How typical… so tiresomely typical… that modern Christianity can’t pass up any chance for a guilt trip. I’ll spice it up by channeling George Orwell. To misquote a truism, 1984 is now.
Evangelical scholars sign statement condemning racism as ‘contrary to Scripture’
Two dozen evangelical scholars have released a joint statement condemning racism as “contrary to the evangelical Gospel” and acknowledging the realities of racism that existed throughout evangelical history.
Racism meaning white privilege or racism meaning the idea that God made different races of men with different capabilities and tendencies? Were two dozen scholars insufficient to clarify this?
The new “Evangelical Statement on the Gospel and Racism” was released Monday as nationwide protests continue in the wake of the killing of African American George Floyd in Minnesota and just days after the controversial killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, Georgia, by a police officer.
.Today.s situation requires more than a statement, but certainly no less than a statement,. the document reads. “As evangelical academic voices, we condemn racism as contrary to Scripture and to the evangelical gospel..
I’ve said it before, these people have found a new Gospel and it isn’t Christ’s.
The statement originates from members of the Evangelical Theological Society’s executive committee, according to David Dockery, president of the International Alliance for Christian Education.
He has that nervous smile common to Churchian leaders, less “I’m feeling well” and more “please don’t hurt me”. Dockery has also been affiliated with the Gospel Coalition.
ETS was founded in 1949 and serves as a professional association of scholars, teachers, pastors and students dedicated to the written expression of theological thought and research.
“In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.” -Orwell
The statement explains that while evangelical history includes “many positive voices for justice,. such as slave trade abolitionist William Wilberforce, the history also includes “negatively those who assimilated the values of their surrounding unjust culture..
Wilberforce is the patron saint of Churchianity, a white man who stood up for Negro empowerment before doing so was cool. Anytime you hear an “evangelical scholar” mention Wilberforce, know that accusing him of being racist will make him cry.
According to organizers, the effort’s mission is to .listen, mourn, speak, and act in accordance with the gospel in our own lives, in our institutions, in our churches, and in our communities..
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” -Orwell
.As we grieved over recent events in our communities, we realized that although a statement is insufficient, it is necessary,. a website created to host the statement online, which went live on Monday, reads. .We are compelled to declare that the Gospel stands opposed to racism, and so, too, must people of the Gospel..
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” -Orwell
The statement was signed by Evangelical Theological Society President and Asbury Theological Seminary Biblical Studies Professor Craig Keener, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Theology Professor Gregg Allison and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler, who also serves as ETS president-elect and program chair.
The usual suspects.
SBC.s flagship seminary, SBTS in Louisville, Kentucky, released a report in 2018 detailing the school’s history of racism and past support for slavery. At the time, Mohler called for the institution to “repent of our own sins” and offer “full lament” for the inherited legacy.
Other signatories include Paul W. Powell, the endowed chair in preaching at Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University; Vincent Bacote, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College; and Darrell Bock, a senior research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.
As of Tuesday, over 150 people have signed on to the statement.
Thus proving that the organized Church is dead… but you already knew this.
The document declares that the Gospel calls on everyone to “come to God on the same terms” and “and become one body in Christ..
.In reconciling, Jew and Gentile in Christ (Eph 2:16), surmounting a barrier that God himself once established, God in Christ summons us to surmount every barrier erected merely by human sinfulness,. the statement explains.
What the…
“SURMOUNTING A BARRIER THAT GOD HIMSELF ONCE ESTABLISHED“?!?
Feckless hypocrites!
.Scripture does not discriminate by color, and, on the most common understanding of Acts 8, the first Gentile convert may have been Black and from Africa..
Snicker. “Scripture doesn’t see color and Scripture says the first convert was a Black!”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” -Orwell
The statement adds that Jesus was, both by His example and His teaching, summoning Christians to “serve and love fellow believers to the point of laying down our lives for them” and “to love all our neighbors as ourselves..
