The Sean McDowell Show - Is Critical Race Theory Leading to Catastrophe in the Church? (w/ Voddie Baucham)

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Voddie Baucham believes the Social Justice Movement is dividing the church and that there is a looming catastrophe for Evangelicalism. Is he right? What's his case? Join Voddie and me to discuss the SJM movement, CRT, and his response to some of his critics. READ: Fault Lines (Baucham): https://amzn.to/3fwErFt WATCH: Critical Race Theory: Can Christians Agree to Disagree (Conversation with Samuel Sey): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nnKB4MoTUM READ: 3 Steps for Engaging Critical Race Theory: https://bit.ly/32Vvr5v *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

All right, friends, we have a fascinating interview for you today. As almost everybody knows, critical race theory is a huge topic that's been debated in the culture politically. It's discussed in the church. And although there's been plenty of discussions about what is it, what does it mean, should the church embrace it or not, my guest today, Votie Bauckham, author, speaker, leader, we're going to go a little bit of a different direction. We're going to kind of just talk about how should Christians approach this?

Can we find unity across differences with critical race theory? Is it dividing the church? Why is it dividing the church? That's kind of the direction that we are going to head. Now, those of you who watch this know I bring in a lot of different guests on my channel from a range of different perspectives and sometimes people have criticized me for doing that I understand the concern but I want to hear from a number of different people and just piece together what's a wise Christian response to this and Voddie Bauckham you are not immune to criticism I think you have a statement in your book where

you said about one of your kids that you have kind of a dad who's a lightning rod sometimes, so you have not avoided controversy. You've waded into these issues with your recent book called Fault Lines, which has sold a ton of copies, obviously stirred up a bunch of people, which I'm thrilled for you in that regard. But first first off we're glad that you're healthy and doing better and thanks so much for coming on the show oh man you're very welcome and i appreciate you having me i'm looking forward to this as we talked about earlier i think it's been about a dozen years since we've seen each other so i'm just excited to sit and talk with you again. It is. I remember you were there with your son and we got to chat a little bit. So this is this is great. Thanks for doing it.

Well, let's let's dive in. You tell a lot in your story in the book. And I think you're careful to not say because of your race, because of your story, you have unique authority in this area. But clearly your perspectives are deeply informed by your background as are mine. So I'd love to hear just your story of coming to faith. Yeah. And I did that in the book for some specific reasons, not because I'm agreeing with the sort of CRT idea that black people have a special access to knowledge on race by virtue of our blackness. But because there are individuals who have either thought that because I'm serving in Zambia, that I must be Zambian, which is kind of racist, actually, right?

If a white person goes as a missionary to an African country, we don't assume that their ancestors, you know, came from that country. But when a black person goes to be a missionary in an African country, they must be going back to their homeland, right? So that was number one. I wanted to clarify that. I'm an American. My family has been in America for six or seven generations. They came as slaves, but we've been in america for six seven or more generations and secondly there are people who who believed that perhaps i grew up outside of a typical black environment or that maybe i grew up with you know some kind of privilege that made it impossible for me to understand these things from a proper perspective.

And so those are the reasons that I wrote those sections, really just kind of to dispel those things. But I did. I was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. I was raised by a single teenage Buddhist mother. I was born in 1969. And so I went to school during the era of desegregation and busing. And I was bused from my all-black elementary school, Coliseum Street Elementary School, in the jungle, right? For those of you who know LA, to Coliseum Street Elementary School. I mean, no, to Pacific Palisades Elementary School in the Pacific Palisades. And, you know, so needless to say, I've had that whole experience

and I'm part of that generation. Also, you know, my parents were very Afrocentric. I didn't grow up with my father, but I knew my father. He was incredibly Afrocentric. My family, because it wasn't a Christian family, my mother wasn't a Christian. It wasn't very much a sort of Martin Luther King family as much as it was an Angela Davis, Malcolm X, you know, family. And so that was the brand of Afrocentrism that resonated with me. And even as a new Christian, I used to wear t-shirts with Malcolm X on them.

So that's kind of my background and my perspective. When I got old enough to run into a little trouble in South Central, my mother shipped me out and I went and lived for a year and a half in Beaufort, South Carolina with her oldest brother who was a retired drill instructor in the Marine Corps. Okay. Yeah, changed my life. Yeah, the Marine Corps changed my life and I didn't even have to be a Marine. But you know after that I we moved to San Antonio and that's where I went to high

school. That's where I started playing you and got involved in all those sorts of things. And that's what really kind of in a general sense shaped me as a man. And then coming to faith that first year in college is really what transformed me as a man. It sounds like you wrote that there was somebody with Campus Crusade or another ministry who was like, here's a Bible, let's study this and just kind of mentored you and it made sense. Yeah, he did. You know, he came to talk to me about starting a Bible study for the football team. And in about five minutes, he realized I didn't know Jesus from the man in the moon. And, you know, went from there to sharing the four spiritual laws I didn't really have enough understanding to even go with him on the four spiritual laws

