Aftershocks occur in rocks located near the epicenter or along the fault that harbored the principal quake. Although the intensity associated with most aftershocks is small compared with that of the principal earthquake, many are large enough to hamper rescue efforts by further destabilizing buildings and other structures and can be stressful for local residents coping with the damage and loss of life wrought by the principal quake.1
On July 28, 1976, a 7.1-magnitude event struck the city of Luanxian, China. I say “event” because it was not an earthquake; it was an aftershock. The initial earthquake that struck the nearby city of Tangshan was a 7.5-magnitude. In other words, the initial earthquake was so severe that the aftershock was greater than some of the most catastrophic earthquakes in history. By comparison, the San Fernando quake of 1971 was a 6.6. The 1989 Loma Prieta quake was a 7.1, and the infamous 1994 Northridge earthquake was a 6.7. All three are among the ten deadliest earthquakes in U.S. history, but are of a lower magnitude than the Luanxian aftershock.2
The moral of this story is, “Don’t underestimate the catastrophic potential of aftershocks.”
One of the unintended consequences of the Critical Social Justice movement is that Christians who adopt its underlying ideologies will not be able to avoid the damage it creates. “The idea that evangelicals can adopt the analysis of contemporary critical theory with respect to race and sex, but not with respect to sexuality, gender identity, or religion is naïve—at best,” writes apologist Neil Shenvi. Shenvi holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, but it doesn’t take that level of scientific acumen to understand the inevitable link between the aspects of Critical Social Justice that evangelicals are eager to embrace and those they want to avoid, because as Shenvi notes, “these views all share the same root: a particular understanding of oppression.”3
A quick glance at the website of any social justice organization will make this clear. Back in 2007, Social Work Today offered a list of the “Top Five Social Justice Issues of Our Day,”4 which included: celebrating diversity, child welfare, healthcare reform, poverty and economic injustice, and affordable housing. Maryville University’s list includes: climate change, racial equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and affordable healthcare. If you check Yeshiva University’s list, you also will find: voting rights, climate justice, healthcare, refugee crisis, racial justice, income gaps, gun violence, hunger and food insecurity, and equity. All of these pale in comparison to the Education for Justice list, which includes a whopping thirty-seven issues! (And yes, I’m going to list all of them):
Consumerism |
Human Trafficking |
Mental Health |
Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Church |
Climate Change |
Hunger |
Migration |
Signs of the Times |
Death Penalty |
Immigration |
Natural Disasters |
Terrorism |
Economic Justice |
Inequality |
Pastoral Circle |
Torture |
Education |
Integral Ecology |
Global Poverty |
U.S. Elections |
Gender Equality |
Interfaith |
U.S. Poverty |
War |
Genocide |
Intergenerational Justice |
Racial Justice |
Water |
Healthcare |
Sustainable Development |
Refugees |
|
Homelessness |
Land Grabbing |
Restorative Justice |
|
Human Rights |
Liberation Theology |
Racism |
|
By the way, if you think this list is exhaustive, it’s not. It ignores several other hot-button social justice issues like veganism, ableism, beauty standards, animal testing, body positivity, and COVID-19, which all have significant followings. And while these things may seem random or unrelated, I assure you, that is not the case. They all stem from the same critical worldview. Scratch the surface of each one of these issues and you will find:
Then there is the interconnectedness of the issues themselves.
Julie Cappiello’s article “Here’s How Veganism Is Undeniably Linked to Other Social Justice Issues” (posted at MercyForAnimals.org) is a prime example of the interconnectivity in the Critical Social Justice movement. Cappiello connects veganism to environmental justice, racial equality, immigration, and workers’ rights in ways that are pretty straightforward. The environmental justice link has to do with global warming and animal farming, the racial equality link has to do with the fact that most farms are in low-income areas and tend to pollute them, and the immigration and workers’-rights connection has to do with the fact that large numbers of illegal immigrants work in agriculture (and are often afraid to leave the farm for fear of being deported).
However, it is Cappiello’s link to feminism that is both creative and revealing. “The meat and dairy industries not only exploit our environmental resources,” she writes, “but also continually exploit female bodies in the reproduction of new animals to use and kill for human consumption.” In case you missed it, Cappiello is not talking about human females: “Females in the dairy industry are repeatedly and forcibly impregnated to ensure a continuous supply of milk. Their young are ripped from their sides within hours, with the daughters forced into the same generative cycle and the sons killed for someone’s dinner.”5
No, this is not a parody site. This is a real article posted on a real website to be read by real people who nod in real agreement with these unreal claims. This is the Critical Social Justice worldview in action.
