The Evidence Cru's Gone Woke
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worldviewconversation.com
https://capstonereport.com/2021/05/12/cru-chose-critical-race-theory-over-christian-unity/36010/
- 00:12
- The Conversations That Matter podcast, my name is John Harris. I appreciate everyone's prayers, I gotta say up front.
- 00:18
- For last week, I was traveling, I put some of the updates on Patreon as to what I was doing. You'll hear more about them in the coming weeks.
- 00:26
- We recorded some podcasts, we did some side projects, all very beneficial. And all,
- 00:32
- I really do have to say thank you to those who do support me, both in prayer and financially, because there's just no way we would have been able to do it.
- 00:39
- It's expensive to travel the distances we were traveling. We went from Auburn, Alabama to Seattle, Washington, and places in between.
- 00:46
- So it spanned the country, it was very short, so we were doing a lot of sitting, but also a lot of work, a lot of film work, and it was just, it was great.
- 00:55
- I think what we got was good. So I just want to thank everyone for that. Could not do it without your support, and we do aim to be as efficient as possible, to work as hard as possible, and to get out the best quality work we possibly can.
- 01:09
- And so that's the aim, that's the goal, and that's what we're doing. And so thank you so much, once again, for that.
- 01:17
- And I'll give you some of my observations, too, about those different places. When you go from Auburn, Alabama in the morning, and then that night you're walking the streets of Portland, you're just, there's thoughts that come in your head about the contrast between the different places.
- 01:29
- And so I'll talk about that a little bit. Today, I want to talk about something else that happened within the past week and a half.
- 01:36
- I just really couldn't get to it with the travel arrangements that I had. I wouldn't have been able to do it quite justice, and I want to at least talk about it, try to talk about it some, and do it some justice.
- 01:49
- As you can see, the title of my slideshow here, if you're watching, is Crew Goes Woke. And this isn't new to anyone, really, who's been watching this podcast or really paying attention to Crew.
- 01:58
- This has been going on since 2015, and of course, we featured some montages,
- 02:06
- I want to say two years ago now, end of 2019, from their 2019 staff conference, which really went into just detail, soundbite after soundbite.
- 02:17
- I think I watched myself almost every session of Crew 19, which it just,
- 02:26
- I was social justiced out by the end. I get that a lot because of some of the things I have to read, and you start reading something, you're like, okay,
- 02:33
- I've read this before in many forms, well, Crew 19 was just social justice talk after social justice talk after social justice talk.
- 02:42
- And I think there was one, in all the sessions I watched, there was one that shared the gospel.
- 02:47
- Other than that, no, it was all social justice, mostly nonsense, to be honest with you. And you can go back, you can watch those, you can probably even type in on a search engine, go to your
- 02:57
- DuckDuckGo or something, type in Crew 19, woke, social justice, something like that.
- 03:03
- I'm sure some of that stuff will come up. But there's been some further developments.
- 03:08
- I've known about a lot of these developments for a while, some of them at least, some of the major ones. And I want to talk about that.
- 03:14
- I've been constrained from talking about those, and I'm going to tell you why I was constrained and give you a little bit of a backstory here as well.
- 03:23
- But before that, before we get into all that, I just want to say this. I noticed this this morning, when
- 03:29
- I got up, the Supreme Court is agreeing to consider a major rollback of abortion rights, according to the
- 03:37
- Associated Press, that's what they called them, abortion rights, saying it will take up Mississippi's ban on abortions after, and I think it got cut off there,
- 03:46
- I think it's 15 weeks, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, scaling back of abortion, it's not perfect, but a step in the right direction, it looks like from the limited information
- 03:57
- I have, and something to pray about, even if you're just in your car right now, maybe pause this podcast and just pray about this, that this would be something that can be used to save the lives of human beings who are made in God's image and who are not to be murdered.
- 04:13
- That's what the law of God says. So we certainly want to pray for this, and in a way,
- 04:21
- I want to share it too, just because I've gotten so many, it seems like every day almost, there's so much bad news, I wanted to share this as kind of like a little silver lining, something to be a little hopeful about, and so be praying for that.
- 04:33
- Now let's get into the crew stuff here. So I probably should start off with a little bit of a backstory before I get into all this, and I'm going to do that,
- 04:43
- I think, now, and I'll give you some more as we go through. So where to begin?
