King David a Rapist? & Confirmed: Cru Endorses Social Gospel

Gratitude, Personal Update, and Why Cru Is Becoming a Concern

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I want to start off today by just saying thank you to you all. Thank you for the encouraging notes that I've received on email, social media, the prayer support, half of which I probably don't know the extent of, and the Patreon support, which really does help.

Thank you so much. I've just been overwhelmed the last few days, and I don't deserve any of this at all. The Lord's been good to me, and he's been good to me through you all, and I just want to say thank you for that.

I am going to talk a little bit about Crew today. I wasn't planning on it until about 3 o 'clock in the afternoon yesterday when I was made aware of some developments within the organization and how they're responding to some of the things that I've exposed.

And honestly, the response is more concerning to me than the material that I've already presented. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking about Campus Crusade for Christ, which is now called Crew, which is a campus organization that originally was for the dissemination of the gospel message on college campuses especially.

And there's an apologetic element, because you need that when you're at a college campus, but there's been a mission drift in the organization. And I've received a lot of notes from those within Crew who are telling me that, yes, I am correct, and in some cases, John, you don't know the half of it.

And I've been hearing, for lack of a better term, some horror stories. Those who are conservative, orthodox, Christian, traditional people being discriminated against in some form or fashion to the point that they can't really say anything about what they've experienced without repercussion.

And that is concerning to me. And I said that in my last video, but it's still concerning to me because I've received more of those notes. And so the encouraging part, though, is that there are those who are trying to be discerning within Crew, and they're bringing these concerns to the top levels of their organization.

It is creating waves within the organization, which I'm going to share with you what I mean by that a little later in the video. But there's still hope in some sense that at least in some places within Crew, there's concern over this.

And I've been receiving... I need to just sort of address this before I say anything else in this video. I've been receiving a lot of questions about, what do I do? John, I'm a Crew staff member. What do I do about this?

Do I leave? And most of the current staff that I've had reach out to me are trying to leave in some way or consider their alternatives. And I want to say this. I don't know what the answer is for you personally.

There's always that question, do I stay in a sinking ship and try to bail it out so that it can float again? Or do I jump to a new ship? And usually the determining factor is, can your little bucket get as much water out of there as possible to counteract the tsunami that's coming in?

Is it actually going to be seaworthy again? And the thing is, I don't know with Crew. I really don't. I'm not in the organization. It seems to me like it's probably past the point of no return, but I'm hoping I'm wrong on that.

And I'm just basing this off of what I've seen and some of the stories that I've heard. If you are in Crew, I would try to find a place where you can survive and still be vocal about your Orthodox Christian beliefs on sexuality, on social justice, where you can proclaim the true gospel of Jesus Christ without distraction.

And if there is not a place like that in the organization, then you probably need to get out. If you're concerned that the money that is being donated to you is going to fund bad elements of your organization, you might want to get out.

I've been talking to some folks who have reached out to me about alternative organizations, and I'm hoping to have some of that information for you within the next month, if possible. We'll see how things go.

But just so you know, I want there to be college ministry. We need to be on the campuses. We need to be proclaiming the gospel. We need apologetics. The last thing we need is an organization saying that they are proclaiming the gospel, but meanwhile, they're also capitulating to the culture and the sins the culture finds in flavor and just in vogue right now.

Like greed in the sense of social justice, theft, stealing other people's things, sexual deviancies, and so forth. We don't want to support an organization if that's the direction they're going. And as far as I can tell, there's no orthodox opinion from CRU, like, you know, orthodox in the sense that there's no, like, this is our faith, and we are soft-pedaling homosexuality.

It seems like it's an unofficial stance. And so what do you do with that? There's some gray area there. You can probably exist in it, but I wouldn't want to exist somewhere where I cannot be honest and proclaim the full counsel of God.

So that's my advice. If you feel like you can't do that, leave. If you have found a place where you can do that in CRU, then fight. You know, do the right thing where you are, but you're going to have a battle, and battles are exhausting.

And if you have a family, that can be exhausting. So you've got to weigh the pros and the cons with that. And I've had to make some of those same decisions myself, not exactly parallel to the situation that CRU staff members are in, but as many of you know, I was in the Southern Baptist Convention at one point.

I went to an SBC school intending on being involved in the SBC, and I have basically said that's not the direction I want to go. I respect those who hold the views that I hold, who are in the SBC, but it's just not for me.

