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Scott Coley

@scott_m_coley

29 May

It’s been suggested that those who promote “wokeness” or “woke theology” should be regarded as false teachers. This claim reflects a kind of theological illiteracy that needs to be exposed. I’ll start with a brief note about terminology, since it’s a source of much mischief.

Critics of “wokeness” often identify concerns about systemic injustice with Critical Race Theory (CRT). But you needn’t endorse CRT—or care anything about CRT, really—in order to be concerned about systemic justice.

CRT is just one among many academic disciplines that deal with questions about systemic justice; and it is hardly the first or the most important. Roughly 2500 years before the inception of CRT, Plato discusses systemic justice in his ‘Republic’ and ‘Laws’.

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Scott Coley

@scott_m_coley

29 May

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.

Read 13 tweets

Scott Coley

@scott_m_coley

26 May

@WokenessG

Unsurprisingly, the upcoming @WokenessG conference has at least one sponsor, The Baptist Missionary Association Theological Seminary, that has a disturbing record on issues of racism.

There’s a lot of overlap among evangelicals who dismiss social justice (or “wokeness”) as Marxist, those who embrace patriarchy, and those whose theology borrows heavily from the thinking of men who claim biblical support for chattel slavery and segregation.

The overlap isn’t coincidental: all of these commitments flow from an authoritarian outlook that organizes people into a divinely ordained hierarchy, based largely on innate physical characteristics, and conceives of morality as a matter of obedience to one’s natural superiors.

Read 21 tweets

Scott Coley

@scott_m_coley

26 May

You and I can agree that Herman Melville is the author of Moby-Dick, even if we disagree about how to interpret Ahab’s obsession.

We can agree that John Milton wrote Paradise Lost even if we don’t agree on whether the narrative depicts creation ex nihilo or ex prima materia.

Similarly, fellow believers who share a high view of Scripture can disagree about the role that Scripture assigns to women:

Interpretive disagreement doesn’t imply a denial of God’s authorship.

At some point, the SBC has to reckon with the fact that the Conservatism of the Conservative Resurgence was at least as much cultural as it was theological—and a lot of that cultural Conservatism is either unrelated or antithetic to a high view of God’s Word.

Read 4 tweets

Scott Coley

@scott_m_coley

25 May

The danger of religious fundamentalism is that it blinds its adherents to the distinction between prevailing orthodoxy and objective truth. That’s why fundamentalists can see no difference between rejecting God’s Word and rejecting what they say about God’s Word.

That’s why fundamentalists in the SBC are so resistant to institutional reform: once we look beyond what’s good according to the established order and inquire into the goodness of the established order, moral authority shifts away from ambitious men and toward the truth itself.

Men at organizations like the Conservative Baptist Network, FoundersMin and the CBMW all advance orthodoxies that conform to their personal and political interests. But do their agendas conform to moral truth?

Read 14 tweets

Scott Coley

@scott_m_coley

23 May

I’m often asked why my tweets tend to focus on criticism—particularly as it concerns theobros. Here’s my typical response.

I don’t have strong views on ‘biblical manhood’ (a phrase that I find ridiculous). But my sense is that most of it comes down to being a good Christ-follower, which has nothing to do with the kind of muscular Christianity promoted by some of the more vocal hyper-complementarians.

Concerning my tendency of late to engage in negative critique on Twitter dot com, without much in the way of positive proposals: there are—as best I can discern my own motives—three reasons for this.

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