Category: Critical Race Theory

The Challenge of Non-Conformity and Its Implications

The following excerpt is from a fascinating book titled Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism, by George L. Mosse (University of Wisconsin, 1978, 2020).

Mosse traces the various currents of cultural, social, and political European history that eventually culminated in the rise of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi party, and the Holocaust.

The most interesting element in Mosse’s analysis, to my mind anyway, is the fact that none of these factors had anything to do with Christian theology or the Christian church.

Yes, many self-professed “Christians” and church leaders participated in the rise of anti-Jewish racism throughout post-Enlightenment Europe, but their arguments for eliminating the Jews had nothing to do with religion.

However, that does not mean they were not racists; many continued to despise the Jews.

The medieval Christian, anti-Jewish tropes and accusations were nowhere to be found in the new brand of post-Enlightenment, secular racism that was forged in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries throughout Europe.

I have a lot more to say about this, but I am still doing my research. Maybe I will post more about this in the future.

In any case, here is the excerpt from Mosse followed by a few of my observations for today’s church. When Mosse refers to “racism” he is thinking about all forms of racial prejudice and discrimination. Antisemitism is only one possible example of such racism. (All emphasis is mine):

Racism had no founding father, and that was one of its strengths. It made alliance with all those virtues that the modern age praised so much. Racism picked out such qualities as cleanliness, honesty, moral earnestness, hard work, and family life – virtues which during the nineteenth century came to symbolize the ideals of the middle class. . . Racism was associated with these virtues rather than with any single philosopher or social theorist of importance. . . Racism was not merely one form of social Darwinism, but instead, a scavenger ideology, which annexed the virtues, morals, and respectability of the age to its stereotypes and attributed them to the inherent qualities of a superior race.

 If racism annexed the virtues of the age, it also condemned as degenerate all that was opposed to such respectability. Not to exemplify the ideal-type of “clean-cut American” or “right-living Englishman” was a sign of an inferior race. Though racism was often vague, it clearly embraced all the values of middle-class respectability and claimed to be their defender. To be sure, few people at first went along with such a claim; to the vast majority of Europeans, it sufficed to be a Christian gentleman. But even here racism so infected Christianity that, in the end, no real battle between racism and Christianity ever took place. Both supported the same middle-class virtues and saw the enemy in the same nonconformists – be they Bohemians, Freemasons, or Jews. The support racism gave to ideals which were opposed to a threatened degeneracy was in practice more important than any differences between racism and Christianity.

 . . . The perimeters of racial thought are as elusive and slippery as the ideology as a whole. And yet, for all that, the myth was transformed into reality, not just during the Holocaust and the camps, but whenever ordinary people made judgments upon others based upon the implications of the racial stereotype.

 The Holocaust has passed. The history of racism which we have told has helped to explain the Final Solution. But racism itself has survived. As many people as ever before think in racial categories. There is nothing provisional about the lasting world of stereotypes. That is the legacy of racism everywhere. . . Blacks on the whole remained locked into the same racial posture which never varied much from the eighteenth century to our time. Practically all blacks had been outside Hitler’s reach; consequently, there was no rude awakening from the racial dream in their regard. Moreover, nations which had fought against National Socialism continued to accept black racial inferiority for many years. . . (They) did not seem to realize that all racism, whether aimed at blacks or Jews, was cut of the same cloth. (209-211).

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The intense, perennial pressures of cultural conformity are no more “provisional” today than are the ever-present stereotypes of racial prejudice. Yep, we got 21st century racists, too. Many of them within the Christian church.

Pressures for conformity continue to press against God’s people now just as they did in Nazi Germany and medieval Europe. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sadly, the Christian church – but especially its more conservative membership. . . can you spell MAGA? – is always inclined to endorse the cultural, social status quo, even if our preferred status quo is defined by a sub-culture.

Today’s (sub-)cultural norms are always more popular than Jesus.

For instance, studies consistently reveal that evangelical Christians share the same political priorities, endorse the same social, cultural agendas, and vote for the same political candidates as their non-Christian, non-church going neighbors – wherever they happen to live.

Is this an accident?

