Deconstructing Matt Chandler’s Perverse “Racial Reconciliation”

I first became aware of Matt Chandler through reading the blog posts of Dalrock. Dalrock is a traditionalist Christian husband and father who critiques feminism from a biblical perspective. Chandler is the pastor of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, the President of the Acts 29 Network, and a scion of the Young, Restless, and Reformed crowd. Chandler is a survivor of brain cancer, and from all appearances he has maintained an admirable and mature Christian outlook during his trials and suffering. Chandler’s passion is readily apparent in listening to him speak on a variety of topics. There is certainly no questioning Chandler’s sincerity, but as with many in evangelicalism today, Chandler’s zeal is too often not properly grounded in knowledge. I find myself put off by Chandler’s overly bombastic and joke-telling preaching style. It often detracts from more serious points that Chandler makes during his sermons. Chandler, like so many evangelicals today, has embraced the continuation of the charismatic gifts of prophecy and tongues.¹ More disconcerting is Chandler’s direct and indirect involvement with “interfaith” initiatives between Christians and Muslims. Chandler’s support for an unbiblical perspective on religious freedom and evangelism has made American and his own Dallas-Fort Worth metro area less Christian, not more.

Dalrock has critiqued several statements of Chandler’s about intergender relationships and marriage in particular. Chandler’s understanding of gender is influenced by feminism, although he is likely not a conscious subscriber to feminism. Chandler’s preaching has stoked the flames of feminist resentment by teaching that any wife’s inclination towards feminism is the result of her husband not properly exercising his headship over his wife. It never occurs to Chandler that women might be enticed to feminism for a number of reasons, and this can often happen in spite of being married to a godly man. (One wonders what Christ is doing wrong whenever His bride, the church, falls into error.) It is only natural that after hearing Chandler preach, a woman would be inclined to consider all the ways that she believes her husband is failing her in some way, resulting in relentless nagging and hen-pecking. Chandler has a general fear of confronting the sins of women.

Chandler’s approach to intergender relationships parallels his approach to race. I will use Chandler’s sermon on racial reconciliation as the basis for my critique of Chandler’s position. Make no mistake about it; Chandler and the Village Church do not consider race to be a topic of indifference. Chandler and the emergent church have moved beyond mere racial indifferentism. Chandler’s understanding of race places diversity (as he understands it) as a Gospel mandate and a natural outworking of the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. But Chandler misapplies the biblical texts that he uses to make his case, and his understanding of race is steeped in the presuppositions of our modern post-Christian culture.

Chandler’s View of Race Relations Is Pharisaical

It might seem awfully strange to compare Matt Chandler to the Pharisees of Jesus’s day. Most people imagine the Pharisees as stodgy old men wearing suits and listening to classical music. A Pharisee is overly enamored of tradition and seeks to impose his own arbitrary preferences on others. In contrast Jesus is typically viewed as critical of the Pharisees for their rigid traditionalism. This understanding of the Pharisees has led to this label’s application to social and theological conservatives. This is a major misunderstanding of the Pharisees and Jesus’s opposition to them. The Pharisees did strictly adhere to some traditions, but the traditions to which the Pharisees subscribed were not derived from the divinely revealed Law of God, and they often violated the Law that they claimed to revere.

This is apparent in Jesus’s confrontation with the Pharisees recorded in Matthew 15 and Mark 7. The Pharisees question Jesus for not requiring his disciples to observe a Pharisaical hand-washing ritual. In response, Jesus asks the Pharisees why they have made the Law of God void through their own traditions. Jesus exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and demonstrates that their concern for morality is only superficial. The reality is that the Pharisees had distorted the Law through their innovations. Jesus corrects these false teachings about the Law in the Sermon on the Mount when he points out Pharisaical misapplications by telling His disciples, “you have heard,” and correcting these false teachings with, “but I say unto you.” It is clear that the modern concepts of racism, racial reconciliation, and diversity² are rooted in recent traditions emergent from our degenerating culture. One could easily imagine Matt Chandler confronting Jesus about his choice of the twelve disciples: “Why are all of your disciples Israelite men? Why did you compare that nice Syro-Phoenician woman to a dog? Are you a racist?” The tradition of racial reconciliation, though recent, is no different from the various “traditions of the elders” that the Pharisees sought to impose on the people of Israel.

