Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 459 | David Platt Drama & “Pro-KKK” Propaganda in Texas

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Lots to discuss in today's episode. We start with a message of encouragement that hopefully is familiar to all Christians. No matter what happens on Earth, followers of Christ get to rejoice in the good news of the Gospel and what comes after our worldly lives. Then, we move on to debunk some ridiculous misinformation being pushed by Democrats regarding curriculum legislation in Texas. The Left is up in arms, claiming that Texas Republicans are trying to prevent schools from teaching about MLK or the KKK. But is that really what's happening? It may not surprise you that Democrats aren't being very honest about this one. Lastly, we address the drama surrounding David Platt and McLean Bible Church, and the "accusations" that Pastor Platt has gone woke. --- Today's Sponsors: Annie's Kit Clubs encourages your kids to be creative with subscription boxes for both boy & girls. Go to AnnieKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 75% off your first shipment! Hunter Douglas has innovative shade designs that let you enjoy a more beautiful, comfortable, and convenient lifestyle. Visit HunterDouglas.com/ALLIE for your free Style Gets Smarter design guide. Good Ranchers safely delivers American craft beef and better than organic chicken, right to your door! You can place a one-time order, or better yet ... subscribe! Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE & get $20 off your order, plus free express shipping. --- Show Links: TrackBill: "Texas SB 3: Relating to Certain Curriculum in Public Schools, Including Certain Instructional Requirements and Prohibitions" https://bit.ly/3f0Drsu Townhall: "Fact Check: No, Texas Lawmakers Aren't Stripping MLK, KKK from State Education Requirements" https://bit.ly/3zDw0iF Religion News Service: "David Platt's Dreams for McLean Bible Church Sour as Members File Lawsuit Over Elder Vote" https://bit.ly/3iNSxCK The Dispatch / The French Press: "Structural Racism Isn't Wokeness, It's Reality" by David French https://bit.ly/3iSLZm6 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in, conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed. You can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.

Today we're going to talk about two subjects or we're going to try to get to two subjects. The first one might take a little bit longer time. So I'm not sure if we'll have time for the second one. But I'm going to try to talk about both this. Texas bill that you've been hearing about, a ton of you have been asking me about this, about the Texas bill that supposedly bans teachers from teaching about the KKK and Martin Luther King Jr. We're going to debunk that because it is truly one of the most egregious examples of propaganda that I've ever seen. So we're going to talk about that. We're also going to talk about

if we have time, what's going on with David Platt's church. But in some of the pushback that he's getting the allegations of David Platt and his leadership and his church apparently embracing CRT. But mostly we're going to talk about one of the responses to that by David French and a little bit of my rebuttal to that. Before we get into all of it, though, I just want to give you guys some encouragement. I was thinking about this as I was driving in today. So for the past couple of weeks, my family has been going through a lot. Now, not really big things. They've been just small things that have kind of piled up a couple of weeks ago. You guys might remember I was sick. I ended up having some kind of infection. I actually had to go to the ER a couple weeks ago. I ended up being totally fine,

but that kind of threw our family through a loop for one week. And then both of my kids last week came down with RSV. First, it was my two-year-old, and then it was our baby, and then if it sounds like I'm still under the weather, I'm actually recovered, but both my husband and I also got colds. They were very minor cold, so it was fine. But then there were some other things that went on and our family that just added a whole lot of stress to us and threw us out of our normal routine. And it can also be very scary when your kids get a cold. And RSV typically isn't that serious, but it can be serious. Our youngest is 12 weeks. And so you really have to watch that kind of thing, especially if they get into some kind of coughing fit. You just have to be super careful. And I am

very careful in general. This is actually the first cold that my two-year-old has ever had. And so, and it lasted. They last about a week. Thankfully, thank the Lord. Both of my kids, fully recovered, totally fine. But in the midst of all of those things, like, it can just be easy to get overwhelmed and to kind of wallow in the fear and anxiety that all of that brings on. And a lot of you might be dealing with some of the same things. Maybe you have a similar circumstance that you're in the middle of right now. Maybe you have a much bigger trial that you're dealing with. Or maybe you've just got a lot of small things that seem to be piling up and you're feeling

yourself get overwhelmed and wondering, why are things happening this way? Why can't things be better? And maybe you're starting to feel that kind of bitterness. and that feeling that you are entitled to ease kind of start coming on and building up in your life and in your heart. And if you are in the midst of that, whether it's a bigger, small circumstance, I just want to encourage you to do something that may seem counterintuitive at first. And that is to think about how things could be worse.

