Response to the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel

First off, I’ll agree that my rhetoric about evangelical SJWs was shorthand, and probably should have been explained better. I don’t really think of those compromising the gospel as “evangelical” so my term was specifically for those I consider mostly orthodox, but not in agreement with me on this point. And maybe they are not exactly SJWs, but statements like Thabiti’s certainly fall pretty closely in line with that philosophy.

Second, in a group like this where we discuss issues in fundamentalism, I’m going to speak less carefully than I would outside it, since my goal here is less about being careful how what I’m saying may be perceived and more about getting to the core of matters.

Third, I admit I haven’t read all the blog posts from MacArthur and others that might be inflammatory on this topic. I was specifically speaking about the Statement itself, which I have read, and which I don’t see as inflammatory. In my opinion, trying to tie a statement that you admit is one that even Thabiti calls a great statement to “background” information is like trying to judge a law that is specifically constitutional in its language by other things those who agree with it have stated. I refuse to do that.

Finally, on the “complicit” statement, I can state the following:

1. Let’s say I accept that the meeting you described actually happened in the way you describe it. If so, that’s sad, and sinful, but it’s in no way representative of all of “white” Christianity at the time, orthodox or otherwise.

2. While I can never know someone’s thoughts, my parents are not racist in any way in their speech or actions, and as much as I can determine about my grandparents (some I knew, some were dead before I could speak to them), they weren’t racist either, and I’ve never heard anything to indicate anyone in my family would “cheer” King’s assassination.

3. None of my family was at that meeting. So, that meeting is not actually germane to whether or not my family was complicit.

4. Therefore, I can say with confidence that Thabiti’s statement is false, since it doesn’t actually apply to my family. So no admissions are necessary or will be forthcoming. And I haven’t changed my mind that his stating things in the way he did was unhelpful, and not going to lead to a solution to the problem he wants to solve.

I happen to hold the now out of fashion belief that the best way I can fight racism is to NOT be racist, rather than trying “race-sensitive” things (which actually end up being racist in fact, since they treat one race different from another) in a vain attempt to make up for things that happened in the past that I had no hand in. Not to mention, I don’t believe in race anyway.

Read the Statement one day.

Prayed and thought about the truthfulness of it for one day.

Signed it the next day.

Racism is sin. I am a white man, son of Arkansas sharecropping cotton farmers, who as a teenager wept with my two white sisters when MLK was assasinated. We did not cheer. We grieved. Too assume that all white Christians were guilty of racism over MLK’s death is very racist.

i think this is fundamentally a clash of worldviews, which is why nobody understands the other. I don’t think the SJWs have a biblical worldview. I think they have a secular worldview that’s uniquely influenced by contemporary American culture.

It might be hard for you to prove since the majority of “SJW evangelicals” that we are talking about were influenced by people like John Perkins (friend of John MacArthur) or Tony Evans who were writing books about Justice and Racial Reconciliation far before today’s secular current tide of critical race theory and intersectionality came on the scene. Its more about Interpretation of the Scriptures than anything. Ideas such as group repentance didn’t just emerge in the past 20 years. Perkins was talking about in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s from his reading of the book of Nehemiah and Acts. Do you know Thabiti’s background, influences and writings enough to come to the secular worldview conclusion? How about Eric Mason’s?

I would very much agree that people are talking past each other in this conversation, but the clashes of the worldviews between Biblical and Secular seems quite a surface-level observation, unless you were making the comparisons between someone like MacArthur and someone like Jim Wallis or Tony Campolo or Rob Bell.

I would also agree with you that some of Thabiti’s writings has caused more confusion. When you have to write a long article to explain what you didn’t mean probably shows that you weren’t very clear in the first place.

My general disagreement with this line of interpretation is that it appears to be a uniquely American interpretational grid, influenced by American experiences, informed by American contexts, and shaped by American life. That is, I suspect it’s an echo chamber. I am very, very skeptical about whether this approach will even be coherent or practical to, for example, the situation I referenced with the Boers and the British Christians, and the Ukranians and the Russian Christians.

There is a huge problem with pointing to “inflammatory rhetoric” as a reason for not hearing someone out; often, what we consider “inflammatory” is what others see as “what I’m really thinking but am not willing to say publicly yet.” I remember one woman I used to work with more or less saying some fairly nasty things about one portion of my work, but it turned out that she was merely mouthing what a lot of others were thinking—that that portion of my work (ionizers with blowers and without heating coils) were freezing their hands. Sometimes the person you instinctively think is obnoxious is actually your best friend.