While few evangelicals promote veganism as social justice, plenty of them promote the worldview behind it. Consequently, several CSJ issues have become part of the evangelical landscape, and more will in the future. In the remainder of this chapter, I will address one of them: Abortion. My goal here is to show the clear link between this issue and the CSJ movement, as well as the evidence of a subtle shift in popular evangelical circles that coincides with the influence of CT/CRT/I in recent years.
We touched on abortion previously, focusing on it as a cultural issue in the black community. Here, I want to address the broader question of abortion as it relates to the Critical Social Justice movement and how evangelicals are migrating toward the CSJ pro-abortion position, or at least the rationales that support it.
The abortion debate is strangely absent in the conversation of most Social Justice Christians, and with good reason. While abortion is the number one killer of black people in America (and there is most assuredly a connection to racist, Malthusian eugenics), to the broader Social Justice movement, access to abortion is the key issue. In an article titled “Abortion: A Matter of Human Rights and Social Justice,” Women on Web notes that the World Health Organization “affirms that medicines used for medical abortion are among essential medicines, which should be available in every country.”6 “Abortion is a social justice issue,” says SafeAbortionWomensRight.org, “in that criminalizing, restricting or stigmatising abortion creates barriers that women with unwanted pregnancies face in exercising body autonomy.” And in a nod to Intersectionality, it adds, “Often these barriers are even greater for women of colour, young women and poor women.”7 The Reproductive Health Access Project leaves no doubt as to its overall political philosophy, noting that the organization “condemns anti-Black, state-sanctioned violence and the brutal murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, David McAtee, and of countless other Black folks lost to the system of white supremacy upon which this country was founded.” They finally state, “We stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, Black protesters, organizers, and colleagues.”8
Ironically, the availability of abortion is actually a bit of an embarrassment to the Critical Social Justice movement since, in many ways, it disproves the assertion of disparate impact. For example, if justice equals access to abortion and black women have disproportionate access (that is, they comprise just 12 percent of the population, but have more than 35 percent of the abortions),9 doesn’t that mean America, at least in this area, is… just?
Nevertheless, as the Christian Social Justice movement continues to move along parallel lines with its anti-Christian counterpart, it will have to cross this issue. Unfortunately, the evidence seems to indicate that this is a case of “bad company ruins good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
An example of this is Jesse Jackson. We have already seen his very surprising pro-life quote from 1977 in a previous chapter. However, there is more. He would go on to write, “Human beings cannot give or create life by themselves, it is really a gift from God. Therefore, one does not have the right to take away (through abortion) that which he does not have the ability to give.”10 However, as his commitment to the social justice movement (and the political left) grew, Jackson eventually would abandon his pro-life stance.
“Fighting social injustice, by caring for migrants and the poor, is just as holy a pursuit for Catholics as opposing abortion,” declared Pope Francis in a major one-hundred-page document the Vatican issued in April 201811 to discourage so-called “single-issue voting.” Likewise, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, argued that “in pursuit of ‘single-issue’ strategies to end abortion,” many Christians “scandalously turned a blind eye to real breakdowns in solidarity and dehumanizing policies, including crackdowns on worker rights and voting rights, the slashing of social support for the poor and sick, racism and the exploitation of immigrants and the environment.”12
Among Protestants, Jim Wallis, who also decries single-issue voting, is an example of one who holds firmly to liberalism, liberation theology, and the Critical Social Justice movement while attempting to straddle the fence on abortion. Wallis outlines his view in his book The Great Awakening, where he writes in favor of “protecting unborn life in every possible way, but without criminalizing abortion.” Wallis is a staunch progressive and loyal Democrat, so there is little surprise he holds and promotes such a compromised view. What concerns me is the fact that many in more conservative evangelical circles have begun to promote something similar.
In a series of tweets issued in September 2020 that set off a massive debate about “single-issue voting,” Tim Keller appeared to be advancing an argument for a more Wallis-like position when he wrote, “The Bible tells me that abortion is a sin and great evil, but it doesn’t tell me the best way to decrease or end abortion in this country, nor which policies are most effective.”13 He went on to say:
The current political parties offer a potpourri of different positions on these and many, many other topics, most of which, as just noted, the Bible does not speak to directly. This means when it comes to taking political positions, voting, determining alliances and political involvement, the Christian has liberty of conscience. Christians cannot say to other Christians “no Christian can vote for…” or “every Christian must vote for…” unless you can find a Biblical command to that effect.14
Set aside for a moment the fact that “Thou shalt not kill” is a pretty clear “Biblical command to that effect,” and let’s put this in a bit of context. First, let’s look at the two political parties which, according to Keller, “offer a potpourri of different positions on these… issues.” Remember, the primary issue Keller is addressing is abortion. Is it true that the Democrat and Republican platforms offer “a potpourri of different positions” on abortion? The answer is a resounding no! From the Democratic Platform:
Democrats believe every woman should be able to access high-quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion. We oppose and will fight to overturn federal and state laws that create barriers to women’s reproductive health and rights, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment and protecting and codifying the right to reproductive freedom.
