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If SBC seminary presidents are going to denounce CRT/I as incompatible w/ BFM, to keep critics from calling everything they don’t like CRT, why not put out a 20-30 page scholarly paper defining terms, saying how CRT falls short, and promoting a biblical approach to gospel unity?
2/ Why not address specifically what opposing racism in all its forms looks like? The 1995 Apology denounced “systemic racism” but we’re now at a point where if anyone says the effects of it still exist, they can be labeled outside the BFM by anyone interpreting it that way.
3/ SBC seminary presidents might mean well, but those they’re trying to appease w/ this now have the opportunity to use it as a club to go after anyone they disagree with on racial unity/justice issues. This might shield the presidents from criticism, but what about the churches?
4/ I wrote against defining/categorizing people by their race, ethnicity, or nationality yrs ago. I devoted an end section of my book to the dangers of this approach. We are one in Christ. However, to do that w/out admitting historic and present effects of racism is to err.
5/ We don’t live free of the past. We aren’t gods astride the earth refashioning our identities as we please. What came before isn’t determinative, but it is informative. We live in context. Jesus stepped in space-time and put on flesh. Salvation plays out HERE. History matters.
6/ A concept more helpful for me than CRT is “racialization.” It doesn’t require people to be actively racist for past effects of racism to still be at work. It admits past sin was embedded and passed on. Emerson/Smith dealt w/ this in Divided by Faith. https://www.amazon.com/Divided-Faith-Evangelical-Religion-Problem/dp/0195147073
7/ The way out of this is the Cross of Christ, particularly embracing a theology of the Cross as opposed to myriad theologies of glory. Philippians 2:1-11 at work and applied to racial/ethnic division created by past sins & structures still affecting us. The Better Way of Jesus.
8/ If you do want to see an approach to all of this that isn’t CRT/I and that actually addresses the effects of the past still with us, I’d recommend this. 320 pages and a couple of hundred footnotes. It leads you to the Cross with real application. https://www.amazon.com/When-Heaven-Earth-Collide-Evangelicals/dp/1603063501
9/ Now, in asking seminary presidents to do this work, I’m saying they CAN and we need it. We need more than denunciation, but we need a way forward. I would listen to them. It would be helpful and bring clarity. Just don’t turn this issue over to critics to use as a bludgeon.