That's something that I do. That's an exercise that I do. Whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed and things seem like they're not going well. Think about how things could be worse because in the midst of that, doing that, you actually start to see how the Lord has given you particular mercies that maybe you didn't notice before. So for us, for example, the way that I kind of found that grace in the midst of the last couple of weeks. I think the Lord for good health care, I think the Lord for good doctors and nurses

and for medicine that was able to help me a couple weeks ago that was able to help my kids. I think the Lord that because of COVID restrictions at my husband's work, he was able to, he still works from home. And so he was able to have a flexible schedule that allowed us to really, really engage in a lot of teamwork in helping our kids. I think the Lord that it was my old. who got sick first. And so the worst of it for her was before, the worst of it for the baby. And so we were able to allocate our energy toward each kid how we were, how we needed to. I think the Lord that my husband and I really didn't get a cold until after our kids were already recovering. And so that allowed us to give the energy to them that we needed to, that so that we weren't

completely down in the dumps. And I think the Lord that both of them, recovered, that we recovered, and that it was minor, especially compared to a lot of kids, especially babies who get RSV. So thankful for all of that, thankful for friends who sent us lunch, who checked in on us, thankful for parents who prayed for us and helped us. However, they could. Thankful for me for a job that I am able to, I'm kind of able to dictate my schedule for the most part. Last week, we had already pre-recorded Monday's episode, Tuesday, we didn't have a new episode. Wednesday I was able to record from home. Then Thursday, because I really needed to. I came in and recorded a quick interview. But wow, thank the Lord that I had the

flexibility to be able to do that kind of thing. And so I'm so incredibly grateful for all of the mercies that I saw in our lives over the past two weeks. And it would have been really easy to just sit in my fear and sit in my anxiety and allow kind of self-pity to overwhelm me. But the Lord calls us to something better, and it's not because he's just chastising us for having bad feelings because bad feelings are a part of life, and I'm not saying we should just shut those down and pretend that they don't exist and to tell ourselves to buck up and just be positive all the time. We do have to feel sadness and negative feelings that's part of being a human being, but we cannot allow those things to dictate us. We can't allow those things to rule us,

and to overcome us. God calls us to rejoice. He calls us to gratitude. And that is not some form of so-called toxic positivity. That's because he cares about us. He knows that joy and gratitude and recognizing his goodness, his faithfulness, his mercy is actually better than being overwhelmed by our own feelings of misery, which may even be justified feelings. He still says in the worst fiery trial, or in the smallest inconvenience that we are supposed to give him glory and to give him praise because he cares about us. And now listen, you might not be able to think right now of anything worse that could go on in your life.

Like, you might be listening to what we went through as a family over the past couple weeks and you might be thinking, I would pay to have problems that small. And maybe the problems that you are dealing with are so much bigger and so much more profound and so much more grave than the ones that I, I described. Maybe you are going through the darkest season of your life, and I will not even try to invalidate that or belittle that in any way. If you cannot think of how things could be worse, I absolutely believe you. What I am going to call you to and encourage you to is what the Lord encourages all Christians to, which is hope. So maybe you don't feel like you have any hope in

this life right now and you don't see any light at the end of the tunnel at least in the physical world what god gives us what the gospel gives us is if you by grace through faith believe in him for the forgiveness of your sins if you have trusted him as the lord of your life again uh because of his grace and the power of the holy spirit in you then you have the hope of one day everything that is wrong today being made right. You have the hope that one day he is going to wipe away all of your tears. You will never have any more sorrow. You will never have any other, any more feelings of despair. You will never be discouraged. You will never be disappointed again. You will never have to worry about injustice. You will never have to experience unfairness. There will never be anything bad

or sadness inducing ever happened to you ever again. And you will be living in perfect peace and perfect joy forever and more in the presence of your Savior Jesus Christ. When you die and or when Jesus comes back to rule in perfect peace and righteousness forever and ever. So even if nothing good seems to happen to you ever again in this life, the fact that Jesus died on the cross for your sins, the perfect righteous one died on the cross for your sins so that you, a sinner could be reconciled to a holy God forever and spend forever in fellowship and in peace and in joy with him, in worship of him forever, that is enough to give

us joy. That is enough to bring us to gratitude. So even if you can't find anything else in this life right now to rejoice over, rejoice over that. There is no better news in the gospel. There's no better news in the gospel, even if the only thing you've been hearing for the past month, the past year, the past decade is bad news. You have good news in the gospel. And I don't say that because I know what you're going through because I don't. I say that as someone who reads the word of the one who does know who you are and what you're going through. He is the God who sees. He is the God who cares. He is the good shepherd that longs to give you rest, that longs to restore you that longs to forgive you if you do not know Jesus. I promise you that what you are

trying and failing to find inside yourself, what you're trying and failing to find inside your boyfriend or your job or whatever endeavor it is is found in Christ alone. That, I guarantee you, there are a lot of things that I get wrong. There are a lot of mistakes that I make. There are a lot of things that I do not know. That is the one thing that I know for sure. So that was just, just on my heart. That was on my heart this morning as I was driving in. And I just wanted to give you that Monday encouragement before we get into the rest of this news stuff, which I know in itself can be stressful. I wanted to make sure that we started this week off on the right foot. So whoever that was for, I hope that encourages you in the Lord. All right. We're going to get into some of this

new stuff that you've been asking me about, though. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D. Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

