The SBC: Proposing a way Forward

The book of James tells us that a double-minded man, ἀνὴρ δίψυχος, is unstable in all his ways. The word dipsuchos means someone who is uncertain about the truth of a thing. The kind of man James is describing is a man who is wholly lacking certainty on a matter, it seems, on any matter. This kind of man is unstable in all his ways. To be unstable, according to Louw-Nida is to be unable to be controlled by something or someone. He is all over the map, out of control. This is a man who of extreme vacillation. Needless to say, it is a description of the kind of behavior we should very much seek to avoid.

Unfortunately, one of the oldest and largest Baptist denominations in the world has made it a practice over the years to elevate the sort of men who are indeed double-minded vacillators. They are vacillators from the standpoint that they are not controlled by the reformation principle sola Scriptura. Rather than anchoring themselves in Scripture alone and caring for God’s truth alone, they entertain theories, ideologies, philosophies, and values that are incubated in the unregenerate minds of God-hating pagans. And as a result, this very large Baptist denomination known as the SBC, is in the middle of a colossal collapse.

The denomination long ago abandoned the reformed theology into which it was born and upon which it was originally grounded. You see, the supreme principle of Arminianism is conditionalism. It provides a philosophical via media between Naturalism and Fatalism.[1] The Calvinistic understanding of divine justice is based on the supremacy or rights of God while Arminianism focuses on the right rights of man. Arminians were the fathers of toleration. Calvinism on the other hand was rigid, inflexibly dogmatic. As the SBC drifted more and more into Arminian theology and enlightenment philosophy, the level of toleration increased exponentially. The necessary condition for toleration is adiaphora. The problem arises when your basis for adiaphora becomes more man-centered than Christ-centered. As the SBC drifted toward Arminianism, it also drifted into the sea of adiaphora. Over time, fewer doctrines were viewed as essential to the Christian faith. The rights of individuals eclipsed the sovereign rights of God. Whatever kind of God Scripture reveals, it had to be the kind of God that would always respect the rights of the individual. This is because the rights of the individual are at the center of fairness, or, justice, to use a popular buzzword.

This environment of toleration has negatively impacted what the apostle Paul said was the primary duties of the pastor: to equip the body of Christ. (Eph. 4:11) You see, if very few things are essential (known as minimalism), then doctrine becomes less important, or nearly unimportant at all. Now, when you spend years not engaged in equipping the body, the body becomes uninformed which is a nice way of saying, ignorant. This lack of equipping opens the door to all sorts of nonsense. Since the church has become a place that focuses on individual rights, the natural progression becomes even more focused on the individual: my career, my marriage, my family, my happiness. Relationships completely eclipse theology, discipleship is non-existent, Christian confessions are abandoned, standards are vacated, and church discipline crumbles. As a result, church membership is a wink and a nod. The roles and pews are filled with people who are unregenerate, have no idea who God is, what the mission of Christ was, or what the gospel is.

This has become the base of the SBC. Her churches are filled with just these kinds of people. Most of them are unregenerate for all the reasons I have mentioned above. Add to this the fact that pastors have become addicted to their celebrity status. Their personal reputations and income depend heavily on churches that are mostly filled with non-Christians who do not know Christ, the gospel, and who could care less about doctrinal truth. This is why the SBC is in the condition it is in today. Many of these unregenerate members have been filling the seminaries for years now. And they have become pastors themselves. This is how you move from a solidly reformed denomination to one that is now, for all intents and purposes, just one more liberal Protestant denomination, or at least, on the precipice of becoming one. If you have ever hit black ice, then you know that early in the spin, you have some hope that you can bring the car back under control. But there is a point in the spin when you realize the tail just passed the point of no return and it isn’t a question of crashing, it becomes a question of how bad this is going to be. The SBC has just had the tail pass the point of no return. The question is, how bad is this going to be?

