Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 460 | How Social Justice Activism Is Infecting The Church | Guest: Dr. Voddie Baucham

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

Today we're thrilled to have another chance to speak with author and theologian Dr. Voddie Baucham. First, Dr. Baucham gives everyone an update on his health and how he's been doing recently after his trip to the hospital, and then we get into the details of his new book, "Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe." The book seeks to expose and highlight the dangerous side of leftist buzzwords like "critical justice" and "social justice." Dr. Baucham traces the history of critical race theory back to its Marxist roots and how these ideologies start with mistaken assumptions about oppression and "hegemonic power." We discuss accusations of white supremacy in the Southern Baptist Convention, how Christians should respond to corporate guilt, and much more. --- Dr. Voddie Baucham's Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe book https://bit.ly/3xbOC7I --- Today's Sponsors: Annie's Kit Clubs helps you relax & recharge by getting in touch with your creative side. Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 50% on your first kit. Bambee gives your small business a dedicated HR Manager available by phone, email, or real-time chat. Month-to-month, no hidden fees, cancel anytime. Go to Bambee.com/ALLIE to schedule your free HR audit. Good Ranchers delivers ethically-raised, sustainably-sourced beef & chicken — and you're also supporting American farmers! Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE to get $20 off & free express shipping. --- 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 Tuesday. Today we are talking to Dr. Voddy Bakum. He is the author of Fault Lines.

Of course, he has written many books and he has spoken many places and worked many places within evangelicalism. And you guys, I'm sure, know him well. the last episode that I did with him, almost a year ago probably, was one of my most popular episodes ever, both on YouTube and listening. And so if that is any indication to you of how good this interview that you are about to listen to is going to be, I don't know, let that be your indication because he really is such an insightful and clarifying and wise person, especially when it comes to the issues of social justice and racism that are really just so controversial

within the church today. So he's going to give us a lot of his, a lot of his insight into that today. So without further ado, here is Dr. Voddy Baccombe. Dr. Bacom, thank you so much for joining us again. Can you please tell everyone, this is the pressing question that everyone's been asking me to ask you, and that is how you're doing health-wise, because the last time we were supposed to talk a few months ago before my maternity leave, you were having heart issues, and I know a lot of people in this audience have been praying for you, you know, donated, have been thinking about you. So can you give everyone an update? Yeah, I'm doing great.

But we ended up having to leave here and go to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. And I had a couple of surgeries, a couple of hard procedures, including open art surgery. and everything went well. My heart is fixed. And I feel great. You know, I'm back in the gym. I'm back doing everything that I was doing before. And, yeah, I know I'm so grateful for just all the encouragement and people's prayers and support.

And it was really, I mean, the only word I can use for it is overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I am so thankful for that. I mean, praise the Lord for. health care for how I know there were a lot of logistical things that you guys were trying to figure out at the time. And so it really seemed like just the Lord's sovereignty. He just had his hand over all of that and that whole process. But during this time, you also had a book come

out, fault lines, which I really want to talk about today. I know a lot of people listening or watching have already read it. I think we're going to go through it with the book club that I have on Facebook. Can you tell us first what this book is about and why you wrote it? Yeah. Fault Lines is a book that, you know, I've been marinating on for a while and didn't want to write. It felt like I had to write. The subtitle is the social justice movement and evangelicals limiting catastrophe. And I see the social justice movement, critical social justice, as a threat to the gospel. I see much of what's happening in anti-racism as another gospel, which is no gospel at all,

because there is no forgiveness of sin in anti-racism. There is no redemption in anti-racism, only perpetual penance. And so this book is really designed to help people understand what's been going on, where this comes from, and what the consequences really are. Yeah, and can you define some of those terms for us? You said one, critical social justice, and like you said, the subtitle is the social justice movement. What do you mean by social justice and critical social justice?

Yeah, well, in the book, what I try to do is outline the ideas of critical theory. And really critical theory is neo-Marxism. It comes to us from Marx via Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist, and then the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School is where we really get the term, you know, critical theory. And so there's a whole suite of ideologies and disciplines and fields that fall under that umbrella. Critical race theory, critical pedagogy, feminist theory, queer theory. you know, all of these things. And really the critical social justice movement is sort of the practical outworking of these ideologies.

It's built on the premise of equity, not equality. Equity is about getting equal outcomes, not equal opportunities. It's based on the faulty premise that all things being equal, People from various ethnic and racial groups ought to have identical outcomes. And if they don't have identical outcomes, if they have disparate outcomes, then the only explanation for that when it is to the disadvantage of non-white people is discrimination is racism. So critical social justice is the effort to rectify those. inequities through redistribution, redistribution of resources, redistribution of wealth, redistribution of opportunities, and really redistribution of power, because critical theory

really sees the world in terms of power structures and power struggles, power inequities. It separates the world between oppressors and those whom they. oppress and really sees the struggle within a society as this struggle. It's a real, that's, I mean, that's the core of Marxism. He's doing it on an economic level, but neo-Marxism and critical theory looks at it from a social level. Right. And I want to take a note, I want to make a note on equity. You talked about how equity, instead of equality, means equal outcomes. Real equity, that is how critical social justice advocates define equity. Real equity is the equal application of the law, but critical social justice advocates have

subverted it. They have changed the meaning to mean. And Kamala Harris actually said this in a video the day before the election back in November. She had a video that came out that said equity is everyone ends up in the same place. Well, that's not the, the, the real original definition of equity, but they've changed that definition to mean equality of outcomes, which is why we say that something like critical race theory does have Marxist roots, and people get very angry about that. People have, you know, they say it has nothing to do with Marxism, or you hear a lot of people within evangelicalism say, well, I'm not a Marxist, or I don't believe in Marxism, or I don't believe in critical race theory. And yet, you give a lot of

very concrete examples of the outworking of CRT and what you're calling neo-Marxism within evangelicalism. I mean, you talk about Anthony Bradley, you talk about David Platt, you talk about Tim Keller. These are all people who consider themselves conservatives. So can you talk about, you know, some of those specifics that you include in the book, why you decided to go ahead and just kind of name these people and give examples because I imagine you got some pushback. about that. Yeah. In the end, I did it because it would have been cowardly and unclear not to.

