Dr. Vody Bauckham is the author of The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicals' Living Catastrophe. His latest book, Fault Lines, is a critical look at the social justice movement and its impact on Evangelicalism.
00:00:00.000Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. Today we are talking to Dr. Vody Bauckham. He
00:00:16.200is the author of Fault Lines. Of course, he has written many books, and he has spoken
00:00:22.880many places and worked many places within evangelicalism. And you guys, I'm sure, know
00:00:28.380him well. The last episode that I did with him, almost a year ago probably, was one of
00:00:34.240my most popular episodes ever, both on YouTube and listening. And so if that is any indication
00:00:40.380to you of how good this interview that you are about to listen to is going to be, I don't
00:00:46.840know, let that be your indication because he really is such an insightful and clarifying
00:00:50.820and wise person, especially when it comes to the issues of social justice and racism that
00:00:56.540are really just so controversial within the church today. So he's going to give us a lot
00:01:02.960of his insight into that today. So without further ado, here is Dr. Vody Bauckham.
00:01:15.540Dr. Bauckham, thank you so much for joining us again. Can you please tell everyone, this
00:01:22.160is the pressing question that everyone's been asking me to ask you, and that is how you're
00:01:26.920doing health-wise? Because the last time we were supposed to talk a few months ago, before
00:01:31.660my maternity leave, you were having heart issues. And I know a lot of people in this audience
00:01:36.480have been praying for you, you know, donated, have been thinking about you. So can you give
00:01:41.140everyone an update? Yeah, I'm doing great. We ended up having to leave here and go to the Mayo
00:01:51.320Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. And I had a couple of surgeries, a couple of heart procedures,
00:01:57.820including open heart surgery. And everything went well. My heart is fixed. And I feel great. You know,
00:02:07.080I'm back in the gym. I'm back doing everything that I was doing before. And yeah, no, I'm so
00:02:12.680grateful for just all the encouragement and people's prayers and support. And it was really,
00:02:21.940I mean, the only word I can use for it is overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I am so thankful
00:02:27.160for that. I mean, praise the Lord for health care, for how I know there were a lot of logistical
00:02:32.680things that you guys were trying to figure out at the time. And so it really seemed like just the
00:02:38.460Lord's sovereignty. He just had his hand over all of that and that whole process. But during this time,
00:02:43.560you also had a book come out, Fault Lines, which I really want to talk about today. I know a lot of
00:02:49.760people listening or watching have already read it. I think we're going to go through it with the
00:02:55.020book club that I have on Facebook. Can you tell us first what this book is about and why you wrote it?
00:03:02.680Yeah. Fault Lines is a book that I've been marinating on for a while and didn't want to
00:03:10.580write, felt like I had to write. The subtitle is The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicals
00:03:18.720Living Catastrophe. And I see the social justice movement, critical social justice, as a threat to
00:03:26.500the gospel. I see much of what's happening in anti-racism as another gospel, which is no gospel
00:03:33.880at all, because there is no forgiveness of sin in anti-racism. There is no redemption in anti-racism,
00:03:42.440only perpetual penance. And so this book is really designed to help people understand what's been going
00:03:49.000on, where this comes from, and what the consequences really are.
00:03:56.540Yeah. And can you define some of those terms for us? You said, one, critical social justice. And like
00:04:02.920you said, the subtitle is The Social Justice Movement. What do you mean by social justice and critical social
00:04:09.160justice? Yeah. Well, in the book, what I try to do is outline the ideas of critical theory. And
00:04:18.520really, critical theory is neo-Marxism. It comes to us from Marx via Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist,
00:04:27.980and then the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School is where we really get the term, you know, critical
00:04:33.480theory. And so there's a whole suite of ideologies and disciplines and fields that fall under that
00:04:45.180umbrella. Critical race theory, critical pedagogy, feminist theory, queer theory, you know, all of
00:04:52.680these things. And really, the critical social justice movement is sort of the practical outworking
00:05:01.840of these ideologies. It's built on the premise of equity, not equality. Equity is about getting equal
00:05:13.160outcomes, not equal opportunities. It's based on the faulty premise that all things being equal,
00:05:20.920people from various ethnic and racial groups ought to have identical outcomes. And if they don't have
00:05:29.180identical outcomes, if they have disparate outcomes, then the only explanation for that, when it is to
00:05:35.220the disadvantage of non-white people, is discrimination, is racism. So critical social justice is the effort to
00:05:48.420rectify those inequities through redistribution, redistribution of resources, redistribution,
00:05:58.360redistribution of wealth, redistribution of opportunities, and really redistribution of power. Because critical
00:06:06.800theory really sees the world in terms of power structures and power struggles, power inequities. It separates the world
00:06:17.960between oppressors, and those whom they oppress, and really sees the struggle within a society as this struggle. It's a real, that's I mean, that's the core of Marxism. He's doing it, doing it on an economic level. But neo Marxism, critical theory, looks at it from a social level.