In this case, I think we need to remember that in our churches, our cultures developed largely in a society where racism was enforced by custom and law, yes, even North of the Mason-Dixon. We are therefore, even after repentance from things like BJU’s interracial dating policy and BJ Jr’s overt support of segregation, going to have some major blind spots. Might as well sit tight and listen when the father of some of the kids in AWANA, a local BLM activist, starts talking.

I think I asked you something like this before (or maybe not), but what one book would you recommend I read on this issue to better understand? I’ll grab it from my library and listen to it.

Dave and Jim and others,

Do you think it was wrong for Stephen to say to the Religious Elders and Scribes, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” Was it wrong for Stephen to make all of their ancestors complicit in the sin of persecuting the prophets? If not, what would be the difference between Thabiti’s use of ancestors that were generally guilty and Stephen’s use of ancestors that were generally guilty?

By the way, I feel very grateful to converse on Sharper Iron with men like you who abhor racism and have done so for many many years.

Also, I think we are overlooking the cultural differences between whites and blacks when it comes to speech and even preaching. My black brothers use much more figurative speech and allegory in their preaching and in normal conversation than my fellow white brethren who are much more propositional in their preaching and speech. Thabiti has already admitted that he meant it more figurative so I think part of talking past each other is not seeing the cultural differences and assumptions that all of us brings to the table on an issue like this.

Stephen isn’t making them complicit in their father’s crimes. He’s simply saying they’re doing the same thing their fathers did. Their fathers persecuted and killed prophets, and now they (Stephen’s current audience) have persecuted and killed the Righteous One. The pattern repeats. There is nothing there about being personally responsible for their ancestor’s crimes.

Instead of pretending we agree and that everything is semantics, I would suggest we simply agree to diasagree.

I think Thabiti and MacArthur are both capable of saying things that, when confronted, are obviously wrong. Rather than humbly say “Oops, I guess I was wrong, sorry,” they feign being misunderstood.

I am displeased when people overstate cases or set up straw men arguments and put words in the mouths of others. But I am not willing to bend over backwards and say any of these guys are always right about everything.

Logical fallacies are part of life, and they are used by people we agree with and respect and people we detest. What matters is the remaining substance.

We disagree. Thabti is not a bad communicator, nor is MacArthur. They just are both sometimes WRONG.

Tyler R said:

My general disagreement with this line of interpretation is that it appears to be a uniquely American interpretational grid, influenced by American experiences, informed by American contexts, and shaped by American life. That is, I suspect it’s an echo chamber. I am very, very skeptical about whether this approach will even be coherent or practical to, for example, the situation I referenced with the Boers and the British Christians, and the Ukranians and the Russian Christians.

Tyler, you nailed it IMO.

Tyler,

No. I didn’t say that. You misread what I said. Maybe I need to explain what I meant better. Stephen broad-brushed all of the Jewish elders, leaders, and people’s ancestors as being complicit to the crime of persecuting the Prophets. Not just the certain leaders of the ancestors that were primarily responsible for persecuting the prophets. All of their forefathers were guilty. I didn’t say anything about the audience of Stephen being complicit for their ancestor’s crimes, which doesn’t follow the text at all.

If we take Deuteronomy 24:16, Jeremiah 31:30, and Ezekiel 18 seriously, we would find that Stephen cannot be claiming that the current Jews were guilty of their fathers’ sins—one could say he was making a huge mistake, but given that he appears to have been amazingly under the control of the Holy Spirit at the time, I can’t quite go with that, either.

Why he brings it up, I think, is that he was pointing out that the same cultural factors that made it thinkable to kill the prophets then were operative at that point, too—they could protest that “we’ve changed” until they were blue in the face, but the sad reality was that the Pharisaical mindset, while excluding overt idolatry, had institutionalized yet further the tendencies that led to murdering prophets.

In other words, they had blind spots that only outsiders could help them to see. Sound familiar?

I really appreciate Joel’s comments on the differences between black and white rhetorical styles. I am all for the proper handling of propositions, say via Aristotelian categories and such, but that can and does make us rather weak in handling the huge portion of Scripture which is narrative—the places where metaphor and the like replace hard propositions. That’s one strength, really, of historically oral societies.

I believe you’re trying to drive a freight train into the white space between Stephen’s words. He’s addressing the Sanhedrin. All their fathers (i.e. the Jewish leaders from past generations) persecuted the prophets and rejected God’s revelation. This is a generalization about how apostate leadership has continually doomed Israel and Judah, because they wouldn’t listen to the prophetic warnings. The Jewish leadership of Stephen’s day has repeated the mistake by killing Jesus. That’s all Stephen is saying.