All right. Let's get into this first story. Like I said, we're going to talk about this Texas education bill that you have been hearing. Bands teachers teaching about the KKK and Martin Luther King and slavery and apparently is emblematic of just how racist Republicans. states are. And then also, as I mentioned at the beginning, we're going to try to talk about what's going on with David Platt Church. But first, this Texas bill, a ton of you have been sending me post on Instagram about this bill, SB3, Senate Bill 3, that claim the bill prevents teachers from teaching certain parts of American history, particularly history pertaining to oppression, to race, racism, and civil rights. The post that I saw had hundreds of thousands of likes. I saw tweets that went viral. I saw articles circulating all saying the same thing. So

if you were under that impression, I don't blame you. That is, that's, that colors most of the information that you have been seeing about this. But because I know how the media work, unfortunately, my first thought was when I saw all of this was no, no. There's no way that that's really what it is. I've seen this happen too many times, too many times where the media and social media influencers run with an angle that is insufficient and complete at best and completely false at worst. And then by the time anyone can issue a fact check, it's too late. The story is already cemented into people's heads. And no matter what I or anyone else says, that's not going to change. And that's really disappointing. Like it's really discouraging

that unfortunately it's so hard to, to, for the fact check to be as positive. and pervasive as the false information. And that goes for anything on both sides. But even if I can just get one person or help you get one person to peel back the headlines and the captions and the social media graphics and see what's actually true, I think that it's worth it. So let's first read what this bill actually says, which is always publicly available, by the way. I'll link it in the description of today's episode. But you can always search Texas bill SB3 text I use duck, duck go. I've really tried to make a concentrated effort to no longer say to Google something because I don't use Google and I don't really like Google.

Sorry YouTube. I didn't say that. I love Google YouTube. It's great. But I just personally use duck, duck go. Or you can go to trackbill.com. It's a good tool to always be able to read the text of the bill. So you can see for yourself what these things actually say because they're so often misconstrued. So this is a state bill passed by the state legislature in Texas and the version of the bill that we're talking about has passed through the state Senate. It passed on Friday, July 13th. And so here's the stated intent of the bill that you will see in the text of the bill itself. It says this. SB3 prohibits teachers from being compelled to discuss current events or controversial issues in public policy or social affairs.

Prehibits districts, charters, or teachers from requiring or granting a grade or extra credit for a student's work or service with any organization that lobbies for legislation or is involved in social or public policy advocacy or any political activism. The bill prohibits teachers, administrators, or any other public school employee from being required to engage in training, orientation, or therapy that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping. They're trying to imply like anti-racist workshops, et cetera, in that last line. It also says SB3 prohibits the teaching or course requirement that includes the concept of

one race or sex being inherently superior to another, or that one race or sex should be held to blame for actions committed in the past by a. other members of that race or sex or that traits such as hard work, hard work ethic, are inherently racist or sexist. This again is, it's an implication of CRT. Also says SB3 adds clarifying language that the prohibition on students receiving a grade or credit for political activism does not include service and nonpartisan community-based projects or activities such as community gardens, food banks, or other philanthropic projects. So you might be thinking none of that sounds particularly problematic, but I will say know that the summary at the top of bills hardly ever includes like the most controversial stuff.

It typically generalizes the legislation in a way that makes it sound simple and straightforward. But usually the bills are much more complex and the summary says. And so we're going to read what it actually says, what the bill says and what people have contentions with. All right. So what this bill actually says, the summary that we read is still helpful in getting a general understanding of what this bill is trying to accomplish. And we should, before we get into what the bill says, like we should note that there are some words right off the top, right off the bat, that are important. So in particular, quote, prohibits from being compelled or required. So that means teachers cannot be required. required to discuss current events or controversial issues. A district or a school administration, for example, cannot compel a teacher to talk about the latest case of, for example, like alleged police brutality. The teacher can talk about it, but she can't be required to talk about it. Teachers cannot be required to attend some sort of race or sex stereotyping training

or therapy. So, for example, a white teacher can't be compelled to go through training that then teaches her how to divest of her white privilege. A teacher cannot be compelled to undergo therapy to learn about how his masculinity is contributing to patriarchal oppression, et cetera. So if you want to do those things, you can, but you can't be required to do those things. That's a good stipulation. Like, that's a good part of this legislation, in my opinion, a very good thing. The bill also prohibits the teaching and course requirement of racial or sex superiority or that traits such as hard work are inherently racist or sexist. This is unfortunately something that we have seen, for example, from the Museum of African American History, who released a public infographic.

I think it was last year saying that hard work, efficiency, timeliness, meritocracy. These are all traits of whiteness math programs and places like Seattle link getting the right answer in math to Western whiteness. And so it's trying to emphasize not getting the right answer in math in order to make math more, quote, equitable. So Texas is saying, no, that cannot be a requirement in our public schools. And I'm pretty sure it also says that you can't, you can't teach those things. Like, you can't teach that white kids or black kids or brown kids are inferior or superior or that men or women, boys or girls are inferior or superior. That can't be a part of your curriculum. Again, I think that's a good thing. Now, that alone is controversial for people who are

sold out to critical race theory, which, again, in the interest of clarity, is an academic theory, the principles of which have become very mainstream in the past few years, namely the ideas that America is and always has been systemically racist and must be revolutionized, not reformed, including the Constitution, are definitions of rights, of liberty, of property, etc., that white people are oppressors, whether they are actively racist or not, because they are not trying to actively tear down the racist systems in America, and black and brown people are oppressed in all manners in all ways in the United States, even if a few happen to succeed because the institutions are all permeated with the racism on which our country was founded,

CRT says, and therefore any disparity in outcome that we see between the white race and other races is because of racism. So those are all assertions of CRT. You might say, oh, that's not CRT. That's actually true. I promise you that I am not misrepresenting what CRT is. When people tried to say that I or someone else, I don't know what CRT is, I wish that I didn't. I really do. I wish that I hadn't spent so many hours reading what critical race theorists themselves say the critical race theory is.

