Suppose your son came home from college and said, “Dad, we both know how racist southern Christians were, not only in supporting slavery but supporting Jim Crow laws and then opposing the Civil Rights movement. Don’t you think it’s time the church proved it is no longer racist by partnering with the Critical Race Theory movement?” What would you say?
It would be easy to answer this question about Critical Race Theory with a callous, indifferent, cold-hearted critique of the Marxist roots of this movement. And believe me a crisp, logical refutation of this ideology is coming in this episode. But if I am to have the heart of Jesus, I cannot start there. When Jesus heard that his friend Lazarus had died, he returned to Bethany, knowing that he was going to raise him from the dead, which he had told his disciples he would do (John 11:11-14). Even knowing that he was about to overthrow death and transform the tears of Mary and Martha from tears of sorrow to tears of joy, astonishingly, we read, When Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And …. Jesus wept. I believe that in those moments Jesus felt the awful grief and heartbreak brought upon the human race over the ages by death—death caused by sin. Jesus wept over the pain brought upon humanity by evil, just as he taught us to do in the second beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn over the way sin shatters human life” (Matt 5:4). I believe that before analyzing the misguided culture’s approach to racism in CRT, we must weep for the horrific way that blacks have been treated by white American Christians. Here is one commentary to help us again remember.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail 4/16/1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
My Dear Fellow Clergymen: While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "untimely…."
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."
In Alabama in 1985, a black man named Anthony Hinton was sentenced to death for double homicide. The conviction was based on a faulty ballistics report, but the prosecutor believed he could tell Hinton was guilty just by looking at him, because he was black. Hinton’s story is told in Bryan Stevenson’s bestselling book, Just Mercy. In several decades representing poor clients on death row, Stevenson and his colleagues at the Equal Justice Initiative have won reversals, relief, or release for more than 115 condemned people. Many were convicted because white officers, lawyers, and jurors could tell they were guilty just by looking at them.
In a less dramatic but firsthand experience, my eyes were partially opened to life as a black man. As a visiting professor at RTS DC, I met a black pastor who wanted to pick my brain about discipling men. He was bi-vocational, so the date we chose to meet at Columbia Mall, near Baltimore, MD was a day he had to take off from work because he had a court appointment later that day. He had accidentally been driving without current license plates, not knowing his wife had forgotten to send in the reregistration. That day my brother in Christ opened my eyes to something I had never experienced as a majority culture Christian—how a black man feels when a police cruiser pulls up behind him with its light flashing. This brother told me he had carefully trained his teenage son to immediately place his hands on the steering wheel and not to dare move, lest he be shot. That morning, I watched this brother be so agitated and apprehensive about his 1 PM court date, that he literally couldn’t function in the discussion we had planned. He couldn’t overcome the past trauma he had experienced from white police officers and the white justice system. He couldn’t even eat because of the panic he felt as that morning wore on.
If we would be like Jesus, who wept at Lazarus’ grave over the pain brought on by sin, we must weep over the horror of the injustices and devastation of the dignity of precious black human beings created in the image of God. And then weep again. Only with compassion in our hearts, is it time to bring clarity to our minds about the radical evil of critical theory.
OVERVIEW OF CRITICAL THEORY
Critical Theory is a way that some in our culture try to explain and confront power structures. To understand Critical Theory, we need to understand its two primary claims. 1) Everyone can be divided into two groups—those who have power and those who don’t. 2) Those who have power, by definition, always OPPRESS those who don’t. How do we know who the oppressed and who the oppressors are? According to Critical Theory the categories of oppressed and oppressor are based on your group identity. Membership in categories of race, gender, religion, immigration status, income, sexual orientation, and gender identity determine whether we are oppressed or one of the oppressors. In Critical Theory, the degree to which you are oppressed determines your level of moral authority. The more categories of oppression someone identifies with, the more weight their words should have. As a result, the perspective and experience of a gay black woman are more valuable than the perspective of a straight, white man, regardless of whether what they say corresponds to reality or not. We see this aspect of critical theory used to justify men violating the rights of women by claiming they are transgender. White women’s voices crying out that it is unfair for biological men to take medals away from women in athletics—are delegitimized because they are cisgender, so their opinion does NOT count. Biological women’s complaints about their privacy and safety in locker rooms and prisons being violated by men claiming to be trans—don’t matter because they are cisgender—part of the majority, i.e. women who believe they are women.
Critical theory also excuses the breaking of laws by the oppressed class. In fact, the more oppressed someone is, the less they are morally responsible for their actions. We see this worldview expressed when looting and vandalism is excused in inner city neighborhoods. It is why vagrancy and sanitation laws are not enforced on city streets by woke government leaders. It explains why woke prosecutors, mayors, and governors are reluctant to enforce laws against crime, have branded law-enforcement the enemy, and sought to defund police.