00:06:41.820Right. And I want to take a note, I want to make a note on equity, you talked about how equity,
00:06:49.500instead of equality, instead of equality means equal outcomes. Real equity, that is how critical social justice advocates define equity. Real equity is the equal application of the law. But critical social justice advocates have subverted it. They have changed the meaning to mean, and Kamala Harris actually said this in a video the day before the election back in November,
00:07:15.000she had a video that came out that said equity is everyone ends up in the same place. Well, that's not the real original definition of equity, but they've changed that definition to mean equality of outcomes, which is why we say that something like critical race theory does have Marxist roots, and people get very angry about that. People have, you know, they say it has nothing to do with Marxism, or you hear a lot of people within evangelicalism say, well,
00:07:42.020I'm not a Marxist, or I don't believe in Marxism, or I don't believe in critical race theory. And yet, you give a lot of very concrete examples of the outworking of CRT, and what you're calling neo Marxism, within evangelicalism. I mean, you talk about Anthony Bradley, you talk about David Platt, you talk about Tim Keller. These are all people who consider themselves conservatives. So can you talk about, you know, some of those specifics that you include in the book,
00:08:11.820why you decided to go ahead and just kind of name these people and give examples, because I imagine you got some pushback about that.
00:08:19.740Yeah, in the end, I did it because it would have been cowardly and unclear not to. If I'm writing a book and saying we have a real problem in evangelicalism, and I'm saying that this stuff is creeping into evangelicalism. And again, in the book, I make it clear that it's creeping in in different ways. For some people, they've gone whole hog, right? They are critical social justice warriors, if you will.
00:08:48.500But for other people, they haven't gone that far. They're sympathetic to these movements, and they use the language of these movements. And for another group, there are people who are really just ignorant of what's going on.
00:09:05.140But if I said that there was an issue and didn't name names, then the critique would have been, well, he says it's there, but he doesn't show how it's there.
00:09:16.600So it was necessary to do that. The other reason I did that is because the Scripture gives us both examples of naming names and a mandate, I believe, to name names.
00:09:29.540Paul in 2 Timothy names names in at least three different places. And my favorite is when he talks about Alexander the coppersmith who did him great harm, you know, as though he wants to be really clear about which Alexander it was.
00:09:44.940But then in Titus 1.9, you know, as an elder, as a minister of the gospel, I'm called to hold firm to the trustworthy word so that I can exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict.
00:09:59.940Not just refute unsound doctrine, but refute those people who contradict sound doctrine.
00:10:10.200So, you know, we both have, we have an example, or multiple examples, I should say, and we also have, I believe, a mandate to do that.
00:10:20.760One of the reasons people have a problem with it is because, really, to be quite honest, modern Christianity is so effeminate.
00:10:29.940We, you know, the 11th commandment is thou shalt be nice, and we don't believe the other 10.
00:10:36.380And anytime you do something that is as, you know, forceful, forthright, madly, if you will, there's always this kind of response to it.
00:10:50.100And the thing that amazes me is that people are more offended by me naming people's names than they are about this wretched ideology running roughshod in evangelicalism.
00:11:04.260And, you know, you say that that's the 11th commandment for a lot of people, thou shalt be nice, and yet you do have a segment that I really agree with because I see it so prevalently on the side of people who profess to be, you know, Christian social justice advocates, whatever, is you talk about a lack of clarity and a lack of charity.
00:11:27.460And I see a lot of people on that side who say that they don't want to have a debate, they don't want to have a discussion because they would maybe accuse someone like you or maybe someone like me of, you know, wanting to not being, not doing this in good faith, of maybe being dishonest.
00:11:45.460Dishonest, and so we're just not worth the time, we're not worth the discussion.
00:11:52.080And then they will applaud when someone on the other side who opposes the social justice theology is dissed or is taken down or is, you know, ridiculed in some way.
00:12:05.660I'm thinking of when Charlie dates, he called Virgil Walker Uncle Ruckus, which is, you know, a character from a cartoon who thinks that he's white.
00:12:14.540It's, you know, another way of calling him an Uncle Tom.
00:12:17.440I mean, person after person underneath, prominent Christians who would call themselves theologically conservative underneath, applauding it, saying, yeah, Charlie dates, you get them, you say it.
00:12:32.780And then those are the same people who would say someone like you, that you're stirring the pot, that you're aggressive, that you're the divisive one.
00:12:44.240Like, why is it, how do we reconcile that, that simultaneously the same people who are constantly calling for empathy and niceness and sensitivity and not to offend people have no problem offending someone like you,
00:12:57.880or slandering you or someone who represents the arguments that you and I both represent?
00:13:17.500You see all of American history and all of American society as about this wicked, evil oppression of people, this hegemonic oppression, to use Gramsci's terminology.
00:13:31.060And if that's the case, then they see it as acceptable to lash out against such overt evil, which is, I mean, it's quite ironic because, you know, one of the reasons that we do what we do is because we believe that, you know, this ideology is a pernicious ideology.
