Andy Stan­ley: A Cau­tion­ary Tale of the Dan­ger of Wok­e­ness

In a 2019 lec­ture at Dal­las The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, speak­ing to an audi­ence of young soon-to-be pas­tors, teach­ers, and pro­fes­sors, Andy Stan­ley attempt­ed to shift the foun­da­tions of the Chris­t­ian faith from a bib­li­cal world­view into an inco­her­ent mix­ture of empiri­cism and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. This speech has recent­ly resur­faced and gar­nered atten­tion with­in evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, in part because it high­lights Stanley’s decon­struc­tion­ism applied to his Chris­t­ian faith. Fur­ther­more, Stan­ley demon­strates here his dan­ger­ous assump­tions which rest upon the same ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings as wok­e­ness. In the rel­e­vant part, Andy states (full tran­script at the end of the arti­cle):

“My pur­pose today is to inspire you… in your preach­ing and your teach­ing and your writ­ing… to teth­er the faith of this next gen­er­a­tion to the event of the res­ur­rec­tion rather than the author­i­ty and the inspi­ra­tion, infal­li­bil­i­ty, or even the inerran­cy of the Bible where it should have been teth­ered all along, and where the Apos­tle Peter and the Apos­tle John teth­ered theirs.

“About nine years ago… I was sit­ting at home, and I’m watch­ing a YouTube video of Sam Har­ris. [A]nd he is just com­plete­ly dis­man­tling the Bible. And the crowd is cheer­ing, I mean every time he…takes a shot at the Bible, they just cheer. And as I was watch­ing, some­thing dawned on me that I nev­er thought about before that has rocked my world and changed the way I preach and teach. I made the change almost imme­di­ate­ly. 

“It dawned on me that Sam Har­ris shared an assump­tion with every­body in the room that was a skep­tic or an athe­ist or agnostic…And the assump­tion that he shared with them he also shared with most Chris­tians, although most Chris­tians haven’t thought about it, and the Chris­tians in the room lis­ten­ing to him, and Chris­tians every­where, and the assump­tion that I was raised on, and it’s an assump­tion that most of you were raised on. And the assump­tion is sim­ply this: that the Bible is the foun­da­tion of the Chris­t­ian faith, and as the Bible goes, so goes Chris­tian­i­ty.

“thought this is a big deal because I was raised, most Chris­tians were raised [on this] assump­tion [which] is a dan­ger­ous thing. 

“[H]e pub­lished anoth­er lit­tle book called “Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation.”…You should all read that book… If your faith sur­vives, then I want you to ask your­self this ques­tion: would the faith of the high school stu­dents in my church sur­vive this book, with the faith of the col­lege fresh­men that are leav­ing my church?…[W]ould the aver­age faith of the aver­age per­son in our church sur­vive this book? Because…he goes after the Bible because as the Bible goes so goes our faith and that just isn’t true…”

To begin, it is impor­tant to dis­cuss how this speech is detri­men­tal to Chris­tian­i­ty. As we have dis­cussed in a pre­vi­ous episode on our pod­cast, there are sev­er­al non-nego­tiable, fun­da­men­tal hermeneu­ti­cal points that one must agree upon to (1) be a faith­ful Chris­t­ian, and (2) be able to trust the holy scrip­tures. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Andy Stan­ley and his fol­low­ers would find many if not all of these essen­tial points prob­lem­at­ic: that the Bible is the breathed-out word of God (Matt. 4:4, 2 Tim. 3:16, 2 Peter 1:21); the Bible con­tains no errors (John 17:17, Ps. 119:160); the Bible is suf­fi­cient as a source for all Chris­t­ian faith and prac­tice (2 Tim. 3:16–17, 2 Peter 1:3, Jude 1:3); the Bible is author­i­ta­tive, backed by the author­i­ty of the cre­ator of the uni­verse (Matt 22:29, Matt.28:18, 1 Cor. 14:37); there is noth­ing miss­ing or unnec­es­sary with­in the Bible (2 Tim. 3:17, Rev. 22:18–19); the Bible is uni­ver­sal truth, equal­ly rel­e­vant for all peo­ples, at all times, and in all places (Heb. 4:12); the Bible is acces­si­ble to any­one with spir­i­tu­al ears to hear (1 Cor. 1:26–31, Ps. 19:7); and that the Bible is about Jesus, not you. How­ev­er, the Bible is writ­ten for you, so that you may have eter­nal life and glo­ri­fy God (John 1:14, John 20:30–31, 1 John 5:13). If those things are not true, then we can­not trust God’s word, we can­not trust the accounts of the res­ur­rec­tion, and God is not who He says He is. All of Chris­tian­i­ty blows up when any of these points are not true. Like­wise, to say the Bible is not nec­es­sary, is to reject its author­i­ty and suf­fi­cien­cy. This is func­tion­al­ly what Andy says, even if he would say we have accounts of the res­ur­rec­tion in the Bible.  Now that we have a foun­da­tion of what the scrip­ture says about itself, let’s focus specif­i­cal­ly on some of Andy’s points, test­ing every­thing by God’s holy word.

