Rev. Dr. Gregory Seltz, Executive Director, Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., offers his insight on the state of religion and government in the US.

The following program is sponsored by evangelical life ministries.

Welcome to the Liberty alert with Gregory sells, sponsored by our friends at the Lutheran center for religious Liberty here in Washington, DC, a program that cuts to the chaos and confusion in the culture today by talking to kingdom, citizen old biblical principles for robust public Christian life. And now your host, Dr. Gregory Salz

Good day, good day, Washington DC, and friends of the program all around the country. I'm Gregory Schultz. Welcome to the Liberty

Alert where every week we

Try to cut through the noise and take on the issues, especially the public issues that matter to people of faith. Today we have on our program, Dr. Robert many, the Jordan Drexler, professor of religion, emeritus and research associate in religion and philosophy, the department at Rooke college, but he's also currently the professor of Christian ethics for of the online Lutheran Institute of theology. And many of you know him from our earlier time, we had him in our program. Uh, he wrote the book, paradoxical vision. That's foundational to a lot of the work that I do, reasonable ethics and good and bad ways to think about religion and politics. Now, today we have him on because he just wrote an op-ed and let me get to the tight of that particular op at its diversity, inclusivity and equity, the new Trinity driven by two destructive ideologies. Well, that seems like a provocative title, Dr. Benny. So first of all, welcome. And, uh, how are things going after this op-ed?

Well, I expected I would get some blow back, uh, uh, from that. And I did, uh, I identify this as a, uh, new religion.

Okay. It

Substitutes for a lot of, uh, confusion about what institutions are really for. So one way to, uh, kind of sure, short circuit, any further confusion is to adopt equity in I and diversity, diversity.

Let me just say this, you know, one of the things, and, and I've been involved in this stuff too. My PhD is in black liberation theology, which, you know, is a forerunner of critical race theory and its challenge to a healthy diversity, a healthy inclusivity and equality, not equity. You know, I guess that's been my biggest problem is that when they, you know, the folks that we're arguing against, they, they understand the power of language. And so they, they specifically couch these discussions in bumper sticker language, well, who would be against diversity. So, you know, we're not against diversity, we're against their solution or their strategy. Mike, first question to you is the narrative. Our people, I think, a are getting overwhelmed by the fact that they think the narrative is diversity. You have to think this way or else you you're against it. When in reality we're saying, no, there's a different way to get to that. And there's even a different understanding of what those words mean, right? How do we take this narrative back?

Absolutely. Uh, well, in the oped piece, I try to start with the idea that, that for most people, diversity, inclusivity and equity are kind of continuations of the old sixties, uh, emerging notion of affirmative action, which we've participated in 40 years. So it's very much like the black lives matter thing who would be against black lives matter, right. But if you look at the organization and its ideology, it's extremely radical, well, one wouldn't wanna identify oneself at all with it. I mean, if you were a Christian or if you were a, a Democrat, a democracy in the nuclear, your family, right? So, so the phrase, uh, inclusivity, uh, diversity and equity seems harmless enough as an extension of that. Uh, uh, affirmative action, even affirmative action has its, uh, doubtful characteristics. There's a hard form of that. And there's a soft form of that. A lot of discussion of way back in the sixties, about the different kinds of affirmative action. I would be for a soft firm form of a, uh, affirmative action, but certainly not the harder forms. And now this has taken a whole nother meaning because beneath it, as I argue in the opioid are two very destructive ideologies, the one critical racial theory and the other one, uh, uh, gender ideology.

Yeah. Before I, before you get to that, let me just say, you know, you did a great job in this oped of dis of describing this as a new religion. Uh, yeah. Again, a lot of times people think, oh, this is science. This is no, this is a new religious, uh, affirmation. This is an, an assertion of truth. That's really, um, not coherent. And it's not really an extension of the reality that we know. So talk about how that is and then get to those, like you said, those two destructive ideologies that both undergird and promote this

Well in the OPPA, I was careful not to attack persons or parties. I said that, uh, those ideologies are destructive of Christian anthropological assumptions that have been in the culture for many centuries and that we depart from, uh, at our risk at our at hazard.