From the Republican Platform:
We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.
We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare. We urge all states and Congress to make it a crime to acquire, transfer, or sell fetal tissues from elective abortions for research, and we call on Congress to enact a ban on any sale of fetal body parts. In the meantime, we call on Congress to ban the practice of misleading women on so-called fetal harvesting consent forms, a fact revealed by a 2015 investigation. We will not fund or subsidize healthcare that includes abortion coverage.
Far from being a “potpourri of different positions,” this is a clear-cut distinction between two competing worldviews. The two statements couldn’t be more different!
This leads to a second issue: Keller’s history and the insight it gives to his motives in this matter.
Keller has had no problem making clear, unambiguous, authoritative statements on a host of moral issues from the CRT/I perspective. For instance, in a recent panel discussion, he declared, “If you have white skin, it’s worth $1 million over a lifetime.” This is quite hyperbolic, and the same has been said about having a college degree, being a man, and being married (though the last two aren’t usually valued at the same dollar figure), but that is beside the point. What Keller said next is pertinent to the current discussion: “[White people] have to say, ‘We don’t deserve this!’ ”
Not “You need to find a biblical command to that effect,” but, “you have to say…” Keller goes on to clarify that white Christians must conclude, “I am the product of and standing on the shoulders of other people who got that through injustice… the Bible says you are involved in injustice… even if you didn’t actually do it.”15 Remember, he is speaking about having “white skin.” Your family never owned slaves? Doesn’t matter. You have family who fought and died for the Union in the Civil War? Doesn’t matter. Your family came here after slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow? Doesn’t matter. You are descended from Jews who immigrated to the U.S. to flee oppression after World War II? Doesn’t matter! The only thing that matters is “white skin.”
To sum up: abortion is a complex web of political potpourri that requires nuance and wisdom, but white privilege, (generational) white guilt, and the need to repent of it is so clear that Keller can use words like “you have to” and “you must.”
David Platt, whom we heard from earlier, wrote a book timed for release before the 2020 presidential election titled Before You Vote. In it, he recalls a discussion he had with a pastor who said, “In my church, voting for a Democrat could be cause for removal from the church.”16 The pastor asked Platt plainly: “How can a Christian vote for a candidate from a party that holds abortion as a key tenet of their platform?” Platt’s response was quite telling: “I considered the implications of the question.… Yes, abortion is abhorrent. That’s clear in the Bible.… But is that the only issue at stake in an election?”
Then he gets to the heart of the matter. “What about the scores of Christians, including overwhelming percentages of African-American Christians, who consistently vote for Democrats because of the party’s record on other issues that they also deem biblically important?”17 Unfortunately, Platt does not enumerate these issues. But others have.
Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, led by Fuller Seminary President Emeritus Richard Mouw and touting signatories like Ron Sider, Richard Foster, and John Perkins, echoes the same sentiment. They actually list some of the issues they believe are as important as taking the lives of the unborn, and it looks eerily similar to the CSJ lists I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter:
Many things that good political decisions could change destroy persons created in the image of God and violate the sanctity of human life. Poverty kills millions every year. So does lack of health care and smoking. Racism kills. Unless we quickly make major changes, devastating climate change will kill tens of millions. Poverty, lack of accessible health care services, smoking, racism and climate change are all pro-life issues.… Therefore we oppose “one issue” political thinking because it lacks biblical balance.
The group goes on to add “affordable childcare” and “a minimum wage that lifts workers out of poverty,” believing that these policies are more pro-life than—well, being pro-life—because “the most common reason women give for abortion is the financial difficulty of another child.”
9Marks founder Mark Dever and editor Jonathan Leeman had an on-stage discussion about single-issue voting in February 2019,18 during which Dever set off controversy when he opined:
African American Christian voters realized a long time ago that there are going to be a bunch of different issues affecting us. So I can support a candidate I don’t agree with on some issues, which nothing may get done about anyway, because I do agree on other issues where they can help do something. Can we, even if we don’t accept the position ourselves, can we make room for that in our church as a morally legitimate argument and option? (emphasis mine)19
Dever would go on to add, “Many white Christians act like [single-issue voting] is the only morally legitimate way of voting… I would certainly like to question that.”20 And therein lies the rub.
