Panel Discussion with Three Different SBC Whistleblowers

Conversations That Matter

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Our laymen need to go to their pastors. They need to find out what their pastors believe about these current cultural trends.

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And they need to get themselves in a strong Bible -believing Southern Baptist church. And they need to get themselves elected as a messenger to the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And they need to come in mass to Nashville. And we need to vote these folks out of office.

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All right, welcome to a special edition of the Conversations That Matter program. We have today a few guests that are all, the thing that they have in common is they are all

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Southern Baptists. And they all have expressed some concerns about the

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Southern Baptist Convention from different areas. And we're gonna get into that in a minute, kind of the vantage points that everyone here is coming from, but they expressed concerns.

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And some people call that whistleblowing. The thing we wanna do, and I just want to set the tone here, is we wanna inspire laymen, not just them though, pastors as well, trustees, professors, church planners, people who have seen things happen in this convention.

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And maybe even other conventions like the PCA who are afraid of speaking out. I wanna give you an example of some guys who had backbone, who did speak out, and the

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Lord has provided for them. They're okay, they're all still in one piece. And we need more people to come out and verify some of these things that are happening.

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Because what we've seen in the SBC and some other denominations are there are elites and people in high positions saying social justice movement isn't happening, people are lying about this.

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Well, it's not a lie, it is happening. And if we don't do something about it and steward our denominations and our churches well, then we can fall prey to some very bad theology.

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And so I am just so thankful to have with me today, we have Dr. Tom Rush, we have

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Dr. Russell Fuller, and we have Forrest Davis. And all of them have made some videos and those are linked in the info section of this video if you want more information about their story.

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We also had, I should mention, Jacob Johnson was supposed to join us. He made a video which will also be linked in that info section.

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He had a stomach bug though and wasn't able to come on our chat tonight. But we'll start out though with Dr.

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Tom Rush who made the most recent video about Southern Seminary. Dr. Rush, thank you so much for being here.

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Why don't you tell everyone a little bit about yourself? Well, John, I'm delighted to be with you and thank you for the opportunity.

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I've been a Southern Baptist all my life. I was saved as a child through the witness of my parents.

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And later on in life, God called me to preach. I pastored for 34 years, been in ministry for 38 years.

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I'm doing primarily evangelism now. I'm also serving as an interim pastor. And I've had the privilege over the years of my ministry, the

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Southern Baptist, to serve in a number of positions within state conventions, the

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New Mexico Baptist Convention, Georgia Baptist Convention. And I've had several opportunities to serve

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Southern Baptist as a teller on the resolutions committee and as a trustee at the

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Southeastern for a brief time. And now serving since 2014 as a trustee at the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. And it's been my honor and privilege to serve Southern Baptist in those positions, but you're exactly right.

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We do have some problems and we need our pastors and people in our churches, first of all, to get informed, and then they need to get involved.

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And we can talk about how they might do both of those things certainly to pay attention to the links that you are providing for them.

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It'd be very helpful to them to get the information and to know what's happening. Yeah, well, thank you,

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Dr. Rush. We can talk about that at the end of the video too, how to get involved. There's a network now called the Conservative Baptist Network.

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There's all kinds of things starting to form. Dr. Russell Fuller, you are a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is a flagship seminary for the denomination.

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Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yes, my name is Russell Fuller and I taught at Southern Seminary for 22 years.

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Before that, I taught for two years at Mid -Continent College over near Mayfield, Kentucky. I've been a

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Southern Baptist for over 40 years. And when

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I came in, it was moving toward the conservative resurgence. And unfortunately today,

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I think it's moving in a very different direction. And in academia, in many of these seminaries today, you'll have everything from, you know, postmodernism to woke theology to even, let's say, old fashioned liberalism, like the belief that the

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Old Testament teaches mythology, things of this nature. So there's many problems now in our seminaries.

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And so, yeah, I came and spoke out about it. And again,

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I taught for 22 years. I'm not there anymore, but I was able to teach for 22 years.

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And again, I was very appreciative of that opportunity. But now I'm teaching online theology classroom, is what

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I called it. And I got that from a very dear friend who gave me that idea.

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I won't tell you who right now, but anyway, I'm teaching theology. It was Russell Moore, right?

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Russell Moore told you to do it? No. That's right. I think it was a guy named John Harris, but the one who gave me the idea about the title theology classroom.

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And I appreciate it, John, very much. All right, thank you, Dr. Fuller. And we also have Forrest Davis. Now, Forrest, I know you're not quite as seasoned as you were a student at Southwestern.

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Why don't you just briefly tell us kind of what prompted you to go to seminary and then just a little bit of what you saw there.

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All right. Well, thank you for having me, John. My name is Forrest Davis. I have always been around the

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Dallas area. I grew up in an unbelieving household. For 22 years of my life, I did not attend church.

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And after I finished undergrad, I was looking for something.

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There was many sins in my life that were just very apparent. And through the

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Lord's gracious gifting, he called me to salvation when

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I was 22. And I started attending a mega church in the Dallas -Fort Worth area, First Baptist Dallas, that has many ties to Southwestern.

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And for the first two years or so I was there, in my early to mid -20s,

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I started growing, growing, growing in the faith, going to many Bible studies, having more hunger, deep hunger for the word, while I was also employed as an accountant in my early adult life after undergrad.

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I felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit that I needed to step out, be equipped for the ministry.

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I felt called to the ministry. I started looking at seminaries in 2018. And through the two seminaries

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I was looking at, I disagreed very much with Dallas Theological Seminary. I felt

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Southwestern was the better fit in the Dallas -Fort Worth area. I started attending. And the first month of my classes was the month that Paige Patterson was ousted.

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So I came in at that really rough transition time. And I have documents from prior, before I was there through testimonies of witnesses or professors of what it was like during the

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Patterson administration. And then I saw the transition of the interim of Dr. Jeffrey Bingham as interim president.

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And then I obviously was there when Dr. Greenway took over in February of 2019 as the new president.

