News Roundup: Todd Benkert, Marvin Olasky, and Glenn Youngkin

Conversations That Matter

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Hey, everyone, welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. As always, I want to talk about a bunch of stuff.

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It's kind of some unrelated things in a way, I guess. So there's not like a common thread today, but I want to talk about Todd Benkert and his appointment to the sexual abuse task force in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. So some Southern Baptist news for all of you. I know some of you are turning it off right now. I don't want to hear about that denomination.

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Well, that's not all there is. So we're going to talk about Marvin Alasky, who wrote The Tragedy of American Compassion. I believe he was the one that I think helped craft

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George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism. But more recently, he was the chief editor at World Magazine and the

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New York Times has a take on him that is much different than I think the reality. And so I want to,

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I just want to show you kind of what's being said. There's some things that came out about him recently. And then Glenn Youngkin, governor of Virginia.

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I just want to since I did kind of take a stand against Glenn Youngkin in the primaries in Virginia.

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I wanted to let you know kind of where in some ways on social issues, especially where things ended up because Christians in Virginia voted for him on the basis of what he says.

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He's a good Christian. He speaks the language we have got to be way better at vetting.

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We have got to be way better at researching our candidates that we spent. You spent like half an hour online or less and I realize not everyone has that time, but even 10 minutes of just doing some research on Glenn Youngkin.

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I think you'd find, wait a minute, does this add up? And and unfortunately, it's a lot of things that I said are coming true.

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A lot of the things that I warned about are happening. So it's an example.

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So anyway, let's start here. I'm going to start by playing a video for you. Todd Benkert is with SBC Voices and it's an outlet.

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I would say more to the left in the SBC for sure. But let me give you a little sampling before I play the video of some of the things

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Todd Benkert has put out there publicly. Now, he's been appointed to the sexual abuse task force by the president of the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And I haven't seen all the responses from conservatives, but the few

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I have seen seem awfully weak to me. And I think, you know, there's the thing that concerns me about a guy like Todd Benkert, if I was to be concerned, if I was in the nomination, wouldn't be as much some of the things that are being focused on now.

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It would be his overall philosophy, his overall philosophy. He's looking at the job that he's going to do on the sexual abuse task force.

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Is he actually capable of doing it? Or is he going to be biased? Is he going to have a conflict of interest?

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Is he going to faithfully execute his duties in that office? And I think the answer is if you look at just a brief perusal of some of the things that he's put out there and then

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I want to play for you a longer clip from him, Rachel Denhollander, and then I forget the name of the other guy, but the other guy from SBC Voices.

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I'm going to just, it'll give you an insight into kind of what Todd Benkert's about when it comes to this, this issue of sexual abuse.

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So here's some of the things that he put out there on Twitter. He says, before the Me Too moment hits your church too, be protective in addressing the sexual assault now, sexual assault now.

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And he reposts SBC Voices. It's 2018 and it says, it says the same thing and it's got someone holding

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Me Too, hashtag Me Too. So he's saying in 2018, you know, I'm on this bandwagon. I'm on this, this, this

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Me Too bandwagon. Let me, let me see if I can pull it up for you so you can actually see it. Here you go. I'm going to minimize myself a whole lot so you can see this.

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Then you have, here's another one from him. Note that this discussion is not new nor, and he's talking about whether or not

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David raped Bathsheba, a controversy that's re -emerged because Rachel Denhollander said, we need to understand

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David raped Bathsheba. It wasn't consensual, except the text doesn't tell us. He's not getting it from the text. So Todd Banker says, note that this discussion is not new nor is it some novel interpretation inspired by the

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Me Too moment or movement. Whether or not you want to use the term rape, it is quite clear that the Bible condemns only

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David and that more than mere fornication took place. Really? Okay.

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So we see what side he's on on that one. Jennifer Lyell, he says, is my sister in Christ and we talked about Jennifer Lyell situation.

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Go back to my videos on that. I support her. I believe her. I care about her. I stand with her and against anyone who hurts her.

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She's been through hell, not only by her abuser, but even more so by many of you. Leave her alone. And this is when, you know,

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Megan Basham put out the article that she did and really poking a lot of holes in this narrative.

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And it's in Todd Banker, and again, you know, not examining the evidence, the facts here, not bringing us through any of that, explaining things.

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It's just, it's the Me Too response. It's just, we just got to believe her and you need to stop attacking her.

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You have, here again, he's, I mean, there's just so many of these, you know, this is just representative of a lot, a lot of his posts.

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He's heading to Nashville for the convention to stand with survivors. And he made a big to -do about it, had like,

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I think t -shirts and all kinds of things, sign he's carrying here. Be like Jesus, take abuse seriously, and love victims.

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And you have here, all this time, Jennifer Lyle's case was on my mind, especially when Baptist Press wrongly led Southern Baptist to believe her abuse was consensual and refusing to correct themselves and make it right.

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And then he says this, and I just had to include this, he goes, calling me woke is not an insult. He said this in 2020 during the riots.

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Well, it was May 7th. Calling me woke is not an insult. I mean, how many more black men have to be killed or, okay, so this is before the, right before,

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I guess. Or native women and girls go missing or children get molested by a minister before you wake up too.

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Hashtag Ahmaud Arbery, hashtag church too. So yeah, he's calling, he's saying it's a compliment to call him woke.

