This may be a derail and deserving of its own thread, but I’m interested in this conversation. One thing I’ve learned over the past few years is to watch for the things people get defensive about and outraged over- we react strongest to things that threaten our idols.
I think those who are reacting against CRT have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and the power dynamics CRT seeks to critique. I also think reacting against CRT is, again, a way of externalizing the problem- it’s a way to deflect. We don’t have to examine our own systems and structures and try to do things differently in the name of justice if the tool used to expose the injustice is the “real” problem, not the injustice itself.
How many people railing against CRT are engaged in any kind of meaningful work towards racial justice? Purposely or not, dismissing CRT has had the side effect of stifling this work in the church. I read an interview the other day with a Wheaton professor who has been teaching on CRT for years before it became a divisive issue. Where he used to get real engagement, his students are now terrified to discuss it since they’ve been basically told that if you agree with any of it, you’re anti-Christ. He said he will have them read and discuss an article without saying it’s from a CRT scholar- here’s what he says happens:
“ The overwhelming response from the students is: “Wow, this essay is so rigorously researched, so clear, and so well-argued. Even if I don’t agree with every claim, I learned so much,” etc. Then, after they’ve sung a little praise song, [laughs] I tell them they’ve read a piece by a critical race theorist. You can see a look of disillusionment set in — this part gets really hard, if I’m honest. On the one hand, it’s a healthy destabilization. You’ve gotta remember that a lot of my students are racialized white folks. If they’re not now going to say that everything they just said was false, how do they reckon with believing there are things to learn from critical race theorists while knowing that the stakes, in some of these communities they’ve been a part of, are so high that to say such is to find themselves ostracized?”
Here’s the interview in full:
https://sojo.net/articles/why-nathan-ca ... angelicals