HISTORY OF CRITICAL THEORY
Critical Theory traces back to Karl Marx’s view of history as class conflict and parallels his view of animosity between the oppressed proletariat (workers) and the oppressor bourgeoisie (business owners). He defined capitalism as the exploitation of the masses and predicted that the workers in the industrialized nations would revolt and overthrow the capitalist establishment. Though his ideology led eventually to the bloody Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 in Russia and execution of millions of landowners by Mao Zedong in the 1950’s, this revolution never took place in the industrialized west. Why not?
Later, one of Marx’s followers, Antonio Gramsci, provided an explanation for why this revolution never took place: cultural hegemony. The word hegemony is normally used of nations that exert dominance, authority, or influence over other nations. But Gramsci applied this term, hegemony, to the capitalist establishment who, he argued, unjustly gained cultural power and dominance, (not just economic dominance as Marx argued) and has victimized everyone else. Gramsci defined cultural hegemony as: Domination or rule maintained through ideological or cultural means. It is usually achieved through social institutions, which allow those in power to strongly influence the values, norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and behavior of the rest of society (Voddie Bauchem, Lecture: Cultural Marxism). The oppressed worker that Marx predicted would revolt against capitalism didn’t, because that worker was oppressed by cultural hegemony.
Have you ever wondered why women, who outnumber males in the world, are considered a minority? It is because women are not seen as part of the cultural hegemony. The cultural hegemony in US culture is based on unjust patriarchy. It is white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, non-poor, and born in the USA. EVERYONE who IS that is part of the PRIVILEGED OPPRESSIVE CLASS and corresponds to Marx’s hated bourgeoisie. Everybody who IS NOT that (which corresponds to Marx’s proletariat) is a victim of the cultural hegemony established by THE PRIVILEGED CLASS, and ought to be at war with them.
Critical Theory was furthered by a group of German cultural Marxists known as the Frankfurt School, which moved to Columbia University in NYC in 1935. Their goal has been to overturn the cultural hegemony, (which, includes the influence of Christianity). Their goal in shaping the culture is to control the “robes of society”—judges, professors, pastors and to gain political power through identity politics.
PUTTING A BIBLICAL LENS OVER CRITICAL RACE THEORY
A. Scripture validates the intent of Christians who support CRT—but not its ideology.
- Christians ought always to be concerned about the oppressed. James 1:27 says, Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction. This exhortation is not because widows and orphans are more important than widowers and children, but because they are most likely to be exploited.
- One of the first trips that Jesus made early in his ministry was to Nazareth, his hometown, where he confronted the elders of the synagogue, many of whom were the fathers of childhood friends and likely his uncles over their racism towards the Gentiles, many of whom lived just five miles away in the Roman town of Sepphoris. Luke tells us they were so angry they tried to throw Jesus over a cliff. Majority culture racism was repugnant to Jesus; he constantly affirmed the value of despised Gentiles. We ought to pray, Lord, search my heart and show me the majority culture biases that shape my opinions of those outside my tribe. Give me compassion for those unlike me.
- Institutional racism exists. The US Constitution considered a black slave to be worth 3/5 of a white man for determining representation in the House of Representatives and denied him the right to vote, himself.
- Aspiring to diversity in our churches is a godly virtue. Theologian Herman Bavinck argues that the image of God is far too rich to be fully realized apart from those of every tongue and tribe, and nation. He writes, The image of God can only be displayed in all its dimensions and characteristic features in a humanity whose members exist both successively one after the other and contemporaneously side by side. Only humanity in its entirety is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking image of God (Reformed Dogmatics Vol 2).
B. Critical Theory offers a false view of HUMAN PERSONHOOD. It argues that our identity is rooted in categories like race, gender, income, economic status--all features that differ from one another and these differences become the basis for HOSTILITY towards one another as oppressors OR those who are victims of such oppressors. Scripture bases human identity upon all being made in God’s image. That truth gives all individuals worth and dignity, no matter what subcategories he or she belongs to.The biblical worldview leads to harmony, respect for other’s ideas, and justice. Critical Theory deliberately fuels class warfare and reverse racism.
C. Critical Theory teaches a false view of OPPRESSION. Oppressing others is not caused by being born into privilege. Nowhere does the Bible teach the Marxist class division and warfare that is the basis for making white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, non-poor, able-bodied, natively born, by definition, oppressors. Jesus was a white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied Jew. Was he an oppressor? Oppression is using whatever power you have to harm another. The Bible teaches that every race oppresses others. In his book, The Third Option, Miles McPherson, a light skinned black describes his being bullied by BOTH the white and black communities. Every human on planet earth has used his power at times to harm others. That harm is called oppression. It is exhibited by the “privileged class” and “the oppressed class.” Oppression comes from human sinful nature. Now the works of the flesh are evident: … enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy (Gal 5:20-21).
