On the OPC GA and Apologies

June 17, 2022 at 12:13 pm (Church, Racism)

The General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church recently concluded. No one could say it was uneventful. While I was not in attendance this year, an incident occurred that I believe needs some comment. Eastern University hosted the GA this year. Very near the beginning of GA, Eastern alerted the OPC to four alleged incidents of egregious racism. Two of them were by an OPC minister (I do not know who at this point, and it doesn’t really matter, anyway, in terms of what I wish to say), attempting to make jokes, and achieving what I would call “an unsuccessful attempt at humor.” The third incident, if it even happened at all, was not by an OPC delegate or member. The fourth incident was a misunderstanding in the cafeteria later cleared up, as I understand. This is what I understand second hand, let the readers be clear, and this evaluation of the four incidents was only possible later.

At the beginning, Eastern would only tell the OPC that there were these four incidents, and that if another such incident happened, EU would enforce its zero tolerance policy (which would have the effect of nullifying the contract). Eastern conducted no thorough investigation before the communication that was read on the floor. The OPC’s reply was an immediate statement:

“The 88th (2022) General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church hereby expresses to the faculty, staff, and students of Eastern University its grief, sorrow, and disgust regarding four recent incidents of racial disparagement reported being made by some present at our Assembly. There is no place in the church for such conduct. The church seeks to magnify and honor Christ as the Creator of every human being, each one reflecting dignity and value as the image of God. Therefore, in accordance with God’s Word and the two great laws of love, we repudiate and condemn all sins of racism, hatred, and prejudice, as transgressions against our Holy God, who calls us to love and honor all people. In keeping with the law of God and the right order of the church for Christ’s honor, we resolve to deal directly and biblically with any such sins of hatred committed by members of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In keeping with the gospel, we resolve to offer our assistance to Eastern University to confront offender(s) and seek reconciliation.”

As I understand it, no amendment was effectively allowed to occur, and very little time allowed to dissent or object. This “apology” (I put this in quotation marks since, as I understand it, the intent was not an apology, though it seems to have been interpreted as one by EU) was issued on the basis of witnesses, but not a thorough investigation to examine whether there might have been mitigating circumstances, or whether the alleged offences amounted to what Eastern thought they did. As it turned out (from where I sit, admittedly looking at this from a distance), there was little to apologize for in the end. The most egregious was the third, which was not committed by an OPC member/delegate at all. The first sentence is one I still regard as problematic, even though my understanding of what was meant has been tweaked by people in the know. The “disgust” of the first sentence is at the sins reported, and is not meant to imply that the alleged offender was automatically guilty. While this is the intended meaning, it could easily be interpreted as an actual apology. It seems to have been so interpreted by EU, which pronounced the matter as closed upon receiving this communication. This whole situation raises some very important questions in my mind.

Why did we make an apologetic sounding statement before conducting a thorough investigation? Why did Eastern University shoot first and ask questions later? While I am told they cooperated with the OPC in a cordial fashion afterwards, why the ultimatum at all? The ultimatum makes it sound as though they already believed the initial reports. The statement of the OPC (which kinda sorta looks like an apology, or at least has an apologetic tone to it) in its effect, is easily misunderstood. I am getting lots of different reactions as to what it means already. Why was no amendment effectively allowed to the apology? Why was pressure exerted to pass this “apology” with no dissent? The whole thing was rushed in its adoption. Apparently, the “apology” was enough for Eastern, and they thought the matter closed. Why, when no thorough investigation had been done up to that point? From where I am looking, there were no incidents of egregious intentional racism, only misunderstanding, and possibly lack of wisdom, certainly not intentional racism. At the very least, it seems clear that the OPC GA should not be held at Eastern University again, if “guilty until proven innocent” is going to be their mindset.

UPDATE: I am getting lots of valuable feedback from members of the GA who were present, and they are refining my understanding of what went on. I have already updated the post twice, and I expect to update it more to achieve greater accuracy. There are many different perspectives already on what went on that I have heard, many of them contradictory of each other. It will probably take some time before a final understanding of what happened is actually possible.

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The OPC, GRACE, Diane Langberg, and Critical Theory

April 29, 2022 at 4:21 pm (Bible, Culture, Feminism, Racism, Uncategorized)

Part 2: Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Power and Critical Theory, by Rev. Michael Grasso

In part 1 we looked at Critical Theory and saw that it is rooted in (neo)-Marxism and postmodernism.  With this overview in mind, it will be helpful to see the way in which Langberg’s book on abuse fits into the framework of Critical Theory.  In Redeeming Power Langberg attempts to show the roots of abuse by explaining the way power is abused in order to hurt the vulnerable.  This part of the articles is highly critical, but this does not mean there is nothing of value in Langberg’s book.  She has much experience working with abuse victims, and there are positive things that can be gleaned from her writings.  Her perspective, however, ultimately is in line with Critical Theory and therefore is dangerous.

