Woke­pe­dia Pro­file: Moody Bible Insti­tute

Founder: Dwight Lyman Moody
For­ma­tion: Feb­ru­ary 5, 1887, Chica­go, Illi­nois
Cur­rent Pres­i­dent: Dr. Mark Jobe

A Plea to Those Who Love Moody

If you are a stu­dent, par­ent of a stu­dent, alum­ni, or donor, then we call on you to exam­ine the evi­dence, do more research, ask ques­tions, and demand change. Expos­ing issues is use­less unless faith­ful peo­ple like you take action.

Overview

World-renowned 19th-cen­tu­ry evan­ge­list and author D.L. Moody desired to bring the gospel to the com­mon man. Upon the advice of his friend and col­league, Emma Dry­er, who want­ed to see Moody uti­lize his gifts to train the next gen­er­a­tion of young men and women, Moody found­ed the Moody Bible Insti­tute (MBI). Accord­ing to Moody, his goals for the Insti­tute were “…to have gap-men to stand between the laity and the min­is­ters; men who are trained to do city mis­sion work. Take men that have the gifts and train them for the work of reach­ing the peo­ple.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, today the goals of MBI have dras­ti­cal­ly shift­ed. Instead of train­ing the com­mon man in bib­li­cal lit­er­a­cy for evan­ge­lis­tic pur­pos­es, the mod­ern MBI focus­es on shift­ing young future pas­tors and schol­ars toward the polit­i­cal left.

2014: Unit­ed: A Sym­po­sium on Race & Eth­nic­i­ty in the Church

To illus­trate this drift into pro­gres­sivism, one can eas­i­ly observe the fact that a sym­po­sium on race rela­tions in the Unit­ed States is fea­tured promi­nent­ly on the MBI website’s “diver­si­ty” page. In this 2014 sym­po­sium, Moody stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, and alum­ni pon­tif­i­cat­ed about racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion as pan­elists uti­lized many woke talk­ing points six years before they became pop­u­lar­ized in evan­gel­i­cal­ism fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd.

For exam­ple, Chris Brooks, pas­tor, author, pod­cast host for Moody Radio, and then-cam­pus dean of Moody The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, assert­ed the fol­low­ing at the sym­po­sium: “The sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions are out­do­ing the church in [race rela­tions]. Does this break anyone’s heart besides mine? That we as Chris­tians should be lead­ing the way, and oth­er places, God for­bid the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, is out­do­ing the church.” In Brooks’ mind, a left-lean­ing sec­u­lar insti­tu­tion is doing more for race rela­tions than God’s blood-bought, Holy Spir­it-filled church.
But the slan­der did not stop there at the sym­po­sium. Local pas­tor Eli Garza then char­ac­ter­ized the church as defi­cient because there is not enough of a mix of eth­nic­i­ties in local church­es: “But real­ly we should be griev­ing and mourn­ing because we have embraced the homo­gene­ity prin­ci­ple. That the fastest way to grow a church or to plant one is to have every­body be the same [skin color]…That’s our human nature…We like being around only our own kind.” In a sim­i­lar vein, Pas­tor Brent Slater elab­o­rat­ed, “…Rev­e­la­tion 7, ‘They sang a new song: Wor­thy are you to take the scroll, open its seals. For you were slain by your blood, you ran­somed peo­ple for God from every tribe and lan­guage and peo­ple and nation, and you’ve made them a king­dom of priests to our God.’ And [I and the elders at my church] felt God was say­ing, ‘I want a place to paint a pic­ture of what my king­dom looks like, and are you will­ing to do that?’ Both pas­tors are mak­ing the same claim: if your local church does not have enough dif­fer­ent­ly col­ored faces, then your church is doing some­thing wrong. Fur­ther­more, like so many woke pas­tors, Slater twists the mean­ing of Rev­e­la­tion 7 to try to make it say that church­es must be diverse, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to skin col­or. In real­i­ty, this chap­ter speaks about saints wor­ship­ing God in heav­en, and has noth­ing to do with how to run a local church. It con­founds rea­son to con­sid­er how this unbib­li­cal doc­trine would apply in homo­ge­neous coun­tries like the Repub­lic of Con­go. By con­trast, scrip­ture gives us the par­a­digm for how to grow a church: going out into the world and “testifying…repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Nowhere in the Bible does it put pres­sure on local church­es to have a cer­tain lev­el of melanin in the con­gre­ga­tion. As with the Phar­isees, Jesus would con­demn such fool­ish­ness as “…teach­ing as doc­trines of God the com­mands of men” (Matthew 15:9).
Not only did the sym­po­sium false­ly accuse the church of racism; it also indict­ed Amer­i­can soci­ety more broad­ly by for­ward­ing the Marx­ist idea of sys­temic racism. Accord­ing to Moody stu­dent Joshua Fort, Chris­tians need to sym­pa­thize with his per­spec­tive that as a black man, Fort is an oppressed vic­tim:

“…[T]his is about a sys­temic prob­lem that we’ve been see­ing, and that we’ve been hav­ing to endure time after time again. I real­ized that I was impli­cat­ed to stand with the oppressed, to stand with peo­ple who were say­ing ‘hey, there is a problem.’…[P]eople are large­ly ignor­ing that we are in pain and not hear­ing us when we’re say­ing that we are in pain…We are Chris­tians who are called to have a the­ol­o­gy that doesn’t just sit inside our heads, and sit inside con­ver­sa­tion, but that is man­i­fest inside our lives, and the way we live our lives…What it meant for me to have integri­ty between my words and my actions was for me to go and protest these sys­temic injus­tices that are going on in the world.”

Last­ly and per­haps most strik­ing­ly, the sym­po­sium taught racial essen­tial­ism in the face of a bib­li­cal text to the con­trary. Local teacher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, Hyung Joo Kim, encour­aged the audi­ence to ignore what the Bible says in order to focus more on race: “I don’t want to talk about much of the Bible, but only one word I want to bring to you here. So that’s 1 Samuel Chap­ter 16 and verse 7: ‘The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the out­ward appear­ance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’ But also, I just want to say to you, we can­not ignore the out­ward appear­ance because that’s me. That’s me, my identity…Asian.” Amaz­ing­ly, while read­ing a text dis­play­ing the Glo­ry of our Lord in impar­tial­ly judg­ing and dis­cern­ing the thoughts of man, Kim tells us to do the exact oppo­site. Jesus dis­agrees with Kim when he com­mands his peo­ple, “Stop judg­ing by out­ward appear­ance, but judge with right­eous judg­ment” (John 7:24).

2020: Response to George Floyd

Fast-for­ward to 2020, and Moody was preach­ing the same tune as at the 2014 sym­po­sium. After the death of George Floyd, Pres­i­dent of Moody, Dr. Mark Jobe released a state­ment regard­ing the inci­dent which states: “…[I]mages of 46-year-old George Floyd with a knee on his neck gasp­ing for breath and beg­ging for his life, have left many, includ­ing myself, deeply dis­turbed and want­i­ng justice…Listen to those around you—especially those who are mar­gin­al­ized, those who are hurt­ing.”
Dr. Jobe’s “call to prayer” was not his final word on the George Floyd Inci­dent. Three days lat­er, he dou­bled down on the left­ist nar­ra­tive of sys­temic racism against black Amer­i­cans in the Unit­ed States:

“I want to acknowl­edge the deep, deep pain that exists because of the long-stand­ing prej­u­dice and big­otry against our African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties. Here at Moody, this pain is espe­cial­ly felt among our African Amer­i­can fac­ul­ty and staff, as well as oth­er peo­ple of col­or. The cri­sis came to a head when we saw the images of George Floyd, a 46-year-old man who was arrest­ed, thrown to the ground, and hand­cuffed. A knee was placed on his neck, he cried out while gasp­ing for air, and his pleas were ignored…[W]e should all be indig­nant. We strug­gle to process the anger and the grief, and now we are seek­ing to under­stand how God would have us respond…Don’t be quick to judge people’s expe­ri­ence. This is a time to lis­ten, to empathize, to acknowl­edge people’s sto­ries and their pain. It’s easy from the outside—if you’ve nev­er lived through it—to excuse or explain away people’s pain. Instead, we need to lis­ten to our African Amer­i­can broth­ers and sis­ters who are express­ing grief and pain and deep hurt. This is a time for every­one to listen…Don’t dis­miss legit­i­mate peace­ful protests. The protests start­ed out with legit­i­mate con­cerns and many peace­ful pro­test­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these were sab­o­taged by loot­ing and van­dal­ism and vio­lence that has hurt the com­mu­ni­ties that were already suf­fer­ing and strug­gling. Just yes­ter­day, two blocks from the church that I pas­tor, loot­ers broke win­dows and took advan­tage of the chaos. But the mes­sage of the pro­test­ers needs to be heard through the noise of loot­ing. Don’t dis­miss the mes­sage because of the vio­lence occur­ring in our coun­try and in our communities…Don’t just watch—do some­thing.”