- 04:50
- After the Crew 19 video montages dropped at the end of 2019, and there were a number of crew missionaries reaching out to me.
- 05:03
- I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, and I probably couldn't go back and reconfigure all of that. But my guess is there was probably like nine crew missionaries, at least, who had reached out in some way to me to just thank me for putting those montages out, to express kind of what their little corner of the world looked like.
- 05:25
- I mean, some of them were shocking. I remember one was a crew staff member who told me that for some training, with crew sponsored training here, they had to go to a homosexual art exhibit at an art museum, and they were not allowed to witness, that was one of the rules, while they were there.
- 05:49
- And it was for the sole purpose of understanding, like cross -cultural experience, understanding homosexuality and this other culture.
- 06:00
- This is part of their training as crew missionaries, crew staff. And it was disturbing for this particular staff member when she reached out and told me about this, that this was even going on.
- 06:11
- And since then, I believe she has left crew, she's no longer with them. It was a number of circumstances like this one, but including this one that caused the separation there.
- 06:25
- And it was, I guess, horrifying things in this exhibit that they had to look at, just things that, indecent things.
- 06:32
- But this was part of, now I'm not saying the official organization sponsored all of this, but in their little corner of the world where they were, this was what was going on.
- 06:40
- And of course, I asked, I usually do, like, would you be willing to come forward? Would you be willing to make this public? And she was not.
- 06:47
- And that goes for a number of other stories of which this is just a representative story.
- 06:53
- It goes for a number of stories that I've gotten from crew staff members about things going on in their slice of the pie.
- 07:01
- And they, more often than not, cannot come forward. Now, there have been two crew staff members who have come forward and talked.
- 07:07
- And you can go in this podcast archives, and we've covered that. But for the vast majority, and I would say the more extreme, if you want to call it that, or more severe and just upsetting stories, those aren't seeing the light of day.
- 07:27
- And it's because of intimidation. It's because of fear. It's because even after leaving crew, they don't want bad recommendations,
- 07:37
- I guess, on their resume, or they want to have recommendations from crew. They don't want the negative blowback.
- 07:43
- Maybe they still have friends in crew. These are the kinds of things that are causing people to just, they'll reach out to me, and this happens all the time, and tell me the story.
- 07:52
- But as far as going public, that's a hard thing. And I understand that to some extent. I really do. It can be a very, really actually hard thing.
- 08:03
- When you think about some of the repercussions that might happen to you. The fear of man is very strong.
- 08:09
- And wanting to just kind of wash your hands of something, move on. You know, it was so stressful when you're in the situation, and you just want to put it behind you.
- 08:18
- That's a natural human thing. There have been a few, though, who have decided they want to warn others.
- 08:23
- And I really, I just want to say I respect that, when there is that attitude of those who have come forward.
- 08:30
- But this happened, I'd say, 2019, the end of 2019, 2020, number of these situations.
- 08:38
- And you didn't hear about them on this podcast, just because I want to respect the privacy of individuals.
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- And if I can't substantiate something, because I'm not allowed to share a primary source, I generally don't talk about it.
- 08:51
- And you don't have to believe even the story I just told you. Because I can't give you the source on it. But I'm only letting you know this, because I want to tell you, as myself being the source, that these are the kinds of stories that I'm getting.
- 09:04
- I'm getting people coming out to me with these stories. Well, one of the individuals from crew that reached out to me was, again,
- 09:13
- I'm not going to use names, but someone from high up in a concerned group, concerned about social justice.
- 09:22
- And they wanted me to connect a concerned crew staff, who had reached out to me, with them, because they were going to start a group to reform crew from the inside.
- 09:32
- And I talked to this individual on a few occasions. And since then, I did connect this person with other crew staff.
- 09:40
- A number of them joined. And I didn't hear much after that.
- 09:46
- I just knew that there was a group forming. I got little updates here and there from people I knew who were in this group.
- 09:52
- They would have weekly meetings. They would discuss some of these issues. And they put a document together.
- 09:59
- And I heard about this document, I think at the end of 2020, or that they were forming it,
- 10:04
- I think actually before that, in the fall of 2020 or so, that there was this document being formed. And it was a collaborative project with a number of crew staff.