First, note how similar these statements are to Platt’s. They both reference “issues” that African American Christians prioritize over abortion, though neither enumerates those issues. One can only assume that they would include at least some of those articulated by Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, but we don’t know. Dever and Platt are also concerned with “making room” for Christians who vote pro-choice.
Second, note that both Dever and Platt ascribe altruistic motives to black Christians who vote pro-choice and a type of blindness to white Christians who vote “single-issue.” I would take issue with Dever’s (and Platt’s) characterization of “African American Christian voters.” As noted earlier, there has been a massive shift in the black community away from the pro-life position. Personally, I find that I rarely encounter black Christians who are staunchly pro-life. Among my family, my friends, and my black ministerial acquaintances, I frequently find that my pro-life position puts me in the extreme minority (pardon the pun). This became painfully clear to me during my time as a professor at the College of Biblical Studies (CBS) in Houston.
At the time, CBS was the largest multi-ethnic Bible college in the United States. Seventy percent of our students were black or Hispanic. One of the classes I taught was Biblical Worldview. Every semester, I addressed the issue of abortion, and every semester, I was disappointed to find the overwhelming majority of the black pastors and church leaders in my class held pro-choice positions. I considered it a win if I had a class with a 50/50 pro-life, pro-choice split among my black students. The idea that most black Christians are voting Democrat in spite of their pro-life convictions is, at best, an overstatement.
I have also witnessed this reality in my work with pro-life ministries. I have preached at many crisis pregnancy center banquets over the years. A common refrain I hear is, “I hope some of our black pastors will come to hear you.” As it turns out, most pro-life ministries have a hard time gaining traction with black pastors and churches. These conversations didn’t just happen with white Christians. Black board members and volunteers were just as likely to raise this issue.
Finally, I find it rare, in my experience, to run into staunchly pro-life black voters who, for the sake of other issues on which they agree with pro-choice candidates, will do the kind of political calculus Dever and Platt suggest. In 2008 and 2012, black voters voted for Obama 1) because he was a Democrat and 2) because he was black (not necessarily in that order). In 2016, they voted for Hillary supposedly 1) because she was a Democrat and 2) because Trump was “a racist.” However, I didn’t hear much angst over her position on abortion. Add to this the fact that the largest black denomination, the National Baptist Convention USA, has no official position on abortion and most of the other predominantly black denominations equivocate on it,21 and the claim of complex political calculus seems dubious at best.
Whether it is Platt, Dever, Wallis, Seitz, Keller, Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden, or Pope Francis, my big problem with this entire line of argumentation is that “single-issue voting” is a straw man. I am not, nor have I ever met, a single-issue voter. Issues like same-sex marriage, school choice, and religious freedom, to name a few, are all very serious issues to Christian voters. And these voters are more than narrow-minded fundamentalists being led around by the nose for the sake of a single issue. Moreover, this line of argumentation makes light of the vast chasm between the platforms of the two parties on major moral issues while extoling the virtues of sophisticated black voters who carefully weigh important (yet unnamed) issues that white voters apparently do not comprehend.
However, even if abortion were an example of single-issue voting, I reject the idea that murdering the unborn can be subjugated in favor of social issues that are being promoted through the lens of Critical Social Justice. In other words, if I were going to be a single-issue voter, that single issue would be the murder of the unborn.
According to Live Action, an estimated 2,363 pre-born children will die in America today. Every ninety seconds, a child is aborted at a Planned Parenthood facility somewhere in our nation. Under current federal law, pre-born children can be aborted up until the point of birth. A preborn person’s life can be ended for any reason.22 And in the last five years that I have lived in Zambia, I have seen how the UN has worked to advance the same eugenics-based, black- and brown-targeting, abortion-at-any-stage-and-for-any-reason ideology throughout Africa. I think Owen Strachan had it right when, after the first Trump/Biden debate in 2020, he tweeted, “I get the ‘democracy is being coarsened’ point. What an awkward event! But mark this: the moral abomination of abortion has coarsened and soiled America to an untold degree. No other modern evil comes close. Defeat abortion. Vote pro-life.”23
To those who argue that being pro-life must be about more than abortion, allow me to say a hearty amen! I believe being pro-life should be a comprehensive commitment for the follower of Christ. I also understand that overturning Roe v. Wade will not end abortion in America. It simply will return the issue to the individual states, and many will choose to keep abortion legal. While that breaks my heart, I am happy to save every single child I can. I am not a social justice warrior, but I believe God meant it when He said, “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17). But I don’t believe He called me to use the government as a proxy. God calls His people to be His hands and feet in this regard. Believing this transformed my life and that of my family to the tune of adopting seven newborns in nine years as an expression of our pro-life commitment.
