Ep 985 ｜ Why DEI Always Leads to LGBTQ ｜ Guest： Delano Squires
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
167.1781
Summary
Delano Squires joins Allie and Wenndy to discuss his new book, First Comes Love: Restoring Marriage as the Foundation of Black Family Life, and what it means to be a Christian in the 21st century.
Transcript
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Was MLK a Christian? Should Christians be admiring him the way that we have for so
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many decades? Also, what can be done to ensure that the Black community in the United States
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succeeds? Today, we are talking about all of this and much, much more with my good friend,
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Delano Squires. You guys love him. He is always bringing the truth in such a memorable way.
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We are going to analyze all kinds of culture war things going on, specifically the kind that are
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particularly affecting Black Americans. And you guys, y'all are going to love this conversation.
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It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com.
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Use code Allie at checkout. That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.
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I'm working on a few things. I'm writing a book.
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Sure. Yeah. I'm writing a book. Title is still up in the air, but the point of it,
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my central thesis is that we need to restore marriage as the foundation of Black family life.
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So it's about rebuilding the Black family, building a marriage culture.
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My title, preferred title, is First Comes Love, Restoring Marriage as the Foundation of Black Family Life.
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Lord willing, it'll be out next year. So I'm writing it as we speak. And I'm very excited about that.
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Yeah. I love that. When do you think marriage no longer became a high priority, both in our culture in general?
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Because it's a problem no matter what race. But you're specifically talking about the Black community.
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Well, everyone likes to reference the Moynihan Report that came out in 1965.
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At that point, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the Black community was one in four.
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That was considered a national emergency. It crossed over 50% in the mid-80s and has been at or around 70% since the late 90s.
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So sometime in between then, you know, I think people got the notion that marriage was not a necessity for having children.
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And part of what I'd say in terms of rebuilding a marriage culture, and to your point, this is a more general argument, right?
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Because of the sort of four major ethnic groups. Asian Americans are the only ones below what I call the Moynihan threshold at 25%.
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So as I said, for the Black community, 70%. For Hispanics, it's 52%.
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For white Americans, it's 28%. Non-marital birth rates. And for Asian Americans, it's 13%.
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So I think what we have to do is make the case that marriage is valuable, desirable, accessible, and indispensable with respect to having a family.
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So first half of the book, we'll be talking about the things that destroyed the Black family or got us to the point that we are today.
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And then the second half will be ways to rebuild the Black family. And not just theoretical, but certain things that will be tangible that both individuals can do, right?
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That I have a call both to Black men and Black women, as well as institutions, right?
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I have the chapter I'm working on now is basically making the argument that if we want to save the home, we have to get four houses in order.
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The church house, the school house, the state house, and the art house.
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Where do you think the Black church comes in? I mean, depending on how you define that, predominantly Black churches in America, do you feel like they have pushed family values or not really?
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Well, it depends on which churches you're talking about, right?
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Obviously, you and I both know solid gospel preaching, Bible teaching, Black preachers.
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But I think when people talk about the Black church in general as its own sort of cultural phenomenon, the subset of churches within that sort of descriptor, the ones who see economic inequality and systemic racism as sort of man's highest forms of bondage, those are the ones I'm worried about.
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And I think those churches have become highly political, almost always skewing to the left.
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And for them, I don't see sort of marriage and a nuclear family as a high priority, not one that they express publicly.
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I'm not saying that these pastors and preachers don't care about the family.
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But they spend a lot more time, you know, promoting abortion and talking about marriage equality, quote unquote, promoting all manner of things, LGBT.
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And I don't see sort of family restoration as a large priority or an important thing that they want to talk about.
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So part of it is going to be a call to them, to those churches to, in many respects, repent and begin to teach sound doctrine.
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Because the thing, you can't even get to the family if some of these churches are afraid to declare that there are only two sexes and switching is not allowed.
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But for many of them, they are very soft on all manner of issues.
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And I think part of it is because, to put it frankly, pride has become the new Black.
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And there are churches, a generation ago, the Christians that sort of filled the ranks of the NAACP and march in the civil rights movement, so on and so on and so forth.
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Those people don't understand the degree to which sort of our cultural tectonic plates have moved.
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So I actually put this on Twitter the other day to a guy, and I said, if a Black baker in Jackson, Mississippi refused to make a cake celebrating a transition, a gender transition, that was requested by a white customer, what side do you think the NAACP would be on?
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I know that for the NAACP, it's all about, you know, trans rights and LGBT rights.
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And they would publicly attack that Black Christian baker for standing on his biblical principles.
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But they're certainly not going to stand up for him.
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And I think it's important for people like him, men and women like him, particularly Black Christians, to understand that.
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Because as Nicole Hannah-Jones said, there's a difference between Blackness sort of racially defined and Blackness politically defined.
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And to be a Black person in good standing, for your Black card to be accepted where they typically are, you have to affirm basically every part of the left's progressive agenda.
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And I hope this is a call that they'll be willing to take up.
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You know, I was talking to someone the other day about an organization called La Leche League.
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And it's an organization that is supposed to support women in breastfeeding and provide resources and things like that.
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Like many of these organizations over the past few years, they say chest feeding, like it's on their official website.
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Human milk, they won't even say breast milk, is absolutely insane.
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And I posted about it the other day on Instagram, and someone responded to me and said, you know, I've been working with La Leche for years now.
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And what happened was, you know, it was started by Christian women with good intentions.
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But then we had activists fill the ranks who came in and supported kind of CRT-based initiatives first.
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And then very often what happens is that the LGBTQ activists will piggyback on that and say, see, you learned the lesson of inclusion when it came to making sure that, you know, Black mothers are being seen and taken care of.
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Well, now you also need to ensure that trans men or trans women are being seen and taken care of.
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Now, of course, we know that those two things are different.
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But I do see this a lot in organizations that first comes, hey, we need to ensure that we are treating everyone fairly.
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We need to make sure that we have equal treatment, that we are ensuring that we are giving, you know, Black prospects a chance, whatever it is.
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And then that kind of grows into away from equality into equity, all the DEI that we see.