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This is the person that's now going to be heading up or part of the sexual abuse task force. So they're going to be the ones creating policy and responsible to help police sexual abuse in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And this is someone who can't even correctly have a suspicion, identify issues that would at least arise, cause someone to think that there should be some suspicion surrounding like the

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Jennifer Lyle case. It's just, you've got to believe it. So this is the kind of person that's in that position. Now, let me play for you an event that he co -hosted and you're going to hear his voice in here and along with Rachel Denhollanders and a few others and see what you think about this.

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The purpose of this breakout is to talk about how trauma -informed care can be useful in the church.

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Anything that has formed in that neural pathway in response to their trauma, especially in a church setting, can be incredibly triggering.

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The worship songs that their pastors played, the Bible verses they used to keep them silent, the sound of a man's voice reading scripture.

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All of those things can be early connected to those traumatic memories and then cause a cascade of physical and emotional realities and coping mechanisms.

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And if you don't understand all of those connections, you are going to misdiagnose what you are looking at.

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And here's a really common example. Survivors of sexual assault often, not always, but often act out sexually, very sexually aggressively.

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And oftentimes this is an attempt to regain some form of control over their sexuality. I actually have a high number of survivors that have told me,

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I wish I had modeled for Playboy or I wish I had entered because at least then I would be wielding my own sexuality rather than having it wielded against me.

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This often creates a cycle of abusive relationships in the survivor's life, partly because they've lost the ability to define what's normal and partly because they have reached this situation where they are continually trying to wield their sexuality, continually trying to regain control.

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And even if that means a cycle of unhealthy and abusive relationships, if they're the one initiating it, it can at least feel like they're wielding their sexuality rather than having it weaponized against them.

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This creates just a complete paradigm shifting for survivors of what normalcy is.

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And you're going to see this play out in the survivors that you are ministering to. You're going to see things in their lives that look to you like, oh, that's anger, that's sin, that's these things.

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But what it is, is a coping mechanism for what they've suffered. And if you can't help get to the root of what is going on, you're going to mislabel those things.

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It is absolutely imperative that we start understanding that God did not make us dualistic beings.

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Here's your body. Here's your soul. That's Gnosticism. We rejected that a long time ago, like way back when the

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Bible was being written. And we need to go back to theological orthodoxy and realize that God created us body and soul, and there is an intermingling of those realities.

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And trauma does not just cause a thought wound. Trauma causes a physical wound, and you can see it in the brain scans, you can see it in the blood work.

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It's there, it's real, and it's got to be treated that way. How does trauma -informed ministry relate to the

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Bible and our view as Baptists in the sufficiency of Scripture? I think it's an important question.

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One of the things I want to mention that it is consistent with Scripture, and I could spend a lot of time going into that.

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I will just ask you to observe when Dave comes up, the things that he's saying, does that resonate with you as things that are contrary to Scripture or in line with Scripture?

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And I want to go a little bit more and say what trauma -informed care does for us is to help us define problems accurately so that we can apply the

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Scripture appropriately. If we don't understand what's happening with trauma, we're not going to be able to use the

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Scripture in a way that is helpful. I thought it was very helpful, Matthew Barrett, one of our professors of theology at Midwestern Seminary, spoke of sufficiency this way.

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He says, "...sufficiency does not mean that Scripture functions alone apart from any other source or authority, rather that all other authorities serve under the

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Scripture, while Scripture rules over them as the final inspired authority." And I think that's important to understand that when we say that the

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Bible is sufficient, we are not saying that the Bible is the only authority that we have. What we're saying is that all other authorities, all other sources, must come under the authority of Scripture.

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We've had resolutions that have stated that. That is part of our Baptist distinctive in our

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Baptist faith. And so as Rachel explained, trauma is not merely a spiritual issue.

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Trauma is an issue that affects our physical and physiological being as well.

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And so trauma is not just what happened to us, but it is our experience of what happened to us.

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And so if we're going to understand how to minister to trauma, we're going to have to understand that trauma is not only answered with spiritual truisms, but it comes with a full understanding of the physiological, physical, mental, and spiritual effects that trauma has in our experience.

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In my opinion, there is no better Christian resource on trauma than Diane Langberg's book,

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Suffering in the Heart of God. The Bible is full of trauma and you'll often hear trauma -informed care speak in a shift of thinking between what is wrong with you and what happened to you.

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Has anyone heard that before? The shift in thinking between what is wrong with you and what happened to you.

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Now, those aren't biblical categories, but can I give you the corresponding biblical categories? What is wrong with you is the issue of sin.

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What has happened to you is the issue of suffering. We don't have a Bible that speaks only to the problem of sin and not to the problem of suffering.

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The scripture speaks to both issues. And so when we often focus on the problem of suffering, the theodicy and where does suffering come from and trying to explain why suffering happens.

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Sometimes we want to talk about the purpose of suffering. We'll go to Romans 8 28 and the very truth that God is using suffering in our lives, but we don't have the answer sometimes to the very presence of suffering in someone's life.

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And that's what we're dealing with when we're dealing with trauma. We're dealing with the presence of ongoing suffering in a person through the responses that they're having in their experience with a traumatic event.

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And so the sufficiency of scripture is limited only by our willingness to follow the whole counsel of God.

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Now, that's a sermon in itself, but the church is focused and I would say primarily the white evangelical church is focused.

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I think there's a lot that we could learn from our African American and First Peoples and Asian cultures that have much more robust theologies of suffering than we do in the white evangelical

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American Church. However, in our context, we often see just that lack of being able to focus on suffering.

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How can we not also contextualize our ministry to deal with the one out of four people in our congregation that have experienced significant trauma?

