Jon Reviews a Recent SBC Candidates Forum

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, here to address these Southern Baptists in the audience. That's right, more content on the

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Southern Baptist Convention. You asked for it and I delivered. Actually, I don't know if you asked for it. I think probably 50%,

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I'm just guessing, this is a gut feeling of my audience, is Southern Baptist. That is my guess. I could be wrong on that.

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It's interesting because when I get invited to speak at churches, it is rarely ever a Southern Baptist church.

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But I think a lot of the pew sitters in those churches listen to this podcast. It's just a really interesting dynamic.

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But the Southern Baptist Convention is coming up in June and many have asked me to talk about the candidates who are running for the presidency of the convention.

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I do have some thoughts on it and I thought maybe a good way to break into this, and I may have more episodes in the future on it, but a good way to start talking about it is to go through some clips from an

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SBC presidential candidate forum that was just held recently. And I think that a lot of the topics, well, the major topics were brought up that people are contending over.

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And it's interesting to see the way that these topics were handled by the three candidates. And so I just wanna spend some time with you.

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We'll probably do one episode, I'm hoping. I might summarize some things because I don't wanna go more than one if I can avoid it.

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And we'll just talk about where the candidates stand according to what they said in this public forum on critical race theory and the

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Church Too movement. They didn't use that term, but that's the popular term. And accountability and some of the things that you all who are listening to this podcast are concerned about.

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So let's talk about that. Let's go to that. We're just gonna jump right into it. This is the church that hosted

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FBC Keller, which I believe is in Texas, if I'm not mistaken. And I want to just jump to a few different things in this.

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I'm not gonna show you the whole thing. It is almost two hours. And frankly, most of you probably wouldn't find that interesting for a variety of reasons.

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But let me give you the tidbits, I think, that you will find not just interesting, but important.

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So to start off the forum, the moderator asks the three candidates, and there's

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Bart Barber in the middle, who is a pastor in Texas. You have Robin Hadaway to his right, well, to actually his left, our right, who is a professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a former missionary.

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And you have Tom Askel to the far right, from our perspective, who is a pastor.

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Well, probably Tom Askel doesn't need much of an introduction on this podcast because we've talked about him, but he's a pastor in Florida and the president of Founders Ministries.

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And so these three are the three that have so far been nominated and are running.

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Willie Rice dropped out. I think Willie Rice was probably the pick from most of the elites in the SBC convention.

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He's the one, I think, that they wanted to rally behind. And I did several podcasts on Willie Rice. And now, this is just my opinion, but I think that they're kind of stuck.

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The Southern Baptist elites in the convention are a little bit stuck, in my opinion, with the candidates that are currently running.

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I think they'll probably end up voting for Bart Barber, but it became more obvious in this forum.

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He's kind of a weak candidate. And Robin Hadaway is also a little bit of a weak candidate for a variety of reasons, which we'll get into as we go through it.

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I think Tom Askel came out looking not just the strongest and most competent, but the most mature and probably, and I'm trying to view this as much as I can with this comment that I'm making, at least, not the rest of them, but this comment.

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I'm trying to view this as much as I possibly can in a nonpartisan way. Just Tom Askel, just to me, seemed like he was well put together and had thought through the issues more than the other two.

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Robin Hadaway was constantly talking about his experience, and that's really what he has.

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He has experience in various committees and as a missionary and as a pastor. So he's well -rounded and he's a professor.

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And so therefore, he's got experience. You should do it for him. Bart Barber seems to be, my overall impression, the kind of the status quo candidate, just kind of the

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SBC may have some issues here and there, but nothing huge or major. And it doesn't need to be completely reformed or anything like that.

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And just, like I said, the one that the elites will probably rally around more. And then, of course,

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Tom Askel has some real issues with what's going on in the convention. And so I actually think Tom Askel did a pretty good job in this forum.

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There are a few things that I probably, I would have liked to hear him say a little differently and be stronger on and give more of a rallying cry for, and I'll talk about those things.

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But overall, I think, I mean, he had the facts in front of him. He was able to remember things and articulate things.

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And he has a vision that seems to be, which the other two don't have much of a vision.

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So if the conservatives are gonna win, I think last year was like their last chance in my mind.

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And I've said this before, this isn't new information, just for those who might be watching this particular podcast. I've said this many times.

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In fact, a year ago, I had a podcast, The Eight Reasons to Leave the Southern Baptist Convention. People know where I stand on this.

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And the SBC. Having said that, this particular year, this is pretty weak.

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I don't know that it can be much weaker as far as the candidates that Tom Askell would have to run against, that it is running against.

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It's just, they're not well known. Bart Barber was on the resolutions committee last year, which that doesn't really give him a lot of notoriety.

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So, and their personalities and the way they articulate themselves and their visions, it's just, it isn't very strong.

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Tom Askell has the upper hand, at least when you watch this, in my opinion, and you just listen to him speak.

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Now, we know once you get in that convention room, it's a different story because many of the people there are essentially paid to be there.

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They are, I hate to put it this way, but this is just the reality. You have a swamp in the

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SBC and the swamp needs to be drained. And the swamp shows up to vote.

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And the messengers, a lot of them are from the swamp. There are bigger churches that can afford to send candidates or messengers rather.

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And it's organizations like the IMB and NAM that have a party loyalty in a sense.

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They have a loyalty to the center. And so getting a conservative messengers to come and overwhelm the convention is extremely hard, if not impossible, unless you have a strong rallying cry.

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So this forum, if it was just based on this forum and everyone could vote online who is a

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Southern Baptist and they were forced to vote online and they had to just see this forum and then vote, I think Tom Askew would win.

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That's no question in my mind, but that's just not the way this thing works. The motivation, the momentum, the resources, and the location are all in favor of the more progressive elements of the

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Southern Baptist Convention. So let's start here. The candidates are asked questions about kind of who they are.

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We're gonna skip through some of that and then what they wanna see. And one of the things Bart Barber says, this is as close as he gets in my mind to, well, one of the things that,

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I mean, he talks about a problem at the end that's, but that's discernment blockers.

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The problem that he sees, one of the things that would maybe appeal to conservatives,

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Orthodox Christians in the SBC and theological conservatives is this. And it's probably about as close as he gets.

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In constitution and about strict construction, this interpretation of the U .S.

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Constitution, leading us to do wonderful things like strike down Roe v. Wade, that I'm also a strict constructionist when it comes to the constitution of the

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Southern Baptist Convention. That's pretty, that's it. That's, I think the closest thing that I heard, there was one other thing he said that was kind of,

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I was like, oh, that's good. Like he understands that we should have localism more so in the

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SBC, but he had no plan to implement any kind of decentralization. So this is the closest that you get to,

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I mean, I know it's kind of, it lacks. If that's all it is, it lacks, but that's the closest he gets to saying something,

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I think that would appeal to more conservatives, that he believes that. I don't know whether in practice he believes that or not or how that would work, but that's as close as we get.

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I'm not gonna talk as much about Robin Hadaway. And one of the reasons is he didn't, he kind of forges this middle road where, and I don't even know if he understands to an extent all the issues going on.