The evangelical wing of the Christian church fought against racial integration and condemned the civil rights movement as loudly and vociferously as did the worst racist politicians in the deep South. Men like governors Lester Maddox and George Wallace armed themselves with long, wooden ax handles while blocking the doorways to keep black students out of white, public schools.

And, yes, the southern, conservative church applauded both Maddox and Wallace and their violent racism.

Similar instincts are at play today when Christians join in the condemnation of Critical Race Theory, while not having the slightest inkling of what CRT really is.

What other sorts of violence, racism, bigotry, and close-mindedness are evangelicals, who claim the name of Jesus, following after today?

Pay attention to how closely “acceptable” church leadership conforms itself to the standard, middle-class, cultural virtues of the friendly, well-dressed, patriotic American. How much of this social conformity is the fruit of genuine Christian discipleship, following hard after Jesus, and how much of it is merely the required uniform expected of us by the world at large?

Neither the dangers of racism, in all of its various shades, nor the moral compromises on display when the Christian church surrenders itself to cultural conformity have changed all that much over time.

The pressure to conform never goes away.

The crucial question is: to whom or to what are we conforming? Middle-class values? Or Jesus of Nazareth?

More Evidence For the Practical Importance of Critical Race Theory

Colin Gordon is a history professor at the University of Iowa who specializes in the history and long-term effects of American public policy.

Professor Colin Gordon

Professor Gordon recently wrote a highly informative article for Dissent Magazine which asks the question, “Who Segregated America?”

In this article he demonstrates the pernicious role played by private business interests in pioneering the highly discriminatory methods that would eventually be used by public, government policies to permanently entrench racial segregation through America’s neighborhoods.

Here is one more example of why an understanding of American racism and its dissection though tools like Critical Race Theory are so important to our educational system.

Frankly, it is impossible to understand either our history or our current racial predicament without it.

Below is an excerpt of “Who Segregated America?”:

Federal housing policies contributed to the segregation of American cities in the twentieth century. But it was private interests that led the way.

Recent scholarship and reporting on racial disparities in the United States have emphasized the role of public policy—especially federal policy—in the creation of what the 1968 Kerner Commission famously dubbed “two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” This is especially true of housing policy. Ira Katznelson’s When Affirmative Action Was White (2005) skewers the stark exclusion of African-American veterans from the benefits of the GI Bill. Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law (2017) offers a damning synthesis on how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) embraced Jim Crow. More recently, the digitization of the infamous “residential security” redlining maps prepared by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in the late 1930s has spurred academic interest in the connections between the HOLC’s bluntly racial assessments and contemporary disparities.

This condemnation of federal policy is certainly warranted. Even the constraints of the New Deal coalition (in which the Democratic majority was, as Katznelson observes, a “strange marriage of Sweden and South Africa”) cannot excuse the FHA’s slavish deference to racial prejudice in private realty. One can and should expect more of a public agency, wielding billions in housing subsidies in one hand and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause in the other, than a set of underwriting guidelines that “could well have been culled from the Nuremberg Laws,” as housing activist Charles Abrams observed in 1955.

But is it true, as Rothstein’s subtitle suggests, that “government segregated America”? Not really. As new work on the scope of private racial restrictions underscores, racial segregation in American cities (especially Northern and border cities) was largely accomplished by private interests and private action long before the FHA spent a dime or the HOLC opened its first bottle of red ink.

Race-restrictive deed covenants and agreements reserved the occupancy of individual lots or entire residential subdivisions to those (in the phrasing preferred by developers in St. Louis County) “wholly of the Caucasian Race.” The result was a sort of pointillist apartheid, filled in parcel by parcel, block by block, and subdivision by subdivision, on a scale sufficient to quarantine existing pockets of African-American residency and mark new developments as largely off limits. . .

(Observe in the following graphic how “Race-restrictive deed covenants and agreements reserved the occupancy of individual lots or entire residential subdivisions to those (in the phrasing preferred by developers in St. Louis County) ‘wholly of the Caucasian Race.'” In other words, private racial regulators orchestrated the creation of black ghettos and white suburbs with all the damaging consequences.)