Double miss. The Christian’s goal is Christ, not his “community of fellow believers”, and how I wish the police would let me love others as much as myself. For example, I have no fear of COVID-19.
.This invites us to be swifter to listen to others than to speak (Eph 4:29; Jms 1:19), to mourn with those who suffer (Rom 12:15), and to join them in acting for justice on their behalf (Isa 1:17; Luke 11:42; Jms 1:27),. the statement concludes.
You ivory tower navel-gazers don’t have shit to say because you failed to notice that Black Looters Mobbing is a terrorist group destroying America’s past in the name of an unrepentant drug dealer. You’re the scum who STILL want Barabbas freed even before the mob demanded your cooperation.
According to Dockery, Keener did most of the “heavy lifting” when it came to creating the statement. However, he stressed that the rest of the signatories “offered suggestions and encouragement..
I posted the full, intact statement at the end. Feel free to notice all the “heavy lifting” that went into it.
.We believe the statement is timely and important, expressing our longing and hope for racial reconciliation in the church and in society,. Dockery, who also serves as chancellor of Trinity International University in Illinois, wrote in an email to The Christian Post. .We trust the statement will be helpful in that regard in the days to come..
The best path to reconciliation is “good fences make good neighbors” not “all whites must wash the feet of all blacks because some of their ancestors mistreated other peoples’ ancestors”.
The new statement comes as several church bodies have issued statements on race in the U.S. in the last several weeks following the controversial deaths of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and most recently, Brooks.
Additionally, several well-known Christian pastors and speakers have participated in demonstrations following the death of Floyd.
Two Sundays ago, Texas megachurch pastor Matt Chandler issued harsh words for the Church during his sermon. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Chandler argues that the Church has largely “refused to participate” when it comes to speaking out about racial issues.
It was called Separation of Church and State. Matt’s predecessors couldn’t abdicate their Christian responsibilities to the State fast enough.
Are empty pews emboldening Woke clergy to drop their masks?
.[N]ow one of the things that has happened is the Church, by and large, has refused to participate, which means that we have turned over . God help us . we have turned over what is our inheritance to dark ideologies,. Chandler argued.
.You don’t just preach the Gospel on sex trafficking. You don’t just preach the Gospel on the issue of life and abortion. No, you act,. Chandler added. .It’s like this brain-broke disjoint that’s got us acting absurd and then critiquing this [racial justice] movement as being evil and dark when we have given up our inheritance!.
Chandler doesn’t ACT hard enough to put hats on the church ladies. He chose instead to courageously appease the braying mobs.
I excrete more nobility after Chili Night than these perfumed princes have ever known.
Southern Baptist Convention President J.D. Greear recently called on the denomination to stop opening its annual meetings with a gavel that carries the name of John Broadus, a 19th-century Southern Baptist leader who was a slaveholder.
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” -Orwell
On that note, Broadus wasn’t just a leader, he was a co-founder of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Also a chaplain in the Confederate Army, he owned two slaves then repudiated slavery in 1882 per wikipedia. Hardly a plantation owner with a whip.
Greear.s North Carolina-based Summit Church recently released a statement lamenting the death of Arbery, a 25-year-old African American shot by a white man in Georgia while on a jog.
Correction, a 25-year-old Dindu Muffin shot while resisting arrest by the ex-cop who prosecuted him for previous crimes prior to retirement. Did Greear look into the case at all before jumping in?
How is Greear going to stop being racist when he constantly raises awareness of peoples’ races?
.The fight for racial justice is one God himself began as far back as Genesis 12 when he promised to reunite the ethnically diverse and contentious world through Abraham,. the Summit Church Committee on Oneness and Reconciliation said. .It is a fight whose victory is promised in Scripture’s final chapters, where we see the multiethnic restoration of all nations, tribes, peoples, and languages (Revelation 7:9.10). Most importantly, it is a fight made possible by the gospel: Racial reconciliation is an inevitable fruit of the gospel of reconciliation..
