Buckgate

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The tragic story of blackmail and coverup.

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00:13
Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Wow. I have a number of things that I wanted to talk about in this particular podcast, and I have just rearranged everything because I wanna talk about one thing now, just for this one, and this is fresh, so I'm shooting at the hip a little here, but I wanna talk about this issue in the
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SBC right now with, well, regarding a number of people.
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The list just keeps getting bigger, but at the core of this is a article, a draft, an unpublished draft, a rough draft that was written by the wife of a prominent
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SBC pastor, Tom Buck, and then used as a means of blackmail against that said pastor, and it's pretty, it's angering.
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It really is just angering, and the thing, there's so many observations.
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There's so much to say in so little time. Off the top of my head right now, this whole incident exposes how juvenile and childish many of the elites in the
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SBC are, juvenile and childish, petty, immature, petulant children, the way many elites seem to act, and this is something that if you follow this podcast and you've known what
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I've said for now years, shouldn't come as a huge surprise. There's a lot of immaturity at the top, and we've talked about the reasons for that, and this managerial class that exists, and this, the cool kids table, and who gets a seat there, and on what basis, and we've talked about this, but you just have just evidence for it with this situation.
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It's just, it's so clear in this situation. If you don't see it in this situation, it's gonna be hard to demonstrate it in other situations.
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We'll talk about that a little bit. We see corruption as well. One of the things that you've heard me say over and over on this podcast is not just critical race theory, but the whole panoply of social justice teaching that we've talked about, that I've written against, is accompanied by corruption, and that's also something you find in the
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New Testament when you see false teaching. It's generally accompanied by corruption, and we don't always see that corruption, but time has a way of bringing certain things out.
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When there's a pattern of life that is abominable to God, things will slip, and this is one of those times when things are slipping, and the mask is coming off for a moment, and you're able to see what's truly behind it.
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This situation also illustrates, unfortunately, and I hate to say this, but it illustrates how far gone, in my mind, the
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SBC is, and so we're gonna talk about all of that. So what's the situation?
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For those who don't know, this is a statement that was put out on April 19th by First Baptist Church of Lindale.
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That's where Tom Buck is a pastor, and I'm gonna read for you portions of this.
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On April 7th, our pastor's wife published an article at G3 Ministries that told the story of God's redemptive grace in her marriage to the pastor, and this is the article,
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A Story of Restorative Grace, and I encourage you to go read this. It's short, but it is a hopeful, encouraging thing that despite the issues that arise in situations, marriages where there is, however small, there is a selfishness and pride and abuse that can accompany that in some way, small way, that there is grace from God to recover from those things.
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Marriages that are dysfunctional have the potential to be rescued through the grace of God, the power of the
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Holy Spirit, the truth of Scripture, and this is the story of all of us apart from Christ.
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Coming to Christ, what kinds of things, what kinds of sins did God rescue us from? I think about this sometimes.
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What kinds of, what track would I be on had I not come to Christ? What track would
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I be on had I come to Christ and then Christ did not sanctify me? It would be much different than the track
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I'm on now, and so anyway, there's an article, a good article that was published that told the story of redemptive grace.
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On April 11th, so this is only four days later, Baptist News Global published a piece which attempted to redirect attention away from this theme of redemption, instead seeking to discredit
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Pastor Tom and his ministry, and I need to say this, the attacks that we will go through in this particular podcast are not just directed at a person.
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Whatever the intentions are of the people behind this, they're not just directed at a person. They are, that might be who they're shooting for, but you know who gets hit often?
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It's that person's wife, it's that person's church, to some extent, and it affects those things.
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I wonder how much forethought is put into this kind of thing. For people who say they care about the church, and they're, well, we have a parachurch, we're trying to assist the church, help the church, train people to know the word of God better to help the church.
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Don't give me that anymore. I just, I don't wanna hear it from certain individuals which I'll name. How much do you care about the church when you go down this kind of a road?