Intersectionality

Langberg adopts the basic framework of Critical Theory in her repeated use of intersectional categories, adding one’s church and theology to the list typically used by Critical Theorists.  She writes:

  • “We believe our denomination or our church has the only correct doctrine. We believe our race is superior and needs to be protected above others at all costs.”[1]
  • “We believe only one gender, one race, one group is capable of holding power.”[2]
  • “We follow the One who said, ‘I am . . . the truth’ (John 14:6 ESV)—not I will show you the truth; not if you memorize these things , you will have the truth; not if you are in the right church, race, or nation, you will know the truth.”[3]
  • “We are not seeking pure theology, a pure race, or an appearance of purity. The only purity we seek is that of having a heart governed by the Lord Christ.”[4]
  • “Have we, children of the Most High God, sorted precious humans by earthly categories of politics, economics, race, gender, religion, denomination, education, employment, or citizenship? Have we created divisions as we reductively use such categories to separate, dismiss, and condemn the other? ‘We’ are this; ‘they’ are that.”[5]
  • “And our Head, in his love for humanity, broke down every barrier, including the barriers of race, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, and morality.”[6]

The assumption in all of these quotations is that viewing people intersectionally is the standard position of the church and the reason why abuse happens.  Abuse is produced by intersectional realities and oppression.  Fighting against abuse in the church means opposing the idea that one gender, race, group, even religion is better than another.  There are two potential meanings of these quotes.  First, if what is meant is simply that the church should not see through the lens of intersectionality, these quotes would not be a problem.  If, however, what is meant is that the church’s problem is not the use of intersectionality but rather that it has focused on the wrong classes, i.e., the church has favored the oppressing class rather than the oppressed class, then Langberg is making use of the framework for Critical Theory. 

Langberg, unfortunately, means the latter as will be shown.  One element of Critical Theory is that there is an assumption that those in power are guilty of making use of intersectionality in the ways Langberg describes.  This is to grant a major premise of the Marxist system of Critical Theory.  If the problem is defined in accordance with Critical Theory, that is, the church has sought to elevate one race, gender, group above another, then the solutions sought must be along the lines of Critical Theory as well.

This is not to say that the church could never be guilty of preferring one group over another.  This, of course, is possible, but it needs to be proved with concrete examples that do not make use of a Marxist/postmodern framework.  Langberg’s understanding of the corruption of systems of power, however, is exactly in line with Critical Theory where the assumption is that those in power also see themselves through intersectional lenses.  One application of intersectional thinking to Critical Theory used consistently throughout the book is feminism.

Feminism

Langberg defines abuse along intersectional lines for more than just gender.  She adopts the basic framework of Critical Race Theory in her discussion of race in chapter 8, but the most consistent and adamant intersectional category Langberg appeals to is gender.  Critical Theory applied to gender manifests itself in feminism.  This can be seen in a number of ways in Langberg’s writing, particularly as she tries to deny the biblical position of male headship, reinterpreting it in a radical egalitarian way.  First, she uses Genesis 1:26-27 to argue that men are not to rule over women:

““What did God tell them to rule over? Over the fish, the birds, the cattle, the whole earth, and every creeping thing. Note the stunning omission in God’s directive: nowhere does he call humans to rule over each other! The man is not told to rule over the woman; neither is the woman to rule over the man. They are to rule together, in a duet, over all else God has created.”[7]

For Langberg this implies that men and women are equal in authority.  This exegesis fails as it is based on the logical fallacies of a negative inference and an argument from silence.[8]

Second, she argues that Genesis 3:16 teaches that male headship is a result of the fall and therefore not a part of God’s original creation.  This is a classic feminist argument used to oppose male headship.[9]  She writes,

“Deceived by God’s archenemy, they acted outside the realm of God, and life was forever changed. In response, God spoke with them about the outcome of their choice. To Eve, he said in part, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (3:16 NIV). We have lost sight of the fact that this is part of what we call the curse. This is not instruction for the man. It is a consequence of wrong and sinful choices.”[10]

Such exegesis flies in the face of 1 Timothy 2:12-14 and 1 Corinthians 11:2-12 where Paul clearly grounds male headship in creation, not the fall.

Third, she argues that Christ came to serve, not to rule, and he is the model of all headship.  She writes,

“To be a head means to turn the curse upside down, not to rule over others. The Son of Man did not rule, though his disciples longed for him to do so.”[12]  These arguments misunderstand Christ’s statements.  He exercised his headship by serving others, but he still maintained that headship and authority throughout.  Christ’s statements give insight into how men in proper contexts (e.g. marriage) are to use authority, not whether or not they have it.  In an effort to deny male headship her misunderstanding leads to the strange statement that Christ “did not rule”.  Surely one of the most basic elements of the Christian confession is that Christ is our King and he has all authority (cf. Matt. 28:18-20).  Langberg admits this in other places but denies it in this context inconsistently to make room for a feminist conclusion regarding headship. 

Her position becomes clear when she writes, “Yes, pastors and elders have authority over the sheep. Husbands and wives have power over each other.”[13]  This is immediately followed by a false dichotomy created between love and authority, implying that if a relationship has an authority structure there can be no love.  That this is a false dichotomy can be seen in one’s relationship to Christ, which is one where there is both authority and love.

For Langberg, the traditional and biblical view of gender is the cause of some of the abuse in the world and in the church.  She writes,

“Abuse of power is a cancer in the body of Christ. How Christendom uses terminology regarding gender is sometimes an aspect of the disease. We need to let the light of a holy God expose us and our systems… We simply keep repeating theological words almost like a mantra: leader, head, submission, authority, God ordained . We need to drag into the light those things we cover with familiar and good words and test them to see whether our labels and our applications are of God. Many are not.”[14]

Again she writes, “Sadly, authoritarian treatment of females (and all church members) is often supported using the concept of headship.”[15]  The question, however, is this: Does abuse of authority invalidate its proper use? Do examples of people abusing headship mean that headship as a whole must go?  This is one of the strategies used in Critical Theory to undermine authority.  Abuse of authority in some situations means the entire system must go.  The traditional view of gender, however, rooted in Scripture, was given by God for the good of both men and women.