Because Christianity is a religion of hope if it is a religion at all, then one has to believe that there is still a sliver of hope for the SBC. But that sliver lies in a very particular direction. And that direction is the conservative wing. And it isn’t just the conservative wing. It lies in that wing where those inflexible, dogmatic Calvinists reside. This is where men go to avoid the double-minded vacillators. This is the only way forward for the SBC. This group is dogmatic. They are inflexible. They won’t compromise the clear revelation of Scripture. They aren’t going to tolerate a social gospel of racial reconciliation. They aren’t going to tolerate female leadership of any kind. Any hint of LGBT softening will be met with the strongest opposition. They will not play. And they will not keep silent. These are the ones that J.D. Greear called “divisive” over secondary issues recently. They are no longer going to tolerate the complete lack of accountability that is such a distinctive of SBC life in the ministry.

How can the SBC survive without becoming just one more liberal Protestant denomination? I have a few suggestions.

First, stop giving lip service to the authority of Scripture and actually start living under Scripture’s authority. What does it mean to live under the authority of Scripture? What does that look like? First and foremost, it means taking the confession of faith seriously. It means spelling out what a participating community must confess in order to be part of the denomination.

Second, end the ERLC. The ERLC has an unbiblical mission. It is political top to bottom. It is a waste of resources, time, energy and money. End it immediately.

Third, end the idea of a president. Why should there be a president? Perhaps a board of governing elders makes sense. But a president seems outside of Scripture. This would serve to end the political in-fighting that goes on around this issue.

Fourth, make church membership a rigorous vetting process. Make sure that people have truly come to a saving knowledge of Christ when you conduct your membership interviews. Ask tough questions, detailed questions, probing questions. Make sure members understand the beliefs and practices of the church.

Fifth, exercise church discipline. When spouses cheat or abuse one another and refuse to repent, subject them to discipline. Excommunicate the obstinate. Do it openly, publicly, for the sake of the gospel and the purity of the body. Make it a requirement.

Put a stop to false teachers like Beth Moore and Priscilla Shirer, Steve Furtick and other rogue individuals who ignore the teachings and confession of the church. Remove their books, their membership, and warn others to steer clear of them. Do it openly, publicly, lovingly, but seriously, do it.

Prohibit multi-campus pastors. The satellite pastors on the big screens have to go. It is nowhere near biblical. It lends itself to arrogance and deprives the sheep of their own personal intimate shepherd.

Hold your professors to the highest degree of accountability. Take every step to keep your seminaries doctrinally and ethically pure. Require affirmation, commitment, and loyalty from your professors annually. Nothing less will do.

Require your churches to operate on a plurality of elders with no one man being singled out as the “lead” elder. The preaching elder is the preaching elder because he does most the preaching. But his opinion should be no more weighty than other elders, only excepting that he has expertise in a particular area. Then and only then would it be prudent to weigh his opinion more heavily than others who may not be otherwise specialized or qualified.

Finally, learn to care more about the purity and spiritual healthy of your congregation and less about its size and budget and your own notoriety.

Responding to J.D. Greear’s recent video

Recently J.D. Greear posted a video on FB seemingly in an attempt to provide the SBC with some leadership and direction. Regrettably, the kind of leadership and direction JD offered, well, it isn’t real leadership and as for the direction, I couldn’t disagree more. That is not to say that I don’t respect J.D. Greear. I do. I treat him as a brother. However, his video is public, and as a result, it is more than reasonable to provide a public response to it (not that my voice will be heard by very many anyways – but I do have a voice and I will use it to glorify God).

Greear’s made several points to which I will briefly respond. The first issue I have with Greear’s comments are his view the attitude that God has brought a day of reckoning to the SBC. This is pious talk for “someone or a number of someone’s have been exposed for behaving badly.” My objection is simply this: spare me the pious framing. It rings hollow. The behavior that J.D. is talking about has been going on for a very long time and men like J.D. have known about it for a long time. The good ole boys protect the good ole boys until they can’t protect them any longer. Then a sacrificial lamb is offered up and we get to listen to this pious framing. It is hard to stomach. Want my respect? Then just tell the truth openly, honestly, make no excuses, and admit that there is an accountability problem top to bottom in the SBC. And that’s just one of the problems.

