Secular Marxists Appreciate Woke Evangelicals

The Mainstream Media’s Interest in Kevin Smith’s Remarks

Hey guys, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host John Parish. Short podcast hopefully here. I wanted to just bring to your attention something that is trending right this second and probably will be developing more as the evening goes on and into tomorrow to some extent, but the mainstream media, at least one mainstream media source and then at least one very, very Marxist, social Marxist organization has picked up a story concerning a pastor named Kevin Smith in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Now this is all related to a video that someone made me, well someone who was at the conference made me aware of at the Southern Baptist Convention. It was concerning a nine Marx event. For those who are conservative who went to the CBN event, you know how this works.

You have a big convention, but surrounding that convention are other events and apparently nine Marx ran in a room and had an event and so, and that's fine. They did this, I don't know what day, but it was presumably during the convention.

And so there was a lot of Southern Baptists there and this particular pastor, Kevin Smith, made some very inflammatory remarks about pastors who supported voting for Donald Trump. Use some very descriptive language, we'll get into it.

And I had not, I actually wasn't even planning on reviewing this footage until later in the week, but since it's making the rounds now in mainstream circles, mainstream media or Marxist media, put it that way, then I figured, well, I will, I'll talk about it because the significance is this, in my mind, this is how, this is the symbiotic relationship that exists between the secular or the Marxists out there in the world, the political Marxists, social Marxists, and then the pastors and leaders in Christian denominations.

And we've talked about this many times before, most notably when people like Ed Stetzer or Russell Moore write op-eds. And the intention is to, instead of speaking prophetically to the world about what they're doing wrong, how they need to repent, they take the opportunity to write from the New York Times about how, or Tim Keller for that matter, about, you know, what evangelicals are doing wrong.

And so, and they run in the same circles, their views are very adjacent to the views of the mainstream media, the Marxist media. And this is not a surprise to those of you who've listened to this podcast, I've given countless examples of this, but this is an interesting one to me just because it's, I doubt Kevin Smith was intending for this to ever go as big as it's going.

And I'm sure if you probably asked him, hey, Kevin Smith, would you want the occupied Democrats using your quote to smear other Southern Baptist pastors? He probably would try to say, no, or, you know, the occupied Democrats, I'm not, I'm not political, I'm apolitical, or, you know, I don't know, this is hypothetical on my part, but I'm just, I'm just drawing upon all the things I've heard from more elite progressive evangelicals and how they really try to go to great lengths to portray themselves as neutral politically and transcending the political spectrum to support the kingdom of God.

And that's just all they're about. And it's this third way stuff. And we've talked about that, too. And I just think, you know, they don't want to be closely aligned with a political party or one side or the other.

But that's kind of the ruse, because what they're actually doing is they're pushing left in a denomination that has been traditionally very conservative politically. And so that's the political angle.

Of course, we know that there's much deeper theological assumptions that underlie these political philosophies. And so that's where we get the postmodern ideology and the just the redistributive justice and the inappropriate or unchristian ways of looking at reality, that ideologically flatlining reality into this conflict theory, reducing it to conflict theory relationships and, you know, all the rest of the things that we talk about.

And so, you know, these are the things that that underlie these political positions. And they couldn't be more different in this country at this point. Well, Kevin Smith steps right into it. And so here's I'll show you a little bit of what's going on publicly here, and then I'll show you the video.

And if you want to see the full video in context and everything, I'm going to just post it on another website. You can go check it out in the info section. The link will be there. And if you want to listen to it, it's a little hard to listen to because it's on a cell phone camera.

But you'll get the gist of, I think, what's important for our purposes here. And you can see the kind of quote that the secular left really likes to use. They like what Kevin Smith is saying. They think this is great.

This is this is pushing the needle in their direction. It's going to accomplish their goals. Kevin Smith is being used by them without even intending that. I mean, this is it just shows you, though, how it's proof positive in my mind that there is a total leftward drift.

And the ironic thing is in the panel that at the Neimark's event was at least Danny Akin was was very adamant there isn't a leftward drift. And as the others are nodding along, right, that this isn't happening.

And it's like it just it just shows that that's totally not true. If you have the occupied Democrats using what you've said at an event and you say there's no no leftward drift. And then you got someone like Kevin Smith saying this, who's by the way, I mean, he's got clout in the SBC.