First­ly, despite Stanley’s asser­tion, the Apos­tles did not base their faith sole­ly on the res­ur­rec­tion, but based it upon the res­ur­rec­tion as the cul­mi­na­tion of the entire­ty of the bib­li­cal nar­ra­tive (1 Cor. 15:3–5, Luke 24:25–27). Hence why these wit­ness­es of Christ also quot­ed the old tes­ta­ment so much (e.g., John 19:36–37, Romans 4:3, 1 Peter 2:6–8). Andy has already, famous­ly “unhitched” from the old tes­ta­ment, and this explains a lot of why he posits the idea that the faith of the Apos­tles was sole­ly on the res­ur­rec­tion as an event dis­con­nect­ed from all oth­er con­text and prophe­cy. By con­trast, Jesus Him­self appealed to the old tes­ta­ment and prophe­cy to explain the gospel (Luke 24:25–27). There­fore, Andy has placed him­self in oppo­si­tion to Jesus, which is a very dan­ger­ous place to be.

Despite Stanley’s many errors, it is accu­rate to say that our faith is hitched to the res­ur­rec­tion. It is our hope, our guar­an­tee “accord­ing to the scrip­tures” (1 Cor. 15:17–19). This mes­sage was author­i­ta­tive­ly record­ed in the exact words God desired in His word. It is the record of God’s Gospel that will nev­er fail, even when men fail. To reject, or even down­play that real­i­ty is to risk being eter­nal­ly accursed (Gal. 1:8). 

When lis­ten­ing to Andy’s lec­ture, or any of his recent ser­mons, one may notice that Andy Stan­ley nev­er once men­tions any­thing about an unchang­ing, objec­tive truth regard­ing any of his claims. This is pur­pose­ful: Stan­ley fun­da­men­tal­ly rests his case regard­ing unteth­er­ing Chris­tian­i­ty from scrip­ture on a post­mod­ern view of epis­te­mol­o­gy. In oth­er words, he denies objec­tive truth. For Stan­ley, truth is sub­jec­tive and flu­id. Specif­i­cal­ly, we see Andy employ stand­point epis­te­mol­o­gy, or the view that a person’s “lived expe­ri­ences” grant them a supe­ri­or view of real­i­ty that oth­ers can­not have. For exam­ple, at the 2019 400 Lead­er­ship Sum­mit, Stan­ley posit­ed that white men need to estab­lish friend­ships and have con­ver­sa­tions with black peo­ple in order to under­stand that white men are guilty of racism.

Don’t get tripped up about the mean­ing of stand­point epis­te­mol­o­gy. This idea does not make a claim about one’s abil­i­ty to learn infor­ma­tion intel­lec­tu­al­ly, but instead the­o­rizes about one’s access to expe­ri­en­tial truth. It denies objec­tive truth, and denies that all peo­ple have an equal pos­si­bil­i­ty to access that truth, even if they nev­er do access it. How­ev­er, in real­i­ty one can access objec­tive knowl­edge. For instance, there’s a lot about trigonom­e­try that one may not know, but that doesn’t change the under­ly­ing real­i­ties of the uni­verse trigonom­e­try reveals, nor the pos­si­bil­i­ty of one learn­ing about trigonom­e­try.

