#203 How Feminist Standpoint Theory is More Pervasive Than You May Know w/ Theology Mom

Dr. Krista Bontrager, the Theology Mom  and full-time ministry partner at the Center for Biblical Unity, joins me to dive into a discussion that we will probably need to have generation after generation because of how pervasive the lies of liberation theology are currently within our traditional ideologies. Why does the church seem so divided over the Christian profession? Why do so many professing Christians seem to adopt worldly philosophies under the guise of "justice"? 

Dr. Bontrager studied the ever-evolving tentacles of standpoint theory; from the well known ideologies of James Cone to the less well known step-child of feminist standpoint theory. Apparently, they all dwell in one big deceptive family,

Do you know how these ideas may have invaded the ways you read the scriptures? Do we all need new, ethnic methods of understanding God's word? Should this episode be thrown in the trash merely because Krista is white? Leave us your thoughts! 

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Krista Bontrager is a public theologian and fourth generation Bible teacher. She is an author, podcaster, and former university professor. Krista has a unique ability to connect theology with real life. Krista has worked professionally in theology and apologetics for over 25 years and transitioned into full time ministry with the Center for Biblical Unity in 2021. She is committed to equipping Christians to properly interpret the Bible and apply Scripture to contemporary social issues.

Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Black and Blurred. This is Brandon here, and I am with a sister that I'm pretty sure if you listen to this podcast, all of you are very well-known as Theology Mom, but I call her sister Krista Bontrager here on Black and Blurred. Krista, it is a pleasure to finally have you by yourself here on Black and Blurred. Welcome. I'm so excited to be here with you, Brandon, and looking forward to this conversation. We typically get the package deal. And I don't think there has been an episode with you and Monique that we've done on Black and Blurred that people haven't loved. And then Mo has gotten the opportunity to be by herself on Black and Blurred. And we took a long time to give you that opportunity, but here we are now. And- I'm glad for the racial equity. I appreciate that. You and I already had a plan for you to dive into some of the work that you did. Cause I'm sorry, let me change your intro.  

So now I kind of botched that intro there because this is now if you were black, then it'd be Reverend Dr. Krista Bontrager, you know, because you got to have the reverend in front of it if you're a Ph.D., no matter what. It doesn't matter. Well, just in the interest of transparency, I'm not a reverend and I don't have a Ph.D. I have a doctor of ministry and which is a little bit different than a Ph.D. But I am glad to be here and I am glad to have my education behind me. Yes. Well, we're glad to glean from it. You and I already had plans to look into the content of your dissertation because it peers deep into a lot of things that we delve into here at Black & Blur, a lot of things that you guys delve into. But, you know, the best way I can think about it in this nerdy way, I'm an engineer by trade in a former life. And a vector is a directional thing. If somebody is shooting pool and they hit the ball in a certain direction, what people don't know is that direction is actually made up of multiple components, two separate directions that comprise together and make one direction. And some of the things that you guys talk about and some of the things that we talk about are this one thing but they're made up of multiple components for sure a lot of people aren't aware of and one of those components comes in the form of liberation theology and the toxins that spread as a result of that now that was the source i want you to give the full kind of like title of what your dissertation was and why did that end up being the focus of your dissertation Yes, I just finished my Doctor of Ministry at Birmingham Theological Seminary, and the name of my dissertation was called An Investigation into Socially Located Biblical Interpretation and Theology, Its Connections to Standpoint Theory and Its Impact on Evangelical Preaching and Teaching. So it's a very long title, but basically what I was doing was investigating investigating whether feminist standpoint theory from the early nineteen seventies is actually reshaping and coming into the field of biblical interpretation and is standpoint theory being used and applied in biblical scholarship now when you were diving into that Did you see the effects of these things being done in big chunks or very small chunks over time or a little bit of both? Yeah. So I think what I noticed first was now I'm getting an echo. Are you OK on your end? I am test test. OK. All right. Let me try again. So I think what I was noticing a few years ago as Monique and I were starting the ministry at the Center for Biblical Unity, that people were using wording like reading the Bible through a black lens or what is the perspective of oppressed people when reading the Bible and the book by Esau Macaulay, Reading While Black. And that really... was the inspiration for my dissertation. A young pastor from Ohio stood up at the twenty twenty two Southern Baptist Convention and asked the president of Gateway Seminary, is there a right way or a white way of interpreting the Bible? And I could not shake that question. And that question really is what sent me down the path that ended up being my entire dissertation. And Esau McCauley's book, Reading While Black, really was a key cornerstone to my analysis. You know, this book, before I even got a chance to read it, it had already... I was just rubbed the wrong way having received it. I was serving as a pastor alongside a brother. We had planted together. And we had some disagreements that we came to realize, because that's during the first Trump era, BLM going crazy stuff. And he was on one side of that. And people know me and me and Darren and our podcast. Our podcast was born out of the tumult of those collisions. And he kind of just gifted me this book. Now, meanwhile, I would say humbly that I was the more learned theologian out of us. I carried our preaching load as a church. And so receiving this book made me feel like I needed some remedialized lens in order to understand God's word better. Yeah. And I didn't understand the concept because there was no context. There wasn't a conversation that said, hey, I think you'll better understand some things. He just kind of gifted it to me. I didn't know what to expect from that. And the title makes me think differently. there isn't some ethnically contextualized way to read the scriptures. And if there is one, it's from the Middle Eastern, ancient Near East context that one would read and understand the scriptures. And so I think that you're right to have that question stuck in your mind because it's nonsensical, to be honest with you. It really jumped out at me. And really what the conundrum is, is that it's... Esau Macaulay puts forward in that book an idea called socially