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It's just, and the other candidates didn't interact with him as much. So I don't think he's gonna wind up in that second vote.

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I just don't think so, but in the runoff, but he talks about, I'll just say, he talks about remembering the mission of the

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SBC. That's what he believes in. And so, and then Tom Askell says this, and this is where, this does appeal to many of us.

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And I think he says some true things, and I would have loved for him to go a little farther, but here's what he says. Here's to being a pastor.

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I'm delighted to be a part of the Southern Baptist Convention, I love the Southern Baptist Convention, but I'm concerned about the

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Southern Baptist Convention. I think we need to change the direction in the way that we're going. Not because we got ranked liberals among us,

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I don't believe that's true, but I believe that the winds of an acidic cultural mindset has begun to creep in to some of our institutions and agencies, and it's my firm conviction, as I said all the time, that the churches of the convention own the institutions and agencies, and the institutions and agencies need to be responsive to the churches.

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So that's the rallying cry, if there is one, for Southern Baptists to come up and vote, is that there is a problem, and it's not ranked liberalism, but it's the world is coming in to the institutions and affecting them, and that the reason this is left unchecked is because the churches aren't holding them accountable, or they're not listening to churches attempting to hold them accountable.

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And so there's a lot of truth in this. The only thing I would say would have been a real rallying cry,

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I think a stronger one, is to say, because I think Mike Stone did something very similar to this in an article, that, well, we don't really have liberals running.

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And the reason, let me just explain this to people who don't understand. The reason they say this kind of thing is because they're drawing a distinction.

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They're saying it's not like the liberalism that affected the denomination before the conservative resurgence happened in the 70s and in the 80s.

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It's not the kind of liberalism that Jay Gresham Machen writes about in Christianity and liberalism, where you have people that are denying things like the sufficiency and the inerrancy of the word of God, the really basic doctrines too, like the deity of Christ and that kind of thing.

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So they're drawing a distinction and saying, we know that the people that we have issues with in the convention, who are making the convention slide in this bad direction, are not those kinds of liberals.

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They're not liberals in that sense. But there's worldly problems here. They're bringing in ideas that subvert.

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And here's what I would say to that. Yes, but. Yes, they're not the same type of liberal in every sense of the word.

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They're certainly not out there saying that they believe that the biblical text actually has errors in it, or that they're not advancing the

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JEDP theory or something like that. But having said that, what we have today, in my opinion, is more dangerous and more subversive.

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I think it's one of the reasons John MacArthur said that the social justice movement is the greatest threat to the gospel he'd ever seen in his lifetime.

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And he lived through these battles that the SBC was undergoing during the conservative resurgence. The reason for that is because postmodernists play much more fast and loose with the truth.

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And J. Gresham Machen complained in his day about modernists signing statements they didn't really agree with and being subversive, but it's nothing compared to what we see today.

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Today, you have people that can say one thing and say something else, hold them in diametrical opposition and not see the contradiction, and then accuse you of being the divisive one when you point out there is a contradiction.

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If you believe in standpoint theory, that completely erodes not just inerrancy, not just sufficiency.

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It actually erodes the very basis for revelation itself. It's so fundamental. And yet there's people going around adopting a pop version of standpoint theory, implementing it in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. I talk about this in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict.

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The Caring Well Initiative is a good example of it. You have people that are advancing these things in the denomination, and yet they think that they're

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Orthodox believers, that they haven't said anything that contradicts the statements of faith that they have to sign if they're a professor or if they work for the institution and are required to do that.

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And we could give many examples of those kinds of things. And so I think what would have been a rallying cry is

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I'm concerned about this direction of the Southern Baptist Convention, and we have false teachers in the denomination and also those covering for false teachers to the point, to the effect that the

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Southern Baptist Convention is falling into a false gospel and heresy. And it is left unchecked by the denominational institutions that our churches are supposed to hold accountable.

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I think that would be a much bigger rallying cry because that's the truth of the situation. There is a false gospel, and you don't have to look any farther than our seminaries to see this.

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In fact, later on, Tom Askew will cite Walter Strickland. He doesn't name names though in this whole thing.

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He just says a professor. I just happen to know it was Walter Strickland, but Walter Strickland has put forward liberation theology, and he has articulated it in such a way that it's actually textbook false teaching and conflation of law and grace.

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But yet, one of the things that we haven't heard from a lot of the conservative leaders is that word. One thing, and I'm not trying to bash

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Tom Askew here just so people know. I'm saying that I think to motivate people to come to the convention,

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I'm thinking politically here, they have to have a reason to pay them the kind of money that it takes to get to Anaheim, because we don't have the resources on the conservative side that the other side does.

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And they have to know that what they're showing up for is of great importance.

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And I think what he does here is he articulates something that's important, but it's not as important as what's actually formed, which is a false gospel.

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Walter Strickland articulates this, but so does Jarvis Williams at Southern Seminary. He completely takes critical race theory, merges, he basically infuses the works that we need for final justification.

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That's his term that he uses. He takes critical race theory, racial reconciliation, and that's the

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Christianized version of it in his mind, and infuses that right into the gospel under the guise of the works that are necessary for final justification.

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It's a false gospel. So we have people that have been corrected that will not actually retract.

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And so that's where I would focus is we, and name the names. Here are some of the people that are promoting this.

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It's left unchecked. We have a major corruption issue. If people can't recognize this, see this, and oppose it, that leaves, that puts a suspicion around the institutions when this kind of thing happens.

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And two, I know that this kind of thing is happening in the IMB. I know that this kind of thing is definitely happening in NAM.

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It's much harder to find those situations because it's not as publicly available, and the people who know about them are not able to come out and whistleblow without major repercussions.

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And so the seminaries is where I'd probably put my focus is here's the kind of people that are training the next generation to go out, and how do we know that we don't have false teachers going into some of these institutions like the

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IMB, and then going on the field and promoting some of these false teachings to people around the world, and we're exporting that, which

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Tom Askew actually gets into some of that. He just doesn't call it false teaching. So my little quibble, I guess, that what

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I'm saying is that I really agree with him. I just think go stronger, go hard, right?

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Go for the jugular on this thing. That's, I think, what would really motivate people to come out.

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But he's absolutely right that issues streaming in from the culture, which

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I think what he means by that is academia and the media and Hollywood, et cetera, there are coming into the convention.

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So let's go to, let's talk a little bit, we'll give you a little bit of Robin Hadaway here. Let's see here, if I can, 18.

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I put the timestamps down here. Far and away the best at that. So he joined with both feet, and is on the associational board.

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And I think we found that among a lot of California churches in our Pioneer West that they just see that our churches are the best.

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Now, there's always issues. California pastor friend of mine said there's always foxes in the vineyards, these little things that crop up that you have to take care of.

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But that's just how it is in church life because of people's sin. But I believe that Southern Baptists are the ones that really lead the charge for evangelism and church planning, especially in our.

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That's kind of the general rhetoric you're gonna get from Robin Hadaway. It's very, like I said, moderate, middle of the,

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I don't know how to even, it reminds me a little bit of Fred Thompson. I remember when he ran, what was that, 2008?

