Max Luca­do Joins the Woke “Exiles in Baby­lon” Con­fer­ence

*This arti­cle con­tains mul­ti­ple cor­rec­tions intend­ed to pro­vide increased clar­i­ty, see the full note at the bot­tom

Why is Max Luca­do speak­ing at the 2024 Exiles in Baby­lon con­fer­ence? It’s the ques­tion we would love an answer to, though it seems the answer may not be a good one. We reached out to Max for an answer, but he has not respond­ed.

This sit­u­a­tion is even more prob­lem­at­ic in the wake of Andy Stan­ley’s Uncon­di­tion­al Con­fer­ence, which has, right­ful­ly, drawn more scruti­ny to church lead­ers flirt­ing with accept­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in some form or anoth­er. So it makes it more con­cern­ing that Max would be no only join­ing the stage with peo­ple pro­mot­ing an aber­rant view of sex­u­al­i­ty, but even accept/use the term “trans­gen­der.” But what is the con­fer­ence, and is it tru­ly a prob­lem?

The Exiles in Baby­lon Con­fer­ence is an annu­al Chris­t­ian con­fer­ence host­ed by Pre­ston Sprin­kle in Boise. The pri­ma­ry top­ics it cov­ers are “LGBT” and “racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion,” with this year addi­tion­al­ly cov­er­ing the top­ics of church & pol­i­tics and women, pow­er, and abuse.

We will briefly describe the issues here, but we pre­pared mini pro­files on a speak­er for each top­ic to allow you more details as to why this con­fer­ence is so con­cern­ing. Those pro­files are linked when each per­son is men­tioned, and addi­tion­al­ly at the bot­tom.

Pro­mo­tion of “LGBT” Chris­tian­i­ty

The first, and most obvi­ous, issue is in regards to their han­dling of sex­u­al­i­ty. More to the point, they pro­mote an aber­rant view of it. Now, it’s not open­ly affirm­ing, but it does cre­ate strange cat­e­gories that don’t exist Bib­li­cal­ly. This includes a speak­er who is a “trans­gen­der Chris­t­ian,” because that is “help­ful in describ­ing how she sees and expe­ri­ences the world.” Let us be clear, no mat­ter the strug­gles, temp­ta­tions, trau­mas, etc. you face/have expe­ri­enced, adopt­ing loaded, world­ly terms is not help­ful to you, or to oth­ers. That speak­er, Kat LaPrairie, will be talk­ing about “LGBT” peo­ple and the church. To be clear, Kat is a bio­log­i­cal female, uses they/them or (*she appears to have stopped using “they/them” over the past year or so. Still iden­ti­fies as trans­gen­der) she/her, and iden­ti­fies as trans­gen­der because of her “dis­con­nect between her body and inter­nal self.” She is not a bio­log­i­cal male. Yes, talk­ing about trans­gen­der indi­vid­u­als is con­fus­ing when it comes to being clear about who they are bio­log­i­cal­ly.

But she is not the only con­cern­ing speak­er address­ing that top­ic, and one that we find par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing is Art Pereira, a “celi­bate gay man” who has sought to sat­is­fy his desire for mar­riage and fam­i­ly by invent­ing a “cho­sen broth­er” rela­tion­ship where he and his straight friend have “formed a house­hold” togeth­er. They’ve com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing this odd rela­tion­ship even after the friend gets mar­ried. This may sound strange, or even con­fus­ing, so we encour­age you to read more, and hear from Art direct­ly in his mini pro­file.

This is just a taste to show that the con­fer­ence’s stance that homo­sex­u­al activ­i­ty is not accept­able, is no defense for their rad­i­cal­ly warped view of sex­u­al­i­ty. What they’re pro­mot­ing is a twist­ed form of bondage, rather than the free­dom that Christ brings.

Pro­mot­ing Decon­struc­tion

Yes, they’re not just talk­ing about decon­struc­tion, but we argue that they’re pro­mot­ing it. This comes from the fact that Joshua Har­ris will be speak­ing about decon­struc­tion. Joshua is famous for his book I Kissed Dat­ing Good­bye, but also for his divorc­ing his wife and reveal­ing he’s an athe­ist.

It may seem con­fus­ing why a Chris­t­ian con­fer­ence would have an athe­ist talk about decon­struc­tion, but maybe he is not hos­tile to Chris­tian­i­ty? The answer to that would be that he is hos­tile. He tried offer­ing a class to help peo­ple decon­struct and leave Chris­tian­i­ty, which includ­ed a “decon­struc­tion starter pack.”