located biblical interpretation. And when we talk about social location, what we're talking about is its basic foundation is race, class, and gender. And so... that framework or that approach of the socially located approach to biblical interpretation is pitted against the enlightenment approach. And I would say that really what it's pitted against is what I'm going to call the traditional approach or the author centered approach to biblical interpretation. And, and, The idea of socially located biblical interpretation, I think, and I could be wrong, but that's the nature of academia. That's the nature of having a dissertation and putting an idea out there in the atmosphere is that my theory is that a socially located approach to interpreting the Bible is based on the framework of feminist standpoint theory. And it is an application of feminist standpoint theory framework and ideology into biblical scholarship. Now, I want to make it very clear that I don't disagree with everything that Dr. McCauley says in his book, Reading While Black. There's many cultural insights in the book that are interesting and historical, but I it gives me a lot of insight into Dr. McCauley's personal experience and what he experienced as a young African-American man growing up in America. But I would also say that I don't think that there's one homogenous thing quote unquote black experience of what it means to grow up in America. And I know it's very controversial. I'm a white woman on a little podcast saying that, but I think that, you know, the, the African-American experience might have some core things that are, you know, kind of similar to each other, but there's also a lot of variety and it's better to, to see people as individuals and to investigate what, But what his project really is, is to come up with a black perspective or a black lens that you use as a helpful interpretive lens. kind of as a helpful interpretive tool when approaching the scripture. And I really think that if I look at it in the most generous way, that what Dr. McCauley is wanting to do is help young African-Americans to not abandon their faith, to not think that Christianity is the way of the white man. but to give young African-Americans a way of integrating their identity and as Black people, and bringing that to bear on their understanding of scripture. That's the most generous way that I can think about. I was literally about to use those words. That's extremely generous. I'm not even saying that in a way where it's not accurate. I think there is a lot of accuracy to that and in its generosity. However, you and I have talked offline. I remember a time when You had platforms like Jude Three, and it seemed like that was the vision. The vision was, hey, there's this generation of Black professing Christians who are walking away from the faith because they're believing the lies of Christianity having its origin in America with the white man, whatever that even is, the white man. um and now as children of god we want to proclaim the truth to you about christianity that was my take on kind of that and over time it seemed like it started to morph into hey it's not the white man's religion It's ours. And that might not be a very generous conclusion or deduction on what was happening there, but the language there and some of the people who were leading the charge had that rhetoric and that, hey, it's not the whiteness of Christianity that you should be running away from. It's the blackness of it that you should be accepting. And it seems like we were swinging completely to the other side. And I think that what you're touching on addresses maybe possibly how one could even perceive it that way? Yeah, I think that there is this tension that the question, is Christianity a white man's religion? I think is a legitimate apologetics type question that some young African-Americans could raise. Yeah. Or Latinos or, you know, Africans for that matter. The question of colonization, is Christianity just merely an instrument of colonization? But there is this very real tension of how does that question fit with the identity of blackness? Right. And what is blackness? Because it is obviously more than skin color. Right. Because you and my ministry partner, Monique Dusson, who's also an African-American and grew up in South Central Los Angeles, many people would say that you are not representatives of blackness. You are, in fact, what we're having here right now, quite honestly, Brandon, is a conversation with two white people. Yeah, yeah. My black card been gone. Yeah. And so there is a very real, I think, tension of, the identity of blackness and what does it really mean? And for young African-Americans, you know, what does that term mean? And how does that intersect with the historic Christian faith? Now, there are many issues that I would probably say a hearty yes and amen with Dr. McCauley about or uh, Eric Mason or, you know, these, these kinds of people. I, I mean, Dr. Macaulay is a, is a, uh, or he's ordained in the, um, Anglican tradition. And so, you know, I know he affirms the, the Nicene Creed and we could say yes and amen to that together. But when it comes to the issues of race in particular, because that's the focus of his project, um, But to some degree, I would also put class and gender in there as well, that he is wanting to develop an approach to the scripture that brings blackness into the conversation as a tool of an interpretive tool. It plays a role. Now, I do not want to mischaracterize his project as saying it's the only tool or that blackness is the only lens that he's looking at scripture through. But it is something that he wants to come to bear on the text to some degree. And, you know, this is not just some speculative thing you're saying. You're recognizing that, hey, we have a sample size of the results of creating some type of more immediate response or localized lens for the scriptures and whether or not that ends up deviating people from the original intent of the authors of those scriptures. I mean, that's part of your dissertation, right? Yeah, and I want to make it very clear that Esau Macaulay is not the only person who's engaging in this project. Let me back out and mention a few other up-and-coming voices. There's a young man named, well, when you get to be my age, everybody's young. So I don't mean that in a demeaning way. But Robert Chow Romero, he teaches at UCLA. He's an attorney. I believe he teaches in the law. political science realm at UCLA, but he's written a book called Brown Church that does many similar things as to what Dr. McCauley is doing. He's spoken many times at Biola University and what he is, his project is to bring quote unquote a brown lens to the scriptures to help young people from a Latin American background to see if the Christian faith is for them or is it an instrument of colonization? And he is engaged in a form of a Reconquista project to reclaim the faith for those in the Latin American cultural context. But he wants to do that by kind of mixing the Bible and liberation theology and Gustavo Gutierrez together to bring liberation theology into an evangelical context. There's another young gal, Kat Armas. She's published by Baker, which... back in when I was in my