Truth Dependent on One’s Intersectional Class

Langberg undermines the traditional view of gender and more particularly femininity, not on the basis of Scripture, but on the basis of intersectional perspective: “Much has been said throughout the centuries about what it means to be female. Men have said most of it. Women have been labeled the weaker sex, the second sex, the subordinate sex, and the devil’s gateway.”[16]  Not all of these titles are the same, but the first is the clear teaching of 1 Peter 3:7.  The thing important to see for the purposes of this article is that the gender of those who taught on the differences between men and women is significant for determining whether or not it is true.  Note: “Men have said most of it…”  This is a very clear example of a postmodern view of epistemology.  There is a prejudice against the perspective of men as they speak to the nature of women. 

Langberg’s prejudice against men’s speech (the oppressing class) is matched by her deference to women (the oppressed class) when determining truth.  She recounts the early days of her career when she dealt with women who came to her with stories of abuse.  She writes,

“Women asked to see me because I was female, not because I knew anything. I was twenty-three. I listened, asked questions, and told them honestly that I knew nothing and would have to be their student first. I was told by male supervisors not to believe their hysterical stories and lies about “good” men. I chose to listen to the women rather than to my supervisors.”[17]

Note the emphasis on the gender of supervisors as well as that of the abused.[18]  Her choice to believe was greatly affected by the gender of those she interacted with.  This is the hallmark of postmodernism and intersectionality.  There is a “truth” specific to a class.  When the “oppressed class” receives automatic deference because of intersectional identity, this moves into the realm of Critical Theory.  There is an abiding, deep mistrust of “systems of power” ruled by men.  Against this postmodern view of truth, however, the only criteria that should be considered when there are competing stories in a purported abuse situation is the truth.  This will mean believing men sometimes and women sometimes but never because of their gender.

This feminist postmodern framework undermines the authority of Scripture and all ecclesiastical authority.  Langberg’s statement concerning what men have said in the past about women opens the door for questioning the Bible, as it was also written by men.  If Langberg does not like that men have historically called women “the weaker sex”, will she take issue with the Apostle Peter (cf. 1 Pet. 3:7)?  This has always been the logic used by radical feminists to cast off the authority of the Bible going back to the 19th century.  Davies notes that first wave feminists complained about “male interpretations” of the Bible.  This produced a “vicious cycle” wherein subordinated women were unable to engage in theology established by men which taught women were to be subordinated.[19]  According to Davies, in light of this, Elizabeth Cady Stanton “claimed that the Bible, owing to its profound religious and cultural authority, had been instrumental over the centuries in establishing and consolidating patriarchal exercise of power and in denying women some of their basic rights and freedom.”[20]  The result was the dismissal of the Bible.

This view presents a problem for all biblically based ecclesiastical authority as well.  The reality is the teachings of the Scriptures on the nature of men and women will always be said “mostly by men” because men are the only ones who can have ordained teaching positions in the church.  The only way to rectify the situation would be to do away with male only ordination.

Langberg’s postmodern epistemology goes beyond feminism.  She makes the same moves with regard to race/ethnicity:

“We tend not to even see how culture has shaped us. Many years ago, I heard a white pastor speak about a meeting he had with an African American pastor who told him, ‘You white folks don’t even know you have a culture. You think your way is simply right and the rest of us have cultures.’ That observation exposes both the blindness and the arrogance of a dominant culture.”[21]

To keep this article from reaching a tedious length, her view on race will not be expounded further.  The same general features regarding feminism can be applied to race, making her view consistent with Critical Race Theory.  Note that modern feminism and Critical Race Theory are manifestations of the same Critical Theory applied to different intersectional categories.  Advocates of Critical Race Theory openly admit this connection: “As the reader will see critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt.”[22]

All of this is highly problematic and shows that Diane Langberg’s general framework is postmodern and embraces Critical Theory, especially as it is expressed in feminism.  Part 3 will continue the critique of her working focusing on the implications for the church.

                [1] Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020), 37.

                [2] Ibid.

                [3] Ibid, 41.

                [4] Ibid, 42.

                [5] Ibid, 55.

                [6] Ibid, 156.

                [7] Ibid, 5.

                [8] A negative inference is where positive examples of a thing are put forward and these examples are used to prove that a negative is true.  An example that Carson gives in his Exegetical Fallacies (101ff) is “All Jews like Moses”, “a certain person is not a Jew”, therefore “that person does not like Moses”.  The problem is that other kinds of people besides Jews could like Moses, i.e., Christians.  So here: males and females rule over all creation (positive), a woman is not part of the creation being ruled in Genesis 1 (negative), therefore there is no hierarchy of authority between the males and females (negative). 

                [9] Cf. the CEB’s statement on “Defining Biblical Gender Equality”, point 5 under Creation: “The Bible teaches that the rulership of Adam over Eve resulted from the Fall and was therefore not a part of the original created order.”  For an exegetical discussion of the passage as it relates to feminism and egalitarianism, see Zachary Garris, Masculine Christianity (Ann Arbor, MI: Zion Press, 2020), 120ff, where he interacts with Davidson.  See also  Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., “Male-Female Equality and Male Headship: Genesis 1–3,” in Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 110ff where he interacts with Bilezikian.