Nev­er should a man like that be allowed to talk to Chris­tians about decon­struc­tion, unless the objec­tive is to pro­mote decon­struc­tion. His inclu­sion is either the deep­est igno­rance, or else he was picked for hav­ing the “lived expe­ri­ence” of decon­struc­tion. The out­come, either way, is that a man hos­tile to the faith is being giv­en a plat­form to tear down peo­ple’s faith.

*Update: in response to report­ing on the con­fer­ence, Joshua Har­ris has qui­et­ly stepped away. The points in this sec­tion remain, as the ques­tion of “why was this man invit­ed to talk with Chris­tians about decon­struc­tion?” remains.

Woke Speak­ers

What do we mean by “woke” in this con­text? Is it just that there are peo­ple who dis­agree with us on some points with regards to how peo­ple are treat­ed in the coun­try? Peo­ple that are just a bit to the left? No, and all you have to do is look into Chris But­ler and Tiffany Bluhm.

Chris But­ler is a Demo­c­rat, no, not sim­ply by vot­ing, but ran for con­gress as a Demo­c­rat. In addi­tion he was a com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er for Oba­ma’s 2004 con­gres­sion­al cam­paign. Polit­i­cal­ly, which is impor­tant, as that is what he’s speak­ing on, he has pushed ideas such as social­ism in the forms of a uni­ver­sal basic income and uni­ver­sal health­care, as well as sup­port­ing leg­is­la­tion for “LGBT rights.”

Chris also push­es ideas of sys­temic oppres­sion based on skin col­or, push­ing the nar­ra­tive that Amer­i­ca is a racist coun­try. He’s even writ­ten a book pro­mot­ing the idea for the pro­gres­sive “And Cam­paign.” That is a point where Tiffany Bluhm agrees with him, yet she takes it fur­ther by adding sys­temic oppres­sion of women to the sins of Amer­i­ca.

To say that Tiffany sim­ply is a fem­i­nist would be unfair to her own terms. In the descrip­tion of her “Resister­hood” cohort (class) she clar­i­fies that it’s not sim­ply fem­i­nism, but wom­en’s lib­er­a­tion that she believes in. Women are not just suf­fer­ing from some imbal­ances in soci­ety, but need to be lib­er­at­ed from the patri­archy that is using its pow­er and priv­i­lege to oppress women. Is this read­ing into her view? No, she makes this clear in her writ­ing and speak­ing, in addi­tion to bring­ing in a “crit­i­cal schol­ar” to talk to her cohort about “transna­tion­al fem­i­nism.” To be clear, we are not adding terms here, these are the terms she is using.

Why is Max there?

We arrive back at the ques­tion we start­ed with, why is Max there? One of the largest con­cerns on Max’s end, is that he has already part­nered with a hereti­cal, pro sex­u­al devian­cy orga­ni­za­tion in the He Gets Us Cam­paign, pro­duc­ing a book for them. Some seri­ous ques­tions need to be asked of Max, and Max needs to answer those ques­tions with unam­bigu­ous clar­i­ty. No Chris­t­ian should be toy­ing with, part­ner­ing with, pro­mot­ing, assist­ing, the things that he now is. We call on any­one that knows Max to hold him account­able, and for Max to do four things.

• Admit you have erred, and pub­licly take respon­si­bil­i­ty for join­ing this con­fer­ence
• Pub­licly acknowl­edge what is prob­lem­at­ic about the con­fer­ence
• Unequiv­o­cal­ly and pub­licly con­demn the errors of the con­fer­ence
• To live con­sis­tent­ly with that repen­tance, includ­ing fol­low­ing the same repen­tant steps with regards to He Gets Us as well.

Until that hap­pens, we must warn peo­ple to steer clear of a teacher that can­not see the wild errors he’s part­ner­ing with, or poten­tial­ly does see them. Stick close to Christ.

*We decid­ed to makes some updates and cor­rec­tions. The rea­sons include new infor­ma­tion, changes in con­fer­ence atten­dees, and pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al clar­i­ty. Most changes are not­ed in the arti­cle, but unnot­ed changes include the arti­cle title and addi­tion­al expla­na­tions in the para­graph about Kat LaPrairie.