Neil Shenvi, John MacArthur's Friends, and Historical #CancelCulture

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I do wanna thank all of you first.

00:06

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for praying for my father -in -law, Frank. He is off life support now, the breathing machine, the heart machine.

00:14

He's still on some others. I think they're still doing dialysis and he's hooked up to some other things. He's on drugs, but he's gonna live.

00:23

And it'll be a long path forward for him, I'm sure, but it does mean a lot when you say that you're praying for him, when you send encouraging notes in Christianity, which you really believe what

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Christianity teaches. We know that God does answer prayer and he has in this case. He has spared my father -in -law's life and there's a church that depends on him, there's a family that depends on him.

00:44

So thank you. I do appreciate your prayers on his behalf. And they still don't know what caused this.

00:51

His heart just went into failure. He has an a -fib issue, but it shouldn't have caused this. And I know they say that he had a stroke during this whole ordeal, which it shouldn't have been too severe, but they don't know the extent of it until he comes off the pain medication.

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So we'll find out. But anyway, thank you for your continued prayers. A few things, well, first of all, preview and then a few announcements.

01:17

We're gonna talk a little bit about Neil Shenvey today and I'll explain why when we get there. We're gonna also talk about John MacArthur's friends, some reactions to his stand that he's taking, which

01:29

I found out now, he's got a star legal team. The Trump administration is very aware of what's going on there.

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And you got some people that are connected to Donald Trump and the president that are gonna be defending

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Grace Community Church. They're trying to fine him $1 ,000 a day. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that.

01:48

Just some things in the news, some highlights that I just wanted to share with you. Some are funny, some are a little more serious, but just a bunch of accumulated smaller things, really.

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So we'll start there. We'll start with some smaller things. Number one, I wanted to tell you all this.

02:10

Oh, the quote of the week, I forgot. I was gonna give you the quote of the week. This is from Paul Washer. Someone sent this to me this morning.

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I just thought, this is a great quote. I wish I could put it on, well, really, every church just about.

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But I thought, this would be great if we put it up on the church slideshow for Sunday.

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Paul Washer said, some of you are mad about wearing a mask to church, but you've been doing it for years. That's, only

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Paul Washer can say something like that. Think in those terms. I mean, it's the shocking youth message all over.

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But isn't that true? I mean, it's so true. Some of us, and of course, he's talking about masks in which we don't share who we really are because of fear of judgment or we pretend we're something we're not.

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And so anyway, I really, I like that quote. So that's the quote of the week. Here's the little announcement

03:04

I wanted to share. So this is about Patreon. I know many of you are aware of it, but I do have a Patreon and I don't talk about it a whole lot.

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I'll thank people sometimes for contributing, but it's patreon .com slash worldview conversation.

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The reason I'm mentioning it now is for, it's not even necessarily to raise money for me. It's really, the reason,

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I know this sounds so disingenuous, right? I'm bringing up a page where people donate to my work, but for those who want answers to questions, this is why

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I'm bringing it up. It's really for your benefit. For those who want answers to questions, this is just, it's becoming more my way of trying to manage the large load of emails and messages that I get because I do want you to feel like you can message me, but the reality is at this point,

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I can't respond to all the messages and I try. And sometimes it's like a sentence or two that I can give you.

03:57

I can't get into the details of sometimes the paragraphs that I'm sent.

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And so I do try to read them or at least skim them and I do appreciate them. But if you have specific questions and you really want answers, there's two things you can do.

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And one of them is Patreon. You can become a Patreon of mine. You can communicate with me over the app,

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Patreon app. And I'm sure to get back to you if you're a patron on Patreon app. So, I mean, I have probably five different apps and email services, et cetera, maybe more than that.

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I haven't counted them all where people will communicate with me or try to at least. And I, Patreon is high on that priority list.

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So that's just a way that if you really wanna get in contact with me, become a patron. And I can certainly give more attention to whatever question you have.

04:47

I will try to get back to you, even if you don't, but there may be a big delay. And in some cases it might not happen.

04:53

Sometimes things fall through the cracks. So I just, I had a lot of people emailing me this last week or sending messages.

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And so I just wanted to let you all know, if you want more of me, more of my opinion on things, then that is a way that you can get that.

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So that's one of the benefits of being part of Patreon. One of the other things I wanted to mention is that, oh,

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I'm sorry. I almost forgot. The other way that you can access more of my opinion is live broadcast.

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I'm gonna try to do more live Q and A's. And so that's kind of a hit or miss, but if you're in channel on a

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Q and A session on YouTube, then you can ask a question and I may give it more time. So those are the two ways. Next, resources.

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We need resources, right? We all know this, we need resources. More and more resources need to be produced.

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And so, of course, I'm doing what I can. I mean, I have my own business that I run, that I need to run to be able to pay for living.

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Of course, the priority has steadily, I wouldn't be making this video if I wasn't getting support from you guys on Patreon, but steadily

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I've shifted more of my emphasis to this kind of stuff, creating content, producing books, et cetera.

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So I'm doing what I can, but we do need a lot of stuff. And some of you have sent me some really good resources, things you've written.

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I know of several laymen who are trying to write responses to this, which in my mind, it's sad. There should be great, big organizations, but I think there's a lot of fear.

06:29

So laymen who want to take on, let's just say that you read Generous Justice by Tim Keller.

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I know there's reviews of that already out there, but you wanna write a review or you wanna write a review of another woke book of some kind, then you can send it to me.

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And this is really the announcement is if you have a resource, you think it's good, contact me.

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Those who are my patrons know this. You can just send me whatever it is you have and I'll look at it.

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And if it's good enough or if it can be edited and modified for the format that we need, we'll publish it.

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We'll put it somewhere. We'll archive it. And I am creating a list of resources for people.

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So I think that's very important. So that's in response to an email I got this morning of someone just saying,

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I wish I could do more. And I thought to myself, you know what? There's actually a lot of things that you can do and I'm blessed to have a platform where I can get some of this stuff out there.

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In fact, earlier this week, a pastor, you can go to worldviewconversation .com or maybe it was last week, there was a pastor who reached out to me and said,

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I wrote this response to Jonathan Lehman. I haven't really seen anyone else taking this angle. Would you publish it?

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And I said, of course, it was well -written. It's a good resource. And normally I don't think he would have that kind of a platform, but I have a little bit of a platform.

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So I would love to platform some of your stuff if you have good resources. So on that same vein of resources, here's some books.

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I oftentimes don't mention the books that I'm reading and I probably should. If you're a friend,

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I don't know how it works. If you're connected somehow to me on Goodreads, you can see what I'm reading and see what I've read and sometimes

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I'll put what I think about it. These are just two recent books that one of them I read, one of them

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I just started, but the first is Ronald Radish called Commies, A Journey Through the

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Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left. I think this was a very entertaining book myself and partially because he's talking about regions in which

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I grew up or close to regions I grew up in. And so I might have a personal affinity to it, you might not.

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And this doesn't answer everything that's going on in the church, but through a biographical format, it gives you kind of a sense of what was going on in the

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New Left movement throughout from the 50s really to early, he goes a little before that, but his experience is mostly the 50s through probably the early 90s.

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And it just, there's so many parallels. It just, I mean, this is the foundation. This is the stuff we're dealing with today in evangelicalism,

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I mean, it comes from this stuff. And so it's just, it's really interesting. People ask me all the time,

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John, how do you think through these issues? Well, I read, I try to read articles and I read books.