Abraham? Racial reconciliation? Genesis 24:3-4, Abraham speaks to his chief of staff: “I want you to swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not get a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I am living, but will go to my country and my own relatives and get a wife for my son Isaac..
Abraham was the first recorded failure of Magic Dirt in written history.
The National Association of Evangelicals, a network with over 40,000 member churches worldwide, released a statement on May 29 lamenting “the recurring trauma experienced by African Americans..
.We condemn racism and the violent abuse of power, call for justice for victims and their families, and exhort churches to combat attitudes and systems that perpetuate racism,. the NAE stressed. .We are grateful for law enforcement officers who honorably serve and protect our communities, and urge our members to uphold them in prayer..
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” -Orwell
Lastly, here’s the promised statement in full. Behold heavy lifting!
A Statement on Racism and the Gospel
https://www.evangelicalstatement.com/
Today.s situation requires more than a statement, but certainly no less than a statement. As evangelical academic voices, we condemn racism as contrary to Scripture and to the evangelical gospel. Evangelical history includes positively many voices for justice and pioneers of abolitionism, such as William Wilberforce, but also negatively those who assimilated the values of their surrounding unjust culture. Yet the basis of evangelical faith is Scripture, climaxing in the good news of Jesus Christ.
In this gospel, everyone must come to God on the same terms (Rom 1:16; 3:22-24; 10:12-13; Gal 3:28; Rev 5:9; 7:9), and become one body in Christ (Rom 12:4-5; 1 Cor 12:12-13; Eph 4:4; Col 3:15).
In reconciling Jew and Gentile in Christ (Eph 2:16), surmounting a barrier that God himself once established, God in Christ summons us to surmount every barrier erected merely by human sinfulness.
Scripture does not discriminate by color, and, on the most common understanding of Acts 8, the first Gentile convert may have been Black and from Africa.
Jesus, both by his example and by his teaching, summons us to serve and love fellow believers to the point of laying down our lives for them (John 13:14-17, 34-35; 1 John 3:16-18), and to love all our neighbors as ourselves (Lev 19:18; Mark 12:31; Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14).
This invites us to be swifter to listen to others than to speak (Eph 4:29; Jms 1:19), to mourn with those who suffer (Rom 12:15), and to join them in acting for justice on their behalf (Isa 1:17; Luke 11:42; Jms 1:27).
Interesting how they jump to acts in an effort to say the first gentile convert was a black from Africa when the gospels have the Samaritan woman at the well. And then the later passage in John that .many Samaritan.s then believed in him.
The eunuch in the chariot was the first to be baptized as a Christian, is probably their thinking. Cornelius was the first Gentile Christian to be openly accepted as such which is my thinking… I don’t place much importance on a one-conversation convert.
Although extrabiblical sources say the eunuch went on to become a major evangelist in Africa.
The magi from the east (likely Persia) were the first gentiles to recognize Christ’s divinity.
What an absolutely stupid argument. To illustrate this, let’s formulate the implied argument from the ‘evangelical scholars’ into the “If A then B” logical form:
Taking the contrapositive “If not B, then not A” (which must also be true!), you get:
The logic of the argument is that if you can find a different race that was actually first, then you’ve justified racism against Blacks. How absurd! It makes a mockery of the dual Christian concepts that (1) all men are created in the image of God and have inherent worth and (2) all men are judged according to their own actions.
These ‘evangelical scholars’ are so racist they can’t even see the logical consequence of their own arguments. The only valid anti-racist stance is colorblindness, and they are not colorblind. Focusing on the race of the first Gentile convert in the context moral worth is necessarily racist.
evangelical history … also includes .negatively those who assimilated the values of their surrounding unjust culture”
Like this politically-correct nonsense?
And racism is absolutely Scriptural.
