Christians should affirm the phrase “black lives matter” but reject the organization that penned the slogan, seminary president Albert Mohler Jr. says in a new column.
The president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says the three words that have been embraced by Americans of every race and religion are “profoundly true” because “God made every human being in his image, which means every life on the planet, at every stage, matters.”
“[T]here are very real and urgent moral concerns about the lives and well-being of black Americans,” Mohler writes at ThePublicDiscourse.com.
But Black Lives Matter – the movement that was founded in 2013 and is behind BlackLivesMatter.com – takes stances that oppose biblical sexuality, Mohler writes.
The seminary president quotes the position statements on the movement’s website.
“We are guided,” the BlackLivesMatter.com website says, “by the fact that all black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location.”
On transgenderism, the website says, “We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead. We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women who continue to be disproportionately impacted by trans-antagonistic violence.”
Further, it says, “We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual (unless s/he or they disclose otherwise).”
The Black Lives Matter organization, Mohler writes, “adopts and promotes the entire worldview of the sexual revolution.”
The organization’s website also “seeks to remove any vestige of the traditional nuclear family,” Mohler says. He quotes the organization’s stance on the family: “We build a space that affirms Black women and is free from sexism, misogyny, and environments in which men are centered. . . . We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children. We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work ‘double shifts’ so that they can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work. We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.”
Mohler also examines the beliefs of the Movement for Black Lives, a partner organization founded in 2014. The Movement for Black Lives published a booklet that calls for “a right to restored land, clean air, clean water and housing and an end to the exploitative privatization of natural resources – including land and water. Democratic control over how resources are preserved, used and distributed and do so while honoring and respecting the rights of our Indigenous family.”
“These are radical claims, which imply the abolition of private property,” Mohler writes. “In this scenario, who would determine what land and water use constitute exploitation? And who would have the authority to seize property from owners who are deemed exploitative? Although this aspect of its message is emphasized less than its anti-racism, the group’s literature demonstrates that the Movement for Black Lives seeks an end to capitalism and free markets.”
Mohler asserts: “When you look at this language, it becomes clear that Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives share little in common with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.”
Although Mohler says he affirms the phrase “black lives matter” without “hesitation and with full enthusiasm” he “cannot use” it “because it will be heard, nearly universally, as a movement, not as a sentence. The sentence is no longer a sentence – it is a movement, a platform, an agenda of revolution at odds with the gospel, contrary to and destructive of God’s creational order.
“At the same time, Christians must be those who realize the hurt and fear of our African American brothers and sisters, indeed, of our African American neighbors and coworkers. We must be attentive to what they are saying – we must hear them, listen, and act in a way that demonstrates an urgent level of compassion and Christian love,” he writes. “We will need the spirit of Christ to do this, because mere words clearly will not do.”
Photo courtesy: Creative Commons/James Thompson; image cropped and resized
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, The Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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