00:13:57.060But we're attacking the ideology, not individuals.
00:14:03.300And that's why even when I name people's names, I try to do it in as gracious a way as possible.
00:14:09.680It wasn't about attacking people, especially since a lot of these people were my friends and some of them my mentors.
00:14:19.800And that can be it can be really difficult, I think, to strike that balance.
00:14:24.360And I do want to make sure that people who believe the things that you and I believe that, of course, we're not just throwing around the word Marxist or calling anyone who talks about race and racism a Marxist.
00:15:17.140It starts with this idea of hegemonic power and the idea that people are oppressed by the hegemonic power.
00:15:24.380They're oppressed by the ideology that's been imposed on the culture by this hegemonic power.
00:15:32.900And because of that, that's why they talk about things like structural racism and systemic racism, right?
00:15:40.620They take it out of the individual heart and locate it in the broader society.
00:15:48.860And so, once that's done, we're having two different conversations.
00:15:54.040When you and I talk about race and ethnicity and racism, first of all, we understand that there is one race, maybe two, if you look at the race of the first atom and the race of the last atom.
00:16:05.640But secondly, we understand that ethnic pride, prejudice, you know, classic racism is about the heart.
00:16:14.940It is about demeaning individuals because we value them less than ourselves.
00:16:24.180And if we're having a conversation, and I'm talking about the heart, and you're talking about governmental structures, then we're missing each other.
00:16:33.880And so, one of the things that we need to do is we need to clarify our terms.
00:16:39.560And, I mean, that's what I'm trying to do in Fault Lines.
00:16:43.060I'm trying to sort of lay these things out so that we can be clear about what we're talking about and then have an honest discussion, debate, whatever you want to have once we've clarified our terms.
00:16:58.180Yeah, and that's the thing that I loved the most about your book.
00:17:02.400It was also very interesting in the beginning just to hear about your story, especially within the SBC and your personal experiences.
00:17:09.720They really differ from a lot of the accusations that we hear about the SBC.
00:17:16.880Obviously, you outlined differences that you guys ended up having.
00:17:20.880But there's a lot of accusations of deep racism and white supremacy, McCarthyism, of course, within the SBC.
00:17:28.960What do you make of some of the drama that we've seen and some of the allegations that we are hearing leveled against the SBC of just being this kind of racist, white supremacist entity?
00:18:07.020And they stay within the SBC because the race hustle is good, you know, for them.
00:18:13.780But there's nothing that you can point to in the SBC that says, you know, this is a racist, white supremacist entity.
00:18:22.700The other important point is that the SBC is a convention of confessing free churches.
00:18:27.920There are, I believe, 47,000 churches that make up the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:18:33.920There is no top-down authority over local churches in the Southern Baptist Convention.
00:18:39.920So for that reason also, it's disingenuous to talk about the organization and the entity as this racist organization or entity because structurally, that's not even possible.
00:18:56.580And I guess that's part of having that collectivist mindset that something like critical social justice gives you is that you don't view people as individuals.
00:19:07.700And it's so easy to just lump all white evangelicals, which you think is represented by the SBC on the side of the oppressor, and just say, well, that's what it is, without, you know, looking at what you just said, that it's not really this cohesive hierarchy, that there are churches that make their own decisions.
00:19:26.180They're preachers who preach what they're going to preach, and so to say that the entity as a whole is some white supremacist entity just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
00:19:35.120But nevertheless, there are people who talk a lot about the historic racism of just white Christianity or the white church.
00:19:43.500Jamar Tisby, you talk about this in your book.
00:19:46.660I've had a lot of people say, you know, is there anything to that, and what do we do?
00:19:52.420What do we do about the fact that, you know, parts of the white church didn't stand up for civil rights in the 1960s?
00:19:58.080Like, do we rectify that, reparations, whatever it is, or we hear that there has to be some racial reckoning within the white church?
00:20:23.580We are reconciled through Christ, because of Christ.
00:20:28.420We're reconciled to God, and we're reconciled to one another.
00:20:31.060Beyond that, when we sin against each other, right, when we offend one another, we repent.
00:20:43.420And we repent because of that reconciliation that Christ has brought.
00:20:47.900Now, what people are talking about here is the only way you get there is you go from talking about individuals to this racial essentialism that says white people, by virtue of their whiteness, are part of, you know, part of the Borg, you know, to use a sci-fi term, right?
00:21:15.300All white people, by virtue of their whiteness, are part of this entity that we call the white church and that we call, you know, white America, and are as guilty right here, right now, today, as an individual who was involved in a lynching or who owned slaves.
00:21:35.280And you just can't get there from here.
00:21:40.420Is it true that America has a very, you know, colored and sinful past as it relates to race?
00:21:54.660You know, every multi-ethnic country in the world has that.