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And it was just, he lacked that fire in the belly, people said, and it feels a little bit like that. It's just, it lacks, it's like if things are going so well and you just have a little, it's downplaying.

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It's like, yeah, we have scuffles now and then, but we're the best, we're doing well. And meanwhile, the house is on fire.

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That's the reality. And so let's see, let me show you what Tom Askell says about this.

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He does a great job. Around the world, and again, like these brothers, I've been at places around the world,

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I've seen the impact that Southern Baptist Missions has had. I've seen the impact that American Christianity has had, both good and ill.

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We export to the rest of the world what we do here. And if we're not doing it well here, it's not going to go well for the rest of the world.

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God's just positioned us that way. So my desire would be to see the Southern Baptist Convention become healthier, to back up and evaluate who we are, who we say we are, and what we are really committed to being.

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And there's a lot of issues that we just, we need to efface. They're not going away. And if we just pretend that everything's okay, and let's just keep moving forward the way we've been doing things, it's not gonna go well for us.

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And again, the issue here, there's a number of them. There's corruption issues, but there's false teaching, and that's the issue.

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I mean, he's talking about it. He definitely is mentioning the issues and saying that these are being exported, and that's a big problem.

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But at the core of it, we have false teaching going on. That's the real issue, the dangerous one.

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We don't want to export false teaching. Now, he gives some examples. He puts some meat on the bones here.

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And Bart Barber kind of contradicts him on the issues surrounding, or that are affecting the denomination.

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What we're looking for there is simply that we would be able to tell, should they sit at that convention.

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But the other criteria, and I see I'm out of time, but I already gave you 30 seconds back, so I'll take that away.

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So I would just say that it's the situation where the

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Credentials Committee is just that convention. Further Credentials Committee deliberation, that's another story.

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Good, thank you. We'll have another question about the committee in just a moment. Thank you, Brother Tom. Yeah, well, philosophy is important.

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It's not as important as theology, but as has been said, it's the handmaiden. Just so you know, the question is, essentially,

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I'm summarizing, but how can you have such a big denomination with so many varieties of philosophy and ministries, people doing things differently in the denomination?

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How do you keep the denomination together? So here's what Tom Askell says. Theology, and so not just any philosophy works, and we need to acknowledge that.

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The churches of the SBC agree to cooperate on certain things, not everything, and so my church isn't gonna do everything the same way that Bart's church is gonna do it.

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That's okay. He's in Texas, I'm in Florida. We should acknowledge that, but we do need to come to terms with some of the problems that we are facing now are because of philosophies that have come in from the world, which the

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Apostle Paul warns us against in Colossians 2, eight and nine, and look at how those philosophies have begun to erode the foundation of our cooperative unity, and I'm deeply concerned about that.

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So just as you're hearing this, you have philosophies coming in that are eroding the foundation of our cooperative unity.

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That sounds like really serious stuff. So what are those philosophies, and how are they doing that?

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And essentially, I mean, essentially, this is, I almost wanna say this is false teaching without saying it's false teaching, but it's,

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I think he's being very careful and he's choosing his words, but that's, we know in this podcast, if you follow this for any length of time, the issues affecting the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Broadly speaking, you can say critical race theory. You could say feminism is affecting the domination.

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You could say even to some extent, a soft peddling of LGBTQ. You could say that there's a problem with pragmatism and evangelism and outreach.

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There's issues of corruption and character. Now, if you dig into the weeds more, what you're gonna find though, is the doctrines that are being attacked are the very idea that there's objective truth itself.

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And so that erodes doctrines of inerrancy and sufficiency, the justice of God and how he, his law, how it's articulated in his law, and how that is being attacked by the social justice movement directly.

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We could talk about the view of reality that scripture assumes. And then the ideology that comes in from social justice movement, which reduces people down to their oppressor or oppressed categories and kind of dehumanizes them based on those things.

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We could talk about the fact that the gospel is being merged with works righteousness. And there's a social justice infused law that now is being merged with the gospel and called various things.

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Racial reconciliation has been one of the most popular things. And of course, then the corruption is people who are unqualified to be in the positions they're in, running whole institutions that have authority over churches.

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And so not to mention issues of egalitarianism and attacking the very word of God.

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And again, that's attacking the law of God, but attacking the rules that God has set forth as if somehow they're unjust or they're wrong or the created order is actually oppressive in some way.

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These are the things affecting the Southern Baptist Convention. And so I think this is what he's talking about.

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And he does put some meat on the bones here. Now we have churches that say that it's their ministry philosophy to ordain women.

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It's their ministry philosophy to affirm organizations that say that they're caring for homosexual

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Christians and that that's a good way to live. Well, that's not right. I don't think our tent is that big. If it's that big, then we've got problems and we need to look at the stakes and go back and say, no, here are our boundaries.

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Now, what he's saying is true. Actually, the other day, I was looking up a church and I was not looking for anything negative.

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I wasn't even out there trying to find dirt on anything. I was just, it was looking at a church in South Carolina and it's on the

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Southern Baptist Convention's website as being a Southern Baptist church. And they had several women pastors there.

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And I sent it to a few people and I just was like, kind of like double -check me on this.

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And sure enough, yeah, I was totally accurate. But they're just not in favor of the portions of the

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Baptist faith and message that talk about women's and pastoral roles. But they're still with the Southern Baptist Convention.

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I don't know how much money they give to the SBC, but this kind of stuff is happening. There's no doubt. Here and there, you'll get stories about it.

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And so, how do you deal with a church? How do you cooperate with a church that believes that?

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And is it not in accordance with the Baptist faith and message is the real question. And here's how Bart Barber responds to this.

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Yeah, the great news is we have a statement of faith that already addresses those issues. We have parameters of fellowship within the

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Southern Baptist Convention. Not only do we have parameters of fellowship in the

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Baptist faith and message, we also have a way that we set those parameters. And it's that the messenger body of the convention votes to decide what the parameters of fellowship are within the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And I think we've done a good job. So really, all these churches, they're not accountable to just my opinion or the opinion of me and a few friends.

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They're accountable to what the messenger body has voted, what somebody's persuaded the messenger body to adopt as parameters of fellowship within our convention.

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I think we've done a good job of differentiating between preferences and doctrine. And I think it's important that we keep that level of differentiation in mind when we make those decisions.

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So you have, all right, so on one hand you have the house is burning down, there's bad things happening.

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We need to figure out how to address these bad things happening. On the other hand, you have, we've done a good job.

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Things are going rather well. Messengers have the final say, and we do have parameters, and we have good news.

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He said, the good news is we have these parameters. And so we have them, but if they're ignored, if you have parameters that say one thing and then people just ignore it, and what's the mechanism for enforcing those things?

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Or identifying churches that are out of step with those things? Or professors at a seminary perhaps?

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See, that's the issue. So, Bart, this is a guy, in my mind already, you have

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Bart Barber and Robin Hathaway that are just not, they're not up for the task.

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And it could be a combination of things, or it could be one of really two things. Either they just don't understand what's going on in their own denomination, they're somewhat oblivious to it.