. . . More to the point, the FHA and other federal housing policies were always—and remain—little more than a poorly regulated trough for private housing interests. They exist not to secure homeownership but to sustain the residential construction and home finance industries with direct subsidies, socialized risk, and tax breaks. In that role, they have always parroted the goals, motives, and prejudices of private interests and deferred to their assessment of what boosted—or threatened—the value of private property.

The segregation of the American city was conceived, accomplished, and justified largely by private action in response to the demographic upheaval of the Great Migration. Federal housing policies unconscionably doubled down on both segregation and its assumptions, but the damage was already done.

Read the entire article here.

Did You Know that America was Hitler’s Main Model for The Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws?

I recently read James Q. Whitman’s eye-opening book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, 2017).

No school teacher had ever explained to me that during the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century the USA was THE most officially racist country in the world.

What Whitman demonstrates is not only that our Southern states had racist Jim Crow laws intended to disenfranchise anyone who was not white from exercising their constitutional rights as citizens. But beyond that, the entire country, both north and south, was governed by an elaborate system of laws, ordinances, and regulations legislating three vital arenas of citizenship: immigration law, citizenship law, and marriage law. And these laws were far more restrictive than those found in any other country.

These were “the Big Three,” the three legislative arenas that made the good ole’ US of A the most racist nation in the world.

As state legislatures around this country continue to make new laws banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory – even in places where it is not being taught! – I wish that my public education had included the historical information laid out in Whitman’s important book.

Below is an excerpt from Hitler’s American Model. I urge you to read the entire book for yourself. I will make a few comments after the excerpt:

On June 5, 1934, about a year and a half after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich, the leading lawyers of Nazi Germany gathered at a meeting to plan what would become the Nuremberg Laws, the notorious anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi race regime…The meeting involved detailed and lengthy discussions of the law of the United States. In the opening minutes, Justice Minister Gürtner presented a memo on American race law, which had been carefully prepared by the officials of the ministry for purposes of the gathering; and the participants returned repeatedly to the American models of racist legislation in the course of their discussions. It is particularly startling to discover that the most radical Nazis present were the most ardent champions of the lessons that American approaches held for Germany…Indeed in Mein Kampf Hitler praised America as nothing less than “the one state” that had made progress toward the creation of a healthy racist order of the kind the Nuremberg Laws were intended to establish. (1-2)

This too is a part of American history.

There is only one way to teach this history: straightforwardly and honestly. Hiding it, ignoring it only perpetuates the cultural deformities that gave overt racism so much power over our society in the first place.

Yes, every student in an American classroom needs to learn about this part of our story. Yes, courses in Critical Race Theory must continue in colleges, universities, and law schools. Efforts at teaching multiculturalism and inclusion must continue unabated, from our elementary schools on up.

The fact that so many are now fighting against such educational efforts to make the full spectrum of America’s racist history known is, perhaps, the nation’s loudest bellwether proving that America is, in fact, an anti-Christian nation.

Genuine followers of Jesus want to know the truth, the truth about themselves and the truth about the world around them.

Genuine followers of Jesus are more devoted to their citizenship in the kingdom of God and the ethics of Jesus than they are to the mythologies or civic religions of any earthly nation-state, including the one they live in.

Genuine followers of Jesus willingly confess the ugly truths about themselves, their heritage, families, and societies. This is because genuine followers of Jesus are in the habit of confessing their sins and seeking forgiveness from both God and others.

Genuine followers of Jesus eagerly work to make amends to those who have been injured by the consequences of whatever evils their heritage has inflicted onto others.

Genuine followers of Jesus, inasmuch as it is possible, seek reconciliation and work for justice in their relationships with those around them.

The disturbing fact that so many ostensibly “Christian” leaders are in the forefront of this current culture war campaign to hide the story of how America triumphantly won the crown as the world’s most officially racist country, tells us a lot about how unimportant the crucified Jesus truly is to American evangelicalism.

Wise Christians Will Embrace Classical Liberalism

David French is a Christian, a political commentator, a former staff writer for the National Review, a columnist for Time Magazine, and senior editor of

David French

The Dispatch, a conservative news site.

He recently published an excellent piece entitled, “A Christian Defense of American Classical Liberalism,” in which he clearly and compellingly describes the equally malicious rise of authoritarianism from both the Right and the Left in America.