If I'm writing a book and saying we have a real problem in evangelicalism, and I'm saying that this stuff is creeping into evangelicalism, and again, in the book, I make it clear that it's creeping in in a different ways. For some people, they've gone whole hog, right? They are critical social justice warriors, if you will. But for other people, they haven't gone that far. They're sympathetic to these movements, and they use the language of these movements. And for another group, there are people who are really just ignorant of what's going on.

But if I said that there was an issue and didn't name names, then the critique would have been, well, he says it's there, but he doesn't show how it's there. Right. So it was necessary to do that. The other reason I did that is because the scripture gives us both examples of naming names and a mandate, I believe, to name names. You know, Paul and 2 Timothy names names in at least three different places. And my favorite is when he talks about Alexander the Coppersmith, who did him great harm, you know. And so he wants to be really clear about which Alexander was. But then in Titus 1-9, you know, as an elder, as a minister of the gospel, I'm called to hold firm to the trustworthy word so that I can exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict.

Not just refute unsound doctrine, but refute those people who contradict sound doctrine. So, you know, we both have an example or multiple examples, I should say, and we also have, I believe, a mandate to do that. One of the reasons people have a problem with it is because, really, to be quite honest, modern Christianity is so effeminate. We, you know, the 11th commandment is, thou shalt be nice, and we don't believe the other 10. And anytime you do something that is as, as, you know, forceful, forthright, madly, if you will, there's always this kind of response to it. And the thing that amazes me is that people are more offended by me naming people's names than they are about this wretched ideology running roughshod in evangelicalism. Mm-hmm. And, you know, you say that that's the 11th commandment for a lot of people. Thou shalt be nice. And yet you do have a segment that I really agree with because I see it so prevalently on the side of people who profess to be, you know, Christian social justice advocates or whatever, is you talk about a lack of clarity and a lack of charity. And I see a lot of people on that side who say that they don't want to have a debate, they don't want to have a debate, they don't want to have a because they would maybe accuse someone like you or maybe someone like me of, of, you know,

wanting to not being, not doing this in good faith, of maybe being dishonest. And so we're just not worth the time. We're not worth the discussion. And then they will applaud when someone on the other side who opposes the social justice theology is dist or is taken down or is, um, you know, ridiculed in some way. I'm thinking of when Charlie Dates, he called Virgil Walker Uncle Ruckus, which is, you know, a character from a cartoon who thinks that he's white. It's, you know, another way of calling him an Uncle Tom. I mean, person after person underneath

prominent Christians who would call themselves theologically conservative underneath, applauding it, saying, yeah, Charlie Dates, you get them, you say it. I mean, talk about a lack of charity. And then those are the same people who would say someone like you, that you're stirring the pot, that you're aggressive, that you're the divisive one. I mean, what's, what's that called? So why is that? Like, why is it? How do we reconcile that? That simultaneously the same people who are constantly calling for empathy and niceness and sensitivity and not to offend people, have no problem offending someone like you, slandering you, or someone who represents the arguments that you and I both represent.

Yeah. Part of that is this ideology. When you accept this ideology, you see people as oppressors. You see the whole world. You see all of American history and all of American society as about this wicked, evil oppression of people, this hegemonic oppression, to use Gramshy's terminology. And if that's the case, then they see it as acceptable to lash out against such overt evil, which is, I mean, it's quite ironic because, you know, one of the things that, one of the reasons that we do what we do is because we believe that, you know, this ideology is a pernicious ideology. but we're attacking the ideology, not individuals.

And that's why even when I name people's names, I tried to do it in as gracious a way as possible. It wasn't about attacking people, especially since a lot of these people were my friends and some of them by mentors. Right. And that can be really difficult, I think, to strike that balance. And I do want to make sure that,

people who believe the things that you and I believe that, of course, we're not just throwing around the word Marxist or calling anyone who talks about race and racism a Marxist. And that's not what we're doing. That's often what we're accused of doing. But can you help people who are trying to draw that line and make that differentiation? Like, how do we talk about race and racism and true biblical justice in a way that is God glorifying versus the way that is Godless? I think it starts with definitions.

And this is the rub, right? Critical social justice starts from this presupposition of oppressor oppressed. It starts with that paradigm. It starts with this idea of hegemonic power and the idea that people are oppressed by the hegemonic power. They're oppressed by the ideology that's been in. imposed on the culture by this hegemonic power. And because of that, that's why they talk about things like structural racism and systemic racism, right? They take it out of the individual heart and located in the broader society.

And so once that's done, we're having two different conversations. When you and I talk about race and ethnicity and racism, first of all, all, we understand the theory is one race, maybe two, if you look at the race of the first Adam and the race of the last Adam. But secondly, we understand that ethnic pride, prejudice, you know, classic racism is about the heart. It is about demeaning individuals because we value them less than ourselves. And if we're having a conversation, and I'm talking about the part and you're talking about governmental structures, then we're missing each other. And so one of the things that we need to do is we need to clarify our terms. And I mean, that's what I'm trying to do

in fault lines. I'm trying to clarify terms. I'm trying to sort of lay these things out so that we can be clear about what we're talking about and then have an honest discussion, debate, whatever you want have once we've clarified our terms. Yeah, and that's the thing that I loved the most about your book. One, it's very readable. It was also very interesting in the beginning just to hear about your story, especially within the SBC and your personal experiences. They really differ from a lot of the accusations that we hear about the SBC. Obviously, you outline differences that you guys ended up having, but there's a lot of accusations of deep racism. and white supremacy, McCarthyism, of course, within the SBC.