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And so this is just one that I read this week. Another one that I started, which really honestly seems like an excellent book.

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I think Roger Scruton really understands conservatism like well, he's not a neo -conservative.

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There's a lot of people that claim to be conservatives and maybe I'll do an episode someday. I'm more of the, when

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I think of conservative, I think of like the Russell Kirk conservative mind, kind of the Burkean conservative.

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And I think Roger Scruton is in that tradition. So reading him is kind of like reading like a Richard Weaver or David Wells.

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It's insightful, he understands kind of the issues at play and he can get behind them.

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He's not sucked into new left assumptions. So I would recommend that to you,

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Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands. And I think it really will help you understand kind of the times we're living in now.

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Because honestly, here's the thing. The critical theory, I mean, that's getting all the press, critical race theory, intersectionality.

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These are new terms to a lot of you, but these are repackaged old ideas. And sometimes it's a little frustrating to me,

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I'll be honest, when people wanna get highly technical about this stuff. And I understand there's a place for that.

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Some people are good at that too. But to me, it's the repackaging of postmodern and communist ideas that have been around for a while.

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These are Marxist concepts and they're being used in a Marxist way. And of course there's differences.

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Of course, things change over time. But it's like taking a new engine, putting it in an old car.

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Critical race theory, it is a form of Marxism. It's a sect.

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It's like when you look at religions, right? And of course, in Christianity, we have a revelation that is solid and secure.

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So true biblical Christianity does not change. But there's a lot of religions that have a progressive revelation kind of element to them in which things do change.

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And there's contradictions sometimes and there's new. And so this is kind of like that.

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Critical theory, today's version of it, which won't be the same version in 10 years, it traces back to Marxism, but it's changed somewhat.

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It's developed. We're downstream from that, right? And so I like to understand the full stream.

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I like to understand the lake it came from, the stream that it's in, and where it's going, right? And people who only understand one little segment of that,

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I think aren't going to have a complete view. And it's very important to understand, I think, the full picture.

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So these are some books that I would recommend to you. So a little food for thought there.

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Now, let's talk a little bit about Neil Shenvey. And I'll tell you why I wanna talk about Neil.

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So I'll start it off this way. I had, in the last podcast, I had mentioned that Ed Stetzer is doing this white fragility series on Christianity today.

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And I mentioned that this is weird because this is kind of like assuming that white fragility is somehow up for debate, that Christians can disagree on this or can have fruitful conversation.

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We can draw insights from it. And that this isn't something to go after each other on because different Christians come down in different places.

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It's a secondary issue, which I really think that's why he's doing it. He's trying to show that white fragility is a secondary issue.

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And I don't put it in that category. This is coming from a, it's a Marxist worldview.

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I don't have a problem saying that. It's a false religion. And it's a primary issue.

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We wouldn't do this with the Book of Mormon, right? And Neil Shenvey actually compares the two, which is why I'm comfortable now using that.

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We wouldn't get all the Christians together and go, who has insights from the Book of Mormon and who doesn't?

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And we're not gonna go after each other on this. We're not gonna point any fingers. We're just gonna have this discussion and it's gonna be fruitful.

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Well, no, if you're gonna do that on Christianity Today, it would be the Book of Mormon is wrong. We're starting with the assumption that this is heresy.

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This is evil. Neil's doing this thing on, he contributed to this Ed Stetzer Christianity Today thing on white fragility.

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And I just comment, it's interesting how Neil gets into these spaces. He's platformed by big evil leaders.

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I mentioned how he was at Southwestern and Southeastern speaking. When I happened to know that people that would be critical of critical theory, et cetera, were essentially, let's just say those institutions didn't really want them speaking.

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But Neil gets in there. And so it's just interesting to me. I'm like, why is that? And I asked that question.

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And I asked it because I wanted people to think about this. What is it that keeps people out of the guild and makes someone like Neil Shenvey acceptable?

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And I had a few people reach out to me and say, what's the problem with Neil Shenvey? I really like his stuff.

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And praise God, that's great. I don't have a problem with that at all. I don't have a personal problem with Neil Shenvey at all.

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In fact, I liked his personality. He seems pretty straightforward, even keeled kind of guy.

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And we've interacted on Twitter some, I think mostly in disagreements. But I think there have been some nice interactions where, not that the disagreements weren't nice, but there have been some positive interactions where I'm agreeing with something he says.

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But overall, is

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Neil Shenvey's role in this helpful or hindering? And I don't know if I can answer that question because he seems to be kind of like statements, a statement of faith.

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Statement of faiths are very helpful in defining where someone's at, but they become shields at Southern Baptist institutions.

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Now, if someone's accused of liberalism, like a Matt Hall, Al Mohler shows him signing the abstract and principles.

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Same with Danny Akin and Walter Strickland. I mean, that's their go -to is, look, the statement of faith. And so it's become a shield.

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Which in a sense, it hinders at this point. Because you know that they believe things that actually contradict the thing that they're signing.

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But because they're signing it, it's held up as, look, they agree, they're on board.

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So you're the one that's divisive. Neil Shenvey, I think, has been used, whether he knows it or not.

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I think some of these institutions have used him to say, look, see, we're against critical theory.

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We had Neil come and speak about it, right? And so one of the things that Neil doesn't do, which others like myself do do, is

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Neil doesn't really name names in big evangelical circles as much.

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Sometimes I think he might go after someone, but usually it's kind of, it's the farm league types.

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He doesn't go after the big, big Eva guys, right? Which, and I don't have a problem going after them all day long, if I have to.

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Truth is truth. I don't care. You could be a great guy and have done many great things, but if you're gonna go down this road and lead people down it,

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I'm gonna have to say something about it. So Neil is, he's more politically beneficial for some of these guys,

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I think, because he's not gonna go after them. He's not gonna go after Danny Akin, but then Danny Akin can platform him and say we're against critical theory.

16:48

So here's the Neil Shenvey file, if you will. Here are my thoughts on Neil, and I'm gonna expand this so you all can see it.

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First of all, I gotta say, I'm grateful for his research. I really am. I'm grateful that he's trying to, because look, we need resources.

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I just said that. And Neil is really taking a lot of his time, and I don't know if he's getting paid. I mean, with a guy of his credentials,

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I would think he'd be getting paid somewhere for this, because it doesn't pay to homeschool your kids usually.

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They don't have any money, except the money you give them for allowance. But he's doing all this research, and that's helpful.

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He's looking at these books, these books on critical race theory, but that is not his specialty, and it doesn't have to be.

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But that's something that he's taken up recently. And, but here's some of the things that concern me.

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He is a member of Summit Church, right? Which is J .D. Greer's church, the flagship church for the Southern Baptist Convention. Now J .D.

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Greer, we've done some videos. You can go check the YouTube archive where I've commented on J .D. Greer.

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J .D. Greer is not a conservative, not at all. He is subversive. And, I mean,

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God whispers about sexual sin. You know, he wants to get rid of all hierarchies.

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Very much on the caring well stuff. Very much on the, I mean he said what black lives matter is a gospel issue.

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And I mean the list goes on and on for J .D. Greer. Soft peddling, or homosexuality, turning

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Romans one on its head. And so Neil Shenvey is a member of this church, and I have to ask myself,

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I mean this church has really gone down the woke path hard.

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How in the world can Neil, if he is so against this stuff, how can he still be there? I mean, there's a tweet that, maybe

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I have it on another slide, but J .D. Greer is basically saying, yeah, Summit Church is Neil Shenvey. Neil Shenvey and Summit Church, they're connected, and this was just recently.