Explain, explain that. I mean, so you're talking about the notion that human beings are both

Theory, divides people into the oppress and the oppressor on the basis of skin charact. I mean, it's bizarre. Uh, and so, and course and crude, uh, no one really believes that or acts that way, but that's the ideolog that's used to whack people on the head. And of course the Christian anthropological notion is that we're all created an image of God and worthy of respect regardless of our color. But secondly, we're all fallen and need repentance and grace. Those are the two indelible characteristics of humanity. And, uh, what the critical racial theory does is racialize it and make whites, uh, the inheritors of white privilege, whiteness and, uh, all sorts of crazy things because you're a particular color. And then the blacks are hapless victims, which is many very perceptive narrators notice how, how diminishing that is a black people.

Yeah, exactly. In fact, I remember there was one, uh, there's something on television where they were talking about voter ID and they went to white liberals out in Berkeley and said, can, can, uh, is this a good law? And they said, no, it, it, it, it targets black people. And, and they, and then they asked 'em why. And they said, well, they wouldn't know how, you know, some might not know how to get an ID and some might not know how to do this. And they went and talked to black folks in New York and they said, this is crazy. We know where the DMV is. We can go get our own IDs

And it makes black, uh, uh, destiny dependent upon white generosity. I mean, it's really crazy.

Yeah. Thomas O. Thomas O argues against that, for sure. And, and like you said, the, the Christian world view, it has a healthy understanding of, of who we are as human beings created the image of God, but then a healthy reality that we're fallen. And I think that's what the new secularism is against that doesn't believe in the fallenness of humanity, which is why it's gotta put all these things into structures and then wipe out structures and build what they call social equity structures. And again, we've seen this happen for the last hundred years, socialism Nazi-ism, we've seen them build those structures, they're they don't, they're not good for us as human beings. Right.

Right. And for, for blacks being identified as pure victims, there's no room for being guilty. Right.

And

Remember way back in the sixties, it, the argument was, uh, whites, blacks could not be racist cuz they didn't have power. Right. It was only whites that had power and therefore only whites could be racist. Well that's a bunch of nonsense and class would probably be a much better category to analyze things in rather than race. And I hope we finally get over this racialism, which is, uh, and it's very dangerous I think. And what we need to do is class analysis a lot better to talk about the plight of human beings.

Well, lemme just, and before you get to the second one too, let me just say this, that in my, uh, work in the city and I've always tried to be a city guy who empowers the neighborhood, um, this kind of stuff, doesn't help black people or white people. So, you know, a lot of times you're accused you probably of defending this because you're a white guy. Uh, but in reality it doesn't help average black people either.

And, and most black people don't buy into it. Right. Uh, and at the ground level, blacks and whites relate to each other as human beings, not in these categories. Right. So it's kind of an elite phenomena. That's been kind of pressed on the culture and I don't think it'll have lasting, um, impressions. I hope we get over it quickly. Uh, it's a disastrous thing, but you know, the sixties racialism died out too.

Yeah.

I'm hoping that this will die out. The one thing is more disturbing, I think, is the gender ideology. Right. You know, that didn't die out with the sixties. The cultural revolution went on the political revolution didn't nor the economic revolution, but the cultural one did, that's been relentlessly pushing from the sixties onward and I'm not sure there's an end point for the L G B T Q. Uh, I, and that's the second thing I criticize and that's, I think has been more active in institutions than even the racial thing right now, the LT Q agenda. What I pointed out there is, is, well, the, the more deeply theological issues is that it denies the polarity of the sexes that, you know, from the very beginning, God made them male and female and cultures have affirmed that for centuries. I mean, it's nothing, uh, there's not much, uh, argument about that. And here we're trying to reverse a tremendous, the deeply embedded theological and anthropological notion that there's a polarity between man and woman and gender theory, which argue, you know, gender theory has this assumption of radical plus plasticity of the human being oddly enough. And I didn't point it out in the editorial, but you'll pick it up. Probably picked it up already that the first one, uh, the critical racial theory has indelible characteristics. It can't change of races. Correct. The other one, the, the gender ideology has utmost radical plasticity, right.

