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

by Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

hegemony is what takes place when a dominant group imposes its ideology on the rest of society:

In other words, Critical Theory is not just an analytical tool, as some have suggested; it is a philosophy, a worldview.

According to the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs: CRT recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color. CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says that the law is neutral and colorblind, however, CRT challenges this legal “truth” by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle for self-interest, power, and privilege.12

Note also that this definition, without using the word “worldview,” describes precisely that. One way to define a worldview is “an analytical lens one uses to examine the world.”

the worldview of CRT is based on four key presuppositions: Racism is Normal:… the usual way society does business, the common, everyday experience of most people of color in this country.13 Convergence Theory: “Racism advances the interests of both white elites (materially) and working-class whites (psychically), large segments of society have little incentive to eradicate it.”14 This means whites are incapable of righteous actions on race and only undo racism when it benefits them; when their interests “converge” with the interests of people of color. Anti-Liberalism: [CRT] questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.15 Knowledge is Socially Constructed: Storytelling/Narrative Reading is the way black people forward knowledge vs. the Science/reason method of white people. Minority status, in other words, brings with it a presumed competence to speak about race and racism. The “legal storytelling” movement urges black and brown writers to recount their experiences with racism and the legal system and to apply their own unique perspectives to assess law’s master narratives.

Intersectionality is about the multiple layers of oppression minorities suffer.

But this fault line is not new. It has been quietly forming underneath our feet for a long time around the area of social justice, and the Church must be awake and aware of what it means and where it comes from. Otherwise, we will fall victim to it—as many leading Christian voices already have.

Our Problem Is Not Growing Ethnic Tensions

Growing ethnic tension is a problem—but it is not the main problem.

Our Problem Is Not Political Divisions

Our Problem Is Social Justice versus Biblical Justice

There are two competing worldviews in this current cultural moment. One is the Critical Social Justice view—which assumes that the world is divided between the oppressors and the oppressed (white, heterosexual males are generally viewed as “the oppressor”).3 The other is what I will refer to in these pages as the biblical justice view in order to avoid what I accuse the social-justice crowd of doing, which is immediately casting its opponents as being opposed to justice.

The question of the proper order of faith and ethnicity is critical to understanding the various positions people take in the broader social-justice debate—one with which all people must wrestle, regardless of their ethnicity.

Black Nationalists have often argued that Christianity is the white man’s religion and that whites used it to encourage slaves to be docile.

Therefore, for many black people, coming to faith in Christ requires addressing this objection not only in and for one’s own self, but also for one’s peers. Providentially, the Bible does not leave us to answer this question in the dark. This is exactly what Jesus meant when He said: Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. (Matthew 10:34–36)

The Gospel is not something that merely sits on top of our identity. When we come to Christ, our identity is transformed completely. As Paul tells us, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:16–17).

Ibram X. Kendi captured this sentiment in a recent tweet contrasting his “Liberation Theology” with what he called “Savior Theology.” According to Kendi, we are not here to see people delivered from the penalty and power of sin. On the contrary, “the job of the Christian is to liberate oppressed people from their oppressors.”3

When I think about my successes in life, I don’t think, “I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps.” Rather, I think, “He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and on them he has set the world” (1 Samuel 2:8). I don’t take this truth as an invitation to simply sit and wait for God to “do something” for the widow, the orphan, or the poor. In fact, I have pursued advocacy work because I recognize that God uses His people to deliver the oppressed. I point this out because at the heart of the current debate over racism lies a false dichotomy that says, “Either you are on the side of the oppressed” (read: an SJW), or you are 1) shutting down the conversation about racial injustice, 2) ignoring minority voices, and 3) upholding (or internalizing) white supremacy. One pastor friend put it this way in a private email: “I cannot help but feel that much of the dispute… comes down not to a disagreement on principles, but to a disagreement on historical judgments. [One] crowd doesn’t see race in America as a significant problem worth addressing, while the [other] does.” There is, however, an alternative explanation—one I will present more fully hereafter.

However, we must be certain that we pursue justice on God’s terms. For instance, we must bear in mind that “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established” (Deuteronomy 19:15, cf. Matthew 18:16; 2 Corinthians 13:1; 1 Timothy 5:19; Hebrews 10:28). This is critical in our quest to adhere to the Lord’s admonition that “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:15).

