BHM Reading #1: Critical Race Theory

Ways to Observe Black History Month 

We have many options if we want to study, understand, or celebrate Black History this February. I am going to propose two readings this month with a focus on systemic racism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) because such readings will help us understand racism today and also discover a positive path forward in loving our neighbors and thereby being faithful Christians.

Christian Complicity in and Incomprehension of Racism

It is no longer sufficient, nor has it ever been sufficient, to declare our opposition to slavery. Every sermon I have ever heard against slavery has been one too many because they all insult our intelligence and leave us comfortable and complacent (or worse, smug in our moral superiority to blighted colonial Christians) in our own evil, whether individual, collective, or structural. As Christians, of course we oppose slavery. It is high time to stop patting ourselves on the back for moral opposition to something that has been outlawed and morally repugnant for long over a century in the United States and to start understanding our current reality. That means humbly learning and admitting how racism continues on systemically and how it manifests itself, even if slavery and lynching have been overcome as the most horrific manifestations of it.

The Important Role of CRT in Christian Theological Expression

You may not be aware that in November of 2020, the Council of Seminary Presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention (including, unfortunately, such evangelical mouthpieces as Danny Akin and Al Mohler, who do not speak for me) decided that they could affirm the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) but not Critical Race Theory. The bizarre statement raises myriad legitimate questions, which many Baptist and other Christian pastors, theologians, and historians have touched on: Do these six seminary presidents, presumably intelligent men, even understand CRT? Do they think that any generally secular school of thought, or even more systemized philosophical system, is illegitimate in research undertaken from a Christian worldview? Do they actually think that CRT is a statement of faith like the BFM, and therefore unacceptable? Do they perhaps believe that BFM is somehow presented as the Gospel, or God's own unmediated truth? And the one that most intrigues me, do they have any idea how human language works? The answer to that last question, I am more and more convinced as I continue (in spite of myself) to study conservative evangelical and fundamentalist theologians, is no. And because so many of our Christian theologians and other leaders do not understand language, they sometimes introduce that fundamental and fatal flaw into everything from their theories of biblical inspiration to hermeneutics to their interpretations of cultural phenomena. It is high time that academic research and higher education undertaken from a serious Christian worldview seek to understand the best of both Christian thought and secular thought, unless we do not believe in at least some sense that all truth is God's truth. Even supposedly "Christian" systems of thought like dispensationalism, covenant theology, Calvinism, Arminianism, or confessions and creeds like the Baptist Faith and Mission are human creations with profound flaws, little more than our meager efforts, in the words of W.E.B. DuBois, to "read the riddle of the world" (The Souls of Black Folk, p. 82). Some readers may be waiting for several qualifications to this paragraph, but I should not need to make them explicit. Let's just be mature Christian thinkers, shall we?

A Suggested Reading for Week One of Black History Month 

Rather than reading the cringe-inducing statement from the Council of Seminary Presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention, may I suggest that you actually read something by (not about) CRT theorists? In other words, go to the source. Many times, we avoid understanding out of ignorance; other times, we avoid understanding out of fear. We do not need to remain ignorant or fearful that actually reading existentialist, Marxist, feminist, post-modernist, or CRT theorists is going to corrupt Christian thinkers, and we most decidedly do not need to rely on John MacArthur or D.A. Carson to ineptly explain them to us. So for starters, pick up a book, like the third edition of Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, and you might be surprised to find out that it is not some anti-Christian, radical leftist, Communist, America-hating ideology. In fact, it is a grouping of thinkers and paradigms within the academic discipline of legal studies that has gradually moved into other disciplines as well. Would most Christian academics agree with every tenet or proposal of every CRT writer and researcher? Let me answer that question with a question: Do we have to ask (or answer) silly questions?

According to the introduction of this suggested reading for week one of Black History Month, "The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power" (p. 3). With nothing more than that quotation, can we think of biblical reasons that Christians might take at least a passing interest in CRT? Perhaps it is not enough information to preclude definitely a condemnation of CRT, but it should be enough to make us curious.

Later this week, I will share broad CRT approaches and principles that tend to unite CRT theorists. Spoiler: they will not be any more anti-Christian than this general definition (which is also not to say that they are overtly Christian or explicitly biblical).