Woke in the WELS: A pastoral brief on Critical Theory misses the mark.

(Dropping this at 4PM on a Friday is rather ominous)

The Conference of Presidents (COP) has finished their work on a pastoral brief addressing Critical Theory and justice. (Note: the link is to my Google drive. The WELS distributed this initially to Pastors, and it will be published online next month.) The CoP is comprised by the Presidents of the twelve WELS districts and this document was authored by them and any consultants they chose to bring on. The impetus for this document was a memorial for the 2023 Synod Convention. Here is the original memorial as published in the BORAM:

During the convention there was a fair bit of conversation on the memorial and it's wording. Much of the conversation belied a poor understanding of critical theory and social justice (although a few Pastors were very on point in their comments) and how it is affecting the laity. Ultimately the memorial was revised and accepted. The revised language follows:

Comparing the two, you can see the 'mistake' made by the original author - not couching it in a sufficient number of Scripture passages and not spending a large part of it equivocating. You can also see specific references to touchpoints the laity encounter in their everyday life and the assertion that there is a theological underpinning were unfortunately lost in translation. However, the end result still demanded a response from the CoP, which is a good thing. Until this point everyone has done what is right in their own eyes. This document, whether good or ill, will form a basis for future discussion and will allow for correction, since the WELS now has an 'official' stance.

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Given the short timeline this blog post will not be a full assessment of the document. Expect some targeted discussions to follow. And I need to thank several good friends who also read the document and shared their thoughts and reactions, which helped to inform mine. 

Right off the bat we are hit with the phrase "historic Judeo-Christian religion." The phrase Judeo-Christian is repeated three times in the document. We discussed this some in Berg's presentation Signals Not to Send. The astute reader might also notice feminine pronouns in the first paragraph, also ominous.

The introduction to the full-length brief suggests we are past 'peak woke': colorblindness is returning, and postmodernity is faltering. This has a certain 'Midwestern Nice' naïveté to it: that because a particular element or certain statistical measures are in decline, that therefore it couldn't possibly be that the strategy is pivoting or that there aren't some motte-and-bailey style tactics in play, particularly in an election year.

The COP then throws politically engaged evangelical churches under the bus:

"This brief does not intend to join in such political, ideological, or philosophical debates ... After more than 40 years of engaging the world politically, evangelical churches in America have but little to show for the countless dollars, hours, and lives invested. If any change has been affected by becoming an actor in the culture wars, it is the church’s credibility that has suffered, not least among young people."

In my experience this is backwards. The most disaffected young men I am aware of, are such because their churches are afraid to make the practical connections to how the Christian lives his life that our theology should be making. They hear a narrow Gospel preached on Sunday and rarely if ever how the full counsel of God should impact their lives in a meaningful way. 

And their foreshadowing is correct - there is no practical advice offered in this document.

Critical Race Theory is loosely defined and its historical roots in legal analysis is identified. A major failing here is to mention the jump it made to education, especially in light of several self-adulatory expressions like "We have always been strong at the formation of a Lutheran Christian identity, through Lutheran elementary schools, preparatory schools, area Lutheran high schools, a college of ministry, a seminary, Sunday schools, confirmation classes, Lutheran Pioneers, youth retreats, public worship participation, and the like" and "The education of children and the formation of their identity as sinners forgiven in Christ is one of our synod’s most cherished—and effective—commitments."

The argument can be made that our educational institutions are already occupied by the critically conscious. At MLC we have Prof Ting-Ting Schwartz's BLM/Antiracism presentation, multiple appeals to Social and Emotional Learning, a willingness to 'play along' with Minnesota's PELSB standards [1],[2], (not to mention I'm working on some future articles on trauma-informed learning and restorative justice which are being taught at MLC). At WLHS we have a presentation by a social media influencer who curates books on gay sex and race activism and sermons telling us we must be antiracist. At the WELS Lutheran Leadership conference, we had Berg's flawed presentation on critical theory, a prayer of the church that invokes allyship, unconscious bias and antiracism, and encouraging the use of Courageous Conversations which encourages us to question the role of whiteness in any given discussion. And it turns out we have our own WELS Connection to CRT in education - Gloria Ladson-Billings is (in)famous for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and her highly cited Towards a Critical Race Theory of Education. 

