Recent discussion of critical race theory (CRT) in conservative evangelical circles has become a distraction from substantive issues of real concern—a chimaera, invoked by culture warriors in a transparent effort to preempt serious conversations about systemic racism.
In point of fact, the concept of systemic racism is used across a number of disciplines to describe a variety of different 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.
Yet some politically conservative evangelicals 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 is merely 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 to themselves, “Well I’m not a racist, so systemic racism can’t be real.”
Finally, the culture warriors 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.
And the culture warriors manage to elicit this reaction without saying a single word about systemic racism qua institutional injustice—
which has nothing at all 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 really a remarkable sleight of hand. It allows white evangelicals to dismiss all claims to do with systemic racism qua institutional injustice, without saying the first thing about, e.g., the federal government’s discriminatory housing policies that remained until 1968:
policies that wrought all manner of chronic social infirmity—from school segregation to racial disparities in wealth and income, incarceration, etc.
—tangible effects of injustice that impact the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans, many of whom happen to be our brothers and sisters in Christ.
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In 1934, the U.S. Government created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to oversee a mortgage insurance program that facilitated homeownership for millions of Americans. But the FHA only insured mortgages in neighborhoods that systematically excluded people of color.
So white Americans were given an opportunity to accrue equity in real estate with the help of the FHA—a program that was subsidized by all taxpayers, including those of color, who were effectively barred from owning desirable real estate.
In other words, the U.S. Government systematically transferred wealth from people of color (in the form of taxpayer subsidies for the FHA mortgage program), to white Americans (in the form of home equity, mortgage interest tax deductions and so on).
Sadly, this is pretty representative of reactions within the SBC—bullet points with vague suggestions, insinuating everything and nothing all at once.
Point-by-point:
1. I’m confident that on Josh’s (aberrant) anti-intellectualist conception of Sola Scriptura, most academic disciplines somehow entail a denial of Scripture’s sufficiency—including much of what goes on in the field of theology.
This is hardly a problem for CRT.
2. Victimology and theology aren’t mutually exclusive so this is just a false dichotomy.
There are hundreds of small SBC churches all over the South where the median church member is in her 60s or 70s. Her parents attended that same church and they’re now buried in the church cemetery out back.
She sits in the same pew every Sunday, next to the same people. One day they’ll all rest next to each other in the church cemetery, along with their parents and grandparents.
The church is shrinking because most everyone’s kids left for college (or wherever) and never came back, except sometimes at Christmas.
The question that Southern Baptists need to confront—especially Southern Baptists born before 1970 or so—is whether the SBC is going to go along with the effort to conflate theological and cultural Conservatism.
A lot of cultural Conservatism is either unrelated or antithetic to theological Conservatism. My generation is done with those aspects of the Southern Baptist tradition.
The SBC can try to salvage pieces of the Conservative Resurgence that never should have been there in the first place, just so @FoundersMin , @BaptistNetworkand and @CBMWorg can play Culture Warrior and pontificate about keeping women in their place and the dangers of CRT.
By Southern Seminary's account of its history, when the SBC "...established SBTS in 1859, the prevailing orthodoxy of its white clergy included commitment to the legitimacy of slavery.”
The phrase ‘prevailing orthodoxy’ is doing a lot of rhetorical work here: ‘orthodoxy’ evokes the safe harbor of official sanction, while ‘prevailing’ conjures a sense of resignation to the inertia of established norms.
Yet the question must be asked: in 1859, how prevalent was the view that the institution of slavery was morally legitimate? Across the West? No: America’s N. Atlantic peers abolished slavery in the 1840s. Among Americans? No: Civil War was two years away. Among Protestants? No.
The biblical picture of false prophets bears a striking resemblance to the handful of theologians in the SBC whose dalliances with heresy have redounded to their own professional benefit.
Some proponents of ESS misrepresented the very nature of the Trinity in an effort to legitimate a niche research agenda that they were well-positioned to lead (largely because the most fertile theological minds of our era simply have no interest in advancing male headship).
These men spend their days stirring up controversy, insisting that God’s people break fellowship over the secondary effects of tertiary issues that are a matter of grave importance only to men whose professional advancement depends on it.