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There's one thing, exposing false teachers. Publicly available information they've shared that is misleading people.
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It's one thing having a debate over things that you disagree on, teachings that you disagree on.
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It's another thing trying to manipulate blackmail and start a smear campaign against someone because they might threaten your political enemy.
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I might be a little sensitive to this myself, and I will just admit that because my dad's a pastor, and I've seen this over and over and over when there have been people who, and this is inevitable in ministry, but when there's people who don't like what my dad has done and wanna shoot at him, who often catches the bullet?
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It's not him, it's my mom. So I feel very bad for Jennifer Buck in all of this, and her name is mentioned here, so I almost had an aversion to saying it, but her name is mentioned on First Baptist Church Lindale, and she is to be prayed for and commended for being brave enough to even publish an article that seeks to glorify
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God by showing what can happen in a marriage when God takes someone who is in sin and then redeems that person or brings about a repentance in that person's heart.
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Anyway, let's keep going with this. So the publication,
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Misconstrued Details, which are taken out of context from a private rough draft of the article that was written in 2018, and they were quoted in a screenshot and an anonymous tweet due to some political machinations within the
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Southern Baptist Convention that have been working behind the scenes to tarnish our pastor's name and discredit his ministry.
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We as elders feel it necessary to provide the following details, and then they go through the sequence here.
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Our pastor and wife have never been afraid of telling their story, they do have a story. It includes a damaged marriage, and in 2018, this draft was given to Karen Swallow Pryor, who's a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminar where I graduated, and this draft was then with the intention of Karen Swallow Pryor editing this draft.
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It was never actually, though, either edited or published, they couldn't make it to a final draft, and that seems to be because Karen Swallow Pryor had an accident.
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So this is the source of this rough draft.
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This rough draft contained more details that were used against Tom, like slapping his wife on one occasion, things like that.
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Shortly after Jennifer sent her rough draft, Karen had a tragic accident, all right, we already talked about this. Just a few weeks ago, on March 30th,
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Tom was asked on Twitter by a newly created anonymous account if it was true that he was an abuser and whether he had emotionally and physically abused his wife several survivor activists were tagged in the tweet to draw their attention to the accusation.
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Tom received a phone call on March 31st asking him if he was trying to destroy Willie Rice, who had accepted a nomination for president of the
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SBC on April 1st, just hours after Willie Rice made a public announcement about removing a deacon in his church after he was contacted by a pastor in another state.
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Tom received a phone call asking him if Jennifer had written a blog post about him having abused her.
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He was told that Jennifer had written and this had been sent to several news outlets.
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Think media here, okay? It became apparent that, so I need to stop and make a point here, something that you're often going to see.
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The progressives in the SBC have no problem sometimes, some progressives, many progressives, kind of seems to characterize
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SBC elite progressives, but they have no problem siding with the media on things. This is Russell Moore's idea of being prophetic.
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Well, what's being prophetic? Speaking truth to the society that's ungodly, the world, the flesh, the devil?
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No, it's going to the New York Times and Washington Post and telling the church how racist they are or how much they hate immigrants or how sexist they are or something like that.
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That's what being prophetic apparently is. There's relationships there. There's good relationships there between Southern Baptist elites and the
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Houston Chronicle and the Washington Post and the New York Times. And those outlets are used at times, and this is one of those times when there was an attempt at least, and I'm not sure, it doesn't say which publications, but we have a precedent to go on here.
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We can look at a lot of different news items stretching back to Paige Patterson and forward that have gained the light of day in those publications.
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Anyway, a few days earlier, on March 26th, Tom and two of our elders had called Willie Rice. It says, regarding a deacon in Willie's church who had committed a predatorial act in December 2005,
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Tom knew this man well. From the years Tom served as a pastor in Florida as a mentor and friend, Tom led the man and teacher to report to his school that he was engaged in sexual relationship with one of his students.
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Tom went with him to make this report. This man was a professing and devout Christian and his willingness to go with Tom to the school to confess his sin appeared to be fruit of repentance.
