Do you think one of the issues is a lack of consistent definition of terms like systemic racism?
Yes, a lot of times. It’s become like a wax nose you fit it on anything that you want to argue for. So yeah, I do think definitional conversations would be helpful to clear it up.
People say, well, do you believe in systemic racism? I say, believe it? I’ve seen it. You know? I mean, it’s not a question of whether or not exists.
The question is, are you saying that today we are in the same place we were 50 years, hundred years ago, 200 years ago in the United States. I’ve had guys tell me it’s worse than it was in the antebellum south. In what universe? I mean just listen to the people who lived it and their own narratives compared to today.
So, I think this has been driven by ideologies and forces that have no regard for the Church of Jesus Christ or the Word of God. People ask me, are you a conspiracy theorist? No, I’m a conspiracy realist. I believe in the Devil. I believe the Devil’s a conspirator and goodnight, you know, I mean, he’s been doing it for thousands of years. We got evidence of it in the Scripture. So we shouldn’t be blown away if he’s doing it again today in, in ways that maybe are very subtle that we didn’t see coming.
While you say Critical Race Theory shouldn’t be prescribed, should it be taught in SBC seminaries?
I say teach it the same way you teach evolution or higher criticism or something. You don’t teach Islam as a good alternative. You teach it, if you’re thinking right in my book, you teach it as a system from the pit of Hell that will lead you to Hell. Now let’s understand it.
But today, even people that say, well, you’re saying we ought to be dumb, you know, and not learn about these. No. Learn about it, but call it what it is. The folks that are advocating it, they stop short of that, and they get upset whenever you try to push them. Nobody’s saying be dumb or narrow-minded on reality. These are real things in the world.
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But is Critical Race Theory a helpful analytical tool the way that Critical Race Theory says it ought to be used? Absolutely not. It’s incompatible with the Gospel, and if we don’t say that clearly then we are going to leave some people, who are not very discerning, to be prey for folks who will come in and convince them, “Well, you know, look we’ve said this is a good analytical tool. Look what this analytical tool shows you and tells you to think and tells you to see.” I think that was a horrible mistake on the part of the convention in 2019.
It sounds like you have concerns about the effects of CRT on today and in the next generation.
Absolutely. I mean I’m 65 years old. All right. I got plenty to do right at this church. I never wanted to be involved in these debates. I’ve lost friends over these debates. I really had hoped at this stage of my life, I’d be able to pastor this church for as long as they tolerate me and just live and die here and trust the folks that were doing the things that you know, they’ve been doing for years.
But having grandkids and realizing these kids are growing up in a world where Disney has executives telling them, “We want to sensitize them. We want to train them to recognize LGBTQ as a right lifestyle.” And you’ve got these ideologies coming in. It’s in the world.
But when I began to get my mind around this 2017, 2018 to see this is in the church and it, when you start comparing some of the positions and language of church leaders to secularists and they’re reading out of the same playbook?
I made phone calls and I talked to guys far smarter than me and better positioned than me to deal with this. And I was sitting in this chair when I talked to one of them in 2018 after the Martin Luther King, Jr. Conference in Memphis, and I hung up and I looked at my associate pastor and I said, “He’s not going to help us. He’s not going to help us.” That was the day that I really started going to school, and I started buying the books, reading the material, educating myself far more rigorously than I had the year before.
It seems like the ERLC’s MLK 50 event was really a turning point for you. Is that true?
It goes back to that illustration I was trying to use a while ago that there’s a subterranean reality that I think has been subtly attacked and it will destroy the house that it sits on. We’ve been talking about the house — we need these doors, we need these windows, we need this kind of furniture in it and all that is right and good and true — but whenever the subsoil is being eroded under it, if we don’t stop and say, “Wait a minute, if this subsoil goes, the whole house goes.”
So, I’m not much impressed with anybody anymore who tells me they’ve signed the Baptist Faith & Message or The Abstract of Principles. Now, what I want to know is what do you think about these realities that we are being told we must see or else you’re bigots, you’re racists, you’re misogynists.
Do you see those realities? Do you think that we ought to be claiming those realities exist?
Because I don’t think they exist the way that we’re told that they exist and that’s where the debate’s gone. I think that’s taken us into arenas that I think are very theological, but like my friend Bart (Barber) says, “You know the Conservative Resurgence was all about theology and inerrancy, but this new thing, this is all about politics.”
It’s not, I mean, politics is certainly in it, but this is not about Trump. This is about the fact that Jesus Christ is Lord over every square inch of this creation. And Genesis 1:1 is still in the Bible and it’s God’s world.
The confessions, the doctrines that we love and delight in that founders is promulgated, tried to recover that people have forgotten about all those things are right, good it and true, but they grow out of God’s revelation in the real world.
What’s happening today is we are being increasingly coerced to say that the world is different than God says it is. Man’s not a man. Woman’s not a woman. The heterosexual is not right and normative. It’s an option.
We’re being told these things and you look in the Scripture and people will say this, “You know, Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality or the Bible doesn’t forbid transgenderism.” Well, okay. If you’re looking for a verse. But if you realize this is God’s world and God has two books, He’s got creation as well as revelation in Scripture and creation is just as authoritative.
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He (God) speaks just as authoritatively in creation as He does in the inherent Word of God. Then you can’t deny creation while trying to affirm the Doctrine of the Word. I mean, you can do it, but it’s a parlor trick. And what I’m going to do is turn lights on and say, “No, no, no, no, over here he signs all the confessions over here, but over here he’s giving up reality.” A lot of that sounds political and I get it, but I think Jesus is Lord of politics, too. So I’m not embarrassed or hesitant to talk about politics, but so often I think it gets miscast as a political debate when it’s not. It’s a debate about reality. Okay. That’s the way I see and the way I’ve entered into it.
