Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe

by Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

It is the Bible—not sociology, psychology, or political science—that offers sufficient answers not only on race, but on every ethical issue man has faced, or will ever face.

We are right to pursue justice, peace, and unity (Micah 6:8; Romans 12:18; John 17:20–21). That is not the fault line. The fault lies in believing that such a vision can be attained by affiliating with, using the terminology of, or doing anything other than opposing in the most forceful terms the ideology that lies at the root of the social justice movement.

have long tried to chart a middle course—acknowledging antiblack biases that should be remedied while insisting on addressing and reversing the patterns of behavior that impede black people from seizing newly opened opportunities to prosper.”

According to federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, in interracial violence involving blacks and whites, white perpetrators account for 15 percent of the cases while black perpetrators account for 85 percent.35 In other words, far from there being an epidemic of whites “hunting down innocent, unarmed black men,” when it comes to interracial violence, black people are overwhelmingly more likely to victimize white people than the other way around.

A police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black assailant than an unarmed black man is to be killed by a cop.36 And before you accuse me of “victim blaming” or “promoting negative stereotypes about black criminality,” remember, my point in raising these statistics is to expose and warn against the flippant use of univariate analysis in order to “prove” racism.

“The idea that evangelicals can adopt the analysis of contemporary critical theory with respect to race and sex, but not with respect to sexuality, gender identity, or religion is naïve—at best,”

However, even if abortion were an example of single-issue voting, I reject the idea that murdering the unborn can be subjugated in favor of social issues that are being promoted through the lens of Critical Social Justice. In other words, if I were going to be a single-issue voter, that single issue would be the murder of the unborn.

So yes, I agree wholeheartedly that being pro-life should go beyond just being anti-abortion. However, it must start there.