                [10] Ibid, 102-3.

                [11] Ibid, 103.

                [12] Ibid, 104.

                [13] Ibid, 179.

                [14] Ibid, 93-4.

                [15] Ibid, 103.

                [16] Ibid, 95-6.

                [17] Ibid, 92.

                [18] My point is not to say that a woman should never seek counsel from another woman.  It is simply that the gender of the supervisors and the gender of the abused are factored into one’s view of truth.

                [19] Eryl W. Davies, Biblical Criticism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Guides for the perplexed (London ; New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 37-8.

                [20] Ibid, 38.

                [21] Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power, 46.

                [22] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, 3rd ed. (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 5.

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The OPC, GRACE, Diane Langberg, and Critical Theory, Part 1: Critical Theory

February 18, 2022 at 10:37 am (Anthropology, Feminism, Racism)

Guest Post By Michael Grasso

Should the OPC hire GRACE to investigate potential instances of abuse in its churches?  This question came before the 87th General Assembly (GA) in the form of a motion to add a docket item called “Ministering to victims of abuse”.[1]  The motion needed a 2/3 majority to be added to the docket, and it failed to reach this threshold.  This motion did not come in a vacuum.  Aimee Byrd had called on the OPC to hire this organization on April 5, 2021.[2]  Following the GA’s decision not to take up the question of hiring GRACE, Aimee Byrd publicly condemned the decision of the GA in two blog posts on July 21[3] and 26[4] respectively.  A few months after GA, on October 8-9, the Presbytery of Philadelphia hosted a fall conference on the subject of spiritual abuse with Diane Langberg as the speaker.  Diane Langberg is the author of Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the church and is a former board member of GRACE.  The connection between the conference and the motion brought before the GA was made explicit by the bringer of the motion, Larry Westerveld, whose church hosted the fall conference.[5]  It seems clear from these actions that one of the goals of the conference was to move the denomination in the direction of hiring GRACE at a future GA.

While abuse is something the church must always take seriously, the thesis of these articles is that hiring GRACE would be a mistake, that the ideology driving all of these actions is Critical Theory, and that embracing this ideology, exemplified in Langberg’s book Redeeming Power, would not help abuse victims but remove God-ordained protections for them as well as move the church towards a new form of liberalism.  This will come in four parts.  In the first part I will give an overview of Critical Theory.  In the second and third parts I will review Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church to show the connection with Critical Theory.  Then in the last part, I will try to draw some connections between this ideology and the move to hire GRACE.

Critical Theory

Critical Theory is the ideology of the Frankfurt School established in the 20th century.  Corradetti gives a succinct history:

The Frankfurt School, known more appropriately as Critical Theory, is a philosophical and sociological movement spread across many universities around the world. It was originally located at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), an attached institute at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. The Institute was founded in 1923 thanks to a donation by Felix Weil with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany.[6]

Critical Theory is a Marxist ideology that makes use of Conflict Theory, a theory that separates people into two classes (oppressors and oppressed) and seeks to explain the problems of society in light of the systems controlled by the oppressors.  Critical Theory is called “critical” in the sense of being critical of existing authority structures. Pluckrose and Lindsay define Critical Theory as a theory that is “…chiefly concerned with revealing hidden biases and underexamined assumptions, usually by pointing out what have been termed ‘problematics,’ which are ways in which society and the systems that it operates upon are going wrong.”[7]

What is distinctive about Critical Theory is its expansion of Conflict Theory into other areas of life.  Marx applied conflict theory to class divisions.  Critical theorists apply the distinction to areas such as race, gender, and sexuality.  This broader application of Marx’s Conflict Theory is known as “cultural Marxism”.[8]  Critical Theory applied to race is Critical Race Theory, which posits “systemic racism” on the basis of “implicit bias”.  When applied to gender, Critical Theory manifests itself as feminism.  When applied to sexuality, it is the LGBTQ movement.  In each case the “oppressed class” (blacks, women, homosexuals) are abused by the system of power held by the “oppressing class” (whites, men, heterosexuals).  In popular thought, these movements are expressed under the name “Social Justice Movement”.  One who adheres to the movement is “woke”, that is, he has been awakened to the realities of systemic injustice understood on the basis of these categories, or intersectionalities.

There are three distinctive things that bind these movements together under the heading of Critical Theory: First, extreme skepticism about the use of authority, that is, the systems of power are corrupted and cannot be trusted; second, a Marxist view of oppression or abuse, often combining real forms of oppression with those that are unfalsifiable; and third, intersectionality, i.e., the process of dividing people on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, etc.  Intersectionality leads to seeing one’s intersectional identity, one’s relationship to the group, as the most significant thing about a person.  If a person is a woman, then she is automatically in an oppressed class even if wealthy, in a position of prestige, etc.  In this scheme a person’s success or failure in the world is determined not by individual choices, but by one’s adherence to a particular group. 

