Growing up in my family, I saw that there was a partial equivalence made between the Republican Party and our conservative Christian faith. Thus when I developed Marxist political and economic leanings, one of my parents started to question my faith. That was because that parent saw an attack on the Republican Party as an attack on their faith. Sad to say that what I experienced was not unique to my family.
For others, the partial equating of certain American subcultures with Christianity caused a similar reaction to those believers who didn't buy into any significant level of American patriotism. For such people, any accusation against America, especially against its glorified past, is an attack against Christianity.
Both partial equations are often seen in conservative common folks and certain conservative ministers whose theological education is limited. However, there are groups of more highfalutin conservative Christian theologians, educators, and even ministers whose partner in crime with Christianity is neither a given political party or a nation, but a civilization, in particular the one they grew up in. For they partially equate certain parts of Western Civilization with Christianity to the extent that criticisms of those parts of Western Civilization are seen as attacks on Christianity. And it is with that that we should begin to discuss Carl Trueman's (click here for a short description) article in the First Things website about Christianity and Critical Race Theory (click here for the article and click there for a list of definitions and terms used in Critical Race Theory).
As with Critical Theory, Intersectionality, Postmodernism, and Marxism, Trueman doesn't like Critical Race Theory(CRT) though he is more friendly with it than he is with the other approaches listed
Trueman is writing about CRT because it is making significant inroads into the Conservative Christian Church such as in the Southern Baptist Convention. In fact, he believes that some religiously conservative Christians are presented with CRT in all-or-nothing terms and thus are pressured into accepting the CRT perspective lest they be seen as supporting racism. Also, he believes that CRT provides a false perception of reality.
Why the latter? It is because of one of Trueman's 2 main objections to CRT: it has its roots in criticisms of Western Civilization such as is found in Marxism. Where Trueman disagrees with such criticisms is that it revolves around its focus on oppression with oppressors on one hand and the oppressed on the other and what follows that thinking.
Trueman attempts to discredit CRT out of existence by associating it with Marxism. He does that by citing Mao and then he asks the reader to substitute the word 'race' for 'class' and 'white' for 'bourgoisie.' Trueman's basic description is that oppressors have rigged the system so that they benefit from the status quo. And part of that status quo is the oppression of certain groups of people. But he seems, and hopefully I am wrong in saying this, to say that in a tone that casts disbelief on the possibility of that happening for he goes on to say that this approach is provides the pressure on people to either accept it all of CRT by 'deligitimizing' any challenges.
He then associates CRT with what he sees as the modern therapeutic approach of the age which says that all one needs to solve a problem like racism is for the right people to reallocate enough resources into solving the problem.
Trueman tries to cast more doubt onto CRT by claiming that CRT portrays life as a 'zero-sum' gain where one person's gain in power is another person's loss. Thus, you not only have the 'haves' and 'have nots,' you have a comprehensive way of describing the ills that so permeate our world. That our problems are due to those who have seized power so that there is always someone else to blame for the evils we see. All of that goes into the reasons why we must stand with the oppressed and against the oppressors.
Trueman's second objection to CRT is in how it is presented to people, and this has already been touched on. It is presented in such an all-or-nothing manner that it rules out any dialogue or discussion. Again, any disagreement is equated with standing with the oppressors, and in this case that is standing with the racists.
Trueman uses the writings of Jemar Tisby and Edward Copeland to help make his case. Trueman cites from Tisby's book, The Color Of Compromise, as well as his NY Times review of the book, White Too Long: The Legacy Of White Supremacy In American Christianity by Robert P. Jones. The short of it is that Trueman believes that they are saying that racism has so invaded Western Christianity that it cannot properly called Christianity. Thus, Tisby, Copeland and others have overstated their case so as to say that White's cannot be real Christians.
Trueman then, again, uses deduction to argue against the idea that racism is systemic. According to Trueman, such a claim 'flatten's evil and allows us to blame the system for racism's existence. By flattening evil, Trueman seems to be saying that there is no gradation of evil, and that includes racism in terms of what CRT is battling. Thus, even words can be described as violence. None of the above implies that Trueman believes that there are no problems with what CRT describes as racial prejudice, he believes that there are significant problems there.
Trueman goes on to say that some attempted discussions on the subject devolve into the pejorative use of labels such as 'cultural Marxism' as a way of arguing against CRT and 'white privilege' as a way of countering objections to CRT. And such is a good observation by Trueman.
Trueman sees a ray of hope in a new collection of essays by the Acton Institute.. But the Acton Institute doesn't have the influence that the NY Times has. The above is an attempt to summarize what Trueman is trying to say.
