Why Are Evangelical Pastors Pandering To Marxist BLM? – With Dr. Everett Piper: What matters more–objective facts or subjective feelings? Why is BLM tearing down statues of Civil Rights Leaders? Are pastors ignorant or caving to cultural pressure in their support of the BLM organization? Are we dividing the nation rather than uniting the nation, thus moving backward instead of forwards? Tune in to hear this eye-opening interview with Dr. Everett Piper.

Air Date: 07/21/2010

Guest: Dr. Everett Piper

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live and we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy, faith, the culture, the virtue signaling, all of the things that are happening right now in our nation. We always look at those things, though it’s very important to do this. We always look at it from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective.

When you do that, when you study what the Bible says about something, what history can teach us about something and how in our nation and our Constitution that something should work, it’s very easy to come to the right conclusion on things, it’s very easy to have the right policy that will produce freedom and prosperity and all of those things. But if we don’t look at those perspectives, it’s also very easy to go the wrong direction. So that’s why WallBuilders Live is so important. Thank you so much for listening and tuning in today.

You can find out more about us at wallbuilderslive.com. That’s our website for the radio program where you can get archives of the program from the last few weeks. You can also get some of the videos we’ve done on unconstitutionality, I should say of the quarantines, the way they’re being done and a lot of other great information there as well. Also, the place you can make a donation, which is very, very important, because it takes finances to get the truth out there and we need truth desperately in this country.

My name is Rick Green. I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s Constitution coach. And I’m here with David Barton. He’s America’s premier historian, and our founder at WallBuilders. And Tim Barton is with us, he’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

Alright, David, Tim, you know, I said, biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. But you know, all I really care about is how I feel about these things, is really my feelings that count. I mean, what really matters what’s written in the Constitution or what actually happened in history? Isn’t it really about all about how I feel?

Tim:

Well, Rick, that’s why we hang out so much together, because we just make you feel so good. And you just keep coming back because we’re all about feelings and we want to make people feel like winners and we give out participation trophies and none of that is accurate whatsoever.

David:

Well, actually, I would disagree with both of you, because I don’t think we care how you feel. I think it’s important to how your feelings are perceived by others. So, what do you really feel like you care or not? I think it’s really important that we know that you seem to think that you care. And so…

Rick:

This just gets worse and worse.

David:

It’s how you appear to the public that is more important than really whether you have feelings.

Tim:

Meaning what really matters is that people get the perception that we care, whether we actually care or not will be different.

David:

That’s right. That’s right.

Tim:

But if it looks like I care, and man, we live in a culture right now, where everybody has the virtue  signal, everybody has to follow the rules of the game or you don’t care and you hate people and you want people to die, we see, does with face masks, where somebody doesn’t wear a face mask in public when they’re social distancing, which is still what the CDC. And who says it’s okay? If your social distancing your public out open space, that’s okay. But there are people who will curse you for not wearing a mask, because you are not signaling correctly and you’re therefore…

Rick:

They’ll publicly shame you, take video of you and put it on the internet to publicly shame you.

Tim:

Because you have no virtue and you’re supposed to virtue signal. It is really crazy to see how many institutions, how many individuals are really just bowing down at kind of this mob rage and feel like they have to virtue signal or justice signal and all the craziness is going on. Certainly, historically, looking back, this is not something you would think that would be the reality of America and the way Americans operate and especially not the way Christians operate. Because even though we’re supposed to have empathy, we’re supposed to have compassion, we’re supposed to have sympathy, we’re still supposed to be people who operate based according to what is true. And that’s just not a lot of what we’re seeing in culture.

David:

And one of the things that disappoints me is to see how many evangelicals, including evangelical leaders are jumping on things because they don’t want to be perceived as being on the wrong side of something. And let’s take something that we’ve seen in protest Blacks Lives Matters.

Now, if you go back to the Black Lives Matters movement, it began just a few years ago. And it began when several transgender black folks said, we want black transgender lives to matter in the black community. And that’s why we’re starting Black Lives Matter. It was to give transgenders a standing in the black community. So, you have Black Lives Matter that was founded for a very different purpose. And now if you want to spend time to go through their website, you’ll find the open Marxist connections, the open socialist connections, and as you look even at the fruit of what’s going on, while the whole mantra is Black Lives Matter, what’s happening is we’re tearing down monuments all over the country, not of racist, but of Americanism, of things that would represent the institutions of America. We’re going even after black statues of civil rights leaders that are being torn down.

