Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 985 | Why DEI Always Leads to LGBTQ | Guest: Delano Squires

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Today we’re joined by BlazeTV contributor Delano Squires to discuss social justice activists and DEI, marriage and the family, and whether or not Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian. Did MLK believe in the bodily resurrection? If not, does this mean his work was NOT beneficial to society? Plus, South Carolina women's basketball coach Dawn Staley recently said biological men should participate in women's sports if they identify as women. But does she really believe this, and what are the implications? --- Timecodes: (01:51) Marriage and family in the black community (08:35) CRT & LGBTQ piggybacking  (14:14) Dawn Staley (31:54) Was MLK a Christian? (47:15) Rush Limbaugh controversy (53:35) MLK controversies (1:01:00) Race in the Church --- Today's Sponsors: Seven Weeks Coffee — try Seven Weeks Coffee today at SevenWeeksCoffee.com and use the promo code: ALLIE to save 10% off your order. Good Ranchers — Go to GoodRanchers.com and use code 'ALLIE' when you subscribe to get free jumbo chicken wings for a year! Jase Medical — get up to a year’s worth of many of your prescription medications delivered in advance. Go to JaseMedical.com today and use promo code “ALLIE". Carly Jean Los Angeles — use promo code RELATABLE to get 20% off your entire order at CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com! --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 706 | SPECIAL EPISODE: A Biblical Analysis of Post-Midterms with Delano Squires https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000585684712 Ep 616 | Why Black Americans Vote Democrat | Guests: Shemeka Michelle & Delano Squires https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000560818980 Ep 569 | Kim & Kanye, 'Conscious Co-Parenting,' & disrupting God's Order | Guest: Delano Squires https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098?i=1000551920276 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: 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. Was MLK a Christian? Should Christians be admiring him the way that we have for so many decades? Also, what can be done to ensure that the black community in the United States succeeds? Today we are talking about all of this and much, much more with my good friend, Delano Squires. You guys love him. He has always bringing the truth in such a memorable way. We are going to analyze all kinds of culture war things going on, specifically the kind that are particularly affecting black Americans.

And you guys, y'all are going to love this conversation. It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use Code Alley at checkout. That's good ranchers.com. Code Allie. Delano, thanks so much for joining us again. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. What's you working on these days? I'm working on a few things. I'm writing a book. Oh, yeah. What is? Can you tell us? Sure, yeah.

I'm writing a book. Title is still up in the air, but the point of it, my central thesis is that we need to restore marriage as the foundation of black family life. So it's about rebuilding the black family, building a marriage culture. My title, preferred title, is first coming. love, restoring marriage is the foundation of black family life. But that's the general idea. I love that. Lord willing, it will be out next year. So I'm writing it as we speak. And I'm very excited about that.

Yeah, I love that. Why, when do you think marriage no longer became a high priority, both in our culture in general? Because it's a problem no matter what race. But you're specifically talking about the black community. And so like, when did that happen? Well, everyone, you know, likes to reference the Moynihan report that came out in 1965. At that point, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the black community was one and four. That was considered a national emergency. It crossed over 50% in the mid-80s and has been at or around 70% since the late 90s. So sometime in between then, you know, I think people got the notion that marriage was not a necessity for having children.

And part of what I say in terms of rebuilding a marriage culture, and to your point, this is a more general argument, right? Because of the sort of four major ethnic groups. Asian Americans are the only ones below what I call the Moynihan threshold at 25%. So, as I said, for the black community, 70%. For Hispanics, it's 52%. For white Americans, it's 28%. Non-marital birth rates. And for Asian Americans, it's 13%.

Yeah. So I think what we have to do is make the case that marriage is valuable, desirable, accessible, and indispensable with respect to having a family. So first half of the book will be talking about the things that destroyed the black family or got us to the point that we are today. And then the second half will be ways to rebuild the black family and not just theoretical with certain things that will be tangible that both individuals can do. right, that I have a call both to black men and black women, as well as institutions, right? I have the chapter I'm working on now is basically making the argument that if we want to save the home, we have to get four houses in order.

The church house, the school house, the state house, and the art house. That's all good. So, yeah, so I'm looking forward to that. Where do you think the black church comes in? I mean, depending on how you define that, predominantly black churches. in America. Do you feel like they have pushed family values or not really? Well, it depends on which churches you're talking about. Yeah.

Right. Obviously, you and I both know solid gospel preaching, Bible teaching, black preachers. Those churches I'm less worried about. But I think when people talk about the black church in generally as its own sort of cultural phenomenon, the subset of churches within that, in that sort of descriptor, the one. who see economic inequality and systemic racism as sort of man's highest forms of bondage, those are the ones I'm worried about. And I think those churches have become highly political, almost always skewing to the left. And for them, I don't see sort of marriage and a nuclear family as a high priority,

not one that they express publicly. I'm not saying that these pastors and preachers don't care about the family. but they spent a lot more time, you know, promoting abortion and talking about marriage equality, quote, unquote, promoting all manner of things LGBT. And I don't see sort of family restoration as a large part or an important thing that they want to talk about. So part of it is going to be a call to them to those churches to, in many respects, repent and begin to teach sounds. doctrine because the thing you can't even get to the family if some of these churches are afraid to declare that they're only two sexes and switching is not allowed but for many of them they're very soft on all manner of issues and I think part of it is because to put it frankly pride has

become the new black and there are churches a generation ago the Christians that sort of fill the ranks of the NAACP and Martian civil rights movement so on and so on and so forth those people don't understand the degree to which sort of our cultural tectonic plates have moved so I actually put this to on Twitter the other day to a guy and I said if a black baker in Jackson, Mississippi refused to make a

cake celebrating a transition a gender transition that was requested by a white customer what side do you think the NAACP would be on that's easy for me to answer. Yeah. Easy for, that's an easy call. I know that for the NWACP, it's all about, you know, trans rights and LGBT rights.