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And that's, I think, so often what happens, and that does seem to be what happened with the NAACP, the Black church or just kind of civil rights activism in general, just putting it all in the same bucket.
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That a man who wants to become a woman is in the same oppression category as a Black woman.
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Yeah, I think, to me, when I think of sort of DEI hires, and I'll use a name that I know you're very familiar with, I think of Sam Brinton, right?
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The former Biden administration official who, before coming to office, was, to his position, was a known puppy play enthusiast.
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But this is a person, and you can tell that it's sort of a DEI hire, so to speak.
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And I generally don't use, you know, terms like this without explaining them, but I think the audience knows what I'm talking about.
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Because when he was hired, what was celebrated was his non-binary identity, quote-unquote non-binary identity.
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I mean, he's a transvestite who liked to do, you know, public fetish and kink stuff with other men.
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I mean, I don't know why we just can't say that.
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But when you start to equate that with, to your point, you know, Jackie Robinson crossing the color line in Major League Baseball.
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Then I think you have some serious category errors.
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And one of the things that is not lost on me, particularly with Christians, is that there are those believers who, they think that they would have been on the front lines of the civil rights movement, right?
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And in fact, they will say, you know, we celebrate Dr. King because the civil rights movement was sort of grounded on a Christian and biblical framework.
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So they celebrate Dr. King for using his Bible to destroy the color line.
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But then they would attack believers today for using our Bibles to defend the sex binary.
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And a lot of times they think that sort of social justice is about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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And these are the same people who are silent on the Equality Act of 2021.
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So it takes a lot more courage today to just say, like, again, there are only two sexes and switching isn't allowed.
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And many of the Christians who prattle on about social justice are simply unwilling to do that.
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It's an ideology that just kind of blinds you to reality and blinds you to what is.
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And that's why it can never accomplish justice, because justice that is not grounded in reality and grounded in truth can't be just.
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No. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're seeing that play out in the culture right now.
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And, again, seeing the ways in which people, again, you get asked a simple question about gender or sexuality.
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And many Christians just feel like they can't answer.
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And it's conditioning a sense of cowardice in the culture.
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And I think some of that is bled over into the church.
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So I hope that spirit sort of is broken in the coming years, but it's going to take courageous Christians who are willing to stand up and say,
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no, I'm not going to be bullied into going against God's word on these particular things.
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And I don't care who. I don't care if it makes me, again, you know, a bad black person to say, well, actually, I think, you know, it's male and female because that's what God said.
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Don Staley, the coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks, the women's basketball.
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Right. So it's really interesting how women's basketball has made its way into like my attention.
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It is become almost like a cultural conversation right now, largely because of Caitlin Clark on the Iowa team.
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But then you've also got this like duel somehow between what's that coach's name?
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And so it's become like, I don't know, discourse, the dialogue.
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But I do want to talk about Don Staley, who has kind of become this media darling.
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She's very, at least like left wing coded in that she is black, androgynous.
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But apparently she doesn't have like the same tactics as the other coach.
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She is, I don't know, she's like a different kind of coach than her.
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But the media has basically hoisted her up as some kind of progressive hero.
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So it's interesting when she was asked just the other day before the championship, what
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do you think about, you know, trans women so-called playing basketball?
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If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports or vice versa, you should be able
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Do you think transgender women should be able to participate in college basketball?
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So she basically says if you identify as a woman, if you say that you're a woman, then
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Um, see, it is one thing when the gender ideology sort of stays in the realm of feelings
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And when a six foot eight, 270 pound man puts an elbow in your chest, I mean, the average
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But even women who are, you know, sort of high level basketball players would do the same.
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And actually, Lisa Leslie, again, who's a WNBA great, um, was asked this question years
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I've played with Magic Johnson and, you know, and, and I can hold my own, but she said, taking
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It's just a different, the, the, the difference in terms of physicality, size and strength and
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power and speed, particularly in basketball is so apparent.
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I'll give you a couple of examples in 2017 WNBA put out a video of all of the dunks in
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Up until that point, 20 years of history, the video was a minute long, one minute, all
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of them were basically women barely getting over the front of the rim.
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Um, there have been eight dunks in NCAA women's history.
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The last player to dunk, I want to say was 2022.
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Um, you, you, it's just a completely different game.
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And I'm sorry, this might be a stupid question, but are the Nats the same height for men and
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And they certainly look that way on, on, on TV.
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Um, another example, and I've, I've used this before, like the fastest woman, the fastest
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hundred meter, um, time in history is Florence Griffin Joyner, right?
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That is not even one of the top 7,000 fastest times for men.
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In fact, several high school boys have bested that time.
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Um, I'm not saying any of this to denigrate female athletes.
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I'm saying this to say that there are differences between men, um, and women and people who act
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I think one, are engaging in a serious acts of public cowardice, two, are deluding themselves, right?
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Um, and three, to your point, I think are often lying about things that they know better about.
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And, and one of the things that I say is that it's funny to me because many of these women publicly over the years have built at least part of their personality on being women who have forged a path in spite of the headwinds of sexism.
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And, you know, always having to do, go above and beyond to show that I'm just as good as the boys and so on and so on and so forth.
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But the minute a group of men show up and say, Hey, well, um, look at me, look at me.
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They all just say, Oh, okay, well, I shouldn't say anything.
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And to me, particularly some of the loudest feminists have finally found a group of men they can submit to.
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Um, and I think that that is, it is fascinating to see this play out because one of the things that I saw in terms of the,
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the journalists who asked the question is people attacked him and said it was a gotcha question.
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And he tried to show her up and I'm thinking, wait,
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is this the same sort of sports landscape that spent the last eight years protesting during the anthem?
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Opining on police violence, um, the second amendment, guns, um, the presidential election, black lives matter.
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And now when a female coach at the highest level is asked a question about women's sports,
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now all of a sudden that's too political to discuss.
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Jamal Hill said the truth is that there isn't a single transgender woman competing in division one
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women's basketball, meaning none were competing at the final four or on Don Staley's team.
