The Insidious Ideology of Social Justice

The Insidious Ideology of Social Justice. That is the topic we'll discuss today right here on the Christian RealView Radio Program where the mission is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm David Wheaton, the host. The Christian RealView is a listener-supported radio ministry. Thank you for your notes of encouragement, financial support, and lifting us up in prayer. Our website is thechristianrealview.org and all our contact information will be given throughout the program today. Just a quick reminder that we are now only one month away from the Overcomer Foundation Cup, which takes place on Monday, September 16th at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota. This is our annual event where we connect with supporters and raise funds for the Christian RealView Radio Ministry. Please tell golfers in your life about the event, and if you're not a golfer, consider being one of the sponsors or partaking in the silent auction, which will be available in a couple weeks. Go to thechristianrealview.org slash golf for more details or just give us a call. Again, the date is Monday, September 16th.

Major preparation underway for this, but we are blessed with the great staff and volunteer team. Paul wrote to the Colossians in Colossians 2, verse 8, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. It would be hard to overstate just how pervasive and destructive social justice ideology has become in our society and the church, whether termed social justice, wokeness, colonization, diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, or critical race theory or critical theory. It has metastasized everywhere, government, business, education, media, military, even in Christian institutions in the church. It's based on the Marxist worldview that, quote, oppressors, such as white, Christian, heterosexual men have, quote, rigged the system to oppress and victimize non-whites, non-Christians, women, immigrants, indigenous peoples, homosexuals, transgenders, and of course Palestinians. This is a politically and theologically left-wing ideology whose ultimate aim is to crumble Western civilization and the biblical principles upon which it's based in order to transform the country and really the broader world into what they believe will be a united socialist utopia where they do not, quote, acknowledge God any longer.

That's from Romans chapter 1 verse 28. But instead of this unity, this ideology foments division between people, a sense of entitlement for some, and the sin of partiality, choosing one over the other based on the wrong reasons. But even worse for Christians in the church, social justice prioritizes the pursuit of social issues above the Great Commission and sidetracks many Christians and churches. Our guest this weekend is Pastor Jeff Klewer. He knows all too well about social justice. The term Christians are particularly susceptible to because, quote, God is a God of justice and so pursuing social justice is a biblical and gospel issue. Jeff lived and ministered for over a decade in the inner city of Philadelphia and came to the conclusion that social justice policies were not only misguided but actually cause and exacerbate problems rather than providing solutions. Jeff has written a strong and insightful book titled Woke Free Church for the Deliverance of the Body of Christ from Social Justice Captivity that exposes just how insidious this woke ideology is. The book struck such a nerve in his own denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America, EFCA, that they removed his ordination as a minister.

You may recall that journalist Megan Basham recently joined us to describe the left's infiltration into evangelicalism in light of her best-selling book Shepherds for Sale, How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. Now Jeff Klewer joins us to describe what it's like to stand in opposition to the social justice movement within the church. Let's get to the first segment of the interview with Pastor Jeff Klewer. Jeff, we're grateful to have you come on the Christian Worldview radio program today. Tell us briefly about your background, how you became a follower of Christ, and what your life is like now.

I was raised in a Christian home, and in college I would say that basketball was probably more important to me than my faith, but I did have the opportunity to go to North Carolina as a fellowship Christian athletes huddle leader, and it was there that the Lord just captured my heart and gave me a fire to tell others about Christ, and my life sort of changed at that point just before I graduated college, went and became a youth pastor upon graduation, and then in 2004 moved to inner city Philadelphia where I was an inner city missionary with the church there. My wife and I and our two kids were born in the inner city, and I was there for 12 years, and then in 2016 moved out to the suburbs of Mount Laurel, New Jersey where I've been holding it down as a senior pastor for about almost nine years. We're going to get into your experience in the inner city as part of your really insightful book The Woke Free Church.

Let me quote from the book on page 20. You say, the left has a theory that they have introduced into the national conversation by way of deception. They snuck their ideas into the national psyche, and when we take a look under the hood we'll see that the critical theory behind what contemporary society calls quote social justice does more than describe the way things supposedly are. It seeks to tear down Western civilization, especially biblical Christianity.