And so, what is this pressure is evangelical said, well, we need to join with Black Lives Matter to say that all lives matter. Well, I don’t know anyone who’s saying that black lives don’t matter. And if they’re saying that, they’re crazy. So, I mean, especially biblically, you can’t justify that. The Bible makes it really clear that all men are created equal, Jesus died for every person. There is equality of life within God’s view. I mean, they’re all important lives to Him. So, that’s really not the issue so much as the perception of the issue. And so, now you have even evangelical pastors and churches wanting to side with Black Lives Matter so as not to be perceived on the other side, as if there is another side.

Tim:

Now, and what you’re saying, is that perception is they have to side with the organization and therefore support everything the organization supports or the perception is they don’t actually support black lives. And that’s where you have a lot of the problem and the fault, where you have a lot of pastors who are caving to the cultural pressure, who want to virtue signal and actually, forget virtue signal.

A lot of pastors who genuinely care about the black community and I want to support the black community and if this is how I can show you support, I’m going to support you. And I think there’s just a lot of ignorant pastors who haven’t done their research. There’s probably some who support some of those bad positions that the organization Black Lives Matter supports, then maybe it is pro-Marxist, that there are some denominations that are pro-LGBT, that are not necessarily pro-family being a traditional man and woman.

There are some denominations that do not hold biblical values and support the biblical positions of issues. And so maybe they do support it. But the bottom line is, what we are seeing culturally is you can no longer just believe that an individual’s life is inherently valued because they were created in the image of God and therefore as a child of God, there’s value to their life you have to support an organizational movement that is not a biblical movement and there are too many Christians who are caving to that movement.

Rick:

Well, guys, we’ve got Everett Piper on when we come back from the break. You know, Dr. Piper’s great at these issues and specifically looking at sometimes the lunacy of it and articulating why we have to turn this thing around. So always good to have him. We’ll, take a quick break and then Dr. Everett Piper when we return on WallBuilders Live.

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Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Good to have Dr. Everett Piper back with us. Dr. Piper, it’s a pleasure, man. Thanks for your time today.

Piper:

Hey, I’m always delighted and honored to be on your show, Rick.

Rick:

Always great articles. And basically, you’re saying hey, you folks that call yourself “Woke Evangelicals out there”, what in the world, I love your start, what in the world is wrong with you? Boy, but they feel good. They feel good. If that’s all that matters, right? As long as they feel like they’re being virtuous, why would fax have anything to do with this?

Piper:

It’s just crazy. I’ve written two articles actually for the Washington Times in the last month on this issue and how the Evangelical Church is basically selling its soul and bowing at this golden calf of Black Lives Matter and Neo-Marxism rather than standing confident and boldly for the gospel. I mean, this woke stuff is a joke. It’s not the gospel. It’s Marxism.

I mean, Black Lives Matter on its website, as you know, I’m sure you’ve covered it 100 times, go one tab deep. Just click one tab on the Black Lives Matters own website and they tell you that they stand for the dismantling of cisgender, hetero-normativity, the dismantling of the nuclear family, in fact, they call it the querying of the family. They stand for the destruction of the Judeo-Christian ethic. And yet we have evangelical pastors standing in solidarity with this organization. This is an embarrassment to the church, Rick.

Rick:

It is. It is. And I felt the same way. I mean, as soon as it started happening and I saw these pastors that, frankly, and a lot of these churches and I’m embarrassed to say the church we were, I mean, emphasize, we’re attending had been solid on everything else. And then all of a sudden, this one, it was like the pressure of society, I guess or maybe they’re just fool. What do you think? Is it the tickling of ears because they want people there? Or is it they’re just caught up in the, I feel bad too for things that happen 300 years ago and I want to do whatever it takes to let people know I feel bad and so they’re getting into bad theology as a result? What’s the source of this? Or does that even matter? I know, I’m asking you a dozen questions at once.