twenties and thirties, like I was seen as a very highly reputable Christian mainstream Christian publisher, but her book of abuelita faith is this type of contextual theology. It is a liberation theology for young evangelicals. There is, I think that what's important to understand is, is that this idea of what's called in theology contextual theology but is part of this socially located biblical interpretive lens this is all kind of different names for very similar projects this this is not a new thing, but it is a kind of an up and coming thing, but it is so ingrained. particularly at the graduate school level, the seminary level, that I'm not a hundred percent sure that these people even know that they're borrowing from feminist standpoint theory. They aren't quoting them. It's not in their citations. And again, I could be wrong. This is my theory. But when I read the feminist literature, which I had to read a fair amount of it for this project, And then I read someone like Esau Macaulay To me, this is just applied of application of the theory. And feminist standpoint theory, I would say the first generation is with a woman that I focused on is Sandra Harding. She's sort of the godmother of feminist standpoint theory in the early nineteen seventies. And she comes up with this idea that because of your social location, There are different ways of seeing the world, different standpoints. And in the beginning, she's particularly focused on the white female standpoint. Okay. And that this is in counteraction to the Enlightenment, which was all focused around white, heteronormative, patriarchal, Christian, Western ideas. Okay. And so the feminist standpoint theory comes against that white heteronormative Western Christian standpoint, if you will. And so in the beginning, kind of Sandra Harding's project is how can we bring feminist thought into the sciences, right? How can we bring it into this area of the enlightenment that is seen as being completely objective, this area of knowledge that's seen as testable and repeatable and objective? Well, no. Sandra Harding says, really, science is also a bunch of standpoints. So really quickly, so people who are listening can track with us. Don't lose your thought, Krista. No, it's all good. The purpose of this connection that Krista is making is to say that when we are, of course, All right. So the point of I want to just make sure that our people are catching on here. The point that Krista is highlighting is that when it comes down to science, which is something that is objective, when we're looking at science, we are looking we are discovering objective truths. And for someone to want to take that field and create some type of subjective lens to which we then discover objective truth. it's contradictory by nature and it makes no sense. It will only lead to more confusion. And so that's the point you highlighted. Go ahead. Yeah. And to add to the confusion is I think that there is a tension that feminist scholars understand, like, well, falling into total subjectivism is bad. Like, we don't want to do that. So Sandra Harding came up with this kind of alternative way of thinking about objective truth, where we're going to kind of compile the subjective experiences of people from all of these different social locations. And it'll kind of create this kaleidoscope of perspectives. And the more perspectives we get together and kind of homogenize them all together, then we will arrive at the truth. So it's like, well, we're going to get all of our race, class, gender, But then in the eighties, Patricia Hill Collins comes along and says, well, you know, this standpoint theory thing, let's not just apply it to white women. What about black women? What about queer people? And so gradually more lenses start growing. And so we now have, you can, you get a whole PhD in queer studies, you know, the queer lens and, The black lens, feminist lens, all these different lenses. All right. So then fast forward to what's happening in our seminaries today. We need to have as many perspectives, as many lenses as possible on your bookshelf, Brandon. You are a pastor. You want to have as many lenses represented, as many perspectives, social locations represented in your personal library as possible, because when we kind of put them all together, that's when we get to a version of the truth. And so we're no longer looking for, in biblical terms, we're no longer looking for the author's meaning of Because the author's meaning is something we can't really get to. Can we ever really be sure, they would say, that we could ever get to the author's meaning? The most we have is just the text. We have the text as the starting point, but we can't really know about the psychology of the author or what the author was thinking when he wrote such and such. We only have the text. And we have the standpoint of the reader. These are the two things we have. It's modern in nature. Ish. They wouldn't really like that. Especially the evangelical versions are very careful to try to avoid a lot of that language. But there is a certain... vulnerability, I'm going to put it that way, to falling into subjectivism. So, for example, let's say you, Pastor Brandon, are looking at your bookshelf. We need to make sure you have proper bookshelf diversity. Hmm. How many female commentaries do you have on your bookshelf? How many commentaries do you have written from the Latin American perspective? Do you have the proper, I mean, you went to a seminary, I assume. How many of those books were written by white people? You are not possibly properly educated because you didn't read enough books by authors from non-white Western heteronormative countries. social locations. You need to have proper diversity. Now, here's another example that in the church that is very practical. What about your local home Bible study group? Do you have enough social locations represented in your home Bible study that you can have enough of these lenses to kind of put together to get at an understanding of the text so that we're getting closer to the truth the more perspectives we have represented? Yeah. This is the very practical, real-world application of the socially located lens. How do you arrive? When have you done it? When have you won? When have I arrived at an understanding of the scripture? Let's use the last question. What answer could I have given to them where they're like, wow, that is an exceptional Bible study group? Well, I think that if we have proper representation, because everyone has a role to play in this system. I did a whole section in my dissertation on the white person's role in interpreting the Bible. In Esau Macaulay's commentary on the New Testament, he has a white author with a short chapter on the roles that the white people are supposed to play. So if we play it out in the home Bible study scenario, the role of the white people is to be quiet and to listen to all the members in the room, who are from social locations of oppressed groups. So we want to give deference to the women in the group, to the immigrants in the group, to the African Americans in the group. And my role as a white person, I really shouldn't even be doing this podcast right now with you, but it is to to give deference to those