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Or they do know what's going on, and they're in favor of some of the things that are going on. Or they don't view the thing going on as a big deal.

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So you have a combination of those two things, or one or the other.

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And to me, that's just a disqualification at that point. If you can't articulate very firmly that there's major issues in the

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Southern Baptist Convention of which I've mentioned some, you can't put meat on those bones and get specific about where you see some of those issues, then how in the world are you gonna address them once you become the president of the denomination?

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You're not gonna gain more discernment just because you became president. And you're not gonna gain more backbone just because you became president.

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So I would say, already in my mind, Tom Askell's the only one that even is approaching some of these issues.

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And even then, I would articulate some of these things stronger. But he's actually seeing there's a problem, and he wants to do something about it, and he knows kind of where it is.

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There's a guy who's qualified to do something. He's met the preliminary qualifications for running the institution that's in crisis.

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So we have a question, and this is a big one,

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I'll probably just play this for a little while, on critical race theory. And the candidates have to respond.

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I'm just gonna play it for you, and then I'll comment as we go. Talking about this issue, it's on the news. So what is

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CRT? Is it manifesting in churches or organizations, including the

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SBC? And what, if anything, should the SBC and its president do about it?

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So we go from Bart to Tom, and then Robin. And then if you all have clarification questions for each other, we can do that.

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No, we have the order here for question two, goes

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Bart, and then Tom, and then Robin. Sorry about that. So Bart, what is

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CRT? What, if anything, should we do about it? So all you have to know about CRT to be ready to walk away from it is that it proposes some ideas of what justice is that are at odds with the

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Judeo -Christian idea of justice that's passed down into American jurisprudence. But I think it's important to ask what is

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CRT, not only for yourself, but also for the other people you're talking with about it.

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I'm interested in truth, and I conducted a poll to try to figure out whether we were actually talking past each other.

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1 ,500 people responded to my poll. Only 63 out of 1 ,500 said that they affirmed critical race theory.

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Half of those were people who were not Southern Baptist, so you had fewer than 40 who were

31:16

Southern Baptists who said they affirmed critical race theory. And of those people, only four agreed with the statement that said white people are racist just by virtue of being white.

31:28

Okay, only four out of 1 ,500. But I've had people tell me that that was what critical race theory was.

31:34

It was the idea that white people are guilty just by virtue of being white. But a lot of people who affirmed critical race theory deny that.

31:42

I've had people tell me that anything that you do to try to include black churches, or Hispanic churches, or Asian churches in the

31:51

Southern Baptist Convention is racist and is critical race theory. You can do all you want to to include small churches or large churches.

31:59

You can do all you want to to try to include rural churches or urban churches. You can do all you want to to include all these other groups, but if you try to include black churches or Hispanic churches or Asian -American churches, they say that's racist.

32:11

That's critical race theory. You can't do that. I don't buy that. I don't think we have to espouse secular ideologies just to be kind and welcoming to churches that are on the fringe in the

32:24

Southern Baptist Convention. I think we ought to work to try to build our fellowship stronger and stronger, and to invite more and more people to come and to be a part of this great family of churches.

32:36

And I think that's the president's role in helping to show the difference between critical race theory and just not being a jerk, or just not not caring about people who are on the fringe, but trying to bring people in.

32:48

Okay, so this is disqualifying on so many levels, but let's start here.

32:56

And let me just give you kind of my summary here. The SBC doesn't have a critical race theory problem, because he did a poll and people said they didn't believe critical race theory.

33:04

And then he builds a straw man. He can't define CRT, but some people say it's just it's this.

33:12

Some people say it's this. People who actually believe in CRT disagree with some of the definitions of people who think they know what

33:19

CRT is. And because there's so much confusion, then we shouldn't use this. We shouldn't cater to the people on the fringe.

33:25

We shouldn't use this controversy to stop reaching out to minority congregations.

33:32

And of course, here's the thing. The straw man is, number one, no one is reaching out.

33:38

No one is saying you shouldn't reach out to minority congregations or include them. Who is saying that? Show me who's saying that.

33:43

No one's saying that. The issue—so that is a complete straw man. The issue is the motivation behind why we supposedly reach out or include not just—it's not even minority congregations.

33:58

It's diversifying churches and institutions. Why do we do that? There is, to some extent, some reach out to churches that are diverse in those ways or different than the white

34:11

Southern Baptist churches, and so we want them in. It's the motive for it.

34:18

Do we do it because we think we could partner better for the sharing of the gospel, and it's churches in a location, and it can reach this people group, and there's a mission strategy of some kind here?

34:29

Is it because, well, hey, we're a bunch of racists, or the legacy of racism is upon us if we don't do this?

34:37

See, that's a very different motivation, and with all the racial reconciliation rhetoric that's been going on for the last, really, eight years, the impression is given that it's the legacy of racism that has led to the whiteness or the white majority in the social justice things to try to get these other churches and these other people involved in the denomination.

35:05

That's what people have complained about. They haven't complained about, it's CRT if you want to partner with an

35:12

Asian American church or something. No, who's saying this? No one's saying this. That's a straw man, and he said then, though, at the end, that it's the president's job to basically define

35:23

CRT and then explain to everyone what the difference is between CRT and then the misnomers about what people think

35:29

CRT is. So it's not just hating white people, right? And he's got to explain the differences, but then he can't even define what

35:36

CRT is. So it's just fail all the way around. He can't even do the very job he's saying that this president ought to be able to do because he can't define it, and I think

35:44

Tom Askell's answer here was out of the park. Any clarification that either of you—

35:51

Okay, we're not going to do Tom Askell's answer first. Tom Askell's going to kind of cross -examine them, but we're going to get there. Tony, do you want from Bart?

35:59

Anybody? Yeah, Bart, do you think that it's possible that those folks that are saying, no, we don't believe in critical race theory really don't think they are, but could have well imbibed the ideas of critical race theory as just being a part of this culture where it is so preeminent?

36:16

I think the only way that we're going to know that for sure is if we can agree on a definition. I appreciated what you said in your interview.

36:23

Well, I'm supposed to address my remarks to the moderator. I insisted on that, and I've already broken it.

36:29

Sorry about that, Tom. I appreciated what Tom had to say a few days ago in his interview where he said, you know, we may find out that our differences are not nearly as great as we think maybe they are.

36:41

I'd say that's possible. Why don't we find that out before we get into a big argument with each other, is what

36:49

I would say. I think we ought to talk to each other in such a way that we're only ready to start debating something when we can say what the other person's viewpoint is so well that they say, yes, that's exactly what

37:00

I believe. Then we're ready to have those conversations. Yeah, that's a wall of words. There's nothing significant.

37:06

I mean, he's nervous, clearly, and he says we should agree on a definition, but then he makes the claim that there are all these competing definitions.

37:19

And so it's somehow the job of the president of the denomination to kind of compare them to a standard, but he's never posited a standard.

37:27

So what's the standard? What is critical race theory? So it's best, I think, to talk about the issues issue by issue instead of just throwing labels around that we have trouble defining.

