Recognizing Critical Theory in the Church
It's four years old, but I would endorse reading the whole thing. Recognizing Critical Theory | Stand Firm (standfirminfaith.com). I'll focus on two pieces. The first is the narrative:
"In broad terms, the narrative tends to work along the following lines. The Gospel is less about God saving sinners from eternal condemnation through the righteous life, substitutionary death, and glorious resurrection of his Son than it is about God’s solidarity with the oppressed and his demand for justice. God identifies with the poor, the victim, the minority, the immigrant. God picked a particular group, the Jews, liberating them from slavery. He sent his prophets to speak truth to power, offending exploiters and giving hope to the exploited. He came in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, as an impoverished peasant, a refugee threatened by a murderous king, an immigrant born to an unwed mother. He sought social justice. He refused to submit to the privileged of his day and called them to let loose the chains of greed and power. So they killed him. They hung him on a tree. He was lynched because he refused to conform. But by his life and death, God himself says to the world that he is One with the victim, the stranger, the outcast, the refugee, the woman, the person of color. Wherever there is inequity, Christ is the victim. He calls all those occupying privileged social places to repent of their racism, sexism, and exploitation. "
... So the author posits the root of CRT in the church is the shift from justification of sinners to "your best life now." That's definitely true in many circles but I don't think it's necessarily true in our confessional Lutheran circles. CRT can be more subtle than a wholesale shift of how sinners find justification. And given our Lutheran priors of justification being the article on which the Church stands or falls - I'm not sure Satan is quite that brazen (with us, anyways).
Within a Lutheran context I'd argue it is less about attacking the atonement, and more about attacking the Doctrine of Election. Many churches will look to the Revelation of Jesus Christ and see "All nations, tribes and languages" in the heavenly throne room and impute a certain egalitarianism on our individual parishes. I've heard pastors lament that "we don't look like our communities" and are heavily German/Norwegian, depending on where we are in the United States. We know the WELS statistical report laments that our diversity is concentrated. This is a shift from the Lutheran view of election (which can only be used to comfort consciences) that our names are written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, that Jesus Christ is the Good Shepard, and that none of His sheep will be lost. We as Christians are responsible for scattering the seed indiscriminately but the fruitfulness of our endeavors is entirely up to God. In many cases the fruitfulness is in spite of our efforts. We can take comfort that even when our churches and synods are distracted by demographics, God is still working through our meager and ill-focused efforts. Even when our schools - which are particularly vulnerable as they try to make themselves more attractive to an influx of students from school choice programs, or susceptible to modern educational theory and adopting Marxist educational techniques like Social-Emotional Learning or Racial/Cultural Identity or ...
The second addresses the soteriological ramifications of critical theory.
Baptized Critical Theory is a complete soteriological system with its own law and gospel. The white person must not ask: am I a racist? He must ask: in what ways am I racist?
Like Mike Novotny tells us in Taboo, "racism is a spectrum", "The question, therefore, isn't 'Am I racist like Hitler?' Instead, it's 'How racist am I these days?'"
He must repent of his whiteness. Should he object, his objection will be dismissed as fragility.
Like we were told at the Lutheran Leadership Conference, we should examine the presence and role of whiteness.
The classic doctrines of the church, because they reflect values and voices of the victors, must be challenged and give way to theologies of the oppressed. The male must renounce any notion of patriarchal headship and give way to egalitarian relationships.
Like we have seen in the consensus governance model, the implementation of female board members at WLHS, the overly winsome and egalitarian men and women roles document and female principals exercising headship in the synod.
To refuse these renunciations is to deny the Gospel and continue in sin and unbelief. This “Gospel” is exclusively for those who are deemed powerless. They have little of which to repent. They rest in the assurance that Christ is embodied in their struggle.
In extreme forms this manifests as Kendi's liberation theology. In less extreme forms, though, it might be invoking MLK's statement "the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice" in the liturgy. We co-opt the world's liturgy without recognizing the syncretism and the baggage it carries. For instance, the use of the language "anti-racist." This is not simply an opposition to racism but a dialectic with racism. You are either racist, or you are actively anti-racist. It's not enough to be colorblind. Our own Conference of Presidents couldn't get this right.
Some labor under condemnation for sins that are no sins at all and/or from which there is no redemption. Others, encouraged to focus on injustices done to them, are blinded to their own need for forgiveness and mercy.
God forgive us for unnecessarily burdening consciences!
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