Greear says there are things about the SBC culture that grieves the Holy Spirit. What does he mean? Does he mean that the SBC needs a culture of accountability and transparency among leadership? A culture that lives up to the principle of sola Scriptura? A culture that is impervious to the good ole boy back-slapping and protecting that has gone on for so long? Nope! He says the SBC needs a new complementarianism. The SBC needs to recognize the gift God gives to women and it should seek to empower them. This, despite the fact that Scripture has reserved authority and leadership for men. But this is a wink in the direction of the #MeToo nonsense that has made its way into the SBC. It is a wink in the direction of Beth Moore. And maybe it’s some sort of penance for some heinous evil performed against women by men in power positions within the SBC. Sorry J.D. but the solution to the SBC’s problems is not a new complementarianism. It is a return to living under the authority of Scripture. Nothing else will do.

Greear’s second issue is to see people of color in the highest levels of leadership. This a wink at the racial reconciliation movement. Despite the fact that there is nothing in Scripture that supports this kind of mindset, these men continue to adopt pagan thinking around the subject of diversity. It is sad to see. We need fearless leaders in these positions, not white men, or brown men, or black men. We need men like John MacArthur, Voddie Baucham, Steve Lawson, Conrad Mbewe, Paul Washer. We don’t need melanin to be a criterion by which men are appointed to these positions. They are far too important to be reduced to something as arbitrary as skin tone. This is nothing more than political posturing. It is what lead to the conditions that have created the impetus for this video to begin with and J.D. I cannot see it.

The third item Greear mentions is very likely the powder keg that is about to explode in the SBC. Greear says that we need to help the vulnerable, to stand up for the abused. Finally, Greear gets to transparency in leadership. Well, I wonder what this cryptic message is about standing up for the vulnerable. What is J.D. referencing? Personally, I think it is always a bad idea to talk about transparency in a cryptic way. Maybe I am the only one the feels the irony here but I sure do feel it.

Next, Greear decides to go after those of a divisive spirit. Now, you can almost guarantee when someone starts talking like this, their goal is marginalize anyone that disagrees with them and to shut them down. Greear even says that it does not matter if these folks are actually right in their understanding of an issue. All that matters is that they are being divisive. Riddle me this: why is it that it is always “them” that are being divisive and never “me?” In other words, the ones who are divisive are the ones that disagree with us, with my side, with my team, with our view. And it doesn’t even matter if my side is wrong. It is those guys, even though they are right, that are dividing us and therefore, we should mark them. For example: recently, this good ole boys club thought it was prudent to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. as a noble Christian man and an example to be admired. Many of us think this is detrimental to the gospel and to the integrity of the Christian church. But since it is a secondary issue so to speak, it does not matter if we are right. What is worse is that we are speaking out about it and creating division. Therefore, we should be marked and dealt with presumably. This is not how the church is supposed to operate folks. This is a man seeking to keep things exactly the way they are all the while saying that things need to change. Washington has done this to American society for years and years now. And it seems that the SBC is taking the very same approach. Shut down those people who disagree with Greear and his friends. No debate. No synod. No conference. No Discussion. Mark them and shut them up now. Greear even quotes Paul at Romans 16:7, saying “Mark them with a divisive spirit and keep away from them.” First, its Romans 16:17, not Romans 16:7. Second, here is what Paul actually said: Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. Greear goes on to say, “whether you are being divisive on an issue even if your right still makes you divisive.” Now, compare that statement with statement Paul made. Did Paul say that division in and of itself is wrong? Nope. Paul said, “Keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned.” The presumed next president of the SBC is misquoting Scripture in an attempt to manipulate and intimidate anyone who might disagree with him on an issue. Is this the kind of character the SBC needs leading it in the future? It is the same old same old, folks.