But I have. Okay. So I promise you that I am not misrepresenting. When I say the critical race theorists don't actually believe. in our version, a constitutional version of rights, of inherent rights. For example, the right to do process. They say that the right to do process really hasn't amounted to anything good or anything beneficial for people of color.

I promise you that is not a misrepresentation. That is almost a direct quote. So now, if you can point to me exactly to where I am misrepresenting and tell me how my description is not factual, I would love. to learn and correct the record publicly. But if you just disagree with my interpretation because you don't like that representation of CRT, I can't really help you. People who believe in that theory that I just described originally posited by Derek Bell and carried on today by people like Kimberly Crenshaw and in more concrete ways by Ibramax Kendi and Nicole Hannah-Jones,

even though they say they're not critical race theorists. Their work is representative of it. they do believe in the necessity of using public school to teach children about the harms of whiteness, the inherent evils of every American system, the idea that America never really ended slavery, and that essentially we haven't made any real racial progress in 1619, the injustice of capitalism, the unfairness of meritocracy. They believe in teaching students, all of these things. They think it's true or I don't even know if they think it's true history, but they think it's an important, necessary rendering of history that young people need to learn.

These are all opinions, though, about our history. This is a way theirs is a way to look at history through the lens of race, which is what CRT is. That's not anything close to an objective view of history. A people's history of the United States by Howard Zinn, as well as the 1619 project, as well as the works of Derek Bell, are all narrative-based. And they own up to that, by the way. They're not fact-based.

They might have some facts sprinkled in, but it's a narrative-based view of history trying to add in some events and facts to fit into that narrative and omitting other things that don't fit into the narrative. Now, you could argue that all renderings of history are subjective, but the ones I just listed, like I said, rely on secondary sources, omissions of facts that inconvenience their narrative and a coloring of certain parts of our history to drive home this, I just listed. that America has always been a bad force for its entire history, both here and abroad. Now, my opinion is if you want to teach about that perspective, then you can teach about that perspective, but call it a perspective. Teach it in a way that's appropriate for the students you're teaching, but say, look, here's what we know happens in our history based on these primary sources. These are the facts that we have based on these primary sources. Here's how some people interpret those events. Here's how other people interpret those events.

Teach about the importance of primary sources, of asking questions, of thinking critically. Like, if you want to teach that the 1619 project exists or any other journalistic project, what they say about history, teach students to pick it apart, to critique it, to rebut it, or to weigh it against other artistic renderings of history. That's what the 1619 project is, by the way, is an artistic rendering of some things that actually happened. it is admittedly not an accurate historic account, but rather a narrative about what Nicole Hannah-Jones imagines the history of the U.S. to be if we start from the CRT premise that America was founded on white supremacy and our legacy has only been white supremacy.

So if you want to teach that that exists, that that perspective exists, that's one thing. To teach that perspective is absolute truth, that people must reiterate as absolute truth, that students must reiterate as absolute truth in order to get a, good grade, that's wrong. That's, that's wrong. And it's just, it's bad education because it's not true. And it's harmful because it's not teaching kids to critically think. It is teaching them to accept things that, A, aren't objectively true and rely on really bad scholarship. And so it's just bad all around. So back to this bill. The parts of the bill that I've already read are controversial to progressives for those reasons. They want to teach that stuff as fact, but there's a

bigger controversy that has probably angered a lot of people who maybe don't consider themselves, die-hard progressives or critical race theorists. And that controversy lies not so much in what the bill says, but actually in what the bill does not say. So in the House version of this bill, the Democrats had added requirements to public school curriculum that included things like the following, and I'm reading from the House version of this bill. Quote, historical documents related to the civic accomplishments of marginalized populations, including documents related to A, the Chicano movement, B, women's suffrage and equal rights, C, the civil rights movement, D, the Snyder Act of 1924, and E, the American Labor movement,

the history of white supremacy, including but not limited to the institution of slavery, the eugenics movement, and the Ku Klux Klan, and the ways in which it is morally wrong. The history and importance of the civil rights movement, including the following documents. A. Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from a Birmingham jail, and I have a dream speech, among other. So that's what the House Democrats all wanted to agree. require with specificity and their House version of this bill, among some other things. So the Senate, when they got this bill, they ended up scrapping a bunch of these requirements

and instead included more general requirements in the bill. Why? Because it is the state board of education's job, not the legislature's job, to make specific curriculum requirements for the most part. Guy Benson reported a fact check for townhall.com, which will link in the description to this episode. He quotes Rich Lowry in the article, who is an editor for National Review, who said this, quote, What happened is that Democrats added a bunch of concepts and documents that school kids should know in the anti-CRT bill that passed the House a few weeks ago, so a different bill. The list was incredibly detailed and extensive when it's the role of the State Board of Education, not the legislature, to get into,

