A response to “Critical Race Theory and Christianity”
Speakers Monique Duson and Krista Bontrager
The first time I remember hearing the phrase “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) was a month ago. I’ve been hearing it constantly since then. (I thought it was just the Baader-Meinhoff phenonmenon, but apparently this is the new hot topic.)
According to Duson and Bontrager, it’s the core of the justice work I’ve been doing the last six years. That may be true- I don’t work in the vaunted halls of academia just because I hang out with college students- so if CRT is what I’ve been doing all these years, I should probably learn about it.
But that already puts me in a sticky situation for writing this blog post. I need to research before I can give a true response to this talk. I’m happy to admit that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d like to read an actual book from a CRT scholar. And that may take me awhile. So for now, consider this post more of a “huh, what?” response rather than a deep dive.
Because I do still have a response. I have concerns about the material presented here. If I’ve been unknowingly involved in CRT all these years, I see two options.
- All of the teachers, writers, and activists I’ve been learning from are dramatically changing the teachings of CRT and not staying true to its core at all.
- Duson and Bontrager are representing an untrue version of CRT.
So let’s walk through that and see if we can find some contradictions.
First, here is Duson & Bontrager’s evidence that I’m practicing CRT. I have used the following terms: white privilege, inclusive, racial reconciliation, systemic injustice, reparations, diversity, equity, and white fragility.
They keep saying CRT is complicated and confusing. But when they define it, I find the definition simplistic.
“White people are oppressors. Black people are oppressed.”
This may be generalized and unhelpful, but I wouldn’t call it complicated. If this were true, it would be easy to dump folks into categories. Of course, those categories would be nonsense, but that’s what makes a strawman. A strawman serves the purpose of making your enemies look bad, not of understanding them.
The last Maven talk left me feeling confused, but in this talk, the ladies are organized. They made it quite clear what they believe CRT is, and why they believe it’s bad:
White culture is wicked. Western European culture is wicked. Being born white is bad. If we could just get rid of whiteness, we could get rid of society’s fundamental problems. People of color can’t commit the sin of racism. Today’s generation is responsible for the sins of previous generations. You need to divest yourself from whiteness. We must retrain white people to think differently. We associate privilege purely with skin color. You’re a racist. You’re responsible for 250 years of economic disadvantage. People of color don’t need to look inward- they aren’t racist and don’t need to do any self-examination. The goal is to hand over all power structures to people of color.
I’ve never been taught these things, and I don’t believe these things. (I could re-interpret some of them: “Aspects of Western European culture are wicked.”) I understand why hearing these things makes their audience mad. I feel a bit emotional myself.
1.
Duson and Bontrager did not provide quotes from scholars or activists for these statements. (Instead, their slides are peppered with exhausting scare quotes centered on all the words they don’t like.)
It leaves me floundering to try and understand where these extreme beliefs came from. Duson hints a bit at her conversion story: she was a black Democrat, living in Africa, doing activism work, and a passionate believer in CRT. Perhaps these were once her beliefs? Yet she changed her mind when she came home to the US and moved in with the Bontragers, a family of white Republicans. It sounds like they had many interesting conversations.
Yet, I’m questioning my theory already. If Duson thought white people are evil, she wouldn’t have moved in with them or had conversations with them.
There were some good parts to this talk. Even after Civil Rights passed, things weren’t equitable. Bontrager says, “It makes sense” that the rise of Critical Legal Theory (a precursor to CRT) grew out of this. She calls out the “awkward silence” of Christians during these bad parts of history, and explains that this is what activists are talking about when they talk about complicity.
I’m grateful they recognize America’s history of racism, and how racism does still exist. I’m not sure how many churches believe and recognize this. I can only speak of my own experience. Duson and Bontrager have a description they consider to be an extreme belief:
“Racism is a thing of the past; racial incidents are rare and isolated.”
I believed that when I was a kid. And I often meet people who believe that. So, I’m genuinely glad these ladies aren’t promoting that belief. But, they set another belief at the other extremity of their scale:
“Racism permeates every system. Everything is rigged to benefit whites and marginalize People of Color.”
This is a trick to make yourself look moderate, by the way. As long as you are the one creating the scale, you can always set other’s beliefs as the extremes and place yourself in the middle.
Oddly, although the ladies don’t believe that racism permeates every system, they do believe that CRT has permeated everything. Bontrager in particular has a distrust of Christian colleges, and gave a lot of advice about making sure you aren’t sending your kids somewhere that has any version of CRT beliefs. (I admit finding a college that never uses the words “diversity” or “inclusion” might be hard.)