- 10:15
- A number of very highly educated people as well. I just want to say this for those who are watching, who might be more on the social justice side of things.
- 10:22
- These weren't just like hayseed, uneducated rednecks, putting a document together.
- 10:28
- These were people that knew what was going on, and knew how to address it. And were coming up with theological reasons for their concern, documenting it very well.
- 10:37
- It's a very well -crafted document. I'm actually pretty impressed with how well they did. And at the beginning of 2021, it was sent to me.
- 10:48
- And I was told not to put it out there publicly at all. Under no circumstances was
- 10:55
- I to do that. And so I asked the person who had sent it to me, is there a way we can have a redacted version maybe?
- 11:01
- Because the concern that I have is this. It's not, I'm not in crew. There was a short time I was, years ago.
- 11:07
- But my concern is that there are still a number of people funding crew who think their money's going solely to evangelism, making disciples.
- 11:18
- And they don't realize a large portion of it, larger than most people realize, is going to political activism from the left.
- 11:26
- It's funding that. And I've done my best to shine a light on some of this, but you don't want, we don't want, as Christians, money designated for sharing the gospel and making disciples going to left -leaning political activism.
- 11:42
- The kind of political activism that's actually gonna shut down our avenues for sharing the gospel and making disciples.
- 11:49
- And I just think it's a matter of loving people actually to share this, that they need to know because crew's not being forthright.
- 11:55
- The organization is not being forthright. And I can say that honestly to this day, and there's some things I can't share, but if, again, you don't have to believe me, but if you want to trust what
- 12:05
- I'm saying here, I have had discussions with people who do know about these things, who have very well -documented firsthand experience with these things at some of the higher levels.
- 12:19
- And there is no way to really approach this, it seems. The attitude from most of the higher -ups at Crew seems to be that Crew may have had a problem in the past, but they've corrected it.
- 12:34
- At the same time, there are no problems, real problems with Crew. At the same time, those who are challenging
- 12:43
- Crew about the problems are the ones that are causing division, right?
- 12:48
- And in scripture, division is coming from those who actually bring the false teaching. It's not coming from those who are correcting the false teaching, but Crew's got it backwards, a lot of the people in Crew who are on the higher levels.
- 12:58
- They think that the division's coming from those who would want to be concerned about false teaching. And this has caused a lot of frustration.
- 13:08
- And I know that a number of people are looking for their exit right now, a number of conservatives. Now, that being said,
- 13:15
- I thought, okay, this needs to get out there. The people funding Crew need to know this is what's happening in this organization.
- 13:22
- But the intimidation factor, like I just talked about, is insane off the charts. I can't even quite figure it out.
- 13:29
- It seems like there's a combination of a number of things. And I'm just gonna give you the best that I can come up with for understanding this, for coming up with a paradigm to understand why so many people are afraid to bring this information to the light of day about what's going on.
- 13:42
- One of them, I think, is this idea that Crew, as a parachurch organization, is kind of like functions like a church, or they're a part of the church, and there's church hierarchy there, so that the higher -ups in Crew are like the pastors, or maybe bishops would be a better word.
- 13:59
- And you're not supposed to really disrespect them, and it's disrespectful to bring concerns or publicly expose things that are happening.
- 14:09
- That attitude, I've certainly seen that attitude. I think the problem with that is that Crew is actually a parachurch.
- 14:14
- It's not a church. It's actually supposed to be assisting the church. And insofar as it is not fulfilling its mission in doing that, it's the responsibility of the church, and people in the church, the true church, who are funding this, to put an end to it, or to reform it, or to do something.
- 14:31
- If they don't have the information, they can't do that. And so withholding that information, to me, seems like a wrong thing.
- 14:38
- It should be, and I understand, if you're in Crew, if you're a staff member, it doesn't look quite that black and white.
- 14:45
- It seems like, well, I got staff telling me not to share this information, and I need to trust them. I need to trust the process. But the process, from everything
- 14:53
- I can gather, has been against this concern group from the beginning. It seems like, with everything
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- I know, that the goal of the concern, the goal of Crew higher -ups, undersellers, has been to neutralize this concerned group, not to genuinely receive their discernment and their correction, and that would include issuing public retractions, public apologies, perhaps, firing certain people, getting rid of things like the
- 15:25
- Lenses Institute. Their goal isn't to do those things. They don't want to let their donors know, or anyone know, that anything's really going on that's turbulent.