Like the Pharisees, Chandler misapplies Scripture to support his agenda. Chandler cites Peter and Cornelius from Acts 10 as an example of racial reconciliation. The context of this passage is the controversy of the Judaizers, who insisted that converts to Christianity must observe the Mosaic ceremonial law such as circumcision, ceremonial cleanness, and dietary restrictions. In this well-known story Peter is told by God in a vision that God has cleansed the common animals which had been declared unclean by the Law of Moses. Peter rightly infers that God has revealed to him that the Gentile nations are not required to conform to the ceremonial law for conversion to Christianity. He travels to meet with Cornelius and his men to preach to them, and they receive an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Peter defends his account to the apostles and brethren back in Judea (Acts 11) and ultimately at the Jerusalem council, in which it was formally determined that the Judaizers were in error and that the Gentiles were not required to observe the ceremonial law (Acts 15). Peter slides back into error when in the company of Judaizers and has to be rebuked by Paul for his hypocrisy (Gal. 2:11-16).

Chandler also argues that Paul’s discourse in Ephesians 2:11-22 is about racial reconciliation. Chandler observes that the middle wall of partition mentioned in 2:14 is the dividing wall in the Temple separating the outer court of the Gentiles from the inner courts, where Israelite women and Israelite men would be allowed to enter. He states that archeologists have discovered an inscription in the dividing wall that states, “Whoever is captured past this point will have himself to blame for his subsequent death.” Chandler argues that this would be tantamount to telling Blacks, Latinos, and Asians that they couldn’t cross our boundaries or they would be responsible for their subsequent deaths. Chandler argues that the word for “new” in v. 15’s “new man” (kainos) means that God has taken what was many and has created one.³

Contrary to Chandler, the passages above are all about the particular ceremonial distinction between Israelites and non-Israelites that has been abolished since Christ has finished His perfect sacrifice and earthly ministry. None of these passages are about proper race relations or cultural dominance at all, although this is obviously a facet of the relationship between Israelites and non-Israelites. The Judaizers were not Jim Crow segregationists as Chandler implies, but were a party of Israelite converts to Christianity who were overly zealous for maintaining the obsolete prescriptions of the ceremonial law. The goal of the Judaizers was to compel Gentile Christian converts to uphold the ceremonial law, not racial or ethnic segregation as such. Whatever degree of integration of separation one believes should be normative for Christians of different ethnic or racial backgrounds is not at issue.

In addition to this basic oversight, there are additional observations about these passages as well. The middle wall of partition existed in the Temple throughout Jesus’s entire ministry, and He never took the opportunity to object to this wall’s existence. This particular ceremonial distinction has obviously been abrogated, but none of the Apostles indicate that this distinction was sinful, just obsolete. Many proselytes did keep the ceremonial law and were circumcised in order to be grafted into the covenant until the beginning of the new covenant. The problem of the Judaizers was their failure to understand and apply the new covenant. Finally, it is evident that even after the new covenant took effect, Christians of separate nationalities remained distinct. The Apostle Paul considered even unsaved Israelites to be his brethren (Rom. 9:3), and the Grecians considered their own widows, as opposed to all Christian widows in general, to be their own responsibility (Acts 6:1). Likewise, Paul teaches that Christians are responsible for the needs of their own people, especially of their own household (1 Tim. 5:8). Clearly, national distinctions continue to remain important both in general and in the Church.

The result of these misapplications of Scripture leads Chandler to a false understanding of racial reconciliation. Chandler states (27:45) that racial reconciliation must be driven not by white guilt, but by the Gospel. This assurance notwithstanding, white guilt is clearly a major driving force in his message. Chandler constantly harps on “white privilege.” Around the 7:30 mark Chandler pontificates that “white privilege is a reality” and adds, “There are doors open to Anglos⁴ that we did not have to kick open that were just normative to us. We don’t even realize it exists and we get offended when someone mentions white privilege.” Chandler imagines the response of a (quite reasonably) offended white man saying, “I worked hard!” to which Chandler responds, “Well sure you did, but there are a whole slew of people who worked hard but didn’t get the opportunities you did. We must use the Gospel to deconstruct white privilege and reconstruct in its place the supreme value of every human being.”

I addressed the topic of white privilege in my earlier article defending privilege, so there is no reason to rehash all the issues with this modern concept. I will simply reiterate that white privilege is largely the invention of Leftists who imagine that whites have some sort of unfair advantage. If anything, our present society is construed to give non-whites an advantage over whites. Businesses and universities provide preferential hiring and admission to non-whites. The media maintains a false narrative of white oppression and non-white victimhood. Hollywood and television producers churn out movies and programming in which non-whites are the heroes and whites are either helpless victims or villains.⁵ Advertising is also reliably anti-white.