Read more on my blog about individual vs. systemic sin here and here.
2.
So, not having sources is my first concern. My second concern is about intersectionality (although D&B don’t use the word). They make it clear that CRT is exclusively about black vs white and reasonably observe how that leaves a lot of people out. But, they also discuss the overlapping philosophies with CRT: Critical Legal Theory, Feminism, Disability Theory, Queer Theory, and Child Studies. This, for them is a scare tactic. “If you agree with CRT, you’ll have to believe in feminism as well.” they say, knowing feminism is a scary boogie man for their audience. Most people, including me, don’t know anything about child studies, so they give us a brief description: “It means that children are oppressed by their parents.” This baffling descriptor seems untrue to me, and when she follows it up with, “What will happen to parents’ rights?” I become worried that she’s talking about anti-vaxxers.
So. Black and white are the only categories that matter. Although gender matters too. And ableism matters too. And sexuality matters, and age matters. So perhaps CRT isn’t only about being black or white? This feels like a contradiction in our speakers’ premise.
Again, I’m not qualified to talk about this, but I want to give my limited understanding on power imbalances. I think that’s what they’re actually talking about here. Regarding children: I’m a parent. I have power over my infant. It doesn’t always feel that way: if he’s crying and screaming, it feels like he’s the one in charge. Or if he falls asleep in my lap, I am “trapped” for an hour, unable to do my own thing. But, I’ve made a choice to be attached to my child 24/7. I have the power to do things quite differently. I could leave him in the crib all day (he lacks the power to get out) and barely care for his basic needs if I wanted to. Yes, he could yell, but I could leave the room and turn up the music. I can overpower him in absolutely every way.
When you talk to a friend who lived through an abusive childhood, you don’t (I hope) ask them, “Why didn’t you do something?” We intuitively know children lack power. They may be too small to fight back, too scared to speak up, or too isolated to ask for help. Even as adults, abusive relationships can follow similar patterns (coercion, intimidation, emotional abuse- see Power and Control wheel.) Gender often plays a role in this because men have historically had more power than women.
Please notice though, that I’m not saying “Men are evil. Parents are evil. Babies should be in charge.” We can understand power imbalances with room for nuance. There are situations where a basic binary isn’t true. White people usually have more power than black people. But not in every situation. (A badge or a gun can change a power imbalance immediately.)
But we do know situations where people use their privilege and power for bad. Think about the viral video from 2020 between a black bird-watcher and a white dog walker. The white woman was the one breaking the rules (dog off leash.) But she was confident that if she called the police and lied that the man was threatening her (he wasn’t), he’d be the one arrested.
I have power over a person in a wheelchair when I’m climbing stairs and there’s no ramp. I have access (to school, city hall, the library, whatever it is) that they don’t have. My family member who works in disability services is the one who taught me the word “equity.” (I thought it was only about mortgages.) A staircase is already equality: we both have the same challenge. But only a ramp creates equity. She told me that certain professors at her university have disputes with disability services. Her department will say, “Student X is allowed an extra half hour on her tests.” The professor says, “No, that isn’t fair. Everyone gets an equal time on tests.” But fortunately, we have laws that empower the disability services department to get the student the help they need.
In a different circumstance, maybe the person in a wheelchair has power over me because he’s my boss. I had a long conversation with a friend a few years ago about the power of being a boss and sexual assault. My friend had empathy for a pastor accused of sexually assault. He imagined all the attractive young women in the office throwing themselves at him for years. “If that’s true, why not fire them? Or move them to a different office?” I wondered. The boss has the power. (An employee can also choose to quit, but there’s an economic punishment for that. And in this situation, there was enormous pressure from family and community to do whatever the pastor wanted, since he was considered to be God’s Anointed.)
In the New Testament, tax collectors were empowered by the Roman government to collect money and enrich themselves. But, also all their Jewish families and neighbors hated them and thought they were traitors. They got excluded from the community. Power is complicated.
3.
My third frustration is the way Duson and Bontrager believe they are the only ones interpreting scripture correctly. I know everyone does this a bit. I have as well. But I’d like them to reconsider saying things like, “We have a solely Biblical perspective.” Two people can read the Bible and come out with quite different perspectives. (In fact, I could argue that any time two different people read the Bible, they’ll read it differently.) I especially felt concern about this when they said things about historical Christianity like, “scripture is clear: it’s about your own personal righteousness.” Ancient Christianity and Judaism were communal, not individualistic.