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And I saw an usher of wokeness, of standpoint epistemology of critical race theory that from time to time was there, at least beneath the scenes, but came very apparent during the

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Greenway administration to the fact that this January, after completing over half the

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MDiv, I could not justify spending tuition and keep working at that.

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So I felt I must leave Southwestern and I left the SBC as well. I currently go to church that's no longer affiliated with the

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SBC because I feel as if I could no longer submit myself to those heresies and false teachings, but I want to shine the light on the truth and to any seminary students or anybody involved in the seminary, anybody in the

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SBC to understand from a student perspective what I saw and what needs to be said. I appreciate it

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Forrest. I know that takes a lot of bravery being in those shoes myself a few years ago. I wanna sort of set the tone by starting off with you,

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Dr. Rush. A question that I think is probably going through a lot of people's minds as they hear what you're saying and maybe even if they watch the videos linked in the info section, you're the latest whistleblower for lack of a better term to come out publicly.

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And my question is what motivated you to shine a light on some of the corruption at Southern Seminary? John, that's a very important question.

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And it breaks my heart that a young man like Forrest has felt like he had to leave one of our seminaries, even leave our denomination.

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And his story is not alone. There's so many like that. And I went to Southern as a trustee, not with the idea that my job was to protect

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Southern, but that I was elected by the Southern Baptist Convention. And my job was to protect the

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Southern Baptist Convention's interest and literally ownership of Southern Seminary.

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And so I began to hear some rumblings of things being taught in the classroom.

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And I felt like as a trustee that I needed to become informed, that I needed to know whether these accusations, ideas were actually true or not.

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But the thing that really spurred me was when I attended the Southern Baptist Convention in Birmingham in 2019.

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And of course, that's where we passed a resolution nine, which certainly supports critical race theory and intersectionality.

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And I was standing at a microphone. I was going to attempt to try to table the motion.

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I've certainly felt like that the convention needed more time. I didn't feel like that the people in the building understood what

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CRT was. They didn't even, they couldn't define it. If you ask them to define it, I think the majority of them there would know, but they were following what they were directed to do by the leadership.

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And one of the things that concerned me is it appeared at least based on the individual who was chairman of the resolutions committee, that the resolution, it almost seemed like came right out of Southern Seminary.

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Well then, so I'm thinking, well, if the president of Southern Seminary is opposed to CRT, it would certainly be nice if he would say so.

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Well, he did. The problem was he did so the day after. On Thursday after the convention was over, he came out on his podcast, his briefing program, and stated that he was opposed to critical race theory, that he felt there were some problems with resolution nine, and that we were not going to teach

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CRT at Southern Seminary. Well, I wanted to find out if that was true or not.

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And so that was really the thing that motivated me to start looking into it. And so as I begin to go through that process,

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I've discovered some class notes from Dr. Jarvis Williams. And also noted that Curtis Woods, who was the chairman of the resolutions committee, had been at least,

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I think, an adjunct professor at Southern. And certainly it seemed from his leadership of the resolutions committee that he was at least friendly to CRT philosophy.

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And then on top of that, I got a call from a professor who heard that I might be looking into this, and he wanted to meet with me,

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John, privately, and off campus. And I thought that was a little odd, but I agreed to do so.

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And when I asked him why he wanted to meet that way, he said, well, I don't want to be seen talking to a trustee.

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I could get fired. Wow. I don't want to be a trustee at a seminary where professors are afraid to talk to me.

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I want to know what they think. And so, you know, he shared his concerns with me.

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And one of the suggestions that I had already made to Dr. Mohler was, you know, if we're not teaching

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CRT, it seems like it'd be a good idea if maybe the seminary embraced the

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Dallas statement, the statement on social justice. And he was a little defensive about that.

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He said that he felt like that the statement wasn't well vetted. And one of the things that this particular professor, who

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I will not call by name because I promised him his confidence, one of the things that he said to me is that it was his understanding and the way he interpreted what he had been told was, is that no professor at Southern would be allowed to sign the statement on social justice.

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Now, I asked Dr. Mohler about that directly. And he said, well, now we don't want our professor signing anything but our official documents, which would be the abstract and the

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Baptist faith and message. Well, that's wonderful, and I understand that to a degree. But if we're against CRT, and if we're not teaching

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CRT, with the unbelievably capable faculty that we have from top to bottom in terms of credentials and education, one would think that there would be some articles, perhaps even a book, something that would be written, maybe a podcast would be done that would expose the dangers of CRT and intersectionality and why we shouldn't be teaching it.

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Well, I come to find out that we did have one professor at Southern who did sign the statement on social justice and he's on this podcast with us.

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And I'm grateful for Dr. Fuller's courage to sign that document even though there was an indication that there could be repercussions and we all know there were repercussions.

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But in short, John, that's what motivated me to start looking into it. And when

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I did, I really didn't like the information I found and that's what ultimately led me to do the video.

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Now, I do want to say I did everything that I could within the trustee system process.

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I've spent hours on the phone with Dr. Moeller. We've texted, we've emailed.

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I have appealed to him as a brother in Christ. And we've had to come to agree to disagree.

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And I will say I have great love and respect for Dr. Moeller but we're on the opposite side of this

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CRT thing. And quite frankly, CRT is being taught at Southern and it really is shameful.

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Real quick, Dr. Rush, I know that one of the things that I've heard quite often is if there's public issues, sin, error, you gotta go to that person in private.

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I don't know where that comes from in scripture but it seems to be something in the Southern Baptist culture for some reason. And you have gone to Dr.

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Moeller, as you just stated. Has Dr. Moeller given you any feedback about the video you did last week which has now thousands of views?

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Has he said anything to you, if you can disclose? No, no, he hasn't said anything to me.

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John, recently when he was being interviewed by Baptist Press and asked questions about his desire to be president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention, one of the things that he said was is that we don't need to be kind of blasting at each other on social media.

