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

by Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

The very idea of dividing people up by ethnicity, then declaring some of them wicked oppressors and others the oppressed, is inconsistent with the biblical doctrine of universal guilt: What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:9–18) This is not the state of white men; it is the state of all men. As such, the idea that there is special knowledge or revelation available to some and hidden from others by virtue of their race or position in the oppressor/oppressed scheme is unthinkable—and unbiblical. If it doesn’t come from the Bible, where is it coming from?

John O.’s point—shared by many, if not most of the authors on Christianity Today’s reading list, and evinced by the list’s very existence, is that you really don’t get what the Bible is trying to say about social justice until you read social science and history.

I am not saying that men should not come to understand more of God’s revelation as they grow. On the contrary, we must always be reforming. Semper reformanda was and is the cry of the Reformation. However, the CRT crowd in evangelicalism are not men who have been challenged on their interpretation of Scripture—they are proclaiming that sources outside of Scripture have brought them to a new, better, and more complete understanding of God’s truth on race.

The idea that we need a new canon to be able to decipher what the Bible says, or more specifically, what it means regarding race, is quite troubling. This attack on the sufficiency of Scripture should serve as a call to arms.

The environment within evangelicalism is so hostile that it has a chilling effect. In this environment, dissent is not only unwelcome, but condemned. Consequently, many godly, thoughtful, well-meaning, justice-loving brethren are being silenced.

CRT is a worldview based on clear, unambiguous assumptions: 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 (italics mine).

First, racism is engrained in the fabric and system of American society. Second, that racism has been redefined so as to no longer require the existence of individual racists. Third, CRT exists to examine power structures which are assumed a priori. Fourth, these power structures are identified based on the assumed definitions and existence of white privilege and white supremacy.

The Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice puts an even finer point on the matter: Our experiences of the social world are shaped by our ethnicity, race, social class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and numerous other facets of social stratification. Some social locations afford privilege (e.g., being white) while others are oppressive (e.g., being poor). These various aspects of social inequality do not operate independently of each other; they interact to create interrelated systems of oppression and domination. The concept of intersectionality refers to how these various aspects of social location “intersect” to mutually constitute individuals’ lived experiences.

As this book was on its way to press, the Council of Seminary Presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention released a statement on November 30, 2020, that is nothing short of a complete repudiation of CRT as well as Resolution 9. While the organization condemns “racism in any form,” the seminaries agree that “affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality and any version of Critical Theory is incompatible with the Baptist Faith & Message.” The issue was addressed at several convention meetings late in the year. This is a complete reversal of the language adopted in Resolution 9 in 2019. See George Schroeder, “Seminary Presidents Reaffirm BFM, Declare CRT Incompatible,” SBC News, November 30, 2020, https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/seminary-presidents-reaffirm-bfm-declare-crt-incompatible/.

The following list of examples of internalized oppression is from Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo’s book Is Everyone Really Equal?, one of the most influential college textbooks currently being used to train future educators: Seeking the approval of and spending most of your time with members of the dominant group Behaving in ways that please the dominant group and do not challenge the legitimacy of its position Silently enduring microaggressions from the dominant group in order to avoid penalty Believing that your struggles with social institutions (such as education, employment, or health care) are the result of your (or your group’s) inadequacy, rather than the result of unequally distributed resources between dominant and minoritized groups Harshly criticizing members of your group who do not assimilate to dominant norms (“Pull up your pants!” “Speak English!”)3

As Thomas Sowell points out in Discrimination and Disparities, the CSJ crowd “proclaim that statistical disparities show biased treatment—and that this conclusion must be believed without visible corroborating evidence… unless sheer insistent repetition is regarded as evidence.”

Racial inequality emerges from the social, economic, and legal differences that white people create between “races” to maintain elite white interests in labour markets and politics, giving rise to poverty and criminality in many minority communities.

In his book Human Diversity, Charles Murray sheds light on the orthodoxy in social science. “The core doctrine of the orthodoxy in the social sciences is a particular understanding of human equality,” he notes. “I don’t mean equality in the sense of America’s traditional ideal—all are equal in the eyes of God, have equal inherent dignity, and should be treated equally under the law—but equality in the sense of sameness.”10 Murray calls this “the sameness premise.” The premise holds that in “a properly run society, people of all human groupings will have similar life outcomes.”11 While this premise sounds good, Murray demonstrates convincingly, using copious data, that it is false. “The political expression of the orthodoxy,” he adds, “had its origins in the mid-1960s with the legal triumphs of the civil rights movement and the rise of feminism.”

“The crucial question,” writes Thomas Sowell, “is not whether evils exist but whether the evils of the past or present are automatically the cause of major economic, educational and other social disparities today.”

Yet,” he asks, “whose fault are demographic differences, geographic differences, birth order differences or cultural differences that evolved over the centuries before any of us were born?”

“Many vocal advocates for racial equality have been loath to consider the possibility that problematic patterns of behavior could be an important factor contributing to our persisting disadvantaged status,” writes Brown University economics professor Glenn Loury in a Manhattan Institute essay called “Culture, Causation, and Responsibility.” “Some observers on the right of American politics… take the position that discrimination against blacks is no longer an important determinant of unequal social outcomes. I 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.”

Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities. But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child—it’s the courage to raise one.

Interesting that President Obama made these remarks. “Obama’s Father’s Day Remarks,” New York Times, June 15, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/us/politics/15text-obama.html

“I have tried to recover a portion of African American social, political, and intellectual history,” writes James Forman, “a story that gets ignored or elided when we fail to appreciate the role that blacks have played in shaping criminal justice policy over the past forty years.”38 In his book Locking Up Our Own, Forman weaves a narrative supported by historical and data analyses and demonstrates the little-known or -appreciated fact that blacks have not only viewed crime as a major issue, but have also played a significant role in shaping the modern legal response to that problem.

Kermit Gosnell is one of America’s most prolific and least-known serial killers.

Fascinating account.