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You wanted to troll, you wanted the clicks and you were looking for a reason to put a target on
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Oh my, Jamal Hill of all people saying this, that's not journalism.
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But then again, given who you work for, none of this is surprising.
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And you said for the past eight years, we've seen athletes.
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So yeah, this is exactly what you just, just said.
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And then you said, just say you're scared and keep it moving, which is true.
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This is obviously something that we've seen in other sports.
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Interestingly for mysteries, uh, mysteries, just beyond our comprehension, we don't see
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women who identify as men trying to infiltrate the NBA and the NFL.
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I don't care about the privacy and the safety and the fairness of the women that I coach that
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Um, I want, uh, men to be able to play, which means that there are women who won't get the
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spot, women who won't get the scholarship, women who are going to be injured, women who
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lose the championship game because they are competing against a male who went through male
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puberty, has greater bone density, greater muscle mass, greater aerobic and anaerobic
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capacity, is taller than them, stronger than them, has a bigger heart than them.
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Um, and of course, if that had been the rule all along, there would be no women's basketball.
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Um, so I don't know whether she really believes this or if she's like, you know what?
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It's easier for me to say this because she's like, it's probably not going to happen.
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Because, um, people keep saying, oh, there's no division one, you know, trans athletes.
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Now, I remember a couple of years back, and this is actually pre sort of Bruce slash Caitlyn
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Um, there was a man named, I want to say his name is Gabrielle Ludwig, who identified as
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Now, the other thing is this guy was 52 years old and was playing.
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I mean, he was a head and a half, um, above the women he was playing with.
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And I, and I, and I think this might've been division three or division two, uh, but ESPN
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covered it, you know, sympathetically as, as they do, cause they're part of the sort
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Um, but yeah, to hear Jamel Hill say this, Colin Kaepernick's personal scribe, I just,
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I just found that, you know, somewhat interesting, ironic because again, she's been one of the
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main people pushing, um, partisan politics into sports.
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And, and for me, it's not just the issue itself, but behind that question.
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From that reporter are thousands of girls in middle school and high school and middle school
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and high school who have been crying out for some woman with power, influence, and authority
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And aside from your Sage Steele's and your Riley Gaines's and a handful of other women
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in sports and media, um, the silence has been deafening.
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And, and, and I think, and I hope what these young women are learning is that look, when
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it comes down to it and it's, and it's time to fight, the sisterhood is going to abandon
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Um, the progressive sort of second, third, fourth wave feminists who talk all the stuff about
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They go from I am woman, hear me roar to this is a man's world in, in a split second.
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It's like, no, it's, it, to me, it's not, it's not about testosterone levels.
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The question is simple, but the issue is simple.
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So therefore men should not be in women's sports.
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So I don't believe you should have to test people.
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And well, if he was on estrogen for three years post, I'm to me, all of that is nonsense.
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Um, but it just shows you how deeply this issue has sort of sunken into the ground.
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Like the roots of gender ideology are deep in our culture and is going to take a lot of
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time and a lot of effort to pull them out because this is, if the Biden administration
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has its way, this will be enforced via policy, via, via changes to title nine, which will
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And when, once that happens, I think it's game over and no pun intended.
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I've heard it said that identities don't compete.
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And so it doesn't matter what you declare, what you say, how you dress, even what hormones
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you decided a few years ago to start putting in your body.
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At the end of the day, if your body is male, if it was ever male, I mean, it's always male,
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but you know, presenting as male, you don't belong in women's spaces, not in our bathrooms,
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Not in women's prisons, where you can impregnate your cellmate.
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And I'm not saying that it's not justified that they're there for whatever reason, but
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Like in a country that has said that, you know what, like the death penalty is too distasteful
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for us, even for the most violent child rapists, even for some of the most violent murderers.
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We are willing to subject women who are in prison for much less crimes to perpetual torment
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And we've decided that that's okay in the name of LGBT inclusion.
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The last thing I'll say about the sports thing is that I think sometimes what you need to
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sort of break the fever is for the level of ridiculousness to sort of get so high that people
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And I think the only way to do that, you probably have to get a group of high school boys who,
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I mean, these guys, they don't care what any other people think.
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They just say what they want to say and, you know, give them a little bit of money, pay
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them and say, look, when you guys finish your high school year, we want you to all go to
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a particular school and we want you to identify as women.
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Now you don't have to change anything about your appearance because this is the left piece,
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It's not about the length of your hair or the clothes that you wear.
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It's just as long as you feel like you're a woman or you identify as a woman and you're
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a woman. So you show up with your beard, your goatee, you know, don't take any drugs, you
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know, and only identify as a woman when you're on the court because, again, gender is sort
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But when you get on the court, I mean, demolished, run the score up 126 to 15 and just do that
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for enough times. And when ESPN comes and say, you know, they stick a mic in your face
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and say, look, I'm just so thankful for this opportunity as a woman.
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This has always been my dream to compete in women so that it gets to the point where you
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make people who claim to be serious journalists and thinkers have to repeat the lies and tell
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everyone that we're not seeing what it is that we're seeing.
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I think then you can start to break the fever. But right now, people like Jamel Hill can
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hide out and play it safe and then tomorrow go on and find some police shooting and say,
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I'm back to, you know, beating the social justice drum. But but we need this fever does need
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to break. So, yeah, I mean, a few years ago, the 15 year old soccer players, remember the
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boys soccer players, they beat the U.S. women's team. I mean, we're talking teenage boys. They beat
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women who have been competing on an elite level for years. There was that Duke University study a
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few years ago that looked at track stars or track competitors, boys, girls, high school, college,
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and then professional and found that thousands and thousands. I think it's over 10,000 high school
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boys beat Alison Felix's record as an Olympian track star every single year, every single year.