He's head of the Maryland-Delaware Convention, which has a reputation for being pretty woke friendly and really aggressively woke convention. It's he's I mean, he's on the stage at the SBC. He's not just in the audience.

He's on the stage. And I'm going to show actually another clip, Lord willing, later in the week from him talking about the culpability of mothers in abortion. So we'll you'll see he's got some authority.

Anywho, he so here's what he says.

He says.

Race, Political Allegiances, and the Leftward Drift in the SBC

And this is after, I believe, Protestia published an article where they said Kevin Smith said some inflammatory things you're about to hear about Trump voters or pastors who would support Trump in the Southern Baptist Convention.

And so his reaction to it is, I don't know about hit dogs, but it's strange that some guys always get their panties in a wad whenever race is discussed, even if it's a discussion among friends of which they weren't involved.

A blessing of the SBC is its size. You can have 100 friends for every one. And there's OK. And that's it, I guess. So this it's interesting, because when I saw this earlier today, this this advertisement you're seeing now was not here.

And it was just it was I saw this. And then I looked up and saw his pin tweet, the tweet from 2018 that he wants everyone to read. And it says that saints when discussing tense matters with fellow Christ followers, it can be helpful to use biblical language and paradigms, avoid secular combat rhetoric and engage as a family member seeking to persuade rather than a lobbyist or activist seeking to maneuver an opponent.

Let me read this to you again, because this is going to be so ironic. There's just this whole thing is such an example. I couldn't pass it up. I had to record this because it's such an example of the move that's constantly made on it to make you really think that you're crazy.

Or that's the effect it at least has. So many people think, am I am I nuts? You know, no, you're not nuts. This is what's happening. You have a guy like Kevin Smith having his pin tweet. This saints when discussing tense matters with fellow Christ followers, it can be helpful to use biblical language and paradigms, avoid secular combat rhetoric and engage as family members seeking to persuade rather than as lobbyists or activists seeking to maneuver an opponent.

So that's that's what he it wants to project that he's about. Yeah. At the same time, he makes this tweet that I just showed you that there's these guys that get their panties in water whenever races discuss.

I mean, what's he insinuating? They're just, oh, my goodness, we can't talk about race. No, that's not the issue. It never was. I mean, it's a it's just it's juvenile. I don't know. I don't know what word to use about this.

It's it's it's beneath someone like Kevin Smith to use this kind of like should be. Really? It's it you're going to frame it like that, like they're just afraid of discussing race. No, it's it's not about discussing race.

The conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention are more than happy to discuss race. But the topic is not race. The topic it there's it's it's it's critical race theory. It's social justice. It's black lives matter.

It's the whole narrative there in CRT infused racial reconciliation narrative and which has assumptions attached to it that are in conflict with biblical Christianity. And even that conservatives will discuss, but they just disagree.

So it's just such I've heard this so many times. Conservatives, you know, they get their panties in a while. They get upset when race is discussed. They don't want to talk about race. No, it has nothing to do with it.

I've never met one conservative who is really afraid to talk about race. Oh, my goodness. There's different there's different people out there, different kinds of people. Oh, my goodness. I'm so afraid of that.

I mean, come on. But anyhow, anyway, he's saying even if it's a discussion among friends of which they weren't involved, so they weren't at this public meeting as a public meeting, as far as I know at this.

I mean, I think you could you could go to it if you were at the Southern Baptist Convention. I don't know if you had to register anything. But but it was it was it was a meeting that took place in a room full of a lot of people, and it was very participatory.

I mean, Kevin Smith wasn't even on the stage. He was asking a question and and said something inflammatory, which you're about to hear. And so Protestia writes an article. Kevin Smith has a response. And so I just want to start off with saying, look how out of step even his response is with his pinned tweet.

It's just on the one hand, it's, you know, we're peacemakers, we're we're just trying to be biblical here. We're just we transcend party politics and we're not trying to be lobbyists or activists. We're engaging a family member.

On the other hand, here's here's the hypocrisy coming right out. So here is let's let's look at well, let me just look real quick. I'll show you what what the news story at MSN is saying right now. It says pastor at Southern Baptist meeting called out Trump called out.

