An earlier article summarized the presentation of Douglas Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary, at the recent L’Abri conference concerning the controlling doctrine of Critical Theory in the identity politics of race and sex. In a subsequent lecture, Bob Osburn of the Wilberforce International Institute reviewed the challenges for Christians of addressing racial disparities given the prevalence of the social justice movement, which is strongly influenced by Critical Race Theory.
He said that while social justice is “about more than just race, currently the main register for it is a racial register.” Osburn asked how we can both address the adversary worldview found in the social justice movement and address the problems it seeks to address.
Worldview is crucial to approaching the social justice movement, because, as a respondent to Osburn said, “we live what we believe.” The term “worldview” was coined by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, but Francis Schaeffer popularized it for Christians in the mid- to late 1960s.
The postmodern worldview “has begun to shape and affect our churches.” This has led to the increasing acceptance of the idea that “white supremacy is very systemic in our society.” Osburn noted that Ibrahim X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, begins his book with an event in 1970 at which Osburn was present, an InterVarsity meeting at which black evangelist Tom Skinner spoke, saying “Christ is the liberator.” Kendi’s parents were also present at the event. At the time, they were committed Christians, but later fell under the influence of the radical black theologian James Cone. Cone held that “racism is systemic and cannot be erased from anybody who identifies as white.”
Osburn said that “it is the view increasingly of thinkers in our society that Christianity is in itself a moral threat.” This is because the doctrines of liberation at the heart of the social justice movement contradict the Christian doctrine of sin and salvation. The counterculture of the 1960s has prevailed in American society, throwing off Christian morality “in a very rapid and aggressive fashion.” Today, it is traditional Christians who are countercultural, believing and living contrary to the contemporary western establishment (governments, corporations, universities, mass media, etc.). In response to a questioner, Osburn affirmed that Critical Race Theory is opposed to Christianity “on worldview grounds.”
Critical Theory, of which Critical Race Theory is a variety, is a neo-Marxist doctrine, developing out of the Frankfurt School in Germany in the 1930s. Like all Marxism, it begins with the division of humanity into oppressors and oppressed. Rather than emphasizing economic class division, the CRT variety of neo-Marxism emphasizes race, and holds that blacks are “systemically oppressed” by whites. This is believed to have happened by the social system that has evolved, characterized as “white supremacy,” which favors the interests of whites, regardless of what individuals within the system may think or feel. Critical Race Theory is a term Osburn used interchangeably with the social justice movement, even though it is only part of what goes under the name Social Justice. Social Justice “sounds really good,” because its ostensible aim is the liberation of humanity. Consequently, it “is seeping into our churches very rapidly.” However, it proceeds from presuppositions which are contrary to the Christian worldview.
Liberation theology adds religious verbiage to the Social Justice movement, and began among leftist priests in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire is a classic book setting out the worldview of the social justice movement. Freire developed the doctrine of social justice, “working right out of critical theory.” Basically “the gospel is reinterpreted in terms of Christ overthrowing oppressors.” This understanding of the gospel is the epiphany that its adherents have; one has a revelation that he or she has always been an oppressor, or has always been oppressed (depending on what oppressed categories are identified in current social justice doctrine), and thus becomes “woke.”
Osburn reviewed some of the history of black Americans, including its legacy of 4 million black slaves and 4,000 black lynchings in a 90-year period. He conceded that this history is “psychologically demeaning,” but denied that this magnitude of oppression continues to the present day. However, there continue to be severe problems in the black community. Today, the black abortion rate is 5 to 6 times higher than that of whites. More than two thirds of black children are born to unmarried mothers. This shows major failure at the family level, Osburn said. The distress of many blacks in contemporary American society is the result of this family breakdown, he believes, and also involves “a tremendous amount of violence.”
