What is happening? Ligon Duncan sat on stage at the ShepCon Q&A and tried to assure us (quite unsuccessfully) how totally non-liberal and uncompromising he is. Then, he went to the Ligonier Q&A and endorsed the work of a gay priest who he said was the best one to teach us the Biblical sexual ethic. Today, when pressed on Twitter, he (seemingly) called out for support from a pro-gay advocate. Then he deleted it. It’s a bizarro world.
Frankly, Ligon Duncan has had no more negative things to say about Revoice than he did the Dallas Statement…it’s “problematic”, we “don’t think it represents us”…you know, stuff like that.
It’s what Duncan did say about Revoice at the Ligonier Q&A that befuddled many, however. Duncan claimed that Revoice had no ties to either the PCA or the SBC. That’s simply untrue, unless Duncan means that it didn’t have the official endorsement of either denomination, but no one was arguing that in the first place. The fact is, the conference was held in a PCA church, had the support of many in that denomination, and was endorsed by an ERLC research fellow who Russell Moore vehemently defended only weeks prior.
Tom Buck was referring to Karen Swallow Prior, who we first warned you was gay affirming back in July of 2015. Buck, who was a contributor at P&P at the time, left our organization afterward. Eventually, however, Buck called for her resignation from the ERLC three years later, in July of 2018, after she doubled-down on her support for Revoice.
In a bizarre response that have left many people befuddled, Ligon Duncan chimed in with a single name…Ryan Burge.
Who then is Ryan Burge? We’ve saved the necessary data and retrieved the info and will do an in-depth report on this man over the next few days. In the meantime, as soon as Duncan realized what he had done – apparently accidentally tagging him in a moment of brain fog – he deleted the tweet.
It’s too late.
Burge is an assistant professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University. His specialty of research focuses largely on “the intersection between religiosity and political behavior.” He is an expert in Critical Race Theory, having written for the Journal of Religious Leadership, Representation and Politics, Groups, and Identities. He is also a pastor in the extremely liberal and fragrantly gay-affirming American Baptist Convention.
Burge’s ongoing work includes the use of statistics and voting data to determine the best way to move evangelicals to the political left. He writes on his website:
My research explores the extent to which religion undergirds or undermines democratic support among citizens. More specifically, I have published articles on the relationship between religion and political tolerance among both citizens and clergy, as well as the political implications of the emergent church movement – an offshoot of evangelicalism that has a radical deliberative democratic structure. My future agenda is concerned with better understanding the role that clergy play in the political and social life of the local congregation, as well as measurement of religiosity and religious classification in survey design.
Burge’s media coverage page shows a plethora of articles dissecting the American political spectrum and mining of religious data, clearly for the sake of creating a leftward trajectory in evangelicalism.
This isn’t the first time Duncan has tweeted Burge, however.
What’s interesting is that instead of reaching out to his church elders or fellow theologians to know how to best deal with Buck’s tweet, Duncan reached out to a leftist political operative.
Who’s really running Ligon Duncan? How many forces – like Burge – are at the helm of the parachurch organizations that are pushing the Social Justice narrative from behind the scenes?
