Tom Ascol is a Profoundly Stupid Man
If you’re looking for a leader in the War on Social Justice Terror, keep looking. As I have pointed out before, Tom Ascol might be a well-meaning fellow, but his inborn stupidity as a human being is fleshed out into a level of naivety that makes him poorly suited for any big-boy type ideological battle against subversive agents of the evangelical left.
Suffering a debilitating case of Tom Buck Syndrome (a deep moral malady that insists upon calling the rankest heretics “brother in Christ” no matter how clearly they raise up lofty arguments against God), Ascol has shown himself again and again to be incapable of handling ideological subversive agents.
The latest exhibit in the museum of “reasons why Tom Ascol shouldn’t be leading anything more than a men’s choir” comes from a recent tweet in which this titan of naivety claimed that a phone call with Paul Chitwood “cleared up” whatever “misconceptions” might have existed that Chitwood is a woke lefty progressive window-licker.
Essentially, what happened is that an International Mission Board (IMB) – which Chitwood leads – email was released that showed textbook examples of Critical Theory and woke ideology. Essentially, a fox got smoked out of his hole.
According to Jacob Brunton…
- The email talks about the “current events in June” (i.e. rioting after the killing of George Floyd) as if the killing was racially motivated (racial injustice is the context of the email). But only those who have bought into the Woke narrative — that American police are systemically targeting black people, and that racism is the motive behind any instance of a black man dying at the hand of police officers — would think that.
- It recommends this deplorable article on what it means to “belong.” Here’s an excerpt:
- It promotes the idea, throughout, of actively “diversifying” the IMB at all levels of leadership. This means utilizing functional racial quotas which artificially give preference to people based on their race.
- It promotes the idea that white people need to “listen” and “learn” — as if most white Christians are ignorant about racism (which is only true if it’s the Woke / Critical Theory type of “racism”).
- It talks about new training programs on “Cultural Sensitivity” and “Unconscious Bias Sensitivity.” Chitwood may be telling the truth when he says they don’t use that language anymore, but are they still the same programs? What is being taught by the IMB to their leaders and their missionaries? Are we just supposed to take Tom Ascol’s word that Paul Chitwood has given him his word that there’s nothing to be concerned about?
- There’s a new “TEAMS channel” devoted exclusively to people of certain races (racial segregation). Is this still going?
- This all came about through certain “conversations” conducted over the course of months. If it really is “problematic,” what about the damage already done? Chitwood says the language is “problematic in our environment.” Why? And if the language is problematic, aren’t all these other things much more problematic? Tom Ascol needs to stop helping these guys hide behind private phone calls.
But then predictably (because Ascol’s mind-numbing stupidity is 100% predictable), a simple “conversation” with Chitwood was able to clear everything up. Within minutes, Ascol was standing as the mentally-retarded hall monitor throwing sawdust on the vomit pile, telling the other kids to move along because there’s nothing to see.
Of course, this type of thing is called the Mohler Mind-Meld. That term exists because it’s a common strategy of evangelicalism’s left – and has been since well before the Conservative Resurgence. The Mohler Mind-Meld is when a mountain of incontrovertible and undeniable evidence of progressiveness run amok is exposed and some gullible half-wit like Tom Ascol receives a phone call from an uppity-up in Big Eva. After a few minutes on the phone and all concerns are dissipated and dispelled, despite that mountain of incontrovertible and undeniable evidence being exactly where it was before.
The best example I can find of the Mohler Mind Meld is when Tom Buck, ever the faithful sidekick to Tom Ascol and James White (none of these men can discern their way out of a wet paper bag and if it weren’t for Michael O’Fallon loaning them his discernment, they would have none at all), spent months helping Pulpit & Pen expose Karen Swallow Prior for her liberalism. Then, he had a single phone call with Prior who – through what I assume is some kind of bizarre feat of mentalism that overthrows ones hopefully better biblical judgement – changed his mind. All it took was one phone call with the most self deceived liberal icons of evangelicalism and Buck became Prior’s strongest defender.
Thankfully, there’s a shelf-life for how long witches’ spells can last and Buck eventually came to his senses and did another 180, eventually calling for Prior’s dismissal from the ERLC. But had it not been for defenses of Prior launched by Buck, it’s doubtful that the White Witch of Lynchburg would have relocated to the haunts at Wake Forest. And while Buck has apologized for being bewitched, his gullibility had real-world consequences that hurt the cause of “La Resistance.”