How can one respond to Trueman? We first should note that there are two main problems with Trueman's approach. The first problem is that of logic. Trueman sees problems that really don't exist whether they be the flattening of evil or he attempts to define things out of existence including when his descriptions are not precise enough.
There is no reason to believe that recognizing systemic evil must mean that there is a flattening of evil. Tim Keller, former pastor of Redeemer Church, shows why the Trueman's implication that systemic evil flattens the curve is false when discussing the corporate evil that existed in the Nazi era in Germany (click here for the video). Keller describes the different levels of responsibility Germans had during that time period. Those with the most responsibility for the Nazi atrocities were those who gave the orders. After them comes those who carried out the orders. Then comes those who knew about what was going on but did nothing. And finally those who didn't really know about the atrocities and chose to remain ignorant.
There is another problem with the implications Trueman associates with believing that CRT calls racism systemic. That problem is that CRT calling racism system does not imply that only the system is responsible for racism. Please note the CRT definition of racism below (click here for the source):
Racism = race prejudice + social and institutional power
and the definition of prejudice:
An attitude based on limited information, often on stereotypes. Prejudice is usually, but not always, negative. Positive and negative prejudices alike, especially when directed toward oppressed people, are damaging because they deny the individuality of the person. In some cases, the prejudices of oppressed people (“you can’t trust the police”) are necessary for survival. No one is free of prejudice.
In the first cited definition, racism just doesn't consist of what the system does, it includes with how the system is set up the individual's attitudes toward a given race. So the system is not responsible for all of racism. The second definition defines prejudice and asserts that everybody has prejudices--that is each individual has prejudices.
Then again, there is another approach to examining whether racism can be systemic. That approach is an inductive approach where we look to see if a given racial group is suffering from systemic racism. Now while Trueman looks at the possible existence of systemic racism from focusing on the oppressor, perhaps we should use the perspective of the alleged oppressed to see if there is systemic racism.
So we might ask Trueman whether there was systemic racism here during America's early days, even those days after the Civil War and up until the end of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Such as when Native Americans could be ethnically cleansed from the land they lived on, was there systemic racism? Such as when Blacks could be regarded as property and have their families divided so that they could be sold as slaves, was there systemic racism? Such as when The Constitution explicitly stated that each white person counted as 3/5ths of a Black person, was there systemic racism? Such as when after slavery ended and Reconstruction ended, was there systemic racism during the Jim Crow era? And such as after Jim Crow, when there is disparity in how law enforcement and the judicial system in the races are treated, when there are renewed attempts to reduce the ability to vote based on race, when employers show preferential treatment to perspective employees based on whether an applicant's name sounded more White than Black, is it possible that we have systemic racism today?
And if there has been and/or is systemic racism, does it matter how much that concept borrows from Marx's model that divides the world into oppressors and the oppressed?
To be clear, Trueman does not deny the existence of racial prejudice and its horrible effects. Nor does he deny a lot of the Church's ugly past involvement with racism. But he seems to balk at whether there is systemic racism. But doesn't an inductive study tell us it exists?
Trueman does make an important point: one must not approach what CRT teaches using all-or-nothing thinking so that we are compelled to either accept or reject all of it. Trueman is right in saying that such thinking blocks legitimate discussions and prevents meaningful dialogues between people with varying viewpoints. But doesn't Trueman use that same all-or-nothing viewpoint when he warns us about CRT's reliance on Marxism and other critiques of Western Civilization? For he seems to view Marxism in all-or-nothing terms. And though all of life cannot be reduced to the battle between oppressors and the oppressed, isn't that conflict descriptive of a significant part of our lives?
And finally, given Western Civilization's own history of internal wars, external imperialism and imperial wars, colonialism, slave trade, anti-Semitism, and alike, shouldn't we be more open to substantial criticisms of Western Civilization than what Trueman and others are open to?
For resistance to broad and substantial criticisms to Western Civilization by older and more traditional theologians, like Trueman, is a serious problem. And perhaps it is the combination of age and traditionalism that prevents some from accepting necessary changes to Western Civilization that the tenets of theories like CRT call for. The combination of age and traditionalism along with a long personal history of living in Western Civilization that give many such theologians a very strong conflict of interest in doing so in evaluating Western Civilization.
Quite often, what the combination of age with traditionalism does is that it puts its people in box of rely too heavily on the past to both understand the present as well as try to solve some of its problems. Note that not relying too much on the past should not be confused with totally disregarding the past.
Trueman's overall evaluation of CRT is a mixed bag that has more drawbacks than contributions to make. But that does not imply that his contributions should be ignored. We can't afford to react to CRT in all-or-nothing terms. But many of Trueman's negative responses CRT must be challenged. For they are due more to tribalism and the call for change both in how we see our current reality and how we respond to it.
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