Background Information:
Name: Ron Burns (given), Thabiti Anyabwile (Muslim)
Birthday: March 29, 1970 Lexington, N.C
Education: BS & MS in psychology from North Carolina State University
Occupation History: Elder at Church on the Rock (Raleigh, NC)
Assistant pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church
Pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman
Council member of The Gospel Coalition
Occupation Current: Pastor at Anacostia River Church 2015-present
Author, Speaker, Blogger
Known For: TGC and 9Marks contributor
Associations: TGC, 9Marks
Overview:
Thabiti Anyabwile (from a Swahili term for “a true and upright man” and an Arabic term for “God has set me free”) was originally born as Ron Burns, but changed his name during his college years, when he became a radical black nationalist, and he has never changed it back. This is indicative of his loyalty to the agenda of Black Nationalism, which is expressed in many of Burns’ teachings. Also during his college years, Burns says that he “left the Black Church of [his] youth and converted to Islam during college.” His infatuation with Islam was due to his desire to join a non-white religion, which is why he kept his Muslim name. In a 1990 North Carolina Technician newspaper, Burns promoted “black pride slogans” and argued that if European Americans feel threatened by black pride, then they must be “suffering from paranoia and guilt.”
Burns has also written articles for The Gospel Coalition, a prominent neo-Calvinist parachurch organization which has a significant number of board members and authors who adhere to Woke ideological tenets. In one article, he insinuated that a Christian who disagrees with protesting, marching, or demonstrating in favor of Leftist politics is “blind. He means well, no doubt. But he doesn’t see how he not only removes the Scripture from real life concern, but also abandons his own ‘orthodox’ view of the Bible.” In other words, if a Christian doesn’t adopt Leftist politics, Burns doesn’t consider that person to be a Christian.
In 2019, Burns tweeted the following: “If I were the head of state for an American ally, I would be working to convince other American allies to work together to hack the next election to choose for the US a normal president so we could return things to normal. The world can’t afford more of this.” In other words, not only does he not care about the integrity of American elections– he actually advocates for cheating and disobeying God’s law by the bearing of false witness.
Burns has also claimed, in a response to Neil Shenvi’s public question on Twitter about whether straight people and men are “oppressors” and whether sodomites and transgenderists are “oppressed,” that he does “affirm that when such oppression has occurred historically and contemporarily at a ‘society’ level as you put it, it has happened generally at the hands of ‘men and heterosexuals.’ And in US history and society, the oppressing group has gen’ly [sic] also been white.”