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Friday, March 29, 2024 - 06:17 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

The Poisoned Chalice of Critical Race Theory

Fault Lines (cover of Voddie Baucham new book)
Fault Lines (cover of Voddie Baucham new book)

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a Neo-Marxist ideological framework and sociological and psychological toolset for undermining the cultural, social, moral, economic, legal, and political foundations of a people, nation, or government.  

CRT’s primary tool is to exploit or even to fabricate racial grievances, which are built into social injustice narratives supporting Marxist cultural and political objectives. These narratives may have some truth to them, but they are most often built primarily upon subjective “lived experience” and blatant falsehoods that contradict objective facts and reason. Marxists believe that power is the only truth, so subjective “lived experience” and its supporting ideology and train of lies always trump objective truth or moral protest.  This borders on post-modernist philosophies denying objective truth. The Marxist perpetrators of these false narratives often claim that the narratives are a “higher truth” that cannot be seen or understood by white people or their allies, because they don’t have the “lived experience.”

CRT is primarily and blatantly anti-white, yet they have made “antiracism” into an almost-religion with high priest celebrities who alone can see and understand truth. There is no forgiveness for whites is this antiracist religious fervor.  Whites can only partially and temporarily atone for the “systemic racism” that is the white-centered evil of European and American history.  Secondarily, however, it is obvious from CRT related agitation groups that CRT is also anti-Asian, and whoever else gets in their way.

The modern CRT movement started at a 1989 Wisconsin conference meeting hosted by Harvard professor Derek Bell. Early 19th Century Marxism had its original basis in the Conflict Theory of Karl Marx (1818-1883), which envisioned a worldwide revolutionary political struggle between capital-based government and proletarian labor. Following the Leninist Marxist  Russian Revolution in 1917, a new generation of Communists believed that for Communism to spread in Europe, Christianity must be destroyed or discredited and social issues should be given more priority as a tool to overthrow Western governments. Italian Communist leader and philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) devised a theory of social dominance that gained power by advancing social Marxism in every facet of culture with the final objective of total power. The Frankfurt School in Germany continued to advance Critical Theory to advance social Marxism as a dominant philosophy opposed to Judeo-Christian and other Western philosophies.  Following World War II many Frankfurt School Marxists came to Columbia University and spread across the U.S. primarily as university professors and writers. Two of the most influential in the United States were Herbert Marcuse and Eric Fromm.       

Black Lives Matter (BLM) was founded on CRT and antiracism ideology in 2013 by three members of the Neo-Marxist Black Liberation Movement. Both their published worldview and public actions reveal that the breadth of their ideology encompasses far more than being  pro-black or anti-white.

CRT and BLM are both blatantly anti-white and anti-Christian. Their views of social justice also completely contradict the principles of justice taught in Judeo-Christian Scripture. CRT social justice is not Biblical justice. What the media and educational establishments have today accepted as social justice is strongly influenced by CRT and contrary to Biblical justice and often common sense.  They are against traditional families and family values. They are also anti-male in the most vicious forms of radical feminism. They are rabid advocates for LGBTQIA+ issues and encourage various forms of gender confusion.  They are anti-merit and “anti-ableism.” Like their Marxist-Leninist founders they are strongly anti-capitalist. They try to intimidate, bully, and slander anyone who opposes them. As in Leninist-Stalinist Marxism, violence is right, if it advances their cause, and power makes the party line truth and right. Paganism is encouraged, and at least one of the BLM founders practices divination by witchcraft.

CRT divides people into privileged oppressors protected by “systemic” long-term racism versus the down-trodden and disadvantaged oppressed for whom significant upward mobility is blocked by long-term “systemic racism.” The oppressor class is almost always white and unaware and not easily teachable of their “original sin,” for which they can never be completely forgiven. Only revolution can rescue the downtrodden and demand reparations for white racist sin.  CRT and its cancel culture and attacks on free speech manifest an unforgiveness culture. This unforgiveness culture yields its deadly fruits of hatred, distorted reason, and moral and intellectual blindness.

Intersectionality is an important concept in CRT, but it is really very simple. According to CRT thinking, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has suffered systemic discrimination on at least three counts—she is black, female, and lesbian. So, she is more worthy of social or economic privileges and reparations than a straight black male. More importantly, intersectional categories or classes expand the applicable principles of CRT to a broader base seeking social justice reparations. 

