A couple of days ago, I posted some video of JD Greear bragging that he had appointed women and minorities to two-thirds of the important positions within the Southern Baptist Convention; and that 63% of church plants were being led by “people of color”.
Below, you will see a video in which Danny Akin– the leader of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary– asserts that we must “listen” to minorities, and that we must cede power to them:
The @ERLC made this video, starring SEBTS President Danny Akin, telling white Christians to:
— Center for Baptist Leadership (@BaptistLeaders) April 28, 2025
1) “Listen” to minorities ABOVE ALL THINGS
2) Surrender power
Interestingly, neither Leatherwood nor Akin have “surrendered” their position of leadership to a “minority” pic.twitter.com/wjxRn0Omxe
Just as in the case of JD Greear’s video, this is horrendously unbiblical. This is a wholesale surrender to the political and cultural left. It is dabbling in Critical Race Theory and DEI– just like Greear.
There are several problems with this situation.
First, faithful Southern Baptists would be right to question how their tithes and the Cooperative Program dollars are being used.
Second, this mindset, to the extent that it is likely propagated, inevitably affects the quality of seminary graduates this particular school is producing.
And third, this inevitably percolates down to the individual churches where pastors say and do things that lack biblical wisdom. Groupthink within the Convention affects everyone.
These kinds of videos would have been unimaginable even just a decade ago. It demonstrates the “progressive march through the institutions”. But it also demonstrates key people rising to leadership who are not properly vetted.
A popular saying in Bulgarian culture stems from a story about a pig begging its owner to be allowed to sleep under his bed for warmth, the owner’s acquiescence having created in the pig the boldness the next day to now request permission to sleep on (rather than under) the bed the following night.
This is the position the SBC now finds themselves in.
Good analogy, Fred. What a mess!
Danny boy just proved what a deep-seated racist he is in this clip. Just because we all see the world through different paradigms doesn’t determine who has “power” or privileges over another. If Danny were to give that same speech at a conference in parts of Africa, they’d laugh at him! And last time I checked, God determines our purpose for the kingdom as well as our pigment and the latter is irrelevant to our calling.
Jan, you are absolutely right. This is thoroughly objectionable. And the problem is that this type of groupthink infects pastors in individual churches.