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Dave is going to share how important that is and I want to invite you to come and just talk about in general terms, how is it that we begin to be trauma -informed in the church?

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It starts with empathy. That is the absolute starting point for trauma -informed care because it's exactly what

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Jesus told us to do. To love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and then love your neighbor as yourself.

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Loving another as yourself is to imagine, right? Us in their position.

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That is what empathy is. When I came forward about being abused,

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I called pastor after pastor, church after church, entity after entity, and I had to explain in detail every single time what was happening to me.

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I wanted them to alert what was happening. Let me ask you something. How many of you ever been into emergency room?

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I know this has got to be everybody in the room, right? Everybody's gone to emergency room. How many times did you have to tell people the exact same thing?

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How many nurses and doctors, right? Over and over and over. Did you wonder if anybody was listening to you?

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Now imagine you've been sexually abused. And you're not just telling it to the same people in one night and one

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ER. Now you're having to say this story over for years, for decades.

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See, I know you can empathize because you have Christ in you. So you can do that. And we got to listen.

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My granddaddy always told me, son, you got two ears and one mouth. Use them proportionately, right?

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This isn't about having pity. It's about loving them, laughing with them, lamenting with them.

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And how do we listen? I hear you. I believe you. How can

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I help? Just ask the question, how can I help? And let them know that it was not their fault and whatever feelings and emotions they're having, they are normal and they are natural.

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Do you know the available resources in your area? Do you have any available resources?

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Sometimes you have to go online. Is there an advocacy, a child advocacy center near you?

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Victim advocates, forensic interviewers, victim services department. These are all things we need to know.

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And you might hear somebody tell you, well, but that's not a Christian organization. Maybe or maybe not.

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Do you call 9 -1 -1? Do you use district attorney's office if someone harms you and your family, right?

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There are all manner of organizations that we as Christians utilize for help for a particular reason.

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And it is not any different when it comes to trauma -informed care. How do these sins and crimes often get described?

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Well, it wasn't really as bad as they say. It was an adultery. It was adultery. It was an affair.

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It was a mistake. And my favorite, sarcastically, it was an inappropriate relationship.

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No folks, it is child molestation and it is rape. And for a denomination that has no problem calling out lots of sins, we need to start calling it what it is.

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We have to stop using this benign language. Communicating insignificance.

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How do we do that? Platitudes, right? These are the things that we say when we really don't want to talk about it.

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You need to forgive and move on. You need to get over it. It was a long time ago.

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Hey, out of tragedies, good things come. Or again, my favorite, well, it was God's will.

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No, God did not will for children to be raped for his glorification.

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That is neither trauma -informed and it is certainly not Scripture. It is not biblical.

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Genuine repentance must include total admission of crimes, not just the ones for which they've been caught.

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Total cooperation and submission to the criminal justice system. Acceptance and submission of the survivor's preferred boundaries and voluntary acceptance of any and all boundaries placed by church leadership.

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It is a sin and a crime and any offender that refuses that, that is not bearing the fruit of repentance.

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Recently, it was revealed to you some of the things that was said about survivors. We were troublemakers and we were evil and we were schemers of Satan damaging the work of Jesus.

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I hope we know now differently. I hope we know now that the survivors were the truth -tellers.

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Humility in the face of historical, cultural, and gender factors. You can go ahead and flip it to the next one.

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We don't know what another person's life experiences is. We have not walked a mile in their shoes.

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And in Philippians, it tells us clearly, in humility, consider others more than yourselves.

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So you just heard Rachel Denhollander. You heard Dave Miller, who's also from SBC Voices. And then in the middle there was

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Todd Bankert, who was appointed to the Sexual Abuse Task Force. This was the SBC 2022.

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This was last June and an event they held, SBC Voices held. And you first heard Rachel Denhollander talking about the reason that there's some sexual sin, really, sexual sinful behavior among abuse survivors, is that, that's the term they use, abuse survivors, is that it's a way of trying to cope with sexual sin in their past.

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Now, I can see opportunities to soft -pedal sin based on that.

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And I'm sure that some people may take those opportunities. The Bible does speak clearly about it. You can understand things, but the

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Bible still also speaks clearly about sin. It is against God. And I think that's something that primarily needs to be understood here, is that it's not just horizontal human relationships here.

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It's not just that when there's abuse that happens or sexual sin happens of any variety, that it's just, it's something that takes place between individuals.

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And there's a, that certainly happens. There's sin there, but there's also, and primarily so, sin against the

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Creator, going outside of His boundaries for sexual expression. And so, whether or not someone is trying to regain control of their life, they are still making war on the

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Creator. They still have a sinful black heart if they are engaging in that sin. It's not an excuse, and it's not, it doesn't even,

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I don't even know what I think about that, whether that makes it more understandable or not. That's, so I don't really want to comment on it.

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I just know what the Bible says about sexual sin. And I know that it's, it doesn't have this category that Rachel den

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Hollander is trying to give. This isn't being drawn from Scripture, which Rachel den Hollander just said.

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And Todd Bankert is trying to say this is biblical, this whole thing's biblical, but where do you find that distinction made in Scripture between those two?

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So, this is a, this is coming from psychology, that view.

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Gnosticism, she accuses or implies that Christians have a problem with Gnosticism.

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This is, and I talked about this just the other day in Carl Truman's book. I said this is a common thing to accuse

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Christians of is that they downplay the body too much. They downplay the body. They need to realize that we're body and soul.

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And I think it's odd when you do it without, there just doesn't seem to be much evidence of it out there.