minority perspectives and lenses. And so our goal together as the Home Bible Study Group is really to look at the Bible through the lens of the oppressed and to get to liberation. liberation is now the goal or one of the key goals. And so Esau Macaulay still wants to, I want to be fair, like he wants to hold some role for the author. It's very limited. He only has a few sentences about it in his book. It's not well developed. It's really mostly he just talks about the text, the text, the text, and the reader, the reader, the reader. We don't really hear about the author too much because again that's an enlightenment idea is separated from the text has become separated for the most part from the author now the other great line that we have to know is evangelicals is the big red line for people who want to use standpoint theory in their biblical interpretation is the issue of queer things the queer issues On the evangelical side, they're very silent. Like Robert Chao Romero does not say anything about a queer lens. Esau Macaulay does not say anything about a queer lens. Esau Macaulay does mention womanism, though, which is Black feminism. But it's very briefly, it's two paragraphs. But he does seem a little bit open to it and sympathetic. But there is a great silence about the queer lens. Once you cross that red line and you acknowledge the queer lens, then you're in the progressive version of standpoint theory. And then we have a proliferation of lenses. Wow. Wow. It's interesting how the sexual ethic seems to be the hinge, right? Between evangelicals and progressives. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what I see playing out in the academic realm, every year Monique and I go to the annual meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society. And you can go to four-hour modules on the African-American perspective, the Latin American perspective, the Asian-American perspective. And these lenses have been... adopted by evangelical scholars. It is the, an assumed position. So one of the papers Monique and I went to last year at the meeting, we went to the session on Asian American perspectives. And one of the whole papers was about Confucius and how as an Asian person, Confucius could be a helpful, offer helpful cultural insights as a lens into scripture. And I just sat there and thought, wow, This is highly interesting. So I quote that paper extensively in my dissertation. But another session I went to, I went to four hours of scholars from a Latin American lens talking about how they have special insight into into passages related to immigration because so many of them are immigrants. And so they, if they were in a home Bible study situation, I, as a white person ought to give deference to the immigrants perspective in my group, because they would have special insight into the Exodus event, for example. So what, Is this making sense? It is. I had this pause because I came out a little hot. What's the supposed eschatology of one with this standpoint relationship? understanding of scriptures, you know, not necessarily like, where do they pre-trib, post-trib, where do they, you know, but eschatologically speaking, what does the bride of Christ do with the Lord in glory forever? What is our status? How do we fit together? Are people still jockeying for oppressive benefits? What is it like? I don't know if eschatology or the end game is really like a big theme for them, but for some of them, the focus is, especially in the progressive versions of this approach of standpoint theory and socially located interpretation, they would have a more earthly eschatology because their primary concern is that of tearing down all systems and structures of the white heteronormative Western patriarchy. So that is a very, I would say, physical and in this earth type of eschatology. Now, that liberation message, though, is definitely a component of Esau Macaulay's project. Mm-hmm. It is in Robert Robert Chow Romero's book that he more explicitly quotes Gustavo Gutierrez, which who was a socialist and eventual Marxist. And he's arguably the godfather of liberation theology. He was a Catholic priest in Latin America and kind of brought together Christianity and. at Christian theology with Marxism into what I would consider a false gospel. It is another gospel. But the theme of liberation is of It is a buzzword, if you will, if people start hearing their pastor using that term a lot, that ought to be at least a yellow flag for them, if not a red flag that their pastor may have been taught in seminary. to read the Bible through this socially located lens and the lens of the oppressed. But that is kind of the end game is liberation. Now I think Esau Macaulay wants to engage the word liberation with some amount of, um, eternal perspective, not to be liberated from our sins. But he definitely also has a component is tearing down systems and structures of what he sees to be white, heteronormative, patriarchy, Western ideas, maybe not patriarchy, I want to be fair, but definitely Western ideals. Well, I mean, it seems like intrinsically patriarchy is wrapped into Western ideals. Is that not? I mean, cause it seems like. But the tension for me is that he's an Anglican. I got you. So I want to be as fair as possible. Yeah, it's true. It's true. I mean, yeah. And you know, one could say that. But these people tend to be egalitarians. They tend to want to, um, tearing down the patriarchy in all forms is a big theme for many of them. I don't know exactly where Esau Macaulay would stand on that. Yeah. I mean, there's so much presupposed in a lot of the language of all of this stuff that I mean, it takes painstaking detail to be able to decipher what any given statement means. I mean, one would even have to look at patriarchy. I remember when I first moved to the D.C. area to do ministry, I started hearing that word a little bit more. And it wasn't that the word itself was foreign. It was just foreign for me to start hearing it in the context of ministry. Patriarchy, patriarchy, patriarchy. And I'm thinking, yeah, and as a seminarian, I know that patriarchy exists because God created it. There is that whole pesky thing about elders being men. Yeah. You know, like, I know that. I mean, I think about Paul's prayer in Ephesians three, when he says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father from whom, and that word he uses in the Greek means from whom all other fatherhood comes. Yeah. That it's a good thing. And what the devil has done is he's used a lot of real failures in sinful men to be the justification for throwing literally baby Jesus out with the bathwater. When it comes down to the good things that God has given us. When I think about... What you just said, you did a video on kind of just this pursuit of truth that you have been in regarding egalitarianism, complementarianism. I'm not going to dive deep into my view, although I am not an egalitarian, and I also hate the word complementarian, to be honest with you. However... I want you to just walk people through that journey as you're kind of looking through all these different lenses that exist in your video. If people aren't familiar with it, you had a desired outcome and how did that work out for you? Well, yeah, I