Insofar as whites have advantages over non-whites, this is due to entirely legitimate reasons. Just as it’s not unfair for a father to privilege his own children with special opportunities he does not provide for other children, it’s also not unfair and worth “deconstructing” for a nation or ethnicity to privilege its own. Chandler uses white homogeneity as an example of white privilege, but this is simply due to the fact that America (at least for now) is a white country. No one (including Chandler) would go to Japan, see the extent to which Japanese predominate there, and conclude that this was an unjust privilege that needed to be corrected. But whites aren’t afforded the right to have our own countries as are members of other races. In spite of the anti-white character of the modern age, non-whites still lag behind whites in many ways. To Chandler, this can have nothing to do with achievement or behavior. This must be an ever-lingering result of slavery or oppression. If this doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because you’re a white man of the “predominant culture,” so you can’t possibly understand the problems non-whites face which prohibit their success.

Matt Chandler’s Ethnic Gnosticism

Chandler repeatedly states that whites have grown up as the predominant culture in America and that this affects our thinking about other races. White people simply cannot understand why non-whites don’t succeed as much as we do, for we are blinded by our privileged status in America. Voddie Baucham has terms this belief “ethnic gnosticism,” referring to “the assertion that someone not of a particular ethnicity can’t understand the problems or challenges of that particular ethnicity.”⁶ Chandler believes that whites in America filter all of our experiences through the lens of our privileged status, the result being that we have deceived ourselves into thinking that underachievement from non-whites has something to do with a lack of work ethic. Chandler mocks any suggestion that circumstances have improved for non-whites and insists that white racism is still a major problem. “[White people] can’t say, it’s better, can we? We’re doing better. You’re not supposed to say that if you’re a white dude. It’s better out there for other races. Shut up, you’re a predominant culture, what do you know?”

Chandler’s ethnic gnosticism takes a concrete form in his sympathy for black rioters in the wake of the well-publicized police shootings of black criminals. Chandler has written sympathetically about the black response to the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Chandler has also contributed to a discussion on this issue in this podcast in which Barnabas Piper (John Piper’s son and fellow SJW) is quoted⁷ as saying, “If you refuse to believe the accounts and feelings of 44 million black Americans, it’s an indictment of your character.” Like his good friend John Piper, Chandler speaks sympathetically about Black Lives Matter in spite of the movement’s leaders calling for white genocide. It is particularly unfortunate to see such obfuscation from purportedly Christian conservatives when there are far more honest and straightforward appraisals of Ferguson and other related events from the secular Alt Right perspective.⁸

Chandler claims that whites filter everything through the lens of our white privilege, but white privilege is just another presuppositional lens through which he views the world. Chandler’s understanding of white privilege and how it has shaped the world is analogous to the liberal concept of “homophobia.” Conservatives frequently point out the unhealthy nature of homosexuality by citing the medical, social, and psychological problems that typically accompany homosexual behavior. The typical liberal response is that these negative consequences associated with homosexuality have nothing to do with homosexuality per se, but rather the homophobia of the general public. If only people would be more accepting of homosexuality, then homosexuals wouldn’t be so psychologically damaged and turn to bad behaviors.

Like the leftist concept “homophobia,” the ethnic gnosticism of Chandler is obviously unfalsifiable. A white man may express genuine concern about something like race riots over black criminals killed by white (or even non-white) police officers, but this will be dismissed because he is simply interpreting the world through the lens of his privilege. No amount of factual reasoning could possibly convince Chandler that his anti-white narrative is wrong. We whites cannot truly understand the tortured existence of blacks that causes them to riot and burn entire cities to the ground after black criminals are killed while trying to take the lives of police officers. Likewise the poverty of blacks and mestizos in relative comparison to whites cannot be explained by their higher rates of illegitimacy or criminality. Liberals like Chandler must attribute this to some nebulous, poorly-defined concept like “structural racism.”

Chandler seems oblivious to the fact that whites may have good reasons for our beliefs and practices. Whites in general, and white women in particular, have good reasons for exercising caution around blacks due to the prevalence of black-on-white crime. Furthermore, Chandler’s ethnic gnosticism makes any objective criticism of another person’s actions impossible. It is certainly true that behaviors and actions can be motivated by factors that might not be readily apparent, but this never excuses objectively evil behavior. Chandler whines about the prevalence of white faces in magazines while ignoring manifest evils such as black criminality and sexual promiscuity. This is because “white privilege” has nothing to do with justice. It’s simply a hammer with which to bludgeon white people until we submit to our own dispossession and destruction.