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Maybe I'm missing something, put in the comments. If I'm missing something and there's all this Gnosticism, but the Gnosticism I see is more, it's the standpoint theory stuff.

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It's the, I have this, this knowledge that you don't have access to because I have an experience. I have, you can't even question my experience that I said

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I had because it's my experience and I'm a victim. And once it's got that protected victim status, you're not even allowed to bring evidence in that would overturn the assumption that someone's a victim.

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That's the Gnosticism I see. I don't see people who are saying, you know, what happens in the body doesn't matter or whatever.

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She's trying to imply here that it's it's irrelevant or something.

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What happens in your body? I just, I don't know. I just, I haven't had experience and I've had, I think, I hope a well -rounded evangelical experience being all the different institutions

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I've been at, but I haven't really ran into this. All right. So there's also talk about here.

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Let's see. This is what Todd Banker basically says is that trauma -informed counseling helps to define the problem more accurately.

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And I'm somewhat sympathetic with the idea that there, because I know this in the political realm, there are categories, there are things that people have observed that I think can help facilitate a discussion.

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I just talked about in the last podcast, distinctions and human relationships that exist.

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National distinctions, familial distinctions, you know, you can arrive at some of these conclusions without looking in the pages of Scripture.

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You'll find Scripture assumes these things, but you can come at these things because these are part of the natural world, the natural revelation

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God's given us. Well, anyway, he says that this particular form of counseling, this psychologized form of counseling though, trauma -informed counseling, he calls it, helps to define the problem more accurately.

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And this is where I have a caution that kind of goes up. It can as long as it's true.

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And if it has assumptions undergirding it that contradict Scripture or directly contradict

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Scripture, then it's not true. And you got to reject it. And so that's the real question here. And this is where I'm suspicious, because of some of the other things

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I heard. This doesn't sound to me like it's something derived from a biblical anthropology. There's a, he basically insinuates that the church has a problem separating sin and suffering.

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And maybe some churches do, I guess, but it's, or recognizing, I should say, suffering.

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But he's saying that this approach though, takes into account suffering. And how does it take into account suffering?

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It takes suffering into account by asking the question, what happened to you?

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So it puts you more in the victim position. And so, and what you see in this whole thing is that the sense you're getting is, okay, so you engage in sexual sin, but you're a victim.

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So it's more and more understandable. The question you got to ask is what happened to you? And that's the determinative thing here.

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It's taking responsibility off the person. Now, the person who is legitimately a victim is not, of course, responsible for sin that's not their own.

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Obviously, that's true. And so, if there's a Christian going around saying that, you know, like the

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Pharisees did to some extent, like people in India's caste system. I'm reading a book right now that talks about the

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India's caste system that, you know, imply that you did something bad in a previous life. And that's, it's your actions that are linked to your circumstances every time.

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Of course, that's wrong. But I don't, you know, and Christians probably can't act that way.

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But is that really what's going on, broadly speaking? Is that like a pernicious issue, a systemic issue in the evangelical church?

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I'm skeptical about that. I haven't really seen that. If anything, I see it's leaning the other way.

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Like people who have victim status don't really have to have much responsibility. They don't have to, they get the benefit of being defended.

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And even if they're exposed later and they've had lies, it's like, you know, like with the Jennifer Lyle situation, it's like even the things that were not true that she said can't be admitted by anyone.

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It's like, even if you're not questioning her whole narrative, you're just saying, okay, here's some things that she said that weren't true.

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And we've seen how they're not true. You can't question it. So that's, there's a protected status that is given here.

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And it's, he admits here, it's a shift. It's a shift from asking questions about, you know, what did you do?

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I think, or what did he say? What sin has been committed or whatever, but what happened to you?

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It's looking at the person as passive in that endeavor, in whatever took place.

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Then he says that basically, whites though, there's a lot of insinuating that the church has a problem.

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Specifically, whites have a problem. Whites don't have an understanding of suffering. They don't have a robust theology of suffering.

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You got to go to indigenous people and black people to understand suffering apparently. Because white people don't have that.

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It's, they don't have developed theology on this. And it's interesting though, because like the books he recommends are white people.

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I included one of them in there, the Diane Lainberg book. I was just like, well, where are all these resources you're talking about then?

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I mean, or is this just a talking point to belittle and to try to just keep more scorn upon white people?

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And then Dave Miller says some of the, this is the stuff that really, so there's a lot of suspicions. There's a lot of things that I'm like, that doesn't sound right.

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It's just, but then Dave Miller makes things clear for me here. And this is where I'm like, wait, hold on. He says it starts with empathy.

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All right. It starts with empathy. So you got to put yourself in that other person's shoes. And then he abuses scripture to make the point.

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He says, it starts with empathy. And that means loving your neighbor. And that's what that is. It's putting yourself, no, no, that, no, that's not, you're just inserting that.

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You're just taking a scripture and then you're inserting your own meaning into it. Actually, I'm not going to be able to relate to everything someone else has done and they're not going to be able to relate to everything

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I've done or experienced. We're just not. That's the truth of the matter. And so it doesn't,

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I don't think counseling starts with empathy. It, sympathy should be present.

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I would think if you're, certainly if you're a victim, but it starts with a love for God and a love for others.

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Well, what does that look like? Well, his law is his love. Love and law go together. That's what

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Jesus summarized the law in love your neighbor, love God. So our respect for those things is going to be there.

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A willing to sacrifice for the other person is going to be there. And the truth cannot be compromised because we're supposed to speak the truth in love.