What do you make of some of the drama that we've seen and some of the allegations that we are hearing leveled against the SBC of just being this kind of racist, white supremacist entity? Oh, boy. Those things are simply not true. And a lot of the individuals who are making those accusations or individuals who are, dishonest and had been dishonest for a long time. They're race hustlers. They're race hustlers within the SBC. And they stay within the SBC because the race hustle is good, you know, for them. But there's nothing that you can point to in the SBC that says, you know, this is a racist, white supremacist entity. The other important point is that the SBC is a convention of confessing free churches. There are our

47,000 churches that make up the Southern Baptist Convention. There is no top-down authority over local churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. So for that reason, also, it's disingenuous to talk about the organization and the entity as this racist organization or entity, because structurally, that's not even possible. Yeah. It's, yeah, that's true. I think that's a really good point. you, and I guess that's part of having that collectivist mindset that something like critical social justice gives you is that you don't view people as individuals, you view them as part of a group, and it's so easy to just lump all white evangelicals, which you think is represented by the SBC on the side of the oppressor and just say, well, that's what it is without, you know,

looking at what you just said, that it's not really this cohesive hierarchy, that there are churches that make their own decisions. They're preachers who preach what they're going to preach. And so to say that the entity as a whole is some white supremacist entity just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But nevertheless, there are people who talk a lot about the historic racism of just white Christianity or the white church, Jamar Tisbee, you talk about this in your book. I've had a lot of people say, you know, is there anything to that?

And what do we do? What do we do about the fact that, you know, parts of the white church, didn't stand up for civil rights in the 1960s, like, do we rectify that, reparations, whatever it is, or we hear that there has to be some racial reckoning within the white church. What does that mean? And what a well-meaning people who want reconciliation do with all of that? Reconciliation is something that Christ has done. It's something that he has accomplished. It is a finished work. We are reconciled through Christ, because, because of Christ, we're reconciled to God and we're reconciled to one another. Beyond that, when we sin against each other, right? When we offend one another, we repent and we repent because of that reconciliation that Christ has brought. Now, what people are talking about here is the only way you get there is you go from talking about

individuals to this racial essentialism that says white people by virtue of their whiteness are part of, you know, the part of the board, you know, to use a sci-fi term, right? All white people, by virtue of their whiteness, are part of this entity that we call the white church and that we call, you know, white America, and are as guilty right here right now today as an individual who was involved in a lynching or who owned slaves. And you just can't get there from here. Is it true that America has a very, you know, colored and sinful past as it relates to race? Well, of course it is. You know, every multi-ethnic country in the world has that.

Is it true that in that context that many, you know, people, many Christians, many, you know, evangelicals, if you will, participate in that? Yeah, it's true that those people participated in that. And to the degree that there's anyone around who participated in that, then they should, repent. But the idea that you can collectivize that to where, you know, everybody who has white skin is now, you know, carrying that guilt, that's absolutely ridiculous. That dog won't hunt. That's just, that's just not biblical. 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 unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. there was an article. I don't know if you saw David French put out an article about kind of some of the

division that's going on within David Platt's church. We talked about it yesterday on this podcast where David French, who has been a very influential conservative voice for a long time, basically said, look, structural systemic racism is not woke. It's just a fact. And he said, you know, David Platt is right on this because David Platt said it makes a difference. if you're white or black in this country, these disparities exist. David French points to these different disparities between median income. And he talks about redlining and all the different, you know, actually systemic racist laws that existed and how they still have an effect today.

And a lot of people look at that and they say, okay, well, that does seem like a problem. Like there are these really big gaps between white America and black America when it comes to various factors of success. What do we do about that? How do we close those gaps? Is the question that I'm hearing a lot from even conservative Christians. What's your response to that? Well, the first thing we have to do is reject the idea that disparities can only exist as a result of discrimination. That's crazy and it's not true.

You know, for example, and one of the things people hate, they hate when you start talking about Ottawa-odlock birth rates, right? Because the fact of the matter is, growing up without a father makes you several times more likely to be poor. I think five times more likely to be poor. You know, nine times or ten times more likely to drop out of school. You know, something like 20 times more likely to be incarcerated. I mean, we know this for a fact, right? That's a disparity. There's disparities between people who have two parents and people who don't.

Now, in the black community, more than 70% of children are born out of wedlock. So we would expect that there would be disparities just as a result of that. Now, am I saying that that's the only reason that there are disparities? No, I'm not saying that that's the only reason that there are disparities. Another reason for disparities is median age, right? People's income goes up as they age. The median age of white people is like a decade older than the median age of black people. Am I saying that that's the only explanation for disparities?

No, I'm not. But what I am saying is, just like it would be wrong to point to one of those things as the explanation for disparities. disparities. It's also wrong to point to the idea of lingering, institutional, lingering, structural, lingering systemic racism, because that's what they're talking about, right? Redlining has, you know, has been illegal for three, four decades. You know, Jim Crowe's been gone since before I was born. These things are not on the books. Not only that, but there are dozens of federal agencies designed to monitor these issues. Affirmative action is still in place. You know, racial preferences for people, you know, going to colleges and whatnot. So the idea that

you can point to racism as this sort of univariate, you know, reason for the disparities between people is absolutely ridiculous. And it only is, it only is, you know, it only is, you know, it only, you can only do that if you accept these premises of the critical social justice movement. If you accept the assumption of the oppressor-oppressed paradigm, if you accept the assumption of the reality of hegemonic oppression, if you accept that assumption, then you view everything through that lens. And it's unbiblical. It's absolutely unbiblical.