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So it's not like Neil has gone anywhere. He's still with Summit Church, according to J .D.

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Greer. So he's a member there. That just, it just raises at least a yellow flag, if not a red one.

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Where's your discernment level on this stuff? You're gonna be an authority on it, but you're going to a church where a pastor that's one of the worst abusers of this is your spiritual shepherd.

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You're putting your kids and your wife under his pastoral care. If you're so concerned about critical theory,

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I don't understand why you would do that with a pastor who's pushing aspects of that. So, like I said before,

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Neil has spoken in various venues where dissenting voices have not been permitted to speak, including southeastern and southwestern baptist theological seminaries.

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That's very true. He promotes a narrower focus, I think is one of the reasons, to specifically challenge more orthodox proponents of critical theory.

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So what I'm trying to say is that he's taken the definition of critical race theory, or critical theory in general.

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He kind of, he's more of like a sniper. He kind of, he'll zoom in in his scope on those who are more purists.

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They're really advocating the critical race theory stuff, and he'll go after them. But someone who's more syncretistic, who really likes aspects of it, wants to use it as an analytical tool, but doesn't like all of it, he's not as likely to go after them.

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And so this gives a pass to guys like J .D. Greer. And that's,

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I think, part of the danger of this is that's how this stuff gets in. It doesn't, you know, it's not someone coming, your pastor saying,

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I believe in critical race theory. Most pastors are gonna deny that while promoting the new left critique, the idea that we need reparations or some kind of redistribution, whatever that looks like, promoting the lamenting session, standpoint epistemology, the list goes on and on.

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And we've talked about it on this channel. So here's a tweet. This was a tweet

20:48

I really appreciate. So I wanna really get this off on a good foot. I just wanna show you, I do appreciate some of Neal's research and some of the things he said.

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This is one thing he said that I did appreciate. Jesus devoted little, if any, of his ministry to dismantling unjust systems and structures.

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He spent nearly all of his time preaching the gospel, teaching and doing good works to individuals. We don't live in first century

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Israel, but his model is still relevant to us. And I think that that's a relevant thing to say, yeah. Jesus did live in a system, in a place where there was abuse.

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I mean, he lived in an occupied country. And you wanna talk about colonialism? He lived at a time when there was slavery.

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You wanna talk about slavery? He uses it in some of his parables. And of course, J .D. Greer's response,

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I'm not even gonna go over it. It's just, it's not a very, again, you read his response,

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I'll just read it. The greatest societal revolutions from the Bill of Rights to the abolitionist movement.

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So the Bill of Rights apparently was, that wasn't a societal revolution. That was a conservative move back to rights that England, that the king was not defending.

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But anyway, came from Christians applying the biblical worldview to the public square. As Abraham Kuyper said, "'God wants his truth proclaimed everywhere.'"

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So yeah, that revolutions are, Christians are the ones that are behind revolutions.

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I don't understand why Neil Shindley goes to Summit Church exactly, if he's so against critical theory.

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But that's J .D. Greer's response. So it's kind of a, it's a yes, but.

22:14

Yes, Neil, but. Don't forget about this. So here's some of Shenvi's endorsements.

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Here's Danny Akin. Danny Akin said, "'The Incompatibility of Critical Theory in Christianity,' "'a very fine, worth taking time to read article "'by

22:30

Neil Shindley.'" So he likes what Neil Shindley's putting out there. This is from day one.

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This was, I think, what was it? 2018, maybe, when Shenvi put this out, or the beginning of 2019.

22:42

Keith Whitfield, who was on the Resolutions Committee that gave us Resolution 9. He's now, I think, the provost of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Said, yeah, Neil Shindley has provided us a helpful and accessible overview, a fair analysis and faithful guide to engaging contemporary critical theory in our culture.

22:56

So he likes Neil Shindley. So it's an interesting thing. Why would Keith Whitfield, on the Resolution 9 Committee, love

23:02

Resolution 9? I mean, I have all the screenshots for when that took place, but he likes Neil Shindley.

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Danny Akin likes Neil Shindley. And, of course, Walter Strickland teaches at that seminary, the

23:14

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Shindley, like I said, is a member of J .D.

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Greer's church. Shindley has defended Greer as a conservative. So here's what he says, and he's talking about J .D.

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Greer here in the context. "'Would being one of the original signatories "'of the Nashville Statement convince you "'that he," meaning

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Greer, "'is not the head of the progressive wing of the SBC?' So Shindley's saying, look, you can't sign the

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Nashville Statement and be a liberal in response to this Tim Dukeman, who's saying, look,

23:46

Greer could stop promoting liberals at the convention level. He could retract how the fall affects us all. That's his

23:51

Sermon on Romans 1. He could stop practicing as much egalitarianism as I can get away with without blatantly defying the

23:58

Baptist faith message. And that was Neil's response. Well, yeah, he signed the Nashville Statement. So I guess that makes someone a conservative if they sign the

24:05

Nashville Statement. Not necessarily. You can still sign things. You can still, and this is the problem with statements of faith sometimes.

24:14

You have to hold people's feet to the fire. You sign this, why are your actions then in contradiction to this?

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If you just give someone the benefit of the doubt and read their actions through the statement that they signed, then you're gonna get it wrong.

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Look at their actions. Look at their actions. Look at their works, right? You say you have faith, look at their works.

24:36

But Beneal's here, I mean, he goes to the church. He knows what's going on. He's not ignorant of what J .D. Greer, he sat under J .D.

24:41

Greer's preaching. He sat under the sermons where J .D. Greer is soft peddling homosexuality.

24:47

But he says, oh, I know, but yeah, but he signed the Nashville Statement. Well, Shenvey also supported

24:53

Resolution 9. Here's what he said. The resolution on critical race theory intersectionality is careful, charitable, and nuanced.

25:00

I hope it passes. You don't get much more of a recommendation of an endorsement than that.

25:07

He endorses Resolution 9, he likes it. And you just gotta think to yourself, you know, this is a guy who's, you know, out there combating critical race theory, producing stuff, combating it, but he likes

25:19

Resolution 9. It should make you scratch your head at least a little bit. Shenvey also states that critical race theory is not

25:27

Marxism, which is, now I gotta say, I wanna say this, we all grow, we all learn.

25:33

I mean, I've said things that now I look back, I'm like, you know what, I've learned some more since then. I wouldn't have phrased it that way, or I would have added this to it, or I wouldn't have said it, right?

25:44

And hopefully, Neil Shenvey's learning and growing, and maybe even if he sees this, hopefully he sees it as someone who is acting in good faith, who appreciates some of the things he's done, but has a hard time recommending him.

25:56

And once my, the people that follow my channel, I just want you to be aware of some of the things that Neil has said that at least should cause some pause.

26:07

I mean, that's the tone, that's my attitude towards this whole thing. But I want

26:12

Neil to grow and learn. So Neil, this morning, in his article for Ed Stetzer's White Fragility series on Christianity Today, he actually says that D 'Angelo's ideas are rooted in Marxism.

26:24

So he says that today. Maybe he's grown, because this wasn't that long ago. This was this year, this is

26:30

March of this year. He says, resolution nine did not say that Marxism is useful for understanding the world, because CRT is not

26:37

Marxism. You can't just redefine terms this way. Most critical race theories reject the central components of Marxism, especially historical materialism.