I believe you’re trying to drive a freight train into the white space between Stephen’s words. He’s addressing the Sanhedrin.

That could be. Sometimes (such as this) I argue to learn. To see if what I am saying is right or wrong and I appreciate the push back because I don’t know if I actually believe it. I am with Kevin DeYoung who said, “We need more work in the years ahead—exegetical, historical, and doctrinal—on our theology of apology.” Actually DeYoung’s approach to Corporate Repentance is what I believe is most faithful to the scriptures. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/toward-theology-…

Joel said:

Actually DeYoung’s approach to Corporate Repentance is what I believe is most faithful to the scriptures.

Thanks, Joel, for this link. You are right, it is an excellent article.

I especially appreciate these words:

We can also be held responsible for sins committed long ago if we bear the same spiritual resemblance to the perpetrators of the past.

Regarding the issue of taking responsibility as a group, we need to understand that the Bible does not always distinguish between a a group and members of a group.

Much to the disappointment of some pulpit pounders, “all” very often does not mean “everyone regardless of distinction.” We find stereotypes and many generalizations (even exaggerations) in Scripture. I believe we (in English) use the word “all” in the same way that the Biblical authors did. [Mark 7:3-4, John 5:18, Acts 19:10, Acts 26:4).

All of this means that the stronger the ties that bind, the stronger the argument for corporate identification.

Although in the very early church, some Jews persecuted Christians, the by-and-large behavior over the centuries has been extreme persecution of the Jews by Christians over centuries.

Although much of this was done by Roman Catholics, you need to remember that Luther’s rants against the Jews were used by Hitler to bolster his case. From a common Jewish perspective, the Nazis were Christians (many, were in fact, Lutherans and Catholics).

No people have been so persecuted for so long by so many nations as the Jews, but, by and large, those nations and persecutions were in the Name of Christ. It seems to me that this international wrong was both theologically based wrong and extended over a millennium. It is a greater blot on the church. Yet, for some reason, we hear little about this from our pulpits and in articles.

I think, while we are on the subject, that we need to be aware of our corporate shame in this instance more than any other.

As Americans, however, we have little to be ashamed of regarding the Jews. As members of the professing church, we have much.

And so that is perhaps another issue: our national shames (Native American genocide, Slavery, Land-grabbing from the Mexicans) and the shame is that is a longstanding (nearly) worldwide shame of Christendom, the treatment of the Jews.

To me, the theological and position papers require us to do both, because as Christians, we are also to be good citizens of the nations in which we hold our citizenship. Unfortunately, I don’t see much done with the Jewish issue. The squeaky wheel.

[Joel Shaffer]

Do you think it was wrong for Stephen to say to the Religious Elders and Scribes, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” Was it wrong for Stephen to make all of their ancestors complicit in the sin of persecuting the prophets? If not, what would be the difference between Thabiti’s use of ancestors that were generally guilty and Stephen’s use of ancestors that were generally guilty?

Sorry for my lateness here. I was out of the country and traveling back, and trying to post to SI from a phone is something I don’t really like to do.

Let me put things this way. Regardless of what Stephen was saying (and I also don’t think he was accusing his audience of guilt for their ancestor’s sins, but their own), it seems to me it would be a lot like a speaker saying “You men need to put away your pornography and repent.” That’s the kind of thing you hear from the pulpit all the time, especially from revival-type speakers. However, that’s qualitatively different from a statement like “The men in this church need to agree that they are guilty of the sin of indulging in pornography and need to repent.” One is typical rhetoric, while the other is actually accusatory to those who may not be guilty.

I suppose it’s possible that there are differences in the way pastors of different races/cultures address the audience when they speak. However, I have personally been present for at least 5 or 6 times when Thabiti has preached to a racially-mixed audience, and I don’t recall him ever making statements like the one that I referred to. That’s not his typical style. However, on that statement, he (IMO) departed from speaking truth, probably to make a point. But for me and others I have read, he accomplished exactly the opposite of what he now claims was his goal.

In my opinion, a preacher of the gospel should not be pandering to one particular audience in order to endear himself to them or to make a point. We have enough division in this country already without trying to add to it. If a speaker demands I admit to guilt for something I didn’t do, then he is indeed adding to that division. Instead, preach the gospel, tell me that racism is sin, call for repentance if necessary, and be an example to me of how to do good to ALL men.