so he's backed up and held up his bible and said this is a bible you know and we spent two and a half three weeks just talking about basic stuff him answering answering my questions. Toward the end of that time, we were going to look for answers together. That's cool. I always say I was trained in apologetics before I was converted. So you tell a story in your book of just growing up without a father in the home. Your cousin was shot, streets, gangs. Two of my cousins were killed and shot to death. Wow. in the home your cousin was shot streets games wow coming to Christ in college but you have this afro centric afro centric background how did those two merge what happened there yeah well not too well in the beginning in the

beginning I would have said that my blackness was more important than my Christianity. And that my Christianity had to be shaped by my blackness. That took priority for me. And I would say now that it's the exact opposite. That I understand that I'm called to be in Christ and that Christ is Lord of all. Christ is Lord over all. Christ is greater than my ethnicity. Christ is greater than my nationality. Christ is greater than all of those things. And so all of those things must be subservient to who I am in Christ. I love that. For those of you just joining us, we're here with Votie Bauckham,

author of Fault Lines, and we're talking not so much the nuts and bolts of critical race theory, social justice, but how should the church respond? Is this dividing the church? We're starting by hearing some of his story that he's been explaining. If you're new to the channel, make sure you hit subscribe because we have some upcoming interviews, including my response to a popular atheist you're not going to want to miss. Now, once you became a believer, Vody, you described this experience in the Southern Baptist Convention. I'd love to just hear, and you're careful to say, you're not saying this is true for everybody's experience but what was your experience like um well i mean there which which part are you talking about are you talking about um my experience in in terms of the politics of the spc or no let's go back

when you became you served at a church that was southern Baptist early on, not so much the politics that came later. I'd love to hear that experience. You know, I didn't serve at Southern Baptist churches earlier. Earlier on, I served at National Baptist churches. I served at predominantly black churches, National Baptist churches. And it wasn't until much later that I served at a Southern Baptist church. And in fact, the way that I became a Southern Baptist was, you know, I transferred my senior year from Rice University. I was playing football at Rice, a football scholarship there.

You know, God calls me to preach. I didn't grow up in the church, so I don't have much of a background. And I knew I needed to train. So because I was a football player, people were inviting me to come speak at events because I was a football player, but I didn't know much of anything. And so I transferred to Houston Baptist University as a senior and not only a senior, but I was married and we had a daughter. And now all of a sudden I go from, you know, being on full scholarship, you know, sign your name to having to pay for school. But if you're a ministry student, tuition was half if you were at a Southern Baptist church.

So I had two questions. One, what's the Southern Baptist church? And two, how do I find one? You know? So that's how I became a Southern Baptist, but I asked for a black Southern Baptist church. And I talk about in the book how I said that and nobody blinked. Now, now if a white student had come and said, I want a Southern Baptist church, but I want a white Southern Baptist church.

He might've been disciplined. Interesting. But for me, had come and said, I want a Southern Baptist church, but I want a white Southern Baptist church, he might have been disciplined. Interesting. But for me, I said, I want a black Southern Baptist church. And they just went, yeah, here's a list. And so that's how I became a Southern Baptist. Now you described the way, I'll ask you right here to talk about the way that you were treated, because it sounds as I read your book if i read correctly you feel like you were not treated differently because of your race

and that many people sought you out mentored you treated you fairly yeah did i read that right talk about your experience yeah no i i say i actually was treated differently. And I was treated differently because in the SPC, there was a desire to have more black churches, more black involvement, more black leadership. And because of that, there were a lot of people who took me under their wings. I showed promise, you know, academically. And so they took me under their wings because a lot of black students, I remember, you know, when I graduated from seminary, I remember I got a surveyiv because less than 15% of all black ministers at that time had a theological education. And I remember just being floored by that. And so you take that small number of black ministers with theological education, take the small number of black people in the SBC, and then you take the fact that, you know, a lot of guys who did get that theological education went, you know, to serve

the church and didn't serve the academy. So there were a lot of guys who were really trying to encourage me to at least consider a career in academia and kind of going out of their way to keep me in the fold, so to speak, and to help me down that road. There was also a sense in which a number of sort of movers and shakers in the Southern Baptist Commission, and I talk about this in the book, there hadn't been a black president of the SBC. And they weren't interested in having a black president of the SBC just because the person was black. They wanted somebody who was really a Southern Baptist, who had credentials, who had,