37:38

Fair enough. Tom, so the question goes to you. That was just a mess. That was just a mess. You. Yeah, well, critical race theory is an offshoot of neomarxism, postmodernism, and a theory that came out of critical legal theory.

37:54

And it basically says that all racial relationships should be viewed in terms of power dynamics and that some are inevitably oppressed and others are inevitably the oppressors.

38:05

Now, it's worked its way out in a variety of places and ways, like in Robin DiAngelo's book that says that, you know, whiteness is just an ideology that everybody in this culture, this nation is born with, and that this nation is inherently and will forever be racist.

38:22

And so it takes the idea of sinful partiality from the Bible and redefines it in ways that are completely unbiblical.

38:30

And that's one of my great concerns about this is this wouldn't even have been a conversation among us had the resolutions committee in 2019 rewritten a resolution that was submitted to renounce critical race theory and intersectionality.

38:42

They rewrote it to affirm critical race theory and intersectionality. And then we were told, no, they're just good analytical tools.

38:51

And that was a disaster for the SBC. It was tragic that it happened.

38:57

Our six seminary presidents have now said critical race theory is incompatible with the Baptist faith and message.

39:03

But one of those presidents the next day said, well, I wish we hadn't said it exactly that way. When they said it, there were churches that left the convention over it.

39:11

So to suggest this isn't a problem, I think is not looking at all the evidence that is out there staring us in the face.

39:18

I do believe that this is an ideology that as we're seeing in our newspapers and news reports, in school board meetings and classrooms, it is part of our cultural air right now.

39:30

And I do think that it's come in. We have one of our professors that gave an interview to the New York Times and says that he teaches

39:36

James Cone, who's the father of liberation theology, very much influenced by this whole ideology.

39:42

He said, but I just don't use his name when I do it. We have another professor at a different seminary who wrote an article talking about how he was an oppressed man because he's black at our seminary.

39:52

He's got a PhD from Southern Seminary, teaches at Southern Seminary, one of the most prestigious seminaries in the world.

39:58

We got another professor who has endorsed the Revoice Conference, which says we affirm gay

40:06

Christianity. We want to help homosexual Christians to flourish. Brothers, these things shouldn't be.

40:14

We have boundaries. And the Baptist faith and message certainly points out our doctrinal boundaries.

40:20

But I do believe, just like we saw in the conservative resurgence, there are a lot of people who are saying, oh, we believe the Bible, we believe the

40:26

Bible, but they're not thinking as rigorously as they need to be thinking about exactly what does the

40:32

Bible say. And so that's part of my concern on this. I'm grieved over what

40:37

I see happening. I don't, it's not a matter of partisanship with me. It's a matter of deep conviction that we must change the direction of our convention right now.

40:46

That was very well articulated. I, at this point, having seen this for now a few years, more than that,

40:56

I'm not willing to extend the olive branch of ignorance any longer. I know there are ignorant people out there, but people in the denominational hierarchy, there's no reason for them to be ignorant.

41:09

In fact, if they're ignorant, they are so unqualified. Ignorance is not the issue.

41:16

It's false teaching. That's the issue with this. It's not just, it's not people that are just, they haven't made the connection.

41:22

They haven't looked at their Bibles well enough. I mean, these are people that are subverting. These are, I was reading Jude this morning with someone

41:27

I am discipling. These are people who are crept, they've crept in unaware. People aren't seeing who they really are.

41:36

And he mentioned Walter Strickland, not by name. That's who he's talking about, who wrote the piece or was interviewed by the

41:42

New York Times. That's who he's talking about and teaches James Cone. He doesn't talk about James Cone though, but he'll teach

41:49

James Cone and doesn't, not by name sometimes. I mean, this is textbook. You're introducing these damnable heresies and you're doing so in a subversive manner.

42:01

We have subversive false teachers in our midst. That's what we have. And I commend

42:08

Tom Askell for at least going after it to some extent and going after the resolutions committee as well because he's absolutely right about what happened with Resolution 9.

42:22

I think we could probably, let's keep playing this because I think Bart Barber responds to this and it's interesting.

42:29

Any follow -up or clarification you would ask of Tom? I think for the examples that you've listed of people who have said things that are objectionable, haven't all of those people come back and said, hey, that's not really accurately representing what

42:46

I think and what I believe? And what are we supposed to do when people say, just like here, we're getting an opportunity to clarify things that we say?

42:54

What are we supposed to do when other people ask for that right? Yeah, well, and I would be delighted for that, but the clarifications have not clarified.

43:03

The clarifications in my mind have said things like, oh, this is not really what I meant, but they've not just gone back and said, no,

43:11

I no longer endorse revoice. How hard is that to say? That's not hard to say. If you've endorsed a conference that affirms homosexual

43:18

Christianity, how hard is it to say, I no longer endorse that? Or if you say, I teach

43:23

James Cone, but I just don't use his name, how hard is it to say, I don't do that anymore? I used to do it, and I'm not going to do it anymore.

43:30

Or if you say, I'm an oppressed person because of the color of my skin in the most prestigious seminary in the world, how hard is it to say, you know what, that's wrong.

43:38

I shouldn't say that. That's the problem, is there's an obfuscation that seems to permeate the way that we talk about some of these things.

43:46

And I just think we ought to be plain spoken. I mean, let's let our yes be yes and our no be no. I think we can do that as brothers and sisters in Christ.

43:54

He's talking about Jarvis Williams, depressed person at Southern Seminary. He's talking about Walter Strickland at Southeastern.

44:01

He's also talking about, I believe, Karen Swalwell -Pryor at Southeastern. I thought at first it may have been Nate Collins, but I think it's

44:07

Karen Swalwell -Pryor. So these are the three people that he doesn't name by name, but that's who he's talking about.

44:13

And his response is excellent. Because basically what he's saying is he's accusing them.

44:19

He's not using the strongest language to do it, but he is doing it. He's saying, look, I just think we should be plain spoken.

44:25

We should be direct. And it leaves you with options of either these people who say that they don't believe these things when they say them and they are unwilling to retract.

44:34

They're either cowards or they're lying. And that's what's going on.

44:40

So Barber is trying to defend them from these charges by saying, well, maybe they don't really mean that.

44:51

But Tom Askell, I think, very clear and articulate on this. And so good job to Tom Askell for being honest about this.

45:00

This is like the thing that you're not allowed to say in the SBC. You can't go after people. It's breaking that 11th commandment when you start going after people personally.

45:09

And he's identifying, he's giving you enough description that you know kind of who he's talking about if you're paying attention, at least with some of this.

45:16

And so I'd say good for him on that. So let's see.

45:22

I don't know if I want to even play Robin Hataways because basically what he says is that CRT is wrong, but we got to be careful we don't become racist.

45:33

But he doesn't understand what's going on here as if CRT is somehow the same kind of thing.

45:43

And there are parallels. CRT is influenced to some extent. One of the streams coming into it is the civil rights stuff, but it's got a lot more packed into it than just that.

45:54

And so as if we reject CRT, then we're going to go back to segregation.

