The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is promoting the launch of Christian schools through its North American Mission Board (NAMB). Ordinarily, if a Christian organization were to promote launching private religious schools that would be a good thing. However, the North American Mission Board is doing so with partners that embrace Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and at its upcoming July 16, 2024, conference on launching a Christian School, the conference hosts speakers who defended Critical Race Theory’s (CRT) use in the SBC as an Analytical Tool.
NAMB presents A Case for Church-Based Schools online seminar on July 16 featuring Trevin Wax, ACSI President Larry Taylor and The First Academy of Orlando Head of School Steve Whitaker. All are Woke. Here is what you need to know.
The First Academy of Orlando, Florida is a ministry of First Baptist Church of Orlando. Danny de Armas is Senior Associate Pastor of FBC Orlando. The head of school is a speaker at the NAMB conference. In 2022, de Armas praised how his church included the entirety of the rainbow with FBC Orland including transgender, LGBTQ, straight, single and so much more!
“We have transgender, LGBTQ, straight, single, married, divorced and cohabiting people,” de Armas said. “These same people attend, listen, serve, grow and give…We have Democrats, Republicans, independents, and non-registered people…We have documented and undocumented people…We have pro-life and pro-choice people.”
And to further establish FBC Orlando’s Woke bona fides, de Armas participated in the Woke flagellation over George Floyd.
And lest you think de Armas’s comments on diversity were just lip service, the Disntr reported, “FBC Orlando’s Danny DeArmas Baptized Openly Gay, ‘Married’ Man-to-Man Homosexual.” Yikes.
So naturally, this is the ministry organization NAMB brings in to tell conservative Christians how to start a church school.
First Academy and FBC Orlando face lawsuit over sexual abuse of a female student by a female teacher
The First Academy and First Baptist Church of Orlando were subjects of a lawsuit filed in 2023 where a former student claims the school allowed Harriet Sugg to groom the girl.
The lawsuit contains explosive allegations that the school was warned about the relationship, was concerned about it, and even fired the teacher; however, the lawsuit alleges “school officials did not report the relationship to law enforcement or the victim’s parents.”
ACSI promotes Woke Diversity program led by Critical Race Theory promoter
Another speaker at the NAMB online seminar is the head of ACSI. In 2021, ACSI began a partnership with Watler Strickland who teaches Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Strickland admitted to the New York Times that he teaches to unsuspecting pastors the theology of James Cone—the founder of Black Liberation Theology.
Regarding Dr. Walter Strickland, according to the First Academy website he has been a feature speaker on diversity at the school. Promoting what? Diversity! Was Dr. Cone’s Black Liberation Theology taught to unsuspecting people at First Academy? It appears based on the website that Strickland was talking about Diversity initiatives at First Academy at least as early as 2017.
Strickland attacked traditional evangelicals as having something less than the Gospel. “During a panel discussion on race and justice in the wake of the civil unrest following George Floyd’s death, Strickland claimed that American Christians, to justify slavery, constructed and passed down a ‘half gospel.’”
First Academy embraced ‘racial reconciliation’ after Shaun King attempted to shame the school
In 2016, First Academy gained attention when a student’s Instagram post went viral as it featured a few First Academy students debating how to use the N-word. According to the Post, “The public Instagram exchange went viral last week after New York Daily News reporter Shaun King shared it on Facebook and Twitter, overshadowing the start of school at the First Academy, where officials say many of the teens involved in the debate are enrolled.”
It appears after this time that Dr. Whittaker launched a racial diversity program at the school including bringing in Woke speakers like Dr. Walter Strickland. As noted above, Strickland was speaking at the school not long after the Washington Post and other national outlets reported on the controversy.
Whittaker pledged at the time that First Academy had “taken and are taking, deliberate steps to address this issue. As we reflect on this situation, we have realized there is much work to do in the area of racial reconciliation that we must take ownership of. Have we done enough? The answer is no. However, we will continue to learn from this experience and are committed to do the necessary and important work to grow as a school community in this area of racial reconciliation.”
Racial Reconciliation. There you go. The performative code word for DEI implementation.
Trevin Wax promoted resolution that declared Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality to be ‘Analytical Tools’
And there is the other featured name on the program—Trevin Wax. Trevin Wax served on the SBC Resolutions Committee in 2019 and defended the resolution the committee offered declaring Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality to be useful “analytical tools.”
Trevin Wax is part of the in-crowd of SBC Elites and used his position to speak against the Law Amendment. The amendment that clarified the SBC would not cooperate with churches that had women pastors.
Conclusion: Christians Schools are going woke as secular schools ban DEI
So, why now? Why do we see Christian schools facing the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) promotion even while DEI is facing new bans in secular public schools? Even hedge fund manager Bill Ackman calls DEI “reverse racism.”
Once again, Evangelicalism is ten years behind the culture. This heinous reverse racism will infect Christian K-12 schools just as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Intersectionality were problems in our seminaries. It all filters down from seminaries and universities.
This is the bitter fruit of about a decade of people like Walter Strickland, Matthew Hall, David Platt, J.D. Greear and other SBC Elites pushing these divisive doctrines. There is a generation of new preachers, teachers, and missionaries corrupted by the Woke mind virus. That is what your Cooperative Program (CP) dollars paid for over the last decade.
And now that the CP is facing the realities of incompetence thanks to the likes of Jared Wellman and the Woke Executive Committee—where they spend money like drunken sailors and hand out immunity to consultants who get sued for libel—the SBC Elites just may have killed the goose that laid the golden egg. That means the SBC needs to find new sources of revenue. Christian Schools just might be the answer. Why? Vouchers.
Money. Follow the money. One blog post written in 2023 from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) argues that the expansion of vouchers will help churches launch schools.
According to the post, “Since the advent of North Carolina’s voucher program a decade ago, numerous churches across the state started schools while others expanded existing schools. Private school enrollment has surged and significantly outpaced the percentage growth in traditional public schools.”
What will no doubt concern liberals is that the money in places like North Carolina are being redirected from secular schools to religious schools.
According to the SEBTS article, “Most of the scholarship money already goes to religious schools. Statewide, more than two-thirds of private school students are now attending religious schools.”
Money. Always follow the money in SBC life.