The concept of intersectionality also bears an important relationship to postmodernism.  In postmodern thought objective truth is impossible to attain.  It is a reaction to modernist thought which claimed that a person could reach objective truth by being detached and unbiased.  When people became disillusioned with the possibility of being detached and unbiased in the way Modernists claimed, the result was a denial of objective truth.  If objective truth depends on being “unbiased”, then it is impossible to attain because everyone has some sort of perspective that “colors” one’s view of a thing.  Schüssler-Fiorenza, a postmodern feminist, explains this posture: “This modern posture of value-detached inquiry in the interest of pure reason and its claims to universality has been thoroughly challenged by diverse (post)modern discourses such as philosophical hermeneutics, the sociology of knowledge, ideology critique, and Critical Theory.”[9]

Doing away with objective truth does not mean that truth of every kind is gone for postmodernists.  It means that objective truth is replaced by truth as it is received by a community.  Grenz notes, “The conviction that each person is embedded in a particular human community leads to a corporate understanding of truth.”[10]  This fits very well with the idea of intersectionality and makes the truth claims of the oppressed class unassailable by definition.  If those in the oppressed class feel oppressed, then this is truth for them and no data or objective reasoning can be brought to bear to show that they are not oppressed.  In fact, in postmodern thought, to try to do so is a form of oppression.  It is nothing more than the oppressing class imposing its biased view on the oppressed class.  This is why today on the issue of abortion, the pro-abortion side demands that women, not men, make the decision.  If a woman determines that an abortion is the correct decision for her, this is the truth for the oppressed class of women that must be defended in order to protect women from the oppression of men.  A man telling a woman that abortion is wrong is a form of oppression since his view is just as biased as hers.

The view of oppression is distinctive for another reason.  In Critical Theory the oppression is seen, not on an individual level, but on a societal level.  Oppression further becomes anything that promotes inequality of outcome.  Beisner links this view of equality to the French Revolution and notes the common slogan of the day: “Not only equality of right, but equality of fact, is the goal of the socialist art.”[11]  In this view equality as an outcome, i.e., “fact”, not equality in the sense of a person’s “rights”, is true justice.  The problem is that this form of justice is contrary to biblical justice and requires a perversion of justice to implement.  Justice in biblical terms entails giving to each person his due according to what he has done.[12]  Equality of outcome means giving the same to every person regardless of what he has done.

The promotion of this form of justice comes with a deceptive trick.  Very real examples of oppression and abuse are put forward, but then abuse and oppression are defined so broadly that many other things can be lumped into the category of abuse or oppression that are quite different. 

An example from Critical Race Theory may illustrate this point.  Slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow laws are defined as racist; however, racism is more than these.  It is any systemic injustice that keeps black people down.  Further, these systemic injustices may be invisible.  They may be implicit, unconscious biases of people who do not even know that they are racist or have not done a racist thing.  If a person does not stand with Black Lives Matter, even though its stated goals are neo-Marxist, anti-family, and anti-Christian, then a person is guilty of the same kind of racism that produced slavery, lynchings, etc.  One is a racist if one does not stand with the oppressed class in the neo-Marxist sense.

The purpose of this article is not to suggest that everyone who advocates for hiring GRACE is guilty of adopting Critical Theory in its entirety.  It is to suggest that this is the ideology that undergirds the mistrust in the authority structures of the OPC and that hiring GRACE would give a foothold to this ideology.  It is also to suggest that the view of “abuse” is taken from Marx’s Conflict Theory expressed in the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory.  It ought to be noted further that this ideology is very popular today even if many do not understand where it comes from.  For many, it is the air they breathe and the position accepted uncritically. 

This is one of the great dangers of the Social Justice Movement.  Ideas like “abuse” or “racism” or “oppression” are used to garner support.  Who does not want to oppose racism?  Who does not want to take down all oppression?  It is easy to sell ideas about liberation from oppression generally, but what is meant by “oppression” and “liberation” has been given Marxist content in the Social Justice Movement.  The goal of these articles is to draw out these connections so that the Scriptures might be applied faithfully to the situation.  In part 2 we will look at Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Love to see how it related to Critical Theory.

                [1] Minutes of the Eighty-Seventh General Assembly, July 7-13, 2021, item 214, The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Pennsylvania , USA.

                [2] Aimee Byrd, “An Open Letter to the OPC on Abuse,” Aimee Byrd, April, 5, 2021, https://aimeebyrd.com/2021/04/05/an-open-letter-to-the-opc-on-abuse/

                [3] Aimee Byrd, “Reflections on the OPC GA Meeting: Part 1, The Purpose of Church Order and the Vote on G.R.A.C.E.,” Aimee Byrd, July 21, 2021, https://aimeebyrd.com/2021/07/21/reflections-on-the-opc-ga-meeting-part-one-the-purpose-of-church-order-and-the-vote-on-g-r-a-c-e/

                [4] Aimee Byrd, “Reflections on the OP General Assembly, Part 2: Trauma-Informed Ministry and a Traumatizing Process,” Aimee Byrd, July 26, 2021, https://aimeebyrd.com/2021/07/26/reflections-on-the-op-general-assembly-part-2-trauma-informed-ministry-and-a-traumatizing-process/

                [5] Westerveld opened the conference by saying, “And you may have also heard that an attempt was made to engage the services of a third party, an independent party to help us in our diagnoses and so on.  That had very little traction.  What is less known, perhaps, is that another motion was made simply to add to our docket a chance to discuss ministry to abuse, victims of abuse, and that also failed, sadly, but the presbytery of Philadelphia believes these are discussions worth having… So we approved the planning and hosting of this conference for your benefit and the benefit of the whole church.”