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Um, so yeah, it's just crazy. It's craziness. And I think underlying it is one of the worst and
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even many, one of the worst contributions of second wave feminism is teaching women, communicating both
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explicitly in some areas and implicitly in others, that the true north of womanhood is whatever the men
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are thinking, saying, and doing. Um, even sort of our, our impulse to compare Serena Williams to John
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McEnroe, right? It's like, you know, being a great female athlete doesn't, isn't contingent on whether
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or not you can beat the guys. Yeah. Um, but I think over and over again, this is the message that
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feminists will sort of give to the cultures, like to women's like, no, unless you're doing what the men
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are doing, you're really not living your life. Yeah. And the opposite doesn't happen, right? Men are
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not banging down the door to all women's bowling league in Sheboygan. It's just like, okay, you guys
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have your league and we go do something else. Yeah. But as long as something in the culture is just for
00:29:38.680
men or men are in a particular position, they're going to be some rad femmes that say, no, we need to
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be there. And I think this is just the latest iteration of that. Let's switch gears, talk about
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MLK. Okay. So I know that this is kind of older news because this back and forth about MLK based on
00:30:08.620
comments that John MacArthur made a couple months ago, it's a, it's, it's a little old, but some
00:30:14.540
people probably didn't see the dialogue, didn't see the discussion. And I think it's important for
00:30:18.960
us to know, cause it's going to come up again. Over the past few years, we've kind of reassessed,
00:30:25.340
I think, as conservatives, as Christian conservatives, whether or not we like MLK. I mean, it's been for as
00:30:32.200
long as I can remember, yes, he was a hero. Yes, he was a Christian. Yes, he was an example and a
00:30:37.680
representation that all of us should follow in unity and peace and love. Now, granted, I don't know that I
00:30:43.380
studied, you know, deeply his theology or all of his beliefs or even all the details of his life,
00:30:49.260
but I was, you know, happy believing and repeating that message. Then over the past few years, I've
00:30:55.600
heard a few things of like, okay, wait, he wasn't a Christian. He was a philanderer. He was a horrible
00:31:00.720
person. John Piper, a few years ago at the MLK 50 conference, actually got up there and said, which I
00:31:07.720
think this is maybe necessary to say, okay, before I talk, he was like, I just want to say, we don't
00:31:12.660
know if MLK was a Christian or not. And so he's, so John MacArthur, whose comments I'll get to in
00:31:19.980
just a second, was not the first person, first prominent pastor to say something about this, but
00:31:25.280
MacArthur's comments stirred a lot of, you know, backlash and controversy. So we've got a clip of
00:31:34.040
John MacArthur at a conference at his church answering a question, um, about MLK. So here's
00:31:40.860
thought two. And the strange irony was a year later, they did the same thing for Martin Luther King,
00:31:46.640
who was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral. I'm not saying he didn't do some social
00:31:56.860
good. And I've always been glad that he was a pacifist or he could have started a real revolution.
00:32:03.180
But you don't, you don't honor a non-believer, um, who misrepresented everything about Christ and
00:32:13.580
the gospel in an organization alongside honoring somebody like R.C. Sproul.
00:32:20.220
Okay. So this inspired Justin Giboney of the AND campaign to write an article titled,
00:32:32.820
Why John MacArthur is Wrong About MLK. And so basically he just says, look, MLK was a Christian
00:32:40.860
leader. He did exemplify love of neighbor. He did champion what Justin Giboney would say
00:32:45.280
was social justice. We don't need to like, you know, we shouldn't be saying he's not a Christian
00:32:51.240
and we don't need to be overanalyzing it basically as is a long article. Um, but you have some thoughts
00:32:57.340
on this too. You have some thoughts on the points made from both camps. So I just want to hear what
00:33:02.880
you think. Well, one, I think it's important to, to sort of start by saying, you know, God is the,
00:33:10.660
the, the sole and final judge of the authenticity of anyone's conversion. Right. So, um, I sort of
00:33:21.240
reluctant to say, well, this person was a Christian and this person was not that being said, and I'll
00:33:26.100
use a different example. Um, if Joel Osteen was the most prominent sort of pro-life pastor in the
00:33:32.540
country and his work helped get Roe versus Wade overturned, do I think that Christians would find a
00:33:39.180
way to honor him? Sure. Do I think that many Christians would still question his theology?
00:33:44.520
Absolutely. Do I think those questions would be legitimate? Yes. And because I think it's possible
00:33:49.720
for someone to do good sort of working in sort of in that common grace space for society and still not
00:33:58.320
be a genuine believer. Um, I think it's good when I think about these issues, cause I see sort of
00:34:05.180
Justin Giboney and John MacArthur, who I both, again, certainly would, would say both self-professing
00:34:12.160
Christians and I have no reason to doubt either person. Um, but I think of the cross and let me speak
00:34:20.700
metaphorically for a quick second. And when I look at the cross, a picture in my mind, I see that
00:34:26.800
vertical beam that stretches up to heaven. And then I see that horizontal beam, right? With Jesus is
00:34:36.500
stretched out on. And, and I think in many respects, and I'm generalizing, and I'll say that on the
00:34:43.460
outset, white and black Christians, even within the sort of conservative evangelical space, um, tend to
00:34:52.960
approach professions of faith by taking one part of that beam, starting with one part of that beam or the
00:35:03.140
other. And I think for white evangelicals, it tends to be that vertical beam. What did this person believe
00:35:08.100
about God? And what do they believe about God based on the things that they said and taught, particularly
00:35:13.840
if you're talking about a pastor? Um, so did this person exhibit sound doctrine? Did this person exhibit right
00:35:20.660
beliefs? And I think for many black Christians, um, black evangelicals, they tend to focus on that
00:35:28.000
horizontal part, right? How did this person treat their fellow man? Um, and particularly within our
00:35:34.020
sort of American cultural context, one of the first questions is, was this person a racist? Was this
00:35:40.100
person a slave owner? Um, did this person oppose civil rights? Did this person fight for civil rights?