I don't think that's where I can do the most good, and I know I'll be muzzled. There's no way for me to have the effect that I'd like to have and be used by God in ways that He may want to use me in that organization, knowing the trajectory of it.

And that's just my opinion, and there's people who disagree with me on that, and that is absolutely fine. I respect and I support those in the SBC who are trying to fight the tsunami of social justice, but that wasn't for me.

And so, yeah, that's my little personal opinion there, as well as hopefully some advice that maybe you will find helpful. Now, I do want to talk about something other than CRU today. So here's what I'm going to do.

Was King David a Rapist in the Bathsheba Story?

I'm going to talk about this latest debacle, especially on Twitter. This is mainly confined to Twitter, but there's some blogs that have picked up on this, over whether David, King David in the Bible, was a rapist, and whether this is a Me Too moment, and whether he supported and created a culture of rape within his family.

I'm just, I'm staggered by how fast some of this stuff is coming down the pike. I predicted this actually a few months ago, three or four months ago, and I'm going to show you that, but I didn't expect it to come this quickly.

So I want to talk about that. I want to walk you through 2 Samuel a little bit, and just talk about whether David, King David, was a rapist or not. And then I am going to get to CRU in the second part of the video, and some of the developments that have taken place over the course of the last 24 hours, I suppose.

I'll just be perfectly honest with you, the reaction to the two videos that I made on Campus Crusade, and what's going on within that organization, that reaction is more concerning to me, from leadership, than those videos were, the content that I showed you.

I think, if anything, what I'm going to share with you today is the most concerning evidence of drift within CRU. And we need to talk about it. And I didn't want to, but we need to. This is important.

So before I do that though, let's talk about King David a little bit, shall we? Now the story of David and Bathsheba begins in 2 Samuel chapter 11, Nathan the prophet confronts David in chapter 12. And then you may be wondering, why do I have 2 Samuel 13 on the screen?

And the reason for that is because an actual rape does occur in 2 Samuel 13. It's an immediate context. And I want to get a rudimentary understanding of what rape is, biblically, before we get into the narrative with David and Bathsheba.

So 2 Samuel 13, verse 11, talks about, these are brother and sister, David's kids, Amnon and Tamar. Tamar is bringing Amnon something to eat. And it says, when she brought the food to him, he took hold of her and said to her, come lie with me, my sister.

But she answered him, no, my brother, do not violate me. And then jumping down to verse 14, he would not listen to her since he was stronger than she. He violated her. He lay with her. Now the words took and stronger in verse 11 and 14 are both from chazak, which has a wide range of meaning, but it denotes strength.

It means to make strong. And this word is used in another place in scripture to also denote a sexual, a forced sexual encounter. And that's in Deuteronomy 22. And I want to read for you a few passages there, verses in Deuteronomy 22, and tell you what the law has to say about this.

This is the, the Old Testament mosaic law says, if there is a girl who is a virgin engaged to a man and another man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of the city that you shall stone them to death.

The girl, because she did not cry out in the city, the man, because he has violated his neighbor's wife, thus you shall purge the evil from among you. Now why in this situation are both the man and the woman stoned?

She is someone who's engaged in an engagement in that time, by the way, it's a little more than engagement in our culture. It's effectively their, their promise to one another, they're, they're almost married.

They're basically married. And so this is, this is a case of adultery. And in Deuteronomy 22, it says that there's a penalty for this. Why for the woman? Because she was in the city and she could have cried out and she didn't.

So there's a, there is a consensual element to this. Now I don't, our culture wants to make consent the only factor that matters in sexual encounters of any kind. And it's the only thing that makes something either right or wrong is consent, which that's not biblical, but, but consent of course factors into it because right here, if she did not consent and cried out, then she is to be spared.

And how do I know that? Well, here's the next two verses. And the word chazak is used in the verse 25, Deuteronomy 22, 25 through 27. But if in the field, the man finds the girl who is engaged and the man forces her, chazak, forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die, but you shall do nothing to the girl.

There is no sin in the girl worthy of death for just as the man rises against his neighbor and murders him. So in is this case, when he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her.

Now, now here's an interesting thing. Because you could have a situation in which the man and the woman are consensual, but there's no one there to prove it. And so this is one of those cases in which you find biblical justice.

There's no one to witness. There's no one to say, because they're out in the middle of nowhere, whether this was consensual or not. So you know what? The man dies. You know why? Because he's stronger.

Verse 25, chazak, he forces her. So you cannot disprove that the woman may have cried out. She may have. So you have to give her the benefit of the doubt, but the man receives no benefit of the doubt because he's stronger.