Piper:

Well, I think it all goes back to the common theme I’ve had on your show over the years and that is ideas have consequences. And like Abraham Lincoln said, the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will become the philosophy of the government in the next. Yeah, the philosophy of our Christian colleges in one generation will become the sermon topic of our churches and the next. And we’ve been teaching these crappy ideas, these lousy ideas. We bought the lie of systematic racism. We bought the lie of intersectionality.

I mean, my man, we’ve got evangelical church pastors promoting white fragility, a terrible book for professional development within their churches. We have a seminary and evangelical seminary, you know, no less the Kansas that lift white fragility is one of its recommended readings. So, this goes on and on and on.

When you teach Marxism, when you teach radical Darwinism, when you teach intersectionality, critical race theory, when you teach systematic racism, that racism is not an individual choice, but it’s part and parcel of the system, of the culture, of the corporate community rather than the individual heart, when you start teaching people to judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character, you’re turning Martin Luther King Junior’s dream upside down and it becomes a nightmare. And the Evangelical Church is leading the way. It’s a shame.

Rick:

I wonder how much of this is overreaction and trying to make up for. You know, when you read MLK’s letter from the Birmingham jail, he makes the point that the white churches were not, some of them work. Now, let’s not forget, he was marching… There were some Catholic priests, some white evangelicals that did march with MLK and they did stand with him. But he definitely called them out for being silent, the ones that were silent.

And it to me, it feels like as I listen to some of these pastors that they’re trying to make up for what their grandparents did in the 50s and the 60s. Do you get that sense at all? And I mean, that doesn’t justify it. I think they’re foolish for doing that. If this was 1955 or 1962, you know, I could understand the responses. But it’s not. We have done so good over the last 50 years to change this narrative and to stop this stuff. It seems like to me we’re going backwards.

Piper:

But we are. We’re dividing the nation rather than uniting the nation. It’s a message. I mean, diversity, in and of itself, by definition is a message of division. I think I’ve said it on your show before. I was the president of a university, I wasn’t the president of diversity and it’s called a university for reason because it stands for the unity of Veritas, the unity of truth and the freedom that comes from honoring that truth.

Now, back to your question. Why are these pastors doing it? Is it because of guilt for what their forefathers did? I really don’t think so. Because if that’s the case, where were you five minutes ago, where were you five days ago, five years ago? Why weren’t you doing something about this before Black Lives Matter came along and wave the flag under your nose? So, I think it’s politically expedient. I think it’s wanting to be popular, wanting to be woke. I think it’s wanting to be politically correct, rather than suffer the consequences of standing alone and standing bold and clear.

Rick:

Unfortunately, I think you’re right. I think that’s definitely what it smells like. What are you seeing in terms of pastors that refuse to participate? They’re few and far between, from what I’ve seen, but there are a few.

Piper:

Well, let me shift to the collegiate environment rather than the church environment, if I may?

Rick:

Sure, yeah.

Piper:

There’s one college, I mean, evangelical Christian college presidents are falling over themselves “issuing laments” and apologies.

Rick:

Oh, kicking kids out. Kicking kids out.

Piper:

Absolutely.

Rick:

For just simply saying all lives matter. Girl says all lives matter on her TikTok, she gets kicked out of her school. Yeah.

Piper:

Exactly, yeah. So, in the midst of this lunacy, in this parade of foolishness of marching along with this emperor with no clothes, we’ve got one little boy standing on the side of the parade saying, wait a second, the guy’s naked and that little boy is Hillsdale College up in Hillsdale, Michigan. They have a perfect response to this. They basically are saying this, we are not going to issue a new statement in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, because for 175 years, we’ve stood for the right things. We’ve never stood for racism. We’ve never stood for bigotry. We’ve always stood against it. We had Frederick Douglass speak on our campus mind land. They go on and on and on. And they say this, our curriculum is a statement and our history is at skate and our mission statement is a statement. And that’s the only statement we’re going to make. We’re going to continue to be Hillsdale College. God bless them. They’re saying the right things, even though everybody else is marching with the parade.

Rick:

Well, I hope other colleges will pay attention to that. Some of our smaller ones that in the past have been pretty solid, you know, I’m hoping or I haven’t had a chance to really look at their statements or see where they are, and maybe even some of the big ones that have been mostly solid in the past. And we’ll do another show on this, because that’s one of the questions I keep getting asked because one of my first statements when all this happened was we’d have to defund the left and stop sending our kids and our money to the schools that are indoctrinating the kids.