I've often said to people, right, you show me the law, you show me the system that exists today, that is racist. And I mean, I'm with you. Let's go. Let's go get it right now. But all people point to is things that are 40, 50, 60 years old to argue for their lingering effect. Yes, and I think, or they will change the definition of racist to do the whole Ibramax-Kendi slide of hand, which is racist is not malintent. It's not, it's not any intent at all. A law can be racist, Ebermax-Kendi would say, and as you said in your book, not because it intends to be racist, but if its impact is so-called racist. And so if there is a law that he says create some kind of racial disparity. then that law is racist whether or not it intends to be that. That is what the dissent in the Supreme Court recently said when it comes to, for example,

like voter ID laws, if that happens to have a disparate impact on black Americans, then that law is racist even if the intent wasn't racist, which is ridiculous, like you said. That is not actually, that's not actually biblical. And as you have argued, there are a lot of different reasons for various disparities. in the same way that the fact that the Asian median income is so much higher than the white median income doesn't mean the Asians are discriminating against white people. But if you bring that up, which I have in conversation with a lot of these people, you're just dismissed as, well, that's a model minority myth, which is a tenet of CRT that's

in the books about CRT. And so you're not even allowed to bring that up. Or if you bring up, okay, well, here's another. Go ahead. And it has to be in there because it, obliterates the argument. By the way, so do first generation Nigerians. First generations Nigerians do better than white people as well. And so not to mention, you know, other black people. But one of the things, we don't want to talk about the fact that when it comes to the number

of hours that people dedicate to their homework, you know, you look at Asians and everybody's in their dust, you know, white people, black people, you know, so on and so forth. Attitudes toward education. You know, these things matter. These things are important. But here's the other issue, though. The other issue is, okay, if there are these structures out there, if there are these laws out there, and nobody's pointed to, you know, the amount to me.

But if there are these laws out there, then what? What am I supposed to do? And I ask that question because a lot of the people who are now working toward anti-racism and wanting to deal with structural racism, all of a sudden these people who used to talk about, you know, theonomists like something on the bottom of their shoe have become theonomist. You know, all of a sudden, you know, these people who have accused, even me, you know, being too political, I remember in 2008 when, you know, I was talking about Barack Obama and his Marxist ideologies and whatnot. All of a sudden, these people are like, you know, you shouldn't be involved in politics like this. Right.

Now some of these same people are arguing for anti-racism, which is at its core political action. activism. And now we're saying that it's, you know, it's gospel work, right? But ultimately, it's political activism, plain and simple. Yep. And, well, first, I want you to explain, for those who don't know, what is a theonomist? How do you see these people becoming the very thing that they used to hate? Yeah. Well, theonomists are individuals who believe that the law of God ought to be applied in the civil realm, you know, to the same degree and in many of the same ways that it's applied in other realms. So like, you know, the church and the family, for say. And again, at one level, I believe all Christians are theotomists, right?

But when we're talking about theonomist, we're talking about individuals who really want, to impose and enact, you know, sort of Levitical and Deuteronamic laws within the context of our culture or other cultures on really kind of a one-to-one basis. Right. And the social justice side, like, they would call someone like that a Christian nationalist or they would say that that is wrong. yet, because those are the same people that say the people who are anti-theonomy and things like that, which I'm not, I would not call myself a theonomist, but they are separation of church and state when it comes to things like abortion or when it comes to things like marriage. And yet they think some of these people, not all of them, but definitely people who profess to be progressive Christians think that Jesus's command to give all you have to the poor should absolutely

be applied to everyone. and that that's an endorsement of socialism and would 100% apply what they see as the right version of Micah 6-8 on the country as law in the form of reparations or the redistribution of wealth. So that's how you see the same people who say anti-Christian nationalism. We don't believe that Christians should be able to influence laws at all, you crazy conservatives. They're coming along and they've got their progressive interpretation of scripture. and they absolutely believe that that social justice interpretation of scripture should influence laws. And so they don't believe in the separation of church and state when it comes to their version of what justice is.

Is that what you're kind of talking about? Yeah, absolutely. It's completely critical. And it's amazing because, you know, some of these same people have argued against this sort of cultural transformation. They've argued against the idea that, you know, we would apply the gospel, you know, and apply the law more broadly than just being about, you know, the salvation of souls. And some of these people now are making arguments to apply the law of God in a much broader sense. to political issues, like the ones that you mentioned, like the idea of reparations, for example. You know, they want to go to Old Testament text, Old Covenant text, and bring those texts in and say, you know, we need to do this in American law, just like we find it here in this Old Covenant text.

And I just, I find it fascinating because some of these same people, you know, were pointing at me. not that long ago, saying that, you know, I was, I was too much into politics and too much into, you know, fighting cultural wars and, you know, dealing with these things outside of the church. Yep. And we got a lot of cultural warriors now. And two points on that. One, that was one thing that David French said in his article. He used an example of David asking for mercy from the consequences of sins that had been committed by past Israelites, and he used that as a precedent for us today, you know, repenting for sins of our past, of, you know, the sins that our ancestors committed and things like that. Obviously, we believe that there are consequences for generational sin.

However, I see this a lot that, you know, like you said, the idea of reparations or repenting for something that my so-called ancestors did the same way Israel did without, recognizing or pointing out that one America is not modern day Israel when David is talking about his ancestors or Daniel or any of the people in the Old Testament asking for mercy from the sins of their ancestors. They're talking about actual ancestors. They're not talking about like when I say oh, when any white person in America says, oh my ancestors own slaves, they really just mean some white American sometime 200 years ago. They have no idea if their ancestors actually committed or own slaves. I have no idea if my ancestors did. And so, listen, I have no idea if my ancestors did.

Right. Because you know there's a possibility that my ancestors did too. Right. Well, that's one thing for sure that we're not allowed to talk about. I was actually, I was looking at a terrible story this morning about, I think it was like 3,400 Nigerian Christians who have been terrorized and hacked to death in the past few months by radical Nigerian Islamic. there, that kind of thing, I know, you know, is happening all the time, intracial, if you want to use that term, injustice, that apparently we're just supposed to turn a blind eye to because of this myopic sense of the world that it's white versus black, white oppressors versus black oppressed. Do you see the consequences of that, of our compassion becoming too narrow along white, black

lines that we turn a blind eye to other people? Thanks. Absolutely, I do. And not only that, but even when you look at it in church, and I think I wrote about this in 2004, my first book, you know, we start talking about reconciliation and we start talking about, you know, caring about the other. Before coming to Lusaka, I was in Houston, Texas. Houston is the most ethnically diverse city in America, not L.A., not New York, Houston.