So you know that this happened and we know the man's guilty. We're not sure about the woman perhaps, but she could be guiltless. So we're going to treat her that way and we're just going to kill the man.

And that's how it worked in the Old Testament mosaic law. With this understanding, let's jump into the narrative of David and Bathsheba. So 2 Samuel chapter 11, it says in verse one that this is the spring at the time when kings go out to battle.

Yet David sends Joab and he stays home. He's not where he should be. He's in Jerusalem. And evening came and David arose from his bed. So he's having an afternoon nap and he walked around on the roof of the king's house and from the roof he saw a woman bathing and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.

So he's close enough that he can make out what she looks like. And this is what David does in chapter 11 verse four. He sends messengers and the messengers take her. And when she came to him, he lay with her.

And when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house. So four things going on. David sent, messengers took, she came, and he lay. Now this doesn't mean necessarily based on this verse that this was all consensual.

She probably didn't know what the king really wanted from her. But of course it's the king, so she's going to go with the messengers. But I do want to point out something. The word l 'cha is used here.

It's a different word. And it's used in the next chapter in 2 Samuel 12 to talk about David taking Uriah the Hittite's wife. And of course this was a legitimate thing. Deuteronomy 1 25. It says, then they took some of the fruit of the land.

Nothing wrong there, taking fruit of the land. Genesis 20 verse two, and this is probably the closest parallel. Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister. So Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.

So Abimelech is doing the same thing David's doing. He sees something he wants and he's going to fetch it. It just so happens that what he wanted was a woman made in the image of God. Now like I said, she was probably unaware that this was David's intention.

But this happened in the city, right? There's no record of her crying out. And four times in the passage, she is identified as Uriah's wife. And she's upset because David murders Uriah, gets him drunk, tries to cover up his mistake first.

It doesn't work out. And then he murders him essentially because he commands Joab to make sure that the men fall back and Uriah takes the brunt of the battle upon himself and he dies. And David's sin here is adultery and it's murder.

But there is no evidence within the passage to say that it's rape. Now here's my question. Why are some so adamant that it must be rape? It has to be rape. It doesn't seem like they're coming at it from even a biblical understanding of what that looks like based on the Mosaic Law.

We just went over that. But they really want this to be the Me Too moment somehow. And I had written this a while ago. I want to show it to you. This is back in, I believe, July or August. I wrote this article about what happened at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Patterson Hall, where they remove the portrait of Page Patterson and his wife as well.

And one of the lines that I had put in there is this. I said, with all the controversy surrounding names, paintings, and monuments from history, one has to ask the question, how long before heroes of the faith receive the proverbial boot?

Will Calvin be ousted for the way he handled Servetus or Luther for his book on the Jews and their lies? Will slaveholders, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, survive modern scrutiny? What about the Apostle Paul's alleged misogyny or King David's affair with Uriah's wife?

Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights credentials may protect him for now, but the Me Too movement can't ignore his scandals forever. And of course, I mentioned David in there. I didn't say rape. I said his adult affair.

But I just didn't think that King David would be in the crosshairs this quickly. Yet, here we are. This happened on October 3rd. Matt Smethurst put out a tweet which got a lot of attention. Adam fell.

Noah got drunk. Abraham lied. Goes through a list of all the vices that different saints have had and how Jesus redeems. Great tweet. And he said that David fornicated and Rachel Denhollander had a problem with that.

She says, David raped. It's important we get that right. Now, why is that important? You know, I've already shown you that the word that's associated with rape, the force, the strength, it's not in there.

That word is not used when it says that David took Bathsheba. There's no evidence. This is in the city. There's no evidence that Bathsheba cried out. Why is it important that we get this right, that David raped, even if he did, even if the text said he did rape and Matt Smethurst said David fornicated?

Why is that so important? Well, I'm going to see if I can answer that. Malcolm Yarnell is a professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Very welcomed at the conventions.

He sits on some of the panels and so forth. And he put, yeah, you know, Rachel Denhollander's exegesis is correct. David thought he was better than Uriah and smarter than God. He was neither. David added murder to his crimes in a second cover up his time, not of rape, but of murder.

And this is from his latest book, Who is the Holy Spirit? Now, I'm not sure what Malcolm Yarnell's motivations are here. I don't know if he's advertising his book. I don't know if he's trying to just give support to Rachel.

But this is, I joked and I got blocked, I guess, right after I joked about this. But I was joking. I was like, this is Sola Yarnella. I mean, this is just an arbitrary comment. There's no argument here.