That's a very big statement to say that this ideology is seeking to tear down the entirety of Western civilization and especially biblical Christianity, but you have some family experience with what leftism, socialism, Marxism, even communism does. You write about in your book Woke Free Church about your grandfather who was imprisoned, if I'm not mistaken, in the Soviet gulag. Tell us briefly about that and how his experience informed your understanding of social justice as Marxism and its danger to the church. Socialism is at root of the Marxist agenda in the communist Soviet Union. My grandfather got there because he was actually a German soldier but a pacifist and a Mennonite, so he laid down his arms when he was impressed into the military and was taken captive there by the Russians, and so they put him in a Russian gulag.

He lived there for four years. As the war was over and eventually he was being brought back to Germany, they tried again and again to indoctrinate him in that worldview, and he of course having lived through the gulag wanted nothing to do with that, but then eventually the family moved to the United States of America. So I was kind of raised with this story, and my father being an immigrant from Germany after World War II was very aware of how destructive Marxism is.

So when I saw it coming up in our own denomination, the Evangelical Free Church, it wasn't in the explicit form that you would have in outright Marxism, but in the more cultural Marxism of victim oppressor paradigm, it raised many red flags for me. Jeff Klewer is our guest today here on the Christian Real Views, a pastor of Cornerstone Church in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and the author of the book we're discussing, Woke Free Church. Here's a quick soundbite, Jeff, of what Vice President Kamala Harris, in presumptive nominee for president on the Democrat side, had to say about this ideology of social justice or wokeness. You know, we have to stay woke. Like everybody needs to be woke. And you can talk about if you're the wokest or woker, but just stay more woke than less woke. It's not really a laughing matter as you read your book about what it means to be woke.

This is one of these code words. And in your book early on, you say in his poem on Hegel, Karl Marx says he reveals why he never started with definitions. I mean, what does woke really mean? He wanted to string as many people along for as long as possible. Clarity, which is ever the friend of truth, was always Marx's enemy. And so Marx wrote this little poem. He said, Words I teach all mixed up into a devilish muddle. Thus, anyone may think just what he chooses to think.

Never at least is he hemmed in by strict limitations. He understands what he thinks, freely invents what he feels. Thus, each may for himself suck wisdom's nourishing nectar. And you talk about in the book how words like hate, well, that means one thing maybe to us, but to the other side, it just hate simply means, well, you disapprove of a certain lifestyle. Or diversity to the other side means basically less white people. Or equity doesn't have the nice sounding feel of everyone's equal, but it means that equal outcomes and you need a bigger government to redistribute well to get there. Or the idea of the word city—we'll get into this, this is a very interesting part of your book—that means there's a mystical aura around that words of God's special affection on cities. You talk about the word systemic.

We think of systemic as meaning, oh, it's in our laws and structures of society. Well, to them, the woke is just basically something that happens a lot in their opinion. So talk about how the manipulation or the purposeful ambiguity on words is so effective to leftism or wokeism or social justice or Marxism being able to enter into society and then also the church. The left, they are expert at inventing terms that sound great, and social justice would be the best of all. It sounds like, well, we want justice in society, so nobody would argue with that.

Nobody would want to say that black lives don't matter. The language of the left has this outward appeal, but underneath the surface there is a hidden agenda and one that seeks to undermine biblical ethics. So justice, biblically, is defined on the pages of the Bible. What is right, what is wrong? Christian ethics. But the adjective social modifies justice to something that includes these ideas of redistribution.

This is the great danger. It's the use of language to trip people up and to actually undermine Christian biblical ethics in favor of some new moral standard or no standard at all. Jeff Klewer with us today here on The Christian Real View, the author of Woke Free Church. You also say it's not just the manipulation of words, but it's also the power of stories over objective truth. You write early on in the book on page 19, you say, they also know that when emotional stories are wed to fine sounding terms, heat is introduced to the equation. Stories involving a victim are particularly emotional, because these stir the pious instincts of God's image bearers. Whenever we see victimization, God has wired us not to just look away. We're wired to hate it and to fight it. Once we begin to fight for justice, whether or not questions of truth have been answered first, we have a tendency to keep on fighting.

That's the God-given purpose of anger. The fire in the belly that motivates us to fight the wicked is only meant to die down when the war has been won. Then you use the example of what happened right here in Minneapolis at the death of George Floyd. When America saw George Floyd's face pinned to the asphalt by that police officer, we were furious, we were ready to fight. Enter stage left, the fine sounding phrase, black lives matter.