45:59

He tells a story about being in a sports team and then having to stay at a hotel while one of his teammates had to stay at another hotel, as if that's a danger that would happen if we reject

46:10

CRT. So Robin Hataway, in my opinion, just didn't answer this question very well. And let's skip ahead to Tom Askell again.

46:22

He says that... He talks about the credentials committee of the SBC. And I'm just gonna actually summarize.

46:28

I'm not gonna play this for the sake of time, but he talks about how there are issues with Saddleback Church, and I believe a church in Florida that had, he calls it pagan worship, but they were bringing in really worldly sermon series and things like that.

46:43

And that the credentials committee didn't really do anything about it. And there needs to be... The credentials committee needs to be more aggressive.

46:50

And Barbara makes a good point about localism and how if your local associations are working right within the

46:58

Southern Baptist Convention, the associations that are part of that or related to it, if they were working right, then you didn't need the credentials committee to really do that.

47:07

And Tom Askell brings up the point, well, but there are people that don't have those local associations. And so you see from Tom Askell, he wants a credentials committee that's more aggressive, which at this point,

47:18

I liked Barbara's point about you should have really... I think it's better to have stronger local associations.

47:26

And I don't like what's happened since the great commission resurgence where you have, especially with NAM, so much money and flowing through NAM that should be really left for local associations to do church planning in their areas.

47:42

I don't like that. I tend to favor localism. But when you have a crisis of the proportion that we're in, there doesn't seem to be a great mechanism.

47:52

The local associations in large part aren't really doing this kind of work and you have a problem.

47:58

So what do you do? And so to enforce the standards of the Southern Baptist Convention, you need a strong...

48:03

And really just a committee that does their job, a credentials committee that does. So let's skip ahead to the sexual abuse task force.

48:12

This is also a big issue and this is interesting. There's Bart Barber, what he says about it.

48:18

It was clearly something that originated out of messenger body, didn't originate from the platform. It was overwhelmingly passed by the messenger body.

48:26

There were questions about whether to implement it the way the messenger body said to implement it. And it just goes to show that when it's not just me or me and a few of my friends, when the full messenger body of the

48:39

Southern Baptist Convention demands transparency and accountability, it happens because our system works, works very well.

48:46

The job of the sexual abuse task force is to perform an investigation of the executive committee, to take the report that they get from Guideposts, the firm that's done that, and to disclose it unredacted to the messenger body so that we can all know what they found in that.

49:04

As far as what we need to be doing with regard to sex abuse, I don't know what's going to be in the report.

49:10

I haven't seen it. I don't have any special information about that. I want to be circumspect about what I say about a document that I don't know what's in it.

49:19

But I will just say this. I think what we ought to do is do the right thing and do the right thing every time.

49:28

And if we'll do the right thing, do the right thing every time, God will take care of our reputation. God will take care of our legal situation.

49:35

God will take care of our financial situation because God is holy, he calls on us to be holy, and he's a provider of all things.

49:44

And I think doing the right thing means doing the best that we can to prevent abuse, doing the best that we can to support survivors, doing the best that we can to tell the truth about circumstances that we encounter where abuse has taken place, and also doing the best that we can in all of those things without violating our polity or our doctrine.

50:05

But instead, it's going to look a little different the way Southern Baptists do this than the way Catholics address something like this because we're

50:13

Baptists, we have different polity. I think it's going to be something that gives us some strengths that Catholics don't have to be able to address this kind of thing.

50:22

I mentioned in an interview not long ago, this makes me think about... All right, let's just stop it right there.

50:28

This is an approval, in so many words, of the Sexual Abuse Task Force and what they're doing and examining the executive committee.

50:35

This is, of course, what you all know if you've listened to this podcast. This was what made a lot of members of the executive committee to resign because of the waiving of attorney -client privilege, which was so foolish.

50:51

He doesn't talk about that. It's really basically approval for the process that's taking place.

51:00

There was no reason to ever do this. There was never to investigate the executive committee.

51:07

There was never any real reason to do that, but that's what was... And it was voted. There was a vote to do this kind of thing, and that's what they're doing.

51:16

And it's gone crazy. It's gone haywire. And the idea that, well, if we just do the right thing,

51:22

God's going to protect all these things. Yeah, but that's the real question. Are you even doing the right thing? Is it the right thing to, on a hunch, investigate...

51:31

You don't even have evidence just... It really goes along with the Me Too, kind of innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent.

51:40

There's no reason to do this kind of thing, and that's what they're doing. And really, if there's any problems with the

51:47

Southern Baptist Convention, it's going to be in the local churches. And what do local churches do if they're autonomous?

51:52

They call the police. There's not a lot you can do from the executive committee level.

51:58

You can try to have initiatives that produce resources and things. There's really not much, though.

52:05

There's really not much. So anyway, I think there's just been an effort to show that, hey, we're doing something because there's so much pressure.

52:13

We got to do something, so we're doing something. But is it the right thing? And that's the real question.

52:19

Let's see what Tom Askle says about this. We'll just keep playing this and we'll go to Tom Askle. A line from Apollo 13, the movie, where you've got these people behind Gene Kranz, the flight director, saying, you know, this could be our worst disaster in NASA's history.

52:35

And he says, he turns around, looks at him and says, I think it's going to be our finest hour. And I think if we'll do the right thing, no matter what comes out, it could be the finest hour of Southern Baptists to address things in a godly and holy way.

52:50

Follow up. No, I agree with Bart. We need to care for victims. It's horrible.

52:55

Some of the stories have come out and nobody who's a Christian can look at those stories or look at those people who've been victimized and just not feel compassion.

53:03

And we ought to show real compassion for that. I do have some concerns that this process has been politicized.

53:11

And case in point is what's going on in a church not far from here, about 50 miles from here.

53:16

So First Baptist Church, Lindale, where Jennifer Buck had her story of abuse taken and passed around among some

53:24

Southern Baptist leaders. And then her husband, Tom Buck, received a phone call saying, hey, there are people going to blackmail you if you don't back off what you did in trying to help

53:34

Willie Rice to understand that he had elevated a man in his church who'd been guilty of sexual abuse.

53:40

Now, the Sex Abuse Task Force has actually talked to Willie Rice and they won't talk to Tom Buck or Jennifer Buck.

53:47

And the president or the chairman of the Sex Abuse Task Force has said publicly, yes, I did talk to Willie.

53:54

What's going on there? Jennifer Buck deserves the exact same kind of care that we say as a convention, we want to extend to those who have been sexually abused.

54:04

And yet she's not received that. And I'm grieved over that. I'm thinking, what is going on here?

54:09

And the task force has said, well, we can't interject ourselves into that. Well, you interjected yourself into Willie Rice's church.

54:16

So I just want equal weights and measures. We need to do this well.

54:21

The Bible's not unclear on these matters. The Bible tells us that there are sins and there are crimes.

54:28

When a crime is committed, you call the magistrate, you call the police, let them do what they are called by God to do with crimes.

54:35

When a sin is committed, the church has been given the sword of the spirit to deal with the sins within the church.

54:41

Sometimes you have sins that are crimes and crimes that are sins like sexual abuse. They're both. You call the magistrate, let them do their jobs on the criminal side.