00:35:45.480
Uh, and I think certainly right belief is a prerequisite for salvation, right? I can't say,
00:35:53.460
oh yeah, I love Jesus, but just as much as Buddha and, and, you know, Allah and Krishna and all this other
00:35:59.080
stuff. But, but I do think that there's something to be said because there's, you know, Jesus talked
00:36:03.860
about, you know, the, the greatest commandments to, you know, love God and then love your neighbor. I think
00:36:09.780
there's also something to be said about that, that sort of horizontal love. Um, and I think it plays
00:36:15.640
itself out in many of these conversations and I, and I've heard black Christians and I didn't grow up
00:36:20.280
in a conservative evangelical space. Um, so I came, I heard both set sides of the argument without being
00:36:28.440
sort of prejudiced one way or the other by my own upbringing, but I've heard black Christians talk
00:36:33.000
about the difficulty of learning, of studying certain theologians and seminary who own slaves
00:36:40.280
and having to reconcile those things. Um, so it, I'm of the belief when it comes to MLK and this is
00:36:48.160
my belief for anyone, the heavier the charge, the more evidence you need to bring to bear. Um, when
00:36:55.320
conservatives Christian or not chose MLK's birthday to say to your point, he was a terrible
00:37:02.960
person and the civil rights act of 1964 was a terrible idea. And one of the main things they
00:37:08.080
say is that, Oh, he was a Marxist. And I just, I would always ask some people, well, what evidence
00:37:12.440
do you have of that? Like, show me where he, you know, promoted Marxism. And in fact, what I've seen
00:37:18.220
from his record is his written record is you said, no, I'm against Marxism. I'm against communism.
00:37:23.400
Um, I may be for more social spending and so on and so forth, but I reject these ideologies on
00:37:30.020
specific grounds. So if someone says that King's a Marxist, I just asked for the evidence
00:37:35.260
on the flip side, given King's early writings, where it's not just, um, denying the bodily
00:37:42.660
resurrection, but the virgin birth, uh, substitutionary atonement, these things that he
00:37:48.580
wrote on, I think when using seminary, if you're saying he turned from those positions and embraced
00:37:54.500
a more orthodox theology, all I'm asking for is the evidence to substantiate that claim.
00:38:00.640
Yeah. And just referencing the resurrection and the Easter sermon to me is not that. I think it's
00:38:05.880
someone like Rosario Butterfield who says, I used to believe X. Now I'm making a clear and clean break
00:38:12.960
from X. And I now believe Y. And I'm telling you why Y is an example of me repenting for my beliefs
00:38:20.420
and X. Um, so if you spend a long time sort of teaching and preaching in a particular space and
00:38:25.740
you realize you've made a first order theological error, um, I think it's important to, um, preach
00:38:33.500
just as much and to clarify what it is you were saying before. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, it's an
00:38:39.680
interesting debate. I, my personal takeaway is this. Um, I try when at all possible to make peace with
00:38:48.700
things that I cannot change. And I think we as Americans have been terrible at that with our
00:38:54.680
history, good, bad, and ugly. The lesson that I draw from the previous generations is that they
00:39:01.900
are just as imperfect as we are. They had their sort of cultural bugaboos. They had their particular sins
00:39:08.600
that were active in a particular era. And I never look at them with a sense of disdain and moral
00:39:14.460
superiority because we live in a culture where one party will light up the empire state building
00:39:20.980
pink as the governor signs a bill saying that a child can be aborted up until it draws its first
00:39:26.840
breath. And, and we think we're a more moral and just society. So I think again, as a believer,
00:39:35.160
I'm just like, okay, the same standard for judging salvation is applies to King applies to RL Dabney
00:39:43.440
applies to Mahatma Gandhi applies to Thomas Jefferson applies to me applies to you. Um, we are not in a
00:39:50.880
workspace faith. So yes, right belief is part of that. But I, but I also think there's something to
00:39:57.940
be said for how we treat one another. Um, and, and I think that's sort of what's tied up in this
00:40:04.500
controversy between Gibney and MacArthur. I agree with MacArthur saying that a Christian conference
00:40:22.580
should not promote someone that didn't have the theology of a Christian as far as we know,
00:40:29.960
because as you pointed out, like he did deny the divinity and the bodily resurrection of Christ
00:40:35.680
at one point MLK did. And we don't know really whether he changed that. And of course our belief,
00:40:43.500
God uses our faith, our belief to save us. So that vertical cross beam, obviously, as you know,
00:40:50.140
matters very much. So, and so I don't really agree with Justin Gibney saying, well, no,
00:40:56.080
he definitely was a Christian because as you pointed out, well, we don't really have evidence
00:41:00.860
to show whether he came to like repent of those non-Christian beliefs. But I also don't think that
00:41:10.780
we have to say, well, the nothing that he said and nothing that he did was good or godly or biblical
00:41:18.580
or right. Because I think we would all like a world in which we are judging people by the content of
00:41:25.500
their character rather than the color of their skin. It was one way when MLK was alive and now
00:41:31.200
it's gone the other direction into judging people by the color of their skin. And it's not seen as
00:41:37.080
verboten at all. It's seen as wonderful and celebrated as long as you're judging white people
00:41:42.700
and no one else. And so I don't really see the need to be on either side of this, to be like an
00:41:49.920
apologist for everything that MLK believed, but also dissect him and his theology in a way that
00:41:57.300
someone maybe wouldn't be willing to do for Jonathan Edwards. So I do see like hypocrisy there
00:42:06.560
kind of on both sides of this conversation. Like why, as you said, like why does it seem like some of
00:42:12.160
these people hold MLK to a standard, to one standard? And then when it comes to slave owners,
00:42:19.540
they're like, well, it's just the cultural context of the time, you know, and their politics were
00:42:25.120
their politics, but we can still read sinners in the hand of an angry God and get something out of
00:42:29.240
it, which I do believe that. But at the same time, okay, let's extend the same grace and understanding
00:42:35.540
and nuance to other people as well. Yeah. And I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some
00:42:42.240
sort of conservative evangelicals who say, you know what, we should have a Robert E. Lee conference,
00:42:47.840
right? Because I've seen guys literally say, you know, like the Confederate South, the pre-Civil War
00:42:54.700
South was like the sort of epitome of Christendom in America. And I actually, I wrote a piece for the
00:43:02.200
blaze. Cause I saw some, you know, conservative evangelicals who, when Virginia, a couple months
00:43:08.540
back, I think they melted down a Robert E. Lee statue and did something with it. And I'm not in
00:43:14.720
favor of that kind of stuff. Cause again, at a certain point we have to make peace with our,
00:43:18.680
with our history. But it was just interesting. Some of the arguments that people were making.
