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Conform the Church to Christ, Not CRT
The evangelical world has been rocked by Critical Race Theory and wokeness in general. The Southern Baptist Convention is the latest victim, with pastors under fire from their flock and insurgents trying to oust national leadership.
Political journalists often frame this as a pro-Trump vs. anti-Trump fight, but most believers are trying to balance the teaching of Scripture and preaching the cause du jour. The culture war has attacked the church for decades, it’s obvious that congregations would debate the best way forward.
Though I left evangelicalism for the Eastern Orthodox church a few years ago, I catch the latest news from friends and social media. Most evangelical stories these days are less about saving souls than internecine battles between the woke and unwoke.
Some parishioners complain their pastor is too MAGA. Another pastor spends Sundays pushing CRT. Should our assembly focus more on social justice or structural racism?
It seems churches should talk more about God than either, which I admit is old-fashioned. But you can’t bring politics to the pulpit and be shocked when the faithful divide into Red and Blue camps. To restore unity, perhaps clergy can focus on the only thing Christians supposedly agree on: the truth of Christ.
I swam the Bosporus, not over politics, but a creeping worldliness found at the last few churches we attended. Between the “business leader summits” and moralistic therapeutic deism, God was pushed to the margins.
Christian wokeness is different from self-help pop Christianity, but they’re poisoned fruit from the same rotten tree. Both focus on this world over the next.
Everyone, believer and atheist alike, bows to some god. If you prefer, think of it as the lodestar that guides your life. It might be career, morality, health, social approval, or politics. If your lodestar isn’t God, it will be some earthly matter.
Look at it as a cart and horse. If God is the horse (forgive any equine-themed blasphemy), He will lead your career, morality, health, social approval, and politics where He wants them to go.
If a career is the horse, faith is packed somewhere in the cart to be taken out occasionally when it doesn’t interfere with business goals. If personal health is the horse, let’s shut down churches because worship is secondary to avoiding Covid. Then you’ll justify the lockdown by conforming your faith to the viral threat. Sure, the Bible says we should gather together regularly and celebrate communion, but ignore that and claim “loving your neighbor” means wearing two masks while watching services on your iPad.
Many believers treat wokeness the same way. One group asks how they can conform the church to CRT; the other asks how (or if) CRT can be conformed to Christ. If wokeness, social approval, or politics is your horse, your faith drifts wherever they lead. Over time, it’s reshaped in their image.
Ultimately, God is the Judge. If He isn’t your lodestar, you’ll flip that by using some worldly standard to judge Him. That won’t work out so well.
It leads people into a thicket of errors. We need to grow our church; how can I conform the Bible to celebrate this week’s popular cause? I know BLM’s founders are atheists; how can I adapt my religious beliefs to achieve their ends? I accept structural racism; how do I reverse-engineer the church to bow before this Ibram X. Kendi idol?
In each of these cases, you judge Christianity by the standards of the world and find it wanting. It won’t be long before you leave entirely. Your new god is also a jealous god.
Someone warned of this problem long ago:
Now it is not what is pleasing to God or the Church that is good, but what is “progressive,” “liberal,” revolutionary; that which is “right-leaning” is the concatenation of all evils. “It is in agreement with Marx!” – this is the highest praise for any teaching, for any opinion. Even holy Christian doctrine is assessed on the basis of this new standard. Thus, all of Christianity’s fundamental teaching concerning the personal struggle of repentance and humility is cast aside, while only some sort of “social teaching” is taken up and given consideration, and in it only that which one can reinterpret in a liberal-revolutionary way is approved.
…However, there are no few people who have already adopted the new worldview, who have already bowed down before the new idols, yet nevertheless have not for some reason left the Church entirely. Such people are constantly passing judgment on Christianity, on the Church. They pass judgment not as ones taught by the Church, but as ones who would teach it; they wish to “correct” the Church’s understanding of Christianity, replacing it with their own, in which the teaching of Christ is shown to bear a remarkable resemblance to all the most recent teachings and actions of the godless…
This was written by a seminary professor named Hilarion Troitsky a few years before the Bolsheviks transformed “Holy Russia” into the Soviet Union. A few years later, they sent him to a former monastery the socialists had converted into a prison camp. In 1929, he died in the gulag.
Critical Race Theory is Marxism, as its creators proudly proclaim. Of course, it’s dividing the Church; that’s its goal. And if you judge Christianity by the standard of CRT, you’re placing the cart before the horse. God is not your lodestar. More bluntly, your new god is Marx.
Published in General
From Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety); “On the Church and the German Reich is an encyclical of Pope Pius XI, issued during the Nazi era on 10 March 1937 (but bearing a date of Passion Sunday, 14 March). Written in German, not the usual Latin, it was smuggled into Germany for fear of censorship and was read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches on one of the Church’s busiest Sundays, Palm Sunday (21 March that year).”
The following paragraphs written for German Catholics in 1937 should be a warning for any Christian denomination today.
Critical Race Theory is part of the old Marxist belief that one can shape the new socialist man. It will instead divide, and objectify human beings. Critical Race Theory exalts, and disparages individuals based upon the color of their skin, as well as exalts the authority of the State to impose it upon your children.
while churches wrestle with the cause du jour Mathew 24:35 says: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” I say ignore the constantly moving tide of modern opinions and preach that which is never changing.
I’m not a church goers, so you can say I don’t have a dog in this fight. However, I would not attend a church where the Word of God is replaced by the word of Ibram Kendi. Vote with your feet – and your tithe . . .
There has been a shift among a lot of churches in the past few years, away from the previous emphasis on Christ as the lifeboat off the sinking ship, and more toward new heaven and earth – where creation – this world, this existence, is redeemed, rather than left behind.
Along with this comes a renewed focus on fixing things up around here in addition to saving souls.
Im a layman so I might not be getting the terminology of all of this right.
Do mean Christians and loving Christians worship the same G-d?
Powerful, Jon, and well said.
Strangely, David French disagrees with you on this. He thinks CRT is a fine way to preach.
I talked about it here before I get through enough of my feed to see this post:
https://ricochet.com/1016515/david-french-is-for-reparations/
The Unitarian Church is the least racially diverse and the least politically diverse Church in the United States. I would suggest checking out Grannydudes writings on her church.
That’s better.
Aaron Renn is a podcaster who has been very vocal on these issues, with smart takes on the thinly-disguised power politics going on in churches today. He’d make a great guest on the Ricochet podcast.