And they would publicly attack that black Christian Baker for standing on his biblical principles. They certainly wouldn't defend him. Correct. That is correct. They might say, maybe they'd say nothing. Maybe they'd doubt. Maybe. But they're certainly not going to stand up for him.

No. And I think it's important for people like him, men and women like him, particularly black Christians, to understand that. Because as Nicole Hannah-Jones said, there's a difference between blackness sort of racially defined and blackness politically defined. Yeah. And to be a black person in good standing for your black car to be accepted where they typically are, you have to affirm basically every part of the left's progressive agenda. So yeah. So yeah, so the black churches will be important, and I hope this is a call that they're willing to take up. 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 T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us. You know, I was talking to someone the other day about an organization called Laleche League. And that's an organization that is supposed to support women and breastfeeding and provide resources and things like that. but they have gone woke. Like many of these organizations over the past few years, they say chest feeding like it's on their official website, human milk, they won't even say breast milk is absolutely insane.

And I posted about it the other day on Instagram and someone responded to me and said, you know, I've been working with Alecée for years now. And what happened was, you know, it was started by Christian women with good intentions. But then we had activists fill the rink.

who came in and supported kind of CRT-based initiatives first. So that's kind of how it started. And then very often what happens is that the LGBTQ activists will piggyback on that and say, see, you learned the lesson of inclusion when it came to making sure that, you know, black mothers are being seen and taking care of. Well, now you also need to ensure that trans men. or trans women are being seen and taking care of. Now, of course, we know that those two things are different.

They're not morally on the same level at all. Correct. But I do see this a lot in organizations that first comes, hey, we need to ensure that we are treating everyone fairly. Okay, everyone agrees with that. We need to make sure that we have equal treatment, that we are ensuring that we are giving, you know, black prospects a chance, whatever it is.

And then that kind of grows into away from equality into equity, all the DEI that we see. And then behind that comes the LGBTQ. So we're just, it's just more inclusion. It's just more tolerance. It's just more empathy and compassion. And that's, I think so often what happens, and that does seem to be what happened with the NACP, the black church or just kind of civil rights activism in general, just putting it all in the same bucket that a man who wants to become a woman is in the same oppressing category as a black woman. Yeah, I think to me, when I think of sort of DEI hires, and I'll use a name that I know you're very familiar with, I think of Sam Britton, right?

The former Biden administration official who before coming to office to his position was a known, puppy play enthusiast. Now, he... We're not going to explain that. You're just going to have to put it together. But this is a person, and you can tell that it's sort of a DEI

hire, so to speak. And I generally don't use terms like this without explaining them, but I think the audience knows what I'm talking about. Because when he was hired, what was celebrated was his non-binary identity,

quote-unquote, non-binary identity. I mean, he's a transvestite who like to do you know, public fetish and kink stuff with other men. I mean, I don't know why we just can't say that. But when you start to equate that with, to your point, you know, Jackie Robinson crossing the color line in Major League Baseball, then I think you have some serious category errors.

And one of the things that is not lost on me, particularly with Christians, is that there are those believers who they think that they would have been a lot of people. on the front lines of the civil rights movement, right? And in fact, they will say, you know, we celebrate Dr. King because the civil rights movement was sort of grounded on a Christian and biblical framework. So they celebrate Dr. King for using his Bible to destroy the color line. But then they would attack believers today for using our Bibles to defend the sex binary. And a lot of times they think that sort of social justice is about the civil rights. Act of 1964, and these are the same people who are silent on the Equality Act of 2021.

So it takes a lot more courage today to just say, like, again, there are only two sexes and switching isn't allowed. And many of the Christians who prattle on about social justice are simply unwilling to do that. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. It's an ideology that just kind of blinds you to reality and blinds you to what is. And that's why it can accomplish justice because justice that is not grounded in reality and grounded in truth can't be just. No. It's always going to be unjust. No. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're seeing that play out in the culture right now. And again, seeing the ways in which people, again, you get asked a simple question about gender or sexuality and many Christians just feel like they can't answer.

And it's conditioning a sense of cowardice in the culture. And I think some of that that is bled over into the church. So I hope that spirit sort of is broken in the coming years, but it's going to take courageous Christians who are willing to stand up and say, no, I'm not going to be bullied into going against God's word on these particular things. And I don't care who. I don't care if it makes me, again, you know, a bad black person to say, well, actually, I think, you know, it's male and female, because that's what God said.

Yeah. Mr. Preacher, man, you know. Yeah. Okay, perfect example of this. Don Staley, the coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks, the women's basketball. They just won the national championship, right? So it's really interesting how women's basketball has made its way into, like, my attention. It has become almost like a cultural conversation right now, largely because of Caitlin Clark on the Iowa team.

but then you've also got this like duel somehow between what's that coach's name, the coach that wears the jackets. Kim Mulkey. Kim Mulkey and then Don Staley of USC. And so it's become like, I don't know, discourse, dialogue. But we won't get into all of that. But I do want to talk about Don Staley, who has kind of become this media darling. She's very at least like last.

wing coded and that she is black androgynous. I think she's gay and she is not apparently she doesn't have like the same tactics as the other coach. What did you just say her name was? I cannot keep her name straight. Kim Mokie. Kim Mokie. Okay. She is, I don't know, she's like a different kind of coach than her. I don't know. But the media has basically hoisted her up as some kind of progressive Hero, she also claims to be a Christian. So it's interesting when she was asked just the other day before the championship. What do you think about, you know, trans women so-called playing basketball? And so we've got a clip of her response.