Social Marxism, including its manifestations in CRT and Neo-Marxist social justice, makes much deceptive use of redefined vocabulary. An important word in CRT vocabulary is “equity.”  Equity in Biblical and Western legal justice has always meant impartial or fair justice. But there is an Orwellian distortion of “equity” in CRT.  Equity in CRT justice means divided proportionately by racial or intersectional representation. Thus 13 percent of all pilots must be black, and 50 percent must be female. This is not equal opportunity based on merit, aptitude, and hard study and work. CRT “equity” is a formula for widespread injustice and economic collapse.

CRT has so broadened and abused the terms “racism” and “social justice” that responsible  writers and speakers need to define them more thoughtfully and precisely.  

CRT may remind those of common sense, thoughtful moral compass, and a belief in objective reality of the Greek saying: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad,”  CRT screams against God, reason, and even national self-preservation. Yet it has widespread strong support in the “mockingbird media,” educational establishment, and corporate world. The Biden Administration and almost the whole Democrat Party seem impassioned to impose it on every facet of American society.

Our Armed Forces are already in the process of being destroyed by CRT and its perverse and unbiblical version of social justice. Hundreds of protest and whistleblower letters are coming into Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) and other conservatives in the Senate and House. Traditional conservatives are being pushed out of the Services, and many more will soon be leaving because they can no longer anticipate fair treatment and promotions.  CRT’s well documented anti-white and anti-conservative politics along with deemphasis of merit and abilities are likely to empty the Armed Forces of many dedicated patriots.  The demography of the military may also change dramatically within a few years, maybe even a few months. A CRT-trained woke military will be useless against the tough-minded realism of our most formidable enemies.

Perhaps the most discouraging threat is the rapid acceptance of unbiblical social justice in many evangelical churches, undermining their commitment to the authority of Scripture and sound biblical doctrine.

John MacArthur and 14 prominent conservative evangelicals gathered in Dallas, Texas, on June 18, 2018 to counter the slippage of Evangelical commitment to Biblical authority with a positive statement of essential Christian doctrines, but with some corrective language on unbiblical trends such as the CRT doctrine of systemic racism, which was denied as harmful.

The Southern Baptist Convention met in Birmingham on June 11-12, 2019, and a resolution came to the floor that essentially condemned CRT. However, this resolution was tabled for quick re-writing by two seminary professors who had been promoting CRT, Intersectionality, and pro-liberation theology.   The revised Resolution 9 allowed that CRT and Intersectionality could be used as analytical tools. This was passed during the last few minutes of the Convention, as people were ready to leave, with the help of an accommodating SBC President. According to Voddie Baucham’s recent book, this was a “deliberate act of duplicity.”  This was at least a case where many evangelical messengers were so sensitive to any suggestion of racism if they criticized the revised Resolution 9 that they failed to exercise the proper discernment and courage expected of evangelical leaders. On November 30, 2020, the Council of Seminary Presidents of the SBC completely repudiated CRT and Resolution 9. While condemning “racism in any form,” the Seminary Presidents agreed that:

“affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and any version of Critical Theory is incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message.”

In Voddie T. Baucham’s just released book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, he makes a plea to the Church:

“I believe we are being duped by an ideology bent on our demise. This ideology has used our guilt and our good and godly desire for reconciliation and justice as a means through which to introduce destructive heresies. We cannot embrace, modify, baptize, or Christianize these ideologies. We must identify, resist, and repudiate them. We cannot be held hostage through emotional blackmail, and name-calling. Instead, we must:”

 “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”

—Colossians 2:8

Baucham is a reformed African-American pastor, born in Los Angeles, who is presently Dean of the School of Divinity at African Christian University in Zambia. He is a former SBC minister and has been active in the battle to keep unbiblical Marxist distortions of social justice out of the Church.

CRT is a poisoned chalice, the fruits of which will darken the spiritual, moral, and intellectual discernment of all who partake of it. It is a Trojan Horse that can destroy men, women, children, armies, nations, and unwary churches.  

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Mike ScruggsMike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.

He holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.

Click the website below to order books. http://www.universalmediainc.org/books.htm.