We became aware that there was a dearth of black families participating in adoption, so we made ourselves available. After the first adoption, we never had to pursue another. Word got out in the adoption world that a black family was available and “home study ready,”24 and our phone continued to ring. We received calls from all over the country. We had to turn down several children due to the fact that we were engaged in other adoptions at the time. We have also had the privilege of influencing several other families to enter the adoption arena. We couldn’t intervene for every child, but we could intervene for some.
So yes, I agree wholeheartedly that being pro-life should go beyond just being anti-abortion. However, it must start there.
I also agree that single-issue voting is irresponsible, but we all know that nobody does that. So why are so many leading evangelicals addressing the issue? I cannot speak for them, but I do have an idea. It is based on several conversations I have had with pastors, ministry leaders, and others dealing with CSJ in their churches, organizations, and families.
Allow me to give you a scenario—one that I have faced numerous times. A pastor is leading a church that he has served for many years. It is a growing multiethnic congregation characterized by broad unity and shared vision. Then the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections come. In the first two, the overwhelming majority of his black members vote for Obama in spite of his record on abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and the broader LGBTQIA+ agenda, to name a few topics. Yet the Church didn’t divide, and the leaders of the evangelical movement didn’t write articles or participate in panel discussions about black “single-issue” voters (in this instance, the single issue is melanin). Then 2016 happens.
The 2016 elections took place in the wake of several high-profile killings of unarmed black men and the establishment and meteoric rise of Black Lives Matter. Also, race relations had plummeted during Obama’s presidency.25 We know 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016. Obama received 26 percent and 21 percent of the white evangelical vote in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
Unlike the black people in the Church voting for Obama, white evangelicals voting for Trump in 2016 was a fault line. Suddenly, black church members felt afraid. “As an African American who dedicates countless hours and vital energy to racial reconciliation, I feel betrayed,” said Jemar Tisby, reacting to the 2016 result. “I mistakenly assumed that American Christians understood each other better across racial lines.”26 Thabiti Anyabwile said, “Mr. Trump’s election was… the worse possible outcome in my mind.”27 A letter signed by seventy-four black church leaders called white evangelicals who voted for Trump a “radical faction.”28 They couldn’t possibly have voted for him out of concerns over Hillary’s radical policies, Benghazi, email servers, the corrupt Clinton political machinery, the desire to have a businessman and outsider who wouldn’t back down against the left or the press, or even sheer pragmatism. It had to be racism! And I say this as someone who supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 primary. I even attended a private Cruz campaign event and lamented the pragmatism of evangelicals who abandoned him in favor of Trump.
In the ensuing four years, the ideologies outlined in this book took root in leading evangelical circles. They also took root in local churches. As that happened, pastors and church leaders who had worked feverishly to establish relationships across ethnic lines, who had promoted, mentored, and discipled black leaders, and who had celebrated diversity in their churches and ministries began to see the fault lines. Suddenly, these pastors and leaders had a choice to make. Addressing these fault lines would result in catastrophic losses and sever cherished relationships—not to mention putting them at risk of being called “racist.” Letting them lie often resulted in disputes in the Church as questions about how black Christians can, in good conscience, associate with neo-Marxist ideologies, policies, and candidates—and, of course, abortion—arose.
So what do you do? One possibility is to get out in front of it by equivocating. Teach your people that “it’s not that simple.” Argue for a moral equivalency between Joe Biden’s pro-abortion position and Trump’s abrasive character. “I remain baffled,” wrote John Piper in an October 22, 2020, article, “that so many Christians consider the sins of unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai), and the like, to be only toxic for our nation, while policies that endorse baby-killing, sex-switching, freedom-limiting, and socialistic overreach are viewed as deadly.”29 Piper argues that Trump’s danger lies in “a pattern of public behaviors that lead to death.”
But is this legitimate? Is Trump’s character the moral equivalent of the Democrat agenda? Or has Piper joined Dever, Leeman, Keller, and Platt on a fault line?