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We just need to get in the room together. I've been in the room for six years and it hasn't done a whole lot of room.

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I've been in the room with him privately in the sense of one -on -one conversation when

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I've been at trustee meetings. And of course, since the pandemic, all of our meetings have had to be held in the same way that we're doing this podcast by Zoom.

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But he and I have had private conversations. We have FaceTimed, we have talked on the phone.

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And so I think there's a misconception about the application of church discipline to issues of public theology or public statements that have been made.

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I certainly think that within the context of the local church, when you have an issue with a brother, the first step in church discipline is to go to that brother.

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When someone has publicly spoken, whether it was on television or through published material or through their podcast,

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I think that what they have said is certainly should be open to scrutiny and question.

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Nonetheless, I did attempt to speak to Dr. Moeller privately and certainly brought these things to the attention of the board of trustees first before going public because I felt like that was the right thing to do.

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And we're glad that you did it. It certainly seems like this was almost like a last resort because you went to the president of the institution, you talked to at least one professor, probably more, it sounds like, and then you also talked to trustees and you couldn't even get a second on adopting the

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Dallas Statement or trying to get to the, well, they're not NDAs, those, I forget what they call those, separation -

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Separation and release agreement, right. Right, you couldn't get those ended. And so this is one of the things that I think has disturbed some

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Southern Baptists is why in the world is it so hard to get any movement, to even get a reaction?

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And I wanna ask you, Dr. Fuller, because you've also been in those rooms as well with Dr.

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Moeller and some of the trustees. I mean, was this your experience as well is that you tried to go through all the quote unquote proper channels and just kept meeting roadblocks?

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That's correct. We, I would usually speak out in what was called full professor's meetings.

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And that was the channel that I could officially speak out. And in those meetings, we would put up professors that I didn't think were qualified to really be on the campus, much less get a promotion, but full professor or something like this.

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And there was a professor in particular, Jonathan Pennington, a New Testament professor who's probably one of the best professors pushing postmodernism.

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And I spoke out against it and many others did. And as I said, in the videos, almost 50 % of the faculty voted against him.

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But in that meeting, there was some other side discussions that sort of went on, but it was all, it wasn't like we were having private discussions within that meeting, but other people were bringing up other issues that they were concerned about.

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And that was the first time I heard about Matt Hall and the teaching of critical race theory and these things.

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And it shocked me because I didn't know anything about it. And this was probably about four years ago.

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And so I went to Mark Coppinger, one of the professors, and he mentioned, you ought to see these videos.

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They're very radical. And he was saying this right in front of Dr. Moeller. And I could tell Dr. Moeller didn't like it.

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He didn't like it at all. And after the meeting, I went up to Coppinger, Dr. Coppinger and said, what are these videos?

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What are we talking about here? And he sent me the links to these videos. And one of them you can see today on YouTube.

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The other one was on Southern Seminary's website and has been purged. So you can't see that now.

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At least to my knowledge, it's not out there for public consumption, but it was there. And I was shocked.

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I was very shocked about this. And so at that meeting,

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I was quite troubled. So next year at the same meeting, again, some issues came up.

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And at the very end, again, some issues were brought up and I didn't say anything because it was right at the end of the meeting.

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And that bothered me and it bothered me greatly. And I was having trouble sleeping at night knowing

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I should have said something. Moeller goes, does anybody believe Pennington is outside the abstract? And I thought,

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I've said that to the Dean a hundred times. And the Provost, I said it to him many times that I thought

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Jonathan Pennington was outside the abstract, but it was at the very end of that meeting. And I know we had to go into another meeting and I didn't say anything.

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And that's what bothered me. And that led me to write a letter. And again, as it were,

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I went to the Dean and he says, do you have any concerns? And I said, yes, I do. I said, the postmodernism,

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I have a problem with that. And then I also have a problem with critical race theory, social justice is being taught.

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And I named names. I mentioned Jarvis Williams, I mentioned

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Matt Hall, and I mentioned Curtis Woods. And you should have seen the look of fear on the

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Dean's face when I said that. Because it was almost like he was, the look on his face was like,

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Fuller, you're really asking for it. You're touching the third rail when you get on this.

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I could tell by the look on his face. The look was utter terror that I brought that up.

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Because I mean, look, Matt Hall was, everybody knew he was the era, Moeller is really grooming him to be his era parent.

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That's what it looks like to us as faculty members. And here you are coming out against basically the number two man at Southern Seminary and others.

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And again, you're touching that third rail. And I said, well, what should

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I do? I said, I think I should write Moeller. And the Dean says, yeah, but just be careful how you say it. And I said, okay.

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So I wrote Moeller and he was absolutely furious. I was called into Randy Stinson's office.

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Randy told me Moeller was so upset. He took a picture of the letter you sent him.

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Then he called me up on Saturday night. And I think he pretty well let Randy have it for about a half hour or so.

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So Randy wasn't in a good mood when he saw me. And he and Herschel York, who was the Dean later, it wasn't the

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Dean that gave me the permission. And they were like, you went outside the channels, you didn't do it right, and blah, blah, blah.

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And of course, the prior Dean, Greg Wills, had certainly given me permission.

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And I told them that, but that didn't do any good. They had to come after me for some reason. And then for that, basically for the next two years,

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I lived under constant threat of being fired. I got official letter of reprimand.

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And again, constantly I was being threatened with being terminated. Was I afraid?

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You betcha I was afraid. And then later when I gave the speech against Matt Hall in front of, again, the full professors and Al Moeller, was

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I afraid? You betcha, I was definitely afraid. But I tell you what, I couldn't sleep at night.

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And I had to say something. I just couldn't, I couldn't stay quiet and feel like I'm being faithful to the

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Lord. I would honestly feel that I love my job, my position, you know, my reputation more than I love the

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Lord if I didn't speak up and say something. Those students, they're being corrupted.

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And I can't live with myself being quiet on something like this.