wanted to be an egalitarian. That didn't work out. So when I was in seminary, which I should be transparent here, I started seminary when the first George Bush was president. So I was in seminary before the internet. I'm that old. So I was really searching as a young woman in my early twenties, like, what am I doing in seminary? I didn't really have a special call. I just wanted to learn. I wanted to learn more about God's word. And that's how this whole thing started. I realized that I was actually quite good at this. And one of my professors approached me about becoming a professor at Talbot and, you know, going on to get a PhD and stuff like that. but I was just wrestling so much. Like, can a woman even do this back then? There were no women theologians who were conservative and believed in the inerrancy of the Bible. There was no such thing as women in apologetics. There was no such thing as Elisa Childers or anything of that nature. Nancy Piercy. Like I had never heard of her. Uh, I just thought I was this weird person. And every time I would tell people I was in seminary, the automatic assumption was, oh, you're a lesbian. Because back then, those were really the only women who went to seminary. It was very progressive. Interesting. very liberal women. And so to me, I was the only woman in my theology program at Talbot. And so I was wrestling, can I even do this? Is this a thing? Or am I in disobedience to God? And that led me on a like so many books on gender issues and theology and all of the quote unquote clobber passages. And how do I think about this? And over time, I would have to say that I just kind of gave up because they were all so confusing. They all canceled each other out. You know, this guy's got this perspective and you read this person over here, well-respected, they have a different perspective. And how do you know, like what is what? And so I just quietly became an egalitarian. I didn't really, announce it on social media, but I had kind of drifted into that because it was a pathway in my career to justify on some level, like, yeah, I can be a woman and a theologian and, um, Those were tough times. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I had some church hurts and there was just a lot of things that happened to me in that season. But I walked for over a decade as an egalitarian and just thinking, yeah, this seems to be the more correct view. But I'll tell you, after twenty twenty kind of changed my mind when I really had to confront A lot of the feminist literature in a way that I had never gone and read the feminist literature before. And then I thought, this seems like a very deep error and that has penetrated the church. And I really had to go back and restudy the Bible. And I'll tell you what did it for me was the passages about the elders. It's not the women be silent and all of that. It's just the very clear and straightforward teaching that women were not in the picture. When Paul was telling Timothy who to ordain as elders, it was men. Yeah. And I thought that's that's it. And so I once I made kind of the differentiation in my mind between the office of elder and spiritual gifts, spiritual gifts are not dependent on sex. Correct. So I can have the gift, the spiritual gift of teaching and. but I'm not holding the office of elder. Right. And once I kind of had that distinction in my mind, I became whatever I am now. I don't really call myself a complementarian, but I, yeah, I just, I do believe that women, that men should be elders and, um, you know, that, um, men matter. I want the world full of strong godly men. This is important to me. Society will go better when we have strong godly men. To juxtapose that statement, what we're seeing is a growing collective of broken down men, who were once strong or just very passive men who were raised in a society that believes it's not good to be strong. And so as a result of that, I'm not saying you don't have a lot of men who are in shape with big muscles. I'm saying you don't have men who have the backbone and stand up and say, hey, you're not gonna mutilate that girl on my watch. hey, you're not going to pass this bill where children are harmed. You're not going to pass this bill where mothers aren't cared for. You don't have men in society who feel that that's what it means to be a man. Yeah. Because we've torn them down and neutered them. But in the feminist literature, as I was reading it from my dissertation, I mean, men are the enemy. Yeah. And the whole goal is – to explore in the biblical realm, like how can we get away from, you know, this idea that men have should dominate the conversation about biblical interpretation in particular white men. And that there's this idea that the author centered approach to interpreting the Bible is little more than a cultural construct that comes out of the white Western patriarchal heteronormative culture. European way of thought. And I just think that's utterly the wrong question. When you look in scripture, well, first of all, we have all the authors are men. All of the apostles, the twelve, are men. Yeah. Um, so men are an important cornerstone and foundation of our faith running around screaming, deconstruct the patriarchy. I just, I, I feel like at that point we've, we've left the historic Christian faith. Like, I don't know what we're doing right now, but I think that what we see in scripture is an author centered approach. When the new Testament authors say, And when Jesus talks, there are right and wrong interpretations. There are things that are compromised interpretations. It is never the pattern in scripture where we're worried about race, class, and gender in order to interpret the Bible. This is just not the pattern that we see in scripture where scripture is interpreting itself. This is to lay a foreign framework that's made from our twentieth century construct onto the text. And if I might be so bold, is to say that this is largely also a white academic idea. The very idea of standpoint theory comes... At least the seeds of it come from white people. Yeah. And so... I think that, unfortunately, this is a new form of colonization because we are now exporting this idea to other countries. When pastors come to America to get trained and then go back to their home country, they are getting trained in this harmful framework. I'm going to say something really hard in that last year at the Evangelical Theological Society meetings, one of the main platform speakers was an African woman who is a rising star in biblical scholarship. And she has a whole book on the African lens. And so she learned this in her doctoral program. I think she went to Southeastern Baptist, if I'm remembering right. So Southern Baptist Seminary, she learns this lens. Now she's exporting it or taking it home with her into the African context. So we are potentially, you know, doing worldwide research. damage over time to our pastors so if if people are thinking this is fairly obscure why are we talking about this just wait a few more years because if your pastor was educated in the last three to five years there is a high probability that he was taught how to read the bible this way to some degree or another i think when you just said that the exporting about jesus said you know it's it's become popular over the decades in evangelical christianity to just assume the role of the enemy uh the scribes to the people you don't like so whoever it is you don't like in your time yeah that's what the pharisees are right and no one ever looks at their own heart And Jesus says this from ESV. Woe to you, Matthew, twenty three, fifteen. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte. And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. I think about a lot of the reading and teaching and the nonsensical proselyting. that's happening when it comes down to these doctrines of demons and it's all in the name of what in the name of like humans humanity in the name of um humanism i would say possibly because in this literature is is there a lot of talk regarding god's glory god's will god's sovereignty uh where do you where you find yourself coming across that stuff A primary focus, like I said earlier, is on justice and breaking down the structural issues of the white European Western way of life, including our interpretive approach to scripture. It's more about reordering society and looking at the physical reality the physical world and the structures of poverty, because it has a close connection again with liberation theology, whether that's, Latin American liberation theology, Black liberation theology, or I'm reading right now books on Palestinian liberation theology. But it's all the same. I mean, it's just different applications of the framework. But this socially located approach to biblical interpretation kind of takes that liberation theology lens of, I would say, favoring or privileging the oppressed and using that as an interpretive framework for scripture, there isn't a lot of the traditional Theological categories that you're talking about, about theology proper is what we call it. You're calling, you know, the glory of God, like that's just not really a theme. It's more on the deconstruction project of the deconstructing the West and And looking at these oppressed people and categories and more of an earthly type of salvation, the spiritual salvation does get eclipsed. I'm going to say, I don't want to say in Dr. McCauley's writings that it's completely erased. That would be unfair. But it's definitely a competitor with this more earth-based form of salvation. well there's some unfortunately very recent uh connection to what you've talked about you know we're in a society um let's see this is twenty twenty five I would say for the last uh man what am I doing right now I can't do math for the last last nine years we have seen such a vitriolic response to Donald Trump. Now, I've never been somebody who wants to proselytize somebody into becoming a Donald Trump voter. He hasn't, and this is not a slander to him. I just don't know him. He's another guy we have to either vote for or not vote for for presidency. He doesn't hold any weight in my life. So you have to vote for him or don't vote for him. But there was something different about him. And there's something different about every, let me say this, white man who supports him. And it seems that they fit the prototype of the enemy of the world that you seem to have, I guess, deduced from this framework. This, what does it say? White, heteronormative, Christian. Even if he's not Christian, but he'll hoist that flag up. Yeah. Yeah. We'll call it like a version of cultural Christianity. Right, right. Cultural Christianity. And so he becomes this representation of this, I guess, theological devil. And I think that for a lot of white American men, I'm going to speak to the Christian ones because those are the ones I've been around. They feel that pressure. Hey, I don't even have to tell you who I vote for. You can look at me and now decide that I am a part of the problem. So what do I need to do and say to assuage that as much as possible to alleviate you of any desire of, you know, kind of just repudiating me and dismissing me and wanting to harm me? And I think we're seeing that in our society. Am I wrong to kind of make that observation? Yeah. Yeah, I think that there is a certain cultural pressure for us as white people, especially Christian, well-meaning, compassionate, hearted white people that we're kind of supposed to engage in at worst like a form of self-hatred yeah uh we're not supposed to like our culture i've had black people tell me to my face white people don't have a culture right um i don't agree with that but uh i i think that um at at best we're supposed to kind of be quiet and listen and that there there are expectations of us that come out of this type of thinking and framework now look i am not here to be an apologist to defend every aspect of the enlightenment project Is all true knowledge truly objective and knowable? No. But the idea that some knowledge is, I think, is an important idea. I think that the... Can we talk about science from a perspective that, yes, scientists also bring their biases and they bring their own personal interests to the table. And there are some topics that scientists don't want to look into because it doesn't interest them. And female researchers might be more interested in looking into women's birth cycles you know like that might not interest male medical scholars and we can talk about unique questions that people in the African American community might ask that I might not ask because I have blind spots all of that is a legitimate thing to probe and look into but I am not prepared to say that objective knowledge is impossible or unreachable right i am not prepared to say that the historic christian faith as it has been conceived since the reformation is just basically a white european project like that's that's not that's just not true And to go down that road is to ultimately deconstruct the faith. Right. And this is my concern is how big of a leap over that red line of queer issues is it really? That you're already using aspects of the socially located framework. Right. if you cross over that red line into progressivism, is that really that far? A question I asked in my dissertation is, is there enough fencing around those evangelicals who are using this framework to not cross over that queer line and go slide into progressivism? I don't see a lot of fencing, to be honest. I mean, it seems like the difference between a professing believer who hasn't had an opportunity to get baptized and a professing believer who has gotten baptized and made the public declaration that baptism is. And I mean, that's what it seems like because the infrastructure of this framework is, even if they don't publicly and explicitly say it this way, is to denounce God and his word. I think this is something I've been... really focused on is like just jesus is teaching about our faith needing to be like a child um you know it's not just some cute statement i think it's something we ought to wrestle with in our hyper you know academic and credentialistic society where there is an aspect of a childlike faith that when your parent says something you're like oh well that's what it is and that seems that's scoff worthy to us today we don't have that childlike faith and i think that when when you have when you're holding beholden to a framework that demands the mental