Well, of course they do, answered America. Black lives matter the way all lives matter. And the innocuous sounding phrase, which was actually introduced more than seven years earlier, you're right, surged forward in a wave of emotion. As it turned out, in this emotional situation, far more people just kept on fighting their justice war. It seemed too late to go back and fight a truth war. Explain more, Jeff, about the power of personal story over objective truth, even beyond just the manipulation of words. So the story of Michael Brown being shot by a police officer with his hands up, don't shoot, that emotional idea took hold before any objective investigation of what actually happened. The actual eyewitnesses said something very different from the narrative of the one person who said, hands up, don't shoot was what happened.

But when all of this investigation finally came out, it turns out that it was never the case. Hands up, don't shoot was an emotional lie, something that stirred the emotions of the American people and push forward this idea of black lives matter and the whole movement that came from that. So the emotional story is what carried the day. It didn't matter what were the actual facts, because the emotion and the story and the story that people were hearing were carrying people along along this agenda. But the problem here is that the actual victim in that story was the officer who was doing his job, who was attacked within his own squad car.

There was a tangle for his weapon. All of these things resulted in the ruining of his life. But the narrative which went forth in the media taught something exactly opposite.

And it's still repeated today. Jeff Klewer, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, and the author of the book we're discussing, Woke Free Church, subtitle for The Deliverance of the Body of Christ from Social Justice Captivity, is our guest today here on the program. We'll pause briefly for some ministry announcements, but stay tuned. Much more coming up on the insidious ideology of social justice with our guest, Pastor Jeff Klewer. I'm David Wheaton, and you are listening to the Christian Worldview Radio program. You have a left-wing foundation that realizes it has a problem advancing its political goals because of evangelicals. And so they will think, okay, what we need to do is find some mechanism by which we can change evangelical minds. They will then recruit well-known organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and denominational organizations. That was recent guest Meghan Basham talking about how evangelical leaders traded the truth for a leftist agenda, which is the subtitle of her best-selling book, Shepherds for Sale.

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianworldview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is The Insidious Ideology of Social Justice, and Jeff Klewer, the author of Woke Free Church, is our guest. Let's get to your experience living in, not only living in, but ministering in the inner city of Philadelphia.

And I thought this was a fascinating part of the book, because you're right, today people have this sense, and many Christians have this sense, that there's a special, as you describe, a mystical, higher level of spirituality, living and working and ministering in, quote-unquote, a city. You said, I've been to the final destination, the city, of their social justice train, and what I saw that resembles a gulag, like where your grandfather spent time, a large-scale acceptance of Marxism is what made the inner city what it is. You go on to say, the truth they illustrate is that the devastation of the city is fundamentally a sin problem. The idea that the city is full of victims of society is absolute garbage, you're right. Sure, there are victims in all the crimes that you listed earlier in the book, but those victims are suffering at the hands of sinners, not at the hands of society. Social justice assigns blame to the societal structures, such as laws, or such nebulous things as, quote, implicit bias and white privilege. In truth, the blame lies at the feet of sinners, which all of us are, damnably so, until God interposes on our behalf. I'm just going to read one more short paragraph, because I thought this was very interesting, on your perspective from living and ministering in the inner city of Philadelphia for all the years.

You're going to tell us about that in a second. The problems of the city are not what the left claims, and the solutions are not what they prescribe. Rather, it is social justice rhetoric that feeds the monster of sin in the city, and what happens in the city doesn't stay in the city.

Social justice is threatening all of America and most of the world. The church in particular is in its crosshairs. We're going to get to the church and how it's entered the church in just a bit here. But first, Jeff, tell us about your experience living in the inner city of Philadelphia, where I believe you were a pastor at the time, early in your pastoral ministry, and how you came to the conclusion that the ideology of social justice is actually the problem there. I was there from 2004 to 2016 ministering with various churches. I was not the senior pastor, although in one case I was the kind of primary preaching pastor when we were helping a Vietnamese church establish a second generation English-speaking church. But in that time, I saw what social justice rhetoric, this whole diversity, equity, inclusion movement actually does in the lives of people that I love, and had a very deep relationship with many of them. Many of them were like children to me, in the sense that the kids and teens coming up through teen club at Cornerstone Community Church, where I was leading that ministry, they were like children to me. I saw how the ideology was wrecking their lives.