00:22:00.240Is it true that in that context that many, you know, people, many Christians, many, you know, evangelicals, if you will, participate in that?
00:22:11.380Yeah, it's true that those people participated in that.
00:22:15.960And to the degree that there's anyone around who participated in that, then they should repent.
00:22:22.760But the idea that you can collectivize that to where, you know, everybody who has white skin is now, you know, carrying that guilt, that's absolutely ridiculous.
00:22:39.000That's just, that's just not biblical.
00:22:41.020There was an article, I don't know if you saw David, David French put out an article about kind of some of the division that's going on within David Platt's church.
00:23:00.180We talked about it yesterday on this podcast where David French, who has been a very influential conservative voice for a long time, basically said, look, structural systemic racism is not woke.
00:23:13.860And he said, you know, David Platt is right on this because David Platt said it makes a difference if you're white or black in this country.
00:23:23.920David French points to these different disparities between media and income.
00:23:27.660And he talks about redlining and all the different, you know, actually systemic racist laws that existed and how they still have an effect today.
00:23:38.220And a lot of people look at that and they say, OK, well, that does seem like a problem.
00:23:42.140Like there are these really big gaps between white America and black America when it comes to various factors of success.
00:25:34.400But what I am saying is just like it would be wrong to point to one of those things as the explanation for disparities.
00:25:43.600It's also wrong to point to the idea of lingering institutional, lingering structural, lingering systemic racism, because that's what they're talking about.
00:26:19.020You know, racial preferences for people, you know, going to colleges and whatnot.
00:26:23.140So the idea that you can point to racism as this sort of univariate, you know, reason for the disparities between people is absolutely ridiculous.
00:26:38.040And it only you only you can only do that if you accept these premises of the critical social justice movement.
00:26:47.600If you accept the assumption of the oppressor, oppressed paradigm, if you accept the assumption of the reality of hegemonic oppression, if you accept that assumption, then you view everything through that lens.
00:27:50.980And as you said in your book, not because it intends to be racist, but if its impact is so-called racist.
00:27:57.520And so if there is a law that he says create some kind of racial disparity, then that law is racist, whether or not it intends to be that.
00:28:06.460That is what the dissent in the Supreme Court recently said when it comes to, for example, like voter ID laws.
00:28:14.540If that happens to have a disparate impact on black Americans, then that law is racist, even if the intent wasn't racist, which is ridiculous.
00:28:22.280Like you said, that is not actually that's not actually biblical.
00:28:26.580And as you have argued, there are a lot of different reasons for various disparities in the same way that the fact that the Asian median income is so much higher than the white median income doesn't mean the Asians are discriminating against white people.
00:28:41.220But if you bring that up, which I have in conversation with a lot of these people, you're just dismissed as, well, that's a model minority myth, which is a tenet of CRT.
00:28:59.780And it has to be in there because it obliterates the argument.
00:29:04.020By the way, so do first generation Nigerians.
00:29:07.020First generation Nigerians do better than white people as well.
00:29:10.140And so not, you know, not to mention, you know, other black people.
00:29:15.200But one of the things we don't want to talk about the fact that when it comes to the number of hours that people dedicate to their homework, you know, you look at Asians and everybody's in their dust.
00:29:30.960You know, white people, black people, you know, so on and so forth.
00:29:44.900The other issue is, OK, if there are these structures out there, if there are these these laws out there and nobody's pointed them out to me.
00:29:54.920But but but if there are these laws out there, then what am I supposed to do?
00:30:04.340And I ask that question because a lot of the people who are now working toward anti-racism and wanting to deal with structural racism, all of a sudden, these people who used to talk about, you know, theonomists like something on the bottom of their shoe have become theonomists.
00:30:28.720You know, all of a sudden, you know, these people who have accused even me, you know, being too political.
00:30:35.520I remember in 2008 when, you know, I was talking about Barack Obama and his Marxist ideologies and whatnot.
00:30:44.100All of a sudden, these people were like, you know, you shouldn't be involved in in in politics like this.
00:30:51.260Right. Now, some of these same people are arguing for anti-racism, which is at its core political activism.
00:31:01.500And now we're saying that it's, you know, it's it's gospel work.
00:31:05.520Right. But ultimately, it's political activism, plain and simple.
00:31:10.720Yep. And well, first, I want you to explain for those who don't know, what is a theonomist?
00:31:16.720How do you see these people becoming the very thing they used to hate?
00:31:21.260Yeah. Well, theonomists are individuals who believe that the law of God ought to be applied in the civil realm.
00:31:32.640You know, to the same degree and in many of the same ways that it's applied in other realms.
00:31:39.900So, like, you know, the church and the family, for say.
00:31:42.320Right. And again, at one level, I believe all Christians are theonomists.
00:31:50.140Right. But when we're talking about theonomists, we're talking about individuals who really want to impose and act, you know, sort of Levitical and Deuteronomic laws.
00:32:04.240It's within the context of our culture or other cultures on really kind of a one to one basis.