26:45

And this is where I get frustrated sometimes with people, where they don't see the lake, the stream, and where it's heading, where is it washing into?

26:56

They see one aspect of it. They see the stream, and they say, well, the stream's different than the lake. Lake doesn't run. Yeah, but they're both water.

27:03

That's the point. Yeah, there's different properties to the stream and the lake. Yeah, there's different things living in the stream than in the lake.

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Yeah, it's a different temperature. Yes, of course, you can do different things in it, but it's the same substance.

27:16

And we're downstream from Marxism, but it's the same car, different engine. It's modified.

27:23

It's a souped -up Marxist car, is what it is. And so I think he understands that more now, but up until March of this year, he's still saying, yeah, that critical race theory is not

27:34

Marxism. That's, I don't know, like, Jonathan Edwards' thinking was not

27:39

Calvinism. You know, it's not, because he disagreed with Calvin here and here. Yeah, but look, we understand when we use the term

27:45

Calvinism, what we're talking about. And Jonathan Edwards stood in that tradition, just like critical race theory does.

27:53

Shinve supports using, or at least did, I hope, I mean, this is just last year, so this is not even a year ago, supported using critical race theory and intersectionality as analytical tools.

28:05

And this is probably why he liked Resolution 9. And here's some things he said. I know how critical theory treats critical race theory and intersectionality.

28:13

Hence my warning that critical theory is a dangerous and false worldview, right? That we agree with that. But then he says, but like geometry, it's possible to abstract tools from the worldview that produced them.

28:24

If you disagree, why use any scientific tools or medicine developed by avowed naturalists? Or take the example

28:30

I provided in the article. If a Christian argues for the need for an unwed mom's ministry at his church, this distinct from their single ministry and mom's ministry, he is in fact using intersectional analysis.

28:40

Is this analysis useful or not? And I didn't put my response there, but I did respond.

28:48

And essentially my response, you can go look at it. All the links to these tweets are in the info section. But essentially

28:54

I'm saying, look, that's based on, intersectionality is based on level of oppression. And when you see a need for a nursery, you're not doing this based on level of oppression.

29:05

And you're not using standpoint epistemology to figure it out. You know, this is actually pretty bad, to be honest with you.

29:12

This is someone who's supposed to be an expert on critical theory. And he's saying that it's dangerous, but it's like geometry.

29:19

No, it's not. Geometry, math, the principles of logic, these are fundamental to reality.

29:26

You can't escape them. You can't contradict logic without using logic. You have to.

29:31

So these are fundamental things that God's given us. They're in the natural revelation. Critical race theory is not.

29:37

It exists in the imagined minds of sociologists. And then, and Shenvy's comparing these, like something that is intrinsic to reality is the same as some abstract set of principles that some

29:52

Marxists came up with. No, they're not. And this is where I'm like, why, how is someone, how is someone using someone like this as an authority when they can't get that right?

30:06

Now, maybe he's right now. Maybe he's understood now. Okay, there's a big difference here. But no, you can't use these tools.

30:13

You can't, these tools fundamentally rest upon assumptions that contradict Christianity. It's not like math.

30:19

Math doesn't fundamentally contradict Christianity at its base. He says, I wonder if we could make this into a syllogism.

30:26

Intersectionality is the idea that our identities are complex. It can, no, it's not. That's not, that's not, that's not what intersectionality is.

30:34

There's more to it than that. It's not just that our identities are complex. It's that there's overlapping identities that, of oppression, that's specifically what intersectionality is about, that need political representation.

30:47

It's all about politics and identity politics specifically. So he says, that's the first part of the syllogism.

30:53

It can be useful to recognize that our identities are complex. Therefore, intersectionality can be useful. Which do you deny? Shenvey is arguing that intersectionality can be useful.

31:01

August 16th, 2019. This is the guy that's supposed to be helping us navigate critical race theory and intersectionality.

31:09

He's arguing for using it. Now, I don't have words for this. I don't understand,

31:16

I don't understand why he would do this. But it makes sense now why he'd support Resolution 9.

31:22

He also defended the use of the term social justice as potentially meaning biblical justice. Now, to me, it's not a big deal.

31:28

I don't wanna, you know, just nitpick. But this is, for someone who's supposed to be an expert on this stuff, it muddies the waters.

31:36

He says social justice could mean biblical justice applied to society. I think he's defending a

31:42

Joe Carter piece, if I'm not mistaken here. But again, why go that direction?

31:48

Why, you know, yeah, I guess someone could use that. But it's like, you know, there's, it's a term that is being, that has a wide use.

31:58

And people who hear it today, they have a certain conception.

32:04

So why would you go ahead and use it? You probably shouldn't. And Shenvey even says, you know,

32:10

I don't actually recommend using the term social justice. That's wise. But it seems like he wants to kind of defend people who would use it.

32:17

Really, I think the proper response would be like, hey, look, I understand you wanna use this term, but here are the origins of this term.

32:25

Here's why, here's how this term is commonly used. And here's why you may not wanna use this term, or you wanna think twice about using this term.

32:33

And it's okay to say, yeah, there's people who might use it ignorantly. I get that, I understand. I understand, this isn't a big deal, but it just, this is somebody who's supposed to be an expert on it.

32:41

So that's why it's just weird to me, because it just muddies the waters a little bit. He also misrepresented

32:47

Tom Askel's position on Resolution 9. And I asked Tom about this, and he verified it was a misrepresentation.

32:53

But he, you know, he says that Tom Askel accepted, or those aren't his exact words.

33:00

He didn't say the word accept, but that if Tom Askel's, that the resolution or the proposal that he had put forward to amend the resolution, if his amendment was adopted, that Tom Askel didn't have a problem with Resolution 9.

33:15

And he said that on a show. And so I kind of confronted him on this. I said, I like your personality a lot, brother.

33:21

I'm also grateful for some of the work you've done in cataloging quotes, et cetera. I think there are some on our side of this debate who are perplexed you don't make some of the logical connections we see as obvious.

33:31

And I still feel that way. And so you can see, I put, Shenvey's trying to defend this.

33:37

And he says that Tom Askel added an amendment. It didn't pass, but it wanted to add one more whereas, where he said, look, this is based on a godless worldview and it got rejected.

33:46

My only point is that presumably, presumed, that presumable, if they had passed the amendment, the rest of the resolution was okay.

33:52

Keep in mind, he's not saying the entire thing was garbage. He's just saying, if you added this one sentence, he posted it as a friendly amendment and it said something like, whereas critical theory is based on a godless worldview.

34:04

He says, my only point there is that he didn't argue that the rest of the amendment was false. He's saying, I want to add one more thing and then presumably, if that one amendment was added, he would have accepted the entire thing.

34:14

And I think Al Mohler said the same thing. So he's misrepresenting

34:19

Tom Askel here because what Tom Askel was doing was he was, he was actually introducing a resolution.

34:26

He called it a friendly, friendly, or not resolution, an amendment. He called it a friendly amendment, but this amendment was kind of like a poison pill, which

34:33

I know Shenvey tried to say, well, that's not a friendly amendment, but I think in probably, and I'm guessing at this a little bit, but in Tom Askel's mind,

34:39

I think it was friendly because it was true to Baptist faith and message, biblical understanding, et cetera.

34:44

And I think that's why Tom Askel said it's friendly. I'm trying to get us back to orthodoxy here. That's always a friendly thing.

