Note that item (3) discourages *opposing* candidates for public office. Yet the document makes no mention of any prohibition on *endorsing* a candidate for public office.
The sole purpose is to stifle dissent against right wing political corruption:
No SBC employee who wishes to keep his or her job would publicly endorse a progressive candidate for town dog catcher, let alone national office. A rule to that effect would be totally gratuitous.
So, absent a prohibition on *endorsing* specific candidates, the implication is clear: "Either endorse the Republican or keep your mouth shut (while others who claim to speak for you and all of Christendom embrace every manner of corruption in their lust for proximity to power)."
If 'Endorse the Republican or be quiet' becomes official policy, the SBC will be little more than a voting bloc--which fate would no doubt satisfy the culture warriors who authored this profane document, provided that a few of them get to take pictures with POTUS every so often.
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Here’s the problem with using one’s platform to speculate about subjects outside one’s field of expertise.
Denny posits that the problem with the term ‘systemic racism’ is that its genuine meaning has been obscured in the popular imagination by discussion of CRT.
The first thing to note is that Denny’s hypothesis is sociological, not theological. It is an empirical claim (about the prevalence of a particular kind of error within a certain population) for which he offers no empirical evidence.
Second, insofar as this confusion is prevalent among evangelicals, its prevalence is due to men who’ve spent the last couple of years conflating all discussion of systemic racism with CRT—which is to say, men like Denny himself.
Critics of so-called “wokeness“ in conservative evangelicalism insist on conflating CRT with concerns about systemic injustice
I'm willing to assume, charitably, that this confusion derives from ignorance—of which they display much, and with remarkable boldness.
But the notion that we should regard those who demand systemic justice as false teachers is more than mere error: it presents a false image of who God is and what God requires of us.
Seeking systemic justice is a moral imperative for all who fear God, whatever one thinks of CRT.
In the logic of Christian theology, it doesn't even make sense to say that those who demand systemic justice *on behalf of others* are false teachers.
Simply put, demanding justice for others isn't what false teachers do.
White evangelicalism is in for some serious short-term pain.
There’s nothing to be done about this: it was decided decades ago, the moment that the Moral Majority laid a foundation on the sands of special-interest politics.
What’s yet to be determined is long-term damage.
In an effort to mitigate short-term pain, some churches and denominations will make concessions to white supremacy, Christian Nationalism and misogyny to appease Dixiecrats who hold the purse strings.
And in the process, those churches will lose every young person who can’t unsee the hypocrisy and injustice that 2020 brought unmistakably to the fore. Thus they will sacrifice the future on the altar of the present.
not merely with respect to core doctrinal matters, the truth of which all Christians (as such) are indeed committed to affirming, but with respect to peripheral concerns like “the true Christian stance” on this or that theory of something or other.
It may be helpful to add that this is exactly the predicament of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s ‘The Brothers Karamazov’: even Christ himself is in no position to question the established order—the Inquisitor is the arbiter of truth; objective truth is irrelevant.
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.
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).