I think the best story I heard to describe how this takes place came from an economist named Walter Williams. He was African American, and there was a young boy who came up to him at some large event and told him that he wanted to become a pilot, and then said, but that'll never happen because the man will never let it happen. Walter Williams then got distracted by someone else and turned back to answer the boy, and the boy had turned to leave. He lost sight of him in the crowd and was not able to tell him that it was that very attitude that would keep him from becoming a pilot, believing that you're a victim of society, that the man will hold you down. He said this happened in the 1970s. It was decades after the Tuskegee Airmen did fly as pilots in World War II, and Walter Williams said that that moment was the most heartbreaking moment of his career because he didn't get a chance to tell that little boy that if he will be responsible, if he will work hard, if he will follow the ethics of the Bible. Now, I don't know that Walter Williams would have used the term biblical ethics, but if you will follow and pursue your dream with effort, you will become a pilot. There is no ceiling for you there.

You are able to do it. And that's what's happening in our inner cities, this victim mentality, which is being taught by the Marxist narrative of oppressive societal structures that are preventing people from achievement. This worldview is destructive to human lives.

The spiritual impact of this is devastating. We had the opportunity to baptize over 100 young people during those years of ministry in the inner city, and I've watched in the decades since many of them, probably a dozen or two dozen of them, apostatized from the Christian faith because they came to believe that it was the white man, the missionary, that colonized them with Christianity. Some of them became Muslims. Others fell into the LGBTQ indoctrination and the victim narrative there, but it was always against the white missionary and the biblical ethic that they rebelled. Now, of course, we know scripturally that they go out from us because they were never truly of us. They had been false converts, sadly, but from an instrumental means, what led them away from Christ was the social justice ideology that they're being trained in from the media and the schools and especially the public schools and all the water that they swim in is surrounding them and pushing like a current to have them believe in social justice. There are other voices within the inner city as well.

There's the voice of churches there, spiritual leaders in the inner city saying, repeating these same lies about you're a victim and the policies that go into it that just compound the problems that are already existing. You write in your book that Philadelphia is home to really many well-known Christian, in the broadest definition of the term, leaders on the left like Shane Claiborne, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo. There's a younger guy now that you went to seminary with at Dallas named Eric Mason.

He's at Epiphany Church in Philadelphia. Eric Mason is the polar opposite of your book. Your book is titled The Woke Free Church. His book is titled The Woke Church.

Tell us more about who these men are and what their influence is on the inner city and with social justice. So Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, Shane Claiborne, the red letter Christians of Sojourner magazine and that whole movement, that was just a liberalism. They claim though to be evangelical.

It was a thinly veiled liberalism. But what's happened today is that there are people within this movement of accepted gospel coalition leaders of evangelicalism that have begun to imbibe the same poison and introduce that same poison into mainstream evangelicalism. The SBC, the Evangelical Free Church. One of the primary points at which this came into our world was the book Divided by Faith by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith. And that book, through the influence of Tabidi and Oweble, caused David Platt to go on the stage in 2018 at Together for the Gospel and chastise the people for being so white and introduce this construct directly from the book Divided by Faith regarding the oppressor class and the victim class. So this social justice indoctrination that once belonged really to the left and the social gospel and John Harris's book on social justice went to church traces the roots of that to liberalism in the late 1900s. It was just the worldview of the liberal churches, but now it found its way into evangelicalism.

So that's my great concern at this point. Okay, Jeff, two short sound bites here. The first by Eric Mason, the pastor of that church, Epiphany Church in inner-city Philadelphia, talking about reparations, followed by Paul David Tripp, who is a very well-known speaker, author, who attends Eric Mason's church. And look at the effect that this woke church has had on Paul David Tripp. Israelites got themselves into captivity because of their idolatry and sin, but look, they still got reparations because of the time they were in. Look what it says. It says, let every survivor, wherever he resides, be assisted, listen to this, by the men of that region with silver, hallelujah, gold, hallelujah, goods, hallelujah, and livestock.

I feel God right there, along with a free will offering. They talk about stacks. They give the people of God drip coming out of there, right? It was dripology coming out of the ministry, right? The reason why there have been so many challenges in America is because people are talking about welfare and all that. First, our welfare and social security was created for white people, but we're quote-unquote benefiting off of it, but there's nothing that's been done in this country comprehensively as a system beyond a handout versus a handout to help there to be economic independence among black people. Okay, that was Eric Mason, the author of Woke Church, a pastor in inner city Philadelphia, interpreting a passage from the Old Testament justifying reparations.

