What the "CRT" Debate Obscures: The Church's Calling
When we talk about race in America, we must avoid 7 major errors:
- America has not made significant racial progress
- further racial progress is not necessary
- further racial progress is impossible
- racial injustice can be addressed separately from other issues, such as economic injustice, which affect white people also
- there is only one right way to oppose racism
- people who are racist are irredeemable
- listening and empathy go only one way: from oppressor to oppressed
Only if we can avoid these, can we discuss what racial progress looks like, and how we might make it.
Fundamentally, for Christians, we cannot simply react to the politics of our country. We are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, and we need to start acting like it. This means that neither the collective blame model of the secular left or the denialism or the secular right can be a sufficient ground for true racial justice.
When I was first introduced to racial issues through the New City Fellowship and CCDA in the 2000s, the dominant model among Christians was racial reconciliation. But this has been rejected now by some Christians as denying the real differences in starting point between whites and other races in America, as denying the history of racial advantage that whites have had which perpetuates itself in social structures to this day. And some people may have used reconciliation in this way, but John Perkins, the founder of CCDA, had a more realistic view.
For him, racial reconciliation was not just about talk, it was about action. And the actions required for white people were not the same as those required of others. "To whom much is given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48). White people in this country, on the whole, still have advantages that other races do not have, and so they are called to use these advantages for the benefit of those who do not have them.
Perkins used the analogy of a baseball game to talk about racial reconciliation in the US. If one team had been cheating up to the seventh inning and then said "sorry we cheated all this time; we won't do it anymore," that would not be a reconciliation that restored justice. That would be "saying peace when there is no peace" (Jer. 6:14), because the situation would not have been made whole.
Similarly, we can't look at the history of America and think the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was an apology in the seventh inning, and now the effects of institutionalized racism are past. In many ways, the reforms of that era were incomplete, and they also sparked a backlash - Nixon's "War on Drugs," Reagan's "welfare mom" trope, the '90s Crime Bill of Clinton, Biden, Gingrich, et al.
Racial reconciliation is possible, but only when white people come with humility, honesty and a commitment to action, and those who are not white come with a willingness to see those who have hurt them as individuals capable of change, not as part of a group that only pursues racial justice out of self-interest.
And that is where CRT fails: it claims that whites' desire for racial reconciliation is just a smokescreen, a product of "interest convergence" that will go away when other interests take precedence. In actuality, this is false even on a secular level because, as authors like W.E.B DuBois write, working-class whites and blacks have common interests if they are not pitted against each other by the economic elites. And it is even more false for Christians because we have the Holy Spirit at work within us to reconcile us to others even as we have been reconciled to God (cf. 2 Cor. 5:16-21).
"Christ is our peace" because He is the true Scapegoat who takes the blame for our sin. We see in Him the innocence of the people we victimize and oppress; we see in Him our own guilt as oppressors; we receive from Him unearned forgiveness; we are restored into the image of true humanity. In our diversity, we are united into one Church: the "dividing wall of separation" is torn down (Eph. 2:14-16).
Racial reconciliation within the Church is the most essential form of racial reconciliation: because the Church has the truth and the power actually to do it, and yet has often been one of the most racially divided institutions. Heretical theology has often been used to legitimate racial division for economic gain, instead of true theology being used to bring about racial unity. "God made from one blood all the peoples of the world," as Paul said (Acts 17:26). It is true that he went on to say God determined the places in which they would live, but this was not a justification for racial segregation - rather Paul was saying that now, in Christ that separation was being broken down, so that people would find God and come together as one Body. Then, "His house would be a prayer for all people" (Is. 56:7), that Jew and Samaritan, black and white could worship together in Spirit and truth (John 4:19-24).
Christians are called to begin living now as people who will one day worship with those of every tribe, tongue and nation (Rev. 7:9). This means that we must acknowledge we are "strangers and exiles on this earth" (1 Peter 1:1-2); we seek a heavenly country and so cannot idealize the one in which we currently live (Heb. 11:16). At the same time, we cannot simply ignore its needs. We are called to seek its peace and welfare (Jer. 29:7). Only with this kind of balanced perspective can we begin to consider racial justice, or any other form of justice to which God calls us.