Stand­point the­o­ry says that one’s “stand­point” in soci­ety, deter­mined by their var­i­ous inter­sec­tion­al iden­ti­ties, deter­mine both a per­son­’s pos­si­bil­i­ty to access truth and what that truth is. These iden­ti­ties include race, sex­u­al­i­ty, gen­der, reli­gion, abil­i­ty sta­tus, etc. In oth­er words, you can’t just “learn” some­thing, but instead must essen­tial­ly cre­ate “your truth” through your sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ences, espe­cial­ly expe­ri­ences of oppres­sion and vic­tim­iza­tion. When a per­son with a vic­tim iden­ti­ty (e.g., black Amer­i­cans, women, etc.) speaks about their “lived expe­ri­ence” of being oppressed, those in the dom­i­nant group (e.g., whites, men, etc.) must lis­ten to and believe these sto­ries with­out ques­tion­ing their valid­i­ty, since only the vic­tim­ized have access to the knowl­edge of their own expe­ri­ences. This is an essen­tial part of what we call “wok­e­ness.” As such, it’s no sur­prise that we see some­one that’s giv­en into this ide­ol­o­gy “decon­struct” the faith by break­ing it down, ques­tion­ing those fun­da­men­tals of the faith, and in func­tion give into the very first lie: “Has God real­ly said?” (Gen. 3:1).

Andy is also build­ing off oth­er points here, such as his own “unhitch­ing” from the old tes­ta­ment. In so doing, he com­pro­mis­es those afore­men­tioned fun­da­men­tals by slip­ping fur­ther down the slope of heresy, of which oth­ers have trag­i­cal­ly fall­en before Stan­ley. To make a long sto­ry short, there has been a tra­jec­to­ry toward down­play­ing foun­da­tions of the faith in the prac­tice of apolo­get­ics (the art of defend­ing the faith) that has influ­enced men like Andy to indulge in sim­i­lar error. Many of these “apol­o­gists” have com­pro­mised bib­li­cal truth to not “lose face” in front of mil­i­tant athe­ists such as the ones Andy men­tioned, like Sam Har­ris. This the­o­log­i­cal­ly way­ward drift includes the prac­tice of try­ing to prove the claims of Chris­tian­i­ty sole­ly from extra­bib­li­cal evi­dence. One can see how Andy has tak­en that view to an extreme, com­pro­mis­ing on bib­li­cal inerran­cy and on evo­lu­tion. Sad­ly, the “mil­i­tant athe­ists” of the 20th cen­tu­ry are a near­ly dead breed, and we’ve moved into a ful­ly post­mod­ern cul­ture as we tran­si­tion to a neo­pa­gan cul­ture. Iron­i­cal­ly, the com­pro­mis­es these apol­o­gists have made to fight athe­ism are now breed­ing open and blas­phe­mous heresy as their impo­tent method­olo­gies col­lide with post­mod­ern, woke men like Andy Stan­ley. 

In the end, what Andy’s doing here is why he’s com­pro­mised on Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry, on Queer The­o­ry (the LGBT move­ment), etc. And just as he’s a more extreme ver­sion of com­pro­mis­es that came before him, he will pro­duce men and women who are even more far gone than he is. Con­sid­er­ing that there’s hard­ly any­thing rec­og­niz­able as Chris­t­ian in Andy, what does that say about those peo­ple who are fol­low­ing his exam­ple? This is why we fight. This is why Woke­pe­dia exists. Please, for the love of the Gospel…Don’t…Go…Woke.

Full Tran­script:

My pur­pose today is to inspire you and to try to con­vince you in your preach­ing and your teach­ing and your writ­ing, to teth­er the faith of the next gen­er­a­tion, and maybe some of this gen­er­a­tion, to teth­er the faith. And that’s the phrase I want you to hang on to: to teth­er the faith of this gen­er­a­tion and the next to the event of the Res­ur­rec­tion, rather than the inspi­ra­tion, infal­li­bil­i­ty, or the author­i­ty of the Bible. [Andy briefly looks up at the ceil­ing] Oh good, no light­ning. So let me say that one more time…and you can talk bad about me after I leave, you have per­mis­sion to do that…From now on, for the rest of our lives in our preach­ing, and our teach­ing, and our writ­ing, to teth­er the faith of this next gen­er­a­tion to the event of the res­ur­rec­tion rather than the author­i­ty and the inspi­ra­tion, infal­li­bil­i­ty, or even the inerran­cy of the Bible where it should have been teth­ered all along, and where the Apos­tle Peter and the Apos­tle John teth­ered theirs.