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That has to be there. Well, where's the truth in this? Where's God's law in this? You don't hear them.

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It talked about, it's a psychologized understanding. That doesn't seem, it's not, either it's not compatible or it can't be completely interwoven with what the

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Bible teaches on this stuff. Like the very next thing he says, you have to say

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I believe you. You have to, so you start off from the posture. I just believe the story. Two or three witnesses, civil procedure.

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What it, I mean, is there any concern for truth here? Is it just I believe you? Using secular resources, that can be a good thing.

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And this is where I'm like, wait a minute. Do you see what's going on in our world? The sexually confused world that doesn't know what men and women are is going to help you with this.

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Hints at Jennifer, there's a hint that he takes, a shot he takes at the Jennifer Lyle situation. He doesn't say

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Jennifer Lyle, but he talks about categorizing rape as inappropriate relationship, which is what

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Baptist Press had done, except for the fact that there is not proof that it was rape. We don't know that, which is why it was using a more general term was the way

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Baptist Press originally went until they were threatened with legal action. And so he just, he just tears apart

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Baptist Press. I believe that's what he's doing without naming them. And again, it's, it's an attack.

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This whole thing is a vicious attack. Actually, if you really listen to it, they keep implying that there's this whole group of people, white,

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Christian, evangelical, Southern Baptist Press. I mean, these are the, these are the problems. These are the people that aren't doing, they're the ones that are, they're the ones that are the real issues.

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And that's the other thing that makes me suspicious because you're like, well, those people broadly speaking, and that's like that example,

31:06

Baptist Press, that wasn't an example of someone just saying like, well, you know, it was God's will that you were raped or it was, you know, you're,

31:15

I don't know, saying something really harsh or mean or like it's, it was reasonable what they did, given the situation.

31:22

And yet that's being, that's the example that's being used here as the wrong way to go. And then he says at the bottom, he's just survivors were the truth teller.

31:32

We're the truth tellers. Hopefully it's proven now that we're the truth tellers. No, it's not proven that someone, if you slap the label survivor on someone that they're the truth teller.

31:41

If someone, truth tellers are truth tellers. If you say something that's true and it's proven to be true, you can accept it as truth.

31:48

If a friend comes to you, let's say, this is, you know, just what we all, I think normally do with someone we trust.

31:54

They come to you and they say, this is my experience and you believe them. Well, there's nothing wrong with that, especially if they've proven themselves to be, you know, honest.

32:03

And if it's someone you don't know, and they say, this is my experience. I think it's still fine not for, you don't have, you're not required to believe them.

32:10

But if it seems like it checks out and it's not something like you're not influencing some decision based on their testimony, then sure.

32:19

I mean, if you want to just kind of take it for granted that it's true, that's considered good manners. But as soon as you start believing someone and that has implications of vilifying other people and changing policies in the

32:32

Southern Baptist Convention or elsewhere, that's different. Now you're required now to believe someone.

32:39

And if you don't, then you're a bad person, I guess. So it's the me too stuff just packaged into a

32:46

Christian veneer. That's what you have here. And this is the guy who's now on the sexual abuse task force. That's the concern

32:52

I have about someone like that. It's not the other stuff as much. Yeah, and there's plenty of things, plenty of political things that you could say about Todd Bankert, but that's, this is directly related to the role that he's going to play.

33:03

So he'd be, in my mind, a revolutionary. He'd be a transformer in the Southern Baptist Convention, and it's going to be along the me too lines.

33:12

Let's go to the next issue here. I want to talk about Marvin Alasky. New York Times said in 2021 that Marvin Alasky's departure from World Magazine is just another example of the

33:24

American news media sinking deeper into polarization. As one more conservative news outlet, which is, had almost miraculously retained its independence, is concerned by Mr.

33:32

Trump. Secular culture wars roiled world in the summer of 2020 over a podcast whose guests sharply criticized the protests after George Floyd's killing.

33:41

Mr. Alasky pressed to include a more liberal view. More recently, Mr. Alasky said he faced criticism from readers for running the articles by a doctor recommending masks and vaccines to prevent the spread of COVID.

33:51

Now, the person they're talking about is Daryl Harrelson. He was on a podcast for World, and Marvin Alasky did not like that apparently, according to the

33:59

New York Times. Now, they're saying this is, you know, they're saying he's basically trying to protect evangelicalism from itself in the article.

34:06

Now, another article, and so that was, who was that? Ben Smith. David Brooks in, from the New York Times, February 4th, 2022.

34:13

Says World is a Christian news organization that has been run by a team of strong journalists like Marvin Alasky, who was its editor, and Mindy Bells, one of the bravest and best foreign correspondents in the country.

34:23

It has long scrutinized the Christian world reporting on Christian leaders who have gone astray. It's editorialized that Trump was unfit for power after Axis Hollywood tape, but the culture at World deteriorated over the past few years.

34:35

Tensions mounted over its reporting on COVID protocols and race and over disagreements about whether the 2020 election was stolen.

34:41

Young reporters learned not to pitch stories that might offend Trumpist editors. Last fall, World's Board introduced an opinion section focusing on conservative commentary without fully consulting

34:49

Alasky. Albert Moeller, who was president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and endorsed Trump in 2020, was hired to run it.

34:56

Alasky, Bells, and five other journalists submitted their resignations unwilling to see their journalism become more partisan.