When he used the term stacks or drip, he's referring to money. But this next soundbite is from Paul David Tripp, a well-known speaker and author in evangelicalism in this country, who started attending Eric Mason's church, and listen to the impact this social justice worldview has had on him. Several years ago, Luell and I began to attend Epiphany Fellowship Church. It has been a transforming experience for us because we have listened to the experiences of brothers and sisters that we have come to love dearly.

This is our family, and we have heard things way outside of our personal field of experience. We've heard experiences of injustice that have made us weep. Weep in a way that doesn't allow us to be silent any longer. We have been changed, and that change is still taking place.

We're deeply grateful. All right, so we heard Pastor Eric Mason interpreting Scripture in terms of reparations, and then Paul David Tripp speaks glowingly about this church, whose pastor wrote the book Woke Church. Jeff, what is the seductive allure of social justice ideology? Thomas Sowell wrote a book called Discrimination and Disparities. In that book, he points out that the disparities of outcome are used by people on the left as prima facie evidence that the differing results come from discrimination.

That is not the case. There are any number of factors that can result in disparities, but the assumption that it is discrimination causing the disparities is the root of this empathetic movement to try to right the injustice. Now, slavery ended in the 1860s. There was a civil war that was fought, and I think almost three-quarters of a million people lost their lives, a bloody war that had something to do with slavery, although there's also a question as to the means of implementing that from the North. Some Southerners call it a war of Northern aggression, but certainly slavery was addressed and dealt with in that war. So the question then becomes, has America owed to descendants of slaves reparations for what was done and paid for in blood? And clearly, many of the descendants, like you just played a Kamala Harris clip, she is a descendant from Jamaica, but her father is actually not a descendant of slaves, but a descendant of slave owners, one of the largest slave-owning families in Jamaica. So is it the case that because she has a certain level of melanin in her skin that she would be owed money on account of what happened prior to the 1860s?

Well, of course, that's absurd, and yet people believe this myth, that there should be, as Eric Mason is teaching, silver and gold and cattle and, you know, hallelujah, all of these reparations paid to people on account of something that happened in the past, perhaps to someone's ancestor, but perhaps not. Jeff Klee, we're with us today here on the Christian worldview. You said in the book, Jeff, that you were being set up to really go down the social justice route, that just by God's grace, you were saved from being a real proselyte to this. You said, If my parents hadn't taught me the biblical worldview, I would probably believe in critical social justice.

Given the way I'm wired, I'm pretty sure I would be a full-fledged social justice warrior. You said the Bible and the Bible alone kept both of us, you and your wife, from becoming social justice warriors, having, you know, lived in the city, ministering to the people there where this is so prominent. What do you say to people listening today who have children who have gone to Christian colleges, who've gone to regular, maybe non-Christian colleges? I hear this from time to time, that they just have a completely different worldview now. They have this social justice worldview. How to help Christians, parents, young adults, see through this?

Oh, that's a great question. I think a young person who is just learning and hasn't read widely, probably has never heard of Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell, would be very prone to fall victim to a narrative that's being trumpeted everywhere in the media, and especially like you mentioned, in universities and colleges, but also at a younger level in public high schools and earlier than that even. So how do you fight that? Well, it has to come from a biblical worldview, because that's what's in the crosshairs that the parents and I think there has to be an awareness of what's going on in the culture around us to hear the dangers and to protect the children that we're raising from those dangers. Yeah, I think parents have to be vigilant.

I think parents have to be studied and be able to explain to a person, their child or a grandchild or whoever what the other side believes and why it's wrong. So there has to be work done. There has to be work done. There has to be effort, but it's so important because this is what's capturing the hearts of the next generation and leading them astray. Let me give one more recommendation, Jeff, that they get your book, Woke Free Church. We have it linked on our website, thechristianrealview.org.

You write with a lot of clarity on this issue that's very easy to understand, and I think it would be very helpful for parents and young adults to read this book so they can see through the fog that's intentionally created to deceive people into this really Marxist-based worldview that's not only taken over society, it's everywhere in our country now, including politics, corporations, educational system, but it's also in the church as well. Jeff, there has been a cost for you in writing this book, Woke Free Church. Actually, it's part of a trilogy of books, but this particular one was the first one, and this really set your denomination against you, the Evangelical Free Church of America. As a matter of fact, I'll just read a short paragraph from a column written by Pastor Seth Brickley.

