The growing movements of critical social justice and critical race theory are raising concerns with at least one theologian, who says these ideologies are not only incompatible with Biblical Christianity but could be even considered downright evil.
“I wouldn’t fault anyone for first saying that. … I believe it is sinister,” says Dr. Voddie Baucham, dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia. Despite work taking him to Africa, the dean maintains strong connections to the U.S., where he grew up, studied and where one of his sons are.
Baucham said, “Social justice is not about the outworking of Biblical justice. … Social justice is rooted in these ideas of equity, not equality. … Equality is about equal opportunities. Equity is about equal outcomes.”
He goes on to say that “This term critical has been used in academic circles for a long time. There’s critical pedagogy, critical race theory, critical whiteness studies and so on and so forth. And it has its roots in the Frankfurt school. It has its roots in this neo-Marxist movement of the 1930s, ‘40s, ’50s and ’60s.”
By all accounts Baucham is a conservative. He’s married and the father of nine children who are homeschooled. But he’s a bit of an enigma, whose life defies the prescribed categories of what it means to an African American male.
Raised by a single mother in the gang- and drug-infested neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles, Baucham was steeped in his Black identity. He played college football and considered an NFL career. The professor studied at Houston Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and did his post-graduate work in Oxford, England.
In the 1970s, Malcolm X was his hero … until he met Jesus Christ.
Baucham talks about the “critical” challenges now facing the Christian church in its quest to be racially compassionate. He warns that Evangelicals in particular are teetering very close to denying the authority of Scripture in order to address the sin of racism. Baucham does not deny racism exists in America. He’s been called the N-word enough times to vouch for its presence. But he does deny it being a systemic problem.
Baucham knows he is in a unique position to push back on this current cultural moment of critical race theory, critical social justice, and the woke ideology. And he’s taken a lot of heat because of it. He’s been called all sorts of names that can’t be printed here. One of the purveyors of CRT, who is also Black, dismissed him by saying, ‘He may be skin folk, but he’s not kin folk,” because Baucham does not tote the CRT mantra that, “racism is engrained in the fabric and system of American society.”
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In his new book, “Fault lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe,” Baucham does more than ruffle a few feathers. He plucks the fowl of all its plumage, exposing the false narratives of the movement that is fast encroaching on the church.
For example, the oft-repeated statistic that Black men are killed by police 2.5 times more than White men is statistically unfounded, according to two studies Baucham cites: one by a Harvard professor and another by the National Institute of Sciences. But Baucham’s real point is that these false narratives conflict with the Bible, by practically supplanting the Biblical narrative of redemption with its own version of Original Sin. Instead of the Fall from Grace, putting ourselves in the place of God, critical race theory’s original sin is racism, and it says it is America’s original sin as well. But it’s an original sin without the hope of redemption or forgiveness, just constant penance for atrocities committed.
Baucham, in his book, lays out a scenario which intends to challenge everyone to check our prejudices at the door; that racial reconciliation is not just about Whites making reparations for the past crime of slavery, and Blacks being the being the eternal victim but a collective effort of all of God’s children, made in His image.
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“We do not occupy the space of the oppressors and oppressed based solely on our melanin,” he wrote. “Does this mean our ethnicity is irrelevant?”
Then he said, “I leave you with God’s answer to that,” and quoted from the book of Revelation:
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!….Amen” (Revelation 7:9-10)
Baucham said, “I wrote this book and I deal with these issues because I love the Body of Christ. I love the people of God, I love my country, and I believe that there is a real threat.”