Thus, life can be traumatic if one comes from a fragmented black family. This dovetails with a “culture of victimhood” being fostered in America today, which is “psychologically debilitating.” Osburn believes “it’s hurting the black community, in particular, very seriously.” He discussed, as did Groothuis in his presentation, “standpoint theory,” the belief that truth all depends on one’s standpoint in life. The claim is that the “lived experience” of members of oppressed groups is of greater value in learning the truth than that of academic social scientists. This simply dismisses academic knowledge in favor of one’s own ideology. Osburn pointed out that, despite ideology to the contrary, it is indeed true that most blacks are murdered by other blacks. He cited Roland Frier of Harvard University (among others) to say that about 10,000 young black men are killed every year of which only about 200 “are at the hands of police;” although many blacks perceive police pull-overs as hostile. He observed that police are 18 times more likely to be killed by a black male than they are to kill an unarmed black male. Rates of criminality are much higher in the black community than they are elsewhere. This, he is confident, is the reason for much of the trauma in the black community.
Turning to a worldview analysis the social justice movement, Osburn said that a worldview is “a big story about reality based on deep assumptions that tell us how to live and what to worship.” He offered the following “worldview analysis” of the social justice movement:
- In social justice doctrine, power is ultimate.
- The everyday world is held to be whatever we and our friends decide to make it.
- “Humans are autonomous” according to adherents of Social Justice thinking, and as such, we are either oppressed or oppressors.
- The social justice doctrine of reality holds that truth is oppressive.
- The social justice account of history holds that there is “no big story of history,” there are only micronarratives of oppression.
- The best social justice thinkers can say about death is that “some of those who die are martyrs to the cause.”
- The fundamental problem in the world according to social justice doctrine is oppression; in CRT whites are the central problem in all of human history. There must be revolution until there are absolutely no disparities between different groups.
- The virtuous life according to social justice doctrine is to “support the oppressed.”
This worldview essentially holds human will to be the overriding consideration in approaching life, in contrast to a Biblical worldview, which holds divine revelation and human reason to be superior to human wishes, and obedience to God the proper response to a reality we can know.
In light of this, Osburn asked “why are so many of us willing to synchronize our faith [with social justice], or advocate for a worldview that contradicts our faith?” He said that the CRT aspect of the movement “is having a real impact in academia, the church, and American society.”
In particular, academic endeavor is “morphing” from the production of knowledge to the development of social activists. “This is very dangerous, folks” he said. In the church, social justice “is becoming a religion … Many naïve Christians are welcoming this, not realizing that they are welcoming a contrary worldview that is anti-gospel.” Osburn said that “what is happening with the social justice movement is works salvation.” In society at large, there is the “triumph of subjectivity, and valorization of victimhood, hyper-racialization and white guilt.”
Osburn said that a Biblical answer to the social justice offensive “is to talk about families.” Families are the central item that determine “levels of criminality in one’s life, poverty levels, educational achievement, economic achievement, future family status and health, levels of happiness, and the probabilities that you’ll be abused.” All of these factors correlate strongly with strong families. Although “there are always exceptions … Median household income is highest, when you have the lowest percentage of single-parent families.” Asians have the lowest percentage of single parent families “by far.” They also have the highest median incomes.
Osburn said that “the deadly sexual revolution of the 60s … is, I believe, one of the greates and most tragic things that happened to black people in the history of this country, other than slavery … college educated whites, that have luxury beliefs … protect themselves from the consequences of the sexual revolution they created, ignoring its impact on less educated poor people who cannot similarly protect themselves.”
“We should not apologize” for the Christian worldview. Instead of “white privilege, we should be talking about two parent privilege and its success strategy.” This strategy is to “finish high school, get a job, you marry, then have children, in that order.” Educators in secular universities are uniformly afraid of teaching this as the truth “because they’re afraid of offending people.” But Osburn said we should talk with legislators about “legislation that will restrain family fragmentation and foster family health.” He said “I do not want to see the black community suffer the way they’re suffering.”
Comment by David on April 13, 2022 at 7:34 am
For many years, it was difficult for Asians to immigrate to the US without advanced degrees. Their population in the US is skewed toward the upper end on this account. I live in an area of recent Asian immigrants and many work in restaurants and small import companies. They may not be highly educated themselves, but they consider education very important for their children. It is desirable for children to have two parents, but other aspects of parenting are important as well.