People are ignoring these principles because the standard of justice upon which their pleas are built does not come from the God of the Scriptures.

The best research on the topic of fatal officer-involved shootings (FOIS) has been clear, as were the findings of Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. in a forthcoming study.

Have you heard of Tony Timpa? Like Floyd, “Timpa wailed and pleaded for help more than 30 times as officers pinned his shoulders, knees and neck to the ground,”23 reported the Dallas Morning News in August 2016. Timpa, a thirty-two-year-old schizophrenic, called the police himself, saying he was off his meds and needed help. When police arrived, Timpa had already been handcuffed by a security guard. Three Dallas Police Department officers restrained Timpa for nearly fourteen minutes as he pleaded, “You’re gonna kill me! You’re gonna kill me! You’re gonna kill me!” Eventually, Timpa went limp, at which time the officers mocked him and made jokes. In the end, when the paramedics finally came and put Timpa’s flaccid body on a stretcher, one officer said, “I hope we didn’t kill him.” But they had.

In 2016 the Washington Post ran an article under the headline “In Two Years, Police Killed 86 People Brandishing Guns That Look Real—but Aren’t.” Of those killed, eighty-one were men, five were women, fifty-four were white, and nineteen were black. Four of the eighty-six were under age seventeen. While none of this changes the tragedy of what happened to Tamir Rice, it does make it hard to argue that it was particularly or uniquely heinous and motivated by race.

There was no evidence to contradict [Officer Darren] Wilson’s claim that Brown reached for his gun. The investigation concluded that Wilson did not shoot Brown in the back. That he did not shoot Brown as he was running away. That Brown did stop and turn toward Wilson. That in those next moments “several witnesses stated that Brown appeared to pose a physical threat to Wilson.” That claims that Brown had his hands up “in an unambiguous sign of surrender” are not supported by the “physical and forensic evidence,” and are sometimes, “materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible or otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time.”30 You may be inclined to think this summary came from the pen of some white, conservative, alt-right white supremacist. You would be wrong. It came from the pen of Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the paragons of the Critical Social Justice movement.

In case you’re wondering about its soteriology, there isn’t one. Antiracism offers no salvation—only perpetual penance in an effort to battle an incurable disease.

Whiteness: a set of normative privileges granted to white-skinned individuals and groups which is “invisible” to those privileged by it.7

Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Critical Race Theory: Critical race theory (CRT), the view that the law and legal institutions are inherently racist and that race itself, instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of colour.8

Williams would go on to state, “One reason we get slavery is because of the construct of whiteness.”9

Ekemini Uwan noted, “The reality is that whiteness is rooted in plunder, in theft, in enslavement of Africans, in genocide of Native Americans.”

White Privilege: a series of unearned advantages that accrue to white people by virtue of their whiteness.

White Supremacy: any belief, behavior, or system that supports, promotes, or enhances white privilege.

White Complicity: White people, through the practices of whiteness and by benefiting from white privilege, contribute to the maintenance of systemic racial injustice.22

White Equilibrium: The belief system that allows white people to remain comfortably ignorant.

The Social Justice Encyclopedia is quite helpful here: it defines it as “occupying a position of privilege [which] allows a person to avoid having to deal with or even understand the experiences of oppression and marginalization, or indeed of bigotries like racism or even of the concept of race itself.”

White Fragility: the inability and unwillingness of white people to talk about race due to the grip that whiteness, white supremacy, white privilege, white complicity, and white equilibrium exert on them (knowingly or unknowingly).

The Oxford English Dictionary defines racism as: A belief that one’s own racial or ethnic group is superior, or that other such groups represent a threat to one’s cultural identity, racial integrity, or economic well-being; (also) a belief that the members of different racial or ethnic groups possess specific characteristics, abilities, or qualities, which can be compared and evaluated. Hence: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against people of other racial or ethnic groups (or, more widely, of other nationalities), esp. based on such beliefs.