In 1 Corinthians 5:11 Paul tells the church at Corinth to separate from anyone who claims to be a brother but who is walking in immorality. That is a mandate for division. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have fit that category perfectly and the SBC just celebrated him as an exemplary Christian leader. John told his audience that if someone comes bringing something other than the doctrine of Christ, have nothing to do with that person. That is a command for division. Paul told the Thessalonian believers to keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life. (2 Thess. 3:6) A few verses later he said to note anyone who does not obey the instructions of his letter and have nothing to do with them. (2 Thess. 3:14) Jesus Himself instructed the church to remove men from among them who were obstinate in their sin. This sin would include false teachings. Finally, Greear, without realizing it, is advocating division while attempting to condemn it. If it is true that all division is wrong even if the people creating it are right on the issue in question, and it is also true that marking someone out in the way Greear is marking them out is divisive, then Greear is actually engaging in the very practice he is condemning, while he is condemning it. Even if Greear is right, he is wrong according to his own standard.

I realize that this response to Greear is direct, and some would say overly harsh. Under the circumstances and in the current environment, I think it is reasonable. If the SBC is going to be a denomination that honors Christ, it will have to begin by returning to living under the authority of Scripture. Unless the SBC does that, nothing else that it does matters much. It will continue to bleed good people until all that is left are the progressives. In other words, the only hope the SBC has of avoiding the fate of every other liberal Protestant denomination is to be willing to shrink to whatever size is necessary in order to have a membership that is predominantly submitting their lives to the authority of Scripture, from the members all the way up to the leaders, to include the seminaries. Refuse to do that, and the SBC will not recover. The SBC is like a person on life support today. The time for her to begin to respond and show that there is enough activity in her spiritual brain to justify holding out hope is quickly coming to a close. If Greear’s video is any indication, there is little reason to hold out hope that a recovery is in her future.

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[1] Frederic Platt, “Arminianism,” ed. James Hastings, John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray, Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh; New York: T. & T. Clark; Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908–1926), 811–812.

Colorblind Theology: Exegetically Unavoidable and Scientifically Verifiable.

A lot is being said these days about racial reconciliation, most of it lacking support in Scripture as well as in Science. In fact, the prevailing attitudes about race are not only woefully lacking in their scientific credentials but they are utter devoid of anything remotely resembling exegetical warrant. My personal opinion is that the racial reconciliation movement along with the #MeToo movement have converged into a Tsunami of liberal Protestant theology in an attempt to overwhelm and crush the SBC as well as whatever is left of the evangelical movement. This objective has proven to be much more effective than anticipated due to politically motivated, weak-minded men that occupy most leadership positions in the evangelical world today, especially in the SBC. These men are used to compromising the truth for all sorts of political and pragmatic reasons. Couple that with their intense appetite to be liked and respected by as broad an audience as possible and liberal Protestantism, in the name of racial reconciliation and women’s issues, has all it needs to move these men like pawns in a chess match. Checkmate!

Now, the basic concept behind colorblind theology (a term I loathe by the way), is essentially this; melanin is an unbiblical and unscientific way to classify human beings. We choose not to attach undue significance to this particular genetic feature just like we don’t make much of a person’s hair or eye color, their ear size, or the size of their nose. This does not mean that we are trying to deny the history of racism or slavery in America’s history. It simply means that we reject the idea that human beings can be divided into races based on something as arbitrary as melanin. It is completely irrelevant what pagan society has done or is doing. Pagan society is insisting that we use feminine pronouns on men who want to self-identify as a woman. We reject that too. It is both unbiblical and unscientific just like categorizing human beings based on melanin is unbiblical and unscientific. How much melanin is required before someone is called a person of color. Can you be a person of color in the summer and a white person in the winter? I think the bigger problem is the idea that a person wants to make ado over the level of melanin in their skin. So, what! Just because your melanin matches that guys melanin, is that any reason to align your cultural values with his cultural values? How many different white cultures are there in America? There are tons. There isn’t one white culture. That is a myth. My culture is vastly different from the one I just witnessed in Denver CO. It is vastly different from the one I witnessed in Seattle and the one I saw in LA. What colorblind theology is saying is that there is no good reason to go on categorizing people based on the melanin in their skin and then judging them based off that factor.