00:32:15.840Right. And the social justice side, like they would call someone like that a Christian nationalist or they would say that that is wrong.
00:32:26.280And yet, like, because those are the same people that say the people who are anti-theonomy and things like that, which I'm not, I would not call myself a theonomist.
00:32:35.700But they are separation of church and state when it comes to things like abortion or when it comes to things like marriage.
00:32:41.960And yet they think some of these people, not all of them, but definitely people who profess to be progressive Christians think that Jesus's command to give all you have to the poor should absolutely be applied to everyone.
00:32:54.780And that that's an endorsement of socialism and would 100% apply what they see as the right version of Micah 6-8 on the country as law in the form of reparations or the redistribution of wealth.
00:33:10.320So that's how you see the same people who say anti-Christian nationalism.
00:33:14.880We don't believe that Christians should be able to influence laws at all.
00:33:17.880You crazy conservatives, they're coming along and they've got their progressive interpretation of Scripture.
00:33:23.960And they absolutely believe that that social justice interpretation of Scripture should influence laws.
00:33:32.080And so they don't believe in the separation of church and state when it comes to their version of what justice is.
00:33:38.240Is that what you're kind of talking about?
00:33:43.520And it's amazing because, you know, some of these same people have argued against this sort of cultural transformation.
00:33:55.720They've argued against the idea that, you know, we would apply the gospel, you know, and apply the law more broadly than just being about, you know, the salvation of souls.
00:34:09.500And some of these people now are making arguments to apply the law of God in a much broader sense to political issues like the ones that you mentioned, like the idea of reparations, for example.
00:34:29.420People, you know, they want to go to Old Testament texts, Old Covenant texts and bring those texts in and say, you know, we need to do this in American law, just like we find it here in this Old Covenant text.
00:34:45.380And I just I find it fascinating because some of these same people, you know, were pointing at me not that long ago saying that, you know, you know, I was I was I was I was too much into into politics and too much into, you know, fighting cultural wars and, you know, dealing with these things outside of the church.
00:35:11.800Yep. And we got a lot of cultural warriors now. And two points on that.
00:35:17.420One, that was one thing that David French said in his article.
00:35:20.200He used an example of David asking for mercy from the from the consequences of sins that had been committed by past Israelites.
00:35:27.280And he used that as a precedent for us today, you know, repenting for sins of our past of, you know, the sins that our ancestors committed and things like that.
00:35:38.200Obviously, we believe that there are consequences for generational sin.
00:35:42.640However, I see this a lot that, you know, like you said, the idea of reparations or repenting for something that my so-called ancestors did the same way Israel did without recognizing or pointing out that one America is not modern day Israel.
00:35:59.580When David is talking about his ancestors or Daniel or any of the people in the Old Testament asking for mercy from the sins of, you know, their ancestors, they're talking about actual ancestors.
00:36:09.780They're not talking about like when I say, oh, and when any white person in America says, oh, my ancestors owned slaves, they really just mean some white American sometime 200 years ago.
00:36:21.020They have no idea if their ancestors actually committed or owned slaves.
00:36:36.320Well, that's one thing for sure that we're not allowed to talk about.
00:36:40.540I was actually I was looking at a terrible story this morning about I think it was like 3,400 Nigerian Christians who have been terrorized and hacked to death in the past few months by radical Nigerian Islamists there.
00:36:53.320That kind of thing, I know, you know, is happening all the time.
00:36:58.800Intraracial, if you want to use that term, injustice, that apparently we're just supposed to turn a blind eye to because of this myopic sense of the world that it's white versus black, white oppressors versus black oppressed.
00:37:12.180Do you see the consequences of that, of our compassion becoming too narrow along white, black lines that we turn a blind eye to other things?
00:37:49.140And it would be interesting and funny to me when pastors who would have a church that was, you know, 60-40 black-white would, you know, break their arm patting themselves on the back because they had this, you know, diverse church and they're seeing this picture of the kingdom.
00:38:04.260When, you know, within 10 miles of their church, there's, you know, 70 different ethnic groups that aren't represented in their church.
00:38:14.900And we don't care anymore about those 70 other ethnic groups.
00:38:20.380But to go back to what you were talking about before, this point about, you know, corporate guilt and how we respond corporately to guilt.
00:41:32.300You know, and I sort of outlined that.
00:41:34.380And I let, you know, Delgado and others, you know, speak for themselves in the book in giving those tenets of critical race theory, which really come to us from, you know, its grandfather critical theory.
00:41:47.740But yeah, and here's the other thing, because it's narrative-based, right?
00:41:53.340We say what's true about America, the 1619 projects, for example, if you really want to know what America is based on, you don't look at the documents that were written.
00:42:06.600You go back, not to 1776, you go back to 1619, and you talk about something, you know, incidental, like, you know, that's, you know, when slaves came to America in 1619.
00:42:22.600And you say, that is what America is really about.