00:43:24.300
And as you said, um, part of it will be, well, cultural context, this was what was normal back
00:43:32.000
then. And the, the outworking of the gospel would have eventually ended slavery in this country. I
00:43:37.000
don't see any evidence for that claim, especially since the Confederate constitution explicitly said
00:43:42.700
that we, we will not pass any law to, to outlaw this practice. Um, but I just, I think one of the
00:43:49.920
things that's most important for Christians, particularly in the public space is to judge
00:43:55.040
with a just weight and an equal measure. So whatever standard I apply to you, I should be willing to
00:44:01.600
apply that standard to me and not just you and I personally, but our, our heroes, um, and our villains,
00:44:09.460
we should be able to apply the same standard. And I think part of the problem comes when, um,
00:44:15.220
we assume sometimes that people like people that we dislike for the reasons that we dislike them.
00:44:26.480
I'll give, I'll give an example of that. Um, I remember when Rush Limbaugh passed away and I never
00:44:30.780
listened to Rush Limbaugh because I didn't really listen to a lot of radio. I spent most of my
00:44:35.140
time on public transportation, hour, 45 minutes each way to and from school on two buses. So I didn't
00:44:42.900
really listen to car radio cause I wasn't in a car very often. I first, I knew about Rush Limbaugh,
00:44:49.460
but the first controversy I heard him in Brolin was ESPN. And he made some comments about Donovan
00:44:55.260
McNabb, a black quarterback who played for the Eagles. Basically said the NFL, you know, journalists
00:45:00.220
prop him up cause their desires for black quarterback to do well. And this was at a time when McNabb was at
00:45:04.780
the top of his game. It was a really good pro and you know, people didn't like it. And he eventually
00:45:08.320
left ESPN. So I remember when he passed away and I had people that I know, you know, personally
00:45:13.420
was like, you know, I love Rush Limbaugh. I grew up on him and I'm thinking, well, everything
00:45:17.120
I've heard about him is controversial. NFL game was like a, you know, a fight between the
00:45:21.760
Bloods and the Crips and you know, all sorts of crazy stuff. But I realized it's like, okay,
00:45:26.840
they probably don't like him for those things. Yeah. Right. They, they like him because they feel
00:45:33.080
he's bold. He's audacious. He tells the truth. He's not afraid to stick it to liberals. And I
00:45:38.540
think on opposite direction, when white Christians may see their black brothers and sisters say,
00:45:47.680
yeah, you know, I had a ton of respect for the black Panthers. They're not doing that because
00:45:52.000
they're Marxists. They're doing that because they gave out free breakfast. They had a breakfast
00:45:56.260
program. They're doing that because they engaged in self-defense and they believe in the second
00:46:00.220
amendment. But I think there's oftentimes a lot of crosstalk on issues of race.
00:46:05.620
And of course, but there are times when, okay, a person or an entity, they might've done some good,
00:46:12.200
but the bad should outweigh the good. Like I'm sure that like, and I'm not comparing any of the
00:46:18.160
examples that you just gave to Hitler, but like Hitler probably loved his kids, but we, you know,
00:46:24.740
and you know, Ted Bundy might've been nice to his cat. Right.
00:46:27.860
But for some things we do have to say, okay, the good or the bad outweighed the good. And there
00:46:34.620
is an objective standard, not everything and not all entities, but yeah.
00:46:40.380
Yeah. And, and, and I think we, we make those distinctions oftentimes on a case by case basis.
00:46:45.140
Um, you know, I, I think, and, and part of it is sort of contextual and I'm not endorsing moral
00:46:53.360
relativism, but at a certain point we all engage in it because if there was any person today who we
00:46:59.700
found out was involved in, um, in legal slave trade or sex trafficking, it doesn't really matter
00:47:07.780
what good they did. We would not uphold that person as, you know, a sort of paragon of virtue,
00:47:14.440
but for the founding fathers, it's like, okay, I get it. You know, Jefferson had slaves, but he also
00:47:21.040
wrote the declaration of independence. And we live in the country that we live in today because of
00:47:26.420
things that imperfect men did hundreds of years ago. Yeah. So the question is, well, what do you do
00:47:32.340
with that? Um, I don't think tearing it all down is the right answer. Um, but I will say this,
00:47:38.300
one of the lessons that I draw from that, and particularly as a father is that, um,
00:47:45.160
the decisions that I make as a dad will reverberate down through my generations. If I am an alcoholic,
00:47:53.000
if I am abusive, um, if I'm a philanderer, right. If I'm a drug addict, if I spend our money,
00:48:02.340
recklessly and end up my family's out on the streets, my great, great, great, great grandchildren
00:48:08.300
may still be dealing with some of the fallout of my actions many, many years from now. And I don't
00:48:13.960
think that our founding fathers are exempt from that principle. Um, but as my dad told me when I
00:48:20.620
complained about something he did, you know, when I was a teenager, he said, look, I did the best that I
00:48:25.200
could at the time with what I had. Um, now it's your turn and you have to, you know, make of your
00:48:32.860
life what you will. And that was one of the best lessons that I, that I ever learned because I think
00:48:39.060
way too many people spend too much time looking in the rear view mirror, complaining about what
00:48:45.060
someone didn't do or should have done. Um, I also think this is why there's so much talk about what
00:48:49.720
our ancestors built because our generation is not building as much. We're not building families,
00:48:55.860
strong, stable families. We're not building marriages oftentimes. Um, and I, and I believe
00:49:01.920
in honoring the past, but building for the future. So as a dad, again, I draw a lesson from that. The
00:49:09.340
things that I do are extremely important for the future of my family. And I think nations, um,
00:49:15.100
also have to reconcile with that at a certain point.