I understand that having a Biblical perspective is their goal. That’s a fair thing for a Christian to want to do. But when one claims to have achieved it, I find it prideful. It feels like dubbing yourself the arbiters of Christianity when you say, “CRT is antithetical to the gospel.” “The goal of CRT is to undermine and demolish Christian worldview and culture.”
Additionally, this turns into a purity contest. I felt there was a heavy implication that the Bible is all you need. I don’t understand the disdain for having secular sources of knowledge. Does the Bible tell us everything we need to know about medicine? About science? (I’m almost afraid to ask these questions because, again, anti-vaxxers may answer in the affirmative.)
Bontrager even goes so far to say that everyone is reading too many books about the Bible- they need to just read the Bible. There’s an element of truth to that, BUT— if you fully believe that, why are you standing in front of a room giving an interpretive speech? You should just be reading the Bible to us.
Let’s zip through what they think the Bible says about racism. First, “There’s only one race.” I think what they mean is that everyone is related. Yes, secular folk and religious folk agree on that. But I don’t find it that helpful for most racism related issues. Yes, race is a construct (it exists in our minds more than our biology) - but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. It deeply impacts people’s lives. We don’t solve problems about race by pretending race doesn’t exist.
Next, Duson and Bontrager say that we Christians need to see each other FIRST as brothers and sisters, not as any other identity. That’s fine too- and I like the emphases on first. It leaves room for the fact that we do have other identities that matter to us as well. I’m not sure if our speakers think they matter- Duson made comments like, “I’m a women who happens to be black,” or “I live in brown skin” - which implies that being black is not important to her. That’s her choice- I’m not judging. But I hope she would allow other folks to believe their racial or ethnic group is important to them. I never thought about being white growing up. Whiteness was invisible, “normal.” I think it’s good to take some time to think about it.
They also taught that the Bible has different standards for marginalized and oppressed than our world does: only the poor, widows, orphans, and foreigners count. However, Bontrager wanted to add disabled to the list. I’m not sure why she gets to add to the Bible if no one else does. Just looking at the Bible, I’d add biracial Samaritans, tax collectors, sex workers, eunuchs, lepers, second wives, hand maidens, infertile wives… (Maybe not everything in the Bible is easy to apply to contemporary society.)
They call racism “the sin of partiality.” This feels weak to me. I’m partial to green tea over black. I’m partial to brownies over cake. Partiality doesn’t explain why America is separating immigrant families at the border and locking them up in detention centers with unlivable conditions. Partiality doesn’t describe dehumanization or genocide. Some aspects of racism could be partiality, but it does not describe all.
Lastly, Duson and Bontrager stated that Jesus has already accomplished all that’s needed. They scorned CRT activists who want us to lament and repent, to perform acts of contrition, or who want to bring the kingdom of Heaven to earth. They said that trying to do racial reconciliation doesn’t work because it’s never enough. Activists always want more from you, they say.
I find this version of Christianity off-putting. Yes, Jesus has accomplished the great task they we never could - sacrificing himself, defeating death, forgiving sins. But I feel like they are saying that next time I’m a jerk to my husband, I don’t have to apologize. That is not good relationship advice.
At this point, I feel like I’ve answered my question. Why build such an elaborate strawman of CRT? Yes, building a strawman lets a one “win” an argument, but if you are being honest with yourself, you know you aren’t being truthful. And I do think that our speakers want to be honest people. So I suspect (I can’t know for sure) that this core belief about the Bible is the problem. If the Bible is the only source of truth and understanding, CRT must be bad. So starting with the belief that CRT is bad, they may slowly distort and misinterpret each principal until it becomes unrecognizable, yet suitable for their purposes.
We can toss Bible verses at each other all day, but I can’t change another's heart. I’ll pray for the Spirit to work. I’ll try to teach a clear understanding about what different beliefs are, and to be critical when they don’t line up with God’s heart. I’m sure CRT has flaws, and I know the social justice movement has flaws. That is something we can have a conversation about. But making up these distortions about the other side only sows confusion and disunity. Let’s be humble and see what we can learn from each other when we’re being honest. We can also learn from people who are different than both of us. God spoke to Gentiles, Magi, and Roman Centurions. I want to hear what God has to say.
God has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” -Micah 6:8
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| text: a twitter quote from Phil Vischer @philvischer If only we had fought racism with the same passion we are now bringing to the fight against anti-racism. Would there have been a need for an anti-racist movement? The church allowed racism to flourish. Now we're mad about secular solutions to a problem we wouldn't solve. |
Jeff Liou on Justice and Critical Race Theory from The Reclaim Podcast
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