And it would be interesting and funny to me when pastors, who are, you know, would have a church that was, you know, 60, 40 black, white would, you know, break their arm, patting themselves on the back because they had this, you know, diverse church and they're seeing this picture of the kingdom. When, you know, within 10 miles of their church, there's, you know, 70 different ethnic groups that aren't represented in their church. And we don't care anymore about those 70 other ethnic groups. But to go back to what you were talking about, before, this point about, you know, corporate guilt and how we respond corporately to guilt. I'd say that we've done that.

I'd say that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were acts of repentance. I'd say that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and, you know, so on and so I'd say that those were acknowledgments of wrong. Those were acknowledgements of sin. And I think they were appropriate. You know, people like to point back to, you know, what happened with the Japanese after World War II. And they'll say, well, if you think that was appropriate,

then you think, you know, there ought to be reparations for people. Well, no, because those reparations were paid. directly to the individuals who were wronged. You'd be hard pressed right now to actually be able to pinpoint who are the actual descendants of people who were wronged in slavery. And what people are arguing is not for doing that.

They're not arguing that we should do DNA testing or whatever else. What they're arguing is, we look at the pigmentation of people's skin, And again, this is racial essentialism, right? We look at the pigmentation of people's skin, and then we make the determination there. Which, I mean, that becomes dice. You know, what do you do with bi-ethnic people?

Yeah. Does Barack Obama get a check or does he cut one? Right. Well, there are a lot of different problems that goes back to also what you said, that there were Black Americans who also owned slaves. There were Native Americans who owned slaves. There are black people here today whose ancestors weren't even here at the time of slavery. There are white people here today whose ancestors weren't here in the time of slavery.

So how do we do that math? But I think how they get around that is this narrative that we hear. And you talk a lot about narrative in your book that even the whole idea of systemic racism, and people get mad when I say this. But Derek Bell, and they admit this kind of thing. Richard Delgado, it is based on a narrative view of the world, not necessarily historical facts. do sprinkle facts in to support the premise that America was, you know, based and founded on white supremacy, but it is a form of, uh, of narrative persuasion, not fact-based persuasion.

People get really mad when I say that. But it's true. Um, they, and that's one of the, that's one of the key tenets of critical race theory, right? Right. Um, that idea of narrative and counter narrative being the, the, the, the, the, the, the means through which we, access truth, right? Or determine truth. You know, and I sort of outline that. And I let, I let, you know, Delgado and others, you know, speak for themselves in the book in giving those tenets of critical race theory, which really come to us from, you know, it's grandfather critical theory. Yeah. But, but yeah. And here's the other thing, because it's narrative-based, right? We say what's true about America, the 16-19. projects, for example, if you really want to know what America is based on, you don't look at the documents that were written. You go back, not to 1776, you go back to 1619, and you talk about something, you know, incidental. Like, you know, that's, you know, when slaves came to America in 1619, and you say, that is what America is really about.

like don't believe what they wrote don't believe the systems that were established based on what they wrote believe instead the narrative right because we got nothing but the narrative that says that what they were really doing this for was something else and here's what's crazy about that

what's crazy about that is you'd have to believe that people had to come to America in order to have slaves which means you'd have to ignore that virtually every culture in the history of the world had slaves.

Yeah, and many still do, by the way. There's more slaves in the world today than there were at the height of American slavery. You just let that sink in for a minute, you know? And most of them in the Arab world. But the idea that Americans needed to get or that, you know, British at that time, and that's another issue, right? Because if you're talking about what happened in 1619, that wasn't America. But I digress.

No, yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, that was Great Britain. Those people weren't America. There were no Americans at that time. The United States of America didn't exist. So anything before, you know, 1776 or 1787, you can't call America. And so, again, the way that we're doing history is about narrative.

It's about forwarding a narrative. Don't look at the documents. Don't look at the laws. Look at the narrative. Yeah. And there's enough, you know, there's enough truth sprinkled in to, I think, make it believable. for example, kind of going back to, well, how do we square the whole reparations thing when there's so much math that just doesn't seem to add up? The narrative that we hear is that there is an unbroken legacy of slavery from 1619 to today that went from slavery to Jim Crow and then to mass incarceration.

That's what we hear today is like the new form of slavery. We saw in the 4th of July, Representative Cory Bush said black people aren't really free today. And so there are people who really believe that basically slavery is still happening. And therefore, every black person does deserve a check from a white person because just by nature of being on the side of the oppressor and the side of the oppressed, you know, they would say I'm upholding, probably even you or upholding these racist systems. And therefore, I owe the people who have been victims of that racist system, whether or not they actually have ancestors who were slaves. And so that's how they get around that. But you talk about in your book, I've talked about many times. Thomas Soul bust that narrative time and again of this unbroken thread of a person.

Can you talk about that? Yeah. Yeah. Soul and others kill it because what they show is this dramatic improvement in the lives of black people after slavery up until, in the first 100 years, for example, after slavery. A lot of the things that we see now are far worse today than they were in those 100 years after slavery. You know, for example, back then it was, you know, highly unusual, less than 20% of, you know, black children would have been born out of the way like back then, you know, compared to now. There were times during that 100 year period, large swaths of that 100 year period where employment rates were higher among blacks than there were, among whites, for example.

And so as bad as things were, when there's actual real, in your face racism, you know, many of the things that we blame on systemic and structural racism today, we're actually better than what we're seeing now. And so, you know, soul's work. And you notice a lot of people don't talk about soul. Of course.