the weeds of the specifics of the curriculum. Besides, many of the items are already covered in the curriculum. It was widely expected that the Senate would pare down the House bill, and that's what it did, including cutting a provision citing the KKK. Binseng goes on to explain in his article, quote, the law is eliminating duplicative requirements from a bill leftist opposed in the first place. Lowry cites example after example of the Texas state curriculum already requiring teaching about the supposedly eliminated subjects from the KKK to MLK to women's suffrage to Caesar Chavez to Native American contributions, all of which were wrongly mentioned as getting axed in the Huffpo piece quoted above. It's entirely fair to debate anti-CRT bills as they arise in legislatures across the country

and overreach should be called out. But lying about what is actually being proposed discredits anti-C-R-T progressives who also gaslight parents and citizens about CRT in general. Article goes on to say, it's not being taught in schools they claim, clinging to a very narrow definition, helpfully undermined by America's top teachers union, of the broader term, which describes a widespread and undeniable phenomenon of radically racialized indoctrination. So that part about the teachers union that Guy Benson mentions, he is referring to the

largest teachers union in the country, the National Education Association, explicitly stating recently that the concepts of CRT will be taught in public schools. Not CRT as a theory, but the concepts of CRT as truth. Here's what reason.com reports. At its yearly annual meeting conducted virtually over the past few days, the N.EA adopted new business item 39, which essentially calls for the organization to defend the teaching of critical race theory. It is reasonable, this is what the item says, it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for

understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory, says the item. Consistent with its defense of CRT, the reason.com article says, the NIA will also provide a study, quote, that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-blackness, anti-indigenity, racism, patriarchy, cis-hatero-patriarchy, capitalism, wow, abelism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and depression at the intersections of our society. The implication is that these critiques are aspects of critical race theory, which in a weird way makes this an example of the activist left, basically accepting the activist writes new working definition of CRT as, quote, all of the various cultural insanities.

So that's the end of the reason.com article that I just quoted. When people say CRT is not being taught in public schools, you're right in that no one is standing up in saying, here's what critical race, here's what critical race. here's what critical race theory is. Today we're going to learn about it second graders. That would actually be preferred, kind of like what I said earlier. Instead, the concepts of critical race theory, which include but are not limited to what we already defined a few minutes ago, are being taught covertly.

So that includes the concepts of white privilege and systemic racism and intersectionality, which, whether you agree with them or not, they are critical race theory ideas. They were invented by Derek Bell and other critical race theorists. So you might agree with those tenets of critical race theory, but to say they're not critical race theory because you like them or believe in them, it's just wrong. Unfortunately, how these concepts end up being crudely taught is that white people and America are bad and that black and brown people don't have a fair shot. And these things just are not objectively true.

They're just not. So back to this bill again and the reporting about this bill, Democrats tried to put a bunch of stuff in the bill that would, that teachers would be required to teach. Some things that they're already required by the state board to teach. Some things that simply don't need to be required by the state legislature to teach. Republicans took them out. Not because Republicans in the state Senate took them out. Not because they shouldn't necessarily be. taught. But because it's not their job to dictate every detail of curriculum. They instead gave more broad prohibitions and requirements, as well as some specific course requirements, like the Declaration of Independence, the Lincoln Douglas debate, the Civil Rights Act. The bill also gives guidance on teachings about things like slavery. It says that slavery, for example, should be taught, quote, with respect to their relationship, to American values. slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from,

betrayals of or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality. So I don't know if I paired what I said with that quotes in a way that makes sense. So let me explain it. This is another blow to the tenants of CRT saying that you can't purposely teach kids to hate their country. You have to honestly say that here are the values upon which we were founded, and here are the ways we didn't live up to those values through slavery and Jim Crow and things like that, rather than saying, oh, the founders said that we were founded on liberty and equality, and really it was just a veil for white supremacy. I'm sorry, but Frederick Douglass disagrees with you. I disagree with you, too. That would be your opinion based on an ideology, not a factual interpretation of history. So this bill that was so purposely, this honestly reported, basically says, look, you cannot require teachers to teach in a way that aligned with a particular ideology or that ideology's view of American history. And teachers cannot teach that one race or sex is superior or inferior to the other.

And Democrats were very clever, as I think they typically are. And this is a common tactic. Filling the House bill with all of these repetitive and unnecessary requirements for schools, Then when Republicans took them out, they were able to say, oh my goodness, Republicans don't want kids to learn about the KKK. They're banning talking about the history of racism. No, that's not true. And because we have such a generally unthinking populace, because all of us, every single one of us, suffer from confirmation bias that if we're not careful about, we can very easily give in to. Because we have such a dishonest press, the narrative runs.