you know, they didn't want a token. And so as I, you know, sort of gained those credentials and worked within Southern Baptist life, there were a lot of the movers and shakers who began to sort of groom me with the idea of me possibly being the first black president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Oh, wow. And then I came out as a Calvinist and all that ended. Which is a whole nother story, I'm sure. That's a whole nother story for a whole nother story. I'm sure. That's a whole nother story for a whole nother day. I do appreciate it. Because for me, for me,

that also was a very important experience because when that door closed, by the way, I didn't want to be in politics at the Southern Baptist convention, but when that door closed for me, what it said to me was these individuals are not interested in tokenism. You have some theological distinctives that these guys don't want in their president, and your blackness is not enough for that to be overlooked. So I was actually encouraged by that in one sense. Again, I do appreciate in your book that you say you don't think experience gives someone a unique access to truth. You call that kind of an ethnic

Gnosticism, I think is maybe the term. But you also had a positive experience for the most part there. Those are stories that need to be told as well. What about promise keepers in the 90s? I was at Biola University undergrad undergrad went to my first i mean i don't know i'm going to guess 60 80 100 000 people in l.a and it was this powerful reconciliation moment yeah you described this in the book and it was pivotal for you in terms of how you think about race wasn't it yeah it was pivotal for me because you know i was being invited to speak at Promise Keepers events, and I saw this passion and desire for reconciliation. And I met with pastors who wept before the Lord,

desiring for their churches to be more diverse, look more diverse, look more diverse or whatever. But again, in my experience, it was only white pastors. I never met a black pastor who was crying, you know, in his prayer time before the Lord because his church was 99% black. That just, it just wasn't a thing. But in the Promise Keepers movement, I met all of these men who were passionate about racial reconciliation. And I was convicted by that. And I'm not saying that there

were no black pastors who were serious about racial reconciliation. I'm just saying that from my perspective, the Lord used that to convict me. And so that's good being convicted by that. I made a decision that me and my family were not going to be part of churches where everybody looked like us. We decided to take that seriously and to take it to heart. Not that everybody had to do that, but because of the conviction that the Lord laid on my heart, I made a decision to do that, which again is ironic because a lot of people look at my history and they look at positions that I've had in predominantly white churches.

And the assumption is either that that's how I grew up or, you know, that I was, you know, trying to curry favor with white people or whatever. We consider ourselves almost like missionaries in a sense, because I'm sitting here going, you know, everybody's saying we need to be reconciled to one another and we're upset because white people don't understand this. And, you know, we don't see black people, you know, this, that, how is that ever going to change if we don't make that kind of effort and make

ourselves available for it. I love that spirit. I love that approach. Good for you. Thanks for modeling that. You also left the States, went back to Africa, Zambia, I believe, early 2000s. You would obviously know the date.

I'm curious about how moving out of the States to Africa shifted how you think about America and or how you think about issues of race, racial reconciliation. Yeah, well, there's two things. One, the first time I visited Africa was in 2006. And that was an incredibly powerful experience for me because my father died in April of 2006 and I visited died in April of 2006 and I visited Africa in August of 2006 remember you know my parents afrocentric you know just he never got to visit Africa though he wanted to

visit Africa and so that it was powerful in that sense but it was also powerful in the sense that I learned a lot during my time there and experienced a lot during my time there. And I remember and I write in the book about this sort of powerful moment that I had at a church there where the pastor's father came and greeted me at Evangel Baptist Church. You know, he's had to be 85 years old at the time. And spry 85 year old man comes up, greets me. And he asked me if it was my first time in Africa. I said, yes. And he just kissed me and said, wow.

You know, and it was just powerful. I'm sitting there waiting for the service to start. And all of a sudden, Sean, it was one of those moments where it was like nobody else was in the room but me and the Lord. And all of a sudden I realized hundreds of years ago, my ancestors were sold away from this land. Wow. And took that arduous journey across the ocean, ended up in America, underwent incredible atrocities and inhumane treatment. And now hundreds of years later, I have had the opportunity to be raised in the greatest republic in the history of the world, trained, trained in some of the greatest theological institutions in the history of the world. And now I was able to go back to Africa and to give away what the Lord had deposited in me. And it was just a powerful

moment. The other thing that was powerful for me is what I was taken to a place in Indola, Zambia. This, this, this big area where they have this huge old tree, they call it the slave tree. And it's in what was called the slave catchment area. Usually when we think about, you know, transatlantic slavery, we think about West Africa and theantic slavery we think about west africa and the slave castles and the ships going out from there well slaves used to be gathered

in zambia and other places but in zambia they'd be gathered they'd be sold and then they would go across to angola and then from angola they would go west now they were gathered there and sold by arab slave traders and by african slave traders so this is great myth that white people went to africa hunting for black slaves that's not what happened arab slave traders and african slave traders sold other africans to to Europeans or took them to to to the north to North Africa to the Arab world