54:49

You call the church and the church does its job on the spiritual side. And it's another commentary,

54:54

I think of just we need revival in our churches. We need our churches to come back to recognize we have a book and the book says this and this is what we are to do whenever there is this kind of egregious sin discovered among us.

55:09

So if the executive committee needs to be investigated, that's fine. But every one of those executive committee members are members of local churches.

55:18

And if they've done something sinful, their churches need to hold them to account. If they've done something criminal, then the magistrates, the state governments or the local municipalities need to hold them to account.

55:30

It's not complicated. It is hard, but it's not complicated. And we just need the faith and the humility to look to the word of God and say, this is what

55:40

God tells us to do. We're going to do it and we're going to leave cost and consequences to him. This is just this is so good.

55:48

This is so spot on because his point is this is weaponized against one side.

55:54

This is this whole sexual abuse task force. And that would I think even more than that, I'll just say that the whole church to caring well, it's weaponized against a particular side.

56:04

And you can see the unequal weights and measures. And he gives an example of it. And then what's the wrong?

56:10

What's wrong with you people? Right. That's what he's saying. What is wrong out there? We we need to repent.

56:16

We need to we need to have a revival. Well, if we need a revival, that means there's something very wrong going on.

56:21

If we need a revival, we have some people that aren't saved. I mean, he's not saying that, but that's what the implication is here.

56:28

There's people that aren't saved in this convention. And it's big enough that we need it. We need a big revival.

56:34

We need to return back to the God that we have forsaken. I mean, this is he seems he knows that how serious this is.

56:42

And he's revealing it here. And I think that's a spot on answer. Few more clips.

56:47

We're almost done here. I'm just going to skip ahead. Look like people are a lot more troubled than the number of people who are actually troubled.

56:59

That's why I feel a whole lot better about trusting the messenger body. They're they're believers who have prayed and sought the

57:06

Lord and letting the messenger body decide what's important enough to take action on, letting the messenger body decide what the action is to take.

57:13

God has blessed that. All right, so I think I played a clip I wasn't planning on.

57:19

That's this is a theme that you'll see in Bar Barbers. He really does trust the messenger body. Of the

57:24

Southern Baptist Convention, he had a clip, though, where he said that he was he thanked discernment bloggers, even though he doesn't care for him.

57:33

And you'll see later on, he kind of goes after them, not by name, but he thanks them for for doing a job on kind of just spotting potential corruption and stuff.

57:43

And there's an exchange between him and Tom Askell, which I'm going to see if I can find. Which is super fascinating on this topic.

57:54

In fact, I think I might have skipped over it. Let me see if I can go back. Tom Askell asks for something that I know this was

58:01

Randy Adams kind of the basis for his campaign last year for Southern Baptist Convention president. I was really happy to hear

58:06

Tom Askell say this. Where they are, and I expect that they would make a lot of money. It's an important decision.

58:13

So it's not a matter of I want somebody to make less money than they make. It's not that at all. It's accountability.

58:19

And the institutions are accountable to the churches. I just feel like that accountability has not been exercised as rigorously as it should.

58:28

So forensic audits, we got that going. That would give us a baseline going forward.

58:35

And then there probably ought to be regularly scheduled forensic audits. Everybody needs accountability.

58:41

Man, I need it in my life, our church. That's excellent. That is 100 percent.

58:46

And that, I think, is the thing that he said that probably would scare the elites in the convention more than anything else.

58:52

Forensic audits, finding out where the money's going. So I was really happy to hear that, calling for that.

59:00

And then, okay, so I tried to find the place for Bart Barber, thanks to sermon bloggers. There's an exchange between him and Tom Askell.

59:09

And I think it's long. And that's probably why I didn't, I'm looking at my notes. I didn't really write it down. Basically, though, what happens is

59:17

Bart Barber and Tom Askell kind of go back and forth on this whole issue of corruption in the

59:22

Southern Baptist Convention and accountability. And Bart is totally taking the weaker position on this.

59:33

Let me see if I can just kind of jump in here and see if this is one of the key moments. Place to be holding the institutions accountable for all of those things.

59:41

But I think it's the messenger body's right, just as they did with sex abuse. It's the messenger body's right to call for any kind of financial.

59:49

OK, so, yeah, it's he wants to put it at the messenger, and he thinks that the messengers did such a good job last year.

59:55

And that's kind of like what's going to hold the body accountable. And the thing is, the messengers, though, like I said, a great many of them are coming because they're paid to.

01:00:03

They're part of the swamp. They are from big churches. It's not the conservative churches, generally, that are smaller that are showing up at these conventions as much.

01:00:14

And so to use them as, well, they're just going to kind of keep things accountable. Yeah, no, not really.

01:00:22

Let's go here. Our final five minute section for each of you to kind of wrap things up.

01:00:31

But one of the things that I'm personally just kind of interested to hear is if you are elected as president of the

01:00:38

SBC, are you at all concerned about how that will pull you away from the pastorate in your local church,

01:00:47

Brother Robin, your ministry to students and teaching and those and those are, of course, now all my kids are grown.

01:00:55

I'm a grandfather. So I think I'm sorry, everyone. I'm wasting your time here.

01:01:01

I didn't I didn't have my time written down the way I should here. So my time stamp,

01:01:07

I think it's right here that I'm looking for to be recognized as having done what they wanted to do last year at the convention.

01:01:14

Yeah, I realize that can happen, but you would have to agree, wouldn't you, that that is a rarity. The platform has the authority.

01:01:21

The platform has the advantage. I mean, you wrote, I think somewhere, then it's true. Just to give you some context, what's happening here.

01:01:27

This is an exchange that I thought was interesting. Barbara basically says, look, the resolutions, the people can overwhelm the resolutions committee if they want the messengers who come into the meeting of the

01:01:37

Southern Baptist Convention, they can get what they want done. Tom Askell says, wait, hold on a minute. That's really intimidating.

01:01:43

If you own the stage, you can direct what microphones are going to be called upon. You have a tremendous amount of authority, and it's very difficult to jam through what you want when you have, when you don't control that.

01:01:57

Standing at the floor on a microphone, you hear yourself a second and a half later. It's just, so the platform has all the advantages, and I appreciated,

01:02:04

Bart, what you said about as president, you would do your best to make sure the messengers are treated fairly.

01:02:09

The resolutions committee last year did not treat the messengers fairly that submitted that resolution with 1300 signatures on it.

01:02:16

There was a resolution submitted about critical race theory and to basically repeal resolution nine, which affirmed it as an analytical tool from 2019, 18, 19.

01:02:29

And so what he's saying is that that was denied, and it's very difficult when you're in that room, even if you have a majority, most people are going to follow the leader, and they're going to do what the resolutions committee or whoever's on stage wants.

01:02:46

Go ahead. So I would just say, I agree that it's a rarity to overcome the report of the resolutions committee or anyone else.

01:02:56

I would also say last year was a rarity. I think that the messenger body was present and determined for what they wanted to do last year.

01:03:05

And I don't think you can evaluate last year on the basis of all the other previous conventions that have gone forth.