jousting of man in order to arrive at the truth rather than believing that god's word can rightly dis uh reveal it to you then there's not for much further to fall you know anything can go after that Yeah, and I think that that's one of the critical things that I want people to understand is that we're not talking here about, you know, not being in reality that we all bring assumptions to the text. We all come from a cultural context, right? And there's nothing wrong with that simple childlike faith. But even that can be an assumption that we bring to the text. And one of the things that I have had to work with my students on over the years as I teach biblical interpretation is there is value in understanding your and being aware of your presuppositions. It's good to have that. It's good to understand where you've come from, your beliefs, what you're bringing to the text. But what we don't want to do is make that into a fixed lens that then I want to use. Yeah. to interpret the text. Instead, what I wanna do is figure out ways to overcome my presuppositions, to overcome my cultural assumptions, my biases. And if there's one culture that ought to inform my, my lenses for interpreting the scripture, it's maybe second temple Judaism or, or, you know, the David's kingdom, you know, era type of Judaism. Like these, these, those would be some cultural insights that could genuinely be helpful and provide information that would be useful to interpreting the Bible. Right. But whether or not I am a twenty first century American from hillbilly culture. I don't know if that's a useful lens. I mean, that goes against the foundations of hermeneutics, doesn't it? Isn't that one of the first principles? Hey, keep your mind and insights out of the text. You you need to bring out of the text what the author's mind and insights were. And it let that shape and we've completely gone away from it. And I'm imagining it's the offering of all these different lenses that contributed to the overwhelming nature of in that beginning journey of egalitarian and things like that. But we can end up foregoing very beautiful aspects of what God reveals in his word when it comes down to his role of his people. Even in the Old Testament, there are very specific people, all men who are called to be high priests, right, from a very specific line. Very specific people, all men who are called to be priests. Meanwhile, all of Israel is called what? Kingdom of priests. Yeah. And so there's that distinction that you talked about between an office and a gifting and the way that you work things out for God's glory. And we're gone away from that. We don't even care about what it means to work things out for God's glory in our immediate contexts with the different gifts that we have. We are... We're very self-centered. I think that that's what the big push on social justice is. It's a very human-centered understanding of justice. I think any theological understanding of justice makes the human quiver at the notion of true justice being delivered, if we understand that. Glory to God that you and I, Krista, won't receive justice at death. that will receive grace. And I think that when you understand that, then you can understand the distinction between some, yeah, the temporal justice that is a reflection of God's beautiful justice on this earth. That we want to seek out because we want his character to be reflected on the earth. But now that's not the goal for his character as seen as the carrying out of justice in this earth. That's not the goal. And sorry to go on a side there, but I want you to go ahead. I would love to react to that a little bit if that's okay, because, you know, I think that the setup that's created a lot of times by those who are in the liberation theology and stream and the socially located biblical interpretation is, they want to frame the conversation as either you're for justice, you're against justice. Like if you, if you're for the enlightenment or objective knowledge, then you're against justice. And, and we're for justice. And I'm thinking like, now, now, now, wait a minute. Like, how are we defining these terms? Right. And, and, I am for justice and I'm not only for eternal justice. I am also for justice in the physical real world, which is a major concern for these people. And so I don't want to make it sound like I am diminishing the importance of talking about justice. But in my reading of careful reading of scripture, I think there are four key principles of biblical justice, impartiality, or equity, the culture has hijacked the word, is that we are applying the same standard to all. Truth telling, accountability, these are very important principles of what God means by justice. And he applies them to us. So when we stand before the great white throne, whether we are great or small, rich or poor, no matter what ethnicity we're from, the same standard will be applied, okay? There will be an accounting for our actions. There will be truth telling in these matters. And so I am for all of those things. And when there is corruption and specifically the Bible talks about bribery and things like diminishing our monetary value, taking unfair advantage of people. These are things that in God's system of justice, these are evil. These are wicked. We should stand against these things. But the progressive version of justice hijacks a very biblical idea, redefines it, and then wants to fly a lot of unbiblical ideas under the banner of justice. And so my encouragement to your listeners is don't let the conversation get hijacked that it's either Justice or no justice, you know, like, no, there's we have to define these terms very carefully. Well, we're coming to an end and, you know, it's going to seem like a sour note, but it's not. It's going to be an encouragement. I want you to speak to it because you just you just highlighted the distinction between biblical justice and what has been hijacked as social justice and the pursuit of such justice. and so when our society is so plagued by that understanding and all its presuppositions that when you stand your ground on biblical justice you will be seen as an enemy um in a lot of different aspects a lot of different spaces now as in our recording of this we are not far away from charlie kirk's assassination Now, when it's posted, we might be a couple weeks away. But what Charlie stood against was a lot of injustice, but people didn't see it that way. A lot of people are seeing it as him being the source of injustice. What is the chasm? Where is it? What's the dichotomy? What's the misunderstanding? Why are there so many professing Christians who are feeling justified in their hatred for a man they've never met? Yeah, why do you think that is? Well, first of all, I think Charlie Kirk was an evangelist first. I think that he ought to be seen as a type of Billy Graham to his generation. And Yes, he talked a lot about politics, but it was clear as he was kind of in his late twenties, early thirties, his thoughts had advanced to the point where he saw his politics as being downstream from his faith, that his faith was first. He was a Christian first. He wanted to be remembered as a Christian. I've never seen in my lifetime someone so bold and in their proclamation of