Both are dangerous in very similar ways. But, more than that, he explains why  Christian theology provides the church with the best framework for understanding these dangers.

Christian theology also offers the best framework for grasping the social and political benefits of classical Liberalism.

Below is an excerpt:

On the push and pull between ‘humans as made in the image of God and humans still trapped in sin.’

I’d like to introduce you to a term you need to know (indeed, many of you no doubt know it already). It’s “horseshoe theory,” and its short definition is relatively simple. As political movements grow more extreme, they grow more alike. Like a horseshoe, they bend closer together.

A classic example of horseshoe theory is represented by 20th-century European clashes between fascists and communists. It’s not that there aren’t differences between fascism and communism, it’s that in their totalitarian reality, the two competing regimes created quite similar conditions on the ground. 

Thankfully the American manifestations of horseshoe theory haven’t created anything remotely like the fascism and communism that led to history’s bloodiest war, but we’re seeing horseshoe theory emerge nonetheless, and its left-wing and right-wing manifestations have settled on the same target—American classical liberalism.

By “American classical liberalism,” I mean the specific structure of government created by the founding generation, modified and expanded through the Civil War Amendments, affirmed and extended through judicial precedent. While this constitutional structure is malleable enough to accommodate a wide variety of social, economic, and foreign policy choices, at its heart it is defined by a commitment to individual liberty, equality under law, and democratic government. 

On the left, the challenge most prominently comes from a series of critical theory-influenced ideologies that fundamentally reject that American founding (and American classical liberalism itself) as irrevocably stained and tainted (mainly) by America’s racial sins. Classical liberalism, in this telling, was the enabler of great injustice. 

Some definitions of critical race theory, for example, specifically reject liberalism, viewing liberalism as a “vehicle for self-interest, power, and privilege.” This is why, for example, critical theory-influenced colleges often attempt to pare back commitments to free speech and due process on campus. These “liberal” commitments are perceived as oppressive to women and people of color, enabling “hate speech” or sexual predation.

On the right, the challenge comes most prominently from a cohort of mainly Christian intellectuals, many of whom were featured in an extended New York Times piece about the new right and some of whom are in a marriage of convenience with Trumpist populism. They perceive liberalism as both problematic on its own terms and inadequate to the task of resisting “woke” post-liberals on the left. 

Whereas critical race theorists root their objections to liberalism in its coexistence with American oppression, many Christian post-liberals (perhaps we can call them “critical religion theorists”) root their objections in liberalism’s alleged contributions to American immorality and godlessness, with a particular emphasis on abortion and the sexual revolution. 

You will find the entire article here. Take a look.

Check Out My Essay About Critical Race Theory at Comment Magazine

Today the online version of Comment magazine published my essay about Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the conflict is has generated in American society, but especially in US evangelicalism.

This essay began as a review of the best-selling book by Voddie Baucham, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, a book that is highly critical of CRT describing it as a major threat to the Christian church.

What began as a simple book review evolved into a larger essay discussing the broader historical and social context of our current culture-wars over CRT.

You can find my essay HERE. The title is “Among the Tailings of Southern Segregation and Western Imperialism.”

I appreciate the editorial staff at Comment for their willingness to publish this article, as well as for their acute editorial eye.

I hope you will find my essay helpful, educational, and suggestive of the changes needed today in the American church.

Have your friends read it too!

Is Mega-Church Pastor John MacArthur a Racist?

I recently came across this interview with the well-known US, mega-

Pastor John MacArthur

church pastor, John MacArthur. He is being asked about Critical Race Theory, which he describes as THE greatest danger to the evangelical church in the last 100 years.

Really?

Check it out below. My thoughts appear afterwards:

First, the majority of MacArthur’s remarks are, frankly, incoherent. He is rambling. There is no logic to anything he says. He is simply making “authoritative” declarations, without any apparent logical connection linking them together, while expecting his listeners to take him seriously.

Apparently, MacArthur has basked in his status as an adored, authoritarian mega-church preacher for far too long.