35:03

So this is the New York Times spin on the situation at World Magazine. Now here's, this is from Capstone Report, but this is,

35:09

Megan Basham came out on Twitter, who was at World, and she has verified that this is true. And this is what, this is what

35:17

Capstone Report says. In the wake of racial tensions within America and evangelicalism, Alasky formed a racial sensitivity committee.

35:23

This committee was empowered to review co -workers' work and guided World editorial policy by shaping how World covered stories filtered through a racial lens.

35:30

If that were not Orwellian enough, the committee was anonymous. World staffers were not sure who was on that committee. So basically, they've taken, they've set up a committee that's going to look at the content.

35:40

Those who are writing editorials now have to go through this filter. And it's by this, this committee that's going to be looking for racial sensitivity and whether or not it's racist, okay?

35:51

You know, are you writing racist stuff? It's a new committee. And so the New York Times acts like, you know,

35:56

Marvin Alasky is almost like a victim. All of this, this Trump stuff came in and, and pushed him out. When in reality,

36:02

Marvin Alasky was the one pushing the envelope here, implementing a racial sensitivity committee. He's the one that was the change agent.

36:08

The New York Times piece claimed that World was roiled by the culture wars during the summer of 2020. It links to a podcast as a source of division within the

36:15

World staff because the guest sharply criticized, and we talked about this, Daryl, Daryl Harrelson was the guy,

36:21

Harrison was a guy. Now, this is something that was, just to give you an idea of where Marvin Alasky's at in the social justice war in the evangelical circles, the two podcasts hosts

36:33

I listened to the most while walking my dog are David French and Justin Giboney, according to, according to Marvin Alasky.

36:39

If you're not familiar with them, this podcast will introduce you both. Now, let me give you a sample of what

36:44

Justin Giboney and David French sound like. And this isn't just like, oh, they had a bad day and this, you know, because someone could say, oh,

36:51

I listened to conversations that matter and then play one clip of mine that they disagreed with and be like, well, that's, he's not always talking about that.

36:58

This is something that's representative of David French and Justin Giboney. This is like what they talk about.

37:04

It's woke. It's that's, that's who they are here. Just, this is an example though. And this is, again, this is like the favorite podcast of Marvin Alasky.

37:11

Here we go. Let me, let me ask you this. This is one thing that I found, uh, well, let me, I'll do two things.

37:17

One, um, I'll stand in for the listeners who are saying, wait a minute, Justin.

37:23

It seems like I, and for those of you who don't know Duke Kwan and, and his book, it's a book about the concept of reparations and which is a super hot button word.

37:34

So there are going to be listeners who are saying, wait a minute, what are you talking about exactly here?

37:42

If you're talking about and you're referring to a book about reparations, like what do you, what do you mean by that?

37:49

Yeah, I think it's, I mean, you can go to Luke 19 when you see, uh, Zacchaeus, it's a repair.

37:55

When you, when something has been taken, uh, in the book, they talk a lot about white supremacy being a theft, right?

38:01

It's a theft of labor. It's a theft of identity, all these things. When that has happened, I believe there's a clear biblical ethic, whether we want to go to Exodus 21 through 22, uh, we can go to, uh,

38:13

Leviticus six and so on. There's a clear ethic that says when you have taken something or gained something that you didn't earn, or that was somebody else's, you need to repair that.

38:23

And if you look at the history of how African Americans have been treated in this country, who were enslaved and mistreated and not treated as equals under the law, much longer than we've been treated as equals.

38:34

If you even want to argue that that's the case right now, then there's clearly been a theft and that needs to be repaired.

38:41

Now, I'm not even talking about right now, some government, what the government needs to do or anything that I'm talking about, what the church needs to do.

38:47

And if you look at the history, the church has benefited in financial ways and other ways from that theft.

38:53

And we need to have a better conversation about how we repair that. Um, and if we don't,

38:58

I mean, it makes it very hard to move forward with racial reconciliation efforts.

39:04

And you know, this political divide that we've been talking about just gets larger and larger. The Protestant church in the

39:10

U .S. Is just a bunch of whole, a whole bunch of brand new institutions, right?

39:16

You've got all kinds of non -denominational churches that have sprung up in storefronts, for example. They have a history, but it might be to 2011, you know, that particular church.

39:28

What do you say to a lot of these much newer Christian institutions? There's all kinds of them in evangelical spaces that have exploded and grown up since the end of slavery, since the end of Jim Crow.

39:42

And they're gonna look at you and say, Justin, what are you talking about? We, my institution that I had,

39:49

I'm a part of, had nothing to do with it. I have had nothing to do with it. This institutional analysis doesn't make any sense to me because we're not a seminary that benefited from slavery.

40:00

We're a church that started with 23 people in an old, you know, an old 7 -Eleven building 15 years ago.

40:08

What do you say? I would say that you're part of a culture and institutions that have benefited in general, right?

40:15

So you know, even when, whenever we look at sin or when we look at Christian ethics, you got to look at the spirit of it.

40:21

Because if we want to get out of something, if we want to be overly technical and be lawyers like you and I are, we can do that.

40:27

I wouldn't do that with God, though. And I think if you really look at the spirit of, honestly, if you really look at the spirit of what that ethic is saying, have

40:36

I in direct or indirect ways had a benefit? And even if I didn't, has somebody been, has something been taken from somebody?

40:44

What is my responsibility? So yeah, we can get technical. We can say, well, you know, if you look at this, we didn't exactly, you know, we weren't the ones.

40:52

We shut this organization down and started something new. Yeah, but the benefits of that old institution still flow in one way or another to the new institutions, right?