Robin DiAngelo’s work is quite informative here: Given the dominant conceptualization of racism as individual acts of cruelty, it follows that only terrible people who consciously don’t like people of color can enact racism. Though this conceptualization is misinformed, it is not benign. In fact, it functions beautifully to make it nearly impossible to engage in the necessary dialogue and self-reflection that can lead to change. Outrage at the suggestion of racism is often followed by righteous indignation about the manner in which the feedback was given.

Latasha Morrison’s Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation. In the accompanying curriculum, Whiteness 101: Foundational Principles Every White Bridge Builder Needs to Understand,

“a system of advantage based on race, involving cultural messages, misuse of power, and institutional bias, in addition to the racist beliefs and actions of individuals.”

this redefinition of racism, among other things, changes the location and therefore the nature of the sin. We are no longer dealing with the hearts of men; we...

At the heart of the “woke” movement lies the idea that the sin of racism is no longer to be understood as an individual sin. Instead, the term now incorporates the idea of “institutional/structural racism” and its implications.

First, Kendi defines the sin of racial inequity as being “when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.”42 He goes on to offer a concrete example: “71 percent of White families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to 45 percent of Latinx families and 41 percent of Black families.”43 Having provided a definition and an example, Kendi closes the loop with something one almost never finds in CSJ literature or sermons: a solution. Or at least, a description of what the results will look like once the solution (antiracist policies) is applied: “An example of racial equity would be if there were relatively equitable percentages of all three racial groups living in owner-occupied homes in the forties, seventies, or, better, nineties.”

It is also critical to any analysis of the antiracist worldview and its compatibility with biblical truth. How, for example, would we apply the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25 to this kind of thinking?

That’s right: it is not enough for white Christians to examine their hearts and lives to see whether they stand guilty (which they do); they must also examine the attitudes and actions of their ancestors—which, according to antiracist cosmology, includes all white people. And this is no small thing. In Morrison’s theology, this is a cardinal doctrine. “That is the power of the unconfessed sin of white supremacy, racism, and resulting colorism: it leads to death, sometimes physical, sometimes metaphorical.”

The idea that the scientific method is inherently racist is a hallmark of CRT. In one of the seminal academic papers on the topic, Tara Yosso, one of the most-cited CRT academics, lists five key elements of the ideology. Among them, she identifies “the challenge to dominant ideology. CRT challenges White privilege and refutes the claims that educational institutions make toward objectivity, meritocracy, color-blindness, race neutrality and equal opportunity. CRT challenges notions of ‘neutral’ research or ‘objective’ researchers and exposes deficit-informed research that silences, ignores and distorts epistemologies of People of Color. CRT argues that these traditional claims act as a camouflage for the self-interest, power, and privilege of dominant groups in US society.” See San Jose State University’s “Critical Race Theory in Chicana/O Education,” April 1, 2001, https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://duckduckgo.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1036&context=naccs. Also, a flier at the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History included the Scientific Method as “an element of whiteness.” The document specified that this includes objective, rational, linear thinking; cause-and-effect relationships; and quantitative emphasis.

“Ethnic Gnosticism” is a term I coined several years ago to explain what I see as a dangerous and growing phenomenon in the culture that is creeping into the church. Gnosticism is derived from the Greek word gnosis (knowledge) and is based on the idea that truth can be accessed through special, mystical knowledge. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia calls it “a heresy far more subtle and dangerous than any that had appeared during the early years of the church.”2 Ethnic Gnosticism, then, is the idea that people have special knowledge based solely on their ethnicity. This is a hallmark of both Critical Race Theory and its predecessor, Critical Theory. “CRT recognizes that the experiential knowledge of People of Color is legitimate, appropriate, and critical to understanding, analyzing and teaching about racial subordination,” wrote University of California scholar Tara J. Yosso in Race Ethnicity and Education.

First, it assumes there is a black perspective all black people share (unless they are broken).

Second, it argues that white people’s only access to this perspective comes from elevating and heeding black voices.

Finally, it essentially argues that narrative is an alternative, and ultimately superior, truth.

As Christians, we are called to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). And again in Job, we read, “Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the needy” (Job 30:25)? We are also told to “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body” (Hebrews 13:3). May the Lord grant us grace to take such admonitions seriously.