                [6] Claudio Corradetti, “The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d., https://iep.utm.edu/frankfur/#H2.

                [7] Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity-and Why This Harms Everybody, First Edition (Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 13-4.

                [8] Scott David Allen, Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice: An Urgent Appeal to Fellow Christians in a Time of Social Crisis (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Credo House Publishers, 2020), 51-2.

                [9] Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, “The Ethos of Interpretation: Biblical Studies in a Postmodern and Postcolonial Context,” in Theological Literacy for the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 212.

                [10] Stanley J. Grenz, A Primer on Postmodernism (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1996), 14.

                [11] E. Calvin Beisner, Prosperity and Poverty: The Compassionate Use of Resources in a World of Scarcity (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001), 54.

                [12] Cf. Rom. 2:5-6.

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One Race or Many? A Note on Acts 17:26

June 24, 2020 at 2:40 pm (Acts, Anthropology, Racism)

Posted by R. Fowler White

In Luke’s record of Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus in Acts 17:22-34, we read that God “made from one man every nation of mankind” (Acts 17:26). From this passage and our current historical and socio-cultural context, some are drawing various inferences about the Bible’s use of the term race. For the purposes of this post, three points stand out to me.

First, in discussions about the term race and the Bible, the term itself is usually not defined, but, as talking and writing continue, it becomes reasonably clear from the term’s usage that it refers to distinct groupings of human beings based on inherited physical and behavioral differences, with those differences sometimes extending to include language, religion, or nationality. Turning to a Bible concordance, however, it doesn’t take long to realize that the Bible doesn’t use race in quite the way we do. That observation leads us to our next point.

Second, these days, some folks claim that the Bible speaks only about “the human race.” The Bible, however, does express the concept of “races” in its references to various subgroups (otherwise known as nations, peoples) descended from a common ancestor within the human race. Right there, in the trait of “descent from a common ancestor,” the Bible sharpens our understanding of the term races. What I mean is this: at the least, we have to acknowledge that God’s covenant-making acts with Abraham and his descendants created and preserved a specific group of descendants from Abraham through Jacob for His divine purpose (see, for example, Ezra 9:2; Acts 7:19; compare Rom 9:5; 11:14). Though God’s acts were certainly not motivated by any superiority of those particular Abrahamites, His acts did make Israel, as descendants from Abraham through Jacob, a race distinct from other races, such as those descended from Noah’s sons, from Lot, or from others (e.g., Mark 7:26). Of course, Bible believers who claim that it speaks only about “the human race” are trying to make the good point that, despite our ancestral differences, we are also united in the first man Adam. Still, it seems to me that denials that the Bible speaks of “races” amount to word games that don’t help us reach a common mind with others. We do better just to say what we mean: God our Creator made us all from one man, just as Paul said at the Areopagus.

Third, perhaps you’ve heard, as I have, the suggestion, implied or expressed, that the Jew/Gentile distinction in Scripture is an example of racism. Some would cite the narrative in Acts 10 to make their point. There, God met Peter with his (holy) desire to obey the (holy) laws of separation that He had formerly but temporarily established between Jews and Gentiles. In that teachable moment, God re-educated Peter as to how in Christ He had abolished those laws and had expanded the reach of the apostolic mission to include the formerly unclean Gentiles. Now it’s reasonable to imagine or infer that the corruption of the fallen human heart would have led some to interpret God’s laws in racist terms. My point, however, is that the Jew/Gentile distinction itself was not an example of racism, for it was God Himself, with whom there is no partiality (Acts 10:34-35), who had set up the distinction between the one holy race and the many other unholy races in the first place. Attempts, then, to find a modern parallel to racism in the distinction that God made between Jews and Gentiles are misguided and at odds with the teaching of Acts 10 and the rest of the Bible. In that light, we should reserve the “racist” label for corrupt interpretations of that distinction, born in the unholy phobias and prejudices of us sinners.

Well-intentioned but misinformed efforts to address racism from the Bible remind us how important “the whole counsel of God” is both to right interpretation and to right application of individual texts of Scripture. In our striving against injustice, let’s be sure to build parallels and lessons from the Bible to our day on the foundation of that counsel.

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Critical Race Theory

June 24, 2020 at 12:21 pm (Racism)

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is something Christians are now starting to hear about (read: getting it stuffed down their throats at Mach 5). CRT is generally understood as the foundation for people’s understanding of “systemic racism.” To put it simply, CRT believes that “the system” is rigged in favor of white people. As Roy Brooks puts it (“Critical Race Theory: A Proposed Structure and Application to Federal Pleading”. Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal 11 (1994): 85ff.): “The question always lurking in the background of CRT is this: What would the legal landscape look like today if people of color were the decision-makers?” CRT is therefore primarily about power, as it is perceived to be unequally distributed. There is a lot more to CRT than that, but this is enough to be getting on with.

I read Bill Smith’s very interesting article on the subject this morning. Though I would have significant theological differences with Bill Smith in other areas of theology, I am in complete agreement with him on his analysis of CRT, and I want to highlight a couple of things he brings out. Firstly, it seems to me that CRT denies the possibility of change on the part of either blacks or whites. Not even God can change racism in a white person, according to CRT. No amount of apology or grovelling will suffice to make a white person woke enough to escape the racism that is endemic to his whiteness. Not even the gospel can bring forgiveness for this offence. This makes the inherent racism of white people worse than original sin, since original sin can be forgiven in the blood of Christ’s atonement. In fact, it makes racism an unforgivable sin period. I could be wrong, but I thought there was only one unforgivable sin, and that it had something to do with blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and not racism.