34:52

But what his amendment did was it actually turned resolution nine on its head. It showed the foolishness and stupidity of using these things as analytical tools.

35:04

And Shenvey's saying that, trying to say that, oh, Tom Askel, resolution nine, he's downplaying resolution nine. Resolution nine wasn't a big deal.

35:11

Tom Askel, Al Mohler, they would have even gone with it if you had just said that they came from these ungodly worldviews or non -Christian worldviews.

35:19

And that's just not, that's not the case. That's not what Tom Askel was trying to do, which, okay, you can misunderstand.

35:26

I get that, but why try to downplay the resolution nine? Why do that?

35:32

And this is where I think people on the SBC side that are in the establishment, the evangelical industrial complex, they like Neil because he defends some of the things they do.

35:41

And I'll give you some more examples of that. He defended Jarvis Williams' use of critical theory.

35:47

So check this out. So Tim Dukeman asks, so will you call for Jarvis Williams to be fired from his professor position at Southern?

35:54

Neil Schoenbe says, no, why would I? He and lots of other evangelicals have said he finds critical race theory useful.

36:00

But as far as I know, he hasn't said anything heretical. This either means that he embraces the core unbiblical tenants of critical race theory, but hasn't followed them to their logical conclusions, or that he rejects the core unbiblical tenants of critical race theory.

36:13

Now, this is interesting because this is the same Jarvis Williams who, if you watch the

36:19

Enemies Within the Church montage, which came out before this, and Neil saw it because he commented on it in his Facebook group, where Jarvis Williams is saying, fight for penal substitution, racial reconciliation, the same way you'd fight for penal substitution.

36:30

They're on that same level, that gospel issue level. Same Jarvis Williams who put out, you can go look at it online, a syllabus, which someone leaked, but he gave it to his students, where he's promoting a lot of these woke ideas.

36:42

Same Jarvis Williams who said at the Gospel Coalition blog, I wish Christians would read Delgado's critical race theory. Not because they want to oppose it for apologetic reasons, but because there's useful things to glean.

36:52

That's why, positive reading of it. And Shenvey's saying, yeah, that's not a problem. That's fine.

36:59

Evangelicals, finding CRT useful. You can find critical race theory useful. Neil Shenvey, saying it right there.

37:07

It's interesting to me. He's the guy that's gonna oppose this stuff, but he thinks Christians can at least find some useful things in it.

37:15

Shenvey confusing the relationship of critical theory and postmodernism. So this is a black hole that I don't want to get into, because I'm already over the time

37:21

I wanted to spend on this video. But Shenvey says that, it's common to confuse critical theory and postmodernism, but they're distinct.

37:27

In particular, critical theory is not relativistic. It believes deeply in the objective reality of oppression and the objective righteousness of its aims.

37:35

I'll make my comments brief, but postmodernism is not necessarily, what's the word he uses?

37:41

He says, relativistic. It's subjective, but it doesn't have to be, there's different versions of postmodernism too, but it doesn't have to be relativistic.

37:51

In fact, it's not value -free. It's very value -laden, postmodernism.

37:58

Because, I mean, that's inescapable. All philosophies of life have to have a value system of some kind.

38:06

So postmodernists are skeptical of the overarching narratives.

38:12

They want, truth is defined by individuals or groups of individuals.

38:20

It's very man -centered. So yes, that's not the same thing as critical theory.

38:27

In fact, critical theory is based on, it's built on a foundation though, of postmodernism.

38:35

It accepts the metaphysic of postmodernism. Critical theory is pushing a value theory though, that is

38:46

Marxist. So the Marxist value theory is on the engine of postmodern metaphysics.

38:53

And of course, postmodern epistemology, that is indisputable. I mean, standpoint epistemology is the foundation of critical theory.

39:01

So you can't have one, this is like saying, well, it's common to confuse Christian belief with the

39:07

Bible as a foundation or something. It's like, yeah, I guess they're different things.

39:13

Christianity and the Bible are in different categories, but, or biblical truth or something, but they're very connected here.

39:20

And that's very important to see that. And the reason, I think he put this out right after Danny Akin had said something that was basically in line with standpoint epistemology.

39:29

I think we do better when we sit down to read the Bible and we have brothers and sisters coming from all different ethnicities, all different socioeconomic standings, because they're gonna have insights into this infallible, inerrant text that I, for example, will miss, simply because of who

39:47

I am, where I've lived, where I was born, what I've studied, and who

39:52

I'm influenced by. And Shenve did not want to condemn that. He wanted to kind of defend that or deflect from it.

40:00

And so this may have been what he was tweeting about, I'm not sure, but this certainly muddies the waters.

40:08

Describe the, there is a relationship. Just saying, they are distinct, but describe the relationship.

40:15

They don't contradict one another, which is what he's making out. They definitely do not. He also conflates culture and ethnicity.

40:22

I'm not gonna read you all of this. You can screenshot it and go back and read it if you want, but I think

40:28

Bill Roach responded very well to this, when Neil Shenve's trying to say that ethnicity correlates with culture, and culture does influence our presuppositions.

40:38

So he's saying, he's trying to defend Danny Akin, and Neil Shenve's trying to do gymnastics to defend this.

40:44

Well, certain ethnicities correlate with cultures, and cultures influence our presuppositions, and because cultures can do that, well, then cultures, you get more people, they're gonna see different things, they're gonna come up with a better reading.

40:55

And ultimately, the problem with all this is that what Danny Akin was saying was out of a standpoint epistemology playbook.

41:04

He's saying, that's how you get a better reading. We're going to necessarily have a better reading the more diverse perspectives that we have represented interpreting the

41:12

Bible. No, in fact, if you had the author there who is the only perspective, you're going to get the best perspective, right?

41:23

In fact, you start adding perspectives, you're gonna get a worse perspective, because you're gonna get away from what the author was saying, perhaps.

41:28

He knows what he said. And so, adding perspectives, here's the truth in that.

41:35

The truth is that sometimes people, because of their cultures, because they emphasize different things, they see different things, yeah, they can notice things that others would not notice.

41:42

That is possible. That's not just cultures, though. That's professions, that's all kinds of factors can go into that.

41:51

But you wouldn't do this in any other field. You wouldn't say, well, you know what, we're gonna have the best brain surgery ever.

41:58

If we just get people from all sorts of different cultural backgrounds, no, you want a good brain surgeon. And it is very possible that there will be some observations that some brain surgeons, because of the way they grew up, will see that others will not.

42:10

That could happen. But ultimately, you're not shooting for diversity to make something accurate or to get the best reading on something, to interpret something.

42:21

You're shooting for a way in which, a mechanism in which, an interpretation method in which, you can ascertain the objective truth of the authorial intent.

42:32

What did the author mean? That is, that should be the focus. The focus should never be the diversity of perspectives.

42:38

And then in just assuming that you're gonna get a better reading. You may get a way worse reading doing that. You may get perspectives that are way off in left field, but you're including them because, well, they're just a different culture or something.

42:49

So that's the problem with Danny Akin's statement. Neal Shenvey wants to do gymnastics to defend this. Bill Roach, I mean, just,

42:55

I mean, he says, what about Socrates? You have faithful Greek during his time. He was ethnically

43:01

Greek, but viewed as an outcast. So was he a faithful Greek? No, they didn't see him that way.

43:07

So ethnicity, culture, the ways of thinking, these are all, you can't just put these all in a ball and then say, and wrap it up and say, they're all the same thing.