Anything beyond a casual connection to education would have been an implicit attack on our own beloved institutions, and so they safely tiptoe around the elephant in the room. But while we can't take a careful look at a heavyweight like Ladson-Billings, we can spend a fair bit of time with "pop culture" thinkers like Kimberle Crenshaw and Ibram X. Kendi, who are quoted for the most part positively. First on page 11 is a discussion of Crenshaw's view on intersectionality and power dynamics:

"In short, Crenshaw doesn’t want to replicate existing power dynamics and cultural structures simply to give people of color power over white people, for example. She wants to get rid of those existing power dynamics altogether—changing the very structures that undergird our politics, law, and culture in order to level the playing field.

Nonetheless, when academic terms enter the political arena as they did in the 2016 election, for example, there can be little hope of preserving nuance and original intent." 

The idea of changing the underlying structures of western society is something left as an open question, and Crenshaw's ideas are suggested to be neutral at worst and "misinterpreted" in the political arena.

"Antiracism Scholar" Ibram X Kendi gets similar positive treatment on footnote 36:

"Note that prominent antiracism scholar and advocate Ibram X. Kendi acknowledges that “St. Paul equalized the souls of the enslaved and enslaver” and that “this powerful combination gave the colonial founders a justification for ideas that would come to define America”: Stamped from the Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas in America, First graphic edition (Emeryville: Ten Speed Press, 2023), 20."

That is an antiracist take on Philemon, but is it a Lutheran one?

On pages 22-23:

"If racial discrimination is defined as treating, considering, or making a distinction in favor of or against an individual based on that person’s race, then racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. Another term for antiracist discrimination that leads to equity is “positive discrimination.” Another term for racist discrimination that maintains inequity is “negative discrimination.”

While this is knocked for being "an eye for an eye" they miss a golden opportunity to explain Kendi's dialectic of racist/antiracist leaves no room for anyone to be anything but an antiracist. This is a key part of Kendi's thinking and provides justification for his rejection of savior theology. The avoidance of this topic by the COP is concerning.

And in footnote 80:

"Defining the human and what it means to be “fully human” is a central concern of CRT, as demonstrated early in a text by Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist, that helped to popularize CRT, as we have mentioned. Kendi writes, “To be fully human, socially, is to recognize a fundamental connection between ourself and every human being on earth. Which is to say every human being is a member of our extended family; we value the lives of all human groups equally, no matter their skin color. To be fully human, politically, is to think about human rights, about what all humans need to live fulfilling lives, and what powerful forces constrain humans–in this case the force of racism. To be fully human is to use our power to join with other humans to challenge the forces that prevent the full flowering of humanity,” 12."

The Lutheran understanding of 'fully human' is not borne out in interpersonal human association where we use our power to 'challenge the forces that prevent the full flowering of humanity' - one of those forces being, in Kendi's mind, savior theology. Rewatch this clip - Kendi explicitly says that savior theology is an oppressive structure! 

There is brief lip service paid to the theology of the cross (which we've discussed previously) without a concrete application - this is work left for a future contributor. 

As we get close to wrapping up the document, we get some interesting "ultimate and penultimate" discussion adjacent to some two kingdoms talk. It is apparent Berg had some hand in writing this statement, which as I prognosticated almost a year ago is unfortunate:

"Finally, the WELS Conference of Presidents is working on a pastoral brief on the topic of Critical Theory. The utility of that pastoral brief will depend on who the CoP leans on for counsel. I am concerned that, if this kind of presentation is representative of what the CoP is considering, we will wind up with a winsome statement of little utility for addressing Critical Theory as it already exists in the synod."

[Update: Berg was indeed one of three writers of the COP brief. The others being DP Sims, and a layman whose name I will not disclose.] 

And we close on a winsome note...

"For all the confusion of our contemporary world, it is an open marketplace of ideas and this is to our advantage. This is our home turf. This calls for a winsome, truthful, thoughtful, and gracious response from the church and not polemical discourse or defeatist rhetoric."

The world is not an open marketplace of ideas. The COP has completely missed the point that (not Judeo-Christianity, but) Christianity is the hegemonic discourse that all of these disparate groups mentioned in footnote 5 have their barbs aimed at. 

This is basic Psalm 2 stuff. 

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Overall, as noted by a dear personal friend of mine, this document wants to attack the very last link on a long, factually flawed chain of assumptions. It assumes a postwar consensus worldview. It fails to recognize Critical Theory as a second-rate theology.

Returning to the original memorial, it is unfortunate that the theology of Critical Theory and the practical applications were lost in translation, and therefore never made it to this document. The CoP got lost in the weeds and showed their ignorance. There are parallels to the old saw of 'being too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good'. This is truly unfortunate.