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In addition, he agreed with Tom's counsel that he should be forthright about what had happened with any church he attended or joined from that day forward.
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When Tom saw a video from Willie Rice's church and heard Willie introduce this same man as a deacon, Tom was concerned.
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So the situation is this, Willie Rice is running for SBC president. Willie Rice has a deacon, a newly appointed deacon, and this particular deacon had a history that Tom knew firsthand of sexual impropriety that was predatorial in nature, and Tom went to Willie Rice about this.
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Since the SBC Credentials Committee and a 2021 SBC resolution resolved not to allow individuals with a history of sexual abuse to serve in church leadership,
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Tom sought counsel from Rachel Denhollander about how to handle this in a way that was not political but principled.
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Now, some have asked me, why in the world is Tom going to Rachel Denhollander and Karen Swallow Pryor? I did talk to Tom earlier today about this, and I wanna leave that for the end, but I just wanna acknowledge,
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I know there's people wondering some of this right now, and I'll address that, but that's where he did go, okay?
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And Tom's desire was to keep the situation private, so he didn't want this being exposed.
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This ended up getting exposed because Willie Rice went out there and made a public comment and now Willie Rice is not even in the running.
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He dropped out of the, I guess we're calling it race now, the race for the SBC president.
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It's becoming more and more political, but he dropped out over this issue, primarily it seems, and so let's just,
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I don't wanna get into all the Willie Rice stuff right now because it's not as important here, but there is an email here saying that Tom did a stand -up thing.
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Tom was right to come to him and tell him this, and Willie Rice, I guess at first he had doubted these accusations, but he thought the better of it and said,
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Tom, basically, you're right. He then,
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I don't wanna get into the Willie Rice stuff. Let's just skip. Willie Rice has some hypocrisy here, it seems, saying one thing to his congregation and one thing in an email to Tom, but after receiving the phone call about Jennifer's rough draft on April 1st,
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Tom and Jennifer were informed that Karen Pryor had been approached by someone who had a copy of Jennifer's rough draft and wanted Karen to verify that she had received it from Jennifer.
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The person who came to Karen told her that someone was seeking to publish it to cast disparagement against Tom.
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Tom and Jennifer contacted Karen, who said that she had refused to verify the rough draft and that she didn't think it was right to publish.
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Jennifer pleaded with Karen to tell them who came to her, citing how wicked it was to twist a wife's words to weaponize them against her husband.
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Karen refused to give the name of the one who came to her. In the end, she laid the blame at Jennifer's feet by saying, quote, they were your words,
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Jennifer, and my mom said you should never put in writing what you don't want the whole world to read, unquote.
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Now, I need to say something here. We have, this is a messy situation, and I'm honestly,
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I'm uncomfortable to some extent. I mean, read the screenshots, and what's happened though is there's been an attempt to blackmail here.
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There's been to neutralize Tom because Tom is a threat to Willie Rice because Tom knows something that would, at the time, would have hampered
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Willie Rice's campaign, and it ended up hampering because Willie Rice acted, Willie Rice just came out with it.
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Tom wasn't gonna come out with it, but they knew Tom had dirt and Tom could use it, and that could be the October surprise, right?
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That could be the thing that derails the convention away from Willie Rice and gives it to Tom Askell, maybe.
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I still have my doubts on that because of how, just how, like if you're gonna,
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I've said this before, if you're gonna win the room, that's probably a failing strategy. The people who come out there, they're loyal to the center, to the guild, and so anyway, let's, but we'll talk about that more at the end as well.
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So that's how this whole thing starts, and then in order to get the truth out there, you kind of have to share some of this stuff and to set the record straight because it's a very, it can be very damning against, honestly, it's not even
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Tom I'm thinking of as much as his wife, and very violating, and if you don't set the record straight, well, anyways, this leads to this situation with Karen Suala Pryor where she says what
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I just read, and I went to Karen Suala Pryor's Twitter. I just wanted to see, she tweets a lot, so I wanna see, is she combating this?