Despite not hav­ing all the facts of the case at the time, Dr. Jobe was quick to por­tray the Floyd killing as a deep injus­tice. He then tells us that we must lis­ten to the voic­es of peo­ple groups he assumes are “mar­gin­al­ized” and “hurt­ing.” Miss­ing from his let­ter is a cau­tion not to mere­ly lis­ten and sym­pa­thize with some­one who is hurt­ing if their pain is based upon false infor­ma­tion. This evinces the notion that Moody is adopt­ing the post­mod­ern idea of stand­point epis­te­mol­o­gy, that being a non­white gives a per­son a lived expe­ri­ence of sys­temic oppres­sion that can­not be ques­tioned, lest the per­son ask­ing be accused of lack­ing love or com­pas­sion. Nor did Dr. Jobe state that we should wait for all the facts of the case to be released before rush­ing to judg­ment. Even if one believes offi­cer Chau­vin mur­dered or neg­li­gent­ly killed Floyd, it was sin­ful for Dr. Jobe to adju­di­cate Floyd’s cause of death before the facts came out. By con­trast, scrip­ture admon­ish­es us to “…not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a mali­cious wit­ness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear wit­ness in a law­suit, sid­ing with the many, so as to per­vert jus­tice…” (Exo­dus 23:1–2). Addi­tion­al­ly, Dr. Jobe exhort­ed his audi­ence not to “dis­miss” the racial protests that occurred after George Floyd, many of which he said were “legit­i­mate.” In doing so, Dr. Jobe spread a false report by mak­ing the prob­lem of police bru­tal­i­ty seem more severe, by sev­er­al orders of mag­ni­tude, than what is the real­i­ty. In truth, near­ly every year police kill less than 20 unarmed black men, many of which are for self-defense pur­pos­es, and whites are just as like­ly to be killed unarmed. If the prob­lem is so small in a coun­try of 50 mil­lion black Amer­i­cans, then why is it legit­i­mate to protest based on this false nar­ra­tive? And if the protests were so legit­i­mate, then why did they result in at least 25 killings and $2 bil­lion in prop­er­ty dam­age?

Moody Radio

Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of Moody’s quick descent into social jus­tice ide­ol­o­gy comes by way of Moody Radio, MBI’s broad­cast­ing wing. Christo­pher Brooks, the man afore­men­tioned from the 2014 sym­po­sium, epit­o­mizes this phe­nom­e­non in his radio pro­gram, “Equipped with Chris Brooks.” Woke­pe­dia con­trib­u­tor Jor­dan Smith has writ­ten more exten­sive­ly on Brooks in a blog out­lin­ing the rea­sons why he left Wood­side Bible Church, of which Brooks is head pas­tor. In this pod­cast, Brooks has fea­tured promi­nent woke and Marx­ist “Chris­t­ian” lead­ers, such as Jemar Tis­by, Wal­ter Strick­land, Tony Evans, and Dhati Lewis.
Brooks does not sim­ply plat­form these false teach­ers, but he unashamed­ly allows their false doc­trines to spread with­out chal­lenge or refu­ta­tion. For exam­ple, in the Dhati Lewis inter­view, Brooks said “amen” to the racist, Marx­ist ideas of black fatigue and white fragili­ty. On this top­ic, Lewis states:

“On one end of the table, you have minori­ties, because you are the minor­i­ty, you are con­stant­ly remind­ed of being the minor­i­ty. In so many ways, it’s some­thing that dom­i­nates our conversation…And it brings about a fatigue in so many of us. It’s like, we’ve been talk­ing about it, and noth­ing has changed. Things are the same…But on the oth­er side of it is (white fragili­ty), when you’re the priv­i­leged, part of being in the priv­i­lege is the abil­i­ty to not have to deal with things. So, ulti­mate­ly, you’re not con­front­ed with these issues, and so a lot of times I tell peo­ple, a prob­lem is not a real prob­lem unless it’s your problem…And I think that’s so crit­i­cal to address…both minor­i­ty fatigue and white fragili­ty that often pre­dom­i­nates our dis­cus­sions on race…”

Here, Lewis com­mit­ted the sin of bear­ing false wit­ness by declar­ing that blacks are fatigued by con­stant­ly being remind­ed of their vic­tim­hood sta­tus, while whites are too frag­ile to engage in racial con­ver­sa­tions because it’s “not their prob­lem.” This makes blacks seem vir­tu­ous and oppressed while paint­ing whites as lack­ing com­pas­sion. Besides this, all of Dhati’s claims were said by fiat with­out a shred of evi­dence; it was mere­ly assumed in advance. But instead of chal­leng­ing Lewis’s slan­der­ous assump­tions about white Chris­tians, Brooks responds by affirm­ing: “I just want to say ‘amen’ to every­thing you just said…” A greater exam­i­na­tion of Moody Radio will be done at a lat­er date.

Moody Pub­lish­ing

Last­ly, Moody has pub­lished a num­ber of woke books that sup­port unbib­li­cal con­cepts such as the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment; forced redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth by steal­ing from whites and giv­ing the mon­ey to blacks (repa­ra­tions); and that one can sup­port the Demo­c­rat party’s plat­form and still be a faith­ful Chris­t­ian. These books include: “Woke Church” by Eric Mason, “King­dom Race The­ol­o­gy” by Tony Evans, “One Blood” by John Perkins, and “The New Ref­or­ma­tion: Find­ing Hope in the Fight for Eth­nic Uni­ty” by Shai Linne. A greater exam­i­na­tion of Moody Pub­lish­ing will be done at a lat­er date.