CRC Position on Critical Race Theory?

Stewart, Thank you for this question. The CRC has no official position on Critical Race Theory (CRT), and the CRC's office of Race Relations does not look to CRT to guide our work. Instead, we look to the Bible and to the many statements made by the CRC's Synod over the years which are summarized on this page: Race Relations. Of all the documents cited, the most important is the 1996 report: God's Diverse and Unified Family. God's blessings, Mark Stephenson, Interim Director, Office of Race Relations

Hello Stewart:

    You raise very key questions. It is a topic of great interest, especially since both secular and Christian authors are using the term "the religion of Anti-Racism" more and more. This is coming from people who have a lot more skin pigment than I do. Witness, John McWhorter of Columbia University's new book,  'Woke Racism: how a new religion has betrayed Black America' in October 2021 and his online articles “Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion,” and "his “Kneeling in the Church of Social Justice,” Reason (June 29, 2020)  Atonement as Activism,” American Interest, (May 24, 2018)

    Just in case you think that I am being overly selective, check out some of Voddie Baucham's references in his Fault Lines, and Thaddeus Williams references in his Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2020) .

     When analyzing what a denomination believes, look beyond the nice---and certainly true to a degree---statements "we follow the Bible" and ask these questions:

a. What is the predominant message coming out of denominational entities? Also look at official releases, seminars, and books that are promoted. Are they a wide spectrum? Maybe I have white fragility on the brain, but I am seeing a lot of that angle.  

b. Ask yourself, what is not promoted? Are certain readings, books, videos simply missing from the recommendations? Are authors like Lindsay of Cynical Theories, McWhorter, Baucham, Williams and more, being promoted?

c. Ask authors like myself who have submitted material to the Network who have been served a non-publication notice because the article did not fit a certain slant.

d. Observe the policy of the Network under the guise of avoiding inflammatory material, that has the draconian power to edit out what someone or a body with a certain philosophical leaning deems to be too critical, too sensitive, or too prone to raise hard questions. This might tell you the "unofficial-offical policies"

 

The real question is, whether the CRCNA has adopted what Thaddeus Williams so carefully distinguished in his book, the side A' of correctly addressing needed issues of humans inflicting pain on each other, or the side 'B' of this becoming a secular ideology of what the atheist author Camille Paglia termed "political correctness" as a religion.

 

Steve, keeping digging and asking. This is religiously charged stuff.

Blessings

John Span