In order to understand where I am coming from on this, it may help the reader to know a bit more of my history. I made several blog posts in 2008 opposing Obama’s presidential candidacy, including one titled “Barack Obama: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.”30 The day after the election, I wrote:
The people have spoken. Barack Hussein Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America. The left-wing press is ecstatic, white guilt has been assuaged, Affirmative Action has been vindicated, and socialist Europe loves us again. Now comes the rub.… It ain’t over! If you think this means that the “America is a racist society” crowd will have to shut up, you’ve got another thing coming. In fact, watch the press closely in the coming days. There will be a concerted effort to press the opposite point. Jesse Jackson (who said he wanted to castrate Obama a couple of months ago because he had the audacity to call black fathers to account), Al Sharpton, and their ilk will argue that this is merely proof that policies like Affirmative Action work, and that such efforts need to be redoubled; not abandoned. They believe we need to continue telling young black boys and girls that they are not smart enough, good enough, industrious enough, capable enough, and America is not “fair” enough for them to succeed without special help that their white (or Asian) counterparts don’t need.31
Then, as now, I believed neo-Marxist ideology poses a far greater threat to America than race relations. I also see a connection between the infiltration of woke/antiracist ideology and soft-selling the danger of progressive politics.
Remember where we started this chapter? The Critical Social Justice movement goes far beyond just race. As Peggy McIntosh, the mother of the modern white privilege doctrine, wrote, “[S]ince race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation.” Let’s just say the 2020 Democratic National Convention would make McIntosh proud.
Like all political events, this one opened with a nod to God in the form of opening prayers. At the DNC, that task fell upon my fellow Southwestern Seminary alumnus and open-borders advocate Freddie Haynes. “You had the nerve to build a wall while at the same time you have in a harbor there in New York a statue saying, ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,’ ” prayed Haynes, a Dallas pastor and long-time civil rights activist, before adding, “Jesus would say, ‘America, if you don’t get your act together, you may well go to hell.’ ”
The Pledge of Allegiance at the DNC included the word “someday” at the end but omitted the words “under God.” Though many deny the fact, even Snopes acknowledged that “[t]he phrase ‘under God’ was omitted from at least two recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance at individual caucus meetings during the DNC in 2020.”32 It happened at both the Muslim Delegates & Allies Assembly and the LGBT Caucus meeting. For the National Anthem, participants were told, “You may rise or kneel if you are able, or your preference.” I am not nearly as concerned about disrespect for the flag or the national anthem as I am about the deeper issue. All of this was emblematic of the radical, progressive, CRT/I-laden atmosphere that characterized the proceedings.
One speaker was J. Mai, a Duke University student whose preferred pronouns are they/them and who identifies as a “Black-Vietnamese, transgender nonbinary/gender transcendent mermaid Queen-King, currently living out ‘their’ ever-evolving truths in Winston Salem.”33 Mai recently became a “licensed minister in the Progressive National Baptist Church.” In a caucus meeting, Mai made it clear that those who say the cry to “defund the police” is really just a call for redistributing, retraining, and refocusing police efforts are either misinformed or dishonest. “We’re talking about abolishing the police, we’re talking about abolishing ICE, we’re talking about abolishing prisons.…”34
During the DNC LGBTQ Caucus Meeting, trans activist Marisa Richmond reiterated the Democrats’ position on, among other things, transgender participation in school sports. This is the very ideology that has led to girls being left off the podium at track meets as trans athletes take state championships,35 girls’ high school field hockey and soccer being in danger of being completely transformed, and in one instance, a male-to-female trans MMA fighter breaking his female opponent’s skull.36
Then there was the Democratic Party Platform. A few planks are worth mentioning here:
We recognize that quality, affordable comprehensive health care; medically accurate, LGBTQ+ inclusive, age-appropriate sex education; and the full range of family planning services are all essential to ensuring that people can decide if, when, and how to start a family.
Democrats will… restore nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS in health insurance, including coverage of all medically necessary care for gender transition.
We will also take action to guarantee that LGBTQ+ people and those living with HIV/AIDS have full access to needed health care and resources, including by requiring that federal health plans provide coverage for HIV/AIDS testing and treatment and HIV prevention medications like PrEP and PEP, gender confirmation surgery, and hormone therapy.
We will work to ensure LGBTQ+ people are not discriminated against when seeking to adopt or foster children, protect LGBTQ+ children from bullying and assault, and guarantee transgender students’ access to facilities based on their gender identity.
Recognizing that LGBTQ+ youth and adults suffer from significant health disparities, including mental health and substance use disorders, Democrats will expand mental health and suicide prevention services, and ban harmful “conversion therapy” practices. We will ensure that all transgender and non-binary people can procure official government identification documents that accurately reflect their gender identity (emphasis mine).