And, and Cho, you can choose to be one thing one day and choose to be another thing the other day, absolutely. In both are

True on the critical racial theory. You're stuck with your race. Well, both ideologies, which are very, very active or incoherent, contradictory.

Well, let me just say this because for those of you listening to listen, you know, if you're struggling with the lifestyle or, you know, you're confused about these discussions, we're not saying don't have a conversation and that you shouldn't have the speak, the truth in love and care about one another. We're saying that there's a group of people now that are weaponizing differences here. I mean, there are places too where there's, these are hate speech laws. You know, the police are coming to get you, if you say these things, which are basically traditional moral views of the Bible and of a lot of Christians and a lot of Americans and we're, and we're very upset about the people who are weaponizing these things, the activists who are using force coercion, fear, tactics, that kind of stuff has to stop. And, and that kind of stuff is what you're seeing happen. Isn't it? Dr. Benny,

Absolutely. And that's one way they, uh, achieve righteousness. You know, there, there are hardly any ordinary or lower working class people. They're kind of elite people that hopped onto these ideologies as a way to signal their virtue. Okay. And to make them feel good and give them purpose. That's why I say it, it's a new religion giving them purpose, but it's finally incoherent. It doesn't have much substance to it, but it, for the moment it gives them energy and targets that they can work at.

And usually those targets are, I don't mean to say that you're defenseless cuz you're, you're a very, you're a thinker. You you've, you've got the words, the capability to defend yourself and print. But uh, a lot of these folks, uh, just don't even want to hear what you have to say. And so they're gonna make sure that you're not heard. And that's the kind of stuff again that we're saying, wait a minute, in a culture of freedom, in a culture of equality and a culture that learns how to care for neighbor by dialoguing across the fence with people are different than us. We can't have certain people shutting us down and, and making these conversations illegal. And, and that's what we're fighting against.

And it's going on, on all over in academia, uh, people who aren't well known or powerful, uh, get, get fired for having the wrong opinions, even obliquely wrong opinions, but think what it's doing in terms of, uh, hiring

Right,

And keep all these things out of your dossier years ago, uh, someone from Roanoke college told me, you could never put on a dossier if you, that you're an evangelical, you just won't even be accepted, uh, as a candidate for a academic position. And now if you're a classical Christian, you better be quiet and you'll never get hired anyway, because they'll ask you these questions.

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why even at the, not at the, the, um, uh, university level, but especially in high school school and, and grade school, that's one of the reasons we fight for educational choice or what we call parental choice because parents have the right and the responsibility to raise their kids in, in, in the ethos, uh, of the, of education that they wish. And that's even being taken away at the lower levels. And the, I don't see any way of reforming that except to give people choice, to go to other institutions that honor that now, you know, so let's break down some of these things, diversity we're for diversity. In fact, the Bible talks about this all the time, but it's a diversity that is built on the characteristic of a common faith in Jesus Christ or a common understanding of our created reality. Their diversity is something that is supposedly what on, on an outward manifestation and a political ideology. What's the difference there?

Well, uh, one of my colleagues has written a long article that there isn't much attention at all to race in the Bible. Yeah. I mean, there are tribes of people, right. But race doesn't figure in much at all. And, and usually it's PE good versus Christian, uh, and, and the Bible, but, uh, and of course,

And tribes are extended families. You know, that's what people don't understand the ex. And we, you know, we're the nuclear family that we argue for in America. It's not that we're saying nuclear only. We're saying a nuclear family that takes responsibility for the children, you know, at that level. But it's always a part of an extended family, you know, that's America,

Those things wax and Wayne. Right,

Right, right.

But the triad of mom and dad and child is much more crucial. It seems to be, yeah. That I wanna as biblical and traditionally Christian. So the other forms of the family that extend one way or another are flexible in history from a Christian point of view. But, uh, that triad is pretty crucial.