00:42:54.740What's crazy about that is you'd have to believe that people had to come to America in order to have slaves, which means you'd have to ignore that virtually every culture in the history of the world had slaves.
00:44:19.640And there's enough, you know, there's enough truth sprinkled in to, I think, make it believable.
00:44:25.700For example, kind of going back to, well, how do we square the whole reparations thing when there's so much math that just doesn't seem to add up?
00:44:32.160The narrative that we hear is that there is an unbroken legacy of slavery from 1619 to today that went from slavery to Jim Crow and then to mass incarceration.
00:44:44.080That's what we hear today is like the new form of slavery.
00:44:48.260We saw on the 4th of July, Representative Cori Bush said Black people aren't really free today.
00:44:52.600And so there are people who really believe that basically slavery is still happening and therefore every black person does deserve a check from a white person because just by nature of being on the side of the oppressor and the side of the oppressed, you know, they would say I'm upholding probably even you are upholding these racist systems.
00:45:12.020And therefore I owe the people who have been victims of that racist system, whether or not they actually have ancestors who were slaves.
00:45:21.440And so that's how they get around that.
00:45:23.040But you talk about in your book, I've talked about many times, Thomas Sowell busts that narrative time and again of this unbroken thread of oppression.
00:45:33.300Yeah, Sowell and others kill it because what they show is this dramatic improvement in the lives of black people after slavery up until in the first hundred years, for example, after slavery.
00:45:49.980A lot of the things that we see now are far worse today than they were in those hundred years after slavery.
00:46:00.140You know, for example, back then it was, you know, highly unusual.
00:46:03.840Less than 20 percent of, you know, black children would have been born out of wedlock back then, you know, compared to now.
00:46:10.320There were times during that hundred year period, large swaths of that hundred year period where employment rates were higher among blacks than there were among whites, for example.
00:46:21.260And so as bad as things were, when there's, you know, actual, real, in-your-face racism, you know, many of the things that we blame on systemic and structural racism today were actually better than what we're seeing now.
00:46:42.000And so, you know, Sowell's work, and you notice a lot of people don't talk about Sowell.
00:47:09.540And so reading his books is not necessarily as exciting or sometimes as compelling as reading, you know, maybe Nicole Hannah-Jones or someone like that.
00:47:21.720He looks at the data, even the data that might not seem to support some kind of conservative conclusion.
00:47:28.100Like, he is not afraid, he's not, he's not afraid to talk about that.
00:47:32.120And he talks about, of course, he believes, and this is a theory, and I think you would acknowledge this, that it's really the welfare state that started in the 1960s, that started to create some of the disparities that we're seeing today.
00:47:42.660But it's also this whole narrative of the reason disparities exist is only because of the legacy of slavery from 1619 on is also disrupted by the fact that you see in the 1960s that the white fatherlessness rate goes up at the exact same rate.
00:47:59.480Not the exact same numbers, but the exact same rate at the black fatherlessness rate.
00:48:04.640So if the black fatherlessness rate, which is what we hear is because of mass incarceration and the war on drugs that targeted specifically black people, then why is it that from the 1960s on, we also see the white fatherlessness rate go up at the same, go up at the same rate?
00:48:21.540Again, still there's a disparity there, but there are way more white fatherlessness homes, white fatherless homes than there were in the 1960s as well.
00:48:30.500And so, like, what's the explanation for that?
00:48:33.700All of this, the whole social justice narrative sounds really good until you just start to think a little bit.
00:48:50.400And the problem is that the critical social justice movement is operating from a worldview and from presuppositions that say racism is the only acceptable explanation.
00:49:08.580In fact, in her book, White Fragility, you know, and I talk about this in Fault Lines, but Robin DiAngelo has a word for it.
00:49:36.660The only reason that we have this disparity is racism.
00:49:40.760And, you know, if you're arguing that there's another reason for it, well, that's just because you're a racist, which proves that racism is the cause of all of our problems.
00:49:52.240And it's ironic because we get to have our cake and eat it, too.
00:50:48.520Not every group of individuals has the same set of skills, the same set of desires.
00:50:58.000Not everybody wants to do the same thing.
00:51:00.000Not everybody's interested in the same thing.
00:51:02.560And so, you know, again, Thomas Sowell, we talked about Thomas Sowell, but his book, Discrimination and Disparities, you know, I think if people haven't gotten a hold of that, you need to get a hold of Thomas Sowell's book, Discrimination and Disparities.
00:51:17.160And what he shows is how everywhere in the world you have huge disparities among groups of individuals and people who, wherever they go in the world, you know, tend to excel.
00:51:36.280And, you know, it's a fascinating read.
00:51:39.860And like you say, it's incredibly fact-based, fact-based.
00:51:43.420And what I love about it is it gets out of the system that we have in the United States and demonstrates how everywhere in the world you find this.
00:52:39.660And Sol also in that book, people are going to think that I'm paid to promote discrimination disparities because I talk about it all the time, too.