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And so I spoke up knowing what would happen. Let me tell you about my signing the abstract, I mean, the social justice statement, just very quickly.

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I wanted to assign it immediately. But again, I went to a friend who's another faculty member.

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And I said, hey, here's what I wanna do. And he said to me, don't do it yet. There's two or three other faculty members who would like to sign it as well.

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If we all sign it together, it would look better. I said, okay, and I kept waiting.

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And I'd go to this particular faculty member about every month and say, okay, are y 'all ready?

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I'm ready to sign this thing. And no, no, just hang on. There's still things going on.

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Well, finally, when Matt Hall was put up, I told this one gentleman, I said, listen, I've gotta do it now.

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If I sign after this meeting, they're all gonna say you did it just to get back at Moeller.

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And so I signed it right before I walked into the meeting to give that speech against Matt Hall.

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And matter of fact, midway through the speech, I stopped my speech, looked up, because I was scared to death.

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I looked up and I said, for this reason, I signed the statement of social justice for I came in here this morning.

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And I tell you, I'd get this from the administration from here on. Well, we didn't mind that you signed it, but we didn't like the way you signed it.

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We didn't like the way you did it. Well, they always say that. And again, as another faculty member said, they always get you on style points, you see?

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And that's exactly right. They always get you on style points. When that first came out, Al Moeller addressed that in a faculty meeting, and he was livid over that statement.

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And he went into a tirade against John MacArthur. He, again, made it be known, not directly, you can't sign it in just those words.

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But when you basically say, if you sign it, you're agreeing with all the racist stuff, and comments like that, you knew if you signed it, you were in trouble.

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But the main thing probably that got me fired was going against the woke theology, the direction it was going, and especially going against Matt Hall and Jonathan Pennington and the new hire that was bringing in things like, again, mythology in the

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Old Testament, all these things. And so when the coronavirus hit, it was the perfect crisis, and you don't wanna let those things go to waste, by the way.

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And so that's why I was fired. Well - John, let me say something about this from a trustee perspective, if I might.

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This is very troubling to me as a trustee, and it's why I think my fellow trustees should have a greater concern.

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What great courage that Dr. Fuller and Dr. Jim Orrick had in standing against the administration.

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They put their jobs on the line. For me as a trustee to come out and whistleblow,

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I'm not losing my job. I don't have a job on the line. They can't fire me as a trustee.

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I was elected by the Southern Baptist Convention. Only the Southern Baptist Convention can remove me as a trustee.

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So I have great respect for these men. But I'm really concerned that we see where the background was going with all of this.

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And then we come out in the spring when the pandemic hits, and use that as an excuse to fire people.

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And then we turn around and hire new people. And I documented all of this information.

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I sent about 15 or 20 pages of information to every trustee. I called the chairman of the board to tell him what my intentions were.

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And to ask him to assist me with that. And essentially to get his permission as the chairman.

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And I will say the chairman was very gracious about allowing me to present my motions to the board.

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And I also copied Dr. Moeller on this. None of this was a surprise. So when my video came out, if Dr.

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Moeller or anyone on the board was surprised, then they just weren't paying attention.

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And I was left with no other option. These men were treated disgracefully and shamefully.

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And quite frankly, the board of trustees at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary should be ashamed of themselves.

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On that note, which I appreciate you not holding back and just being honest.

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I think that's what the Pew sitters want right now. Because they don't know what's going on. We just want honesty. Forrest Davis, from a student perspective, we're hearing from a trustee who's also an evangelist and a pastor.

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We're hearing from a professor. I wanna hear from you as a student while we're talking about basically these channels, proper channels, if you wanna call it that.

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These unspoken rules. Did you feel, Forrest, like you were,

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I don't know, ostracized or alone? Or like you had to go through these channels that you weren't getting anywhere?

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What was your experience like when you started to see some of these teachings? Well, I never confronted people in private in all those matters like the ones before have documented.

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To me, I consider that phariseeism. There's nothing in scripture says, as we've documented, that public air has a private rebuke.

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It deserves a public rebuke. So I didn't necessarily go through those same channels.

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But I would talk to those, my pastor, the churches I was attending there. I was going to other students, sometimes faculty members, but not necessarily carrying it through this private or public conversation.

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But the ostracism mainly is nobody wants to admit what's going on, especially from a student perspective.

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And I say that because, I mean, there's a few students, one in this particular class, the

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Dr. Bingham, that was talking about that your whiteness or your maleness or your

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Americanness hinders your hermeneutic, hinders your Bible interpretation. So you have to bring others of different skin colors or ethnicities in to have a holistic

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Bible interpretation. That's what Bingham was saying, which is critical race theory, that's social justice, that's false, that is false theology, that is heresy.

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I had a fellow student of mine that was only thinking about baseball and girls. So good for him, that's some of the student perspective.

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They don't really care. Others notice what I was noticing, but dare not speak about it because they're in it for the long haul as an

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SBC lifer. They want the SBC church, mega church, they want to work their way up, they want to get certain statuses.

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And the way you do that is to play politics. That is what I was going to,

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I mentioned First Baptist Dallas. Another student in that same class, his name is

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Britt McFadden, and he's on the pastoral staff at First Baptist Dallas. And he completely denied that liberalism in class, and we had the same class.

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And he denied standpoint, Pismoly denied it was even happening, denied that Bingham was liberal.

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And he even said that Al Mohler's a standup guy, he's conservative, don't worry about him. And so what

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I'm saying is this guy, he's on pastoral staff, not a big staff member, but still on staff at a large mega church.

32:15

So he's making probably considerable money in ministry. So one thing I've noticed is from the student perspective, no one bucks the trend because it's not,

32:24

I wouldn't necessarily say it's fear necessarily, like a professor may be feared of getting fired.

32:30

It's more of wanting to go along to get along. I see a lot now while I was in corporate

32:36

America of you go along with whoever the boss is and to prosper.