- 15:36
- They want it to look like it's just smooth sailing, Crew's doing well, and then neutralize these people who have these concerns, who are saying there's a problem.
- 15:46
- So if you can wine and dine them, do that. If you can give them lip service and then not do much, maybe throw them a few bones, do that.
- 15:54
- This is my impression, and I wouldn't be comfortable talking about this unless I felt like I was on pretty solid ground because of a number of sources who have told me essentially this, from firsthand accounts and experiences.
- 16:09
- So again, don't have to believe me on that. I'm gonna show you some things that aren't me just saying it, but for those who care about my analysis and what
- 16:17
- I think, this is what I think is going on. Now, this document that I had referenced earlier was sent to me, like I said, at the beginning of,
- 16:26
- I think it's January, February, I think it was January, if I'm not mistaken, of 2021. And not only was
- 16:34
- I not allowed to share it, but the Crew staff I knew in the group who I contacted, even people who aren't with Crew anymore, who were in the group, were not really willing to share it.
- 16:42
- They did not want anyone to see this document. And again, you can try to figure out why you think that is.
- 16:49
- I've given my opinion on why, but it was a very well put together document. It outlined where the issues were in Crew, chapter and verse, biblical response to those issues.
- 17:01
- It has screenshots, it had letters, it had documents that are internal to Crew, and it was not allowed to go public.
- 17:14
- And so it never went public until about a week and a half ago.
- 17:20
- And that's when this happened. Oh, that's the document. Let me show you. I'm gonna blow this up so you can see it.
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- A blog on May 7th from Religious Language Resource and Discussion by Valerie Hobbs.
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- And the title is, Calm Down, Campus Crusade AKA Crew Leaders Debate Racism and Critical Race Theory.
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- And there it was, available for everyone to download, the Seeking Clarity and Unity document, which
- 17:52
- I had known about for a while, which I had in my possession, which I never mentioned on this podcast because the
- 17:59
- Crew leaders who rightfully, I mean, it's their document. They're the ones that this
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- Crew group, from my understanding at least has been, it's their document. It was people in their group who formed this document.
- 18:11
- They put it together and they didn't want it going out there. Well, now it's public.
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- Now it's out there. I'm gonna share for you some things from this document. I wanna make two things clear though.
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- Number one, it's already public and it's public on a number of places. This was just the first one I'm aware of.
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- Number two, my understanding is that group doesn't even exist anymore. And multiple people within the group have told me this.
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- The Seeking Clarity group or Concern group, whatever you wanna call them who are concerned about social justice, they've disbanded.
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- They're no longer active in Crew. They're not having their weekly meetings. They're not trying to reform
- 18:47
- Crew from the inside. That is what I've been told. So who does the document even belong to anymore?
- 18:55
- I don't know that there's a home for it anymore. That group doesn't exist. But here's how it was leaked.
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- It's all public online. I'm gonna read for you the beginning of this. It says, in November, 2020, a group of staff in various positions of leadership at Campus Crusade for Christ, now known as Crew, published an astonishing document aiming to confront their belief that Crew has embraced a secular system of ideas that divides humanity into victims and oppressors.
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- Give you some more highlights from this. Here and elsewhere, the authors reframe the concept of hurt in a way that makes discussions of racism the problem.
- 19:32
- And so this individual, Valerie Hobbs, is trying to characterize this document, seeking clarity and unity, which is not officially from Crew.
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- It is from concerned staff members within Crew, as she's reframing it that it is actually, the problem that the document has is that racism should not be discussed.
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- Which, if you read the document, that has nothing to do with it. It's against critical race theory, not discussions of racism.
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- But that's how it's characterized because Valerie Hobbs is more progressive. It seems to be much more.
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- She seems to be much more progressive. She says, a polarizing and paternalistic line in the document's conclusion likewise speaks volumes about the author's aims and prejudices.
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- It is also hoped this study will help both groups currently concerned about such issues within the organization calm down.
