Thread by @AnnaCaudill4

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc I have benefited from Keller’s work, but mercy. If we can’t be honest about this, how many well-meaning white pastors keep piling onto the racist tradition, thinking they’re defending Jesus when they hedge protection around Keller or Saddleback or SBC or whatever other brand? 1/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc I know it’s not enough to be well-meaning, but I’m reminded of @greg_thornbury & @DavidDark’s *excellent* kayfabe writing, & all I can think is that my alums leaving capital-m Ministry now are crushed in spirit from sustaining a system they aren’t free enough to be honest about.

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury daviddark.substack.com/p/on-metaphor-…

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury Pastor @timkellernyc, I *want* to believe it’s not intentional. But I look to my own Presbytery, where I’ve been a member for 24 yrs, taught Sunday School, taught HS art, led a women’s group through Gospel Transformation, & served on the boards of missions & adoption ministry.4/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury I’ve had the privilege of learning, teaching, & serving under no less than @ScottyWardSmith, @scottsauls, @rayortlund, & George Grant (@gileskirk). All outstanding thinkers, all men of compassion, & all w/ hearts committed to the sacred trust of pastoral care.
And yet!!! 5/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund Even amid these giants of the PCA, these servant-leaders, we have an event in our Presbytery to welcome Carl Trueman at the end of this month!! A public-facing community event!! Previously we’ve wept w/ Anthony Ray Hinton over the death-dealing fruit of systemic racism. 6/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund On the surface, Carl Trueman seems *exemplary*!! Classically trained, an Englishman w/ deep roots in the Orthodox Presbyterian tradition. A gifted teacher whose work elicits the respect of ppl challenged by his intellectual engagement of the faith. 7/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund In February, Trueman excoriated Critical Race Theory in a First Things essay, attacking the honest witness of Jemar Tisby & Ibram Kendi, equating their work that emerged from America’s Critical Legal Studies movement w/ the 1930s post WWI German Critical theory & Chairman Mao! 8/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund How is it that we white majority Presbyteries keep drawing to ourselves men with vocabularies that tickle our ears while ignoring the disingenuous hatefulness they use to propel book sales & perpetuate “culture wars”? 9/

firstthings.com/article/2021/0…

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund When will we white majority Presbyteries learn that it’s not worth shit to weep with Anthony Ray Hinton over a life stolen of we’re going to hand his microphone to a guy who says that Tisby is claiming that white Christians “cannot be Christians in any true sense”?! 10/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund If we make equal room for a man to proclaim in our Presbytery to our neighbors that the very *attempt* to examine racism’s influence on the our legal system & denominational framework is a seductive cult, our tears for Hinton were nothing more than a spasm of mirror neurons. 11/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund And why is it that when a Black woman who has consistently shown a faithful witness of justice and mercy explains *yet again* why the behaviors of the evangelical church are problematic, a book review you did is supposed to be a mic drop cloaked in barely suppressed rage? 12/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund The heart is deceitful above all things-we confess we’re chief among sinners but stop short at honest reckoning w/ our racism, from the roots we hold sentimentally close to the traditions which managed to draw us to spiritual awakening to the image we have of living in faith. 13/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund Our fearful attempts to hide the most complex & deeply ingrained behaviors that we just don’t know how to deal with force, with deadly passivity, the role of prophet of conscience upon our Black and Brown brothers & sisters, & we resent them w/ the heat of a hundred Jezebels. 14/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund And they explain, w/ care that evokes the Holy Spirit in ways that I don’t know I’ll ever grasp for myself in this lifetime, that we need humility to imagine the possibility that America’s original sin, inexorably bound up w/ the Great Awakening & the American church, 15/

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund has the same manner of generational consequences as the OT sins of the fathers visited on the sons.

We don’t need mic drops, we don’t need more pulpit brands whose vocabulary makes us feel smarter for hearing, we don’t need to be angry.

We need to listen.
We need to repent. /16

@DavidDark @lisasharper @jon_mathieu @timkellernyc @greg_thornbury @ScottyWardSmith @scottsauls @rayortlund ps-Trueman’s piece also aligns CRT w/ liberals in a way that is also harmful to folks in our Presbytery who happen to vote Democrat. And I’m tired of hearing how Dems can’t be Christians from leaders in our Presbytery. If you don’t want that to happen, don’t feed it.