Second, MacArthur is obviously a dedicated American individualist, as are  most evangelicals in this country. He speaks strictly in terms of individual sins and personal responsibility. But that is only half the picture. Every society is a collective enterprise in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

Thus, social evils are always sins of the collective. And the collective is only changed through new legislation, restructuring, and advocacy for a renewed type of social conscience. MacArthur is either unwilling or incapable of recognizing this fact. Thus, his comments have little relevance to people working to improve the broken social structures in which we live.

To pursue justice within a society, it is not only possible but necessary to address the problems of BOTH individual AND corporate, collective sins. Like far too many evangelicals, MacArthur cannot or will not acknowledge this fact.

Third, MacArthur believes that the current controversies over “social justice” (SJ) within evangelicalism pose the most dangerous threat to the church in the past century!

Frankly, that assertion strikes me as a remarkable “chicken little” type of over statement, to put it mildly.

Why does he believe the social justice movement is so dangerous? Because, (a) in his view, social justice is actually socialism, the eternal boogey-man for American conservatives. [Does he honestly not understand that history has been filled with godly Christian socialists?]  (b) He further claims that SJ is simply a “euphemism for equality of outcomes.” (c) “Critical Race Theory only wants to destroy,” “to abolish everything.” And (d) CRT insists that individuals are not responsible for evil; only society bears that responsibility.

MacArthur’s claims are nothing more than fear-mongering falsehoods. Frankly, he does not know what he is talking about, plain and simple. Each of these points is demonstrably false.

CRT uncovers the many ways in which western society, constructed by white Europeans, has legalized an unequal social system that has historically granted significant advantages to white folks while denying them to people of color. That sort of system needs to be torn down in same way that slavery was torn down by Christian politicians in 19th century England.

Every follower of Jesus, who sees every fellow human being as made in the Image of God, should want to see all racial privilege and systemic inequalities abolished! There is nothing the least bit radical about any of this!

The fact that SJ is now “dividing the church” simply reveals how deeply paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — more specifically, white, paternalistic, reactionary conservatism — is embedded within American evangelicalism!

It is always difficult for those who rest easy in the enjoyment of their social privileges to recognize, confess, and repent of their ignorance and indifference to the difficulties created for others by the very system from which they have always benefited.

I do not know John MacArthur’s heart.  But I will say that he is a misguided, reactionary white man whose “criticisms” of SJ and CRT are very similar to the arguments used by Southern segregationists as they combatted the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 70s.

Leaders like John MacArthur need to be ignored when they address important topics with such arrogance and self-satisfaction.

A Book Review of “The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy,” by J. Russell Hawkins

I recently finished reading the new book from J. Russell Hawkins, historian of American evangelicalism. His book is titled The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy (Oxford, 2021).

The cover image from Hawkins’ book

Professor Hawkins carefully examines the various anti-desegregation strategies deployed by the Southern Baptist and Methodist churches in South Carolina following the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954. Together with the vast majority of Southern evangelicals at the time, these two Christian denominations were vociferously opposed to the civil rights movement, including the efforts to end racial segregation.

This evangelical fight against racial integration broke out on two fronts. One was motivated by white outrage over the desegregation of public schools. The private, Christian school movement (at least, in the south) was a direct result of this anti-integrationist campaign.

The second wing of the battle was aimed at fighting off the threat of integrated churches. Black people were NOT going to be allowed into their white congregations.

I had intended to review Hawkins’ book myself, but since I recently discovered a good review by Christopher Cantwell at Religion Dispatches, I will excerpt his review here and save myself the trouble. [Click on the link above.]

In the light of current controversies surrounding Critical Race Theory (CRT), however, I do want to note the origins of one particular argument that remains very relevant today. In fact, we hear it all the time. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention continues to rely on this argue in its recent, public rejection of Critical Race Theory (now forbidden in its seminaries and churches.)

As the civil rights controversy slowly moved from the 1950s into the 1970s, evangelical racists (yes, we must use this word very intentionally here) were aware that the entire country’s atmosphere was changing. While continuing to use their old, racist arguments in private, they saw the need to adopt a more family-friendly, publicly acceptable line of argument in public conversation.

This new line of dissent emphasized the need for a “color blind” society that could only be achieved through “personal transformation” and “spiritual renewal.”