43:15

They're not, they're not. And so this is just, this is rudimentary level mistakes.

43:20

So it's important I say this at this juncture. Again, I need to repeat it probably. I can make mistakes, right?

43:27

I'm not beyond that. You can make mistakes. So I'm not trying to slam Neal here. I'm not trying to say that Neal is just inept on this issue and you should never listen to anything he says.

43:37

I just want to recognize that he has some limitations that would preclude me from recommending his resources for the purpose of interpreting or understanding critical theory.

43:48

Could you use his stuff for research? I'm sure you can. And does that mean he'll continue, I'll continue to think that, maybe not.

43:54

Maybe he's, I'm sure, learning and growing and hopefully he puts out some material in time that doesn't have these limitations.

44:01

But at this point, there are some limitations there in his understanding of this. And again, he's way smarter than me,

44:08

I'm sure, on some areas. I think he's a scientist of some kind or that's his background. I think he's a molecular biologist or a physicist or a chemist.

44:16

I forget, but look, he knows a lot more than me on some things. Very intelligent guy, I'm sure.

44:22

But that doesn't mean that he has limitations in this area. So that's all I'm trying to say.

44:28

And this is for the sake of discernment. I know his stuff is recommended a lot. I would just be, I'd be careful of making him the go -to guru of critical theory, at least at this point.

44:38

Now, speaking of go -to gurus, James Lindsay is considered by many to be the world expert now on critical theory.

44:47

New Discourses, I think, is his website. He's got the whole dictionary of social justice terminology.

44:55

Really bright guy. And not a Christian, bright guy though. And he actually got into the fray on this

45:01

Danny Akin thing. He's the one, he actually posted the video of Danny Akin talking about interpreting the

45:07

Bible. And he says, the question is, what kind of specific perspective come along with being a white male or black lesbian?

45:13

We all have biases. But why should we assume that those are sources of bias? And what do those biases reflect?

45:19

Theory isn't ambiguous on this, but we can ask. So he's saying, why just assume that these external qualities are the sources of a bias when reading a text?

45:28

That bias necessarily comes from your ethnicity, for instance. So if you're black, you necessarily are going to read something differently.

45:35

That's something that critical theory isn't silent on. There's a reason someone would think that, because they bought into this idea that there is a standpoint of epistemology.

45:43

Your social group determines this lens you read everything through. And social groups can be all sorts of different external qualities.

45:52

And of course, ad infinitum. I mean, it can be because of intersectionality.

46:01

It can be the fact that you're left -handed. You're at a disadvantage, so you're gonna look at the world differently. It could be all sorts of things. So he's saying that this isn't an ambiguous thing.

46:09

And so Neil Shenvey, it's just interesting the way he responds to this. He says, well, after listening to the clip,

46:14

I think the main criticism that could be lodged is that it's arguably essentializes attributes like ethnicity.

46:20

In principle, there's no reason to think that a black woman will necessarily have a different set of assumptions than a white man.

46:26

On the other hand, since culture does correlate with attributes like ethnicity or nationality or geography, it is legitimate to think that these factors can influence how we interpret evidence.

46:36

What I'm missing is how this connects to subjectivism, saying that we all have blind spots and we'll be better able to see them if we interact with people who don't share our views, does not commit us to any kind of relativism, right?

46:49

And of course, I've already explained that's not, that's true, but that's not as far as Danny Akin's going here.

46:56

The issue is, what would make, let's bring the brain surgery example back up. What would make a brain surgeon from the

47:02

Philippines and a brain surgeon from the United States, who, let's say one's female, one's male, one's left -handed, one's right -handed, one's introverted, one's extroverted, et cetera, different languages they speak, what would make them different, better at their job, let's say, better at doing brain surgery?

47:20

What if they're the same? What if they have the exact same skills, exact same training, exact same skills?

47:26

Well, what's the factor that made them the same despite all these supposed, these external qualities that should make their reading of the textbooks on brain surgery different and the way they approach it different, et cetera?

47:39

Well, the difference is they're applying the same scientific principles because those are objective, right? Those don't change.

47:45

And hermeneutical principles are the same way. The way that you read literature, those rules of interpretation, they don't change.

47:52

And so someone who lives in a different geographic area, who has a different ethnicity, et cetera, that's the issue.

47:58

They can read it the same way because they're applying the tools in consistent fashion. And so bringing up, disregarding that level of training, that level of understanding, and then just bringing up ethnicity as if that's the factor, that's the most important one.

48:13

That's what Danny Akin seems to do here, that this is the thing that we're gonna get a better reading from.

48:20

We just, different people of different ethnicities reading this. And maybe he'll, maybe if he thought through it, he'd say, oh, okay, well, training would help.

48:28

But he's still saying that training with ethnicities, that's a prominent factor in this, the ethnic makeup.

48:36

So yeah, it can be true that people can come at things from a different worldview and they can notice different things.

48:42

But the point is, if you're gonna be good at your job, then you're going to understand these principles that are part of the fabric of reality.

48:50

And you're going to be able to apply them well. And you can overcome whatever cultural barriers that might be in existence in your community in order to do that.

48:59

That's accessible information for anyone. That's the point. And so Neil Shenvey wants to carve out this space for Danny Akin somehow to read this in a way that he's sort of trying to agree with James Lindsay, but he's saying, but on the other hand, there is reason to think that culture does correlate with ethnicity.

49:21

So it can be legitimate to think that these factors can influence how we interpret evidence. Well, that's not, yeah, yeah, they can.

49:28

But that's not the point. The point is, where's your authority? Where are you going to to figure out what a text means?

49:36

Are you going to a panoply of different ethnicities to figure out what the better reading is?

49:41

Or are you going to people who understand hermeneutical principles well? And so this would destroy, obviously, hard sciences.

49:50

Brain surgery is the one I like to use because it makes sense. You would be very uncomfortable if you had a panel of different ethnicities and the training was secondary, but they're gonna make the decision on what to do about your brain surgery.

50:02

You'd be frightened. You want, even if it's one person, you want someone who knows how to do it, knows the science behind it, all right?

50:11

All right, we're gonna switch some gears here. Before I do, though, I just, or I'm gonna cap this with, again,

50:18

I wasn't planning on doing this today, but I did get some questions. And I think because a lot of Neil's stuff is shared now a lot,

50:25

I think it is important that I should at least address it. I'm not trying to just be silent and not endorse

50:32

Neil's stuff because I'm a big meanie or something like that, or he's in competition. Look, I don't have a problem endorsing.

50:38

I endorse a lot of other people's stuff. In fact, I did that at the beginning of this program. I love a lot of the stuff

50:46

Sovereign Nations puts out on this subject. I think, I would say, if you wanna understand critical theory, I think

50:51

James Lindsay's a great person to go to on this. But I think there's some limitations right now with Neil's understanding.

50:59

And I don't know, I'm not attributing any motives. He may be very well -meaning. He may be very nice and really have a heart to take this issue on because he sees some of the bad abuses.

51:11

But what I notice is he goes for the more extreme elements, though the ones that are more consistently in that critical race theory model.

51:17

And he kind of gives a pass where he doesn't talk about those who platform him. And so that's something that I think you should at least just be aware of.

51:26

And so I would be open to talking to people more about this. And I'd be open to Neil critiquing this if he wants to critique it.

51:33

Like I said, nothing personally against him at all. So let's switch gears here now.

51:39

Let's go to John MacArthur. And what he said, this is last year.