He's over in Western Wisconsin. He said, Pastor Jeff Klewer, upon recommendation of the Evangelical Free Church of America, EFCA, leadership was informed that he would not be ordained in the free church unless he repented. Over the last few years, Pastor Klewer spoke and wrote about the social justice agenda that he sees being pushed upon the churches by the leadership. Tell us what happened there that your denomination actually strongly pushed back against you, and what happened with your ordination? It's the highest level of excommunication that the denomination can level against a minister, to the point where they won't speak to me, they won't answer emails, you know, as I seek to reconcile and look for ways to bring harmony.

There is just literally no response at this point. They've told me that they have no desire for that, so because they consider me excommunicated. The irony here is that it was really one of the teachers from the national office who came and hit the conservative pastors first. I was one in New Jersey who kept my church open during COVID, and we did so on the grounds that we have natural rights that God has given us to worship, to gather and assemble and worship the Lord in the freedom of our conscience. But this leader came out via Zoom during COVID at this time to do a teaching against Christian nationalism. And one of the things he said is that these conservative pastors are asserting their rights. And then he said, but we don't have any rights, they're Christ's. And there he was conflating our rights before the lordship of Jesus Christ vertically, and our horizontal rights relative to the state.

In any case, he kind of hit us and told us that we were wrong to be, you know, asserting our rights and remaining open, but we rather should be submissive to the government at that point. Well, that was one of the final straws for me to write the book Woke Free Church because I had already seen this infiltration of social justice in to my beloved denomination. They had invited Jarvis Williams to come and give a message at the 2018 theology conference in which he lamented that not all black folk are woke. And he taught this woke ideology. And in any case, the book Woke Free Church addressed all of that. And the response of the free church was never to engage with the substance of this disagreement, but rather to censure me.

There's never been a willingness to speak. There was a point in time when the board of ministerial standing invited me to come and sit with them and then rescinded that offer right away and instead took my ordination and put it in trust for disciplinary reasons. And then when I spoke with you, David, we both spoke at the truth script conference in Wisconsin with Seth Brickley and John Harris. They after that time completely revoked my ordination. It was no longer in trust because they were offended by what I said at that conference. But you were there to hear it.

It was not a stick in the eye. I was speaking sincerely my opinion and what I think that their diversity, equity, inclusion initiative in the free church is doing and the harmful effects that it has. I've spoken in good conscience, but they have not been willing to meet me to discuss the substance of the disagreement. Well, this sounds like something out of the reformation and Martin Luther having to appear before the Roman Catholic bishops or the pope back then.

It's just incredible how hard they came down on you. Where does this stand now? Are you not within the denomination? It doesn't sound like anymore and your church is an independent church now?

Well, that's what they want us to do. They're trying clearly to drive Cornerstone Church out of the evangelical free church, but I'm refusing to go quietly into that dark night. I mean, I believe that the free church has much value in it worth fighting for. And I think there are certain leaders within the free church movement who are trying to move the denomination toward this diversity agenda and there are many more sincere, godly pastors who don't want to go that way. So I would rather stay in the denomination and see if God is going to correct the course. Many of the people, the former diversity, equity, inclusion officer of the free church was Alejandro Mendez.

He has recently been removed for one reason or another. The one prior to him was Alvin Sanders and he also moved on and now there's a new president in the free church. So my hope is that we can turn a corner and the free church can move away from diversity, equity, inclusion and toward biblical ethics and begin to speak out against abortion and the so-called same-sex attracted side B Christianity and to take firm stands on the word of God. Because I believe there are men in our denomination that want that and it's probably the majority of the actual people sitting in pews. Well, I applaud you for standing firm and standing up to this kind of inquisition going on within your denomination. God's given you the grace, the opportunity, the privilege of being someone to stand up for truth in the midst of that. So keep on keeping on. We'll pause briefly for some ministry announcements.

Stay tuned. Much more coming up with Jeff Klewer, author of Woke Free Church. I'm David Wheaton and you are listening to the Christian worldview radio program. This kind of worldview about identity has exploded where people come along and say, if it's all about you, you need to actually work out who you are. It's actually immunizing a generation against the gospel because the gospel comes into the picture and says, well, who are you? You're actually a sinner.