They don't deal. They don't deal with soul. They don't, you know, they, they, they want people to ignore Thomas Soul and the incredible work that he's done. But, you know, I don't intend to let him. Yeah. I mean, he's not narrative driven. He's facts driven. And so reading his books is not necessarily as exciting or sometimes as compelling as reading, you know, maybe Nicole Hannah-Jones or someone like that.

It's not narrative driven. He looks at the data, even the data that might not seem to support some kind of conservative conclusion. Like, he is not afraid. He's not afraid to talk about that. And he talks about, of course, he believes. And this is a theory. And I think he would acknowledge this, that it's really the welfare state that started

in the 1960s, that started to create some of the disparities that we're seeing today. But it's also this whole narrative of the reason disparities exist is only because of the legacy of slavery. from 1619 on is also disrupted by the fact that you see in the 1960s that the white fatherlessness rate goes up at the exact same rate, not the exact same numbers, but the exact same rate at the black fatherlessness rate. So if the black fatherlessness rate, which is what we hear is because of mass incarceration and the war on drugs that targeted specifically black people, then why is it that from the 1960s on we also see the white fatherlessness rate go

up at the same, go up at the same rate. Again, still there's a disparity there, but there are way more white fatherlessness homes, white fatherless homes, and there were in the 1960s as well. And so, like, what's the explanation for that? All of this, the whole social justice narrative sounds really good until you just start to think a little bit. But it's an oversimplification. Again, there is racism in the world. There's discrimination. in the world. And the problem is that the critical social justice movement is operating from a worldview and from presuppositions that say racism is the only acceptable explanation. In fact, in her book, White Fragility, you know, and I talk about this in fault lines,

but Robin DiAngelo has a word for it. It's called it aversive racism. Aversive racism is when you ascribe anything other than racism as the cause for a disparity. Right. So, I mean, they've just, it's complete circular reasoning, right? Yeah. You know, this is racism. The only reason that we have this disparity is racism.

And, you know, if you're arguing that there's a, another reason for it, well, that's just because you're a racist, which proves that racism is the cause of all of our problems. And it's ironic because we get to have our cake and it too, right? You know, 70% of the NFL, 75% of the NBA is black. And what we want to argue is that that's because we work harder, right? You talk to it. You talk to it. an NBA player and he's going to talk to you about how early he got up and his time in the gym and you know all of the time that he spends you know on the court working on his game and honing his craft right and and that's the reason that he's there but then you get off the field and you start

talking about another group of people who excel in another area and immediately you're going to dismiss any effort and you're going to say that's because of systemic racism. Not every group of individuals has the same set of skills, the same set of desires. Not everybody wants to do the same thing. Not everybody's interested in the same thing. And so, you know, again, Thomas Soll, we talked about Thomas Sol, but his book, Discrimination and Disparities, you know, I think if, if. If people, you know, haven't gotten a hold of that, you need to get a hell of the Thomas Sulse book, Discrimination Disparities.

And what he shows is how everywhere in the world you have huge disparities among groups of individuals. And people who wherever they go in the world, you know, tend to excel. And, you know, it's a fascinating read. And like you say, it's incredibly fact-based, fact-based. And what I love about it is it gets out of the system that we have in the United States and demonstrates how everywhere in the world you find this. Yeah. You know, here in Zambia, here in Zambia, you find this.

Not every tribal group, you know, has the same level of success. And there are, you know, sort of these power disparities between tribal groups in a country where all the travel groups are black. That's the norm. Disparities are the norm in the world. And that's because God made this incredibly diverse world. And not everybody has the same strengths and same witnesses and same desires and same passions. And the beautiful thing is that's why we are able to appreciate excellence.

Yeah. And in Seoul also in that book, people are going to think that I'm paid to promote discrimination disparities because I talk about it all the time too. But he also makes the argument, like he dismisses, which this isn't a popular argument anymore, but maybe it was at one point that there are like inherent biological differences between the races that make more some races more successful, other races less successful. He dismisses that by like you said, looking at world history and saying, okay, well, you know, the Jewish people, were really successful in this area at this time. They weren't in this area at this time. Same with, you know, Scandinavian people. He just talks about there are different cycles in history, different places where people are, different principles that certain groups follow that then change after a few generations that change the outcomes for people. And also, yes, there are systems in place that oppress people. Obviously, the Jewish people are familiar with that, has nothing to do with their own choice. Same with slaves here in America. And all that is true. But he makes the argument that you're making that it's not inherent and biological differences that push people down. It's also not always

systems that push people down. And unfortunately, you also talk about this in your book, for whatever reason, when it comes to race, we're not, it's almost, we're not allowed to talk about the truth. Like, we're not allowed to talk about facts. You're not allowed to question it. Or else you are seeing as committing the cardinal sin today, which is being unempathetic. Can you talk about why you think it is, Yes, with this one thing, it seems, that we're not, like you say, that you can't have justice without truth, which is true. And yet, when we talk about instances of police brutality, so often the facts get pushed to the wayside. Why is it when it comes to this subject? Again, it's all about presuppositions. It is all about narrative. You know, you start with the

presupposition of the oppressor oppressed paradigm. You start with the presupposition of hegemonic power that we get from Antonio Gramsci. And then you look at everything through the lens of those presuppositions. It's all about your starting point. And so this is why a lot of times, here's what's been interesting for me is people will say, okay, I agree with you. I don't accept CRT, but what are we supposed to do about systemic racism? Right. And I'm like, okay, the concept of systemic racism, right, comes to us from CRT. Or they say, what are we supposed to do about racial injustice?

And I go, okay, what is racial injustice? And then when they answer that question, racial injustice is, racial injustice is, you. is disparities between racial groups. So people are saying, listen, I reject CRT. I just accept all of their purposes. And the way they view the world and all of their assumptions. So let's just get CRT out of here. And now let's deal with these things that I got from CRT.