51:46

I don't think I really understood in seminary how relentless this battle would be and how much discernment it would take and how it would affect relationships.

51:59

How many relationships eventually look like they're going in the right direction, but are sacrifice to an unwillingness to do battle.

52:07

And you wind up sort of at the end of your life having been stripped of people who at some point gave in to the other side and the ranks get thinner and thinner.

52:19

I'm sort of living in that era. I'm living in an era on one hand as a shepherd and a pastor where I have 50 years of loving people who have filled my life with so much love and so much kindness and so much affection that it's just beyond comprehension.

52:37

And that's grace church. And that's the people who hear the word of God and believe it and follow it.

52:43

But on the other hand, I watch my life as it comes to an end being stripped of relationships with many, many evangelical leaders, because at some point they're unwilling to stand where I stand.

52:56

They will call up and ask, how do we re -engage with MacArthur? What did we do?

53:06

And it really comes down to whether or not you're a faithful soldier. And it's interesting he said that a year ago, right?

53:14

Or not even quite a year ago. This is what he said recently after this whole issue with Grace Community Church opening up and the issue of the church being threatened by Los Angeles.

53:26

This is what he said. People don't wanna take a stand. Look, I'll be very specific. The last couple of days we've been dealing with this issue.

53:33

A lot of evangelical leaders across the country that I know and not one of them that is a prominent person has contacted me to say thank you.

53:44

Because if you're not everything that the pragmatic evangelical movement thinks you need to be, you're like a pariah.

53:52

We can't associate with you because that's not gonna work out there because if the world doesn't like you, they aren't gonna like Jesus.

53:59

Does that bother you at all? Does that bother you? This is a watershed moment in my opinion.

54:06

This just shows kind of where the evangelical industrial complex is at. The people that you might've thought were solid, a lot of them.

54:14

And I'm not going through a whole deep dive into who's supporting MacArthur and who's not. I'll tell you what though, here's one person.

54:20

Here's one person who's supporting him. Rodney Howard Brown. I think he's a prosperity preacher.

54:28

I don't know a lot about him. He's one of the guys though that initially in this whole thing in Florida wanted to remain open, his church.

54:35

Now, as far as I know, he's part of that American gospel, kind of probably not a good guy in the sense of understanding

54:42

Orthodox theology. I don't know a lot about him, but he may be even a false teacher. But this is what he said.

54:48

He said, look, Pastor John MacArthur is not a fan of mine. However, he is a brother. I am praying for him and his church this weekend as they come against this communist agenda to shut down the church.

54:58

May God strengthen and embolden him. If we don't hang together, we will hang separately. Now, I happen to know this one thing about Rodney Howard Brown.

55:04

Someone told me this. He did come from South Africa. He knows what communism can look like.

55:10

I think he wrote a book on it. My friend was telling me. This is peak 2020.

55:16

You have Rodney Howard Brown, who's totally, I mean, he would, I think he was called out at the

55:22

Strangefire Conference. He's coming out in support of John MacArthur. And where are John MacArthur's alleged friends?

55:28

The people he talked about at the Shepherd's Q &A panel over a year ago, where he said, I'm not gonna go after my friends.

55:34

And over and over, they go after him. Sometimes in roundabout ways, but Lincoln Duncan did it after the

55:39

Beth Moore go home statement. Mark Dever just backed up Jonathan Lehman for Jonathan Lehman's questioning of MacArthur's decision.

55:50

Al Mohler has been nowhere to be found, it seems like, on any of these issues to defend

55:56

John MacArthur. Yet he'll defend Southern Baptists till the cows come home on everything that is going on in the convention.

56:03

So what is going on? And of course, Al Mohler, too, I should mention, I said in the last podcast, but he just, in a backhanded way, came out against John MacArthur.

56:13

And without mentioning his name, but calling, in the context of talking about MacArthur opening up, warning about malpractice, church malpractice.

56:22

What's going on out there? What's going on? It can be discouraging.

56:28

And so I understand that. I'm fully aware of that. There's a lot of other things, too, that could be discouraging.

56:35

Here's one thing. I found out about this this morning, and I guess this was a decision from June.

56:41

This is just tip of the iceberg, just a little example of what's going on out there. Rutgers English Department.

56:47

Rutgers University English Department responds to Black Lives Matter. Here's one of the things they've done.

56:55

I'm not gonna read this whole thing, but here's the thing that stood out, mostly. Incorporating critical grammar into our pedagogy.

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This approach challenges the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar, sentence -level issues, so as to not put students from multilingual, non -standard academic

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English backgrounds at a disadvantage. Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them with regard to micro -level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on written accents.

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Let me cut through this for you. The standard grammar, standard

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American grammar, we shouldn't enforce that so heavily. This is where, this is

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Rutgers University. This is Rutgers saying this, that they're going to incorporate critical grammar, critical, so to criticize grammatical structures, the way grammar is constructed.

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I mean, you don't get much more postmodern than this. Grammar and sentence -level issues, they don't wanna put students from disadvantaged backgrounds, which are multilingual, non -standard academic

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English backgrounds at a disadvantage. This is, we're destroying standards. We are destroying standards.

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And what is this gonna do? I had an engineer friend of mine reach out to me. If I said who he was, he'd probably be fired if someone found this clip.

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But he reached out to me, he said, look, we are involved in producing some stuff, like important stuff for aircraft, kind of important.

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He goes, I'm afraid of what's happening because we're making our decisions now based on things like who's a minority -owned business, who's a gay -owned business.

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We gotta do business with them. The, all the training that they get, the sensitivity training.

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And he said, look, our quality is going down. It's happening. Production and quality are going down.

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It's just the quality's not there. What is this doing to our country in ways that we don't see right now, but we're gonna find out about in probably about five to 10 years?

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What is changing us? This whole movement is changing us. So there's, that's going on.

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And if you weren't worried about that, the national debt. Now, I just took this screenshot a couple hours ago, but national debt, 26, over 26 and a half trillion, right?

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We were upset when it was less than half of that. When Obama got into office, right?

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2009, 12 .3, 12 .3 trillion. And we had a tea party.

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People were enraged. It's more than half, more than twice that number now.

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Where's the tea party? We just almost spent, and it didn't pass. I don't know what, they're in negotiation still,

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I guess, in Congress. But another stimulus? Remember when Obama passed a stimulus?

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I just, I can't believe what I'm seeing. Things are changing so quick. Republicans are caving on so many core things right now.

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Here's one that I may talk about later in this week, but some of you may not think this is a big deal.

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I see this as a Trojan horse. The bill is called HR 7608,

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State Foreign Operations Agricultural, Rural Development, Interior Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2021.

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And here's the long and short of it. One of the sections, two of the sections talk about the removal of Confederate commemorative works, including flags and monuments, and then an inventory of assets with Confederate names.

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Now, why would you take an inventory? Well, to see what you possibly would remove in the future. That's the reason. And so the people that are tour guides at Gettysburg are upset about this.

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And I don't have a lot of compassion, because where have they been in the last few years? But now it's gonna affect their job, because if you've been to a battlefield, you know monuments tend to commemorate places where actual things took place.

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So it's the historical landscape. That's where that happened. And sometimes, yeah, oftentimes, actually, they will commemorate in such a way that shows the positive nature of sacrifice, of heroism, et cetera.

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It'll depict soldiers sometimes marching into battle on both sides. And these are men who died, who sacrificed.

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And this could potentially start the process of removing those things from battlefields. I didn't think I would see this, honestly.