the faith in deeply secular context i mean people who are not christians people who have lifestyles that are different than the historic christian faith all praised charlie that they worked with him and he was a genuine christian even though they had differences i think that says a lot about about him and his legacy yeah As to why people are so divided about it, I think Christians in particular, I think there could be a lot of reasons, but I think one of them is because the term justice has been hijacked. The term racist has been hijacked. And we are not defining these terms biblically. So because of that, we're not understanding what he was saying. And so when he would want to advocate for people to get married, have children, to better themselves, find meaning and purpose through Jesus Christ, to get a job, to emphasize meaningful work. He said all of those things because he thought that they were deeply Christian ideas. He wanted people to look at each other as individuals. He wanted people to treat each other with respect. Now, did Charlie always do that? No, he's not Jesus. I'm sure he lost his temper sometimes. I'm sure he said sarcastic comments, but I also have heard from several people that when he was in private, he was generally respectful, even with people he disagreed with when they weren't in the room. He really tried to live out his faith consistently. There are many Christians who don't, they don't have an awareness that their definition of, or it's like equity, love, justice, and even race have all been defined and hijacked and they've been discipled by the world rather than the Bible. You know, the thing that gave me goosebumps that I've been thinking about, I even texted a group chat of my family, cousins and friends, something you said earlier, that we're going to stand before him. And I think that that seems to be left out completely of this other theology, that reality. I think about the different reactions that I see from people. And I guess this, like the hatred and the vitriol is, I mean, it's in the name of Jesus, I guess. Some of it, yeah. And it seems to be a complete neglecting of what it means to be human. Yeah. The fact that there's one death per person still in twenty twenty five doesn't matter how much kombucha you drink. And we will be presented. To him. Yeah. And there's only two options, a child. Or an enemy. And like you said, what breaks my heart is there are people in a lot of different for a lot of different reasons, you know. from the Black American context, I know that there is a lens of the Black American lens that has gotten people to adopt a theology that is not Christ-centered. And so they can go their entire lives calling themselves Christians and hate Christ and not know it, I guess. But we're seeing the fruits of that. It's the culmination of all these lenses taking shape in this tragedy that happened and in the infighting, or I guess I should just say the fighting. That is proceeding from that. And it seems like the people who are blind don't realize that there is a God. There's a God who is a perfect judge. And that the ones who claim to desire justice the most don't realize that they don't want that. What they want desperately is grace from this God who is truly just. What were you about to say? No, I was just thinking about second Corinthians five, ten. I have it here. It says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each of us may receive what is due. That's the definition of justice is receiving what is due for the things we have done while in the body, whether good or bad. And I think that. I want to, I'm in no position to judge the eternal salvation of anybody, but I do want to encourage people to really make sure that you are getting your ideas from the Bible and not from social media. And you may have inadvertently believed in a false gospel. You may have inadvertently be believing or or have drifted into through your own good intentions and empathy and compassion you may have drifted into an error where you are no longer believing in the true christian faith if you are centering love to the point where God's judgment doesn't have a meaningful place. You have drifted away from the faith. And so it's a good time for self-examination. Well, Krista, Darren and I are actually going to record tonight. And so I'm going to address some of this as well. But one of the things I'm going to address is just the... The praiseworthiness of God and the gifts that he's given to his church and the fact that he gave pastors, he gave teachers, he gave evangelists, and the whole point is in the Brandon edition so that you won't be stuck on your phone and you get turned left and right whenever your phone tells you to turn left and right. Yeah. That you would grow to maturity and that you would know the truth of the scriptures so that even when all these little lenses start popping up and try to take you away from what the scriptures teach, you can stand firm and not be tossed to and fro by the waves, as Paul says. And I'm very grateful for the work that you put in. spanning multiple presidencies to make sure that we can have clarity and insight into the schemes of Satan, because that's what it is. There is no neutrality. Either we are children of the king or of the dragon. And through your work, through you and Mo's podcast, through our podcast, we are trying to make sure that people leave this earth as a child of the creator of the earth so that we can inherit the new heavens and new earth with him. And if you're somebody who is listening to this and you hate everything that we said and you slander us, whatever it is, I can speak for Krista and myself that we The moment you have a desire to talk, we'll be willing to listen. We'll be willing to hear you out. You'll be welcome. We'll make sure to put Monique's phone number in the description. They can call me. Okay. Yeah, we'll put Mo's and just make sure. Give her five minutes, though. Give her five minutes and say something sideways. Give her five minutes. But the fact of the matter is we are all flawed people and we don't come together and say, hey, let's be nice to people who are evil. No, we've just adopted the identity of our king. It's been bestowed upon us that sometimes even our flesh wants to fight against that identity. But in his grace and in his kindness, he reminds us of the beauty of that identity, and we willingly walk in it. And so we want to bless those who curse us and who want to do evil to us. And I want to encourage other Christians to be emboldened and courageous for the sake of this world that is dying away and the people who are dying away with it. Share the gospel. live out the fruits of the gospel. Any encouragement you want to share to others, Krista, any other work or things like that you want to share with people? No, I think that's, that pretty much says it all. My heart is much like Charlie's is let's make heaven crowded. Let's preach the gospel. Let's be in a risk, take great risks for God because he is always up to something. And let's, let's do great things for the Lord. Amen. Amen. Well, guys, I appreciate you guys tuning in to this episode of Black and Blurred. We are guaranteed to hear one of two things, a humble opinion or the facts. All right.