D. Critical theory teaches a foolish view of truth. The degree to which you ARE OPPRESSED gives you the MORAL AUTHORITY to make truth claims. The degree to which you were born into one of Critical theory's OPPRESSOR categories DELEGITIMIZES any truth claims you make. This is silly. No one actually lives this way. If you have a stomachache, you don’t find someone from the most oppressed group to get their opinion about what is wrong; you go to the doctor. If your car breaks down, you don’t find the person on your block with the highest intersectionality rating (the number of oppressed groups he belongs to) to find out what is broken about your car. It shouldn't surprise us that such folly is from the world of academia, which is disconnected from reality.
ARGUING AGAINST CRITICAL THEORY IN THE PUBLIC ARENA
(What Might Your Say at Work During Your “Diversity” Training?)
A. Christians can affirm this INTENT—to oppose racism and oppression of minorities. It is also correct to affirm that Jesus came to overthrow oppression. In fact, this might be a great opportunity to say, “But Jesus didn’t teach the oppressed class—the Jews, who were under the military occupation of Rome—to rise up and overthrow Roman oppression. Rather, he challenged his followers to consider their own racism—to look into their own hearts to see their own hostility and feelings of superiority towards the Samaritans, gentiles, and “sinners.” Jesus taught that condescension and mistreatment of others are symptoms of a disease of the heart—sinful selfishness—a refusal to love our neighbor as ourselves.
B. Second, you might ask, “Have you ever considered the way Critical Theory does NOT match reality? Do you think Abraham Lincoln was a racist? He was a white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, Protestant, and born in the USA. According to CRT, he has almost the highest possible intersectionality rating as an OPPRESSOR. CRT is a view from academia that makes no sense in reality?” Or we might ask, “An estimated 27,00 almost all white males from Pennsylvania died in the Civil War to free African American slaves. Would you call them racist, privileged oppressors? According to CRT, they have a very high racist oppressor rating.” This class-warfare concept from academia does NOT correspond to reality. Do you think there might be blacks who are hostile towards whites, feminists who are hostile towards men, LGBTQ political activists who are hostile towards the straight world?” Of course, you do, because hostility towards those outside your tribe is a matter of your attitude not a matter of your class. The CRT paradigm doesn’t match reality.
C. Critical theory’s inciting of class warfare has a long, well-established, destructive history. Here are some facts about the way politicians have often stoked the fire of anger over OPPRESSION for their own political gain.
- Vladimir Lenin generated the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 manipulating workers, peasants, and soldiers into class warfare by portraying the wealthier “kulaks,” as their class enemies, leading to the large-scale slaughter of kulaks.
- Joseph Stalin continued to play on class envy, manipulating the OPPRESSED into blaming the kulaks for their unjust wealth and land ownership. Marx’s oppressor/oppressed paradigm led to the slaughter of 20 million Russians.
The atrocities of these regimes and others were accomplished by stirring up rage at INJUSTICE for the political gain of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. It might be worth saying to your secular friend. “You figure it out. Which is more likely? That the CRT narrative is being advanced today because it is TRUE, or because SOMEONE IS TRYING TO MANIPULATE YOU AND ME FOR POLITICAL GAIN?”
D. Because Critical Theory doesn’t see the problems of poverty and racism correctly, it leads to diverting resources away from the real problems. The problems in our cities are much more about the breakdown of the inner-city family than about structural racism, and white privilege. Critical Theory obscures these real problems, so that much real pain, real brokenness doesn’t get addressed. Black pastor, Voddie Bauchem, after reading the FBI report of what really happened in the tragic Michael Brown shooting in Fergusson, MO by Officer Darren Wilson points out how CRT advocates used this event for their purpose of inciting class warfare—Black Americans against the police establishment and creating a smoke screen over the real issue. In Bauchem’s mind that issue was Michael Brown's decision to rob a store. But Bauchem laments that CRT prevents the message from getting out that would most help the black community. He pleads:
As someone who grew up in drug infested, gang infested, South LA, the son of a single, teenage mother, I look at the Mike Brown situation and I want to say to all of the young black boys like him, who are young black like me, “We can’t live like that.” But the way things stand now is to blame the victim. Do you know what that means? That means that whatever pathologies there are that need to be addressed—don’t get addressed. (You Tube, Cultural Marxism.)
Questions for Guiding the Rising Generation to think about this material.
- As you have seen aspects of Critical Theory being promoted in your experience, why do you think that Christians might unthinkingly buy into it?
- What part of Critical Theory do you think contradicts the teaching of Scripture most severely?
- Which principles for arguing against the Critical Theory worldview in the public arena stood out to you? What additional ideas do you have?