This is a prominent argument appearing throughout the recent anti-CRT best-seller by Voddie Baucham, Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Regnery, 2021). [I may post my review of this lamentable book in the weeks ahead. At the moment, I am circulating it for publication elsewhere.]

Falling back on the Christian emphasis upon personal, spiritual renewal, Southern evangelical racists abandoned the overt fight against race-mingling and shifted their fight to emphasize the futility of legislating morality.

Talking about race and racism only stirred the pot and aggravated racial tensions, they said.

Instead, what was needed was internal, personal, spiritual transformation. Racism was a sin problem, we were told, and no public policy could ever change a sinful heart.

Here was a new abuse of Christian theology that many continue to find serviceable. Southern Baptists and other opponents of CRT are still making such logically mangled claims to this day.

The fact that public policy is not intended to change human hearts or personal feelings but to ensure acceptable public behavior was a very deliberate bait-and-switch tactic for the originators of this pro-segregationist argument. They were hoping that no one would notice the illogical non sequitur buried in the heart of their claims. And it seems that most southerners didn’t.

Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. also promoted the hope of a color-blind society, where little children “would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

However, Dr. King never left it at that. He knew how to hold two different but related concepts in his mind at the same time.

So, he dreamed of a day when personal transformation would eliminate all racism and discrimination from this world. But, in the meantime, he marched; he agitated; he sought to change the laws of the land. He campaigned for new legislation like the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because he understood that in public, as well as in personal behavior, acting differently often precedes (and generates) new feelings.

New anti-racist behaviors can help to erase old racist dispositions long before the racist prayer meetings pleading for evangelical “revival” will ever feel a fart from the Holy Spirit.

Below is an excerpt from the review by Christopher Cantwell:

Last month, the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention became national news after Ed Litton defeated Mike Stone for the convention’s presidency. For months the conservative evangelical denomination had been embroiled in both scandal and controversy after noted Black minister Dwight McKissic removed his 1,600 member congregation from the Texas state convention over the organization’s outspoken repudiation of critical race theory. But McKissic’s departure would become the first of many desertions from the SBC after noted Bible teacher Beth Moore and ethicist Russell Moore resigned from the denomination over its mishandling of sexual abuse allegations and tolerance for white supremacists.

Stone, a hard-right, Trump-supporting minister from Georgia, had spearheaded the denunciation of critical race theory and intersectionality. Litton, meanwhile, was a winsome preacher from Alabama who recently had made racial reconciliation a centerpiece of his ministry. To some, the two candidates represented a referendum on the Trump era, with Litton’s victory serving as something of a reckoning. 

But as a new book by historian J. Russell Hawkins suggests, Litton’s election might just be a new chapter in the SBC’s long and sordid history on matters of race. 

In The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, Hawkins places debates like those taking place in the SBC in a much larger frame. Focusing on the denominational workings of both the Southern Baptist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, Hawkins unflinchingly shows how segregationist Christians drew from their faith in opposing the modern civil rights movement. But in the book’s reflection upon the relationship between race and religion in modern America, Hawkins also has a lot to teach us about our own moment as well. 

You can read the rest of this review here.

Michelle Goldberg on The Decline of the Religious Right

“The Religious Right is in Decline, and It’s Taking America With It,” is the title of Michelle Goldberg’s recent article at The New York Times.

Michelle Goldberg, author and journalist

Ms. Goldberg has been following the Religious Right for some time. I recommend her insightful book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2007) for more of her analysis on white evangelicalism in this country.

Her current article in the NYT underlines the central, animating principle of American evangelicalism in the 21st century: the preservation of Christian cultural supremacy and entitlement.

If you don’t believe me, try this exercise the next time you hear another white, Christian “culture warrior” decrying the latest political act of “anti-Christian” oppression. Ask yourself, “Can I imagine the apostle Paul complaining about this social/cultural disagreement as a threat to the Christian faith or the church?”

Where did Paul ever insist that Greco-Roman society must abandon its idolatry in order for the church to thrive?

When did he insist that Christian organizations were being persecuted unless they were granted tax exempt status?

How often does he announce that the surrounding pagans must change their ways and conform to Christian moral principles in order that Christians may live more comfortably?

The answers are obvious.