Recently, Mika Edmonson put up an article at Core Christianity entitled, Why the Bible Doesn’t Teach Us To Be Colorblind. It is that article that I wish to critique in this post. Edmonson begins his article with the following observation:

As part of his daily prayers, a typical first-century Jewish man began by thanking God for not making him a Gentile, a slave—and finally—for not making him a woman. In a fallen world, we are socially conditioned by messages about who’s important and who’s not, who’s precious and who’s expendable, who should be in and who should be out. Race, class, and gender are the fault lines of sinful disparity and division that pass from the world right into the church.

Notice how Edmonson is attempting to tie the Galatian heresy to racialist and feminist attitudes. Is this really what was going on in Galatians? No, it is not. The Galatian heresy only spilled over into social behaviors because of the theological thrust of the Judaizers. Koestenberger wrote, Soon after Paul left the area, false teachers infiltrated the church preaching a different gospel – a gospel that insisted that keeping the law of Moses, in particular receiving circumcision, rather than faith in the gospel of grace alone was essential to salvation. [The Cradle, The Cross, And The Crown] The issue was not racial at its core. It had ethnic impacts, but those impacts were derivative of the Law of Moses, not social attitudes about others from different ethnicities. If Law-keeping was still necessary, then those Gentiles who refused to keep the law should be avoided because they can make one unclean. It was not a racial attitude that was driving the theology. It was the theology that was creating the ethnic divide. Law-keeping demanded that the Jew maintained a certain kind of relationship with the Gentile who had not converted to the law. Edmonson is reading something into the argument that is not there.

Edmonson goes on to say that Colorblind theology…also suggests that racialized sin is too entrenched and powerful for the gospel to heal. He provides no warrant for this claim. He tosses it out and expects people to just take his word for it. Well, not only can I not take his word for it, I don’t even know how he would formulate an argument that would even come close to supporting such a claim. Colorblind theology nowhere entails the belief that the gospel cannot heal those affected by the sin of racism. To the contrary, most of those I know who hold this view would say that the gospel is the only hope for anyone who has a racist heart.

Edmonson then turns to the Westminster Larger Catechism on its understanding of the requirements of the sixth commandment. Edmonson says, Under sins forbidden, the catechism specifically includes the sin of “oppression.” Its source text for this sin is Exodus 1:14 and the race-based discrimination and enslavement of the Hebrews under Egyptian bondage. However, for starters, Egyptian slavery for the Jews was not race-based. It was familial. This was the family of Jacob. Ethnicity was completely irrelevant. The thinking behind Jewish slavery was self-preservation on the Egyptian’s part. But let us not lose sight of the redemptive aspects of this event. After all, the primary purpose of this event is theological, revelatory. God is revealing something about himself. Moreover, the requirements of the sixth commandment are spelled out in the commandment itself and expounded by Jesus in Matt. 5. The Hebrew idea is the unjust or even negligent/careless taking of a human life. In addition to this, Jesus tells us that we are not to be angry with our brother, not to say to our brother that he is a “good for nothing,” and not to call our brother a fool. France tells us that by adding these requirements, Jesus “adds a far-reaching new dimension by turning attention also to the motives and attitudes which underlie the act, and which are not susceptible to judicial process.” [France, NICNT] Edmonson’s ideas seem far-fetched at best. Of course, racism would be covered by the sixth commandment, but not in the way that Edmonson claims. Edmonson wants to incorporate the political fight against oppression as a requirement of the sixth commandment and he thinks the WCF provides the bridge he needs to get there.