32:45

So that's why I saw many students, they could care less whatever Paige Patterson said or what

32:50

Greenway said. They just want what will make them the most money. They're in ministry for the money. That's why I see a lot of fellow students.

32:57

Dr. Fuller, as a professor, does what you're hearing ring true? Are you concerned that there are some students, obviously not all of them, but there are some students or a significant portion that are going to bury their head and not challenge these ideas because they don't wanna rock the boat too much because they're looking to get position or something else?

33:18

Yes, absolutely. What Forrest just described is very true. I had some students that were attuned to what was going on at Southern Seminary.

33:26

And I said, how do you see the breakdown of the student body? And they said, it's probably like 25 % are truly, they believe in social justice, critical race theory, the whole works.

33:41

There's probably another 25 % over here who's against it and will stand against it. But then you have like the 50 % in the middle.

33:50

And they're like, some of those people do put their head in the sand. They don't wanna know. Others are just kind of, they're gonna just see which way the winds are blowing, but they're gonna be very careful what they're gonna do.

34:03

But at that 25, it's really pro -social justice and so forth. There's a group probably of about 10%.

34:09

They're highly ambitious people. They wanna move up at Southern Seminary. You'll see them on social media.

34:15

They're backing anything that the official line of Southern Seminary comes out.

34:21

You can see they're bucking for positions. They're bucking for advancement in the

34:26

Southern Baptist Convention. So what Forrest just said is dead on, absolute. And by the way, it's going on with the faculty as well.

34:35

There's some very ambitious faculty members who wanna move up, wanna be really close to Al Mohler.

34:41

If there happens to be another job cut, they don't wanna be part of that. So again, you'll see them on social media always, whatever

34:48

Mohler says is correct and so forth. So what you see on the student body, you see the same thing with the faculty.

34:56

If I could just say one quick thing, John, when I said there's a climate of fear at Southern Seminary, I've seen that even with the trustees.

35:04

The last time I was, when I was there in the fall before I got fired, I was sitting at a trustee banquet, talking to a trustee, and let me tell you, that trustee was afraid to speak up.

35:18

He knows the problems. He told me the problems. He said he was against critical race theory. He said he knows that Curtis Woods, who was one of our full faculty members at the time, not full professor, but he was a faculty member when he helped get

35:33

Resolution 9 through. I said, hey, you know, he's a professor here. Oh yeah, but he was scared.

35:40

I've only been a trustee for three years and I can't really speak up and say anything. The trustees are just as intimidated as the faculty, just as intimidated as the students.

35:52

The culture of fear is throughout, John. Well, I wanna ask, wow, I mean, that's concerning.

35:58

May I just add one more thing to mark what mine was too? Going to how my story progressed till I dropped out of Southwestern, this is not just one class.

36:08

And that's one thing I want to emphasize. It's not just one baguette, one bad egg.

36:15

And these other men on this call right now, we're all from different perspectives, different entities, so that's corroborating this, but there's many professors.

36:26

Dr. Malcolm Yarnell at Southwestern for many years has been very woke.

36:32

He's talked on and on about his white privilege. Last year was tweeting about, we need more ethnic minorities in SBC leadership.

36:42

And some people would say, well, why don't you start and get rid of your professorship? But I mean, there's many ones.

36:48

Katie McCoy is going with feminism, soft -peddling abortion, saying you need to not condemn abortion.

36:56

I've had that in one of my videos. You're kidding. Yeah, go on to the biblical ministry website.

37:03

And she has written an article saying, five things you need to tell a woman who's considering abortion.

37:10

And number five is repent. It's all soft -peddling sin and making, it's soft -peddling feminism is what that's doing.

37:19

She is one of the big faculty members in the women's ministry at Southwestern and was affirmed by Greenway when

37:28

Greenway took over. And actually she took over Dorothy Patterson's chair for women's ministries after Paige Patterson was ousted.

37:39

And actually to get another perspective on this, me and Dr. Lopez have talked about this in the interview we've had.

37:48

But so she has soft -peddled a lot of these feminist issues about believing all women when they're charging a rape accusation, things of that nature.

37:57

If you go read her articles. Madison Grace, a systematic theology professor has said that if you just take scripture as is, take it literally, you're nothing but a fundamentalist and you don't need to be a fundamentalist.

38:10

So it's pretty much disparaging those that want to believe scripture the way that it's written.

38:17

And Dr. Andrew Street, a New Testament professor was speaking, I took him for a

38:23

New Testament and he was saying that 1 Timothy 2, chapter two, verse 12, where Paul is saying that he does not permit a woman to teach, but she must be silent in all submission.

38:37

And it goes forward from there to the rest of the paragraph. Dr. Street, this is what this post -mortem relativism said.

38:44

Oh, it's just, it's too hard to understand. We don't know. And that's the whole thing about going away from complementarianism and embracing egalitarianism.

38:53

It's like, oh, we can't know if there can't be women teachers like scripture is too hard to understand that way.

39:01

So they're always convoluting the clear interpretation of scripture to have vocal room for all these liberal false teachings that they have.

39:10

So what I was just interjecting there, if I may, that it is not just Dr. Bingham.

39:16

There's multiple professors over multiple years at Southwestern, and I believe this is all cooperating with things that are going on at Southern and Southeastern.

39:27

Yeah, it's disturbing. Dr. Rush, I wanted to ask you, is the main problem, and there's all sorts of problems, but it sounds to me based on what

39:36

Dr. Fuller was just saying, is the issue that there's just men that lack spines?

39:43

And I'm asking this to you guys because you seem to have spines, but you're all frustrated with classmates, fellow professors, trustees.

39:51

What's going on and what's the remedy for this if there is one? Well, John, the remedy is get right with God.

39:58

I mean, if you're a man of God and you've been called to preach, be bold, be strong, stand up for the truth.

40:06

I have talked to a number of our trustees, had similar conversations with fellow trustees as Dr.

40:13

Fuller's conversation that he had with a trustee that day. And I wanna say, man, grow a backbone here.