Secondly, the ethnic uniformity of whites, and of blacks, is emphasized in CRT to the exclusion of all individuality whatsoever. All blacks are oppressed. All whites are oppressors. This makes both groups incapable of moral agency, as Smith points out. Smith goes on to note that if moral agency is thus denied to blacks and whites, then so is the image of God denied to them. CRT thus dehumanizes both whites and blacks, contrary to the narrative of Scripture.

Lastly, and building on what I said above about power, it becomes obvious why statues of Ulysses Grant (a thorough abolitionist and friend to black people) are being torn down. All white power structures must go, even those which are historically kind to black people. According to CRT, justice will not be achieved until blacks have all the power, all the current systems are thrown down, and completely new ones put in their place by blacks in power. Only then will systemic justice be achieved (though see below). But this is to put one’s faith in princes. Justice is no longer in the hands of God at this point. It is in the change of power from whites to blacks. It can be questioned whether a simple power transfer would even be enough. I ask this question: will the payback (read revenge) be eternal? Blacks will, I think, find themselves in the position of Edmond Dantes, finding out, at the end, that revenge always goes too far.

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A Further Thought on Racism

June 21, 2020 at 8:57 am (Racism)

I have been told to my face that I am a racist because I am white. Let’s break down that claim a bit. The usual baggage that goes along with this claim is that whiteness is part and parcel of “systemic racism.” Therefore I am racist because I have benefited from a white-favorable system. I don’t agree with this idea. The point I want to get at goes deeper, though, and that is the fact that I cannot choose my whiteness. I have the skin I was born with. So the claim that I am racist because I am white is really a claim that I am racist by default. It is programmed into me, as it were. My DNA is racist. I can’t help but be racist. I couldn’t be anything other than racist.

Here is the problem. These people who claim that I am racist because I am white will turn around and say in the next breath that homosexuality and transgenderism are also things that are in the DNA, and that a person is one of those things, not by choice, but by a predetermined DNA. So, we are supposed to accept and not blame a predetermined outcome in the case of LGBTQ folks, but we can blame people who are predetermined to be white and therefore racist. So why is it that the LGBTQ community can excuse their behavior on the basis of inevitability, but alleged racists, who are also supposedly inevitable in their behavior, are blamed and hated?

Most of the CRT folks using the argument about racism discussed above won’t bring in original sin as part of the discussion. However, in a Reformed context, we cannot avoid it. Theoretically, a Reformed version of CRT could argue that both LGBTQ behavior and the automatic racism of white people comes from original sin, which is something God can save us from. However, this won’t completely work, either, at least not in the case of the alleged racists. Why are only white people afflicted with this aspect of original sin? This gets at another important point debated in the literature: whether black people are capable of racism or not. I have talked to black people on both side of that question. It depends, of course, on how one defines racism. If it is a disparagement of someone from another ethnic background because of their ethnic difference, then there is no reason to suppose that black people are incapable of racism. This is not a politically correct opinion, however, on the definition of racism. The CRT folk define racism in such a way that black people are incapable of it. So, if we go back to the original sin discussion for a second, we will quickly realize that it makes no sense at all to claim that a segment of the world’s population (the white segment) has a version of original sin that no one else has, because of their ethnic background! It sounds an awful lot like the first definition of racism to suppose that white people have a different version of original sin than anyone else does.

Of course, this is all so much logic-chopping to the vast majority of today’s CRT folks. Logic shouldn’t enter the equation, they say. Rather, it is sensitivity to other people’s feelings. I would respond by saying that sensitivity to other people’s feelings is a good thing, but it doesn’t have to be set over against logic. We can still try to be consistent. But logic is inescapable, too. They are, in effect, saying that it isn’t logical to use logic, and that we should logically use sensitivity, because it makes more sense to do so. Logic does seem to emerge, doesn’t it?

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Covington High School Situation, a Few Thoughts

January 24, 2019 at 8:55 am (Culture, Hermeneutics, Racism)

The most ridiculous news story I have seen in a while took place over last weekend. It was ridiculous because it really shouldn’t have even been a story. No one got hurt, only words were exchanged. That didn’t stop the main-stream media (hereinafter MSM) from blowing the story so out of proportion that Salvator Dali would have to bow in defeat.

I have some thoughts. Firstly, MSM is completely and utterly incapable of telling unbiased news. Conservatives have known this for a long time. MSM allowed prejudice to blind them to the fundamental fact of interpretation: context is king. Context makes things more complex than first glances can fathom. MSM reporters are obviously either not being trained in elementary interpretation, or they are forgetting what they were taught. It doesn’t matter at this point whether the boys were perfect in their behavior. They almost certainly were not. Why, however, are the MSM and all those spewing out hate speech against these boys forgetting that these are teenage boys? Considering the fact that a hate group was spewing out filth against them, I thought they behaved with rather admirable restraint. When I was a teenager I had all the emotional empathy of a wooden block. While these boys may not have done the most admirable thing (but what would that have been, do pray tell?), they certainly did nothing worthy of the hate speech that has been spewed against them by intolerant, prejudiced MSM and others. If we were in the position of the boys, what would we have done? The boys couldn’t flee, since they were waiting for a bus. They didn’t want to hear the hate speech, so they started chanting their school song. They made no moves of physical aggression against anyone. All in all, pretty good discipline for teenage boys! Maybe one or two of them committed a micro-aggression. Why is that worse than what some of the people in the video were doing to them?