This is a sot one. If you're a woman, you should play. If you conceded yourself a woman and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able to play. Do you think transgender women should be able to participate in college basketball? That's the question you love to ask. I mean, you want to ask, so I'll give you that. Yes. Yes.

Okay. So she basically says if you identify as a woman, if you say that you're a woman, then sure, you should be able to play. Do you think she really means that? That is a good question. I doubt it. See, it is one thing when the gender ideology sort of stays in the realm of feelings and beliefs, right? but testosterone is not a social construct. And when a 6-foot-8, 270-pound man puts an elbow in your chest,

I mean, the average man is going to crumble. But even women who are, you know, sort of high-level basketball players would do the same. And actually, Lisa Leslie, again, who's WMBA great, was asked this question years ago. This might have been 2005. And she said, I've played with the guys. I've played with Magic Johnson. And, you know, and I can hold my own. but she said taking an elbow from a man is not the same thing it's just a different

the the difference in terms of physicality size and strength and power and speed particularly in basketball is so apparent i'll give you a couple examples in 2017 wmba put out a video of all of the dunks in wmba history up until that point 20 years of history the video was a minute long one minute. All of them were basically women barely getting over the front of the rim. There have been eight dunks

in NCAA women's history. The first one was in 1986. Wow. The last player to dunk, I want to say, was 2022. It's just a completely different game. I'm sorry, this might be a stupid question, but are the Nats the same height for men and for women?

Yes. They are the same height. Yes. Yes. Yes. So certainly I believe so, and they certainly looked that way on TV. Another example, and I've used this before, like the fastest woman, the fastest 100-mediate time in history is Florence Grosho. She said that record in 1988. So the record is about 36 years old. It's 36 years old. 10.49 seconds. That is not even one of the top 7,000 fastest times for men. In fact, several high school boys have best at that time.

I'm not saying any of this to denigrate female athletes. I'm saying this to say that there are differences between men and women. And people who act as if, you know, being a woman is a vibe. I think, one, are engaging in a serious acts of public cowardice. Two, are deluding themselves, right? And three, to your point, I think are often lying about things that they know better about. And one of the things that I say is that it's fun. Funny to me, because many of these women publicly over the years have built at least part of their

personality on being women who have forged a path in spite of the headwinds of sexism and, you know, always having to do, go above and beyond to show that I'm just as good as the boys and so on and so on and so forth. But the minute a group of men show up and say, hey, well, look at me, look at me. I'm the female now. They all just say, oh, okay, well, I shouldn't say anything. anything. And to me, particularly some of the loudest feminists have finally found a group of men they can submit to. And I think that that is, it is fascinating to see this play out. Because one of things that I saw in terms of the journalists who asked the question is people attacked him and said

it was a gotcha question. And he tried to show her up. And I'm thinking, wait, is this the same sort of sports landscape that spent the last eight years protesting during the anthem? Yeah. Opining on police violence, the Second Amendment, guns, the presidential election, Black Lives Matter. And now when a female coach at the highest level has asked a question about women's sports, now of a sudden that's too political to discuss. I don't understand it. Jamal Hill said the truth is that there isn't a single transgender woman competing in Division I Women's Basketball, meaning none were competing at the Final Four or on Don Staley's team. So there was zero relevancy to your question. You wanted to troll. You wanted the clicks.

And you were looking for a reason to put a target on someone's back on my. Jamel Hill of all people saying this. That's not journalism. But then again, given who you work for, none of this is surprising. Who does he work for? Outkick. Okay. And you said for the past eight years, we've seen athletes. Okay. So yeah, this is exactly what you just said. And then you said, just say you're scared and keep it moving, which is true. This is a totally relevant question. Absolutely. This is obviously something that we've seen in other sports. Interestingly, for mysteries, just beyond our comprehension, we don't see women who identify as men trying to infiltrate the NBA and the NFL, just so crazy how that works. But this is a very relevant question. And Don Staley said,

you know what, I don't care about the privacy and the safety and the fairness of the women that I coach that have been entrusted to me, I want men to be able to play, which means that there are women who won't get the spot, women who won't get the scholarship, women who are going to be injured, women who lose the championship game because they are competing against a male who went through male puberty, has greater bone density, greater muscle mass, greater aerobic and anaerobic capacity, is taller than them, stronger than them, has a bigger heart than them, It has more aggression than they do. And of course, if that had been the rule all along, there would be no women's basketball.