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- Here's that paragraph. And this is the conclusion of the Seeking Clarity and Unity document created by this group of concerned people within Crew who are staff members.
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- It reads, this document has sought to provide an understanding of diversity issues in the
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- Bible and how they were addressed. It has also looked at the nature of the Great Commission and the implications for diversity issues related to it.
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- Finally, it looked at biblical implications and applications for the organization moving forward. It is hoped that study will provide organizational leadership with reasons for caution where secular influences may have become mixed with biblical truth in addressing diversity issues.
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- It is also hoped this study will help both groups currently concerned about such issues within the organization calm down and love one another better in word and deed.
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- What is good, right, and helpful, whether from a biblical or secular perspective, that is not inconsistent with the teaching of scripture, should be incorporated into how the organization moves forward even better together in its common commitment to achieve its mission consistent with its vision, core values, and movement distinctives.
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- Now, I'll tell you what. That is a bending over backwards to try to have a compromise type of language right there.
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- That is so tame. It is just, how anyone could have a problem with this is amazing to me.
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- But this author calls it paternalistic. The author's prejudices are demonstrated in this.
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- She says, it's a polarizing and paternalistic line and the document's conclusion likewise speaks volumes. Oh, I already read this.
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- Okay, I don't know why I posted it twice. I'm sorry about that for those who are downloading the PowerPoint. So this is the aim of the document.
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- It really is to seek unity. And I don't, the thing that I would have, probably if I was writing something like this,
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- I'd probably have a conclusion of like, root the false teaching out, right? You know, it would be much more strong.
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- But this is very, very benign. And yet it's met with hostility.
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- Here is a, here's the characterization of Valerie Hobbs online.
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- She says, this piece of racist propaganda was the product of weekly meetings over a period of one year involving 350 plus staff members within one of the largest religious orders in the world.
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- So it's racist propaganda. What we just read was racist propaganda. She's obviously affected by critical race theory quite a bit.
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- And here's a reaction by John Sather, who is a former leader of, for Crew Inner City.
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- And he says that he was, he read this document and anyone can download and print about Crew's view of CRT, anyone.
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- So again, this is public, guys. This isn't, the cat is out of the bag, which we knew it would be. We knew that would happen.
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- You cannot have over 350 people in a group and not have a document like that.
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- It's just, it's impossible. It's going to go public. You can't keep that under wraps with that many people who have a copy of this
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- PDF. Valerie Hobbs is a linguist at the University of Sheffield in England, I believe.
- 23:41
- And this, she was the one that ended up leaking it. And so John Sather, who has connections to all these crew people, tags all these crew staff in it just to show them, hey, like, this is what's going on.
- 23:52
- Kind of like whistleblowing from the opposite direction, right, and there's the picture of him holding up the color of compromise, right?
- 23:59
- So that shows you kind of where he's at. So the tragedy, in my opinion, in all this, one of them at least, is that this was, this was not released on the terms that would have been favorable to the concerned group within Crew.
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- Those who actually crafted the document were not able to do a release of the document. Their group, from what
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- I understand, doesn't even really exist anymore. And they didn't want it going out there. But you can't, it's going to go out there with that many people.
- 24:30
- So it went out there in one of the just not, one of the worst ways possible, being characterized by someone on the left.
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- And you know that's going to happen, but at least if you're the first one to put it out there, you control the narrative to some extent. So this narrative was not controlled by the people who formed it.
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- And so the next thing that happened was on May 11th and 12th, Capstone Report, which is a conservative, more conservative blog, both theologically and politically, put out a series of articles, two articles on the document.
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- And let me give you some quotes that, here are two things that they highlighted. These are quotes from the document.
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- The ideas of the victim -oppressor worldview are derived from critical race theory. This victim -oppressor worldview is embedded throughout
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- Crew. This worldview was first introduced at Crew 15 and continued into Crew 17 and Crew 19.
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- Whereas our national gatherings have traditionally been times of vision casting, mission reinforcement, inspiration, refreshment, encouragement, and rich biblical teaching, the emphasis shifted toward thought leaders who taught on victim -oppressor themes.
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- Many, but not all plenary speakers at Crew 19 included the aspects of this message, often with hostility directed toward the white majority staff.