41:01

Even if it, even if it isn't a line item in the budget, right? There's still ways that that flow from one of the others.

41:06

So you got to look at the spirit of it. And Christians know that in other, in other spaces. We know that in other situations, but we want to get very technical and just find ways to get out of it.

41:16

You can convince yourself with that. I would be worried that you could convince God of that.

41:22

And so we need to look at a little bit, a little bit different. There was this interesting moment that barely in your debate that barely scratched the surface of something that I've seen a lot of discussion of.

41:32

And, and that is, is there a distinction between Old Testament and New Testament visions of justice?

41:39

And you were quoting quite a bit from Jeremiah and other places in the Old Testament that really define justice in some pretty concrete ways.

41:47

So it's not some sort of airy, who knows what justice, justice could mean a lot of different things.

41:53

It was really, really pretty concrete. And I have seen this, and I've gotten this pushback when

41:59

I've quoted some of those same passages. Well, wait a minute. That's Old Testament stuff.

42:05

New Testament stuff, New Testament is, is fundamentally different. Maybe not fundamentally, but subtly different in ways that really, really matter when talking about justice.

42:16

And you, you kind of, you answered that to a degree, but I wanted to dive more into that.

42:22

Like, since when did ethics and biblical principles like that completely change to where it just fit, perfectly fits your situation?

42:28

So in the Old Testament, because they, you know, because, you know, the government was different and because, um,

42:36

Jesus, Jesus hasn't come now, since those things have happened, now we don't have to restore people.

42:43

Now I can steal from you and do other things. And because we're not, we're not under the Old Testament's law anymore.

42:48

I don't actually have to repair you. Do we really believe that? Do we really believe that the entire ethic of justice has changed to the fact that you can be unjust and not have to repair people?

42:59

Again, that's one of those things that it's bad theology, but if you want to try to explain it and give a long academic explanation, you might be able to convince yourself.

43:09

But I don't I don't think that you're going to convince the one that matters that justice has really changed.

43:15

This substance of the ethic has changed so much that you can be unjust or unjustice doesn't have to be repaired.

43:22

That just doesn't make sense. Woke preacher clips always doing a great job. They put that together and it's just it's both of them together talking about reparations.

43:34

So there you go. That's it. I don't know what to say. I mean, this is Marvin Alasky, compassionate conservative guy.

43:41

I'm not saying that he necessarily agrees with reparations in all their forms or but this is what he this is what he likes is what he listens to.

43:48

This is these are the two people he identified and this isn't like unique for them to say stuff like that. So that that just is providential that woke preacher clips put that out around the same time.

44:00

I saw this tweet. So for Marvin Alasky, so I figured I'd include that. Let's talk about this as well.

44:07

Let's go. Let's get to Glenn Yunkin real quick. So a few stories here. Number one is August 3rd.

44:13

Yunkin's pick for Historic Resource Board resigns after remarks about the Civil War. Well, what does that mean? Well, let me let me hear

44:20

I'll put myself up here so you can we can read this together. Actually, let's not even read it because I don't want to take all the time to do this.

44:27

Let me just summarize it for you. One of the people working in the administration who was on the

44:34

State Board of Historic Resources resigned and McClain is her name after the governor after a meeting with the governor.

44:44

And and basically the reason was is because the governor disagrees with her and she had said things like this and she's in Virginia.

44:51

Remember that she's in Virginia where they've been ripping down all these monuments and she says, I think that Southerners knew that their story of why they fought the

44:58

Civil War was not being told correctly. McLean said, McLean said about Confederate monuments during an interview with a conservative radio host last year, according to Richmond TV station, fake news or false narratives are not new.

45:08

And this whole tragedy is that these statues were built to tell the true story of the American South to people 500 years from now.

45:15

So that that'll get you canceled. And this isn't a Democrat doing it. It's a Republican. And let me just for strategic purposes here for Republicans, not that they care.

45:23

But look, if you let the Democrats every time all the Democrats have to do is connect you to something that they've deemed to be offensive, racist, horrible.

45:34

And and then you just go along with them in their lie and be like, well, yeah, of course it is all those things because you can make the connection to this.

45:43

Look at look at what Mississippi said when they seceded. That means that that statue for those who fought and died must mean what

45:51

Mississippi's secession document said in this one line about the political issue of slavery. I mean, that those are the kinds of stretches that they're making.

45:58

If you go along with it though, and you're saying that anyone who defends these monuments must be canceled. They can't have their position.

46:06

They're not acceptable. Then you let that you're letting the Democrats be the gatekeepers and they're going to run the same play on you every single time.

46:12

They're going to run on you because it works because you're letting it work. And it's not the only issue that Republicans do this on.

46:18

They just let the Democrats be the gatekeepers. You got to have a spine and young can doesn't. Young can has said things like,

46:25

I remember during the campaign, he's like, well, he's against the tearing down of these monuments. He's, he's against that thing.

46:30

He hasn't done a thing since he's been elected to restore any of them, put them back, say anything.

46:36

I mean, this is classic politician talk. And then someone in his administration supports the monuments.

46:44

Well, can't have that. Can't have that. So for those in Virginia who are traditional, who wanted to keep these monuments, uh, they're probably, you know, you need to think about this.

46:53

This is the guy he all elected during the primary. Um, here's another one young get marriage equality is the law in Virginia.

47:01

Oh, by the way, before I leave the monument topic, I just got to say this. There's a whole historical commission now in Massachusetts trying to change the

47:07

Massachusetts state seal, which is kind of funny because it's Massachusetts and they're using the same, all the same arguments.