And you and I’ve talked about that many times and for years, not just because of what’s happening right now. And I’d love to have you back to basically do an analysis of where can parents consider going. Is there a top 10 that you would recommend? And of course, in the past, when you were there running a college, that’s where I sent every, you know, told everybody to go, but now I’d love to know if you have a top 10 that you recommend. Would you be willing to come back and do an interview in a few weeks on that?

Piper:

Oh, absolutely. You know, I’m always willing to come on your show and I’d be grateful.

Rick:

I appreciate that, because I think people are hungry to know that, they’re beginning to realize it. Now, I probably stole this line from you. I steal a lot from you. But you know, it’s as if, you know, we’ve mortgaged our own homes to pay for the tuition. We’ve mortgaged our state budgets, 20 billion in Texas goes to the schools and we’ve spent the money, it’s been our money to indoctrinate our kids. And as long as the football team had a good recruiting season, we were happy. And as long as we had the bumper sticker and the coffee mug and the sweatshirt, we didn’t ask any further questions, even though these professors, you know, it leaked out, we knew they were spewing left wing poison. And we knew that they were, you know, I think David told me one time, 30:1 in the history department are Democrats to report with that. I mean, that should be a red flag right there. You’ve been preaching this for years. Do you think people are more willing to listen now that we see the results of this leftist poison pouring out into the streets?

Piper:

Well, they better be. Because there’s one reason and one reason only why you see all these 18 to 20 year olds rioting in the streets, tearing down statues of abolitionists, my land, defacing Abraham Lincoln and even tearing down a statue of Frederick Douglass.

Rick:

Frederick Douglass, I was hoping you were going there. That’s right, Frederick Douglas. They’re idiots. They don’t even know this should be a hero.

Piper:

Spot on. Why are they idiots? Because we’ve sent them off to schools that teach them to be idiots. We have invested in colleges and universities that teach nonsense, therefore we get a culture that has no sense and we get a bunch of 18 year olds who know nothing acting like they are know-it-all. That’s what we’re getting and it’s our fault.

Rick:

Yeah, I have been embarrassed for our country watching these 19 to 20 year old smart Alex just the spewing, you know, the language, the whole thing, in the face of not only the Cops, that’s the part that really gets me angry. Is like when did that become okay to get right in the face of a cop and just spew this stuff, let alone the ones where they’re actually attacking him? But then to little old ladies, I mean, when you see a 19 year old punk screaming in the face of a 60 year old or 80 year old or I just to me that’s like, okay, that should be, you talked about woke evangelicals, that should be waking people up to realize we have a problem on our hands.

Piper:

And one story that I read over the weekend that should wake everybody up, is this Hispanic girl that was arguing with a Black Lives Matter advocate in Indianapolis. She said, “All lives matter”. they turned around and they shot her in the head, because she was claiming that all lives matter and she was murdered as the result of that claim. We need to wake up. This is a deadly ideology and we’ve been teaching it in our schools and unfortunately, we’re now preaching it from many of our evangelical pulpits.

Rick:

Yeah. You know, Everett, I think, a lot of people maybe when they saw the TikTok or the Facebook messages or the Instagram, the little videos of people saying if you say, “All Lives Matter”, you know, I’m going to do this to you or do that to you and we thought all that’s just rhetoric. Well, we’re seeing that that is not just rhetoric, it’s happening. You’re right. If that doesn’t wake people up, I can’t imagine what would. We so need your voice of truth and reason right now, Dr. Piper, God bless you for what you do. We’re going to be sharing both of these articles today.

And seriously, let’s get a date on the calendar, we’ll have you back specifically to talk about, parents, what do you do? You know, young people out there that want to spend your money in good places. Because I’m telling people, I don’t care if you’re halfway through with your degree, get the heck out. It’s time to leave. It’s time to stop sending our money to those schools, so we’ve got to have good alternatives and we’d love your advice on that. I love you, brother. I appreciate you for what you do and look forward to having you back.

Piper:

Alright, thanks a bunch, Rick.