Now, if Edmonson is correct in his extremely broad interpretation of the sixth commandment, and Christians are commanded to fight against oppression and to stand up for the oppressed in the way modern Americans define oppression and standing up against it, then he might have an argument. However, there is nothing in the commandment itself or in Jesus’ own interpretation of the commandment to commend Edmonson’s position. In the larger catechism the question Edmonson is referencing is actually Q 136, What sins are forbidden in the sixth commandment? Edmonson is arguing that here that colorblind theology entails the refusal to address sinful disparities. For example, he writes, “Without any acknowledgment of the particularity of historic and contemporary racialized sin in America, the church remains unable to “repent of particular sins particularly.” Repentance for past racism is not something the church is able to do. Only the member(s) of a church can repent of their sin, which would include racism. Sin isn’t something the church commits. It is something the members of a church can commit. This is how the churches are always addressed in Scripture. When the Corinthian man was excommunicated for his immorality, it wasn’t the church that was excommunicated but the member guilty of the particular sin. Also, not that Edmonson applies the WCF 15.5 to this idea of universal guilt and repentance to the church for the particular sin of racism. However, when one examines WCF 15.5, what they find is incredibly different from what Edmonson claims: Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man’s duty to endeavour to repent of his particular sins, particularly. (Ps. 19:13, Luke 19:8. 1 Tim 1:13, 15). Notice the language men, every man, his particular sins, etc. Edmonson wants to apply this statement broadly to “white evangelicals.” Edmonson has omitted his in the quote of the confession and that is a serious breach of ethics. He isn’t quoting the confession even though his use of quotation marks claims that he is. Additionally, Q 136 of the catechism is not saying that the church has a duty to end oppression. It is saying that the church has a duty not to oppress others. But the Scriptures themselves openly and clearly instruct slaves to obey their masters for the sake of Christ. And these same Scriptures openly instruct masters to treat their slaves as brothers, with dignity and kindness. Nowhere does the NT instruct the church to free the slaves, to fight for their freedom, nor does it order Christian masters to grant their slaves their freedom. Since this is the case, Scripture cannot be used to say that disparity, or better, inequality is inherently sinful.

So far, Edmonson has misrepresented the Galatian heresy, attempting to read into it a racism that was not racism, at least not in the way we understand racism. He has intentionally misquoted the WCF 15.5, deliberately omitting the singular masculine personal pronoun so that he could apply the language to the church and hence support his narrative. Finally, he has played extremely loose in his interpretation of the larger catechism in his understanding of the word ‘oppress.’ Not only that, he has engaged in the rhetoric of racial reconciliation which demands that Christians living today repent of sins committed by Christians who have long since died. There is nothing in Scripture to support such foolishness. When Hezekiah became King in Judah, he reversed the sinful idolatry of his father, Ahaz:

He did right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father David had done. He

removed the high places and broke down the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan. (2 K 18:3-4)

What has happened in modern culture to indicate that the sin of racism is predominantly a sin of America’s past? Well, for one thing, we no longer have this:

We no longer have this sort of structure, and predominantly, we no longer think they way about ourselves. In addition, the laws have been significantly modified to provide opportunities specifically for those who suffered the negative effects of racists attitudes of years past. What men involved in the racial recon movement fail to understand is that it is just as sinful for them to demand repentance from the church at large today as it was for Christians of yesterday to adopt the hateful attitude of racism.

I prefer Benjamin Keach’s Baptist Catechism:

Q. 73. What is required in the sixth commandment?

A. The sixth commandment requires all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life and the life of others.

Q. 74. What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?

A. The sixth commandment absolutely forbids the taking away our own life, or the life of our neighbor unjustly, or whatsoever tendeth thereto.

Edmonson goes on to say, “We must acknowledge our ethnic distinctions and intentionally hold those distinctions in a way that makes our full equality in Christ clear.” Apparently, it is lost on Edmonson that melanin is not an ethnic distinction. We are all Gentiles, those of us who are not Jews. Colorblind theology does not insist that there are no white or black people in the world. It insists on not judging people based on skin tone and it insists on not leading with skin tone as a primary means to classify human beings. Moreover, I am not sure what Edmonson is getting at. Of course, we are talking metaphorically when we say we are colorblind. What is it about our ethnic distinctions that we must acknowledge and intentionally hold? Is he saying that I have to make much of my Irish/German descent but do so in a way that also makes my full equality in Christ clear? Why should I do that? Why should I care about my ethnic heritage now that I am in Christ? I come from Adam the same as every other man. What does it look like for me to acknowledge my Irish/German descent? To make much of it? To not lose it? I am not sure, and I honestly don’t care much about it either. In fact, it only comes up in vain conversations where men are bragging about their ancestry. I have enough vanity in my life without intentionally focusing on my ethnicity and making more of it than should be.