rampant and it's very difficult to correct it because it takes time to do. I saw one of you sent me a conversation between like you and an account who shared misinformation about the bill that said that teachers can't talk about the KKK being wrong or can't talk about the bad parts about our history and racism and things like that. You message to this person and said, look, you're spending misinformation. Here's a text to the bill. Here's what it actually does. the person replied to you and said, I really don't like reading. Can you give me a summary? Wow. If that is not

representative of what I think so many, even celebrities and so-called influencers think and how they process this kind of information, whether it's about this or whether it's about Israel and Palestine, whether it's about Donald Trump, I don't know what does. That is just, that's sad. And we have a responsibility as parents, as educators, as mentors, to try to equip young people to question and to think and to not just go with the mainstream, but to be like we talk about so much on this podcast. Human salmon, don't be afraid to swim upstream, even if it's unpopular. Okay, all right. That was me mixing together. All right. And okay, I said, okay. And if you want to use it, you can. You don't even have to give me credit. That's for free. Okay. We are going to talk briefly

about this whole David Platt thing. I'm just going to give like a very brief response to what David French said about the David Platt thing. All right. So David Platt has actually been in the center of some drama over the past few years. There have been some accusations from people within his church and just people within evangelicalism who have called him woke, who have said that, you know, he is moving to the left when it comes to racial issues. David Platt is an amazing pastor, an amazing preacher, an amazing author. I mean, most people I know who are raised evangelical, and it really changed your perspective of just like comfort and convenient and what we're actually called to as Christians. I have absolutely no doubt, at least from what I see,

I've no doubt about the sincerity of David Platt and how much he loves Jesus. Do I agree with everything that he has said about race and racism? No, I don't. I really appreciated it a couple years ago when he put his hand on Donald Trump's shoulder and he prayed for Donald Trump. That got him in some hot water with some people, apparently some people in his own congregation. And I said at the time, because David Platt released his statement afterwards, not necessarily apologizing, but trying to kind of explain it to his congregants, that was the mistake that

I personally believe that he made, that you shouldn't even have to explain that. You prayed for a president. Not, I can't guarantee that David Platt didn't vote for President Trump, but he obviously hasn't been some outspoken supporter of President Trump. So he prayed for him in a nonpartisan way in a way that Republican or Democrat were supposed to be praying for our leaders as Christians. And so I didn't think that he needed to explain that at all. And he has, he has kind of given credence to some of the, some of the assertions, some of the

arguments of organizations like Black Lives Matter. Like he has talked about things like structural racism, racism, and systemic racism. So he has, he said this before. He said a disparity exists. We can't deny this. These are not opinions. They're facts. It matters in our country whether one is white or black.

Now, we don't want it to matter, which is why I think we try to convince ourselves. It doesn't matter. We think to ourselves, I don't hold prejudices towards black or white people, so racism is not my problem. but this is where we need to see that racialization is our problem. It's all of our problem. We subtly, unknowingly contribute to it.

So that is, that is. And I don't, people get so mad like when people say this because they think it's like this boogeyman and they think that you're just, you're accusing anyone who talks about race or racism of being a Marxist, of being a critical race theorist. And I think that's wrong. Like we should not do this. But this comment is critical race theory. Now, whether David Platt has ever read Kimberly Crenshaw or Derek Bell, I highly doubt.

I highly doubt he has. I do not think that David Platt subscribes to all of critical race theory. I do not think that David Platt is a Marxist. I don't think that he is a communist. I don't think that he agrees with probably most of the tenets of the Black Lives Matter organization. I don't think that. I'm not calling him a false teacher. I'm not saying he's not a real Christian.

but this is an argument that is that was founded by critical race theorists. It just is this idea that whether you are racist or not, that we live in a racist, a racist system that is the cause for the disparities that we see between white Americans and black Americans. And that today in 2021 that you are discriminated against or you are oppressed because of the color of your skin, because of these racist systems that exist, that is critical race theory and that is highly debatable. It's highly debatable. Now, I've talked about so many times before the book Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Soul. And the reason I talk

about it is because just the title, or not really the title, but like the introduction alone, it blows apart this fallacy that I see so many well-meaning people give into, which is this idea that if you see a disparity between white Americans and black Americans, it is a given that that is because of systemic racism and that's because of discrimination when really typically maybe sometimes it is because of some like antiquated racist structure or the so-called legacy of racism or slavery, maybe. But so often it's so much more complex than that. That's what discrimination and disparities by Thomas Sol lays out.

perfectly that this this assertion of the history of systemic racism and structural racism and the legacy of the unbroken legacy and thread of slavery and Jim Crow and mass incarceration is the cause for all the disparities between white and black Americans. He really bust that apart by actually looking at the facts and looking at the history and looking at the data that contradict that. And so, yes, David Platt, whether he realizes it or not, and I'm absolutely sure he is completely well-meaning in this and that he's. he wants to seek biblical justice. But yes, this comment absolutely speaks to a tentative critical race theory. That is debatable at best when you actually look at the data. I am not denying

that racism exists. I am not denying that racism at one point in our history was systemic. I am not denying that there could be impacts of previous slavery on today in a way that some people, that some people don't experience and other people do experience. So, I'm not denying that. I am not saying that talking about race or racism is wrong. I'm not saying that talking about injustice against a particular group is wrong. I'm not saying that that's Marxist. I'm just saying what he says is not necessarily supported by the data that we've talked about so many times on this podcast. It is rather a narrative-based assertion that was created by people like Derek Bell. So whether you agree with it or not, that that is where you agree with it or not, that is