And it just doesn't work like that. And then some people ask me, you know, well, what about people who have sort of a balanced view on this? And then they'll start saying names. And basically what people mean when they say balanced view in this issue is somebody who accepts all of the presuppositions, tenants, and principles of CRT, but they say gospel a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Or they reject, well, I think a lot of people who accept the premises of CRT, one, they don't know, like you said, that they actually come from CRT. They're just like, well, yeah, duh, white privilege. That is not CRT. Well, actually, it is. It comes from Derek Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw. That is a CRT idea. Whether you agree with it or not, it does come from CRT.

And then the other premises that you just listed there. But they, if you asked them, if you said, well, do you also agree with the, with the assertion that, for example, do process rights aren't really important and should kind of be pushed to the side. in favor of rectifying discrimination. So discriminating against white people in a variety of ways in order to help black people. Like, do you agree with getting rid of, for example, free speech, our first and second amendments?

Because that's what critical race theorists believe. They don't believe in inherent rights. They call equality under the law equality theory, and they look at it with skepticism. If you asked someone, a conservative Christian, they would say, no, I don't believe in that. Yeah. reason that they argue that is because of Gramshy's hegemony. So their idea is that these laws don't exist because anything is objectively true. These laws exist because the oppressor has established his hegemonic power and these

laws are the means through which the oppressor establishes and maintains his hegemonic power. So that's why we can just dismiss these concepts altogether because of the assumptions about oppressor, oppressed paradigm, and hegemony. Yeah. I mean, that's a scary world when you think about, when you think about rights being something that someone wants to get rid of in the way of justice. I mean, we've seen this story play out in history. Haven't we? Haven't we seen the story play out in the 20th century? Even, I would say, Zimbabwe is a good example of this happening.

more recently. They're my neighbors to the south. Yep. And you know, we know how that went down. Right. And right after them, South Africa, there's our other neighbor to the south. You know, yeah, we've seen this. We've seen this all over the place. And, and, you know, again, when people, there's catchphrases like that, right, that just sort of make red, you know, make red flags just wave everywhere. When somebody starts talking about racial injustice. justice, right? And in order to help people understand the significance of this, I point to the George Floyd case. And so we look at what happened with George Floyd, and everybody's like,

that's the smoking gun, you know, that that's the case right there that demonstrates and that proves this racial injustice and they couldn't, you know, we couldn't hide this because we caught it on film. What's interesting is, you know, in the Chauvin case, they didn't just throw the book at him, They threw the library at him, right? I mean, they charged him with everything that they could conceivably charge him with, but they didn't charge him with a racial crime. Why? Because there's zero evidence that what happened to George Floyd had anything to do with his race.

Zero evidence to that fact. That's scandalous to say. We're supposed to just assume that. Yeah, we're supposed to just assume that. But we assume that because we have the assumption that. that disparities can only come from discrimination. And so we look at disparities in, you know, killing, you know, with police, so on and so forth. And, you know, by disparities, what we mean is, you know, 1,000 people killed by police on average every year.

About 500 of those being white people, about 250 of those being black people, right? So, you know, twice as many white people as black people being killed by the police. And most of both races being armed, by the way. Very rare that an unarmed person is killed by the police. Only a fraction of those will be killed by the police who are unarmed. But even that, it's more white unarmed people than it is black unarmed people. But then they go to, no, no, no, well, black people make up 13% of the population, but 25% of the unarmed people killed by police.

So it's that disparity in and of itself that proves the point. That's why you can come back. to the George Floyd case and say that was racial injustice. Yeah. So if somebody's going to do that kind of calculus, not only can we not solve problems, but we can't even have a conversation. Yeah. And it doesn't point to the other disparities that no one wants to talk about.

There are also disparities when it comes to homicides when it comes to violent crime. Like you can say that, yes, there are only things. 13% of the population, but make up 25 to 37% of unarmed killings, whatever it is, by the police. But, okay, there are also some other, there are also some other disparate statistics that we would have to talk about that 13% of the population also commits 40% of the homicides and also gets, you know, a majority of abortions. And that's really sad. But we're not allowed to talk about those real problems that are really killing black lives, those two issues. And I can't talk about those disparities. And I guess it's because of the pre-stableness. And I guess it's because of the

presuppositions that you were talking about. And because this is ultimately about power. The bottom line here is that this is about power. So you start with these assumptions about the oppressor and the oppressed and about hegemonic power. And what do you do with this hegemonic power? You have to, there has to be a revolution. Critical theory is revolutionary, right?

And this revolution has to overthrow. the hegemonic power and replace it. It has to seed power to others. So ultimately, this is about power. I mean, it's sad, but it's true. You know, when you find yourself in a position where, you know, you've got white people bowing down to black people and, you know, you've got organizations

out there trying to, you know, find people to throw money at, when you've got universities out there trying to find black people to fill seats in their university, both in terms of, you know, students and faculty, you know, when you've got these kinds of things happening, there's a vested interest. Yeah. And it goes back to what you were saying earlier about all these people who called you too political when you were talking about the election. And when you ask a lot of these Christians, like, okay, what do we do? Okay, I'm with you. If there's injustice, show me where the injustice is.

