Reformed evangelicals locate the birth of Christianty in Europe, not North Africa/Middle East. This has caused several problems and significantly undermines their ability to think critically about history. The black church doesn’t care about Spurgeon, Edwards, the Puritans, etc.
When you follow Apollos (1 Cor 1:12) in the form of Spurgeon, Edwards, your fav Puritan, etc. you’re vulnerable to conflating orthodoxy with “white guys being right.” This is why evangelicals don’t know how to handle blacks critiquing the way racism was normed in Calvinism.
And racism & classism were most certainly normed in European & American Calvinsim. And biblically suported. Reformed evagelicalism (with its Apollos-following tendencies) doesn’t know how to handle self-critique so it counter-attacks labeling people “Marxist” & warning about CRT.
Instead, what they should be doing is modeling epistemic humility & stop treating their European & American heroes as pseudo-canonical. Black Protestants are protected from this idolatry because biblical theology has always taken priority over any American/European theologian.
Why is that? Because the practice of biblically suported white supremacy has been so central to UK & American Calvinsim, liberal Protestantism, etc. that black Christians read theologians critically rather than canonically. Black Christians expect Edwards to be wrong at times.
The big threat to evangelicalism is not CRT or Marxism, it’s the internal idolatry that doesn’t know how treat Spurgeon, Edwards, the Puritans, etc. as flawed. It’s the lack of epistemic humility and the inability to center Xianity in North Africa/Middle East rather than Europe.
Result: sets people up for rejecting Christianity as “the white man’s religion.” If Spurgeon & Edwards (have them in your Twitter bio🤦🏽♂️) are people you quote more than Moses, David, the Prophets, etc., that’s actually what you’re presenting to the world. Where are your origins?
So, if the Scriptures are the final authority & inspired, & I believe the noetic effects of sin are real, then I read with the expectation that any theologian from Europe/America will naturally have gaps or flaws. It’s humility, not suspicion.(WCF 1.10) crowncovenantchurch.org/confessions/We….
[This is also a consequence of the way many Protestants have reduced Sunday to musical expressions & a sermon rather than hearing the Bible read & sung, prayer, and taking the Lord’s Supper but that’s another thread. It elevates men over the means of grace.]