There would be no WMBA. There would be no Don Staley. So I don't know whether she really believes this or if she's like, you know what, it's easier for me to say this. Yeah. Because she's like, it's probably not going to happen. And I think that goes to your point, right? because people keep saying, oh, there's no division one, you know, trans athletes. Now, I remember a couple years back, and this is actually pre sort of Bruce slash Caitlin Jenner,

there was a man name, I want to say his name is Gabriel Ludwig, who identified as a woman. Now, the other thing is this guy was 52 years old and was playing, I mean, he was a head and a half above the women he was playing with. And I think this might have been. Division 3 or Division 2. But ESPN covered it, you know, sympathetically, as they do because they're part of the sort of progressive regime. But yeah, to hear Jamel Hill say this, Colin Kaepenick's personal scribe, I just found that, you know, somewhat interesting, ironic, because again, she's been one of the main people

pushing partisan politics into sports. And for me, it's not just the issue itself, but behind that question from that reporter, are thousands of girls in middle school and high school and middle school and high school who have been crying out for some woman with power, influence, and authority to speak up on their behalf. And aside from your Sage Steele's and your Riley Gaines and a handful of other women in sports and media, the silence has been deafening. And I think, and I hope what these young women are learning is that, look, when it comes to me, you know, when they come. comes down to it and it's time to fight, the sisterhood is going to abandon me. The progressive

sort of second, third, fourth wave feminists who talk all the stuff about being a woman, right? They go from I am woman, hear me roar, to this is a man's world in a split second. Just one well-placed question. It's, oh, this is a gotcha question. It's like, no, to me, it's not about testosterone levels. It's not about height or weight. The question is simple. But the issue is simple. Women's sports are for women. Men are not women. This is a logical proposition. A does not equal B. So therefore, men should not be in women's sports. Like to me, it's that simple. So I don't believe you should have to test people. And, well, if he was on estrogen for three years post, to me, all of that is nonsense. But it just shows you how deeply

this issue has sort of sunken into the ground. Like the roots of gender ideology are deep in our culture. And it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort to pull them out. Because this is, if the Biden administration has its way, this will be enforced via policy, via changes to Title IX, which will equate gender identity with, you know, sex. And once that happens, I think it's game over, no pun intended. Yeah. I've heard it said that identities don't compete.

Bodies do. Right. And so it doesn't matter what you declare, what you say, how you dress, even what hormones you decided a few years ago to start putting in your body. At the end of the day, if your body is male, if it was ever male, I mean, it's always male. But, you know, presenting as male, you don't belong in women's spaces, not in our bathrooms, not in our locker room. not on our teams. Not in women's prisons. Not in women's prisons. Where you can impregnate your cellmate.

The most vulnerable women in the world. And I'm not saying that it's not justified that they're there for whatever reason. But how is that not cruel and unusual punishment? Like in a country that has said that, you know what, like the death penalty is too distasteful for us, even for the most violent child rapist, even for some of the most violent, murderers, we are willing to subject women who are in prison for much less crimes to perpetual torment from male rapists. That's their punishment. And we've decided that that's okay in the name of LGBT inclusion. The last thing I'll say about the sports thing is that I think sometimes what

you need to sort of break the fever is for the level of ridiculousness to sort of get. get so high that people can no longer deny the problem. And I think the only way to do that, you probably have to get a group of high school boys who, I mean, these guys, they don't care what any other people think. They just say what they want to say. And, you know, give them a little bit of money, pay them, and say, look, when you guys finish your high school year,

we want you to all go to a particular school. and we want you to identify as women. Now, you don't have to change anything about your appearance because this is the left piece, right? Oh, it's not about gender identity is not about the length of your hair or the clothes that you wear. It's just as long as you feel like you're a woman

or you identify as a woman and you're a woman. So you show up with your beard, your goatee, you know, don't take any drugs, you know, and only identifies a woman when you're on the court because, again, gender is sort of... It's fun. Your gender fluid, right? Gender fluid. But when you get on the court, I mean, demolished, run the score up, 126 to 15. And just do that for enough times. And when ESPN comes and say, you know, they stick a mic in your face. He said, look, I'm just so thankful for this opportunity as a woman. This has always been my dream to compete in women. So that it gets to the point where you make people who claim to be serious journalists and thinkers have to. repeat the lies and tell everyone that we're not seeing what it is that we're seeing.

I think then you can start to break the fever. But right now, people like Jamel Hill can hide out and play it safe. And then tomorrow go on and find some police shooting and say, I'm back to beating the social justice drum. But we need, this fever does need to break soon. Yeah. I mean, a few years ago, the 15-year-old soccer players, remember the boy soccer players? Remember the boys soccer players?

They beat the U.S. women's team. I mean, we're talking teenage boys. They beat women who have been competing on an elite level for years. There was that Duke University study a few years ago that looked at track stars or track competitors, boys, girls, high school, college, and then professional and found that thousands and thousands, I think it's over 10,000. High school boys beat Allison Felix's record as an Olympian track star every single year. Every single year. So, yeah, it's just crazy. It's craziness.

And I think underlying it is one of the worst, and even many, one of the worst contributions of second wave feminism is teaching women. communicating both explicitly in some areas and implicitly in others, that the true north of womanhood is whatever the men are thinking, saying, and doing. Even sort of our impulse to compare Serena Williams to John McEnroe, right? It's like, you know, being a great female athlete doesn't, isn't contingent on whether or not you can beat the guys. Yeah. But I think over and over again, this is the message that feminists will sort of give to the cultures. to women's like, no, unless you're doing what the men are doing, you're really not living your

life. Yeah. And the opposite doesn't happen, right? Men are not banging down the door to all women's bowling league and Sheboygan. It's just like, okay, you guys have your league and we go do something else. Yeah. But as long as something in the culture is just for men or men are in a particular position, they're going to be some rad femms that say, no, we need to be there.

