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Regarding the "big news" in evangelicalism regarding CRT: It's nice to see that another social science field other than my own (counseling) gets to benefit from a bunch of people who aren't dealing with Sir Francis Bacon's "two-books" problem very well. For those unfamiliar 1/20
The "two books" are 1. Explicit (special) revelation and 2. Implicit (general) revelation. I'm really surprised nobody that I've seen has approached this problem of praxis from this point of view. Instead, we're ascribing heart motives to people who engage differently... 2/20
Essentially questioning the very validity of their faith. You might be right, but you don't know (and shouldn't judge in that manner). Obviously, you can part ways, disagree and even say that they are doing harmful things, but don't say that the "other side" is outside... 3/20
the household of faith. That said, back to the two books problem. The question is essentially which type of revelation takes precedence in all forms of human knowledge about Creation: Explicit or Implicit? It's hard to answer this unless you're a Fundamentalist. 4/20
It's hard, because, per David Entwhistle in https://www.amazon.com/Integrative-Approaches-Psychology-Christianity-Second/dp/1556359446 , there are at least Five ways of viewing people who practice a discipline that gathers knowledge about Creation that pulls from Implicit revelation (i.e., not directly in the Bible but available to Reason) 5/20
The first paradigm is "Enemies": essentially, the person trying to integrate Faith and the discipline assumes that the other "book" (Explicit or Implicit) has an inaccurate understanding of the world. Either CRT is of the Devil or Christians are racist bigots. 6/20
Fundamentalists on both sides of the "discussion" approach integration of CRT and Christianity from the Enemies paradigm. The second paradigm, "Spies", is specifically used by those who elevate the Implicit revelation of their discipline and "try to find in the book of God's 7/20
Word what they have already decided is written in the book of God's works". The third paradigm, "Colonialists" is the mirror image of "Spies": here the integrationist "try to find in the book of God's works what they have already decided is written in the book of God's Word" 8/20
Essentially paradigms 2 & 3 are fundamentalists from either side who want to allow a little "nuance". Really all they're doing is ignoring information that doesn't already agree with what they think their preferred form of Revelation says. 9/20
Those who don't want to be Fundamentalists because, "yuck", or because they don't want to throw out information in either book often find themselves in paradigm 4: "Neutral Parties". This way of integration isn't actually integration at all: 10/20
Paradigm 4ers "simply read the two books in relative isolation, and fail to look for unifying themes or underlying truths written by the Author's pen". They practice gnosticism, separating the Spiritual from the Physical. Not really, imo, an orthodox Xtian response 11/20
Which brings us to Entwhistle's paradigm 5: "Allies Under One Sovereign". Here we "recognize that both books as needing to be read on their own merits, but allow for the insights gained from the other, recognizing that both books ultimately reflect a single set of truths". 12/20
Now here's the thing... the fifth approach is pretty scary for a fundamentalist of either side. It requires epistemological humility; willingness to be wrong about MY INTERPRETATION of either book. It also requires us to work on integration as a community of people 13/20
who actually have different specialities of knowledge! Submitting one to another as we submit to Christ. Nobody, but God, has a God's eye view of what God meant in either book. Historically, the way God has helped his people understand either book is 14/20
through the entire body of Christ (Church). The Spirit of God uses different parts of the body to do the work of the ministry. So... how does this apply to this SBC CRT mess? I'm not 100% sure, but I'd submit this: 15/20
There appears to be a lot of people leading the SBC who are operating from either paradigm 1 (enemies) or paradigm 3 (Colonialists). They don't appear to be willing to believe Christians who are experts on CRT and other social theories that try to understand racism. 16/20
There are also people operating from paradigm 2 (Spies), the mirror of paradigm 3 (Colonialists), who are fine throwing out time-tested Christian doctrine, who are also supporters of CRT. This doesn't mean that CRT is suspect... 17/20
The truth is, people who already have power are probably not going to change their approach to integration. They are in power because they hold those methods of integration. Also, those who are willing to jettison Christian doctrine aren't going to change either. 18/20
The caveat in both cases being that the Spirit of God miraculously works a change on their hearts. Barring that, the rest of us better get to work as Allies Under One Sovereign. Call these brothers and sisters to account in our respective 19/20
disciplines, pay attention to people who are doing the integration work, and actually DO something with that work. Knowledge that doesn't result in practice is really just another form of gnosticism. 20/20