Below is Ms. Goldberg’s article. She hits the nail on the head:

The presidency of George W. Bush may have been the high point of the modern Christian right’s influence in America. White evangelicals were the largest religious faction in the country. “They had a president who claimed to be one of their own, he had a testimony, talked in evangelical terms,” said Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the 2016 book “The End of White Christian America.”

Back then, much of the public sided with the religious right on the key culture war issue of gay marriage. “In 2004, if you had said, ‘We’re the majority, we oppose gay rights, we oppose marriage equality, and the majority of Americans is with us,’ that would have been true,” Jones told me. Youthful megachurches were thriving. It was common for conservatives to gloat that they were going to outbreed the left.

Activists imagined a glorious future. “Home-schoolers will be inordinately represented in the highest levels of leadership and power in the next generation,” Ned Ryun, a former Bush speechwriter, said at a 2005 Christian home-schooling convention. Ryun was the director of a group called Generation Joshua, which worked to get home-schooled kids into politics. The name came from the Old Testament. Moses had led the chosen people out of exile, but it was his successor, Joshua, who conquered the Holy Land.

But the evangelicals who thought they were about to take over America were destined for disappointment. On Thursday, P.R.R.I. released startling new polling data showing just how much ground the religious right has lost. P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. (As a category, “white evangelicals” isn’t a perfect proxy for the religious right, but the overlap is substantial.) In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.

One of P.R.R.I.’s most surprising findings was that in 2020, there were more white mainline Protestants than white evangelicals. This doesn’t necessarily mean Christians are joining mainline congregations — the survey measures self-identification, not church affiliation. It is, nevertheless, a striking turnabout after years when mainline Protestantism was considered moribund and evangelical Christianity full of dynamism.

In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56. “It’s not just that they are dying off, but it is that they’re losing younger members,” Jones told me. As the group has become older and smaller, Jones said, “a real visceral sense of loss of cultural dominance” has set in.

White evangelicals once saw themselves “as the owners of mainstream American culture and morality and values,” said Jones. Now they are just another subculture.

From this fact derives much of our country’s cultural conflict. It helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory. “It’s hard to overstate the strength of this feeling, among white evangelicals in particular, of America being a white Christian country,” said Jones. “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles.” The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia.

QAnon is essentially a millenarian movement, with Trump taking the place of Jesus. Adherents dream of the coming of what they call the storm, when the enemies of the MAGA movement will be rounded up and executed, and Trump restored to his rightful place of leadership.

“It’s not unlike a belief in the second coming of Christ,” said Jones. “That at some point God will reorder society and set things right. I think that when a community feels itself in crisis, it does become more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other things that tell them that what they’re experiencing is not ultimately what’s going to happen.”

The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.

Jones points out that last year, after Trump issued an executive order targeting critical race theory, the presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare C.R.T. “incompatible” with the Baptist faith. Jones, whose latest book is “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” could recall no precedent for such a joint statement.

As Jones notes, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 after splitting with abolitionist Northern Baptists. He described it as a “remarkable arc”: a denomination founded on the defense of slavery “denouncing a critical read of history that might put a spotlight on that story.”

Then again, white evangelicals probably aren’t wrong to fear that their children are getting away from them. As their numbers have shrunk and as they’ve grown more at odds with younger Americans, said Jones, “that has led to this bigger sense of being under attack, a kind of visceral defensive posture, that we saw President Trump really leveraging.”

I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.

After NFL Race Norming Exposed, Will People Stop Denying the Reality of Systemic Racism?

The National Football League recently announced its plans to stop the practice known as “race norming” after two black football players filed a civil rights suit.

Race norming has long been a part of the settlement process when retired players filed for disability benefits due to the brain damage we now know is

Pittsburgh Steelers’ Najeh Davenport is one of the players suing the NFL over its practice of race norming. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

caused by multiple concussions.

After years of resistance and legal wrangling, the NFL began a compensation program to help these players deal with the medical expenses and life adjustments made necessary by their brain damage.

Race norming refers to the NFL’s decision that, in calculating this disability compensation, black players began their careers with lower cognitive abilities than white players. As ESPN reports, “The practice had made it harder for Black players to show a [cognitive] deficit and qualify for an award.”