Now let me tell you why I think this is a big deal. About nine years ago…I was sit­ting at home, and I’m watch­ing a YouTube video of Sam Harris…[a] famous athe­ist neu­ro­sci­en­tist. And I’m lis­ten­ing to this and watch­ing this video…and he’s at a uni­ver­si­ty set­ting, and he is just com­plete­ly dis­man­tling the Bible. And the crowd is cheer­ing, I mean every time he…takes a shot at the Bible, they just cheer. And he’s doing all the nor­mal stuff that Skep­tics have done for­ev­er. And as I was watch­ing, some­thing dawned on me that I nev­er thought about before that has rocked my world and changed the way I preach and teach. I made the change almost imme­di­ate­ly. 

It dawned on me that Sam Har­ris shared an assump­tion with every­body in the room that was a skep­tic or an athe­ist or agnostic…And the assump­tion that he shared with them he also shared with most Chris­tians, although most Chris­tians haven’t thought about it, and the Chris­tians in the room lis­ten­ing to him, and Chris­tians every­where, and the assump­tion that I was raised on, and it’s an assump­tion that most of you were raised on. In fact, when I state this assump­tion, part of your brain will go, “well, that can’t be true” and part of you will feel ner­vous that what I’m say­ing it’s not true. And the assump­tion is sim­ply this: that the Bible is the foun­da­tion of the Chris­t­ian faith, and as the Bible goes, so goes Chris­tian­i­ty.

That was the assump­tion he lever­aged all of his skep­ti­cism off of, and it’s an assump­tion that most of the peo­ple in most of our church­es hold to even though they’ve nev­er thought about it because no one’s ever said it like that, the Assump­tion being that as the Bible goes so it goes to the Chris­t­ian faith. So as Sam Har­ris dis­man­tles the Bible, and all con­fi­dence in the Bible, he’s dis­man­tling Chris­tian­i­ty in his mind, and in the minds of the peo­ple in the audi­ence, and in the minds and the hearts of peo­ple, and stu­dents, and high school stu­dents, and col­lege stu­dents every­where. And when I say the Bible, I’m talk­ing about, what if you went to a book­store and said, “I want to see a Bible,” what they would bring you. You know, Old Tes­ta­ment New Tes­ta­ment chap­ter, verse, mapped and wrapped. Okay, like, “the Bible,” the whole thing, just to be clear. 

So after I watched this, I thought, “this is ter­ri­ble and some­one needs to do some­thing.” I looked around and it was just me, so I thought this is a big deal because I was raised, most Chris­tians were raised [on this] assump­tion [which] is a dan­ger­ous thing. Espe­cial­ly when it goes under­neath the sur­face, many of you make deci­sions, we all do, based on assump­tions that we don’t even know about. And as soon as some­body sur­faces the assump­tion you think, “oh that’s not true,” and sud­den­ly you make dif­fer­ent kinds of deci­sions. 

So I read his book, “End of Faith,” and as hope­ful­ly you know Richard Dawkins and Daniel Den­nett and late Christo­pher Hitchens, Sam Har­ris. Main­ly those four guys, they respond­ed to 9–11 by pub­lish­ing books against reli­gion. All reli­gion, not just Chris­tian­i­ty. And so Chris­tians came back at Sam Har­ris so strong after he pub­lished “End of Faith,” [so] he pub­lished anoth­er lit­tle book called “Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation.”…You should all read that book, and if your faith sur­vives, it may not. You may become an athe­ist after you read it, just warn­ing you. It’s a lit­tle tiny book writ­ten to Chris­tians. If your faith sur­vives, then I want you to ask your­self this ques­tion: would the faith of the high school stu­dents in my church sur­vive this book, with the faith of the col­lege fresh­men that are leav­ing my church?…[W]ould the aver­age faith of the aver­age per­son in our church sur­vive this book? Because he does what skep­tics have done for­ev­er, he goes after the Bible because as the Bible goes so goes our faith and that just isn’t true…