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Is she saying that she didn't say that? She's not. In fact, I'll just show you right now. As of right now, on the 21st, 2 .35
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p .m. Eastern time, this is all Karen Suala Pryor has tweeted. The Lord sees and knows, that's what matters most.
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That's it, and of course, she has almost 2 ,000 likes, which is far more than even
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Jennifer DeBuck or Tombuck have gotten on their exposing of this from last
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I checked. Let's see, yeah, it's not even 1 ,000 on the statement by the elders.
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So, that's Twitter world, though. Twitter, I've said before, kind of a leftist echo chamber in my mind. So Karen Suala Pryor says that, and I don't know if there's much more to share on this particular page.
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Let's see here. There was a Zoom call with Willie Rice. That's not that important to this.
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Okay, let's move forward here to this.
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SBC Underground account on Twitter said today, we have come to learn that Keith Whitfield is the person who went to Karen Suala Pryor to verify
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Jennifer Buck's rough draft so it could be published against them by the news media outlets. And so, the story so far is
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Karen Suala Pryor had a copy of this draft. Somehow, someone else got a copy of it. It starts leaking aspects of it.
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SBC Voices picks it up, and then you have
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Danny Akin, he's reached out to by Tom Buck and his wife, and he's not, at first he says,
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I'll get to the bottom of this, and then he's like, I can't reveal the name. I can't reveal the name of the person who leaked this.
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And it's, so Danny Akin, Keith Whitfield, Karen Suala Pryor all work at Southeastern.
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And so now, there's an accusation, at least, that it's Keith Whitfield. He's the one, and that it's confirmed.
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Now, I didn't know, I'm like, SBC Underground, I'm not even sure, I don't know if this is actually confirmed or not, but that's what the statement is.
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Now, then comes this. Buckgate, how the SBC elites conspired to blackmail
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Tom and Jennifer Buck. And this is detailed, detailed to the point that there is an entire phone conversation between two of the men.
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I don't even know if I can use that term, men, but to two people, to two, they sound like men.
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Their voices have, they're deep enough to be men, but man, do they not sound like men in the way, in their expressions, and just the, oh man, it's terrible.
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And I debated in my mind whether I was gonna play this particular clip. This is Tom Buck on the phone. Where is it, there it is.
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Tom Buck on the phone, it's like a 11 -minute clip, with two of the authors at SBC Voices, Todd Benkert and Jay Atkins.
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It's pretty bad, it's pretty bad, and I was floored. Tom is the only adult in the room, that's all
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I can say, and it's obvious from this. The excuses that are given, it sounds like a father scolding his two sons who've been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, it's that bad.
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And they drop one, I don't know which one it was, Todd or Jay, but they drop that, basically, we got this from Karen Swallow Pryor.
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So, SBC Underground saying Keith Whitfield is the person who went to Karen Swallow Pryor to verify
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Jennifer Buck's rough draft, so it could be published against them by news media outlets, but Karen Swallow Pryor is the one who leaked it.
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There's a coordination, if this is true. Now, this particular article claims, yes,
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Keith Whitfield. In fact, let me find the place, if I can, Keith Whitfield, let's see, let's see,
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Whitfield has been confirmed as the person who asked Karen Swallow Pryor to confirm the authenticity of a draft, according to this article, so we'll see if more information comes out that contradicts that or not, but I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't be put out there by both of these, this is formerly
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Conservative Resurgent Voices, SBC Underground, and then for, I guess this is
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Jordan Hall's last polemical article, if they didn't have a good idea, I don't think they'd put this out there, but we will see if there's any rebuttal to any of this.