Yeah. Called out Trump political whores. Yeah, that's the language used. Pastor Kevin Smith called out some Southern Baptists for being political whores to former President Donald Trump, while speaking at the recent meeting at the Southern Baptist Convention at the Anaheim, California event, which was held earlier this month.

Smith spoke about how he has seen the Southern Baptist nomination change in the past decade, and he called out particular attention to the racism. He said he has seen from some of its members, according to the pastor, some Southern Baptists lost their minds when a black man was elected president.

Referring to Barack Obama. I don't mean agree about politics or policy or nothing, said Smith, who is black. I just mean giving a darn that somebody else is hurting, who is supposed to be your brother, sister in Christ.

And I think some Southern Baptists just bent over and became political whores with this whole Trump stuff. Southern Baptist denomination has historically been one of the most conservative evangelical branches of the United States, according to Pew Research.

This is the significance of this. And this is what's missed on so many of these these guys, unfortunately, in the convention who are saying, I'm a third way guy and transcend the political rift and I'm just about Jesus.

And, you know, I'm look, I have conservative things, I believe. Well, it's like, well, yeah, you do, according to a standard of the secular left, perhaps, but you're in the Southern Baptist Convention.

So you're pushing the needle left within a denomination that's super. Well, at one time was on the right. That's the whole point. That's the effect of what you're doing. The left is perfectly happy with that.

And what they think is significant is the fact that, hey, he's saying this in a denomination that's on the right. Smith, the teaching pastor of Family Church in Palm Breach, was was previously on the executive director.

Let's see for the Maryland Baptist Delaware Convention. All right, so that's pretty much the significance of this. OK, so let's just. Well, let's let's go to the source here after. Let me just show you this, the Occupy Democrats.

That's right. The Occupy Democrats right now. And this tweet has been out there now for. Well, let's see, they posted it at 206, it says. So it's been out there about eight hours, almost, I guess, something like that.

And it's already got, I mean, over 11000 retweets. It's got over thirty nine thousand likes. Is this breaking? Minister Kevin Smith slams mega pastors as horse for Donald Trump and losing minds when a black man was elected president during his remarks at Southern Baptist Conference, causing many of them to erupt in outrage, retweet to thank him for calling them out.

If you're thrilled that Minister Kevin Smith slammed mega pastors as horse for Trump and losing their minds when a black man was elected president during his remarks at the Southern Baptist Convention, causing many of them to erupt in outrage, please retweet and follow us.

Yes, that's right. So that is how the Occupy, and just for those who don't know, the Occupy Democrats, they fancy themselves a grassroots political organization and news website supporting progressive Democrats.

New York Times reported that our reach dominated Trump on Facebook before his ban. All right. So that's the Occupy Democrats. I mean, these guys are as left as you can possibly get. You just have to look at some of their their retweets and see, man, you know, how far left these guys are.

So that's that's who was really appreciating what Kevin Smith had to say and wants to support him. I mean, this is so this is I shouldn't laugh, but it's just it's so it's just proof positive of what so many of us have been saying that, yeah, of course, you're carrying the water for the Democrat Party.

Of course, you're helping these people when you push the needle left in that denomination, because they know what's going on. They realize the denomination is known to be conservative, that a lot of Trump voters are Southern Baptists.

And if you can in within that denomination, push the needle left and really say things like that, like people who supported Donald Trump were political whores. Oh, my goodness. That that just makes their day.

And and so here's the the clip. Let's play it of Kevin Smith. And then I want also to attach to this is Matt Chandler. Matt Chandler answers the question. Kevin Smith asked. So let's start here with Kevin Smith and go from there.

That's it, Tom. Yeah, yeah.

You mentioned two years ago, some Southern Baptists were unloving. They betrayed our heart. I don't mean to agree about politics. It's hurting us. They told me they came feeling like they're tolerant and embraced.

I'm not talking about me. I've been in here 30 years. I got true friendships with people in their 20s. I've been in here 30 years.

Matt Chandler’s Frustration and the Woke Turn

All right, let's stop there real quick and just here's what's going on. Let's set the stage, set the scene. So Kevin Smith comes up to ask this question, and he's specifically addressing the white people on stage.

That's who he wants to hear from. And they're why they could be optimistic about the last 10 years. And so that gives you insight into the previous. And if you read or watch the video that is in the info section, you'll see what was discussed previously.