The MSM have forgotten (for a long time now) that there is always more than one side to a story. Since conservatives are no longer human, no longer to be given the benefit of human treatment, the conservative side of any story is ignored in the MSM. I don’t care about the MSM. I haven’t watched it in years. But I do care about the boys at Covington. And I do care about civil discourse in the nation. And the MSM still have the power to ruin people’s lives because they simply don’t care. More than that, they are guilty of far more hatred than Covington High School boys are.

I pity the MSM, actually. As the saying goes, there is no one so blind but the blind person who thinks he sees. And if there is any group of people who thinks it sees today, that group is MSM. If there is any group that simply does not see how much it is contributing to the hate in America, it is the MSM.

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A Guest Post on Racism

June 21, 2016 at 11:37 pm (Racism)

It is fascinating to me to hear the vastly different perspectives even of non-racist people, which ranges from outrage at the passing of Overture 43 as amended (the outrage is thoroughly non-racist), to folks who think we probably haven’t gone far enough. Here is a voice definitely in between these relatively extreme positions.

A Guest Post from Rev. Billy Boyce

Considerations Regarding Racial Reconciliation

As the PCA takes up the discussion about racial reconciliation this week at General Assembly, the ultimate path to finding accord and compromise is sure to come through personal interaction rather than Internet publication. Nonetheless, I wanted to offer a few brief considerations in response to some more recent posts and comments on the subject. I’m grateful to Lane for sharing his space with me and for the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion within our denomination.
Given limited time and space, I offer here three considerations for those voting this week at GA:

Consideration #1: The Insufficiency of Institutional Documents

It has been frequently observed that the PCA expressly desired to include all races and ethnicities in worship, as indicated by the founders of the denomination, something we should all applaud. Also, a number of further institutional documents address racial reconciliation and repentance for past sins. According to the institutional record, the PCA looks pretty good regarding racial reconciliation. However, these institutional documents alone are insufficient for judging the record of our denomination. It is true that our institution has expressed the desire to grow in racial and ethnic pluriformity. At the same time, our institution has not lived up to that desire, but has had barriers to the welcoming of others. The documents themselves are insufficient for weighing the existence and effect of these barriers; personal testimony is needed to flesh out the record. Channeling Martin Luther King, Jr., we need to “be true to what [we] said on paper.”

Consideration #2: The Weight of Personal Testimony and Community Witness
If institutional documents are not enough to assess institutional health, we need to listen to personal testimony. Yet, these testimonies are sometimes disregarded as being merely anecdotal. It is important to state here that there are two types of personal testimony. There is the type of testimony that only represents the individual witness; these testimonies are not enough to develop precedent. However, a second type of testimony exists whereby the witness’s testimony expresses both the individual’s experiences and gives a glimpse into the experiences of a community. These testimonies represent a community of witness and bear much more gravity than mere personal stories. It behooves listeners to discern which type of testimony is offered, and in the case of the PCA’s history of racial reconciliation, the multiple voices coming from across generations and ethnicities are enough to indicate a community of witness. This community of witnesses tells us that we have not lived up to our aspirations—what we have said on paper—and we ought not ignore it. This community testimony offers the PCA two points of witness: 1) the need for the PCA to confess and repent, and 2) the desire to confess and repent! Numerous PCA minorities are willing to participate in the corporate confession and repentance called for in some of the overtures. They offer a profound embodiment of the ideal of corporate repentance by participating in the repentance for sins that directly impacted their forefathers. Those who assert that it is impossible to repent of something that they personally did not do ought to pause and reflect on the willingness of our minority brothers and sisters to confess and repent. After pausing and considering, individuals may disagree. But in the spirit of Christian charity, it behooves everyone to ask, “might I be wrong on this?”

Consideration #3: The Primacy of Theological Faithfulness
In considering the community of witness testifying to the need for corporate repentance and modeling the desire to participate in corporate repentance, presbyters must allow the conversation to remain focused on theological faithfulness. Too often, I have heard presbyters invoke the specter of “political correctness” as the aim of these overtures. This is a harmful temptation, because these overtures aim at a much loftier goal: biblical, theological, ecclesial, Christ-honoring faithfulness. They seek to aid the pursuit of, quoting TE Lance Lewis, “redemptive ethnic unity.” To replace theological categories with mere political posturing is to rip the teeth out of this conversation and reduce it to another partisan squabble. This reduction guts the conversation of its eschatological vision: the ideal of redemptive ethnic unity, which is driven by the commands of Christ and the vision of the New Jerusalem.

These three considerations could be summed up as the encouragement to listen deeply and discerningly, which is itself simply a call to exercise wisdom. Wisdom hears and listens; wisdom is teachable; wisdom craves purity; wisdom longs for the beauty of peace and unity. Listen to those calling for corporate repentance. Listen to those opposing these overtures. Then listen again. May God grant us wisdom as we weigh all of the considerations before us this GA, and may he give us peace.

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