A) Discriminating based on a person’s ancestry / family line would be included in “racism”. “Racism” can also be thought of as discrimination based on physical appearance, such as skin colour, but since a person’s appearance is determined by the genetics of their ancestors, it is still based on the person’s ancestry.
B) God has no sin and does no sin. See 1 John 1:5-7 and James 1:13-15.
C) Given B, anything that God does, at least in that particular circumstance, cannot be sin.
D) God has repeatedly shown favourtism, based on a person’s ancestry. Examples:
1) Exodus 20:5 – favourtism against 4 generations of those who hate God
2) Exodus 20:6 – favourtism for 1000 generations of those who love God and obey his commandments
3) Exodus 34:7 – favourtism against 4 generations of those who hate God
4) Numbers 1:51 – favourtism for sons of Levi, and against everyone else, even other sons of Abraham
5) Numbers 18:7 – favourtism for sons of Aaron, and against everyone else
6) Jesus choosing only Jewish men for his apostles
7) Jesus’s command to preach first to Jerusalem, and after that to the Samarians and to the ends of the earth. Luke 24:47, Matthew 28:18-20.
8) Revelations 7:1-8 – In the end times, God will choose 144,000 witnesses for himself. These will all be sons of Abraham; specifically, 12,000 from each tribe of Israel (sons of Jacob). Blacks (unless they are descended from one of those tribes) are not welcome; too bad, grow up princess.
8) Revelations 7:1-8 . In the end times, God will choose 144,000 witnesses for himself. These will all be sons of Abraham; specifically, 12,000 from each tribe of Israel (sons of Jacob).
There are differing interpretations of that 144,000.
My Catholic study Bible suggests that 144,000 is not a literal number, but symbolic, meaning that many Jews and many Gentiles will be saved
12 symbolizes the Jews, because there are 12 Israelite tribes.
12 symbolizes the Gentiles, just to be symmetrical. (And 12 apostles.).
Ergo, 12 x 12 = 144, i.e., Jews and Gentiles
1,000 means “many.”
So 144,000 means “many Jews and Gentiles.”
That would assume the Samaritans weren.t baptized in the spirit, nor were any of those gentiles who previously worshiped Christ baptized in the spirit after Pentecost.
Amen
Except the scriptures (revelation) would have used many, as opposed to repetition with the 12 tribes and 144k. Each tribe is listed, and 12,000 men come from each tribe. It also repeats 1,000 years many times.
That doesn.t mean the numbers don.t have dual meaning. The seven churches are referencing the complete church, the names are entirely symbolic of the message to those , but also may describe what was happening to those churches in that era as well. (So 3 meanings in total: immediate, metaphorical, and description of church ages).
If you spiritualize numbers in revelation, you must also do so in Samuel and judges, which wouldn.t make sense.
“Each tribe is listed”
Actually, no. The tribe of Joseph was split into Manasseh and Ephraim (Joseph). The 144,000 does not include the tribe of Dan.Scripture doesn’t give an exact answer but here’s Judges 18:30 “The sons of Dan set up for themselves the graven image; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.” Meaning the Babylonian exile five hundred years later, IIRC. Their habit of idolatry pissed off God that much
So, it’s probably the literal tribes. The most popular reason why Gentile believers aren’t mentioned is of course a Rapture event. I agree that one will happen but haven’t found a reliable timeline yet.
Craig Keener is active in promoting feminism in the church.
The SBC repented of racism in a statement in 1941, and several times after that. Continuing to repent year after year is weak. It makes people think that this year is the first time these Christians have recognized racism.
Where is the injustice? Is is it justice to have Affirmative Action? Is it justice to have 25% set asides for Federal Government contracts? Is it just to kill babies? Is it just for DA’s to arbitrarily release protesters who were arrested for throwing bricks, breaking windows, blocking traffic, lighting fires? Is it just to resist arrest? Is it just to commit vandalism?
Listen more? I have been listening to lectures from liberals, feminists, race baiters, grievance mongers, homosexuals, angry immigrants, etc. for decades.