And I think this is just the latest iteration of that. Let's switch gears to talk about MLK. Okay. So I know that this is kind of older news because this back and forth about MLK based on comments that John McArthur made a couple months ago, it's a little old, but some people probably didn't see the dialogue, didn't see the discussion. And I think it's important for us to know because it's going to come up again. Over the past few years, we've kind of reassessed, I think, as conservatives, as Christian

conservatives whether or not we like MLK. I mean, it's been for as long as I can remember, yes, he was a hero, yes, he was a Christian, yes, he was an example and a representation that all of us should follow in unity and peace and love. Now, granted, I don't know that I studied, you know, deeply his theology or all of his beliefs or even all the details of his life, but I was, you know, happy believing and repeating that message. Then over the past few years, I've heard a few things of like, okay, wait, he wasn't a Christian, he was a Flander, he was a horrible person. John Piper a few years ago at the MLK50 conference actually got it there and said, which I think this is maybe necessary to say, okay, before I talk, he was like, I just want to say, we don't know if MLK was a Christian or not. And so he's, so John MacArthur, whose comments I'll get to in just a second was not the first person, first prominent pastor to say something about this,

But McArthur's comments stirred a lot of backlash and controversy. So we've got a clip of John McArthur at a conference at his church answering a question about MLK. So here's that too. And the strange irony was a year later, they did the same thing for Martin Luther King, who was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral.

I'm not saying he didn't do some social good, and I've always been glad that he was a pacifist or he could have started a real revolution. But you don't honor a non-believer who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel in an organization alongside honoring somebody like R.C. Sprole. Okay. So this inspired Justin Gibney of the and campaign to write an article titled Why John McArthur is wrong about MLK.

And so basically he just says, look, MLK was a Christian leader. He did exemplify love of neighbor. He did champion. What Justin Gibney would say was social justice. We don't need to like, you know, we shouldn't be saying he's not a Christian and we don't need to be over. analyzing it basically is a long article. But you have some thoughts on this too. You have some thoughts on the points made from both camps. So I just want to hear what you think. Well, one, I think it's important to sort of start by saying, you know, God is the sole and final judge of the

authenticity of anyone's conversion, right? So I'm sort of reluctant to say, well, this person was a Christian and this person was not. That being said, and I'll use a different example, if Joel Osteen was the most prominent sort of pro-life pastor in the country and his work helped get Roe versus Wade overturned, do I think that Christians would find a way to honor him? Sure. Do I think that many Christians would still question his theology? Absolutely. Do I think those questions would be legitimate? Yes. Because I think it's possible for someone to do good, sort of working in sort of in that common grace space for society and still not be a genuine believer. I think it's good when I think about these issues because I see sort of Justin

Gibney and John MacArthur, who I both, again, certainly would say both self-professing Christians and I have no reason to doubt either person. But I think of the cross, and let me speak metaphorically for a quick second. And when I look at the cross, a picture of my mind, I see that vertical being that stretches up to heaven. And then I see that horizontal being, right, with Jesus is stretched out on. And I think in many respects, and I'm generalizing, and I'll say that at the outset, white and black Christians, even within the sort of conservative evangelical space, tend to approach professions of faith by taking one part of that beam, starting with one part of that beam of the other. And I think for white evangelicals, it tends to be that vertical beam.

What did this person believe about God? And what do they believe about God based on the things that they said and taught, particularly if you're talking about a pastor? So did this person exhibit sound doctrine? Did this person exhibit right beliefs? And I think for many black Christians, black evangelicals, they tend to focus on that horizontal part, right? How did this person treat their fellow man? And particularly within our sort of American cultural context, one of the first questions is, was this person a racist? Was this person a slave owner?

Did this person oppose civil rights? Did this person fight for civil rights? And I think certainly right belief is a prerequisite for a salvant. right? I can't say, oh yeah, I love Jesus, but just as much as Buddha and, you know, Allah and Krishna and all those other stuff. But I do think that there's something to be said because, you know, Jesus talked about, you know, the greatest commandments to, you know, love God and then love your neighbor. I think there's also something to be said about that sort of horizontal love. And I think it plays itself out in many of these conversations. And I've heard black Christians and I didn't grow up in a conservative evangelical space. So I came, I've heard both sides of the argument without being sort of prejudice one way or the other by my own upbringing.

But I've heard black Christians talk about the difficulty of learning, of studying certain theologians in seminary who own slaves and having to reconcile those things. So I'm of the belief when it comes to MLK and this is my belief for anyone. the heavier the charge, the more evidence you need to bring to bear. When conservatives, Christian or not, chose MLK's birthday to say, to your point, he was a terrible person and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a terrible idea. And one of the main things they say is that, oh, he was a Marxist. And I just, I would always ask some people,

what evidence do you have of that? Like, show me where he, you know, promoted Marxism. And in fact, what I've seen from his record, his written record is you said, no, I'm against Marxism. I'm against communism. I may be for more social spending and so on and so forth. But I reject these ideologies on specific grounds. So if someone says that kings and Marxists, I just ask for the evidence. On the flip side, given King's early writings, where it's not just denying the bodily resurrection, but the virgin birth,

substitutionary atonement, these things that he wrote on, I think, when he used in seminary, if you're saying he turned from those positions and embraced a more orthodox theology, all I'm asking for is the evidence to substantiate that claim. And just referencing the resurrection in the Easter sermon to me is not that. I think it's someone like Rosario Butterfield who says, I used to believe X. Now I'm making a clear and clean break from X. and I now believe Y.

