This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
The debate over critical race theory has played out in TV studios, school board meetings and state legislatures across the U.S. It has also found its way into churches.
The theory comprises a set of concepts that frame racism as structural, rather than simply expressed through personal discrimination. Scholars point to racial discrepancies in educational achievement, economic and employment opportunities and in the criminal justice system as evidence of how racism is embedded in U.S. institutions.
But as its critics tell it, critical race theory is a divisive ideology that has infiltrated classrooms and needs to be stopped. By and large, such depictions of critical race theory are inaccurate and misconstrued, perhaps at times even intentionally so. But they have nonetheless made critical race theory a “culture war” issue.
Religious voices, particularly among white evangelical Christians, were among the earliest and loudest in calling for critical race theory to be stopped. Conservative evangelical bloggers warned against the supposed dangers of the theory “infiltrating the church” back in 2018.
And in 2019 – before the anti-critical race theory movement gained widespread attention – the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical group in the U.S., passed a resolution criticizing the theory as a problematic secular ideology that conflicts with the authority of Scripture. A push by conservative Southern Baptists to again reject CRT by name failed at this year’s convention, but a resolution was passed against any theory that frames racism in a way other than its being “a sin” to be resolved by redemption through Christ.
These resolutions reflect a common evangelical ideology. Essentially, evangelical morality sees social problems such as racism as the result of sinful individuals, not larger structures or institutions. In the words of evangelical pastor and theologian Voddie Baucham: “Critical race theory is at odds with Christianity because it takes the problem of racism out of the individual heart and puts it out there somewhere in systems and structures.”
Such views from evangelicals laid the groundwork for the uproar over CRT in recent months.
Rhetoric aside, it’s worth noting what critical race theory actually is: a complex body of scholarship that reflects the efforts of legal scholars to analyze how race functions in American society. As legal scholars Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller and Kendall Thomas explain in their introduction to a key collection of writings on the topic, it explores “how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America.”
As a scholar of religious studies, I frequently use critical race theory as a tool to better understand how religion operates in American society. While critical race theorists initially focused on how race has been embedded in our legal system, the theory can also help us think about how race is entrenched in religious institutions.
It helps move beyond the idea of religion’s being primarily a matter of individual belief to seeing religious institutions and identities as shaped by larger social structures and movements.
In the U.S., race and religious institutions have been intertwined from the beginning. Early U.S. leaders used language that described a “true” American as essentially both white and Protestant. And many Protestant churches supported white supremacy through rhetoric from the pulpit, interpretations of the Bible and policies of segregation.
Critical race theory sheds light on the ways that religious institutions and rhetoric have helped justify and reinforce white supremacy.
And the Southern Baptist Conventions’s resolution against critical race theory is an example of this. Denying the existence of structural racism takes away the opportunity to assess its presence in education, housing, the legal system and religion. It also makes it harder to conceptualize new, more equitable policies.
As such, theological arguments rejecting critical race theory can reinforce white supremacy by refusing to acknowledge the role racism has played in U.S. institutions. It is much akin to the ways that proponents of “colorblind” approaches to racism, in which people claim not to see race, may unwittingly reinforce racism.
While some religious organizations may see critical race theory as incompatible with their ideology, the theory provides an important framework for analyzing the seen and unseen ways that race operates within all institutions and structures of American society – and that includes organized religions.
Tiffany Puett is an adjunct professor of Religious and Theological Studies at St. Edward’s University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Interesting article. It seems at least some white evangelical Christians are willing to admit racism is sinful, but refuse to acknowledge that sinful people can work together to create institutions designed to advance their sinfulness. How convenient.
Yes, I agree that we should work to change the hearts of each racist, but we should also recognize the damage past racism has created and do what we can to eliminate the structures used to advance that racism by the sinners. If we don’t we are endorsing the results of the very sin we seek to end.
CRT is schools would be more readily accepted, if only it was balanced by teaching many slaves led a pretty cushy lifestyle and wouldn’t have agreed to their freedom were it offered them.
The Southern Baptist Convention was literally founded on the principle of white supremacy. It’s why Southern Baptism exists.
That’s actually kinda bullsh-t, because it implies they see racism as a “problem” to begin with.
(Or, at least pink on non-pink racism.)
Never forget that “Christian values”, at least for GOP voters, doesn’t equate – as lazy pundits endlessly assert – to the simplistic idea of “anti-abortion” or even to anti-LGBT, anti-Islam, or anti-secular.
Even after Roe, evangelicals were largely apolitical. It wasn’t until the tax-exempt status of segregated religious schools vanished that they woke up to politics. (Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574.) Then, suddenly, the “Religious Right” and “Moral Majority” burst onto the scene.
There’s a reason 99% of “White evangelicals” opposed Trump’s impeachment – while 86% of “Black Protestants” disapproved of him. Racism was at the heart of the Megachurch-American love affair with Reagan, and it continues today as their increasingly-less-unspoken unifying principal.
“Essentially, evangelical morality sees social problems such as racism as the result of sinful individuals, not larger structures or institutions.”
I know we are on the same side here, but I don’t love how this is framed. It makes it sound as if evangelicals are in general in favor of viewing social problems as residing in individuals rather than larger structures—as if this were their overarching view. But this is not at all how they approach issues they actually care about. Is the supposed discrimination against Christians treated as sinful behavior by individuals? No! Here it is absolutely seen as systemic and only addressed by changing the laws. Likewise abortion is not treated as a matter of private sin.
The point is that the “argument” by evangelicals against CRT is thoroughly disingenuous. Whether most evangelicals actually view racism as a sin is unclear. What is clear though is that they are doing their best to cover their eyes and deny its existence.