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Now, whether Keith Whitfield was involved or not, which doesn't surprise me, by the way, at all, and I'll talk about that again at the end in my commentary on this, this is bad, this stinks to high heaven, this is
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Danny Akin covering this up, Karen Swallow Pryor being actively involved in this, and it's, again, a politically unmotivated attack that ends up hurting not just a pastor, but the wife of the pastor unnecessarily, and it's not about false teaching, it's not even about a character issue, because it's an issue that by the grace of God, there's been redemption, trust has been violated, and then there's a, instead of just being honest about it, like you could, we could sort of,
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I think I could kind of respect it to some extent if, all right, so it's a Me Too person, let's say, and they're like, well,
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I got ahold of this, and man, there's no forgiveness, let's say hardcore Me Too, there's no forgiveness for what
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Tom did by slapping Jennifer years ago, and well, we just gotta know, we gotta put this out there, and people need to know, and I'm gonna just go to the media, and I'm gonna leak it, and I'm gonna be honest about it, you could sort of respect that,
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I guess, you could disagree with that, you could say you violated trust here, but if someone had that conviction that this is beyond that, this is so bad and horrible that we need to put it out there,
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I would understand that, and there's been situations I've even been in where I've been like, I think this piece of information needs to get out there, and this is necessary and vital, but then what you do is you just, you try to let the person know, kind of like, hey, this is what
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I'm thinking of doing, thoughts, you know, you don't just like, I'm gonna cover it up,
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I'm gonna pretend it didn't happen, you admit that that's what you're doing, you're honest about it, this is like when you turn the light on, and there's roaches in the room, and they all scatter, people are just running in all directions, they don't want,
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I mean, and it's crazy, the immature way in which these two guys,
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Jay Adkins and was it Todd Benkert, the way that they are just, we're on your side,
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Tom, we're on your side, so I'm not gonna play the audio, I just didn't feel comfortable doing that, it's a phone call that if you wanna listen to it, you go to protestia .com,
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and it's right there, but very telling, and so this is how the
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SBC works, to some extent, some quarters of the SBC, and this isn't any kind of a shock, not even close to a shock to me, this is the kind of thing that I've become accustomed to in some ways, and there's many situations
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I haven't even been able to talk about, because it's all, you know, the people involved don't want it mentioned, but let me just tell you, this is not like an abnormal thing, to have arm twisting, blackmailing, threats, to smear someone with, really it's about, in this particular case, it's about engaging in a lie, you know, trying to characterize someone a certain way based off this sliver of truth from years ago that is not even, doesn't describe who they are now, and is confidential information that was shared in trust with the intention of putting it out there, only in a form, though, that was gonna be helpful to people, this is trying to put it out there in a form that would damage
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Tom Buck, and by damaging Tom Buck, hopefully derail his, or threaten him, or prevent him from derailing
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Willie Rice's campaign, which has already been derailed. So, anonymous Twitter accounts, you know, are the places that, and apparently, it doesn't matter who it was, but there are anonymous
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Twitter accounts leaking some of this stuff, and that's the situation, broadly speaking, that's going on right now, and I just find the whole thing disgusting,
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I feel like I need to take a shower after this. Now, I do wanna say this, I don't, it's not like I talk to Tom Buck that much, in fact,
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I think the last time I had a phone call with Tom Buck was, I can't even remember, might've been two years ago,
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I mean, it's not, it's, I think, maybe a year ago, I might've messaged something,
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I messaged with him a little, but it's not, I don't talk to Tom Buck that much, just so people are aware, it's not like I'm, you know, just Tom Buck's a close friend, and I gotta stick up for Tom Buck, and it's nothing like that.