and so I'm sitting here and I'm like all my life I've been thinking about what white people did to my ancestors by going and stealing us when the fact of the matter is they didn't go steal us. My African ancestors enslaved us and then sold us. And it was just, again, this powerful moment

where I just had to come to grips with the fact that, you know, history is not as simple as we make it out to be and i was overcome with this need and desire to forgive and it started with my need and desire to forgive my african ancestors who enslaved my ancestors and then sold them and then to forgive the Westerners, you know, who, who, or the Americans who ended up or whoever, you know, ended up taking them first. But it was just, again, a powerful thing for me. And I think it's so ironic that, you know,

we talk about slavery and we talk about, you know, reparations, but nobody ever says that we need reparations from the Africans who enslaved us and sold us to the Europeans and to the Americans. Um, which, you know, I'm not about reparations anyway. Um, but yeah, it was just, it was just a really, it was just a really powerful experience for me. And the other thing is, you know, and this would be the last thing. You know, I learned that there are more slaves in the world today than there were at the height of American slavery. And many of those slaves are in the Arab world and North Africa and the Middle East.

And, you know, some of those slaves are in places like North America through sex trafficking and things like that. But there's over 40 million slaves in the world today. And we're spending all this time talking about what America owes to the descendants of slaves who were freed in 1865 and almost no time talking about people who are in slavery right now today

that's almost a mic drop moment that we could spend a lot of time unpacking because that's that's a powerful powerful truth i appreciate you bringing that in fody one of the things i've heard from many of my black friends and pastors is that when we talk about critical race theory it's a side issue it's a distraction from getting to the heart of real social justice so for example we had an event at biola within the past year some students put it on they invited me and a young black apologist to talk about critical race theory and we had a wonderful discussion one of the things he said he says i only really get invited here to talk about critical race theory. And we had a wonderful discussion. One of the things he said, he says, I only really get invited here to talk about CRT. I wish you folks had invited me to talk about justice

and what we could actually do to fix certain kinds of injustices that are taking place. I've heard that time and time again, which is enough for me to pause and say, am I missing something? How do I listen better? How do you balance that? You're writing a book because you are concerned about a certain view of social justice. Yet I know you would also affirm that we need to do the real work, so to speak. And I'm not implying your book's not, that's not the implication,

but we've got to get out and fight against injustice. How do we balance the two of those together? Yeah. And I think the way we balance that is by first rightly defining injustice. That's where we're missing each other, right? Because within the context of CRT, within the context of the social justice movement, social justice is redistributive justice. Social justice is about equity and outcomes and redistributing resources so that those resources are equitable among groups of people. Right. And so that's the first thing we need to understand that that's what social justice means. The second thing is because of that. and when you look at CRT, for example we don't have the same strength we don't have the same levels of intelligence that there's inequity between you and me and god designed us

that way right we're not all the same we don't all have the same interests and the same abilities and and that's part of the beauty in the body of Christ for example the hand shouldn't say to the foot you know what I'm saying and so what social justice says

is that there is an injustice when we're not all hands or when we're not all feet and that's just grossly unbiblical the other problem is that we do deal with injustice even if you want to say in terms of disparities right but what social justice says is you always look at disparities in terms of the oppressor-oppressed dynamic. And you look at it in terms of the injustice of the oppressor creating an environment where the oppressed end up getting these disparate outcomes. As opposed to saying, we need to look at all of these factors these are complex issues and we need to look at them that way

and determine what types of things lead to these disparities so when we start talking about you know incarceration rates and graduation rates and you know crime rates and all these sorts of things we have to look at this sort of you know multivariate analysis of why it is that these things exist instead of just saying they exist therefore injustice that makes sense i i can tell because you cite him in the book because you're pulling a lot from the work of thomas soul who i recently found out i didn't know he had a youtube channel subscribe to that i've read three or four of his books and especially when he talks about disparity and discrimination his point is that disparities in your example with you and me whether it's hyatt or strength intelligence

whatever there's just going to be disparities that doesn't equal discrimination. So it sounds like the heart of your concern is we can't just jump to fighting injustice unless we agree on a biblical understanding of what justice is first. So the church should be acting and carrying this out, but also critiquing ideas coming from the culture, or at least not passively accepting them, that might have inaccurate views of justice. Is that a fair way of capturing where you are? Or more specifically, of injustice. Of injustice. Okay. Yeah.