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I thought they would be safe at battlefields, for a while, at least. This is quick. And it shows me how quick things are moving.

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I don't know how much longer Founding Fathers stuff is. Once this stuff comes down, what's next? Trump has been the one making this argument.

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He said people who support Robert E. Lee, his memory, they're not bad people, necessarily, just because of that.

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He said that Robert E. Lee was a good general. He's the only one I see pushing back on any of this. The Republican Party has been, they've adopted poison, in my opinion, absolute poison.

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And I'll explain why. Because what the Republican Party is doing is they're trying to say the scapegoat for all of America's sins is the

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Democratic Party. They're the party of the KKK, and oppression, and gangsters, and et cetera. And the

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Republican Party was born out of anti -slavery. It's the good party. They passed civil rights and Ronald Reagan. Boom, boom, boom.

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That's the Republican Party. Except it's not true. That's not an accurate depiction of history. That has holes in it everywhere.

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We're gonna throw Thomas Jefferson away? He was a Democratic Republican. Democrats claimed him for a long time.

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That's why they had the Jefferson -Jackson dinners. You're gonna throw away all the

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Republicans during the wars out West. I mean, who's it?

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Sherman? General Sherman, I think. After the Union Army had taken over the South, they went out West.

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And because the Republican Party was born out of an effort to expand West and infrastructure projects, kind of like the old

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Whigs, American system, Henry Clay stuff, but they wanted the West for free white labor.

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Now, there's a lot of quotations I can give you on this. And of course, the railroad was part of this as well, but they went out, they made war.

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A lot of the Native Americans put them on reservations. That's those Republican administrations. The Union Army that had conquered the

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South goes out West and does this kind of thing. Are we, you know, you just wanna own that?

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Say, you know, so proud to be a Republican. And I'm not doing this to blast the Republican Party.

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I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think I am a registered Republican. I moved and I was a registered conservative in New York.

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I think I'm a Republican here, but here's the thing though, playing identity politics with our ancestors is not a good idea because when the

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Republicans start down this road and they start finding out, wow, look what Abraham Lincoln said on race.

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You don't think Lincoln's gonna be canceled. You don't think that some of the heroes that you have are gonna come down as well.

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The difference between Democrats and Republicans is Democrats don't care about throwing their ancestors under the bus. They can rename, they'll throw

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Woodrow Wilson under the bus. He was a progressive, but they don't care because the Democrats are progressives.

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They are progressing and everything from the past is barbarism. We'll get rid of it, that's fine.

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They canceled the Jefferson Jackson dinners. They're not proud of those guys anymore. The Republican Party is different.

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They actually do wanna hang on to heritage somehow, but they're doing it in a bad way. They're doing it by twisting the narrative of history to just blast

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Democrats and make Democrats responsible for all the national quote -unquote sins. And I'm sorry, but the parties that existed a hundred years ago are not the same as the parties that exist now.

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And I can recognize that the Democrats today are communists and realize that they weren't the same Democrats during the time of Andrew Jackson.

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In fact, they were more so the party of small government at that time in comparison to the

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Whig. Now, of course, Jackson won a national bank and so forth, but the differences aren't...

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There really isn't a tradition that they stand in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has been taken over by revolutionaries.

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And Republicans don't seem to understand this. They think, they project, they think the Democrats care about their history as much as they care about theirs.

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That's just not true. It's just not true. So you start down this road of something that could have possibly offend someone being having to be removed possibly, that there's no end to where that acid will eat.

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And I'll tell you what this is. This is cancel culture. And this started, I think, with millennials mostly when they started on MySpace years ago and Facebook deleting all the pictures of ex -boyfriends and ex -girlfriends as if it never happened down the memory hole, right?

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And you probably did that too, if you're listening, right? It's because you had...

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The reason you would have done that was because you had a negative association with them. It was embarrassing, you didn't wanna be associated.

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Well, who's gonna wanna be associated with bigoted history? I mean, Colonial Williamsburg is already having problems keeping alive financially.

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People aren't gonna wanna go to these places. And more Southerners go to Gettysburg than Northerners. Take down all those Southern monuments, you think people are gonna show up?

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And if we forget our history, we're not gonna have an identity. Marxists understand that. They do. That's why

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Marx believed that history was the chief discipline. The chief of the sciences was history.

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And that's the first thing that you do is indoctrinate the children. Give them negative associations of things that they used to be proud of.

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Sacrifice and heroism of these guys. Well, now they're looking at them and they're just thinking, well, these are just a bunch of racists. That's all they are.

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That's a one -dimensional view. And so we need to take them down. It's offensive. It might offend me if I look at it.

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Well, if we start doing that, what are the negative associations with Thomas Jefferson gonna do? Or what about our own little ventures into colonialism with the

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Spanish -American War and Hawaii and et cetera? Do we just rip down Republicans from history?

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What do we do with Teddy Roosevelt? I mean, I know what's happening in New York City, right? I don't know if they are, if they've taken him down or not.

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They're a big statue and they wanted to take down. So where does this end? Where does this end, guys?

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And I would encourage you, talk to your senator if you're concerned about this, because this is the beginning of the end.

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This is how this works. And this has happened. I started reading a book on Mao's China during the

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Cultural Revolution. It's the same playbook in many ways. So I'll probably talk more about history because we need to be able to respond to these things.

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Well -meaning people, useful idiots, really, that's the term, not my term, but a term that I've heard used that I think is accurate.

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People who have good intentions, well, it offends someone, we gotta take it down. We need to know how to respond to those people. And so I'm gonna do some of that as well, because this stuff just eats away at authorial intent.

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It'll come for Christianity, the quote -unquote white man's religion according to social justice warriors. And we won't have an answer for it if we buy into it now.

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Let's not buy into it. Let's draw the line and say, look, I'm from Idaho. I don't have any connection to this.

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Look, I grew up in upstate New York. I, but I have,

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I can see where this is going. And I probably will contact my senator about this. Some hopeful things.

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I wanna end on a high note. First of all, let's do this first. First Kings 19, 18, yet I will leave 7 ,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him.

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Guys, you're not alone. A lot of people like you, people that are leaving churches, I get the emails all the time, we're creating right now.

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A network that will help connect you with others of like -minded faith. And hopefully we'll go around the institutions to plant some good churches.

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So I'm encouraged by some movement I see in that area. Might be a few months before that whole thing is up, but we're working.

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Also Russell Fuller has, and I'll put the link in the info section. I'll put a bunch of stuff there for you. He started his theology classroom.

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This is a good first step with getting around the institutions and starting some good theological education. Now it's on the ground floor.

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This is the beginning, but I think it's gonna be good. I think it's gonna be good. I also heard,

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I think it was yesterday, I think it was Tennessee passed a heartbeat bill, which might not go as far as many of us want, but it's a step in a direction which should be interesting, undermining

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Roe v. Wade and abortion. So we praise God for that. There are some good things going on.

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There's some people out there trying to do some good things. And I don't wanna forget about all of that. And we should never.

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But we do need to be aware of the tsunami that is coming our way that ever increases.

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And it does bother me. It does bother me to see all these men who I thought were solid years ago, not either they're silent or they're just not gonna stand with John MacArthur on something so basic as being able to meet as a church.

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So those are my thoughts for this weekend. Bunch of stuff for next week.

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We'll see how far I get. But appreciate all your prayers. Again, once again, for my father -in -law, it does mean a lot.