Pocket College
So, obviously Durbin at this point is a false under-shepherd dispensing false teaching. He is twisting the word to fit his egalitarian agenda.
We need to also say here that Jesus isn’t any less the one shepherd over His one flock if the one flock is organizationally worshiping together with all the black sheep only worshiping together, or all the Korean sheep worshiping together in a worship service, or all the Hmong worshiping together in a worship service. Would Durbin, given his hackneyed reasoning, fault Presbyteries or Churches that are organized exclusively for Koreans or for Hmong peoples? If the fact is that this happens in the Reformed world (and it does) why is it a problem if white people were to worship predominantly with other white people? What is the problem here? Even when worshiping according to a homogenous unit principle that doesn’t make Jesus any les the One Shepherd ruling over the One Flock.
(1) = Jeff insists that it has to be one flock together. Yet Reformed theologian John Frame wrote years ago to this point;
“Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”
John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”
So, there is nothing in Scripture that suggests that if the local church isn’t multicultural it is not a true Church and there is nothing in Scripture that teaches that if the local church isn’t multicultural it is somehow not as quality of a church as a multicult church.
(2) = Jeff hopes there is not anything wrong with white people, but he doesn’t seem to be absolutely sure of that.
(3) Jeff says here that he loves to see the different skin colors, backgrounds and tribes in his congregation, thus communicating that he is pleased with the ethnic diversity in his congregation. Yet, the whole overarching point the man is making is that ethnicity makes not difference in the Kingdom of God. All that matters, per Jeff, is being in Christ. So, which is it Jeff… you love the diversity in your congregation or ethnicity is irrelevant as long as everyone is united to Jesus?
(4) & (8) = Nobody denies that what unites all believers, regardless of their tribe, tongue, and nation, is being united to Christ. Nobody denies that and for Jeff to keep insisting that his imaginary opponents suggest that all believers are not united in Christ is a the weakest of strawman argumentation. All of us believe that the black Christian, the yellow Christian, the brown Christian, the red Christian, and the white Christian are all united in Christ. Further, we all believe that all of us together have one Shepherd, being part of one flock. What we don’t agree with is that our union in Christ makes our creaturely realities float away. We do not agree that grace destroys nature and that is what we hear “ministers” like Durbin saying. Just as a woman remains a woman once united with Christ so a black man remains a black man once united to Christ. These creational realities don’t go away upon conversion. Since those creational realities don’t go away it is altogether reasonable if different people groups find themselves more comfortable worshiping with people that are uniquely from their own people group, realizing that doing so does not deny our corporate union in Christ that cuts across every tribe, tongue and nation.
John Calvin agrees with me here;
“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”
John Calvin (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3)
(6) = Here Durbin’s damnable Baptist commitments are leaking through. Of course Reformed people, who believe in covenant theology, would believe that having more white children could very likely be one means of rescuing the formerly Christian West. Reformed people believe that children are a blessing from the Lord and that God normatively builds His church by Christian marriages producing many children who will be ratified as in the Kingdom of God via Baptism and then who will be raised under the nurturing of their parents and the nourishment of Word and Sacrament. For Durbin to deny that one way to rescue the West is by Christian white people having more children is insidious, damnable, and disgusting Baptist teaching. Keep in mind that white people are still, percentage wise, in the majority in the West and so it is a truism that Christian white people having more children could be one means by which God might rescue the West. When Reformed clergy say that one way to rescue the West is by having more white children implied in that is the Gospel. We Reformed non-Baptist Christians don’t divorce bringing our children to the Baptismal font from the message of the Gospel. I understand that Baptists like Durbin can’t understand that but when he uses words like “insidious,” and “disgusting” it gets my dander up.
(7) & (10) = What doesn’t save the world is Durbin’s Baptist theology which completely abstracts the Gospel from God’s graciousness and faithfulness as seen in the covenantal succession that is part of the essence of Reformed theology. God normatively works in family lines. Parents pass on the faith to their children as God promises to be God to us and to our children to a thousand generations. Durbin, as a Baptist, can’t really grab the essence of this and so he insists that it is only the Gospel that can save the West as if that idea isn’t anchored in the statement, by Reformed clergy, that one way to save the West is by white people having more children. All of this is why the Belgic Confession of faith teaches;
“Therefore we detest the error of the Anabaptists, who are not content with the one only baptism they have once received, and moreover condemn the baptism of the infants of believers, whom we believe ought to be baptized and sealed with the sign of the covenant,11 as the children in Israel formerly were circumcised12 upon the same promises which are made unto our children. And indeed, Christ shed His blood no less for the washing of the children of the faithful than for adult persons;13 and therefore, they ought to receive the sign and sacrament of that which Christ hath done for them; as the Lord commanded in the law, that they should be made partakers of the sacrament of Christ’s suffering and death shortly after they were born, by offering for them a lamb, which was a sacrament of Jesus Christ.”
Look, folks, ideas have consequences. One consequence of Durbin’s Baptist ideas is that somehow it is an insidious and disgusting teaching that one way to rescue the West is by white people having more children. Because of Durbin’s horrid Baptist theology he has no way to understand that statement in its best possible light.
(9) = Here we need to consider how reductionistic Durbin is. Like so many clergy today he wants to try and insist that race is only about skin color. This is a magnificently stupid statement. The fact that race is about more than skin color is seen in articles like this;
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marrow-donors-rare-for-mixed-race-patients/
If race was only about skin color then these problems wouldn’t arise. If race was only about skin color forensic pathologists couldn’t tell you the race of a person who died in a fire who is burned to a crisp, having no skin to look at. Saying race is only about “skin color” or only about “the level of pigment” someone has is an unparalleled example of indefeasible stupidity.
(11) = Yes, we should glorify God for the diversity in the Church. But glorifying God for the diversity in the Church does not mean that the Church has to be multicultural. Even in heaven the Church will not be multicultural as we find in Revelation 21 that it is the nations as in their nations who enter into the New Jerusalem. The Church is a confederated nation that is one but as remaining many. The Church is a nation of nations. There is unity and diversity in the Church and for Durbin to suggest that anyone who disagrees with his Baptist bloviating is insidious and disgusting is just jejune to the max.
In the end Durbin, like so many of the clergy in 2025, is still living as if he is championing the Civil Rights agenda of Martin Luther King. He has no capacity to think in any terms except white people who want white people to be distinct are evil. For Jeff his is a multicult Tower of Babel Christianity where the best expression of Christianity is when all colors bleed into one.
By his position Durbin condemns the Reformed Fathers of the past who had no problem with white people worshiping with other white people;
“This is a law of our being….Members of the same nation have a feeling for each other which they have not for foreigners. Member of the same tribe or class in a community are bound together by a still closer tie.”
Charles Hodge
“The Unity of the Church”, p. 24