where it comes from. That's where it comes from. And you can say all day long, I don't agree with critical race theory. Well, you just asserted it to maintain it of critical race theory. Just accept that for what it is. Now, I don't necessarily agree with, although, again, I don't know all of the details of this, so I'm not going to get too into it. But from what I'm reading, I don't necessarily agree with how the people within David Platt's church are pushing back against this. So this is what religion news reports. On July 15th, five members of McLean Bible Church, that's David Platt's Church, filed a complaint alleging that Platt and other leaders illegally barred them from voting at a recent congregational meeting to approve new church leaders. The plaintiffs also claim

a follow-up election at the church this weekend violated the church's constitution. This is a breach of contract action seeking to remedy defendants and legal actions to deny plaintiffs their rights to cast a free and fair vote, to have those votes lawfully counted, and to enjoy their right to a secret ballot, according to the complaint. And apparently, this vote has to do with these issues surrounding the political ideological direction of Platt and McLean Bible Church. Now, Platt has accused his critics in a sermon of spreading disinformation, stuffing the ballot box with votes from former members and inactive church members.

I don't know if that's true. If that is true, that it's absolutely a sin. I also think it's weird to involve civil authorities in this. Now, again, there could be details about this that just sounds, that sounds purposely contentious and maybe not the most Christ-like way to handle this. I'm open to hearing feedback on that. And I do think if Platt's accusations of his critics are true, then obviously that is. is sinful to try to subvert a legitimate process in a way that is dishonest. So David Platt said in a sermon, I want you to listen closely to the words I'm about to say.

A small group of people inside and outside this church coordinated a divisive effort to use his information in order to persuade others to vote these men down as part of a broader effort to take control of this church. So three new elders were approved by their vote by 80%. of the active member vote. There's still a dispute about who is an inactive member. A long-time member, Bill Frazier, believes church leaders disqualified people who they thought would vote the wrong way. So that's where part of this drama, that's part of how this is happening. So like one side thinks that the vote is illegitimate because of the definition of inactive members. I would say

David Platt side thinks that the other side is saying that illegitimate members are illegitimate. both sides, I guess, think that they're trying to take over the church leadership and take it in a direction that they don't agree with because of the nature of a lawsuit. Unfortunately, we cannot provide any further comment at this time. The elders said in a statement, we praise God for our church family's affirmation of new elders, and we would deeply appreciate your prayers for all of McLean Bible Church as we move forward in our mission. So there is obviously division going on within that church. that should never be anything that we rejoice over. Like, we don't revel in this kind of drama.

We don't want this. Like, no matter what side of the argument that you're on, we want unity in Christ and unity in the gospel. I'm sure that's what David Platt wants, as much as I might disagree with some comments that he has made. And I don't know. No one knows except for the people there, all of the details of everything that has gone on.

Like, my prayer is for unity for them. but I want to explain a little bit more using David French's response to all of this, why I disagree with that comment that I read from David Platt and some other things that he has said. And again, this is not an endorsement of the people within his church doing what they're doing to try to kind of oppose him. Because I just don't know. I'm not picking aside. I'm not picking aside on that. But as far as the subject matter goes, let me read you a little bit about what David French said.

and then why I disagree. So he explains kind of what happened. Then he says the congregants, this is David French's, like, own block. He says, the congregants object to what they perceive as a pastoral embrace of critical race theory, and they assert the Bible alone contains teaching sufficient to address America's race problems. You can read the comprehensive complaint against Platt and his team here, and so I can link that so you can read it. and the allegations of teaching or advocating CRT here.

Without restating all the contents of these lengthy documents, David French says, they include complaints that Platt and his NBC colleague, Pastor Mike Kelsey, marched in a Christian Black Lives Matter March, and that Kelsey has endorsed the CRT concepts of systemic racism and white privilege. They also condemn Platt for arguing that the absence of overt prejudice

does not absolve one of the problems of racism and racialization, and includes that quote that I read earlier. So then David French gives his response or his interpretation of all of this according to scripture. And then I responded on Twitter. He has not responded to me. I don't know if he will, so I feel comfortable talking about it here since I've already tried to engage with him individually. So then David French responds to this whole thing. He says, Platt is biblical. and historically right. It's his detractors who are biblically and historically wrong. He says that the conservatives, he puts in scare quotes, have placed a secular political frame around an issue with profound religious significance. And then he says, to understand the flaw in their argument,

he's talking about Plata's dissenters. Let's first turn to the biblical text. He cites Second Samuel 21. During the reign of King David, Israel was afflicted with three years of famine when David sought the of the Lord regarding the crisis. God said there is blood guilt on Saul and on his house. Saul was king before David and God was punishing Israel years after Saul's regime because of Saul's sin. It was the next king David's responsibility to make things right. And then he gives some other examples of this of Israel committing sins in the past and then having to, the next generations having to seek God's forgiveness about these sins. And so David French goes on to say, let's go back to scripture and recognize that the obligation to act justly is intergenerational.

If there is injustice that predates our personal power, it is still our obligation to do what we can to set it right. When you see racist structures at work, you recognize that you need sociology, history, and economics to help you understand not just their reality, but their remedy. he goes on to argue that Sola scripture is not going to inform policy and that we have common grace to be able to draw from different sources of wisdom to tell us, to tell us, you know, how to enact certain policy in a way that is just. So even though the Bible informs our definitions of justice, when it comes to specific policy, we do look to different sources of wisdom and advice. And of course, I believe that. I think that is absolutely true. That's why I quote Thomas O'all, even though he's not necessarily a Christian author.