I do not believe the Republicans are beyond reproach. In fact, the same year I spoke out against Obama, I made waves with another article in which I chided evangelicals who condemned John McCain’s character, then reversed themselves when he picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. That piece landed me on Fox News, where the host, expecting me to whale on the Republicans, almost swallowed her tongue when I pointed out that Obama was the most radically pro-abortion candidate ever to run for president.
My point here is this: The Critical Social Justice Movement is vast. Its influence is broad and deep within evangelical circles. And as that influence grows, it is causing some among us to make alliances we never would have forged in the past. A lot of it has to do with the fact that we are afraid to be called racist or end up “on the wrong side of history” on the race issue. Unfortunately, some have found themselves on the wrong side of the present. In the next chapter, I will offer a roadmap for moving ahead.
But before I do, allow me to share a part of President Trump’s executive order against Critical Race Theory, issued on September 22, 2020. It defines the tenets of CRT/I against which it stands:
(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; (2) the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist; (3) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; (4) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex; (5) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex; (6) an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex; (7) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; (8) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or (9) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race. The term “divisive concepts” also includes any other form of race or sex stereotyping or any other form of race or sex scapegoating.37
I continue to be disappointed and at times offended by Trump’s behavior. However, as I watch the fault lines of CRT/I shift beneath our feet, I must say I am grateful to God for having put him where he is, for such a time as this. Oh, that more pastors would see the threat this clearly and respond to it this boldly! But that is not an issue the president can fix.
1. John P. Rafferty, “Aftershock,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/aftershock-geology.
2. Betsy Mason, “The 10 Deadliest Earthquakes in U.S. History,” Wired, November 21, 2000, https://www.wired.com/2008/11/gallery-deadly-earthquake.
3. Neil Shenvi, “Short Review of Adams’ Teachings for Diversity and Social Justice,” Neil Shenvi—Apologetics blog, https://shenviapologetics.com/short-review-of-adams-teachings-for-diversity-and-social-justice.
4. “The Top 5 Social Justice Issues Facing Social Workers Today,” Social Work Today, March/April 2007, https://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/marapr2007p24.shtml.
5. Julie Cappiello, “Here’s How Veganism Is Undeniably Linked to Other Social Justice Issues,” Mercy for Animals, July 28, 2017, https://mercyforanimals.org/heres-how-veganism-is-undeniably-linked-to.
6. Constitution of the World Health Organization, https://apps.who.int/gb/bd/PDF/bd47/EN/constitution-en.pdf?ua=1.
7. “On World Day of Social Justice, Why Is Access to Safe Abortion a Social Justice Issue?” International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion, February 19, 2017, https://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/blog/world-social-justice-day.
8. “From Abortion Rights to Social Justice,” Reproductive Health Access Project, May 15, 2018, https://www.reproductiveaccess.org/2018/05/abortion-rights-social-justice.
9. Susan A. Cohen, “Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture,” Guttmacher Policy Review 11, no. 3, August 6, 2008, https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2008/08/abortion-and-women-color-bigger-picture.
10. “From Abortion Rights to Social Justice.”
11. Philip Pullella, “Fighting Social Injustice Is as Important as Fighting Abortion; Pope,” Reuters, April 9, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-document-holiness/fighting-social-injustice-as-important-as-fighting-abortion-pope-idUSKBN1HG1BE.
12. Bishop Mark J. Seitz, “Bishop Seitz: Single-Issue Voting Has Corrupted Christian Political Witness,” Jesuit Review, September 30, 2020, https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/09/28/bishop-seitz-el-paso-catholics-single-issue-voting-election-2020-biden-trump.
13. Tim Keller (@timkellernyc), “Some folks are missing the point of this thread. The Bible tells me that abortion is a sin and great evil, but it doesn’t tell me the best way to decrease or end abortion in this country, nor which policies are most effective,” Twitter, September 16, 2020, 11:24 p.m., https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1306433746606977024.
14. Ibid.
15. Protestia, “Tim Keller: If You Have White Skin, the Bible Says You’re Involved in Injustice,” Vimeo, https://vimeo.com/459445613.
16. David Platt, Before You Vote: Seven Questions Every Christian Should Ask (Washington, D.C.: Radical, Inc., Kindle Edition, 2020), 42.
17. Platt, Before You Vote, 42.
18. Although 9Marks went on to address this issue more thoroughly (see “What Makes a Vote Moral or Immoral: The Ethics of Voting,” https://www.9marks.org/article/what-makes-a-vote-moral-or-immoral-the-ethics-of-voting), the statement is worth analyzing—especially since most people have seen the video, but haven’t read the journal article.