It's just, I said this in my latest book. Well, it's nice that you said that, but that doesn't change what the text says itself. That's what we should be concerned about, right? And here's Rachel Denhollander again, supporting her claim that David was a rapist.

To start, when Nathan tells David the parable of the rich man who took the ewe, David is portrayed as stealing, not as two people running off together. Bathsheba is portrayed as an innocent lamb that is slaughtered.

This is the exact imagery for rape from the Old Testament. Now, look, I showed you in the Mosaic Law what rape looks like. I showed you in the immediate context what a rape looks like. We didn't see this imagery.

And in 2 Samuel chapter 12, when Nathan rebukes David, there's an analogy being drawn here. There's a parallel between David the rich man who has many wives, right? Many flocks and herds. And Uriah, the poor man who has nothing except the one little ewe lamb.

And David wants that for himself, so he takes it. And four times in the passage, Bathsheba is identified as the wife of Uriah. She belongs to him. That's what the parable is saying. And David takes, he steals.

Now, why does that constitute rape? Why does that have to be rape? Could stealing not be adultery? If it had been, let's say, a consensual adulterous affair in the modern vernacular, why would this parallel be any different?

Nathan could have given the same exact rebuke with the same exact parable. He's still stealing from Uriah either way. Why are you trying to force the text to make this a rape? Here's a blog that I found.

I'm not even going to say who it was or where I found it, but the blog is trying to support this claim. It says, "...in spite of veiled warning, David sent his men and took Bathsheba, at which point he lay with her.

In point of fact, the scripture put 100 of the blame on King David and none of it on Bathsheba. This was not an affair. Affairs are consensual acts of infidelity. This is why the law commanded death for both offenders in such cases.".

And he's right about that. This was not consensual. In fact, it was a Me Too assault long before the hashtag arrived. It was a Me Too assault. Now, guys, here's the thing. Look at the passage in 2 Samuel chapter 11.

Do we see evidence that this was not consensual or that it was consensual? Not a whole lot. Not really. But if we're going to go by the Old Testament law, and this was done in the city, and she didn't cry out, there's no evidence of that, then the law would say that both of them die, right?

Now, they both didn't die. And David, as this author puts it, receives 100 of the blame. I have to ask this question now at this point. Did David really receive 100 of the blame? Bathsheba lost her son.

Is it harder for a man or a woman in most cases? If you're a pastor and you deal with miscarriages and so forth, you'll know it's harder for a woman generally when a child dies. Not all the time, but generally.

And David deserves the responsibility. He is the king. He is, I mean, on multiple levels violating God's law. He's not where he should be. He murders in this. Bathsheba, yes, is portrayed as the ewe lamb.

That doesn't necessarily make her innocent, though. Where is the word innocent used in the parable in 2 Samuel 12? She's not portrayed that way. In fact, the story is about David stealing from Uriah more than anything else and then murdering Uriah.

They're forcing on the text something the text cannot support. And this is one of the things I'm passionate about, which is why I am bringing this up. This social justice movement, this Me Too Christianity, it's changing the way that we interpret scripture.

This is eisegetical, completely. And it's concerning. This is a professor of systematic theology at one of the biggest, I think it's the second biggest, second or third. I think it goes between Southeastern and Southwestern.

One of the biggest Southern Baptist seminaries supporting this. With an arbitrary assertion? Guys, wake up, wake up. Get back to authorial intent. Get back to the clear meaning of the text. Get back to scripture interpreting scripture.

Get back to the immediate context. Get back to the original audience and what they were supposed to take away from it. I just, I don't understand it quite. I do and I don't. But, you know, I've said this before, but hermeneutics was dropped as a requirement for the MDiv when I was at Southeastern.

We need more hermeneutics and we need good hermeneutics. Grammatical, historical hermeneutics. This stuff wouldn't be able to survive with that though. Here's some more just random samples of people out there, because I could have picked a lot, believe me, people's opinions about this whole idea that David was a rapist.

Here's Paul Dirks, agreed that David was a rapist. And even if at some points she willingly participated, it is still power coercion. So we're starting to figure out here that rape is about power. And that this is exactly how the critical theorists think of rape.

It's all about power. It's a power dynamic because David's a king and Bathsheba is just a citizen of the kingdom. Then that power dynamic means it must have been a rape. Here's Rebecca Carroll. David did rape.