00:52:47.340But he also makes the argument, like, he dismisses, which this isn't a popular argument anymore, but maybe it was at one point, that there are, like, inherent biological differences between the races that make some races more successful, other races less successful.
00:53:02.180He dismisses that by, like you said, looking at world history and saying, okay, well, you know, the Jewish people were really successful in this area at this time.
00:53:11.180They weren't in this area at this time.
00:53:13.480Same with, you know, Scandinavian people.
00:53:14.940He just talks about there are different cycles in history, different places where people are, different principles that certain groups follow that then change after a few generations that change the outcomes for people.
00:53:26.440And also, yes, there are systems in place that oppress people.
00:53:29.240Obviously, the Jewish people are familiar with that, has nothing to do with their own choice.
00:58:45.580And, you know, again, when people, there's catchphrases like that, right, that just sort of make, you know, make red flags just wave everywhere.
00:58:57.580When somebody starts talking about racial injustice, right, and in order to help people understand the significance of this, I point to the George Floyd case.
00:59:09.980And so we look at what happened with George Floyd, and everybody's like, that's the smoking gun, you know, that's the case right there that demonstrates and that proves this racial injustice.
00:59:21.140And they couldn't, you know, we couldn't hide this because we caught it on film.
00:59:24.560What's interesting is, you know, in the Chauvin case, they didn't just throw the book at him, they threw the library at him, right?
00:59:31.540I mean, they charged him with everything that they could conceivably charge him with, but they didn't charge him with a racial crime.
00:59:53.500Yeah, we're supposed to just assume that.
00:59:54.940But we assume that because we have the assumption that disparities can only come from discrimination.
01:00:04.400And so we look at disparities in, you know, killings, you know, with police, so on and so forth.
01:00:11.780And, you know, by disparities, what we mean is, you know, a thousand people killed by police on average every year.
01:00:18.840About 500 of those being white people, about 250 of those being black people, right?
01:00:22.860So, you know, twice as many white people as black people being killed by the police.
01:00:26.440And most of both races being armed, by the way.
01:00:29.000Very rare that an unarmed person is killed by the police.
01:00:32.100Only a fraction of those will be killed by the police who are unarmed.
01:00:36.580But even that, it's more white unarmed people than it is black unarmed people.
01:00:41.660But then they go to, no, no, no, well, black people make up 13% of the population, but, you know, 25% of the unarmed people killed by police.
01:00:49.660So it's that disparity in and of itself that proves the point.
01:00:57.120That's why you can come back to the George Floyd case and say that was racial injustice.
01:01:16.440And it doesn't point to the other disparities that no one wants to talk about.
01:01:22.060There are also disparities when it comes to homicides, when it comes to violent crime.
01:01:25.920Like you can say that, yes, there are only 13% of the population, but make up 25 to 37% of unarmed killings, whatever it is, by the police.
01:01:34.280But, okay, there are also some other, there are also some other disparate statistics that we would have to talk about that 13% of the population also commits 40% of the homicides and also gets, you know, a majority of abortions.
01:01:47.940And that's really sad, but we're not allowed to talk about those real problems that are really killing black lives, those two issues.
01:01:54.920And I can't talk about those disparities.
01:01:57.180And I guess it's because of the presuppositions that you're talking about.
01:02:00.120And because this is ultimately about power, the bottom line here is that this is about power.
01:02:07.500So you start with these assumptions about the oppressor and the oppressed and about hegemonic power.
01:02:13.860And what do you do with this hegemonic power?
01:02:17.900You have to, there has to be a revolution.
01:02:21.860Critical theory is revolutionary, right?
01:02:24.160And this revolution has to overthrow the hegemonic power and replace it.
01:02:42.960When you find yourself in a position where, you know, you've got, you know, white people bowing down to black people and, you know, you've got organizations out there trying to, you know, find people to throw money at.
01:02:57.420When you've got universities out there trying to find black people to fill seats in their university, both in terms of, you know, students and faculty, you know, when you've got these kinds of things happening, there's a vested interest.
01:03:15.640Yeah, and it goes back to what you were saying earlier about all these people who called you too political when you were talking about the election.
01:03:34.100And when you ask a lot of these Christians, like, okay, what do we do?
01:03:42.320It always essentially comes down to voting Democrat.
01:03:46.700Like, that's, that ends up being what it is.
01:03:49.320Well, they'll say, fight for justice, we'll fight for racial justice, advocate for these causes, or, you know, advocate for these programs or redistribution.
01:03:57.280So really what you mean is vote for the same party that has been running majority black cities for decades.
01:04:04.780Like, why do we expect that voting Democrat again is going to help the very communities that you say are oppressed and yet are led by Democrats?
01:04:13.560But that's always what it ends up coming down to.
01:04:15.740Yeah, I mean, it's a believable answer.
01:04:19.280It gets away from the issue of the heart.