00:49:29.740
Back to the MLK for a second, because my researcher did such a good job in, in putting
00:49:34.720
things together. And it really does emphasize your point there's, since there's been so much
00:49:39.760
debate about this and how complicated of a person he was, I do just want to read some things
00:49:44.960
because I know some people out there thinking, well, what about this? What about this? So
00:49:48.520
there are some reasons that people, even our friends, Virgil Walker, Daryl Harrison have
00:49:54.240
pointed out, okay, he's not necessarily the perfect hero that he has been healed. Because
00:49:59.380
while I do think people are complicated, like the founding fathers too, there are things that we
00:50:03.500
would approve of, don't approve of. Um, it does seem like someone like MLK has been traditionally
00:50:09.020
like untouchable. Like you're not even allowed to say, oh, maybe he did some bad things or
00:50:14.160
believed some bad things because of not just the good that he did, but the particular kind
00:50:19.160
of good that he did, um, in regards to race. Um, so they have pointed out in an article that
00:50:26.360
he denied the resurrection, at least at one point. And then also he pointed out that Gandhi
00:50:33.440
was the best embodiment of Jesus Christ that lived. He said, I believe this man more than anybody
00:50:41.440
else in the world caught the spirit of Jesus Christ and lived it more completely in his
00:50:44.500
life. And that is Gandhi. It was actually Gandhi and not the gospel. He says that inspired him
00:50:50.360
to nonviolence. Um, he also, maybe this is where some people are getting this idea that
00:50:56.140
he was like a communist or someone on the left. He, um, certainly believed in the social
00:51:01.520
gospel. He had ties to someone named Walter Rauschenbusch. He was a German American pastor in
00:51:07.740
Hell's Kitchen, New York. And he was someone who pushed the social gospel, who posited that
00:51:14.360
Jesus came not simply to save sinners, but to save society. James Cone also really believed
00:51:20.240
this. Um, and that any gospel that saves sinners apart from society was not a gospel at all.
00:51:26.340
This was one of the greatest influences on, um, on Martin Luther King. Also, people have pointed
00:51:32.480
out that one of his top advisors was Stanley Levison, a member of the communist party until
00:51:37.040
1956. Levison secretly gave MLK $10,000 in 1957, one year after meeting him. And so of course,
00:51:47.320
I'm not saying this just justifies like the FBI intrusion into his life or even all criticism
00:51:53.200
of MLK, but it is just another example of, um, people are complicated. People have also talked
00:52:00.720
about him being, I don't know if this is true, but him being like a philanderer and adulterer
00:52:04.800
and things like that. And I'm not sure if that's true. Um, but this just all, I just wanted to make
00:52:09.760
sure that people knew that there were details that people pointed out over the years to say,
00:52:13.680
okay, we shouldn't deify this man at the same time. You don't deify and you don't discount.
00:52:20.020
Right. And, and, and all of these criticisms haven't come from the right. I mean, Michael Eric
00:52:24.780
Dyson, who is a very sort of prominent, um, he, he was a minister, um, I'm sure in King's vein,
00:52:33.680
but I mean, he, he wrote a book about King's flaws and was very open and in fact got criticized.
00:52:39.660
This is a couple of years back, uh, for some of the things that he was exposing about Dr. King.
00:52:43.900
All right. So, I mean, it's at the point where no one denies that he, you know, was, uh, cheating on
00:52:50.280
his wife. Um, but again, for me, I think context is important. I know context and nuance are two
00:52:58.420
of the most overused words sort of in the public sphere, but, but they do have uses, right? So if
00:53:04.380
you tell me that, okay, Dr. King was sympathetic, let's say he was sympathetic to communists or to,
00:53:10.560
um, he said he, he was in favor of democratic socialism. And I think he used Sweden as an example
00:53:17.380
in his writings. Well, that means something different in 1962 than it does in 2024. Yeah. Um,
00:53:25.620
it means something different in a, in the South than it might've in the North where you had black
00:53:31.780
dentists and doctors who even at that time summered on Martha's Vineyard. But if you're in a context
00:53:37.440
where the median occupation for a black woman in the South is a domestic, then you may be open to
00:53:43.460
views about social spending. The other thing that happens is that, um, politics and political
00:53:51.420
alliances change over time, right? Now conservatives and Republicans tend to be the party against
00:53:58.620
foreign wars. Um, I've also heard Tucker Carlson level criticisms against sort of our version of
00:54:06.700
capitalism, particularly talking about Mitt Romney. This was a couple of years back that sound like
00:54:11.840
they could have been pulled straight from King's playbook. So I'm, I'm a person, again, the heavier
00:54:17.320
the evidence, the heavier, the charge, the heavier, the evidence associations and so on and so forth.
00:54:23.320
I mean, I think there's, there's a place for them, but even for conservatives that, that people like
00:54:29.480
presidential candidates for, for instance, there are associations there that would make you say,
00:54:36.680
hmm, now I see the madness that the LG, the pride agenda is wreaking on, on the culture. And one of
00:54:45.720
my preferred candidates, you know, closest advisors is one of the people who set this whole thing off,
00:54:52.260
right? As a guy who identifies as a gal. Well, does that mean that that particular candidate is pro LGBT?
00:54:58.800
Not necessarily. They might be, I don't know, but I'm wary of hanging a charge on someone based on
00:55:07.540
loose associations. Now I'm not in favor of deifying any person because there's, there's,
00:55:13.040
there's only one person who was perfect in their lifetime and that's, and that's Jesus. Um, but I'm
00:55:20.180
also not the type of person to say every person with whom I disagree has to be dissected while my
00:55:26.440
heroes. Cause everyone has heroes. My heroes are unassailable. It, have you seen the movie, A Few Good
00:55:32.880
Men? Okay. So very much a classic Tom Cruise. Yes. Oh wait, maybe I have actually. Yeah. Jack
00:55:40.840
Nicholson. You can't handle the truth. Yes. Yes. Okay. There was a point where he was on the stand
00:55:44.740
and, and during that cross-examination, Jack Nicholson said something to this effect and I'm
00:55:49.700
paraphrasing. I think about this often when I hear this generation complaining about previous
00:55:54.940
generations, he said, you know, I have neither the time nor inclination to explain myself who
00:56:00.880
rest comfortably, you know, um, under the, the protection that I provide and then question the
00:56:08.460
manner in which I provide it. I'd rather you just say thank you and go on about your way.