40:19

They have told me, other trustees have said, Tom, we're just concerned about what you're bringing up as you are.

40:25

And I said, well, would you please second my motions when I bring them? Would you please stand up and be counted?

40:33

We need to put the administration on notice. It's really difficult when you're the only guy in the room saying that you're concerned about things that are happening.

40:44

A simple second, I told a couple of guys, I said, even if you're not gonna vote for the motion, even if you decide after you hear the evidence that you're not gonna vote for the motion, would you at least second it so that we can get it on the floor for discussion and point out what the problems are.

41:03

Sometimes I think, John, that men get, and we have, of course, some ladies on our board as well, but I think some of the men who get elected, somehow or another think if they go along to get along that after they're a trustee, maybe they'll get a job or maybe they'll get a discount on their

41:21

PhD when they get ready to do that. I really, I can't account for it, but this is not new.

41:28

I was a student at Southeastern in the 80s and I blew the whistle then.

41:35

They were teaching the historical method of, historical critical method of interpretation of the

41:40

Old Testament, and we challenged it. And we went through the channels as a, we started a student group called the

41:47

Conservative Evangelical Fellowship. Imagine that at a Southern Baptist Seminary. That doesn't even make sense.

41:53

But I'll tell you, most of us were either former law enforcement or former military or men that had been in business and we were raising families, had worked for a living, and we were a little harder to intimidate.

42:09

But I think, listening to what Forrest was saying, I do think students sometimes believe that there may be repercussions against them.

42:19

Now I can say at my time at Southeastern, I only had one professor that I felt like gave me a grade that I did not deserve, sort of as a punishment for being a conservative in the classroom.

42:31

But there was a lot of pressure if you held a conservative viewpoint in the classroom.

42:39

What I would love to see happen, I have, I am trying to collect, since my videos come out,

42:46

I've heard from several students, either students that are at Southern now or were there, and they've left for similar reasons to what

42:54

Forrest expressed. I would really love for them to send me an email and describe their student experience.

43:01

Dr. Fuller, I would love to have other professors who maybe haven't lost their job yet, but you might know are sympathetic to the position that I'm taking on the board.

43:12

I'd love to hear from them. I'd like to have a file in my hand, a stack, if you will, of emails or letters from students, perhaps other professors that can document this.

43:24

What's your email so people watching this can send their stories? Oh, absolutely. My email is tom .terush

43:32

.com, as in Thomas Edward, terush .com. And I would be happy to receive that information.

43:41

And it would be helpful to me. I mean, we're in a position where we've got to build a case.

43:49

And when it became apparent that I wasn't gonna get anywhere within the board, that's why

43:55

I felt we needed to go public. And maybe we can talk about that more as we progress on here about what we need our

44:03

Southern Baptist pastors and people to do. Well, I think we're there, honestly, at this point.

44:10

What would you suggest? And I'd like to hear Dr. Fuller and Forrest chime in.

44:15

What can laymen do? What can pastors do? And then what can those working for entities do? Well, the first thing that they have to do,

44:22

John, is get informed. Contact me, contact Dr. Fuller, contact Forrest. Go to our websites, look at our videos.

44:32

They need to go to your site where you have linked all of this documented information.

44:39

And they need to begin to inform themselves. Look, this is not happening in a vacuum. The information is out there.

44:45

The podcast where Jarvis Williams and Matt Hall are pushing critical race theory can be seen online by anybody.

44:54

And the ones that Forrest is referring to from Southwestern, those things can be seen by anyone.

45:01

And so the first thing they've got to do is they've got to get themselves informed. And then Dr. Moeller recently said, we need to get in the room.

45:09

And I've made the comment, getting in the room doesn't do any good. But I'm just gonna be straightforward.

45:16

Dr. Moeller is incredibly smart. We all know that. I mean, I don't know. I told Dr. Moeller one time, this was a little tongue in cheek, but I said,

45:24

Dr. Moeller, you've got more brains in your pinky finger than I have in my entire body. And you know, there's a lot of truth to that.

45:30

I mean, he is a very intelligent man. And I think that Dr. Moeller believes that if we get in the room together, he's gonna be able to convince us that he's right and we're wrong.

45:42

The problem is we've got facts on our side. And the truth is the truth, regardless of your intellectual prowess.

45:49

I mentioned this in my video. I'll say it again. There's a bit of arrogance in academia and the elites that are running our convention right now.

46:00

So the second thing that is absolutely critical is I understand, you know, men like Forrest who have decided that it's time to opt out.

46:11

I've got to go a different direction. I'm not willing to give up. We won this battle before. We won the conservative resurgence, which was for the inerrancy of scripture.

46:20

We have a battle now for the sufficiency of scripture. And so our laymen need to go to their pastors.

46:29

They need to find out what their pastors believe about these current cultural trends. And they need to get themselves in a strong Bible believing

46:37

Southern Baptist church. And they need to get themselves elected as a messenger to the Southern Baptist convention.

46:43

And they need to come in mass to Nashville and we need to vote these folks out of office.

46:51

We need to vote down resolution nine. And that's in progress.

46:57

And I can't say who, but I can say that I am confident at this particular juncture that we are going to have a very viable candidate to run for president of the

47:08

Southern Baptist convention against Dr. Mueller. And the word will come out about that when he's ready to announce.

47:16

I've been asked by a number of people if I would run for president. Well, I suppose

47:22

I would, but I don't believe the time's right for me. I think we're gonna have an electable, viable candidate that can help us turn this thing around.

47:30

And I heard Mueller and J .D. Greer and all that, they're getting some Dominion voting machines to make sure, no,

47:35

I'm just kidding. Sorry, I couldn't help that one. Oh, that's good,

47:41

John. On that note, Dr. Fuller, what we're talking about, it sounds almost like we're talking about either the mob or the deep state, not a

47:50

Christian denomination, which is shocking. I've just been,

47:56

I mean, now not much shocks me, but when I first started encountering these things, I mean, to the layman that's hearing this for the first time, that is just, you can't be serious, right?