47:14

Uh, the people who are defending this seal that were used to defend Confederate monuments, uh, you know, it's the same exact arguments, but yet anyway, the hypocrisy is amazing.

47:23

Cause they'll go and they'll, in the same breath, there was a news article where there are the vilifying Southerners, but then, but not

47:29

Massachusetts. Cause we won the civil war, but it's like, but there it's, they, their seal has the same issue that, uh, they, they have it anyway.

47:38

I can show you a picture of it. I wasn't planning on doing that, but it's basically, it looks like it's a, it's a white man, um, uh, or a

47:47

European over a native American. I'm going to actually pull it up just so I can describe it better.

47:53

Uh, it, yeah. Okay. So I'm looking at it right now. So there's a sword, the arm of a white, uh, presumably a white guy.

48:02

Cause in native Americans don't have swords in the sleeve. Is that of a white guy right over a native

48:08

American with a bow and this is racist. And, um, you have the

48:13

Boston globe. It's no Confederate flag, but our banner is pretty awful. It's no, cause we know that's the worst of all.

48:21

But anyway, um, that's, uh, that monument update there. Okay. So, so that's one issue.

48:28

Now here's, here's the bigger, bigger one here in my mind, Yunkin marriage equality is the law in Virginia Republican.

48:33

So he says this, I'm just going to summarize. He's tells the media that, uh, even after the

48:39

Supreme court case, overturning Roe v. Wade, that if they were going to overturn Obergefell, that marriage equality is the law in Virginia.

48:46

Well, no, it's not, but he just says that, you know, we're going to do everything to protect same -sex marriage in Virginia.

48:52

Like, okay, we can actually protect it because it's the law. Well, no, it's not. And well, why would

48:58

Glenn Yunkin say that? Well, maybe this shines some light on it during June, during pride month, Glenn Yunkin to some surprise, this story says

49:05

Yunkin host series of pride events. He didn't host just one. He hosted a series of LGBT events.

49:11

Yes, that's right. Celebrating LGBT Glenn Yunkin, the strong Christian Republican.

49:18

Uh, and then on the, you might say, well, he sees pro -life. Well, here is Yunkin on the pro -life issue. Uh, this is the headline.

49:25

Governor Yunkin dodges questions on abortion ban at contraception and it's political talk.

49:31

The whole thing is just political talk. Yunkin is now backing a ban on most abortions after 15 weeks, a proposal he believes can get bipartisan support.

49:40

Uh, I can't even begin to look. And so he says on an interview, supposedly that he was willing to ban abortion with some pro -life people,

49:47

I guess, but then when he's asked about it, he dodges it. I can't even begin to look past this year right now.

49:54

What we've got is a Democratic controlled Senate and Republican controlled house and they need to work together. And an absolute no at the beginning of the discussion just is not a constructive place.

50:02

Um, and let's see. Uh, and there is going to be a bill introduced to abolish abortion and you know, you wonder if Yunkin would even sign it.

50:14

Uh, anyways, not being clear, um, on any of this stuff.

50:19

And so this is what we have, uh, with Glenn Yunkin. I mean, he is a politician, he is a politician.

50:27

Uh, okay. So that, yeah, that's, that's all I want to talk about today. Hopefully that was helpful for you all, uh, in some way, uh, a little bit of different things, obviously, uh, that I was talking about here, but, um, all

50:39

I think important, uh, politically, uh, we just gotta do our homework on, on candidates. You can't just trust that what they're telling you is necessarily who they are.

50:47

Look at their record, look at what they put out there publicly. And I think if people did that with Yunkin, we wouldn't be in this. You could have gotten probably any of the

50:53

Republicans in there. Pete Snyder could have been in there. He was the second runner up, but it had to be, it was

51:00

Glenn Yunkin that got it. And now I think Virginia is kind of going to be up a river a little bit because, uh, they, when you have a horrible

51:09

Democrat party and then you have a Republican party, that's so compromised there, there's nothing left to really uphold any traditional values, any

51:17

Christian morality, none of that. Um, and then of course, also, uh, you know, do your homework on the people, even in your denominations,

51:25

Todd Bankart, really, if you looked at his record on the very job that he has, sexual abuse task force, look at his beliefs on this.

51:33

And if you look at him, you'll see this guy's a change agent. This guy is subversive. He's going to be a, uh, he's going to push the me to agenda.

51:43

This isn't, and we talked a lot about how that's not a biblical agenda. Uh, and then of course, even those who are true and time, you know, people that you've trusted forever, some of you, at least like Marvin Alasky, uh, you know, think circumstances can change and people can, and I don't know that circumstances did change all that much with Marvin Alasky.

52:03

I'm not sure, but even people with good names and evangelicalism, um, you know, it doesn't mean that they're not also affected by the social justice creep.

52:12

And so I'm not trying to get you to be like paranoid, but just be practice wise discernment.

52:18

Just do a little bit of homework on on leaders. Uh, if you're going to go to a retreat or an event, speaking of retreats, you should come to the one with Russell Fuller, do some homework on him.

52:27

He's great. But if you're gonna go to a retreat or a conference or calling a pastor, you know, look at their social media, you know, not to have a gotcha moment or anything, but just try to see what, what are they about and, and, you know, see, see what they think about certain things because people can present one thing to one audience and one thing to another.

52:44

It's not always accurate. So if there's a common thread, I guess that would be it. All right. More coming. We're going to talk about the gospel coalition in the next podcast and it's going to be good.