In summary then, Edmonson’s first point, that colorblind theology mistakes Galatians 3:28 to be about erasing ethnic distinctions when it is really about erasing ethnic disparities is patently false. In Christ, from a soteriological point of view, there are no distinctions, ethnic nor otherwise. Galatians is about justification by faith alone in Christ alone. It is a response to Judaizers who were not trying to exclude Gentiles, but who were attempting to impose law-keeping, specifically, circumcision on Gentile Christians as a requirement to be a Christian. Second, there is no logical relationship between “colorblind theology” and the refusal to address  sinful disparities. Edmonson assumes too much about disparities and the sinfulness that supposedly attaches to them. The thrust of his argument assumes far too much and proves far too little. Moreover, he illegitimately treats the idea of repentance, replacing the biblical concept which is individualistic because only individuals can sin, with an institutional concept, something that is foreign to NT theology. Finally, supposed disparities among races in western culture have been shown to be far more complex than Edmonson or anyone else in the racial recon movement care to admit. For example, someone will need to explain why disparities exists from one black group to another. Why is it that West Indian black people out-perform black people who are several generations in American culture now? This is one example of many. See this article for more details: http://quillette.com/2018/05/14/the-racism-treadmill/

I now think that there are two movements within evangelicalism that are intentionally designed to disintegrate the gap that has existed between liberal Protestantism and evangelicalism. The racial reconciliation movement is one of them. When we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Christian man, a godly man to be admired, adored, and a model to be emulated, we necessarily loosen Christian morality as well as doctrinal integrity. To say such glowing things about King is to say, at the same time, that heretical doctrine is not that big a deal, or that these doctrines that King held are not really heresy at all. Secondly, to say that King is an example to be emulated is to say that serial adultery and fornication along with drunkenness and orgies are not detrimental to Christian morality. If this is really the attitude of the majority of black Christians and the predominant view of black Churches, then to join hands with them is to immediately admit that doctrinal and moral purity are secondary to these greater social concerns that are more important to the black community than the purity and integrity of the gospel. That is a serious indictment. The other movement is the #MeToo movement. Under the guise of this movement, women who have been legitimately abused are being used to smuggle in feminist ideologies. Those ideologies start with the uncontroversial position that abused women should be protected and move from there to an extremely broad and radical view of abuse to new grounds for divorce within the church. But it doesn’t stop there. The real aim is the pulpit. The real goal is female leadership in the church.

Racial reconciliation leads us to a lax moral standard because it downplays morality and theology while elevating social concerns. It does this by elevating men as heroes of the faith who were actually enemies of the faith despite the worldly good they may have accomplished. #MeToo leads to lax moral standards around marriage and downplays the theological significance of male leadership in the church. The very basic design of creation itself from the beginning is dispensed with, male leadership, in preference for what pagan society demands. Not only that, the institution of marriage finds itself again under attack in the Christian church. This happens when we take our eyes off the truth of Scripture which is clear on the matter of divorce and we instead place them on “me.” Divorce for any reason is selfism. It is a refusal to submit to Scripture, to trust divine sovereignty, and to put the gospel above our own needs, wants, and wishes.

Paul wrote the Timothy, saying, “Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God.” (2 Tim. 1:8) It sounds unpopular to oppose the racial recon movement. It sounds even more unpopular to inform a Christian wife that she cannot divorce her husband unless he is in unrepentant adultery or unless he abandons her proving his faith to be false to begin with. But it is nevertheless true. Are you willing to suffer the scorn of pagan culture? Are you willing to ruin your reputation and credibility with certain people for the sake of the clearly revealed truth of God’s word? Or, do you prize something more than you do God’s truth?