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I have some respect for Tom Buck for some of the things that he's done, and for some of the sacrifices
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I think he's made by entering the fray on some of these issues, but I did talk to him today, and the reason
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I did was, I just wanted to confirm something, I just wanted to make sure that I was gonna be on semi, at least the right track on a few things
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I wanted to say, and one of them was this, because a few of you have asked, what's up with Tom Buck going to Karen Swallow Pryor to edit a draft, and Rachel Denhollander with how to deal with this, why would you get advice from Rachel Denhollander, and I'll just tell you in brief, this is my generalization of what
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Tom shared with me, is he's trusting, Tom's a trusting guy, and I don't think he views
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Karen Swallow Pryor the way that he did, in fact I know he doesn't, when that initial draft was shared with her, just for grammatical correction, for those who don't know
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Karen Swallow Pryor, English professor, so she'd be good with correcting grammar, and Tom is just, he's a trusting person, he's going to assume the best, part of that is his own story, as has now been revealed by his wife in that article, and I mean the one in G3, that God's done a lot in redeeming him, and helping him come to a knowledge of the truth, and repentance and all of that, and so Tom wants to extend that to others, in his mind that's how he treats people, and I know he's publicly, this is public, he's put out there that he'll go to dinner with Dwight McKissick and stuff like that, so that's the explanation, that's who
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Tom is, that's I think why some of these folks were included, I myself don't view them probably, maybe
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Karen Swallow Pryor now, maybe Tom and I see the same way on that, on her at least, I'm not sure, but I don't,
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I certainly don't see Rachel Denhollander the same way, I wouldn't think that she would be an authoritative voice, or someone that I would want to go to, with any of that stuff, to my mind her credibility has been completely shot, in the revoice stuff, and I talk about this in Christianity and Social Justice, Religions in Conflict, so you can go and check out my book on that, and I detail my issues with caring well,
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I think it's anti -biblical, it's totally against innocent till proven guilty, it rips out of context, love believes all things, you should just believe accusations, it's standpoint theory, we're not gonna go to the people who know the
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Bible well, we're gonna go to the victims, are the ones that seem to have the thing to do, they're the ones that we should go to for advice,
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I think Rachel Denhollander is a threat, and because of her mission in the
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SBC, because of the caring well initiative, but just because of even all, just if you go on do like Twitter advanced search,
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Rachel Denhollander believe women, and you're gonna find, how often does she believe people who make, without any evidence she just believes the victim, that's a problem, so that's kind of where I am with Rachel Denhollander, I think she's an activist, and not one for biblical ethics at all, but Tom Buck is a trusting person, and he sees her motives in his mind at least, as being pure and good to some extent, that she's trying to help the situation, and so that's up to him, where he wanted to go with this particular information, so that's that for those who have brought this up, and asked questions about it, and I'm sure you can go and ask
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Tom if you want, but the only reason I talked to him, is because I did want to know how to represent him well, with that particular concern that some had, the bigger concern, the major concern, the important concern more than anything else right now, is though what
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SBC elites are doing, Danny Akin sounds like Keith Whitfield, and Karen Swallow Pryor specifically, but also really
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Rice is involved to some extent in this, in fact that pulpit and pen, not pulpit and pen
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I gotta get it's protestia, the protestia article I think had a whole list of people, that were in the helping advise
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Willie Rice, and they spread that net even more, but even if it's just Karen Swallow Pryor and Danny Akin, and the
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SBC voices guys, even if it's just them, this is awful, this is absolutely shameful is what this is, that they would do this, that they would try to anonymously attack someone, with this confidential information, that has the potential to hurt a marriage, to hurt to unnecessarily misconstrue smear, and hurt really lie about the reputation of a pastor, this has the potential to put a whole church in turmoil, and none of this is about false teaching, none of this is about a character issues, that have not been rectified, that Tom and Jennifer haven't been honest about, it's just an attempt to smear, and this is the kind of thing we expect, from like secular politics, not the
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SBC, but this is what happens at the SBC, and the thing that wouldn't surprise me about this, with like Keith Whitfield and stuff is like, yeah
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I was like I remember that, like when I was at Southeastern, Keith was the guy, Keith was the you know, if I don't shape up,
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I gotta meet with Keith Whitfield, and it's supposed to be this intimidation thing, I've been through this, I've turned corners and had professors huddled up, and talking and they all stop and they look at me, because they were probably talking about me, and you know just watch me,
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I've had professors know exactly you know, no issues that I shared in private, in confidence with other professors, and then their signs, and then another professor shows, that they seem to know about it, they seem to know about the issue, they seem to,