So that's that's what they're talking about, how they're hopeful for and they think things are actually moving in a good direction in the Southern Baptist Convention, if you can believe that. And so Kevin Smith is just, how can you say that?

I mean, look what happened with Trayvon Martin and how white people reacted and they were not acknowledging or being sympathetic to the hurt that black people felt and look at how they treated Obama versus Trump and they became political whores for Trump.

And so this is what he says. And then you have these pastors, some of them trying to address this. And I don't actually know who this first guy is, to be honest with you, maybe I should, but I think it's a new guy at Nine Marks or maybe if he's not, I don't know, he's just not as well known, I'm not sure who he is.

But anyway, he's a pastor who just essentially starts agreeing more or less with a lot of what Kevin Smith is saying in his analysis. And it doesn't really push back on anything Kevin Smith says. But let's get to Matt Chandler, because that's, I think, the more, he's more of a well-known and that, let's see if I can skip ahead here.

All right, let's do this.

One, thank you for the question. And to stop trying to solve it everywhere else. Because I was losing everywhere. It was never taking shots over here and taking, and I'm willing to believe that you signed up to bleed when you did this job.

I mean, you got this going, you ain't, I mean, there's a reason why, Jesus, when they say, they slander you when they, it's the job. So I try to just double down in my neighborhood, in the place that I'm pastoring, and make sure we're doing the best we possibly can to be a welcoming place, to be a place where there's real conversation.

I explain that kind of network, where there's, where the power is let loose, if you will, not given to, but let loose. And there's a real home and a real place to be heard, and to build towards. Because I've been for a while there, I was fixed with bad, bro, in every direction.

So I think the best I can do is bold,.

And to boldly lead, and it's the message that, like, if I think about my daughter, seeing a difference in me. I'm not changing your interpretation.

Oh, is that what it is?

The process, take place for them, the process we've lamented together. Like, I know everybody, we just, we've lamented together, been frustrated together.

So that's the best thing.

It's a frustrating place, it feels unwinnable, but I've got more hope in my local congregation, right? But if I look, it just feels too big. So like, faithful at home, faithful in my neighborhood, faithful with my debtor, faithful with our dollars.

What you heard Matt Chandler say, essentially, was that he affirms Kevin Smith's frustration. So no pushback on this language of, they became political whores, they didn't care about African Americans because they didn't accept the narrative on Trayvon Martin and didn't, and opposed Obama.

Things went from, went in a bad direction, a bad in every direction, actually, is what Matt Chandler said. And it's interesting to me that three years ago, he shifted his focus to focus more on his local church, and he feels frustrated.

He feels like, really, that, this is the thing, broadly speaking here, Kevin Smith says it, Matt Chandler says it, they feel like they're not winning. That's the interesting thing to me. They feel like they're not winning when they are totally winning.

Like, as far as gaining the levers of institutional control in this country for that particular, that critical race theory adjacent narrative, of course they're winning that. But they feel discouraged all the time.

This is a common thing I see with social justice activists. They can win all the elections, they can do all kinds of things, and they always feel discouraged. Like, they gotta keep pressing and push harder, and it's never enough.

And I think that's just a feature of it. I think it's, the expectation is for this immediate drastic action that's going to change, revolutionize everything overnight. And when it doesn't happen, it's just discouragement on their part.

But it's just interesting, because the conservatives feel like we just lost everything at this convention. Like, we didn't win one thing at this convention. And yet, that being said, you have progressives there thinking that they're, political progressives, that they're the ones actually losing.

It's just interesting. So why don't you put in the comment section, those who think they have figured out why that is, why that dynamic exists, put your explanation for it. I'd be curious to read it, because it's weird to me.

I've seen that for a long time. There's this expectation of perfection or something that they're gonna win, and when they don't win to the, even though they do win, but when things don't turn out the way they want them to turn out, they just get, I don't know what they expect.

So it's interesting admission, though, of Matt Chandler when he says things went bad in every direction, I think, just because he's saying that when he went woke, bad stuff happened. Because Matt Chandler went woke.

I mean, totally woke, on the race stuff, at least. I mean, he just, on the BLM kind of narrative, I mean, it was the same George Floyd who framed George Floyd's death, same Matt Chandler who framed George Floyd's death as a demonic evil that characterized the entire United States.