I guess it is naive not to expect the ugly specter of American anti-intellectualism to raise its head. Universities have long been considered the enemy of the right-wing and are accused of political indoctrination. I never understood in exactly what courses this is supposed to occur. Clearly, it is not in popular STEM studies.
The recent actions by some states to make it more difficult for minorities to vote tend to support CRT. Reducing the number of polls and voting machines to create excessive waiting times in minority areas is deliberate malice. When people used mail-in ballots to avoid this, restrictions were placed on that. Of course, reducing voting hours makes it difficult for many working people who cannot take off at will.
I am not quite certain that Africa went through the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but there are countries in the southeastern part of the continent where a quarter of the adult population is HIV+.
The biblical Christian worldview does include slavery and divine right monarchy. There seems to be a moral problem there.
Comment by Jeff Kelley on April 13, 2022 at 9:12 am
This can all be boiled down to its essence…there is nothing moral, ethical, or Christian about smearing people as “racist” because of the color of skin they were born with, nor of blaming those people for all sorts of things that happened before they were born, (in some cases 100s of years prior), and were perpetrated by others.
To the contrary, to do so is the very essence of “racism” and “bigotry”, and is surely not Christian-like. Each of us is only responsible for our own actions and behaviors, not the actions of others we have no control over. You can’t fix past discrimination with more discrimination against a different group.
Comment by Rick Plasterer on April 13, 2022 at 12:29 pm
David,
You’re really offering scattershot criticism of Osburn. But suffice to say, the Bible forbade American slavery on several points. Kidnapping is among the vices listed that excludes from the Kingdom of God (I Tim. 1:10, in the same list that mentions homosexuals), the Mosaic law forbade the return of fugitive slaves (Deut 23:15), nor is there any racial basis for slavery in the Bible (which basis was crucial to colonial and antebellum slavery).
I might add as well that Douglas Groothuis pointed out in a related lecture that CRT is being held by some to be the presupposition of all knowledge “Objective truth, grammar, and the laws of logic must be rejected as oppressive,” so all courses must be cleansed of “whiteness.” And, of course, surveys show the American academy to be overwhelmingly leftist, which is common knowledge.
Incidentally, the majority of black voters support voter ID. Opposition to it clearly shows an attempt to prevent honest elections.
Rick
Comment by David S. on April 13, 2022 at 4:34 pm
David, It seems to me that you are selectively choosing and applying facts and presuppositions and are not engaging critically actions and motivations of the people making various assertions.
For example, why the big push for election law changes? What are the views of the minorities on the street as opposed to the elitist minority intellectuals and politicians, who generally skew towards one view and will vilify their own, who do not? And using a very perfect example, Stacey Abrams, President Biden, and Mssrs. J. Herbert Nelson and Jimmie Hawkins of the PC(USA) all vilified the Georgia election law. However, after pushing the MLB to move the AllStar Game from Atlanta, Ms. Abrams supported a very similar version of the exact same law at the federal level that Senator Machin proposed. The gentleman above cited the popularity of voter ID among minorities.
Have you even considered that such a position might exist and that given for particularly black Americans, such a proposal might carry the majority, given the history of Jim Crow? UGA, not a bastion of conservativism in the state, did a survey of the various provisions of the Georgia law, and found that with a properly established voter id law and several of the other provisions of said law were popular even with a majority of black voters in the state. Only the liberal white, college educated voters opposed much of it. Furthermore the much maligned voter id provision, allows for alternatives, starting with last four of SSN on the absentee application form in lieu of a state issued, picture id number (DL or ID only). In fact, some members of the General Assembly wanted something much more stringent and the Governor, among others, was opposed to a more stringent bill. Yet, President Biden referred to it as Jim Crow 2.0 and Jim Crow on steroids, when nothing in the law was remotely similar to what Mr. Biden claimed an was easily debunked and was no where near voter restrictions during the Jim Crow Era. Mssrs. Nelson and Hawkins, who are purportedly ordained ministers and one is the top ecclesiastical officer of his denomination, routinely lie and slander the leadership of the state simply because they are Republicans and the party currently control the levers of state power and they is politically opposed to them. However, Mr. Nelson very rarely, if ever, except on immigration, criticizes anything that Democrats do, even as he may criticize those of the opposing party of doing the same thing, such as Mr. Trump’s mean tweets and such as opposed to the antics of Maxine Waters, Ocasio-Cortez, and gang. In addition, over the past 24 months, the leadership of that particular mainline denomination has a history of slandering and making veiled accusations regarding the motivations of those within its own membership who voice well-reasoned, well-supported dissent. So perhaps you should have a little distrust regarding any one within the visible church who seems a little too cozy with any political party, and educate yourself state of racial affairs between 1877, when Reconstruction Era policies were ended in coincidentally, Georgia and not the hotbed of secession in South Carolina, and 1964/65 when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were enacted versus the subsequent improvements in American society from 1966 to the present.
