In the below clip, J.D. Greear of Summit Church in Durham, NC attempts to stoke the guilt of congregants over our nation’s past. He is setting a goal for the congregation to reach a certain percentage of African-American members or employees. This is all under the guise of adhering to scripture.
According to this framework, a key indicator of the congregation’s virtue or worthiness is how many black folks it might have. Thus, the pulpit message from a Southern Baptist church becomes indistinguishable from that of a liberal mainline Protestant church.
What an unbiblical mess. This is in lieu of what members should actually be hearing:
JD Greear keeping politics around the fire pit. Just casually explaining his racial hiring quotas. You know, as non political guys do. pic.twitter.com/do91PwEOki
— Megan Basham (@megbasham) October 7, 2025
I wonder does Greear get any pushback from the congregation ?
He is no better than the author of the “1619 Project ” which is a historical endeavor developed by Hannah-Jones and published by The New York Times Magazine. The project sought to reframe the nation’s history by placing Black people, and the institution of slavery as well as its impact, at the center of the U.S. historical narrative.
“The 1619 Project” was first published in August of 2019 in commemoration of the 400-year anniversary of enslaved Africans landing on the shores of the U.S. in Virginia.
Although lauded by many and awarded the Pulitzer for Hannah-Jones, the project immediately drew criticism from scholars and politicians. However, the greatest objections emerged when “The 1619 Project” began to be taught in grade school and college history courses with some state government’s threatening to revoke funding from schools using it in their classrooms.
A few well-known historians have been critical of “The 1619 Project,” but not because it centers slavery in U.S. history. In a letter to The New York Times they wrote: “None of us have any disagreement with the need for Americans, as they consider their history, to understand that the past is populated by sinners as well as saints, by horrors as well as honors, and that is particularly true of the scarred legacy of slavery.” They are critical because they feel “The 1619 Project” “offers a historically-limited view of slavery” and “asserts that every aspect of American life has only one lens for viewing, that of slavery, and its fall-out.”
Thanks, Fred, and based on his remarks, I suspect he does get some pushback. And I understand many people leave and become disenchanted.
These guys act as if they are doing something original, when in fact this junk has been pushed on us for over a half-century.
I would add this is the same JD Greear who says there should be no politics in the pulpit. Yet, there it is, in living color.