I don't know his faith, but he's not writing from a Christian perspective. And then he goes on to talk about the different kind of racist structures that he believes have caused these disparities. He talks about the median income of black Americans being a great deal lower than the median income of white Americans. And he talks about that that is because of these racist structures that are in place. So here is my response. to that. And then we'll close this out. And this is what I said on Twitter. I'm just going to read what I said on Twitter. So I say you make a lot of good points here, by the way, David French,

I do believe that you do. And I can't speak to the plot situation. This is what I said last night. I know a lot more about the plot situation than I did then. But a few ways I'd push back on what you write here. One, disparities don't equal discrimination. They don't automatically equal discrimination. because if they do, then we have to ask it's discrimination also to blame for an Asian median income that is a lot higher than whites median income. And the article, David Fringe, only compares white versus black income and conclude that it's because of automatically exclusively past structural racism. And maybe it is. Like, I'm not discounting that it could be or partly is, but the reality is that it's much more complex than that. The second point I would

make, America is not Israel. Now, I see a lot of right-wingers, like super pro-Trump people, compare Israel to the United States in trying to say that America is God's chosen nation today. And they use scripture from the past, they de-contextualize that they apply it to America to try to say, you know, America is today's Israel. And they're accused of Christian nationalism for doing that. And I happen to agree that that's theological. flawed that America is not modern day Israel. It's not God's chosen country. But I see the same moderates and leftists, like David, like David French, I'm not saying that he is a leftist, but like David French say that these people are Christian nationalist, that it's wrong to,

that it's wrong to assert that, that it's wrong to call America God's chosen nation. But then they go on to do the same thing. They go. on to compare America to Israel when they're talking about it in a more negative sense, or when they're trying to support their argument that we have a call to modern repentance for past sins. And so either America is Israel or it's not. Either that's Christian nationalism or it's not. I do believe that we can draw from the principles of justice giving and the implementation of justice in the Old Testament in the United States and use that as inspiration for justice and I mean, that's what our laws are.

I do believe that, but we cannot say, okay, this happened in Israel, that means that's what has to happen in America. And that's what David French does here. He uses examples of Israelites asking for mercy for their ancestor's sins. But the problem is, besides the fact that we're not ancient Israel, number one, they were, David, for example, and there are other examples of this, too, like Daniel, they're talking about they're actual ancestors, actual ancestors, not just people who lived in the same place as them at one point. Like, we all talk about, like, oh, our ancestors had slaves.

If you're just a white person, actually probably not. Like, it was a very, very small percentage of the South that actually ever owned slaves. And so for every white person in America to say your ancestors own slave just because you're a white person in America is probably not historically accurate. That's not what was happening in the Bible. So when David is asking for, or like seeking mercy from the consequences of old sin, he is not talking about just some people who shared his skin color. He's not talking about people who lived in the same geographical region that he did or even in the same nation that he did.

Like he is talking about his actual bloodline. Like he's talking about his actual ancestors who committed the sins. And then the second thing I would say is that the sins, I believe, in these cases, were still active. And the Bible was also very clear that God is not holding us responsible for the sins of our actual ancestors, but that doesn't mean that we don't suffer consequences of the sins of our ancestors or even of our nation's history. And that is what David is asking reprieve from. So while I agree with the obligation of a nation to write past wrongs, I one, don't see biblical support for melanin-based repentance.

And two, I don't think that equal outcome, so the elimination of all disparities equals justice. And I don't think that David French does either. But that is what the disparities equals discrimination argument implies. CRT's premise that America has always been systemically racist asserts that modern disparities between white and black Americans exist because of the structures in place. And while that may be true, in science. some cases. It is not a given without some critical thinking. It's I'm looking at data. And then I encourage him to read Sol's discrimination and disparities if he has not. So that's

kind of my take on that whole situation. And we just have to, I do think we have to be so careful not to call everyone a Marxist or a critical race theorist who talks about racism or disparities or problems or who poses solutions to the disparities that we see. And we shouldn't do that because that gets in the way of productive conversations, but so does critical race theory. So does assuming that every disparity is because of racism. That makes it really hard for us to look at real solutions that might not have anything to do with race. It could be a class issue. It could be an individual choice issue. It could be a welfare issue. It could be a family unit issue. There are all different types of problems that are pushed off to the side when we only see disparities and issues that

we have in this country as racial issues. That is the problem with CRT that I've heard, I think James Lindsay say, is that it's compassion is way too narrow. And it doesn't allow us to see other problems that exist. And it also doesn't prescribe actually biblical and biblically just solutions. And I just think that we have to be careful in our exegesis. And we have to be careful in our interpretation of scripture to make sure that we are applying the principles of justice without without superimposing what was exclusive to Israel on today and in so doing, get a wrong interpretation and a wrong application of what the Bible says. And we all, we all need help in doing that. And so we approach scripture with humility and asking God for wisdom in trying

to approach all these issues. All right. That's all I've got time for today. I will see you back here tomorrow. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles,

faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and

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