And I'm telling you why Y is an example of me repenting for my beliefs in X. So if you spend a long time sort of teaching and preaching in a particular space and you realize you've made a first order theological error, I think it's important to preach just as much and to clarify what it is you were saying before. Yeah. So, I mean, it's an interesting debate. My personal takeaway is this. I try when at all possible to make peace with things that I cannot change. And I think we as Americans have been terrible at that with our history, good, bad and ugly.

The lesson that I draw from the previous generations is that they are just as imperfect as we are. They had their sort of cultural bugaboos. They had their particular sins that were active in a particular era. and I never look at them with a sense of disdain and moral superiority. Because we live in a culture where one party will light up the empire state building pink as the governor signs a bill saying that a child can be aborted up until it draws its first breath. And we think we're a more moral and just society. So I think, again, as a believer, I'm just like, okay,

the same standard for judging salvation is applies to king. applies to R.L. Dabney. Applies to Mahatma Gandhi. Applies to Thomas Jefferson. It applies to me. It applies to you. We are not in a workspace faith. So, yes, right belief is part of that.

But I also think there's something to be said for how we treat one another. And I think that's sort of what's tied up in this controversy between Gibney and McArthur. I agree with McArthur saying that a Christian conference, should not promote someone that didn't have the theology of a Christian as far as we know, because as you pointed out, like, he did deny the divinity and the bodily resurrection of Christ. At one point, MLK did. And we don't know really whether he changed that. And, of course, our belief, God uses our faith, our belief to save us.

So that vertical cross beam, obviously, as you know, matters very much. And so I don't really agree with Justin Gibney saying, well, no, he definitely was a Christian because, as you pointed out, well, we don't really have evidence to show whether he came to, like, repent of those non-Christian beliefs. But I also don't think that we have to say, well, the nothing that he said and nothing that he did was good or godly or biblical or right. because I think we would all like a world in which we are judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It was one way when MLK was alive and now it's gone the other direction into judging people by the color of their skin. And it's not seen as verboten at all. It's seen as wonderful and celebrated as long as you're judging white people and no one else. And so I don't really see the need to be on either side of this, to be like,

like an apologist for everything that MLK believed, but also dissect him and his theology in a way that someone maybe wouldn't be willing to do for Jonathan Edwards. So I do see like hypocrisy there kind of on both sides of this conversation. Like why, as you said, like why does it seem like some of these people hold MLK to a standard, to one standard? And then when it comes to slave owners, they're like, well, it's just the cultural context of the time.

Right. You know, and their politics or their politics, but we can still read sinners in the hand of an angry God and get something out of it. Right. Which I do believe that. Like, but at the same time, okay, let's extend the same grace and understanding and nuance to other people as well. Yeah. And I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some sort of conservative evangelicals who say, you know what? we should have a Robert E. Lee conference, right? Because I've seen guys literally say, you know, like the Confederate South, the pre-Civil War South was like the sort of epitome of Christendom in America. And I actually, I wrote a piece for the Blaze because I saw some, you know, conservative evangelicals who, when Virginia a couple months back, I think they melted down a Robert Lee statue and did something with it. And I'm not a

in favor that kind of stuff because again at a certain point we have to make peace with our with our history but it was just interesting some of the arguments that people were making and as you said part of it will be well cultural context this was what was normal back then and the the outworking of the gospel would have eventually ended slavery in this country I don't see any evidence for that claim especially since the Confederate constitution explicitly said that we will not pass pass any law to outlaw this practice. But I just, I think one of the things that's most important for Christians, particularly in the public space, is to judge with a just weight in an equal measure.

So whatever standard I apply to you, I should be willing to apply that standard to me. And not just you and I personally, but our heroes and our villains, we should be able to apply the same standard. And I think part of the problem comes when we assume sometimes that people like people that we dislike for the reasons that we dislike them. I'll give an example of that. I remember when Rush Limbaugh passed away. Now, I never listened to Rush Limbaugh because I didn't really listen to a lot of radio. I spent most of my time on public transportation, hour 45 minutes each way to and from school on two buses.

So I didn't really listen to car radio because I wasn't in a car very often. I first, I knew about wrestling ball, but the first controversy I heard him in Broiland was ESPN when he made some comments about Donovan McNabb, a black quarterback who played for the Eagles. Basically said the NFL, you know, journalists prop him up because their desires for a black quarterback to do well. And this was at the time when McNabb was at the top of his game. It was a really good pro.

And, you know, people didn't like it. And he eventually left ESPN. So I remember when he passed away. And I had people that I know, you know, personally was like, you know, I love Rush Limbaugh. I grew up on him. And I'm thinking, well, everything I've heard about him is controversial. NFL game was like a, you know, a fight between the Bloods and the Crips and, you know, all sorts of crazy stuff. But I realized it's like, okay, they probably don't like him for those things.

Yeah. Right? They like him because they feel he's bold. He's audacious. He tells the truth. He's not afraid to stick it to liberals. And I think on opposite direction, when. And white Christians may see their black brothers and sisters say, yeah, you know, I had a ton of respect for the Black Panthers.

They're not doing that because they're Marxists. They're doing that because they gave out free breakfast. They had a breakfast program. They're doing that because they engaged in self-defense and they believe in Second Amendment. But I think there's oftentimes a lot of cross-talk on issues of race. And of course, but there are times when, okay, a person or entity, they might have done. some good, but the bad should outweigh the good. Like, I'm sure that like, and I'm not comparing any of the examples that you just gave to Hitler, but like, Hitler probably loved his kids.

