:17

And I mean, we should have hospitality. We should fight for true justice. Like this, this, this doesn't really get us anywhere. Like, oh, if you really like justice, you're more on that CRT end.

44:25

Well, you could, like why white, white supremacists thought that they were in favor of justice.

44:31

So, I mean, this is, is not helpful at all, but what does this allow

44:36

Willie Rice to do? That's the question I want you to think of in your mind. Why, what this sort of convoluted, messy chart, what is it, what does it allow someone like him to do?

44:46

You could talk about all four of that, because these are all good categories. And probably you go, yeah, that one's more me or the other.

44:53

And I even think one person can bop around categories, you know, like depending on the situation or depending on what you're going to, you could, you might find yourself here or here or here.

45:05

And here's what I also think. I think most people in here can get along fine. I think most people in these categories recognize we need each other.

45:13

We're not all alike. Some of us feel more strongly about some things than others and we can listen to one another.

45:18

And, and, and there's a real gospel witness in all four of those categories. There's truth, all four of them.

45:26

But here's the problem I'm seeing. It's if the folks over here, you know what they love to do?

45:32

They love to fire missiles at the folks over there. So they liked it.

45:38

They liked to go, they liked it. And I'm going to give sound effects because I've always wanted to do that on 4th of July. You know, they want, it's a pretty good, like, and you want to, they're shooting, they're shooting missiles.

45:50

All right. Let me, fast forward this. Cause I have to wrap the video up. I'm just going to skip ahead a little bit.

45:56

So he, if you can see on the board here, you know, both sides, the white supremacy sides, apparently the white supremacy side is shooting and memeing.

46:04

And he talks about memes and they're putting bumper stickers on their car against the

46:09

CRT side and the CRT side is shooting at the white supremacy side. And in the middle are all these great Christians who have these different personality types and tendencies, and I guess spiritual giftings perhaps.

46:20

And they're being caught up in it. They're, they're tending to side with one political side or the other, but that's not where they belong.

46:26

They truly belong in the middle. And apparently Dottie Lewis is even in the middle here somewhere. So that's, that's how he rectifies this whole thing.

46:34

He calls for unity. You can go watch the sermon if you want. I'm going to put the link in the, I have to end this now, but I'm going to put the link in the info section.

46:44

Here's, here's just what I want to say about this. So the, the effect of this is those who are in his church, in the

46:56

Southern Baptist churches, in the evangelical churches, who are not, who are engaged in this battle somehow, are actually, in reality, brothers and sisters in Christ who aren't involved in false teaching, but they're being swindled into it.

47:16

It's actually kind of takes the responsibility away from them. It's like, it's no, there's people to the left who are, you know, if you're, if you veer left, if you're,

47:25

I guess, in favor of justice, according to the chart, you are going to be kind of taken in by those guys.

47:30

And you're going to feel attacked. It's because you feel attacked that you're kind of becoming adjacent to this political side.

47:37

And it's the guys who feel attacked by CRT, who are kind of becoming adjacent to the, apparently the white supremacy side.

47:44

And, and they're just, and they're more hospitable. Apparently white supremacists are more hospitable. I don't know. I don't know.

47:50

This chart makes no sense. So, but, but it does have a rhetorical effectiveness because it does take away the responsibility.

47:58

And it, it, it, it takes away the possibility that you can be in the church as a

48:04

Christian, even if you're Dottie Lewis and you're part of one of these false teaching sides. Okay. So this, the lack of unity is more of an illusion.

48:13

It's more of people playing us. It's, you know, we, we actually are unified in this church, but those

48:19

CRT people are playing us. Those white supremacists are playing us and they're getting us to be at each other's throats.

48:25

When in reality, I mean, we're just, some of us like justice, some of us like hospitality, some of us like fairness.

48:30

It's just, you know, we're, we're, we're really not that far apart. And so it takes away the responsibility or it reduces it.

48:37

I should say it reduces the responsibility. It's, it allows you to kind of sidestep the issue because it was not really an issue here.

48:45

Those are forces outside the church. And it's, it also provides cover for people.

48:52

Now, the ironic thing is you could turn this around. You could actually provide cover for white supremacy if you wanted, but that's, that's not the issue that's going on right now.

48:59

So it's not going to work that way. And Willie Rice has made it so clear. He's against that in that panel from, from two years ago. So but, but it provides cover for the people pushing the critical race theory stuff like Dottie Lewis and and, and campaign guys.

49:15

It gives them cover because, you know, now they can say, well, like, I believe in all the things I believe in these orthodox things.

49:21

You know, I'm not, I'm not on the CRT side. So I'm just, I, I'm here in the middle somewhere and I just care about justice or something.

49:29

So that's what it does. So watch out for this. This is, it's actually kind of a, it's smart in a way.

49:36

It's smart because then someone who wants to create a problem over this, well, you're just launching missiles. You're just, right?

49:43

You're, you're part of one of these sides. You're causing disunity in the church. You could easily lend itself to that. And how many of you have been accused of these things?

49:49

So the reality is like there's truth and then there's error. And that's what you see throughout scripture.

49:56

Truth, error, truth, error. It doesn't really get into personality types of that person's more, more, more personality driven to be in favor of justice.

50:05

And that person's more personality driven to be in favor of hospitality. It doesn't, you don't see that really in, in, in scripture.

50:11

What you see is there's threats that come in from the outside, but they can come in from the inside when a false teacher gets ingrained and has power and you preach against it.

50:22

So what's the threat right now? Is it white supremacy? No, I think it's critical race theory. That's the big threat. If your church does have a problem with, you know, legitimate, you know, genetic determinism, then take care of it.

50:34

But I'm sure it's probably nine, 9 .999 % of the churches are having bigger problems with critical race theory.

50:42

So preach on it. Talk about how it contradicts biblical truth and how the assumptions behind it are assumptions not compatible with the

50:49

Bible. Talk about that stuff. And, uh, and then educate your people about it. That that's, and identify the false teachers who are trying to push it.

50:56

That, that would be a helpful thing, I think, to do. And that would cause true unity because people would be, uh, uniting around biblical truth against the error rather than this murky muddy, like what in the world did we just watch?

51:08

But everyone feels good because they're kind of off the hook and we can have kind of a fake unity here.

51:16

And it's, it's, it's the fault of the CRT and white supremacy people. And, uh, and we can include the pro

51:24

CRT people that are in our church as part of the church because they're also somehow believing in biblical orthodoxy.

51:30

That doesn't cut it. That's not, that's not Christian. And you're not going to get that, uh, from scripture either.

51:36

You know, you're not going to first Corinthians chapter three and finding this kind of stuff. So I hope that was helpful for some of you.

51:42

Uh, I just, I saw it and I thought, you know, I'm gonna do a podcast on this and hopefully it'll be helpful. So like I said, hope it was still traveling this week, by the way.