It's a negative answer to the question. You need a savior. Look the cross of Jesus Christ. Who did he die for? If you're so good, if you're so worthy, if you have to pursue yourself as a good foundation for how to live. That was recent guest Martin Iles, executive CEO of Answers in Genesis and author of Who Am I?

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I'm David Wheaton. Be sure to visit our website, thechristianrealview.org, where you can subscribe to our free weekly email and annual print letter, order resources for adults and children, and support the ministry. Our topic today is The Insidious Ideology of Social Justice, and Jeff Klewer, the author of Woke Free Church, is our guest. Jeff, I'll just quote one more passage from your book where you say, "...God established hierarchies of authority. Left is a direction away from God's ordering of things. God made human life in His image. Left is a direction away from the sanctity of life. God set boundaries for sex. Left is a direction away from restraints on sex.

God granted private property rights. Left is a direction away from ownership. Social justice leads to devastating, you write, social and political outcomes.

It leads to dead babies, broken families, soaring murder rates, high inflation, and negative outcomes in all areas of life." I know you're not just talking about political left, theological left, because those are very closely wedded. There is a new group, coalition, I guess you could call it. It's called Evangelicals for Harris, as in Kamala Harris. A group of professing evangelicals are getting together and trying to persuade evangelicals that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, who are just clearly Marxist-based in their worldview. In fact, you probably heard Tim Walz say this, "...don't ever shy away from our progressive values. One person's socialism is another person's neighborliness.

Just do the d*** work." So they're telling us they're socialists, and Evangelicals for Harris, that coalition, wants us to vote for the Democrat ticket. As born-again biblical Christians, Jeff, as we consider what's at stake in this election, who the candidates are, how would you frame the situation that is before us over the next few months in our country? The rhetoric that this election is the most important one in our history has been said again and again and again, and yet it's possible that it's more and more and more true with each passing election, because this culture is departing from the Christian worldview in favor of a secular humanism with Marxism at the root, which will destroy an entire nation. So the farther that the left pulls the culture, the more crucial each election becomes. This really is a precipice for this country, that if we plunge headlong into the worldview of Walz and Harris, we may very well not have a country.

I don't think that that is really overstated rhetoric, even though it's been said before, because if you allow the border to be wide open and invite the entire world to come, if even one percent of the world takes advantage of that, the fabric of our society will be torn apart. The Christian ethic that's still held by half of this country, or maybe a little less than half, at least at the cultural Christian level, that will be completely swamped and overrun by a worldview which does not agree with the Bible. So we are so blessed to have inherited a country that was built on biblical foundations.

George Washington's farewell address pointed out that we needed to maintain it. And all of the founding fathers made the same point that this design was built for a religious and moral people. And by that religion and morality, they meant biblical ethics. Now, it wasn't sectarian.

It was a broader Christendom, in a sense. But they did understand the importance of biblical ethics in the public square. If we surrender that, our country could be lost. So yeah, this is absolutely a make-or-break moment for this country, because the cultural Marxism that Walz and Harris espouse are deadly. And that's why I find this so ridiculous, that when people stand up against those who kill babies and mutilate children and impose Marxism, those of our evangelical leaders hunch right.

Like, they use brass knuckles against me, but they use a massage gun for someone who wants Kamala Harris to be acceptable within an evangelical church. And that's one of the biggest divides between what we hold on the side of truth and those who are advocating for social justice in the church. We're saying that strong biblical ethics means you cannot welcome, as members in churches and as members in good standing, those who support the killing of babies, meaning Democrats.

And there are others that say, well, that's just out of bounds, and that's bigoted, or that's narrow, or somehow going to stop the gospel from going forward into a lost world. But this divide is really what we're facing right now. For people listening today, you might think, well, there's only one other option, Donald Trump. They look at him and they can look at some of his policies, that he is a nationalist. He's not as much of a globalist as the left. He is more for free market economics rather than collectivism, socialism. He is more for a meritocracy over equity.