01:03:11

There was a different presence and independent. I love it. Independent attitude of the messengers at last year's annual meeting.

01:03:21

Here's the funny thing. Bart Barber was on the resolutions committee. He was sitting on the resolutions committee.

01:03:28

So he could have done something more about this. And he's the one on the stage. Tom Askell's indicting him.

01:03:35

You're one of the ones up there. And he was part of the group that rejected the resolution on abortion abolition.

01:03:45

And then they tweaked it. They even were able to tweak it so it didn't really make much sense by the time it was passed.

01:03:52

And it's a well, you know, the group of people who come to the convention that can kind of get done what they want to get done. And yeah, well, that's not normally the case.

01:04:01

And he's like, well, it was. It's the case. Last year, it was the case. It's just so weak.

01:04:06

So how do you know it's not going to be that way next year? Clearly, people with the denominational authority and platform and institutional, the top of the institutional hierarchy and from the stage, they have a tremendous amount of influence.

01:04:20

There's no denying that. So, you know, where are you going to get all this accountability from the people that show up for a few days, once a year as messengers when it there's so many barriers to jump over in order to get your resolution or whatever you're voting on through.

01:04:38

So and then let's one more thing. I'm Bart Barber at the end here. Let's see. I want to just play one more.

01:04:44

This is the final clip I'll play. And we live in the world. We live in a culture that says don't apologize.

01:04:51

It's a sign of weakness. We live in a culture in which people get on the Internet. People get on cable news shows and whatever else.

01:04:58

And with red, angry faces, they tell about what's wrong with the other guy. They all shout about and make accusations about what all those other people are doing.

01:05:07

And if we're going to be concerned about culture creeping into the SBC, we need to be concerned about the other things that we've talked about here.

01:05:14

But we need to be concerned about that culture creeping into the SBC because it will destroy our cooperation.

01:05:20

It'll blow the whole thing apart if we're not careful. And so I want to call us to come to a point where we listen to each other.

01:05:27

OK, I'm going to stop right here. This is very interesting to me because what what you see here is

01:05:34

Bart Barber revealing what he actually thinks is a threat to the Southern Baptist Convention. The actual threat to the

01:05:39

Southern Baptist Convention is people like me. It's people, and it's more than me.

01:05:46

It's people out there, not just even Christians, but people on cable news. It's people in the world. It's that divided rhetoric, that divided posturing to come into the convention.

01:06:00

Here's the thing. Number one, you're already divided on actual issues, real issues. It's not like a fake, manufactured, unhinged kind of we're divided because we're just angry people.

01:06:10

Like, actually, you can't blame the anger or the tone on the fact that there's division. Those aren't the issues.

01:06:16

Those aren't the reason there's division. The reason there's division is because people disagree with each other on very fundamental things and they're diametrically opposed to one another.

01:06:22

That's the reason. And you have on one side people that want Orthodox Christianity and have the other side, postmodernists subverting it.

01:06:29

That's really, at the end of the day, what's going on. If you don't see it, then you're not going to be an effective president for the nomination. You can't just straddle that line and say, can't we all just get along?

01:06:38

Because no, we can't. That's the problem. So, of course, we need to speak to each other. But here's the thing.

01:06:43

They just had on stage, they all just spoke to each other and they were civil. You know, where has there been instability in the

01:06:52

Southern Baptist Convention as far as like people red in the face, screaming at one another? Sometimes I think that there should be more of that.

01:06:57

I mean, when Jesus, when he saw that the temple was being desecrated, what did he do?

01:07:05

There's a desecration going on here in this denomination that is just beyond the pale. It's just amazing to me.

01:07:12

And yet the conservatives are expected to be, theological conservatives, very calm. And it's like,

01:07:18

I think that window is probably closed for us. But while it was open, man, go hard.

01:07:25

Go hard. And if you think it's still open, go hard. These are, when you think that eternity hangs in the balance with some of these teachings, then you go hard.

01:07:34

If the Lord's money is being wasted and pilfered and spent on horrible things, go hard against that.

01:07:40

So Bart Barber is making clear. So he does see a threat, but it's not the threat that people in this audience see.

01:07:50

It's not threat coming from social justice. That's not the threat. The threat is big meanies coming in and disrupting the status quo.

01:08:00

And so anyway, that's what you have in that forum. And I hope that was helpful to some of you. I know this is over an hour now, but those are some of the clips that I thought were important to look at when making a determination.

01:08:10

And I think that Tom Askell is the only one running that you can in good conscience vote for at this point.

01:08:16

He actually has, he actually can identify some of these problems and sees them as actual problems, at least.

01:08:22

And he's more competent, certainly than the other two that are on the stage there. And so that, you know,

01:08:29

I was struck with this. I'll close with this. In Reelville, which is where I think

01:08:35

I live. I think most of you live in Reelville. Rush Limbaugh used to say that where I live in Reelville.

01:08:41

But in the real world right now, let me just give you one scenario. Right now, at the church that I attend, the pastor of that church is being attacked pretty viciously by a number of, well, not just even

01:08:57

LGBT groups. Now it's the local Democrat party. It's, you know, pro LGBT groups.

01:09:03

And they're, you know, posting like sermon transcripts and basically it's his position on sexual deviancies and just applying what does the

01:09:11

Bible say about these things? These things are evil, according to scripture. And just saying that is enough for there to be.

01:09:17

And right now, as I'm sitting here, we don't know what's going to happen even this week, if there's going to be major protest or not.

01:09:24

I mean, we hope not, but, you know, that is a possibility that could happen. And where I'm sitting and seeing the way in which, how aggressive this secular religion is, the social justice secular religion.

01:09:37

I don't have time for someone like a barber, honestly. It's just, it's so out of touch with the world that I'm living in and what

01:09:44

I see out there. We need warriors. That's what I think. You need an absolute warrior with a spine of steel in the position of denominational leadership.

01:09:54

Because those are the pressures that are going to be on you. And you better know how to get red in the face if you have to.

01:09:59

And I'm not saying become unhinged. I'm just saying you better know how to be righteously indignant and aggressive when you need to be aggressive and point out hypocrisy.

01:10:07

And as you're doing that, be reasonable. Again, it's not about being unhinged.

01:10:15

It's not about losing control. It's not that kind of anger. I'm saying though, righteously indignant about the way that people are treating the

01:10:22

Lord. And one of the things Tom Askell said in this that I didn't show you is that he has a whole thing where he talks about how we've lost the fear of God.

01:10:29

And I think he's absolutely right. We've lost the fear of God. I don't have time for a barber. Let's trim at the edges a little bit here or there.

01:10:38

And we're just gonna kind of keep things going the same way. No, we need a different direction here. We need some real strong leadership.

01:10:45

Anyway, hey, God bless. Hope that was helpful for all you Southern Baptists. More coming later this week. I am traveling at the end of the week and I have to prepare something for that.

01:10:52

So I may not have as many episodes. I'm hoping I can get a few more out. But in case I don't,

01:10:57

I appreciate those of you who do support me and pray for me that I am doing some work behind the scenes, which is very important.