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- During a Crew 19 seminar, one Crew national leader was recorded shaming a fellow staff woman to tears because she benefited from white privilege.
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- And I've shown this video. I put it out there in what's now scrubbed the
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- Crew 19 session videos. And you can still find that particular clip, not on the
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- Crew website, but on that montage. Here's another quote. Staff are required to disclose nothing about the teaching content outside of the training.
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- Independent thinking is discouraged. Most authors and scholars recommended by lenses are proponents of critical race theory.
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- So then you have Capstone Report putting their information out about this. Now, someone who was formerly with Crew did reach out to me about this and didn't quite like the way
- 26:27
- Capstone Report framed it. But the thing is, and this is what I wanna emphasize so much to those within Crew who might be listening.
- 26:35
- Unfortunately, if a document like this is kept so under wraps and it's not released with a narrative from those who released it, they're not able to explain the document.
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- This is kind of what, it happens. You have different people putting their own spin on it.
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- If they have certain political agendas or whatever the case may be, they're gonna give their take on it.
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- And so I hope that's at least somewhat of a lesson maybe learned. I don't know.
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- Maybe some of the staff think it was still good to keep it under wraps for as long as they did.
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- But this is what's happening now. And it wasn't leaked by conservatives.
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- It was leaked by a progressive initially there. So I wanna go through some of this document that's now publicly available online in multiple places.
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- And we're going to talk about it. I'm going to show you some of the things it says.
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- And we're just gonna go through some of it together. So there's no way, it's 179 pages.
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- There's no way we're covering all of it today. I just wanna give you some highlights. And I'm gonna try to not name names of some of the crew staff while we're going through it.
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- If you want to see the document, you wanna see these names, the information's out there. You can go to Capstone Report.
- 27:53
- You can go to that previous blog that I was mentioning. And it's right there, the link to it.
- 27:59
- So let me show you the contents though of this. It's very well put together.
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- You have the executive summary. Crew has embraced these secular ideas. It talks about the victim, really
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- Marxism worldview. There is a gap between the stated message. This is important. There is a gap between the stated message from our national leadership and the teaching emphasis elsewhere.
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- So the national leadership are saying one thing, but the teaching is different. And this is, I see this the most in fundraising.
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- National staff will say things like, we're propagating the gospel. Here's our discipleship.
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- This is what we're doing. Where the teachings are coming to, in some areas, primarily concentrate.
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- And if you look at the conferences, especially concentrate on critical race theory, intersectionality, neo -Marxist ideas.
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- Crew's new emphasis has resulted in people leaving staff. And they have firsthand accounts of it. Crew's new emphasis has led major donors to stop giving to crew and staff, and they have examples of it.
- 28:55
- And then they go through the evidence and analysis. So they go through all the evidence here, the Lenz's Institute, a document called our cultural journey and ethnic identity, which has been used, maybe still being used,
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- I'm not sure, to train crew staff. Let's see, IBS and scriptural study, the new staff training and glorification of culture, crew and racial theory.
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- They just have, here's the document of proof. Here's where it's happening in crew. These are crew official outlets, official documents.
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- And then here's the theological concerns. Here's why this contradicts the gospel. Here's why this is a new ethic and a new mission.
- 29:29
- This is different than the Great Commission. A new Jesus is being promoted. And then they have a mission drift.
- 29:37
- And they talk about crew 15, 17, and 19, and show kind of the trajectory of how it's going woke.
- 29:44
- They have the Lenz's, which Lenz's is the worst. As far as those who advocate social justice false teaching, the
- 29:50
- Lenz's Institute is by far the institute that's doing this. Critical race theory, ethnic ministry training.
- 29:57
- It just goes through so many things here. Personal impact stories in one of the appendix.
- 30:04
- I mean, they just have pages and pages of just firsthand accounts and just crew staff. Chapter and verse, here's what they experienced.
- 30:11
- Here's what they're saying. And then a whole section, which is very pretty lengthy on theology.
- 30:17
- So it answers you. I mean, this is a pretty decent just document you may wanna have just in general for social justice.
- 30:23
- They got so much packed into this. And there's just more and more and more.
- 30:31
- So let's just go through a little bit of this and see kind of what kind of proof exists out there.