Right. But we, you know, and, you know, Ted Bundy might have been nice to his cat. Right. But for some things, we do have to say, okay, the good or the bad outweighed the good and there is an objective standard. Not everything and not all entities, but yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, And I think we make those distinctions, oftentimes, on a case-by-case basis. You know, I think, and part of it is sort of contextual. And I'm not endorsing moral relativism, but at a certain point, we all engage in it. Because if there was any person today who we found out was involved in legal slave trade or sex trafficking, it doesn't really matter what good they did. we would not uphold that person as

you know a sort of paragon of virtue but for the founding fathers it's like okay I get it you know Jefferson had slaves but he also wrote the Declaration of Independence and we live in the country that we live in today because of things

that imperfect men did hundreds of years ago so the question is well what do you do with that I don't think tearing it all down is the right answer but I will say this one of the lessons that I draw from that, and particularly as a father, is that the decisions that I make as a dad will reverberate down through my generations. If I am an alcoholic, if I am abusive, if I'm a philanderer, right, if I'm a drug addict, if I spend our money recklessly and end up my family's out on the streets, my great, great, great, great grandchildren. may still be dealing with some of the fallout of my actions many, many years from now.

And I don't think that our founding fathers are exempt from that principle. But as my dad told me, when I complained about something he did, you know, when I was a teenager, you said, look, I did the best that I could at the time with what I had. Now it's your turn. And you have to, you know, make of your life what you will. And that was one of the best lessons that I ever learned. Because I think way too many people spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror, complaining about what someone didn't do or should have done. I also think this is why there's so much talk about what our ancestors built because our

generation is not building as much. We're not building families, strong, stable families. We're not building marriages oftentimes. And I believe in honoring the past, but building for the future. So as a dad, again, I draw a lesson from that. The things that I do are extremely important for the future of my family. And I think nations also have to reconcile with that at a certain point. Back to the MLK for a second because my researcher did such a good job in putting things together.

And it really does emphasize your point. Since there's been so much debate about this and how complicated of a person he was, I do just want to read some things because I know some people out there thinking, well, what about this? What about this? So there are some reasons that people, even our friends, Virgil Walker, Daryl Harrison have pointed out, okay, he's not necessarily the perfect hero that he has been healed. Because while I do think people are complicated, like the founding fathers, too, there are things that we would approve of, don't approve of.

It does seem like someone like MLK has been traditionally like untouchable. Like you're not even allowed to say, oh, maybe he did some bad. things or believed some bad things because of not just the good that he did, but the particular kind of good that he did in regards to race. So they have pointed out in an article that he denied the resurrection, at least at one point. And then also he pointed out that Gandhi was the best embodiment of Jesus Christ that lived. He said, I believe this man more than anybody else in the world caught the spirit of Jesus Christ and lived it more completely in his life. And that is Gandhi. It was actually Gandhi and not the gospel. He says that inspired him to nonviolence.

He also, maybe this is where some people are getting this idea that he was like a communist or someone on the left. He certainly believed in the social gospel. He had ties to someone named Walter Roshinbush. He was a German-American pastor in House Kitchen, New York. And he was someone who pushed the social gospel, who posited that Jesus came not simply to save sinners, but to save society. James Cohn also really believed this. And that any gospel that saves sinners apart from society was not a gospel at all. This was one of the greatest influences on Martin Luther King. Also, people have pointed out that one of his top advisors was Stanley Levison, a member of the Communist Party until

1956. Leveson secretly gave MLK $10,000 in 1957 one year after meeting him. And so, of course, I'm not saying this

just justifies like the FBI intrusion into his life or even all criticism of MLK. But it is just another example of people are complicated.

People have also talked about him being, I don't know if this is true, him being like a philanderer and adulter and things like that. And I'm not sure if that's true. But this just all, I just wanted to make sure that people knew that

there were details that people pointed out over the years to say, okay, we shouldn't deify this man at the same time. You don't deify and you don't discount. Right. And all of these criticisms haven't come from the right. I mean, Michael Eric Dyson, who is a very sort of prominent, he's a minister, I'm sure in King's vein. But I mean, he wrote a book about King's flaws and was very open. And in fact, got criticized. This is a couple years back for some of the things that he was exposing about Dr. King. All right.

So, I mean, it's at the point where no one denies that he, you know, was cheating on his wife. But again, for me, I think context is important. And I know context and nuance are two of the most overused words sort of in the public sphere. But they do have uses, right? So if you're telling me that, okay, Dr. King was simply. Let's say he was sympathetic to communists or to, he said he was in favor of democratic socialism. And I think he used Sweden as an example in his writings. Well, that means something different in 1962 than it does in 2024.

Totally. Yeah. It means something different in the south than it might have in the north where you had black dentists and doctors who, even at that time, summered on Martha's Vineyard. But if you're in a context where the median occupation for a black woman in the South is a domestic, then you may be open to views about social spending. The other thing that happens is that politics and political alliances change over time, right? Now conservatives and Republicans tend to be the party against foreign wars. I've also heard Tucker Carlson level criticisms against sort of our, version of capitalism, particularly talking about Mitt Romney, this was a couple of years back,

that sound like they could have been pulled straight from King's playbook. So I'm a person, again, the heavier the evidence, the heavier the charge, the heavier the evidence. Associations and so on and so forth, I mean, I think there's a place for them, but even for conservatives that people like presidential candidates, for instance, there are associations there that would make you say, hmm, now I see the madness that the pride agenda is reeking on on the culture. And one of my preferred candidates, you know, closest advisors is one of the people who set this whole thing off, right? Is a guy who

identifies as a gal? Well, does that mean that that particular candidate is pro-LGBT? Not necessarily. They might be. I don't know. But I'm wary of hanging a charge on someone based on loose associations. Now, I'm not in favor of deifying any person because there's only but one person who was perfect in their lifetime, and that's Jesus. But I'm also not the type of person to say every person with whom I disagree has to be dissected while my heroes, because everyone has heroes, my heroes are unassailable. Have you seen the movie A Few Good Men?