So there's that. He does largely support constitutional liberties, speech and freedom of religion and freedom to bear arms. He's a supporter of Israel. He did nominate Supreme Court justices that did overturn Roe v. Wade, the ruling from the court on abortion, making abortion illegal throughout this country. He wants states to decide for themselves. Now, that being said, such a big issue for Christians is the issue of abortion, that we believe and understand from Scripture that life begins at fertilization. And so taking the life of a baby in a womb is murder. Now, Trump has come out in favor of abortion up to, I think it's 16 weeks.

We saw the convention. The GOP platform has been very softening of pro-life language in that platform. Same with the issue of sexuality and the definition of marriage. And so what you're going to have thrown at you, Jeff, and I hear this as well, and I'm sure you've heard this, is that, well, okay, you don't support Harris and Walz because they're so obviously left and so obviously so far away from a biblical worldview. But look at the Republicans now. You have a candidate, Trump, who's for abortion and he's not against same-sex marriage and so forth.

And I'm not asking you to make an endorsement here by any means. I'm asking you to help us how to think about this election that, okay, I know I don't want to vote for the left because it's so ungodly, but what do I do now that the Republican candidate is, I guess you could say, a lesser, maybe a much lesser, but still promoting some of the evils of the left? How should Christians be thinking about who to vote for in this election?

I think that's such an important question. If you read the Republican party platform, and I read it top to bottom, I can agree with what is said there. However, I think it is too silent on the things that I would say. I would describe myself as an abolitionist. You need to defend life period, no exceptions. Life begins at conception and we need to have a consistent Christian worldview.

So what do you do with someone who doesn't hold your worldview, but does advocate for parts of your worldview? The question is, is Trump advocating for a nationwide 16-week fetal heartbeat bill or something like that? He is not.

He is not doing that. He's the one who appointed the Supreme Court justices that overthrew Roe versus Wade, as you mentioned, but he is saying, leave it to the states. Now that is over against what Kamala Harris is overtly saying, which is to codify Roe to enshrine in a law now, not a Supreme Court decision, but a national quote unquote right to an abortion. So the difference there could not be more stark. If you care about the issue of life, which I do, we go out to the abortion clinics and we stand and plead with women not to kill their babies. If you care that way for children, then you should vote for the person who is not trying to kill them as part of their platform. So the difference is very stark. Now true, we don't have in Donald Trump a conservative evangelical Christian.

Admit it, he is more like Cyrus the Persian, who was a help to the Jewish people in sending them back to the promised land. To evangelical Christians, we should look at Donald Trump that way. He's advocating for the things that we stand for, not in total and not perfectly, but he's a friend of evangelical Christians.

That's how I would advise. That's helpful to think through it because it is a bit of a quandary. This is really the first time I think in our lifetimes where we've seen some on the Republican side where it hasn't been just a bedrock part of the platform and very prominent at the convention and something that they're promising that we're going to fight for pro-life against Roe v. Wade. It hasn't been that way this time. I think what Trump has to do, Jeff, is that he is pragmatic. He has seen what's happened since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that those who have run really strongly pro-life have lost. Now that may not be the reason they lost, but he's interpreted it that way.

He's about winning and he knows that either I get in power to be the president and we start getting the policies I want to do, or if we lose, it really goes left. Like you were just describing the law that is likely coming if Harris and Walls get in power. So thank you for framing that.

I think that's helpful for all of us to consider as we think about the election coming up and how we should vote. Thank you for coming on The Christian Real View, Jeff. We hope listeners get your book, Woke Free Church. All of God's best and grace to you.

Thank you for having me, brother. We are out of time, but thank you for joining us today on The Christian Real View and for your support of this nonprofit radio ministry. One final exhortation to not be taken captive by the deceptive language and seductive stories of social justice. Help those in need without partiality. Remembering everyone's greatest need is to repent and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Until next time, think biblically, live accordingly, and stand firm. The mission of The Christian Real View is to sharpen the biblical worldview of Christians and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We hope today's broadcast encouraged you toward that end. To hear a replay of today's program, order a transcript, or find out What Must I Do to Be Saved?, go to thechristianrealview.org or call toll-free 1-888-646-2233. The Christian Real View is a listener-supported, non-profit radio ministry furnished by the Overcomer Foundation. To make a donation, become a Christian Real View partner, order resources, subscribe to our free newsletter, or contact us, visit thechristianrealview.org, call 1-888-646-2233, or write to Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. That's Box 401, Excelsior, Minnesota, 55331. Thanks for listening to The Christian Real View.