00:56:12.720
And as someone who did not grow up in the segregated South, right. Or someone even younger than I am
00:56:19.500
to say, Oh, well that piece of legislation was a mistake because we got all this stuff as a result
00:56:26.640
of it. Never knowing the indignities of colored only signs and fighting for your country in a foreign
00:56:34.180
war only to be relegated to the back of the bus or a different entrance. When you come back to this
00:56:38.720
country, I'd rather we just say, you know what? We thank our forebears for their contributions and we
00:56:45.320
want to build on what they have built so that we pass on something even better to our descendants.
00:56:50.700
Um, that tends to be my general approach to almost all of these issues. So. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. That's a lot
00:56:57.380
of good insight, man. It's, it's hard being out here and feeling like you have to relitigate everything
00:57:03.760
and everyone all the time. And we all have to pretend like we know perfectly too. Um, and I think any kind
00:57:11.880
of conversation that involves race is really difficult within the church and maybe for a good
00:57:17.740
reason, but also like everything becomes a war and a battle between two different kinds of Christians
00:57:25.480
and really like the two directions of the cross shouldn't be in a battle against each other.
00:57:32.840
Exactly. Exactly. And, and, and I don't think there's any need for them to be that way. Um,
00:57:39.400
I just think people, as I said, should judge with a, you know, with honest skills and just weights. And,
00:57:45.800
and so to me it is again, certain things are contextual. So I'll give an example of one thing that
00:57:52.500
needs context and the other that does not. So if a white person says, well, Hey, I heard
00:58:00.280
Hampton university is a historically black college, you know, in university, well, well,
00:58:06.180
how come there are no historically white colleges? Right. I used to see this all the time in comments
00:58:09.820
in like 2005. Why is there no white entertainment television? Well, again, like HBCUs were created,
00:58:16.700
you know, post civil war, um, to provide educational opportunities to, to freedmen and freed women at a
00:58:23.260
time where many of them couldn't go to Harvard and Yale. I mean, some were going there to, to be clear,
00:58:28.060
but HBCUs are not racist institutions. One, they accept white students. They accept all
00:58:34.280
different types of students. Um, but they were created in a particular context. Right. I think
00:58:39.180
that's important when you're discussing HBCUs on the flip side. Uh, and I think I might have told you
00:58:45.900
this. One of the first shows of yours that I saw was your breakdown of a Kemeni Uwan at the Sparrow
00:58:54.860
conference. My goodness. Where she was on stage and she's, you know, a public, a black woman, a public
00:59:00.540
theologian who was at a conference that I assume was mostly white women. The Sparrow conference.
00:59:05.940
Sparrow conference. Yeah. I think 2018. Yes. And she said she was going on about, she was defining
00:59:12.780
whiteness. Right. And whiteness is about theft and plunder and pillaging and so on and so forth. And
00:59:20.620
she was telling the white women in the audience that, you know, race is, is a fiction and you have
00:59:26.240
an ethnic identity and in your resurrected body, you'll have your ethnic identity, but you've bought
00:59:29.960
into white. And I just thought to myself, now, if someone got up on the stage and said blackness
00:59:36.520
is, you know, moral depravity and broken homes and so on and so forth, they would not make it out
00:59:42.720
of that auditorium alive. No. And it's, it's that type of partial, ethnic partiality that I think
00:59:49.580
causes problems in the church. Um, one, it's unbiblical. Two, it's very sloppy sort of elementary
00:59:58.740
scholarship. I mean, you're using terms that you, you can't even define. You're attaching sin to skin
01:00:05.260
in ways that you will certainly not apply equally. Yeah. When Jackie Hill Perry defended her, by the way.
01:00:10.180
Correct. And in fact, I was going to a church at the time in DC from a fairly well-known evangelical
01:00:17.560
pastor, um, Thabiti Anyabwile. And that's not his real name. No, I don't think so. Um, but that's,
01:00:25.400
that's what he's gone by for a, you know, a period of time. And my wife and I, we were thinking of
01:00:31.400
joining and I saw him encouraging and affirming her during that controversial period. And I told
01:00:40.460
my wife, nah, because I knew where that was going to go. Um, and by the time COVID came around and
01:00:47.340
they were doing online services, he was proof texting the story of Cain and Abel to make an
01:00:52.640
argument for reparations. Yeah. So my thing is this, whatever standard you set, if you, if you want
01:01:00.380
to engage in sort of ethnic battle and race craft in the public sphere, then you have to be willing
01:01:06.940
for that to come back to you. Again, I went to a bunch of public schools and the rules in the
01:01:13.580
schoolyard are quite simple. If you talk about my mama and you call her everything, but a child of God.
01:01:18.580
And then I turn around and say, well, your mom doesn't really make a very good ham sandwich
01:01:22.420
and you run off crying to the teacher. You should pick a different line of work. And this is how I
01:01:27.580
feel about almost all race craft is like, you guys do not have tough enough skin to take what it is
01:01:35.340
that you're dishing out. And because of that, you should stop dishing it out. And particularly
01:01:39.580
Christians who engage in that type of behavior. Yes. And amen. That's a good word. It's a good word.
01:01:45.360
Delano. Delano, I'm so excited about your book. It's going to be awesome. And I love your title
01:01:49.620
idea, by the way. Thank you. It's going to be really good. And when it comes out, you'll have
01:01:54.180
to come back on. Absolutely. Well, hopefully before that, I'll see you again. But definitely when it
01:02:00.080
comes out. Absolutely. Because you talked about all the things that kind of need to happen for things
01:02:04.740
to change in a positive way. And you just never know which flap of the butterfly wing is going to make
01:02:12.180
the difference. And I think that your book is going to be one of those that God uses. So
01:02:16.280
I'm excited for you. You got so many good thoughts. So thanks so much. Everyone can find you on Twitter
01:02:21.800
and find you on Jason's show and all that good stuff. So thanks so much. Thank you,