Chandler’s Idolatry of Racial Integration

Chandler holds such a high view of racial integration that he makes it a foundational principle of his congregation. The Village Church is dedicated to creating and maintaining a racially diverse presence at their worship services. Around 26:15 Chandler recounts a conversation that he had with a black man in his church. The black man asked Chandler, “Why is white folk worship so morose? Don’t you guys celebrate the Lord?” Chandler responds that he was intrigued by the man’s question, because “we thought that we just rocked that joint out. We thought we blew that thing up in there. There were some white older dudes who thought ‘this is ridiculous.’ I couldn’t figure it out.” The black man handed Chandler some music that he wanted him to hear. At first Chandler says that he couldn’t figure the music out, but over time it began to grow on him and the experience humbled him. He hadn’t been exposed to such spirited worship as an Anglo, and he realized he needed help.

Around 35:15 a video is played featuring Chandler and several church members. Chandler begins by recounting his experience as a young man. He states that he converted to Christianity in high school at a Baptist church located across the street from his high school. Chandler notes his disappointment at the diversity of the crowds gathered for Friday night football in comparison to the homogeneity of the white crowds gathered for Sunday worship at the Baptist church. “Across the street from his high school was a Baptist church and football stadium. On Fridays the parking lot of the football stadium was filled with people of different races who were rich and poor. The parking lot on Sunday morning was completely different. It was completely homogenized since 100% of the people in that parking lot were white.”

Chandler never explains why it is wrong, or why it is whites’ fault, for churches to be mostly white; it’s just assumed to be the case. A common theme among the white members of The Village Church is their embrace of “diverse” worship music. During the video a white pastor states, “The Lord has led us into stretching ourselves and our preferences, whether it be musically or otherwise. We’re continually growing… The goal was not to have this type of music on the stage but these types of [diverse] relationships.” Another white man who states that he grew up in an appallingly white Portland, Oregon, suburb states, “Racial diversity opened my eyes to an entirely different genre of music, and an entirely different expressions of worship to the Lord through music. We wanted to celebrate what God had been doing here, and use music as a way to do that.” A Mexican deacon called the worship at The Village Church “a taste of Heaven.”

The worship at The Village Church is explicitly chosen and formulated to encourage and celebrate racial diversity for its own sake. In essence this means that racial diversity in the local church is the object of worship. This is tantamount to idolatry. Whatever one believes about Christian worship, the object of worship is to give glory to God. I am confident that Chandler and the rest of the church staff would agree with this, but they are wrong to believe that musical styles are neutral in regards to the content of worship. Many modern evangelicals reject the concept of sacred music, preferring to believe that no particular style or styles of music could be considered sacred. While I do not intend this to be an excursus on Christian worship, I think that it is important to point out how Chandler’s beliefs about racial reconciliation have influenced the practice of The Village Church. The anthropocentric nature of worship at The Village Church is apparent in their video in which diverse song leaders are prominently featured on stage.

Part of the reason that sacred music has been rejected by modern evangelicalism is that sacred music is so intimately tied to white Christian culture. The providence of God has determined that Christianity would prevail among Europeans to a far greater extent than in other parts of the world, and a consequence of this is that the tradition of Christian music since the time of Christ is overwhelmingly European in character. This is true whether we are talking about psalm tunes and settings, classic hymns, or chants and motets. The reason many megachurches have abandoned traditional Christian worship is evangelism. They believe that the unchurched can be reached through popular or folk music. Chandler and The Village Church have applied this paradigm with their own emphasis on racial diversity in the local church. Church music must cater to the tastes of all ethnic groups in an effort to create a racially diverse experience.

The result is that sacred music, typically associated with the “morose” Western tradition is rejected for musical styles historically associated with Pentecostalism and its black roots. To this end Matt Chandler has fully embraced hip hop and rap as legitimate means of spreading the Gospel by breaking down ethnic boundaries.⁹ “Old white dudes” (paraphrasing Chandler’s words) are expected to sacrifice whatever inclination they may have for traditional music in favor of “blowing up the joint.” Given the commitment to racial diversity at The Village Church, we can expect traditional psalm singing, classic hymns, and timeless motets to be pushed aside for more “vibrant” music suited to the tastes of a racially diverse congregation.

