29 June 2018

Speaking of things not understood:


Read this:


And then this:

 

"What Mr. Johnson Apparently Doesn’t Understand"

Now,

  1. I did not call Thabiti Anyabwile "a racist schlub." I explicitly made that clear in a tweet before he even posted his article.
  1. Yes, I knew he made public comments disagreeing with or criticizing Obama. That, however, is no answer to any point I made. What he did not do was upbraid black evangelicals as a group for the sins of the Obama administration. Nor would he. Nor should he.
  2. I get that "white evangelicals" aren’t an entire race. Same with "black evangelicals." They are, however, subgroups within the body of Christ classed by their ethnicity—in this case, in order to criticize, blame, and castigate one group and set them against the other. I stand by the assertion that this is a racist tactic.

Phil's signature


PS: Everyone who followed my Twitter feed or Facebook page during the election knows I never supported Mr. Trump for the presidency. For the first time in my life I didn't vote the top of the ticket in a presidential election. In fact, my public criticism of candidate Trump was so firm and so high-volume that my pastor scolded me for being too focused on the issue and too aggressive in expressing my opinion on a political matter. So there's no way I'm going to make a phony confession of guilt just because some woker-than-thou church leader lumps me in with the ethnic group he wants to blame for Mr. Trump's character or policies.

I'm guessing my black evangelical friends who never supported Obama feel exactly the same way.

6 comments:

Greg said...

Hear, hear, Phil! Hear, Hear!

Phil Johnson said...

One additional remark: Thabiti, who scolded me a couple of years ago for using the word agitator, claiming it has racist connotations, casually throws the phrase "kith and kin" my way, even though he surely knows that expression is practically trademarked by the kinist movement--who, BTW, must be delighted to see him echoing some of their key talking points.

Hohn C said...

I'm unable to reconcile the "wounded victim" tone I'm reading from him in his TGC article, with: (a) his indictment in WaPo yesterday of basically any evangelical who might possibly be excited by the prospect of Roe v. Wade being overturned; and (b) his closing slam on your supposed "fragility" (which he undoubtedly knows is merely shorthand for the usual term, "white fragility").

Also amazed how his evidence that he previously criticized Obama centers around tweets that say Obama wasn't liberal and race-centric enough for his tastes...

Richard Caldwell said...

I am disturbed by how much attention Thabiti and others give to a perspective that the NT is virtually silent on (Note: I'm not denying that Scripture addresses matters of ethnicity, and hatred among people that centers on ethnicity. What I'm denying is a NT emphasis that imparts to believers some sort of mandate to go to culture warring to fix it. The way I read the NT, Christ solves that. And, where mistreatment occurs, believers have an otherworldly perspective on it and response to it).

I'm equally disturbed by the interpretive gymnastics that SJW's are willing to engage in as they attempt to make the NT mirror their emphasis. Finally, instead of parsing someone's definition of racism (not a Bible word), can't we just acknowledge that most people use it in a very general way? That is, when someone divides people up, categorizes people, so that they carry a bias or bitterness in their heart that centers on "race," they are characterized by racism. And when we look at racism THAT way, then I can't think of anything more racist than to see almost every part of life through the lens of skin color. I also can't think of many things more depressing.

Unknown said...

I am a 70 year old white male. The 2016 Presidential election is also the first in my life where I didn't vote for the Republican nominee. However neither could I in good conscience vote for the Democrat nominee. In the past I have held my nose and voted for the lesser of two evils, however this election was qualitatively different from any in my experience. Ultimately, I could vote for neither without feeling guilty for giving my support. I placed my faith in God's sovereignty and trusted we would be given the leader we deserve. I shuddered at the thought of our future. To this day I have mixed emotions. I feel a measure of relief that Hillary Clinton is not the decider in Chief about Supreme Court replacements. And although Trump's actual governing policies have been in the most part considered "conservative", I still cringe with every tweet that exposes thin skinned responses to some imagined slight. As God's will for America is being worked out in real time I have learned I need to Trust God more now than I ever have in history. He (God) knows what He is doing. Sometimes He calms the storm and sometimes He calms the child.

Hohn C said...

Richard, spot on. Thanks for speaking up about this, and separately, thanks very much for ministering to the people of Grace Fellowship Chilliwack the other day... there are many dear and beloved saints there, and I know how much they have appreciated your ministry.

Kent, thank you for reading and commenting. As another person who couldn't bring himself to vote for either major party candidate, I totally hear you.