Thread by @scott_m_coley

If @MBTS is determined to give Owen a platform for his pronouncements on institutional ethics, its administration might consider granting him a teaching reduction that would afford him leisure to familiarize himself with the basic contours of the subject.

https://twitter.com/ostrachan/status/1331400908375269377

Here, once again, Owen conflates the concept of ‘systemic racism’ with Critical Race Theory (CRT).

In point of fact, the concept of systemic racism is used across a number of disciplines to describe a variety of phenomena.

Two general fields of application stand out. One has to do with psychology—racist attitudes and so forth. The other has to do with institutions.

Culture warriors like Owen talk as though the concept of systemic racism owes its existence to CRT; and they define CRT strictly in terms of theorizing about racist attitudes.

Consequently, the notion of systemic racism appears to be a contrivance of critical race theorists who wish to assert the ubiquity of racial prejudice among white Americans—an assertion that rings false to white evangelicals who reflect on their own attitudes and think:

“Well I’m not a racist, so systemic racism can’t be real.”

Finally, culture warriors like Owen point out that CRT is vaguely related, in ways that they can’t quite explain, to Marxism.

The Gestalt that emerges from all this noise is that systemic racism is a myth—perhaps even a conspiracy—originating in the minds of godless Marxists who say defamatory things about white people and America.

The desired reaction is achieved without a single word on the subject of systemic racism qua institutional injustice—which has nothing to do with CRT, except insofar as some critical race theorists happen to comment on the racial inflection of institutional injustice in the U.S.

It’s a remarkable sleight of hand, allowing culture warriors to dismiss all claims of systemic racism qua institutional injustice, without saying the first thing about, e.g., the federal government’s discriminatory housing policies that remained officially in force until 1968:

policies that wrought all manner of chronic social infirmity—from school segregation to disparities in wealth and income, incarceration, etc.—tangible echoes of injustice in the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans, many of whom are our brothers and sisters in Christ.

A lot of the same culture warriors who reject the notion of systemic racism also claim they’re praying for some sort of national revival.

I’m not sure whether a modern nation-state is the sort of thing that’s eligible for a spiritual revival. But let’s set that to one side.

The God that I read about in Scripture will have nothing whatsoever to do with people who store up harvests sown with the seeds of injustice.

In fact, God detests the supplications of such people (cf. Amos 5:18-24; Isaiah 1:15-17).

So, culture warriors: as long as you persist in denying that systemic racism is a problem, you needn't worry about whether the government permits you to go to church, with or without a mask. Don't worry about what kind of music you sing or whether you sing at all.

None of that matters, as long as you refuse to address systemic injustice and willingly continue to benefit from it.

According to God’s Word, he doesn’t want to hear from you. Your church is just a building where you meet up with your friends.