Okay, that's great. Now, you talk about in the book, and you don't mince words in terms of, you think this evangelical catastrophe is coming and that different views of social justice are going to divide churches, universities, schools, families, etc. Is it, have recent events brought to surface the disunity that was already there? Or do you think these new ideas of social justice are causing that kind of fracturing and looming catastrophe that's coming in the future or is it both yeah i think it's both i think it's definitely both um listen man our adversary the devil is wise you know i mean he's sharp and so yeah he does he plays on weaknesses that are there and also introduces things that will play on weaknesses that are there and so i think it's

both and i think a lot of this and the kind of reason that i wrote the book a lot of this, and it's the kind of reason that I wrote the book, a lot of this has to do with the fact that we're not speaking the same language, right? And so one person says social justice, and they mean one thing, and another person says it, and they mean another thing. And all of a sudden, we're having a disagreement on this. And you look at different events, and people look at an event like, you know, let's say a police shooting or something like that. And one person is saying, you know, here's the injustice again. And another person is saying, wait, don't we need to wait for the facts of the case? Right. And then the person who says we need to wait for the facts of the case is accused of being insensitive because the injustice is the disparity regardless of the facts of the case if you look at it from the CRT perspective

right and so I think part of it is we have not done the work of defining terms and then I think the other thing is that there are many who have imbibed this sort of neo-Marxist critical theory, oppressor oppressed, you know, view and may not have even, you know, been able to put a name on it or know what it is. But they've absolutely bought into it, which makes this stuff sound more attractive. I mean, kindergarten through 12th grade, we spend 14,000 instructional hours in school, and we're being inundated with this neo-Marxist worldview. So it makes sense that especially the younger generations think like this already. So there's obviously a debate within the church, within the academia about whether CRT is a worldview or whether it's just a tool. And I've read some debate on both sides of this, but what I found interesting is in your book to criticize CRT,

you quoted some atheists, which means clearly you're okay with people with a different worldview making a point that you're okay with but when it comes to critical race theory it seems like you wouldn't do that so I guess the question is why can we quote atheists but not use CRT as a tool. There's a categorical error there. Okay. An atheist is an individual. CRT is an ideology. So I can quote an atheist individual, no problem,

but I'm not going to use atheism as an analytical tool because atheism is wrong now if someone who you know is is a crt devotee says something that's right and true in another area amen hallelujah praise the lord that's right and true so what people are doing is they're making this categorical error they say you know and i've heard this from people like kind of a gotcha, you know, yeah, well, you know, you can quote James Lindsay and James Lindsay is an atheist, but then you don't want to use CRT. Again, on the one hand, you have an individual who's saying something that's true and right. On the other hand, you have an ideology that is inherently in opposition to

biblical truth. Gotcha. Good clarification, by the way. So do you think there's anything positive within CRT at all? And let me qualify that before you answer. One of the ideas that's often connected with CRT is that systemic racism is embedded in institutions, not just individuals. And then it's a tool to find ways to analyze that, bring it to the surface, etc. In some ways, I look at that and I go, we shouldn't be surprised that there would be institutional racism because we believe in original sin and it affects everything so you say from your perspective there's anything positive in crt or any positives could just be found elsewhere but you gotta you gotta follow that through though they don't just say that racism is embedded in institutions they define racism as disparate outcomes again Again, that's why the worldview of CRT is inseparable from our discussions about CRT, right? And so they're going about it the completely wrong way, and they're making assumptions that are born out of a broken system and worldview.

So when they use the word racism, they're not even talking about the same thing. They're not talking about prejudice in hearts of people towards other races. That's why they believe only white people are racist. Right? So for example, there's a recent rise in crimes against Asians, violent crimes against Asians, racially racially motivated violent crimes against Asian Asians.

Now, the largest number of those crimes are being committed by black people. Now, that is a huge problem for people who argue that racism is you know prisoners plus power therefore people who are not part of the hegemonic power cannot be racist because by that definition you'd have to say that those really weren't richly motivated crimes because black people can't be racist so a professor at uh believe it was Colorado University of Colorado wrote an article, Asian professor wrote an article that basically explained that even the violent crimes by black people against Asians is rooted in white supremacy. And you have to do that in order for people to not look at the man behind the curtain, right? Because how are you on the one hand going to say you know

we got this huge problem with you know racist violent crimes against asians and on the other hand say that the people who commit most of those are from a group that by definition can't be racist that is that is self-contradictory So the way that you get around that is this sleight of hand that says, no, no, no, everything is racist and everything is racist because America is inherently racist and America is inherently racist. So I'm saying it all goes back to the worldview. It's inseparable. So you've described CRT a number of times as a worldview, and you kind of talk about it that way in your book. As you know, there's some people who have pushed back pretty strong and said CRT is not a worldview.

This language would not be used to describe it kind of historically speaking. Are you saying it's a worldview because there's examples of how it's defined that way? Or are you saying when you actually look at it and people put it into practice, it becomes a worldview whether or not people describe it that way? Tell me exactly where you land on that and why. No, I'm saying both. When you look at, you know, for example, I cite Delgado, you know, the sort of seminal work on critical race theory. And I give those four basic tenets of critical race theory, right? Those four basic tenets of critical race theory, they're worldview orientations. They're not analytical tools.