Yeah. I call that the Trinity of civility, the Trinity of civility, you cannot have a, in fact, we argued this when the defund, the police movement came out. We said, you know, the, that, that defund the police and the family are, uh, in, in an inverse relationship. So if you have less police, you need stronger families. If you have weak families or no fathers, you probably need some kind of force, you know, to keep, uh, what I call the 15 to 19 year old boys high on testosterone, kind of in their place, because all of us would do stupid things at that age as young boys. And again, you can't, but you can't destroy the family and destroy the police and have a, a community that's safe and prosperous. And so again, we had, we had no problem getting involved in this. You want less police, that's great than have stronger families. Well, talk a little bit about the other one, the equity, cuz that's the one, I think people that's very easy to debunk equity versus equality.

Well, I would say equality of opportunity, right?

That's what, that's the American tradition. And it seems to be extremely important to uphold that is open for all different all comers. Yeah. I wonder make one point about those two things that is very tricky. It's not except and being tolerant of different kinds of people, even the LGBTQ, as well as racial, racial, different kinds of ethnic, not just being tolerant, but inclusivity and, and diversity means they come in with their agendas and their ideologies and you cannot criticize that. Right. Uh, that's part of the current one, which dam has any kind of discussion, uh, any kind of critique from a classical Christian point of view or any kind of point of view you simply for, for example, the transgender ideology that suggests that people could choose their, their se their sex or their gender genders, their, the new name. I try to keep using the language of sex. You can, you can dominate your body by what you think internally, uh, that, that has to be accepted

Well. And again, we gotta as Christians, the biblical notions of the moral truths of the Bible, which are differentiated ultimately from the proclamation of salvation, insofar as the moral don't save us, but, but they are true. And they actually prevent us becoming from even becoming even worse than what we are. So God engages us through his law and through his gospel, ultimately save. Um, but folks, you know, those things are true for everybody. Those moral truths are true for everybody. And, and again, even the founding fathers understood that good law in our culture or had to reflect the 10 commandments in some form or fashion. And if they actually violated them there, there's no good that could come of that. And so if you care about people, the notion that they're X, X, or X, Y, and they're created and redeemed by God is a great message to try to get across to them because God loves them. And to say that my gender is fluid and it's my choice. And there is no God, and, and I'm on my own. Uh, there's gonna have personal, moral, ethical consequences to that that we don't wanna see in people's lives. And I think sometimes we lose the fact. We're not just fighting to protect our voice. We really care about people who differ with USC. And that's why we want to have this dialogue,

Right? We care about the social goods, the, the good of society, think of what we're experiencing now because of the sexual revolution, uh, the low marriage rate, the dropping, uh, fertility rate, young children being confused about their sexual identity. There are huge social effects of this sexual revolution. And there will be huge social effects if this racial ideology continues.

Yeah. And, and again, even when you talked about that, they're introducing these, these ideas to children at a time when they have literally no capacity to deal with it. They, they don't have their mind, their brains aren't fully formed yet. They're, they're, you know, puberty and all that makes such a huge difference in how people finally, uh, root themselves. Their family structure is so key to all this, and they're introducing these things in grade school to, to start confusing children. And, and that just can't be a good thing for individual children.

Well, in the media, uh, all over these, this kind of stuff is first was pro portray engaged, but now it's pro portraying all different sexual minorities. Did you see the graph of the current generation? I forget even what the current generation is called. Something like 20% identify with the LGBTQ scale.

Again, like you said, of the power of suggestion, the power of cultural pressure, peer pressure, and then sexual confusion. You know, when you start to con, when you're confused about intimacy, you know, the Bible talks about intimacy this way, leave cleave and there's intimacy. And so intimacy comes after the leaving, after the cleaving, which is commitment, marriage, all that stuff. Cuz now you can actually trust somebody with your inner thoughts and insecurities and sexual insecurities and stuff like that. Well, they put intimacy, uh, at the very beginning. Now it's like, if you don't have sex after the first date, what kind of, you know, what kind of relationship is this? And it's confusing. And then you add to that sexual confusion, gender confusion. Wow. How, how are kids even supposed to come out of this stuff healthy? Well, what are some things we can do? I mean, some solutions, how do we take this stuff on?