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time that Ascol has “played nice” to rank heretics and slapped “Ascol Approved” across their lapel like some kind of prize at a church camp for slow children.
Ascol also performed the task of Useful Idiocy when he defended Arch Critical Theorist, Matthew Hall, the provost at Southern Seminary. When it became clear from an absolute mountain of video evidence that Hall was teaching and advocating for the most radical forms of Critical Theory, Tom Ascol fielded a phone call from the Comintern and immediately stood up on Russell Moore’s step stool, waved his arms in the air, and declared it all to be one big misunderstanding.
This is a common behavior among the Toms, who bequeath the title of “brother” even upon such wicked men as Ron Burns (Thabiti Anyabwile) and Dwight McKissic.
Jesus puked.
I addressed this disqualification from discernment ministry last year, earning the ire of James White.
My comment was simple; “I speak for a lot of people when I say that we appreciate your efforts against Social Justice. But, you have no idea what you’re doing and you’re intellectually unprepared for this. Please stop trying to help. You’re making it worse. Let the experts handle it.”
Frankly, Tom Ascol was telling the world that Pulpit & Pen was crazy when we were raising these same concerns about Social Justice five years ago. In fact, Ascol played a pivotal role in discounting and dismissing every discernment ministry except his own, when his own discernment ministry was still considering Albert Mohler to be one of “the good guys.”
Ascol has kowtowed to Mohler and deleted essential footage from his now-bombed documentary out of deference to our social justice enemies (or as the Toms would refer to them, “our fine brothers”). Ascol kowtowed to that professional eternal victim (and her victimology pimp husband) , Rachael (and Jacob) Denhollander.
I can’t think of a single case of ideological controversy – not one – which Tom Ascol hasn’t declared to be one big misunderstanding once he gets a personal phone call or direct message from the Comintern in question. All it takes to dissuade Tom Ascol from carrying forth the task of smoking out the devil’s foxes is to engage in heavy-petting his ego.
At this point, I don’t know that Tom Ascol is a bad man, albeit I can say without reservation that Tom Ascol is a profoundly stupid man. He may very well mean the best, but he is inept at grasping the very basic rules of discernment.
Here they are:
1. Liars lie.
2. Double-minded men are liars.
My assertion that Ascol is “stupid” is due to his habitual unwillingness to do discernment with these two basic concepts in mind. The only other option from stupid is evil, meaning that he’s whitewashing the enemy on purpose. I’m not prepared to go there yet.
Matthew 7:15 tell us that wolves come in sheep’s clothing. In other words, they live in disguise. This is why trying to nail down where Big Eva stands on important Christian issues is like trying to nail Jello to the wall. Tim Keller and Mark Dever didn’t suddenly disclose they were Democrats, for example, we had to do the research and expose them.
2 Peter 2:1 tells us that those who cause divisions by bad teaching are busy “secretly introducing destructive heresies.” In other words, those uploading destructive heresies into the church’s data systems (like Critical Theory) do so secretly. Tom Ascol seems convinced that these “fine brothers” are only guilty of using sloppy language and accidentally sounding like they’re promoting Critical Theory. But that’s because Ascol is a profoundly stupid man.
Allowing false teachers to privately “clarify” their very public words is the oldest discernment mistake in the book, and Tom Ascol seems to believe this mistake is some kind of virtue.
It’s not.
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Are you sure you want to call a brother in Christ stupid. You seem very judgemental. Bro. Ascol has been fighting the drift to the left in the SBC. I do believe he understands CRT and intersectionality and the movement into the SBC. My question is first what is your name? I did not see it in the article or I missed it. And second what have you done besides writing an article?
You seem like a big talker and a much more do nothing. I could be wrong so show me my error.
Would love to hear your answers.
I Timothy 3:1-3 It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. 2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, skillful in teaching, 3 not overindulging in wine, not a bully, but gentle, not contentious, free from the love of money.
I realize that a blog is not a church and that a blogger is not necessarily a pastoral ministry position, but I am just curious whether the tone of the title, the altered photo, and the specific approach throughout this blog falls under that category of the attributes of provided by Paul of “…not a bully, but gentle, not contentious…” It is a bit heavy on the heart to read and hear posts from individuals in leadership roles post things that do some to fall outside the lines of the biblical standards for those providing leadership to believers. Just an observation.