Why Frank Turek Was the Wrong Debate Opponent

Evaluating the Charlie Dates/Frank Turek Debate

Dr. Frank Turek debated Dr. Charlie Dates on Dr. Derwin Gray's Transforming the Church podcast this week. The episode is framed as a conversation about why Christians see politics so differently across racial lines. 

Watch: Faith, Politics & the Christian Vote with Dr. Frank Turek and Dr. Charlie Dates

In my opinion, this is really a conversation about ideological differences, not racial ones. This is a point worth understanding because it sets the tone for how the conversation will unfold—and explains why Turek never really had a shot to begin with.

Seen through the worldview that Dates operates from, this was never a debate about truth. It relies on "lived experience," both personal and historical, as the final authority. In that framework, it doesn't matter if the truth is on Turek’s side. He's white. Without a black perspective of his own to bring to the table, he never really had a chance. That's not a fair fight. There was a better way.

A Debate That Was Never on Equal Ground

Instead of setting the whole conversation up to fail by wheeling out "the white apologist," why not bring in one of the many black Christian conservatives who can stand toe to toe on the same lived experiences Dates leans on, yet who arrived at the opposite conclusion?

Black conservative Christians such as John Amanchukwu, Kevin Briggins, Virgil Walker, Jason Whitaker, Rick Caldwell, Chad Jackson, and Eric Wallace could have sat across from Charlie Dates and met his history with more history, his Chicago with their own Chicago, and his grandmother's story with a grandmother's story of their own. 

Instead, the producers reached for a popular white apologist known for logic and evidence, not for his study of black history or the black church. Pitting Dates against Turek guaranteed that every time the discussion turned to slavery, Jim Crow, or redlining, one man could speak from inherited generational memory and the other could only speak from research. One could always fly to the excuse of lived experience, while the other had to sit with the reality that his color didn't always grant him room to answer. 

That's not a fair fight. It's a fight engineered so one person’s account of history always wins the room, because the other guy is seen as having no valid experience of his own to offer back.

I want to be clear that I'm not summing Turek up as just "the white apologist." Frank is a friend, a supporter of the Center for Biblical Unity, and someone I greatly admire. He's been good to me. The fact that he chose to sit in that seat across from Dates speaks volumes about his character. This was never a "race" conversation for Frank. It was a conversation about the pursuit of truth and about moving people toward God's good design for humans.

Some may want to point out that most of the men I just named don't hold a PhD, unlike Dates. Fine. But let's be honest: this conversation didn't require a dissertation. It required a working knowledge of Scripture and a working knowledge of black history in America, and there are men without letters behind their names who have both in greater measure than many men with letters. Dates' degrees didn't make his knowledge of history or Scripture more or less true; both can be tested without higher education degrees. And I'm not against higher education.

When History Becomes the Whole Conversation

Hard questions were asked. I appreciate that Turek kept trying to drag the conversation out of 1863 and into 2026, today's abortion and illegitimacy rates, the current welfare state, the actual policy mechanics of what helps a poor kid today. Dates’s answers kept sweeping back to a history none of us can change: 1619, Jim Crow, redlining, Bull Connor. While I can largely agree with the stated race struggles blacks have had throughout American history, those stories don't get to the heart of the question that can bring about actual change: What should American Christians' political priorities look like right now?

Both men said they believe all people are created equal. Only one of them argued as if he meant it. Turek asked, more than once, "Where do we go from here?" Dates answered by reaching for partiality: black pastors need a "concern" specific to black people, the way Paul had a concern specific to Gentiles. That's a lovely rhetorical move. It is also, functionally, an argument for treating people differently based on ancestry rather than common humanity and our unity in Christ. 

I question how Dates affirms universal human equality in one breath, yet argues for race-conscious policy correction in the next—without noticing the switch in frameworks. Scripture doesn't support identity politics. A theology that requires we first play by the rules of race-consciousness and contemporary critical theory moves Christ to the second seat and puts skin color as the main driver. Scripture identifies humans as image bearers, in Christ or in Adam.

Scripture or Identity Politics?

Then there was abortion. Turek brought up the Democratic platform's radical stance on abortion. Dates’s response: "The conversation is nuanced. I want to eliminate the need for abortion because every context I've been in where a woman has felt secure, she's had her needs met, she has opted in a real sense to do that." 

Abortion should never be based on the needs or emotions of another person. While I want to graciously assume that Dates was aiming for a pastoral response, it is, at best, a complete dodge. At worst, it's cosigning on an industry that kills more black babies than children from any other people group. 

Honestly, his words were neither kind nor pastoral. Whether a woman feels secure is a subjective, psychological, circumstantial question. Whether it is right to end the life of an unborn image-bearer is not subjective at all. It's a moral fact, or Scripture means nothing when it says we are formed in the womb. Dates reframed a binding moral question as a matter of felt need and security, and the conversation moved on as if that answered it. 

It didn't. Plainly put, abortion is murder, and I wish progressive black pastors had the moral fortitude to say that, without any caveats about "felt need."

I say all this as someone who once advocated for positions like Dates’s. I moved away from that framework, and for the last six years, I've built a ministry on the opposite premise: that Scripture, not sociology, grievance, or racial tribalism, must be the final word on justice.

Unity Built on Truth

Let’s return to Turek’s question: "Where do we go from here?" If we want unity that is more than a word, we need Christians of all skin tones and ethnic backgrounds to speak the truth in the face of those who would discredit based on skin color and lived experience. All people bear God's image equally, without qualification, and no amount of historical injury changes the objective truth about the current reality of politics, black culture, poverty and welfare, abortion, or the role of the gospel in speaking to these matters. Boldness to speak the truth is what the church needs—not another pastor skilled in the art of dodging tough questions and soft on sin.

Further Discussion:

Watch our extended panel discussion analyzing the debate.