That racist assumption systematically reduced the severity of claims made by black players as compared to white players.

Hopefully, the NFL will remain true to its word by not only abolishing race norming but by also reimbursing all the black players who received inadequate settlements in the past.

Race norming is yet another clear example of systemic racism at work in American society.

As far as I am concerned, these revelations about the NFL’s race norming practices puts a big, big score on the side of Critical Race Theory, which clarifies the many subtle ways in which systemic racism is embedded throughout our society.

Yet, far too many in the country continue to deny the existence of systemic racism! While evangelical Christianity has deepened its condemnation of Critical Race Theory.

The contradiction on display here is as palpable as it is repulsive.

Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this particular  intersection of events is the stark exposure of white evangelicalism’s moral turpitude.

The evangelical church is more concerned with fighting its culture wars while tilting at secular windmills than it is in following Jesus. For Jesus taught us to confess our sins and repent, daily.

Confession requires introspection and honest self-examination. Confession means that we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal our faults and then listen as He speaks to us through others who recognize the habits we have closed our eyes to.

This story of race norming in the NFL ought to be the final nail in the coffin for all those — I am thinking especially of the Southern Baptist Convention, where members will reschedule Sunday services around the afternoon football game — ethically calloused and racially obtuse Christians who refuse to recognize the facts of systemic racism in America.

Evangelicalism’s silence on this score is its own condemnation.

 

 

 

Reflections on the Derek Chauvin Verdict and George Floyd’s Murder

The good news is that Derek Chauvin has been convicted for the murder of George Floyd. In this instance, the justice system has worked. A white police

Derek Chauvin

officer is being held accountable for his excessive use of force against an unarmed black man.  Something that very rarely happens.

But this is also the bad news.

At this point in America’s history, Derek Chauvin’s conviction is a “black swan event.” Recall Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestselling book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House, 2010), reminding us that incredibly improbable events (like a black swan) may have considerable influence while remaining very rare.

Notice the two provisos: first, the transformative event is very rare; and two, it MAY have significant consequences. In other words, the possible results are far from assured, and the event itself may never be repeated.

Krystal Ball

Krystal Ball (yes, that’s her real name) reminded her viewers on “Rising” this morning of the extraordinary efforts that created the context for Chauvin’s successful conviction.

First, is Darnella Frasier, the teenage girl who had the presence of mind and the courage to pull out her cell phone and film the 9 minute video of officer  Chauvin kneeling of Mr. Floyd’s neck.

Second, is the largest, most sustained protest movement in US history, which spread around the world.

Were it not for these two momentous actions, George Floyd would have been just another anonymous victim of police brutality. And Derek Chauvin would have gotten away with murder.

Hardly encouraging news.

Think about that. Let it sink in. It hardly indicates that this is the beginning of a new day in prosecuting police misconduct, let alone altering police behavior nationwide.

[Krystal’s remarks begin at about the 30 second mark.

Now is the time to keep the celebrations brief.

Because now is the time to insist that our legislators pass H.R. 1280, The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021. Though this piece of legislation is inadequate on its own, it may serve as a piece of the larger police reform puzzle.

Now is also the time to continue campaigning for local Defund the Police programs across the country. Numerous cities are testing these ideas now and the preliminary reports are very encouraging in places like Denver and Colorado Springs (see here, here, here, and here).

Now is also the time for Christian leaders to continue speaking out about  justice and equality for all people, regardless of race, color, ethnicity, or class.

Do not swallow the Fox News cool-aid insisting that this trial was only about one bad apple who did one bad thing, and that his conviction proves the reliability of our glorious criminal justice system.

That predictably conservative framing of the issues is a recipe for going back to sleep and maintaining the status quo. A status quo that ignores the larger context of US policing and police training which allows police brutality to continue unabated.

No. Now is the time to keep the pressure on, to continue protesting, to insist that the culture of American policing is in dire need of regeneration.

Now is also the time for the evangelical church to break ranks with the Republican party, Fox News, and the politics of fear.

It will mean wanting to become more like Jesus, releasing our vice-like grip on worries over personal security and caring more for those who suffer than we care for ourselves.