Those are the worldview assumptions that underlie critical race theory. They're not just tools. They're an ideology, and they're assumptions that have um you know they're they're they're an ideology and they're assumptions that have to be brought to bear there are a set of glasses that you have to put on set of lenses through which you have to view things in order uh to understand them according to critical race theory and i think it's undeniable so i've had on my channel a few people from different perspectives who see this differently understand it differently and one of the bigger questions i've i've asked we even frame this conversation this way is how do we have unity and you mentioned in your book you said you want

clarity and you want unity yeah even though there's differences among how to approach things like CRT today, how do we do that? Especially, I mean, your book is a pretty strong call against CRT. How do we combine like a strong call against something with saying, but we still have unity within the gospel? What does that look like, practically speaking? Well, we have unity within the gospel, but we can't have unity with CR crt that would be like saying we could have unity with hinduism right i mean who would be saying you know i we've got these people who are you know embracing hinduism but we're we're brothers in christ so how do we have unity you know while they're embracing hinduism and we're not embracing hinduism the answer is we don't we don't

we can't because hinduism is inherently in opposition to the truth of the gospel and critical race theory is inherently in opposition to the truth of the gospel this thing has to be exposed so you you would say that you understand this is one of the biggest issues facing the church today and we got to speak out on it boldly and clearly absolutely now obviously if you make that bold of a statement and you do in your book there's going to be some people who are going to say you're a you're a sellout and probably put a number of labels upon that give me your thoughts on how you okay and I read it I want to I want to hear you articulate that yeah oh yes yes you do and again the way that I respond to that is by pointing out the inconsistency.

Right. Like if you're saying that I'm a sellout and what you're also saying is there's spectrum of thought within black people, or I am a sellout, in which case you've just admitted that you've stereotyped all black people. Wow. Wow. That's a bold way to put it. Well, those of you joining us, we're here with Votibach. We want to leave some time for questions. There's a ton of comments. Quite a few people saying they're just glad you're doing better, glad to see you up and healthy, which is fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you. If you have a question for Votibach, please state it as just clearly, distinctly as you can. Put it in the comments, and I'll make sure that we come back and address that. Let's see here. Let me see what question I want to ask you. One of the things at the end, I want to make sure we don't miss this, is you end the book talking about forgiveness.

Why do you bring that in the end when you've spent time talking about certain academic issues and things that are dividing the church yeah because one of the things that is glaringly absent from and again the book is about the critical social justice movement right this broader idea and talking about critical race theory it's not a book about critical race theory it just i explain critical race theory because of the role that it plays in this broader, you know, critical social justice movement and this movement of anti-racism. And one of the

points that I make is that there is no forgiveness in anti-racism. There is no redemption in anti-racism. You are never fully forgiven. And even in critical race theory, you know, the second premise, the second underlying premise is that the idea of interest convergence theory, which states that white people are incapable of righteous actions on race unless their interests converge with those of people of color. So it's kind of like, you know, total depravity, you know? And so you do the work of anti-racism within the context of a worldview that says you can't do it righteously unless your interests converge, which means that you're never going to achieve righteousness and are just

going to have to always do the work of anti-racism. There is no there there. There is no forgiveness there. There is no hope there. So that's why I thought it was very important to end on that note, which is really just a contrast to say this is what really bothers me about this, is that, again, it just runs completely counter to the truth of the gospel. Here's a question I think that will be helpful. I'm going to weigh in with some thoughts at the beginning that if you want to jump in here, Vody. Luke Wall says, what should I do if my church leaders want to teach CRT? Here's one thing that I would suggest first is make sure they're actually teaching certain ideas that you think are opposed to the gospel.

What I mean by that is sometimes CRT is thrown around all the time and people are made guilty just by association. Labels go, and this is not really what's being taught. So do your homework, listen to people, and step number one is to go to the pastor or concern people directly, charitably, assuming there may be some kind of misunderstanding first. That's the biblical way, in my view, to start this. Would you add or tweak anything in that response, Vody? No, absolutely. You're absolutely right. And like I said before, I think one of the problems

that we're having is a problem of definitions. And we're not just clear about what we're talking about. And I think we go a long way toward true biblical unity if we just define our terms and make sure that we're talking about the same. That's one of the main reasons I wrote the book is just to sort of help define terms and just sort of lay this out from a historical perspective. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say, here's what this is, right? Not here's what the, I think this is, but here's what this is historically. Here's what this is,. Here's what this is philosophically. And my hope was that it would be willing to engage uh this person in particular oops you know what i need to remove this comment first i swear i've done this before um carlton says uh votey do you consider

conversing with bradley mason about this he's a christian who comes to a different conclusion regarding CRT and has had some good critiques? No, I don't. Okay. I mean, that's, you know, here's my thing. I don't believe that this is an issue of us not talking to each other. We know what CRT is. I don't think what we need right now is somehow to find some third way. There is no third way. And, you know, I've had discussions with people about this that very few people have been willing to sit down and have open discussions about this. And I think what's happening is, you know, there are a lot of people out there who are trying to find this third way. And what they're doing is they're bringing a false dichotomy, right?