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I've seen this kind of thing before, I've had the threats against me, I know of other students at Southeastern, who've had the same thing,
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Keith Whitfield generally winds up in these, for some reason, generally as the guy who has to, try to clean up the mess so to speak, there's political hackery going on, at the highest levels of your convention, if you're a
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Southern Baptist, and the question is can you stop any of this, can you stop, well I think the conservatives in the convention, more conservative ones, leaning conservative, would say come to Anaheim, and if you're gonna stay in and fight, you better do that,
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I've been an advocate for a long time, of have your exit strategy, have the time when you say we're done, enough is enough, we're done, you need that, if it's
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Anaheim, it's Anaheim, fight, if you don't get anywhere, then you might wanna just leave, it might not be worth the hassle, may not be worth funding these entities, you could try to do the, what is it like, you can go down to like $12 a year, or something like that, and still have your vote,
34:20
I mean that'd be good, if you can do that, but yeah in general, not an organization you wanna spend, a lot of effort to try to revive, if you can't get there, now the question is, can you get there, and I've said this a number of times already, but the answer is, can you get the connected to this, is can you get people to show up, can you get your base to show up, can you give them a reason to show up, if you want to win the room,
34:48
I think the strategy is not gonna work, if that's your mindset, it's like we can win the room, we can pit the woke people against each other somehow, we can,
35:01
I don't know, we can, it's gonna come down to two candidates, you're gonna have one that's more conservative, you're gonna have one that's more progressive, most likely, or you're gonna have two progressives, most likely it's gonna be one conservative, one progressive, more leaning person, and you're gonna have to figure out, how to defeat that, it's not a three way or four way race, there's gonna be a runoff, no matter how many people join, and enter the fray, so, you're gonna have to bring a crowd big enough to overwhelm the rest of the convention, and these are the people that are paid to be there, that are loyal to the guild, who have paid jobs in NAMM or IMB or wherever, and they're playing follow the leader, and the leaders are just like party bosses, they have their pick, in this case it was really
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Willie Rice, and then that got, I don't know what they're thinking now, cause they're up a creek a little bit with,
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I don't think they'll have a problem, because they still have their pick, but the person that they've chosen, as a candidate, as a candidate, has inferior qualities as a candidate, we'll just say that to Willie Rice, but, that's what you would have to do, and,
36:16
I'm just gonna be very brutally honest with everyone right now, I don't see the momentum this year that I saw last year,
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I just don't, I saw more momentum last year than I do this year, as it stands now, maybe that can change, but,
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I don't sense excitement, I sense more discouragement, I don't sense a willingness to go to Anaheim, I'm just not,
36:39
I don't know, I don't see the same level, and maybe that will change, maybe there's something that I'm not seeing, that I'm not privy to, but, in order to get the base to show up, and I'm speaking for myself here, if I'm in a
36:56
Southern Baptist thinking about going to the convention, I'm gonna be looking at the array of candidates, especially the person running for president of the
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Southern Baptist Convention, and what I'm gonna be looking for is, are they willing to be demonized, are they willing to really go against the phrase so much, call out the names of the social justice teachers, so it's not just enough to call out the social justice, call out the names of the social justice teachers, identify heresy, identify the false teachers, not to call them brother, but just to really directly say this, we have false teaching here in the seminary, and if you elect me,
37:36
I'm gonna do something about it, that's the kind of thing that would motivate me, those kinds of things, I'm gonna come, this is what
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Trump did, right, when he was gonna drain the swamp, I mean, it's that kind of thing, I'm going to represent your voice, and I don't mind being called racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever, they try to sling at me,
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I'm gonna give it right back to them, and not like Donald Trump, but like Jesus, like Jesus dealt with the Pharisees, every time they attacked him, what did
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Jesus do, he flipped it around, you're the hypocrites, you're making your proselytes twice as much a son of hell as you are, he never made, he didn't allow them to make him the issue, he would turn it right back on them, and who do your prophets cast out demons by, he pointed out the hypocrisy every single time, that's what
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I'm gonna be looking for if I'm a Southern Baptist pew sitter out there, wondering if my denomination is recoverable, that's what's gonna motivate me to spend the kind of money it takes to get to California, and to stay in a hotel, and not for vacation, but to undergo a headache for however many days, in order to try to get someone in there who's gonna start the process, it's gonna be a long process, but at least start the process of cleaning things up, so that's what
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I'm gonna be looking for, whether that's happened or not, I'm gonna let you all out there answer that for yourself, but this is certainly, this is certainly a situation that I think can serve as a rallying cry in some ways, just because it shows the kind of corruption that actually exists out there, these are people, look, think about it, these are people,
39:18
Annie Aiken, president of a seminary for training pastors, people that are supposed to be assisting the church, to love the church, how will they know you are my disciples by your love for one another, and they engage in this kind of, these tactics, how can that be?