01:04:22.180It puts this into the realm of politics.
01:04:25.040And that's why I believe it's sinister and why I believe it's demonic.
01:04:28.560Because ultimately, this gets us away from preaching the true gospel.
01:04:32.520This gets us away from calling individuals to repent before a holy God because of their sin.
01:04:40.880Also, in terms of racism, you know, it's interesting when you read, you know, a lot of the books that are out there, when you read, again, I list a lot of them in my book.
01:04:52.680But when you read them, one of the things that they're doing is they're telling people, listen, you've got to stop being offended by the idea that you're a racist because racism doesn't mean what you think it means.
01:05:17.780That says to the person, even a person who really is racist, it says to them that the problem is not inside you, the problem is outside of you.
01:05:30.200That gets us away from the real sin issue.
01:05:36.560It gets us away from the power of the gospel.
01:05:39.500It gets us away from that individual doing business with God, right, and recognizing that that's a sin for which Christ came to die, and that the only way around that is through repentance and faith in him.
01:05:56.360You can just go do the work of anti-racism, which essentially is, you know, apparently complaining on Twitter about disparities.
01:06:05.540Yeah, that's the cheap form of sanctification that doing the work does.
01:06:12.000And there's no, like, there's no hope at the end of it either.
01:06:15.300Like, we hear that you'll always be racist.
01:06:18.400You'll, you'll, you're never really as a, especially as a white oppressor, going to completely divest of your whiteness and your racism and your oppression and all of that stuff.
01:06:28.400But you just need to keep on doing the work, which is voting Democrats, saying the right things, performative activism.
01:06:38.420What do you think the future of all of this is?
01:06:40.660Like, do you think that people within the church are waking up to it?
01:06:43.580Because I'm starting to just, I'm sensing, like, I don't know.
01:06:49.720People are very angry about, they think that Marxism is a boogeyman, they think that CRT is a boogeyman, and that it's not real, that we're making too big of a deal of it.
01:07:00.640And I'm just worried that it's going to end up backfiring.
01:08:00.400And the reason I titled the book Fault Lines is because, you know, that metaphor was what best described what I saw.
01:08:11.380That, you know, there is this divide and, you know, I grew up on a fault line in Los Angeles and experienced the earthquake, you know, a couple of times in my life.
01:08:23.380But when you live on a fault line, you know, that it's always just a moment away, right?
01:08:31.400The big one is always just a moment away.
01:08:35.120And I think we're in the middle of—I don't know if it's the big one, but it's a big one.
01:09:13.420But when it comes to the problem that what we're talking about, it is essentially a problem of the heart, and it has to be treated as that.
01:09:22.400You can't get political solutions to heart problems, and I think that's the disconnect that we're seeing here.
01:09:29.760Can you just end us with some more encouragement and where people can get your book?
01:09:39.860You know, my encouragement is this, that the kingdom of God is undefeated.
01:09:45.040And, you know, the kingdom of God is not about to take a loss now.
01:09:50.180And even though, you know, we talk about this being catastrophic in terms of, you know, what's happening in evangelicalism, it's not catastrophic in terms of the kingdom.
01:10:05.640And so, you know, we fight, we engage in this fight, but we recognize that regardless of what we see with our eyes, in the end, the Lord reigns.
01:10:21.140The Lord wins, and he will protect his bride.
01:10:23.840He will preserve his bride no matter what.
01:10:26.100You know, in terms of where people can get the book, you know, you can get it anywhere that books are sold.
01:10:32.700I just encourage people to go to local bookstores because even though this book, you know, I mean, this book was a national bestseller.
01:10:42.380You know, it debuted at number seven on Publishers Weekly, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestsellers list and spent weeks and weeks on bestsellers list.
01:10:54.280And yet, you know, you go into a Barnes and Noble and either they won't have it or it'll be in the back somewhere or hidden away on the shelves.
01:11:04.800But it won't be up on, you know, kind of trending or bestselling, you know, books or anything like that.
01:11:10.640So I'm encouraging people to go to their bookstores and ask for the book and encourage them to get it in stores.
01:11:20.080Even Christian bookstores are not carrying the book.
01:11:23.960Like, it's interesting, Lifeway had their, you know, bookstore open at the Southern Baptist Convention and they didn't carry the book.
01:12:02.040And it's not surprising because, you know, this was a book that, you know, evangelical publishers, for the most part, did not want to touch.
01:12:13.860I mean, the big boys were not going to touch this.
01:12:17.340And so, you know, shout out to Salem Books for, you know, being courageous.
01:12:24.060And you see, you know, over here, Christianity and Wokeness, Owen Strand.
01:12:33.060And then, you know, over here, you see, you know, Fault Lines.
01:12:39.100It's no coincidence that Salem published both of those books because other publishers, they did not want to touch these books.
01:12:47.180And you're just not finding books from an anti-critical social justice perspective.
01:12:55.220You're not finding it in Christian publishing houses.