It's kind of a fallacy of the excluded middle. There are people who are concerned about middle. There are people who are concerned about race and there are people who are not concerned about race. There are people, you know, who want to bring, you know, CRT and there's other people who want to bring, whatever, however they want to phrase it. Sure. But that's just not the case. What we have here is not a failure to communicate, right? To paraphrase a movie line. But what we have here is a lack of clarity about what it is that we're talking about. So on the one hand, I don't mind talking to anybody.

But on the other hand, I don't think this is that kind of a problem. Okay, that's fair. That helps explain where you come from. That's great. Here's one from Joel. It says, at the end of your book, you tell us to reject Daniel and Nehemiah as examples of repentance for the nation of Israel. Can you elaborate on that? No, that's not what I say.

I say to reject them as examples for the United States, right? And so what I'm saying is you can't run to Old Testament examples, you know, for two reasons. Number one, in a theocracy, right, where people are prophetic, you know, priestly representatives of the theocracy and, you know, go to God on behalf of the people. You can't get that in the United States. United States government is not that. The second thing that you can't do and people do a lot of is take individual examples of restitution, right? were wrong are still alive and present and then jump to therefore we do this for generations later where the both the offender and the offended are no longer alive okay that's helpful good good response here's one for you and you kind of answer this but maybe just give the quick response because I know this comes up a lot and you address it. It just says, you open your book, and this comes from a friend of mine, Veda. Good to see you, buddy. He says, you open your book by using your experience to illustrate why you can speak on the topic.

Aren't you borrowing from CRT when you do that? Yeah, and the answer is no. topic. Aren't you borrowing from CRT when you do that? Yeah, then the answer is no, I don't open my book to say that this gives me the authority to speak on the topic. I opened my book saying, here's who I am, especially because people have misinterpreted that, and have assumed that the reason I have the perspective that I do is because of a particular kind of experience. So those first parts of the book are not to say that, you know, hey, this gives me authority. The first parts of the book are to say there's a lot being said about

who I am, but this is actually who I am. But nowhere else, you know, I mean, nowhere in the book am I arguing from my experience. Okay, good clarification. Here's one from Simply Grace. I think this is a helpful question. Mr. Bauckham, what do you say to Christians who say CRT is just a buzzword used to shut down discussion about racial issues. Love your book. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. No country in the history of the world has talked more about racial issues than ours. And I don't think there's anything that we've talked more about than racial issues. And there may be people, I mean, there are maybe,

there are people who would use, you know, CRT or other, you know, terms and ideas in order to have a gotcha moment and to shut down a discussion, just like there are people who would use racist and white supremacist in order to do that. And so I think what we have to do is we got to put on our big boy pants and be willing to disagree and say hard things. And if we do, then nobody can shut down a discussion by using a buzzword. Okay. Here's a question that I think will be helpful to have you weigh in on from chemdy and it says hey do you believe systemic racism is a reality and if so how do we continue to confront it as a church

without being as radical as you describe things like crt to be in other words do you believe it's a reality and systemic racism you don't know no no even the concept of systemic racism is something that's born out of the assumptions of crt the the idea is the idea of systemic racism is that disparate outcomes exist because of the racist ways in which the oppressor has set up the society to oppress the oppressed so no i i reject that altogether so you look in the say the criminal justice system or the educational system you don't buy the case or police brutality you don't buy the case or police brutality, you don't believe there is systemic racism targeting certain races, even though there's a disparity of outcome? No, not at all. Not at all. No. Okay. One question for you, I'd be curious, is obviously...

In fact, you know, when you look, for example, at the criminal justice system, if you look at crime rates in the United States, you know, black people, 12% of the population, you know, commit nearly half of all murders and more than half of all violent crimes. When you look at crime rates, it could be argued that black people are underrepresented in the criminal justice system based on the level of crime that's committed. So, no, there are a lot of things. Again, these are complex issues. It's really easy. It's really easy to say, you know, black people are overrepresented here, underrepresented there. Racism, you know. We need to do multivariate analysis of these things. And we need to think about them in a much more complex way than just to scream racism every time we see a disparity.