Chandler’s False Moral Imperative

Throughout Chandler’s sermon there is a recurring theme about how whites have oppressed and abused non-whites throughout American history. Chandler states around 31:00, “The black eye on American history revolves around race relations.” Later on during the video (36:45), a white man concurs with Chandler about American history, denouncing the “expulsion of the natives” and “race-based slavery.” Chandler’s understanding of racial reconciliation leads him to conclude that the integration of all races is a moral imperative in Christians’ personal lives. It isn’t enough for Christians to attend racially diverse megachurches such as Chandler’s. No, he believes all Christians ought to have friends from different racial groups. Chandler states around 28:00, “If the crowd becomes more diverse it isn’t a win unless we become more diverse in our relationships. It’s an epic fail if the church becomes diverse but our friends stay homogenized.” Chandler even ties racial integration to sanctification, saying around 8:30, “Diversity makes things more difficult. Sanctification hurts. It’s painful or you’re doing it wrong. It’s exposing the wickedness of our hearts. That’s what we must do with this issue.”

It is astounding to listen to Chandler make such fantastic claims. I am struck by the extent to which he has simply swallowed the world’s narrative about concepts like racism, racial reconciliation, and white privilege. Chandler proposes that whites go out of their way to make friendships with non-whites, and repeatedly states that we are naturally inclined to gravitate to people like ourselves. But why must Christians believe that this is wrong? After all, it is perfectly natural for men to be attracted to women and vice versa. There is no reason to consider all of our natural inclinations as sinful; many of them are simply driven by healthy instincts God has embedded within us. Chandler fails to differentiate healthy, natural desires and habits from sinful impulses because his ideas are grounded in the world’s understanding of “social justice” rather than God’s Law.

It is obviously nonsense to claim that racial integration is a necessary outworking of sanctification. For the vast majority of human history the kind of integration that Chandler advocates was impossible. For example, a Christian in medieval Scotland had very little chance of interacting with non-Europeans, and most of his family, friends, and acquaintances would likely all be of his ancestral clan. If racial integration is the natural outworking of the progress of the Gospel in history, then it has taken an incredibly long time for this to be realized in post-modern and post-Christian America.

Naturally, Chandler’s proposal for racial reconciliation is to integrate white areas and virtue-signal his friendships with non-whites. Chandler’s false interpretation of the “middle wall of partition” and the abrogation of the ceremonial distinctions between Israelites and Gentiles in Ephesians 2:11-22 leads him to champion causes such as interracial marriage and transracial adoption. In fact Chandler begins his sermon (3:00) with an example of a former church member who told him that he would not tolerate his white daughter marrying a black man. Chandler responds with all the eloquence of “wow, just wow.” Later Chandler quotes from an email (around 32:15) from a white church member who said that his son would “really like to have a younger brother who is black. He prays every night that we would adopt a kid that fits his mental picture a) a little younger than him, 7-8 years old, and b) black.” Chandler praises this as a step in the right direction. In reality it simply demonstrates that most adult Christians have the mentality of a young boy who thinks that having a black brother would be “cool.”

As a Kinist I understand that the progress of the Gospel will bring about a true reconciliation of the races. Jesus Christ has reconciled us to the Father by His atonement, and he commands us to participate in the ministry of reconciliation through the preaching of the Gospel (2 Cor. 5:18-19). This reconciliation will extend not just to individuals and families, but to clans, tribes, nations, and races as well. The reconciliation of the races does not abrogate national identity or its place in human society, only the hostility that has arisen between nations through sin.

Isaiah 19:23-25 prophesies of this reconciliation as occurring between Israel and two of her ancient enemies Assyria and Egypt: “In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: Whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.” On this passage Martin Wyngaarden comments,

Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — ‘my people,’ — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. Yet the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.¹⁰

Chandler’s message is harmful and dangerous. Dalrock observed that Chandler’s preaching unduly emphasizes men’s sins and exonerates women, and Chandler’s preaching about race is just as problematic. It harms whites by propagating anti-white narratives while disingenuously claiming to reject white guilt. It blames racial hostility on the historical actions of whites and foments non-white resentment. Chandler’s affirmation of “white privilege” as the world defines it also morally disarms whites on issues such as racial disparities in achievement or interracial crime. Chandler’s message also harms non-whites. Instead of confronting the sins of non-whites directly,¹¹ Chandler gives non-whites the excuse of white privilege to justify all manner of bad behavior. Chandler’s message can only bring about a shallow and temporary peace between the races, because his message is not grounded in God’s revelation. Only a Kinist perspective, which respects the true importance of national distinctions as divinely created, can bring about a lasting peace and true reconciliation between the races.

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