Rick:

Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

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Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks to Dr. Everett Piper for joining us today. Back with David and Tim Barton. As always, Dr. Piper makes a lot of sense. And actually, every time I talk to him, I realize how foolish the other side is. Do you all notice that? It’s like, it just puts it in perspective in a very crystal clear way.

Tim:

And certainly, the sign of a good teacher is someone who can take a seemingly complicated issue and make it reduce down to such simplicity. You go, how does everybody not get it? This is so obvious. And absolutely, when you listen to him, you think you would just be foolish to have any thoughts on the other side and yet, that’s exactly what we are seeing.

As he pointed out, where Hillsdale is one of the only colleges who has not caved to this, even looking at how many Christian institutions, universities are out there. And that’s not to say everyone has. Because certainly, there are many Christian institutions out there and we haven’t heard what all of them have done. And so, there could be other institutions who are doing the right thing. But what we know is far too many have caved in very poor ways, not recognizing that you know what, no, we don’t need to send a new signal of our virtue. We’ve been consistent in these positions for a long time.

And even if it’s a church or denomination said, you know what, my denomination back in the 50s, back in the 40s, they held a bad position, that got corrected in the 60s. And we’ve been going the right direction for the last 60 years and we’re going to keep going the right direction. We’ve been doing this thing, we’re going to keep… There would be some logic involved, instead of saying, we better cower to this rage mob and do what they want or they’re going to be upset with us.

David:

Well, this also goes back to things we’ve talked about in previous programs, that these young people that are out there, they’re doing what they learned, either from their schools or from their parents. This is not just behavior they came up with on their own. There’s a source for this behavior.

Tim:

And certainly, also, just add in, there’s a lot of cultural things they see too. So, it could be they’re doing this because of a lack of influence from their parents or from their teachers. So, it could be both. It could be the direct intentional acts of the parents, of the teachers who are saying you better do this. But also, a lot of parents are allowing culture or social media to have a major voice, probably a much larger voice in their kid’s life than should be there. And so, whether it’s culture that’s having this influence or the teachers or parents, there is an influence on these kids that’s leading them to make these decisions.

David:

What strikes me is two big things that stand out and watching this kind of movement go, is they’re really into their rights without any responsibilities. We have the right to protest, the right to assemble, the right to whatever, and we can tear down your property, your business. We can tear down your statues. It’s not our stuff, we can do that.

And the other thing that stands out is we can do all this behavior without accountability. We can do this and we’re not going to get arrested for. And then adults jump in and say yeah, we’re going to make the police stand down and we’re not going to arrest anyone for this and yeah, is going to cost the citizens a whole lot of money to clean up this mess. But we’re actually contribute to that.

And then for Christian groups to jump in and show solidarity with something that is producing bad fruits and is built on bad fruits, it really doesn’t make sense. And so hopefully, we’ll get to the part where we can better discern and use better judgment and say we don’t have to virtue signal.

And we have as Tim, as you said, if we were a bad denomination, we fixed this back in the 60s. We’ve been right for 60 years.

Tim:

Well, hopefully you did. And if you haven’t, then let’s go ahead and fix that right now. And then you could say, hey, we were doing wrong, we’re doing right now. But if that’s been a fixed problem for 30, 40, 50, 120 years, then you don’t have to back up and fix a problem you already fixed.

David:

And that’s some decisions that we have to make is, look, we got to stand and say, you know what, what’s going on right now is not right at so many levels. And we’re going to stand for what’s right and we’re going to stand on the right side, even if that makes certain people mad. And at some point, we got to have the backbone to stand and do that.

Rick:

Well, we’re out of time for today, folks. Thanks so much to Dr. Piper for joining us once again. Thank you for listening today to Wallbuilders Live and be sure again to visit our websites. I mentioned wallbuilderslive.com, our radio site to begin to the program. I forgot to mention wallbuilders.com, that’s our main website. And I want to tell you, that website, there are so many different things you can dive into, a wealth of information, a ton of it’s just free right there on the website and articles and downloads and all kinds of cool stuff. And then there’s some great curriculum and materials that will educate, equip and inspire you, get those things and start studying. You know, we got to start investing in truth. We’ve got to start defunding the left and stop letting them educate our children and frankly, us as well. And you to start with truth, you got to go back to the truth. And that’s what Wallbuilders is all about. So, hope you’ll check that out at wallbuilders.com today.

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