He posted the black square on his Instagram. In order to uproot racism, he asked his followers on Instagram to reject a truncated understanding of the gospel, that's right, which failed to expose injustice, because apparently that's the gospel, is you need to do a work of exposing injustice.

And if you don't, then you don't have the full gospel. So there you go with the false teaching Matt Chandler's peddling. And then when addressing violent riots, Chandler scolded the people who pointed out all the flaws in the BLM movement, while abandoning the church's responsibility to protest against injustice.

So the George Floyd, you can see the George Floyd thing, demonic evil, gotta post the black square, gotta uproot racism, that's part of the gospel. And yet the looting and the burning and the murders and all that associated with the BLM riots that took place, oh, that's terrible that anyone would call that out.

He scolds people that they shouldn't be pointing out the flaws in the movement. I mean, if this guy's not woke, I mean, this is the guy who said he had an invisible bag of privilege that he was born with because he was white.

This is the guy who drove a bunch of policemen out of his church because he kept insinuating that the police in this country are racist. I mean, I don't even remember all the things that Matt Chandler has said or done, but there's been a lot.

He's definitely gone down the woke path and he's reaping the consequences. Things went bad in every direction. Yeah, because his church, people left. I mean, he abandoned the core teaching of what he should be putting out there.

And he shifts his emphasis. And of course it's damaging. Of course it's not good. Of course it's going to cause problems. And he says he's hopeful now about where his church is. I don't know what that means.

I don't know why he's hopeful for it, but certainly the direction he's taken the last few years has not been good. And I know that too, just from people who've reached out to me from the church. So this is Matt Chandler.

This is Matt Chandler's reaction to a guy who's asking him, how can you be hopeful when you got all these Southern Baptist political whores out there because they're supporting Donald Trump? They lose their minds when a black man was elected president, as if that's why they were upset with Obama.

Oh, he's a black. No, it had nothing to do with his policies. Look, I was at Southeastern. I remember in fall semester of 2017, three statements heavily supported by the professors and faculty there, two of them partially originating on campus against Donald Trump or the alt-right.

In eight years of Obama, nothing.

Nothing.

This is just, the sense of proportion is so off. And it makes me wonder, why, how do they live in this fantasy? But you know, you're looking around you, you're seeing that it's going pretty left and yet you have Danny Akin.

No, it's not. No, it's not. You have Matt Chandler and Kevin Smith. Hey, we're discouraged, like we're losing or something. It's like, you're pretty much, you have the momentum. And of course, with all this talk of, we're being persecuted, we're being slammed, or names are being, we're being called names.

Look at the halls of institutional power in this country. Look at the places that would feature Kevin Smith and his statement. And I mean, they have the momentum right now, politically. I mean, the media.

I mean, I'm curious to see what happens in the next few days with this. But we're the deplorables. The people who Kevin Smith is describing incorrectly, those are the people that actually really get a lot of heat in the mainstream.

I mean, from the halls of power, we get heat. It may feel like in the Southern Baptist Convention, oh, it's so conservative, but it's always been. This isn't, you join the Southern Baptist Convention, you're joining a denomination, at least at one time, that even today, it still is primarily, it's gonna be Republicans.

This hasn't changed. I mean, they voted to rebuke Bill Clinton and boycott Disney. Now they're going to Disney and giving discount tickets at the convention. Anyway, I thought this was a great example of how the mainstream or the progressive left really is just applauding for the progressive pastors in the denomination and what they're doing.

And I don't know to what extent these pastors are aware of how much they're helping the secular Marxist left, but they totally are. And this is just proof positive that that's exactly what's going on.

Anyway, I'd be curious to see the reactions in the next couple of days, but yeah, this is a vindication for those of us who have been saying this kind of thing. Go to the info section if you want to see more from that 9Marx event.

More coming later in the week, God bless. And yeah, I mean, I hope that was somewhat helpful.

For some of you.

I hope at least it was an illustration that you can remember perhaps in your minds when you hear this objection that some of the really people who are on the social justice bandwagon transcend the political divide and are somehow just forwarding the kingdom of God.

No, they're not. They're totally on a side and the side knows them. The side that is benefiting from what they're doing knows exactly what they're doing and really appreciates it.