19. Stop and Think about It, “Mark Dever on One Issue Voting,” YouTube, September 13, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuquvpUEsWE.
20. Ibid.
21. See Clare Hepler, “Churches & Abortion,” Juicy Ecumenism, January 24, 2020, https://juicyecumenism.com/2020/01/24/churches-abortion. Church of God in Christ: opposes abortion except “in the rare case where mother’s life is threatened, abortion is licit as a last resort.” National Baptist Convention of America: is unclear on abortion. AME: “admits exceptions where the mother’s life is in danger or a pregnancy from rape or incest.” Progressive National Baptist Convention: “opposes abortion outside of reasons of maternal health or fetal disease.” AME Zion: opposes with “the exception of the health of the mother or fetal abnormality.”
22. See Live Action, https://www.liveaction.org.
23. Owen Strachan (@ostrachan), “On the Trump/Biden debate, I get the ‘democracy is being coarsened’ point. What an awkward event! But mark this: the moral abomination of abortion has coarsened and soiled America to an untold degree. No other modern evil comes close. Defeat abortion. Vote pro-life,” Twitter, October 1, 2020, 6:25 p.m., https://twitter.com/ostrachan/status/1311794344429531136.
24. Adoptive families have to go through an investigative process called a “home study” in order to be approved to adopt. This process can take months, so adoptions that come up suddenly are often very difficult to place. This is especially true if a birth mother specifically requests a black family for her baby. Therefore, “home study–ready” black families are like gold in the adoption world.
25. Overall, 54 percent say relations between blacks and whites have gotten worse since Obama became president, including 57 percent of whites and 40 percent of blacks. See Jennifer Agiesta, “Most Say Race Relations Worsened under Obama, Poll Finds,” CNN, October 6, 2016, https://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/05/politics/obama-race-relations-poll/index.html. See also Henry Khachatrian, “A Complete Timeline of Race Relations under Obama,” Daily Wire, January 9, 2017, https://www.dailywire.com/news/complete-timeline-race-relations-under-obama-harry-khachatrian.
26. Emily Lund, “Trump Won. Here’s How 20 Evangelical Leaders Feel,” Christianity Today, November 11, 2016, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/november-web-only/trump-won-how-evangelical-leaders-feel.html.
27. Ibid.
28. Jason Lemon, “Black Christian Leaders Rebuke Evangelical Trump Supporters as a ‘Radical Faction’ in Open Letter,” Newsweek, January 13, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/black-christian-leaders-rebuke-evangelical-trump-supporters-radical-faction-open-letter-1481970.
29. John Piper, “Policies, Persons, and Paths to Ruin: Pondering the Implications of the 2020 Election,” Desiring God, October 22, 2020, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/policies-persons-and-paths-to-ruin.
30. Voddie Baucham, “Barack Obama: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing,” Voddie Baucham Ministries blog, May 9, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20160222005459/http://voddiebaucham.org/blog/post/barack-obama:-a-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing. The article date is 2015 because the original page is no longer available.
31. Voddie Baucham, “A Nation of Cowards,” Voddie Baucham Ministries blog, May 9, 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20150918235537/http://www.voddiebaucham.org/blog/post/a-nation-of-cowards. Again, this is an archived article.
32. Dan Evon, “Did Democrats Omit ‘Under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance?” Snopes.com, August 21, 2020, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/democrats-under-god-pledge.
33. Debra Heine, “DNC Panel Features ‘Mermaid Queen-King’ Who Calls for the Abolition of ICE, Police, and Prisons,” American Greatness, August 19, 2020, https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/19/dnc-panel-features-mermaid-queen-king-who-calls-for-the-abolition-of-ice-police-and-prisons.
34. Heine, “DNC Panel Features ‘Mermaid Queen-King’.”
35. Pat Eaton-Robb, “Transgender Sprinters Finish 1st, 2nd, at Connecticut Girls Indoor Track Championships,” Washington Times, February 24, 2019, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/24/terry-miller-andraya-yearwood-transgender-sprinter.
36. BJJ World, “Transgender MMA Fighter Breaks Skull of Her Female Opponent. Are We Becoming Too Careful Not to Offend Any Group of People,” BJJ World, October 21, 2018, https://bjj-world.com/transgender-mma-fighter-fallon-fox-breaks-skull-of-her-female-opponent.
37. “Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” White House, September 22, 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-race-sex-stereotyping.