- 30:44
- So they're using white fragility. They're using how to be an anti -racist by Robin DiAngelo, white fragility.
- 30:50
- Ken D, how to be an anti -racist. They're using these books, these terrible books to teach at the
- 30:57
- Lenz Institute. They talk about that. They have the proof for all that. They have testimonials.
- 31:03
- I mean, let me just read for you a few. We started getting complaints from students that racial justice was being talked about too much. At every conference and Bible study, at a student retreat, really graphic racial stories were told.
- 31:12
- Six or seven students of ours said that they were thinking about leaving crew because of the retreats were not focusing on the gospel as much.
- 31:19
- Here's another one. Our daughter and her best friends, students at Florida University, participated in December, 2019, winter conference.
- 31:26
- Most of the talks were on social justice and racial and gender identity. Students were encouraged to go back to their campuses and sponsor political discussions.
- 31:32
- Black Lives Matter, Trump bashing, liberal agendas. As a result, our daughter has withdrawn from crew on her campus and no longer wants to join staff.
- 31:40
- Our hearts are grieved that crew committed to sharing Christ's love is becoming a place of critical race theory indoctrination. Christ's love is being taken over by bullying activists.
- 31:48
- Her friend came back and fully immersed herself in BLM activism and has no desire to share the gospel or read
- 31:53
- God's word. This is what's happening, guys. And there's pages of it. Pages of it. Let me read for you another one.
- 32:00
- As a senior involved with crew on campus, I was looking forward to fall retreat as a time of refreshment and encouragement. But for me and many other students, it became a time of frustration and discouragement.
- 32:08
- The second day was focused entirely on racial reconciliation. The third day, speaker focused on America's never being great.
- 32:15
- No scripture was used by either speaker, just ideas and thoughts. I talked with our staff team about this and they felt this emphasis was being mandated from higher up.
- 32:25
- Here's another one. I used to hear my fellow staff talk about the great commission and reaching students for Christ all the time.
- 32:30
- I don't hear that anymore. Instead, I hear things like, hey, have you read the article from such and such a person on white fragility?
- 32:36
- Or we need to watch out for the unequal power dynamics in our office here. Or how does it make you feel that some staff still don't accept that police are against black people?
- 32:46
- Or it's so awesome that our conference will be featuring ethnic identity. Guys, it's all over this.
- 32:51
- It's all over. If you want the proof, the proof's here. The proof's here. They talk about the new hermeneutic. The standpoint epistemology stuff.
- 33:01
- I mean, it's just incredible. They nail crew for the hypocrisy here by just documenting.
- 33:06
- Here's what crew's saying. Here's what they're actually doing. I mean, this goes on forever. I mean, I'm just scrolling and scrolling.
- 33:14
- Here's some screenshots here. This is from the lenses training. Here's a screenshot of books that they use. You can see all these incredibly woke books.
- 33:22
- I'll see if I can. I don't know if I can zoom in here on this. Let me see here.
- 33:28
- Yeah, there you go. Maybe some of you can see that now.
- 33:35
- Here's some of the books that, I mean, this is all social justice stuff.
- 33:41
- Working towards whiteness. How America's immigrants became white. Divided by faith.
- 33:46
- How to be an anti -racist. I mean, this is the stuff you really want for propagating the gospel.
- 33:52
- You just really need that stuff, right? And they got quotes from these authors.
- 33:59
- They talk about the podcast crews put out there. I mean, they really just do a great job.
- 34:06
- This is representing lots of work to put this together. And more often than not, you hear people say things like, well, hey, where's the social justice?
- 34:15
- When you bring it, you say, hey, this group is drifting into social justice, and it's denial. It's usually the first thing. We're not drifting.
- 34:21
- We're as biblical as we've always been. We haven't changed. And then you put something like this out. You do a lot of work to put this together.
- 34:28
- And then it becomes, you guys are causing a problem. You're the ones causing disunity.
- 34:34
- It's very frustrating for people who go through this kind of thing. But I'm just going through. This is the theology section and comparing it to Cruz teaching, giving examples, knocking them down with scripture in context.
- 34:47
- I mean, this is just, this is what every organization probably should be doing and probably should be being public about,
- 34:53
- I would think. They go through some of the lenses. Lenses retweeted some of these things. I've talked about some of this on the show.