48:05

We're giving our money to this. How do you break through that, Dr. Fuller?

48:11

How do you, someone who is just having a hard time with this, how do you motivate them to get involved and to shine a light on this issue?

48:20

Yeah, it's very difficult sometimes because people, when you tell them the facts, they're in denial and then they can watch the videos and some people will see the facts when they see the video.

48:33

So what Tom was saying, hey, look, you can go online, you can see the videos and different things, what's going on.

48:40

You can also, if you just do a little bit of research, you'll find people like Will McRaney, who's talking about, we need forensic audits.

48:52

Yes, we need forensic audits of our agencies. And I'll tell you what,

48:58

I think we really do. And not just a couple of agencies, but every agency needs a forensic audit.

49:04

And again, not just financially, but also what they're teaching, what they're believing at these institutions. We need, as it were, a forensic audit of that as well.

49:14

But I think if the laymen find out where their money is going to, and will educate themselves, and not only what it's going to in the

49:22

Southern Baptist Convention, but also in the state, some of the state conventions, like Kentucky, where I'm at right now.

49:29

If you see some of the money, where it's going in the KBC, some of the people, like for instance,

49:34

Curtis Woods was a member, I mean, he was employed by the KBC for years.

49:40

They knew he was behind, one of the guys behind Resolution 9. And when he voluntarily left

49:47

Southern Seminary, they hired him right back. He's now at a large church in Elizabethtown.

49:55

And I noticed where Adam Greenway came out, congratulating him on this, you see.

50:01

And when you compare it to the mafia, there's some truth to that,

50:07

John, I hate to say it. Yeah, and Jacob, go ahead, sorry. Yeah, but the people in the pews have got to understand where their money's going to.

50:14

They really wanna support this kind of thing. I don't think so. So I look at people like Tom Rush, Will McRaney.

50:22

These are the guys we need to put in as people like them, as the next president, who are going to see the problems and get the job done.

50:32

And Forrest brought up something real good. I just wanna say something about what Forrest said. You know, it's not just critical race theory and social justice.

50:40

When you see that, let me tell you, there's all kinds of problems. And Forrest went through a list of things.

50:47

It's far more than just one issue here. It is, I'll use one of their terms, systemic.

50:54

The whole, if we don't do something soon, the whole core is gonna be rotten, okay?

51:01

Right, yeah, because you have the egalitarianism, you have the soft peddling of homosexuality and other sexual deviancies, and then it's just a free -for -all.

51:11

I mean, you can just make the scripture an origami. Forrest, when you were at Southwestern, I know when

51:20

I was at Southeastern, there was one guy I can point to that I can look back at and say, he was a fellow student and he was going in the woke direction, and the

51:29

Lord helped me kind of pull him out of it. And I didn't have anyone at that time. I mean, this was before MLK 50, before the

51:35

Dallas Statement. And I remember saying, you know, what we're being taught feels a lot like Marxism.

51:41

I didn't really know what else to say. I was just like, this reminds me of secular college. It's Marxism. And we had some productive conversations, but I can't say,

51:50

I can't point to any other student. And I wasn't that close, but a lot of the students that I did try to kind of nudge in that direction, you know, it's kind of like drawing the proverbial

52:00

Ixthys fish. You're trying to kind of like drop the hint, hey, I'm a conservative in like creative ways. You know,

52:06

I didn't have a lot of luck with other students. Were you, Forrest, able to, and do you have any advice about talking to students, were you able to communicate with students, help them?

52:16

What advice do you have for students trying to do that? Well, first of all, and I don't mean this in an insulting way, but get your head out of the sand.

52:24

And what I mean by that is it's the easy thing to do to ignore this and to just let it roll off your back and not get involved.

52:35

But that is not an option, definitely not an option. And I was speaking to a former

52:42

Southwestern student and he got an MTS recently and I've known him. He was a fellow member and the single adults and entry at first at the

52:51

South with myself. And he knows the same things that's going on yet.

52:57

And I've documented, I've screenshotted, I've sent him multiple things. And he says, thanks for the info.

53:04

I'm just left at that. So that is, and I don't know if that's the response when you were a fellow student going through the same things and you were trying to gather a coalition to fellow students or peers, but many that I've talked to, and that has left me to where I've took directions where I have of leaving

53:26

Southwestern and my position at SBC right now as well. I don't see that bright of a future because many of these professors that I've named by name need to repent.

53:41

This is intentional false doctrine and heresies that are being taught to push the

53:48

SBC leftward. And many of these fellow students are willfully going along with it.

53:55

And I've tried to snap the fingers and say, hey, let's wake up, let's go forward.

54:02

And many of my fellow Southwesterners, but will not come alongside me.

54:08

And I have tried to get other people whistleblower whether I'm the only one from Southwestern that I know of that is coming forward.

54:15

So I'd say all that to say, and I would challenge not in a discouraging way, but trying to encourage is understand the gravity and the seriousness of this, heresy sends you to eternal damnation and you lead your flocks astray.

54:35

If you want to be a future elder shepherd of a church, if you're 20 something and you may be married, maybe not, but maybe not that far in your career, if you're not willing to risk it all for truth now, how will you when you're 45, when you're 50, when you have children and a mortgage and things like that, it doesn't get easier.

54:58

It's not like Dr. Fuller or Tom Rush, it's not like they've had an easy time blowing the whistle when there's more to lose.

55:08

If you're not willing to blow the whistle now, if you're not willing to get your head out of the sand now and tell these

55:15

SBC, those in these institutions and these seminaries to repent and to go away from false doctrine.

55:25

And I would say that as SBC at large is,

55:31

I believe it's apostatized, that's my, I believe it has, and I may be more pessimistic than Tom Rush about this, but that's my personal view of how

55:41

I've left is I don't believe it can be salvaged just because I see my own generation, the millennials, how compromised they are.