Also, you cite the whole issue of HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa and seemingly attribute it to Christianity and yet, it is well documented that in the areas with the highest rates of transmission, there are a variety of factors with one of the biggest factors being the usage of the traditional witch doctor. But, you choose to commit veiled slander against an entire religion of which you purport to be a member of rather than consider if there is another cause. It has been documented that up to 80 percent of society, which would therefore imply an excessive level of syncretism among Christians, rely upon the the advice of the witch doctors. In addition, things advised by the witch doctors is that of having unprotected sex with a virgin to cure an individual of HIV/AIDS and widows having unprotected sex to ward off a deceased husband’s evil spirit.
I don’t know what else to tell you, other than don’t believe everything that you hear or read from some on the left, they have as much incentive to lie and purposefully ignore inconvenient facts as their polar opposites on the right. Based upon your comments, it sounds exactly like you believe much of what they say without question.
Comment by David on April 14, 2022 at 4:05 pm
David, All goes back to the evil culture of the slave states and not all that much has changed over the centuries than what you might imagine. Remember the “Southern Strategy” when Republicans encouraged southern whites to join the party?
I did not imply that Christianity has anything to do with HIV. What I wrote was in response to the author’s comment about the “deadly sexual revolution” which was questionable in Africa.
Unfortunately, there are not too many sources on the right that are not primarily opinion rather than news. I happened to switch to Fox News during the New York subway shooting coverage. Other stations were giving factual information as it became known. Fox quickly started with “NYC police do not protect the people.”
Comment by Steve on April 17, 2022 at 8:16 am
According to Lassiter, political scientists and historians point out that the timing does not fit the “Southern Strategy” model. Nixon carried 49 states in 1972, so he operated a successful national rather than regional strategy. But the Republican Party remained quite weak at the local and state level across the entire South for decades. Historian Joan Hoff noted that in interviews with historians years later, Nixon denied that he ever practiced a Southern strategy. Harry Dent, one of Nixon’s senior advisers on Southern politics, told Nixon privately in 1969 that the administration “has no Southern Strategy, but rather a national strategy which, for the first time in modern times, includes the South”.
Comment by Steve on April 17, 2022 at 9:33 am
MSNBC: It’s Our Job To Control How People Think… Not Elon Musk’s
None other than MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ Mika Brzezinski said the following words in her out-loud voice…
“The dangerous edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media, trying to make up his own facts, and it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsen, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think…”
And then the nail in the ‘oops, I just told the truth coffin’:
“…and that is our job.”
To which the effervescent Joe Scarborough replies:
“Yeah”.
Comment by Jeff Kelley on April 18, 2022 at 8:48 am
The whole myth of the “Southern Strategy” fable has been shattered many times, and, indeed, just sheer common sense reveals the folly of the thinking. The Civil Rights Act was largely carried on the backs of the Republican party votes. 80% of the Republican House of Rep members voted for it, only 61% of Democrats. Similar in the Senate…80% vs. 69%.
The “Southern Strategy” argument would have one believe that southern, racist Democrats were so enraged by the passing of this Act that they switched parties…TO THE PARTY THAT SUPPORTED IT MORE? Huh? That makes no sense.