Now, I know you know this and you talk about it a little bit in your book, but I have some dear friends who are black who told me some just deeply painful experiences and stories they've had where they really feel like they were targeted because of their race in particular in terms of just driving and by police what what would your response to that be how how could i guess two questions um how do you process when you hear experiences like that and what advice would you have for me as somebody's white to interact with somebody when hearing a story like that? Because typically I will listen, I'll ask questions, I'll show love. And then eventually if we get to some of the differences down the road, we'll talk about those. Tell me your thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right on there, right?

People tell us stories about experiences that they have and you know for example if an if an asian person comes to me and talks about their experience with a black person mistreating them and then believing that it was because of their race a black person attacking them because of their race you know and then they come to me and talk about the statistical reality that that's a preponderance of the violent crimes against Asians are committed by black people I mean I I'm gonna listen to what they're saying and and I may based on what they say to me try to help them think through whether or not they're making some assumptions and whether and whether or not, you know, they're just lumping all black people

together and whether or not there possibly could have been another reason for it. Now, here's what's interesting. The instant I switch it from police and black people to Asians and black people, nobody would say that it would be wrong to approach it that way or insensitive to approach it that way. That's because we don't have as well developed a narrative around that particular thing. And that narrative is not as emotional for us as the other narrative is. Good. So let me take a step back and ask you a simple question. I've asked with many of my friends of different minorities. What is one of the most important things we can just do as Christians

to improve racial relations within the church? Boy, I think one of the most important things that we can do is to confront this idea of racial essentialism, right? Confront this idea that I know who you are because you're white you know who i am because i'm black we look at another person who's asian or who's hispanic and we know who they are because of that i think one of the things that these this current environment is doing is in the name of fighting racism, we're making everything about race and we're basically reducing everyone to

their racial identity. And I think we have to reject that as believers. We have to understand that there's basically, you know, you can argue that there's either one race or that there's two, right? You can argue that there's one race because we all come from Adam, or you can argue that there's either one race or that there's two right um you can argue that there's one race because we all come from adam or you can argue that there's two the race of the first adam and the race of the last adam right uh but but but other than that um there are many ethnicities but but there aren't many races of people and i think for us to embrace one another as brothers in that way would go further than anything else. And to reject

these ideas that are trying to make us, you know, look at one another through that lens and through that lens only. That's a great way to do it. You said a few times in your book, you said, just because you push back on what people might assume might be a black voice. You feel that's a kind of racism towards you. And I think that's a really interesting, fair point to bring into the mix. I have so many more questions for you from your book. There's a ton here that people are asking. I apologize if I didn't get to them.

I mean, there are dozens here. One thing quite a few people said oh my goodness i mean does as if maybe even more than that is would love to have a dialogue with you and somebody uh who sees things very differently but embraces the gospel you don't have to answer that right now but i would love to host that kind of conversation on my channel not a debate understanding listening sometimes modeling that unity, I think can be very, very powerful. So if you're ever up for doing that,

let me know. And I've done that. I've done that a few times. I've done that a few times. Maybe what I'll do is try to find some links to send to you as well. Sure, that'd be great. But I'm happy to do that. I'd love to do that with you

and whoever you think would be good to bring on to do that. Oh, I appreciate your willingness. Yeah, there's a ton of recommendations here but we'll uh let let's talk about it buddy i appreciate your willingness to come on and entertain some softballs and some tougher questions talk about racial reconciliation your book fault lines i've said on many occasions on this topic crt is difficult i have a book right here a huge one critical race theory kind of just a primer from the late 90s I've been waiting through that it's heavy and it's difficult I've read some books

by left-leaning Christians conservative Christians there's so many voices out there and this issue is so pressing right now that we need to read a range of voices and criticisms to ultimately come back to what is biblical and I felt that your book fault lines is just one important contribution to the larger discussion that we're having right now so thanks for writing it and I appreciate you you coming on hang on don't disappear after I want to just chat for just a moment but those of you new make sure you hit subscribe we've got some shows coming up you're not going to want to miss going to be talking about the enneagram for example and i'll be posting a response soon to a influential atheist youtuber who critiqued me recently i think you'll find it thoughtful and

a very gracious response to him is going to be my goal this channel is brought to you by biola apologetics and if you ever thought about getting a master's degree in apologetics, we have, this might be interesting for you to know, Bodie, we have now gone fully distance in our program and have students around the world. So if you've thought about studying apologetics, we're still the top rated program. We would love to have you join us so we can train the church. So thanks everybody for tuning in. And we will be live again next week. And actually, by the way, you know what? I've got to check. This is super unprofessional, Bodhi. I'm doing this live, but I have, yep, tomorrow a live Q&A

I'm going to do at one o'clock. Just me. Bring your questions, 1 o'clock. Come on and we can hang out. So thanks all. We'll see you then.