Canned hysteria

I gave The Statement on Social Justice a mixed review. Here's a very different reaction:

https://ryanburtonking.blogspot.com/2018/09/why-i-cannot-and-will-not-sign-social.html

Purporting to address an alleged shift in evangelical circles away from the biblical gospel towards a false social gospel, the new Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel is driven by people I would like to believe are well-meaning but frankly not at all “getting” what those whom it primarily addresses are saying. That is at best. At worst, it represents a toxic agenda to discredit and undermine godly men and women crying out for biblical social justice, national and ecclesiastical repentance, and meaningful reconciliation. I certainly hope that this statement will not become a litmus test for orthodoxy, as if those who don’t sign it should be written off as “not sound”. If so the people implicated would include (barring the unlikely event one of them were to sign): Danny Akin, Thabiti Anyabwile, Matt Chandler, H. B. Charles, Charlie Dates, Ligon Duncan, Mika Edmondson, Carl and Karen Ellis, Steve Gaines, Philip and Jasmine Holmes, Eric Mason, Albert Mohler, Russell Moore, Trillia Newbell, Preston and Jackie Hill Perry, John Piper, David Platt, Kevin Smith, Robert Smith, Walter Strickland, Ralph Douglas West, and so on and so forth.

…and the real losers here will not be these statements and what they represent, but our black brothers and sisters and their allies in the fight for racial reconciliation – once again set back by the white majority culture’s denial and deflection. 

i) Is name-dropping supposed to be an argument from authority? An attempt to leverage submission to King's viewpoint? Collecting opinions is no substitute for reason and evidence. 

ii) Isn't there a pecking order in the SBC, where, if you wish to keep your job or be promoted, you must rubber-stamp what the powerbrokers say? Are these all independent voices?

iii) The problem with these allegations is that both sides have different assumptions. The opposing side doesn't share King's assumptions. The opposing side regards "racial reconciliation" as a manufactured crisis. A solution in search of a problem.  

Critics like King never attempt to persuade the other side. King treats his assumptions as undeniable facts. Yet that's the very issue in dispute. That's not a given for the other side. There will be no meeting of the minds on this issue so long as critics like King make their assumptions the benchmark. But the benchmark is something both sides must agree to, not something one side can unilaterally impose on the other.

And if endemic, systemic racism is not a problem, why is Sunday morning still scene to the most segregated hour in America?

That's such a thoughtless, mechanical canard. Attendance is voluntary. 

Why does nobody know pre-Arab invasion North Africa was a stronghold of Christianity, that Tertullian, Athanasius, Augustine, and plenty others were African men?

That's equivocal. That's referring to Roman colonies in N. Africa. To be "African" in that sense is not synonymous with "black African". 

Those evangelicals who voted in the presidential election did so overwhelmingly for the most all-around unpleasant and distasteful president in America’s modern history, who routinely  and crassly denigrates human life, especially that of foreigners.

That's become an instant cliche. A one-sided mantra that makes no effort to engage the argument. It doesn't try to persuade.