- 34:59
- It's just amazing to me. So here's some tweets, public tweets.
- 35:07
- Fascinating to hear Trump condemn racism and evil. Then lists DAPL and trampling of native rights as one of his accomplishments.
- 35:14
- Your theology is deeply distorted when you're completely fine with missionaries illegally smuggling Bibles into countries, yet furious when some
- 35:21
- Christian immigrants come to the U .S. undocumented. This is troubling because the U .S. Constitution was written to protect the interests of white landowning men and assumed people of color were less than human.
- 35:30
- It goes on and on and on and on. Here's more that getting into the different entities, prison ministry staff,
- 35:38
- MPD conference. I mean, it's affecting, it's affecting like everything, everything in crew.
- 35:44
- This is not just like an isolated thing. It's not just lenses. This stuff is all over the place. They have letters from people who left crew.
- 35:52
- Dear committee, my wife and I were on staff for 37 years. And here's what's happened.
- 35:58
- We've seen this drift, we're leaving crew. Donors leaving, they have donors who said, here's what's happening in crew,
- 36:08
- I'm not giving anymore. And then they have an appendix with just more actual sources.
- 36:17
- And they have, it's very well documented. I'm just very impressed with how well, and look, I'm not even halfway through this yet.
- 36:23
- I'm just gonna skip ahead and just see, because so much of this is just firsthand accounts. Just giving you a sense for what's here.
- 36:33
- Bible verses all over the place. Appeal to crew's statement of faith.
- 36:38
- They're saying this is inconsistent with the statement of faith. Incredible how much information is here.
- 36:45
- And then they even have, here's documents, letters from, here's, I believe this is from Steve Sellers himself.
- 36:53
- And showing that, yeah, you know what? Steve Sellers has embraced some of this stuff. This is not just isolated to different entities within crew.
- 37:03
- Steve Sellers is promoting this actively. And chapter and verse on videos.
- 37:09
- I'm just scrolling through this whole thing. There's so much, guys. I mean, you could do, I could do a million programs just on this document, but I'm not gonna do that.
- 37:17
- I'm just gonna point you to it. If you're in crew, if you are a donor who gives to crew, I would encourage you, go download this document.
- 37:23
- Since it's there, it's free, it's online in multiple places. That group, from what
- 37:29
- I understand from multiple sources, doesn't even exist anymore. And I've been told that at least some of the leaders in that group have apologized to crew staff for even creating this concern group or being part of it.
- 37:40
- As, I guess, a challenge to their authority and it wasn't right, that kind of thing. I don't know that everyone has.
- 37:46
- I don't know to what extent. This is just what I've been told. So I don't, I was not in the room for those things, but the documentation's the important part of this.
- 37:56
- The documentation's out there, and it probably would be good, since it is publicly available, for those who are funding crew to know what they're funding.
- 38:04
- And this is part of it. And I would, if I was a donor, big donor with crew,
- 38:10
- I would demand answers. I would say, look, if you are against this stuff now, if you're not on this bandwagon, you need to condemn some of your former teachings.
- 38:17
- You need to retract things and do it publicly. You need to apologize for certain things. Maybe some people need to be fired.
- 38:24
- And that's, without doing that, then how do you know? There's no way to know that crew's actually concerned about these things too, and isn't going in a critical race theory direction, because all indications are, it has been going in that direction.
- 38:37
- It is going in that direction. The Lenz's Institute's still there. So that's my two cents.
- 38:44
- Hopefully that was helpful for some of those who have been concerned about crew. I kind of almost hate to do this. I wish there were representatives from the concern group, maybe, who could put some stuff out there.
- 38:54
- And maybe they still can. Maybe that can happen. But this is what's going on. So just a reminder, again, pray for this abortion, this anti -abortion measure in Mississippi that's going to the
- 39:06
- Supreme Court. You know, we praise God that we still live in a country where some of,
- 39:12
- I know it looks bleak, but at least there is a little bit of a process by which people can appeal things and they can try to scale back some of the horrible things that have been committed over the last several decades.
- 39:28
- And so we just pray for the best with that. But God bless everyone.
- 39:33
- And there will be more material coming out later this week. I hope that was helpful and have a good day.