Uh-uh. Okay. So very much a classic Tom Cruise. Yes. Oh, wait, maybe I have actually. Yeah, Jack Nicholson. You can't handle the truth. Yes. Yes. Okay. There was a point where he was on the stand. And during that cross-examination, Jack Nicholson says something to this effect. I'm paraphrasing. I think about this often when I hear this generation complaining about previous generations.

He said, you know, I have neither the time nor inclination to explain myself who rest comfortably, you know, under the protection that I provide and then question the manner in which I provided. I'd rather you just say thank you and go on about your way. And as someone who did not grow up in the segregated South, right, or someone even younger than I am, to say, oh, well, that piece of legislation was a mistake because we got all this stuff as a result of it,

never knowing the indignities of colored only signs. and fighting for your country in a foreign war only to be relegated to the back of the bus or a different entrance when you come back to this country. I'd rather we just say, you know what, we thank our forebears for their contributions and we want to build on what they have built so that we pass on something even better to our descendants. That tends to be my general approach to almost all of these issues. Yeah, yeah. That's a lot of good insight.

man it's it's hard being out here and feeling like you have to relitigate everything and everyone all the time and we all have to pretend like we know perfectly too and I think any kind of conversation that involves race is really difficult within the church and maybe for a good reason but also like everything becomes a war and a battle between two different kinds of Christians and really like the two directions of the cross shouldn't be in a battle against each other. Exactly. Exactly. And I don't think there's any need for them to be that way. I just think people, as I said, should judge with honest scales and just weights. And so to me, it's, again, certain things are contextual. So I'll give an example of one thing that needs context and the other that does not. So if a white person, person says, well, hey, I heard Hampton University is a historically black college,

you know, in university. Well, how come there are no historically white colleges, right? I used to see this all the time in comments in, like, 2005. Why is there no white entertainment television? Well, again, like HBCUs were created, you know, post-Civil war to provide educational opportunities to freedmen and freedwomen at a time where many of them couldn't go to Harvard and Yale. I mean, some were going there, to be clear. but HBCUs are not racist institutions. One, they accept white students. They accept all different types of students.

But they were created in a particular context, right? I think that's important when you're discussing HBCUs. On the flip side, and I think I might have told you this, one of the first shows of yours that I saw was your breakdown of Akemini Uwan at the Sparrow Conference. My goodness. where she was on stage and she's, you know, a public, a black woman, a public theologian, who was at a conference that I assume was mostly white women. The Sparrow Conference.

Sparrow Conference. Yeah, I think 2018. Yes. And she said she was going on about, she was defining whiteness, right? Mm-hmm. And whiteness is about theft and plunder and pillaging and so on and so forth. And she was telling the white women in the audience that, you know, race is a fiction and you have an ethnic identity and in your resurrected body you'll have your ethnic identity but you've

bought into white and i just thought to myself now if someone got up on the stage and said blackness is you know moral depravity and broken homes and so on and so forth they would not make it out of that auditorium alive and it's it's that type of partial ethnic partiality that i think causes problems in the church um one it's unbiblical two it's very sloppy sort of elementary scholarship. I mean, using terms that you can't even define. You're attaching sin to skin in ways that you will certainly not apply equally.

But Jackie Hill Perry defended her, by the way. Correct. And in fact, I was going to a church at the time in D.C. from a fairly well-known evangelical pastor, Thabidi Ania Bureli. Mm-hmm. And...

Which that's not his real name. No, I don't think so. But that's what he's gone by for a period of time. And my wife and I, we were thinking of joining. And I saw him encouraging and affirming her during that controversial period. And I tell my wife, nah, because I knew where that was going to go. And by the time COVID came around and they were doing online services, he was proof texting the story of Cain and Abel to make an argument for reparations.

Yeah. So my thing is this, whatever standard you said, if you want to engage in sort of ethnic battle and racecraft in the public sphere, then you have to be willing for that to come back to you. Again, I went to a bunch of public schools and the rules in the schoolyard are quite simple. If you talk about my mama and you call her everything but a child of God, and then I turn around and say, well, your mom doesn't really make a very good ham sandwich. and you run off crying to the teacher, you should pick a different line of work. And this is how I feel about almost all racecraft is like you guys do not have tough enough skin

to take what it is that you're dishing out. And because of that, you should stop dishing it out and particularly Christians who engage in that type of behavior. Yes and amen. That's a good word. That's a good word. Delano, I'm so excited about your book. It's going to be awesome.

And I love your title idea, by the way. Thank you. It's going to be. really good. And when it comes out, you'll have to come back on. Absolutely. Well, hopefully before that, I'll see you again. But definitely when it comes out. Absolutely. Because you talked about all the things that kind of need to happen for things to change in a positive way. And you just never know which flap of the butterfly wing is going to make the difference.

And I think that your book is going to be one of those that God uses. So I'm excited for you. We've got so many good thoughts. So thanks so much. Everyone can find you on Twitter. and find you on Jason's show and all that good stuff. So thanks so much. Thank you, Allie. Thank you for having me. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie,

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