Bathsheba had no power, privilege, or rights. Really? None. No power, privilege, or rights. David sent men, plural, to fetch her, used her, and sent her back. Den Hollander is letting the text speak for itself.

Well, you just imposed power, privilege, or Bathsheba not having these things or rights onto the text. Yeah, Bathsheba didn't have the power King David had. That's true. But that doesn't mean it was a rape.

Lowell Hennings, Hennings. He says the reality is not only that he raped Bathsheba. In fact, he created and sustained a rape culture. So David is the founding father of rape culture, right? He doesn't say founding father.

He's saying that's what he's doing. He's creating and sustaining a rape culture. The text of Samuel and Kings describes multiple examples of the denigration, bondage, and abuse of women in David's household.

Here's John Stark. To not see David's sin as rape is assume, I think he meant to assume, a kind of virtue in the power structure at work, and David's grasping for what he wants. So look, we're talking about structure here.

Structural injustice is coming up. Can you see the critical theory rearing its head? Here's Rachel Den Hollander. Check this out. She responds, it's expected. Why? Because the way we interpret and understand this story guides how we understand abuse today.

If blame for rape can be spread to the women somehow, it changes things dramatically. It is a way of absolving men of responsibility for their sexual sins. Wow, guys, wake up, wake up. This is reading the current cultural political environment, which is godless, into the Bible.

Here's, I think this might be the last one I want to show you. Derek M says, again, David used power. He didn't saunter over to Bathsheba's home and seduce her. He had brought her to the palace of the king.

Really? How do you know he didn't seduce her when he brought her over? I mean, this is assuming so much. And again, I will point out that Nathan's parable paints David as the true and only villain, a point you ignored.

Right, because in the text, again, it's focusing on David's sin against Uriah, David's murder. The text is about David. He's the king. It is focused on him. Bathsheba is, if you want to say a supporting role in the story, you can, but she's not the main focus.

Um, uh, here's a response. Not unusual for a man to use power, wealth, prestige, influence to seduce a woman. Uh, then Derek again, uh, then David sent messengers to her. 2 Samuel 11, 4. It appears she didn't come of her own volition.

You're assuming. Um, you, you're reading, and then here, here he's confronted. You're reading far too much into the text. I sent a limousine to pick up my wife and daughter once. It doesn't mean I raped them, which is a great response.

And then Derek M says, and you're not reading what the text says, but that's okay. I know there are too many men out there in the fundy land that blame women for everything. Wow. Look at the assumptions, the lack of evidence, the accusation without evidence.

He's accusing this, this man, Elliot of, um, because he's saying he's like, dude, you're reading too far into the text. He's accusing him of being in fundy land and blaming women for everything. These people are not about justice.

Can you see this? I mean, you can talk about social justice all day long. These guys don't care about justice. They're accusing others of things they don't have proof for. And they're getting an example of how to do this when it comes to interpreting the Bible.

That's scary. From leaders in evangelical circles. And here's the last page I wanted to show you. This just to demonstrate the political aspect of this, uh, Julia Dow. Frankly, this entire firestorm on Twitter over Dellen Hollander, stating that David Ray Bathsheba explained explains a lot about why there is such an enormous crisis in the SBC with pastors sexually assaulting congregants.

Do you all think that it's consensual sex affairs? So here's what she's saying. She's saying people like me who are saying, Rachel, Dellen Hollander, Den Hollander, you're going too far here. This is not supported by the text.

People like us who say that we are somehow complicit in the enormous crisis in the SBC with pastor sexually assaulting congregants. This is amazing. This is being used for political motivations. Look at this Bonhoeffer's child.

He says, Siri, what is a cult? Believers can relate to power in only one of two ways. Be Nathan's and call leaders to repentance and truth, or be the craven servants bringing Bathsheba to David for rape.

Look underneath what he is posting this on, or what he's retweeting this news story. Trump says his fight with the Democrats and media has led to a Christian revival bigger than any in history, right?

And there's a picture of Donald Trump there. Now, it's not true, Donald Trump, but that's what Trump does. And so he is reposting that, and that's his comment. We need to be Nathan's. And so where, if you're supporting Trump, you're being the craven servants who bring Bathsheba to David.

That's the implication. If you are calling Rachel Denhollander out for her eisegesis, you are being complicit with sexual assault in the SBC. We have got to wake up to what's happening out there, and we cannot count right now on our leaders.

If you're in the SBC, to do that. Al Mohler's not coming out about this. This is, maybe it's just too low down on the totem pole on his priorities. Danny Akin's not talking about this. I don't see other seminary professors that are conservative rushing into this.