I really think that, um, at the ground level there's a lot of normality and people are not quite aware of, of the power of these ideologies at the elite level.

Okay.

So I think when the ordinary people get pressed, they're gonna rebel. They're gonna push back. Now the elite are pushing back, like we've already talked about in Loudon county and at the elite level of the Penn state swimming team. Right. Uh, but I think ordinary people aren't quite aware, as I said, they take these, this new religion as a surface thing, not as the deeper thing that is really undermining, can't undermine our life together. But I think there's a lot of health yet at the ground level. Right. And that we have to be politically and socially and make arguments. We can't be, we can't self censor. I'm told that, you know, a lot of parts of the United States, you'd never hear this stuff in the schools here in Salem, which is a conservative kind of city. Uh, I keep asking my grandsons who are at the high school where this stuff is pushed at them at the beginning of the year, they said, uh, uh, well, one teacher wanted to do the pronoun thing and after a couple of weeks or kept every week that pressure stopped.

Cuz what was happening is parents were saying, whoa, we don't want you to do that. We don't want the critical racial theory. And so the faculties, if they have these more avangard opinions, don't push it. So I think, I think they're currents of normality in the society that are gonna push back. And politically, I think we're gonna see a reversal, not a reversal, but certainly a pushback on this. And so much depends upon the resuscitation of the Judeo-Christian tradition, right? It's anology it's notion of family life. It's notion of, I think is so dependent upon that. I hope there's a of the churches, but I don't know how it's gonna happen except from the Lord's spirit. This is us again. What do you think?

Well, I think, I think we have to definitely fight for religious Liberty so we can keep our voice alive and culture, like you said, but then we have to learn to speak the truth and love in such a way that we engage these things. Like, like I said, when I talk about, um, racialism, I always talk about Darwin. I always say, if you're a Darwinist, you have to be a racist. And the secularists were the, were the racist of the last a hundred years. They formed these ideological things and we've been fighting the enlightenment racism and the enlightenment secularity for a long time in this culture. But for some reason, Christianity gets blamed for the enlightenments abuses. And I think we've gotta fight that back.

It's quite disappointing or dis disconcerting that we're becoming a more and more of a post-Christian society. The effects of that are gonna be disastrous. I think we still have a fighting chance. America's been a, a, has had a history and renewal. Yeah. And I don't think it's impossible that it could happen again, uh, when people were come, come to their senses, but right now it looks pretty grim because the churches are dwindling and every grandparent I know worries about their children, their grandchildren,

Right. You know, well, one of the books that I used to always read to early, especially in my ministry was a book by D James Kennedy. What if Jesus had never been born? And it talks about the influence of the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview, if Christ had never been born, the world that we live in would be a much different place. You know, for example, uh, you know, the, the golden rule was turned from, you know, it used to be don't do to others, what you don't want them to do to you. Well, Jesus turned that around and said do to others, what you want them to do to you and, and just the positive force of life, the positive force of marriage. So, so, you know, I think the Christian world view we have, have to, we have to demonstrate that even though, you know, this is stuff that doesn't save us, but it's produced such tolerance. It's produced such freedom. It's produced such opportunity for all people. We have to actually get back to defending that as we also proclaim the good news of Jesus. And I hope we can talk to you more about it in the future delight to do it. Thanks for tuning in today to, to get to know our LCR L DC work better. Check out our website@lclfreedom.org contain. There are resources to empower your public square dynamic discipleship till next time. God bless you. Always I'm Greg Russels have a great week.

You've been listening to Liberty alert with Dr. Gregory Seltz executive director of the Lutheran center for religious Liberty in Washington, DC. This program has been brought to you by the Lutheran center for religious Liberty.