June 2020: Panel Discussion At Willy Rice's Calvary Church Promotes DiAngelo's "White Fragility"

During a June 2020 panel discussion titled "Help Me Understand: An Authentic Conversation on Race, Social Justice, and the Gospel," Pastor Willy Rice enlisted several local pastors and deacons from Florida's Calvary Church to address the nationwide discussion of "systemic racism" spurred by the death of George Floyd.

In this segment, pastor Zelvis Applin of South Hills Church promotes the widely-panned Robin DiAngelo book "White Fragility" to explain white Americans' posture in race discussions, with no caveats or pushback from the rest of the panel.

It's not even close to the craziest June 2020 content I've clipped, but Calvary Church just made the YouTube upload private, which shouldn't be the way Christians do convention politics (Rice is running for SBC president).

—TRANSCRIPT—

WILLY RICE: When people who are in the white community are seeing the anger being expressed, and they think that's inappropriate, "why are you so angry," how do you help them understand that anger?

ZELVIS APPLIN: Yeah, so, we talked about this prior to going live, but Robin DiAngelo has written a book called "White Fragility." And basically what it means is there is this natural tension that happens in the dialogue between black people and white people when it concerns racism.

And what it says is that it's such a sensitive topic that can be offensive, that there is a fragile nature to the white culture when they get in dialogue with this. And even as I'm listening, I've heard it a couple of times where, I don't mean to be offensive.

Well, to me it's like preaching the gospel. If I preach the gospel, it's going to offend you. Coz it's gonna tell you you are sinful, there's nothing good in you, and the only way you can get right with God is through faith in Jesus Christ, through his death, burial, and resurrection. So the gospel is extremely offensive because it tells me I'm no good, and I can't get good without Jesus.

Talking about racism will be offensive, coz it calls out the evil that's in our hearts. It calls out the sin.

RICE: And the pride. The pride, that Derek [Neymour, chairman of Calvary Church's deacons] talked about, which is at the heart of it. It calls it out.

APPLIN: That's right. It calls it out. So there is going to be a level of offensiveness. So here's what I would say. I would say it's okay to be offended. But begin to work beyond the offense to get to the process of understanding.

So how do we help people understand where we're coming from, why are we so angry? Number one, you've got to get past your offense. Number two, like Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter 4, God came to Cain and he said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" And Abel [sic] said the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. He got it from his daddy. If you go back to chapter 3, it's crazy. He says, "Am I my brother's keeper?" In other words, he was saying, "That's not my brother, he's my enemy."

And when you fast-forward to the New Testament, Jesus is asked a question: What is the Great Commandment? Jesus said: "To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second one is like the first." Well, wait a minute, Jesus, I didn't ask about two commandments, I only asked you about one. And he's like, "No no no no, you need to hear this. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. And on these two things, all the Law and the Prophets hang."

And so what Jesus is showing us is that there's this concept of brother and neighbor that are exactly identical. And he's saying that your brother is your brother. Your neighbor, if you cannot identify with your neighbor as your brother but moreso as your enemy, then you can't say you love me. Because the Bible tells us, if you say you love God, whom you have not seen, but you hate your brother who you see every day, you are a liar and the truth is not in you.

And I say this to black and white. If you hate people that you see every day but you claim, "I love Jesus! He's all I need," you are a flat-out liar. The truth is not in you. And so we have to be honest and real about the fact that from the beginning, from Cain and Abel, this has been an issue that has been perpetual throughout the generations, is that we have failed to see our brothers as our brothers, but we have seen them as our enemies. And that hurts God and hurts us, as well.

RICE: Yeah. I think the brother's about to preach.

Source: https://subsplash.com/calvarychurch-florida/media-archive/mi/+zsnwcrb

Here are some more clips I highlighted from the panel, in case the link above gets deleted: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1510995812519661580.html