What do we do? It always essentially comes down to voting Democrat. Like that ends up being what it is. Well, they'll say fight for justice. We'll fight for racial justice. Advocate for these causes or, you know, advocate for these programs or redistribution. So really what you mean is vote for the same party that has been running majority black cities for decades. Like, why do we expect that voting Democrat again is going to help?

the very communities that you say are oppressed and yet are led by Democrats. But that's always what it ends up coming down to. Yeah. I mean, it's a believable answer. It gets away from the issue of the heart. It puts this into the realm of politics. And that's why I believe it's sinister and why I believe it's demonic. Because ultimately, this gets us away from preaching the true gospel. This gets us away from calling individuals to repent before our holy God because of their sin. It's also in terms of racism, you know, it's interesting when you read, you know, a lot of the books that are out there, when you read, again, I list a lot of them in my book, but when you read them, one of the things that they're doing is they're telling people, listen,

you've got to stop being offended by the idea that you're a racist. Because racism doesn't mean what you think it means. Racism is structural. Racism is systemic. Racism is systemic. So it's no big deal for people to call you a racist because you are by virtue of the structure and the system. Do you know what that does? That says to the person, even a person who really is racist, it says to them that the problem is not inside you. The problem is outside of you. That gets us away from the real sin issue. It gets us away from the heart. It gets us away from the power of the gospel. It gets us away from that individual doing business with God, right, and recognizing that that's a sin for which Christ came to die. And that the only way around that

is the repentance and faith in him. And it says, no, no, no, no, you can just go do the work of anti-racism, which essentially is, you know, apparently complaining on Twitter about disparities. Yeah, that's the cheap form of sanctification that doing the work does. And there's no, like, there's no hope at the end of it either. Like, we hear that you'll always be racist. You'll, you'll, you're never really as a, especially as a white oppressor going to completely divest of your whiteness and your racism and your oppression and all of that stuff. But you just need to keep on doing the work, which is voting Democrats, saying the right things, performative activism. And, you know, I don't know. What do you think the future of all of this is? Like,

do you think that people within the church are waking up to it? Because I'm starting to just, I'm sensing, like, I don't know. People are very angry about, they think that Marxism is a boogeyman. They think that CRT is a boogeyman and that it's not real, that we're making too big a deal of it and I'm just worried that it's going to end up backfiring. But what do you think? Yeah, people are waking up. People are figuring out what's going on. People are, you know, people are being educated. That's what, that's what you see in these school board meetings, right? And not that everybody who's going off at a school board meeting knows exactly what they're talking about. But there are a lot of people.

They know enough to know that it's wrong to tell a white kid that he's on the side of the oppressor. And that's all you need to know. Yes. You don't have to have read Derek Bell. Yeah. And it's happening. You know, and it's happening in some churches. You know, we're seeing a lot of churches.

We're seeing a lot of churches where there's a backlash now. And, you know, it's unfortunate. And the reason I talked to, the reason I titled the book Fault Lines is because, you know, that metaphor was what best described what I saw. That, you know, there is this divide. And, you know, I grew up on a fault line in Los Angeles and experienced the earthquake. you know, a couple of times in my life. But when you live on a fault line, you know that it's always just a moment away, right? The big one is always just a moment away.

And I think we're, I think we're in the middle of, I don't know if it's the big one, but it's a big one. Yeah. And it's not as, it's not complicated. A lot of people are worried about it being complicated. I mean, God tells us exactly what to do. You want to racially reconcile. You want to make sure that you're glorifying the Lord and all of this. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Stick to the word of God in the gospel. Yes, there are political solutions to political problems. There are, and I believe that. But when it comes to the problem that what we're talking about, it is essentially a problem of the heart. And it has to be, treated as that. You can't get political solutions to heart problems. And I think that's the disconnect that we're seeing here. Can you just end us with some more encouragement and where people can get your book? Yeah. You know, my encouragement is this, that the kingdom of God is

undefeated. And, you know, the kingdom of God is not about to take a loss now. And that even though, You know, we talk about this being catastrophic in terms of, you know, what's happening in evangelicalism. It's not catastrophic in terms of the kingdom. The kingdom will prevail. The king will reign. And so, you know, we fight, we engage in this fight, but we recognize that regardless of what we see with our eyes, in the end, the Lord reigns. the Lord wins and he will protect his bride. He will preserve his bride no matter what.

You know, in terms of where people can get the book, you know, you can get it anywhere that books are sold. I just encourage people to go to local bookstores because even though this book, you know, I mean, this book was a national bestseller. You know, it debuted at number seven on Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal and USA Today Best Sellers List. and spent weeks and weeks on bestsellers list. And yet, you know, you go into a Barnes & Noble and either they won't have it or it'll be in the back somewhere or hidden away on the shelves, but it won't be up on, you know, kind of trending or bestselling, you know, books or anything like that. So I'm encouraging people to go to their bookstores and ask for the book and encourage them to get it in stores. even Christian bookstores are not carrying the book. It's interesting Lifeway had their bookstore open at the Southern Baptist Convention,

and they didn't carry the book. Wow. Yeah, even at the SBC. So, you know, go to your bookstores. Also, you know, there are a number of stores that have decided that they were going to carry it. Like, for example, Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby bought a bunch of them, you know, to put in their stores. So, you know, go support, you know, those folks as well.

But really, just, you know, go find out if it's in your bookstore. And if it's not, find out why. Yeah, just ask them. Yeah, ask them. And it's not surprising because, you know, this was a book that, you know, evangelical publishers, for the most part, did not want to touch. I mean, the big boys were not going to touch this. And so, you know, shout out to Salem books for, you know, being courageous.

And you see, you know, over here, Christianity and Wokeness, O'N Strand. And then, you know, over here, you see, you know, fault lines. It's no coincidence that Salem published both of those books because of the publishers. They did not want to touch these books. You're just not finding books from an anti-critical social justice perspective, you know, finding it in Christian publishing houses. They just won't do it. Yeah, I know.

It's hard to do. I just had one segment of my book that talked about this, but I didn't make it the, it wasn't the central theme of my book. So I think I kind of got away with it. And it was a couple years ago. Things have changed. really quickly, as you know. So I do applaud Salem books. I'm sure they're very glad that they took this chance on you because the book is done so well. And so congratulations on that.

Praise God for that. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I really appreciate it. I know people are going to gain a lot of clarity, not just from this conversation, but also from your book. So thank you. You're very welcome. It's been my pleasure. Thank you for everything that you're doing. It's really encouraging to see. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. 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

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