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How can that be? How does that demonstrate love? Was he, you know, you're just really so concerned about Tom Buck, that he's such a big threat, that we need to warn people about him, okay,
39:45
I can respect that, but that's not what they're doing, that's not even what they're doing, it's just how do we anonymously smear him, and then cover up for the people who did it?
39:57
Let's cover up some lies, let's cover up some blackmail, let's threaten some people, who might threaten the guy that we want in there, it's no longer about ministry at this point,
40:13
Southeastern, the administration at Southeastern, are they about ministry anymore? It's a good question to ask.
40:19
Well, I wanted to talk about this, and please look, in all this, just remember, there's people behind this, remember,
40:25
I just, I think like I said, maybe because of my background and my parents, but please pray for Mrs.
40:32
Buck, when you're a pastor's wife, I just wanna say this, when you're a pastor's wife, or you and the children of a pastor sometime, but when you're the wife of a pastor especially, that's not a role, that's not like a biblical role in scripture, you know, pastors must have these qualifications, and then the wife of the pastor, this is her role and her responsibility and her qualifications, her job is to support the pastor, her job is to support her husband, she's her husband's helpmate, and it's tragic to me, when wives get dragged into political food fights like this, by frankly people that shouldn't be worth even our time, the way they operate, my goodness, how immature, how worthless to operate this way, and yet they can be dragged into things and attacked and unnecessarily targeted, and when the beef is really with the husband, and I would just ask you pray for that situation,
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I can't imagine that being an easy thing, and the Lord gives grace, and there's many of us, many people out here who see right through this, we know that this is wrong, we know that for those who yell the loudest about victims,
41:51
I mean Karen Swallow Pryor is part of that, I even noticed there was others, and I'm not even that familiar with some of these people,
41:58
I just know like some people run in the same pack, like I think Christine Pack, if I'm not, I can't pull it up right now, there was a few others who were like,
42:06
I'm like you guys, I thought you guys were like big me too, let's speak up for advocates, and all of a sudden we're sticking up for Karen Swallow Pryor, and we're gonna support the abuser, quote unquote, right, we're gonna let the person who did the blackmail get off scot -free, we're not gonna say who things were given to, when it can damage a marriage, it's amazing to me, and it damages a woman, it's
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Mrs. Buck, this is just, it shows the rank hypocrisy of these people, so be skeptical, don't trust any of these people, just don't trust them, they have a good rule of thumb, be skeptical about elites in the
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Southern Baptist Convention in particular, and pray for faithful pastors, who though perhaps imperfect, perhaps you might disagree with the ways they do certain things here and there, but they're striving to do the right thing for the
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Lord, and the wives of pastors especially, not just Mrs.
43:08
Buck, but everyone, all the wives that get targeted in these things, just pray for them, pray for her in particular right now, that's all