Although there are those who, like I just pointed out with Yarnell, who are giving cover for it. We are at a crossroads right now, and it's not looking good for the SBC. This is blatant eisegetical interpretation being used for political purpose.

Cru’s Response and the Talking Points Memo

Let's talk about something else now. I want to talk about Crewe and what's been happening in that organization. Yesterday, I'm guessing it was yesterday that these things went out, but it was yesterday I was made aware that Steve Sellers, who is the executive vice president for Crewe, put together a statement in reaction to my video, and two other outlets who have picked up on what I released in my video.

I want to go through this and talk about it, because it's concerning, especially if you're in Crewe. Then there was also some other material that came out, which I'll get to after this. This is from Steve Sellers, and I made some notes of it.

I'm just going to read through the statement. If you're not concerned about Crewe, you can just turn off the video now, because the rest of the video is going to be about Crewe. For those who are just tuning in, because all you wanted to hear was about Crewe, this may take a little while, because there's a lot of material here.

I'm going to read for you line by line what Steve Sellers has said, and I'm going to comment on it a bit, if that's okay. He says, Dear Ministry Partner, I am writing on behalf of Crewe staff whom you personally support.

Now, I have to note here, this is not all the staff. I've had a lot of staff reach out to me to say, we're not on board with the social justice stuff, the softening of sexual ethics stuff. So he's not necessarily writing on behalf of all the Crewe staff, I wouldn't think, because some of them don't go along with this.

But here's what he says. He says, In the last several weeks, a few social media sites have posted reports that raised questions about Crewe's commitment to biblical fidelity and to its original calling.

That's true. In an effort to serve you well, I want to respond to concerns you may have and to provide the answers which you deserve as we partner together in the Great Commission. Thank you for caring enough to ask questions and seek clarification.

Now, they must be getting a lot of questions, right? Or else you wouldn't have Steve Sellers coming out and making a statement to all the supporters of Crewe. He says, Recently, bloggers and a radio outlet, that would be myself and I think Reformation Charlotte, who has picked up on some of what I've revealed, and then Janet Mefford, who I did an interview with last week.

That's who he's talking about. They picked up a story and it made two claims. First, we have turned from our original mission of evangelism and discipleship and embraced a social gospel agenda. The second is that we have shifted from our traditional biblical teaching on human sexuality.

Both claims were made based on select quotes and sound bites from our most recent all-staff gathering. Now, here's the thing. These were not select quotes. And I've said this before. I watched just about every single session of Crewe 19.

There's a lot of stuff that could be put in there that wasn't. This was the flavor of Crewe 19. And I've had folks who were there reach out to me and say, that was the flavor and you missed this and this because you could have included that.

And I'm like, yeah, I already had a montage that was, what, 17 minutes long or so? It was long. We didn't need more clips. But this isn't just select quotes and sound bites. And I would hasten to point out that you cannot have a discussion that is of the proper length.

I mean, what if I was going to release a montage that was just the raw footage of Crewe? I mean, that would be, what, 15 hours? I mean, you can't really have that and have anyone watch you. You have to, especially if you're writing a book, you have to do this.

You have to select quotes. The important thing is, this is what distinguishes cherry picking from being honest with representing a select quote is, do you take it in context? Do you present it in such a way that is fair to the intent of those who are delivering the message?

And I'd be open to anyone. Go watch the Crewe 19 videos. See if those things were taken out of context. See if they meant what they actually said in that montage or if the meaning is completely twisted.

I don't think sellers would want you to do that because it would reveal that, yes, this was about social justice. This was about all the rest of it, the feminism, the critical race theory. This was what Crewe 19 was primarily about.

Yes, there were other speeches there that were not about that, but more than half, I'd say, had some element of this in the speech. That's crazy. That's crazy to have one is bad. If you just had Sarah Van Opstel speaking, that's bad.

But to have about half or more than half, that's the message being communicated, that became the dominant message of Crewe 19. Now, so these were not just select quotes and soundbites. I want to assure you, he says, that both of these claims are false.

They do not reflect in any way our perspective nor our daily practice as we carry the gospel to the world. Now, let's see the evidence for that would be my response. In addition, I do need to say, not only were the clips that were presented in the montage fairly representative, but also I have shown that Matt McAulatus, the program director, invited Caitlin, who described herself as probably a pagan, Native American Christian mystic, writes for Sojourners, invited her to come.