55:49

And there's, you will find very few that will stand up for truth, unfortunately, but we need those that are the faithful remnant.

55:57

And that's what I'm appealing to right now, the faithful remnant needs to stand up, needs to speak out and needs to declare what is biblical truth, what is heresy, stand on principles and fight the good fight because we will ultimately win in the end.

56:15

But right now, these institutions, SBC, the PCA are falling away, but we need to hold strong the faithful remnant of the bride of Christ.

56:24

It is better to please God than men. Absolutely. You know, John, when we were blowing the whistle when

56:31

I was a student at Southeastern and there were a number of us doing that, we had courageous men who did that.

56:37

And it began happening at our other seminaries as well. I mean, we had students at Southwestern, at Southern, at New Orleans, other places that were coming out and saying, this is what

56:49

I'm being taught in the classroom. And that was a huge part of the conservative resurgence.

56:57

Now, initially when we would tell other pastors what was going on, they wouldn't believe us.

57:05

We got called liars, we got called every name in the book. But one time, a fellow student of the liberal persuasion said to me, he said, well,

57:15

Tom, if you don't like the way this seminary is going, why don't you leave and go to another seminary?

57:22

Well, let's think about that for a minute. I'm pastoring, you know, I'm in my seminary pastoring 30 minutes down the road from the seminary.

57:28

I'm raising a family. I'm pastoring a church. I've invested my money to get my theological education there.

57:36

But here's what I said. Not only that, I said, you need to understand something. I've been carrying an offering envelope to a

57:43

Southern Baptist church since I was old enough to walk. I own this place. This is my seminary.

57:51

They don't own it, I own it. The people in the pews own the seminaries. They need to take their stewardship more seriously.

57:59

And that's why I'm unwilling to give up. Why would we surrender all that we have invested, that my parents have invested?

58:09

But you know, my dad was a deacon and a Sunday school teacher. My mom was a Sunday school teacher and sang in the choir.

58:14

My granddaddy was a deacon. My grandmother sang in the choir. I mean, and it goes back. My great, great granddaddy was a chaplain to the

58:21

Confederate troops. I mean, I've got a heritage that goes all the way back to the very beginning of the

58:28

Southern Baptist Convention. I don't want to give it up, John. We have too much invested.

58:33

Why would we hand all of this tremendous machinery that we have developed to reach the world for Christ?

58:43

Why would we want to let go of it? And so we've got to be, we've got to start listening to the terminology.

58:48

And one of the terms, you know, Russell pointed out that it's not just the critical race theory, and Forrest has mentioned that, but it's the terminology.

58:57

We've got to be very careful when we start changing the terminology. So now what we have is soft complementarians.

59:06

Now, that's just another word for egalitarian. There's no such thing as a soft complementarian.

59:12

Either you are, or you are not. And listen, either you believe the book, either you believe the word of God, or you don't.

59:20

You know, we Baptists used to have some great statements, and one of them was, you know, we're a people of the book.

59:26

We believe in the Bible, the blood, and the blessed hope. And John, that's where we've got to go back.

59:33

Amen, well, good word for sure. And we're going to have to wrap it up. We only have a few more minutes.

59:39

Any really quick final thoughts? I know, Dr. Fruehl, you haven't spoken in a while. Do you have a quick final thought?

59:45

You know, I think, and I'll say this, I think 99 % of the students, the faculty, the administrations of these seminaries and our

59:58

Southern Baptist institutions, they know what's going on. They know the truth. The truth is right there.

01:00:05

They have a conscience. They know what's going on, and they're going against their conscience.

01:00:12

They're going against the truth, and they know it. And it's a very sad thing.

01:00:18

They'll sign statements of faith as if they believe every word in the Bible, but they'll sign these statements of faith, but yet just signing a statement of faith is not a safeguard against what we've seen, not only in this generation, but in past generations.

01:00:34

And so what we need is, again, we need the grassroots

01:00:39

Southern Baptists to once again come together and say, what do we wanna be as a denomination?

01:00:45

Is this who we are? And I don't think so. And I think if we get together and understand the issues as Tom Rush has laid them out and has described,

01:00:56

I look forward to a second conservative resurgency. I hope we have it. I really do. But it's gonna take, first and foremost,

01:01:05

God to once again pour out a spirit of grace and supplication upon us, because we can't do it ourselves.

01:01:11

Well, hey, I really appreciate it. Forrest, Dr. Fuller, Dr. Rush, for being brave enough to talk about this with each other and with me.

01:01:20

If anyone who's watching this wants more information, like I said, go to the info section. I got videos there from all three of these men and Jacob Johnson, who wasn't able to join us.

01:01:31

He has some whistleblowing material on NAM, and his video is linked there. You can also see one other link to the

01:01:38

Conservative Baptist Network. It is in the info section. If you're in the Southern Baptist Convention, you like your church, you don't wanna leave the convention, you'd like to try to take it back, that's the network that you probably need to be part of.

01:01:49

In fact, it's not even a probably, you just need to go join it. So that's my encouragement to you.

01:01:56

And wherever you are, whether you're Southern Baptist or not, though, please stay faithful and try to please

01:02:02

God, not men. Men cannot do a thing to your soul. Did you say something,

01:02:10

Dr. Fuller? John, can I say this one more thing real quick? Yes, remember, as a

01:02:15

Southern Baptist, when you give money, you can designate funds at your church or where you want it to go to.

01:02:21

If you don't want it to go to Russell Moore in the RLC, you can designate the funds the right way.

01:02:28

And so, B, if you see the problems, remember, you can designate the way you give funds to your local church.

01:02:35

Yeah, that's a good final point there. Hey, I appreciate all three of you. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, John. And before I go,

01:02:42

I'll just say one last thing. 30 seconds. Yes, 30 seconds. I truly believe that there are people in these institutions, leaders, that are not brothers in Christ.

01:02:54

I don't say that with joy or glee, but we need to call people repentance and we need to fellowship with true brothers and disfellowship with false believers that are running our institutions.