Editors note: This article was slated for the The Gospel Coalition but it was too much info for them to publish. I appreciated them asking me to write it though. A review needed to be robust because the impact of Fault Lines is very much that. Enjoy!
On Tuesday evening January 26th, 2021, I was at Lancaster Bible College. Wrath and Grace was hosting a panel conference on Social Justice. I was one of the three panelists. To my left was Timothy Brindle. And to my right was Voddie Baucham. The three and a half hour conference was attended by hundreds of people, mostly there to see Voddie. It was a great time. Tim and Voddie were basically in sync with their opinions on Systemic Racism, CRT, BLM, and Social Justice. While there were things I agreed with them on, we definitely had some differences of opinion. The audience watched us work through all of them.
Towards the end of the conference, the moderators asked us to give a final takeaway for the audience. Tim went first. Then I shared something from my heart. Voddie went last, and gave, for many, the most meaningful wrap up to the conference. Voddie looked to the audience and said, “Remember what you saw here tonight.” Remember that you saw brothers, not enemies, disagree on somethings and still be brothers. The reason the quotation is missing from the second part of the quote is because I’m going from memory and don’t want to misquote the rest of what he said, but it was very close to that sentiment. He talked for a few minutes more and then the conference was over.
Voddie and I talked afterwards and it was clear we had a genuine, mutual respect for one another; even though we had some different conclusions. It is in the vein of that respect for Voddie that I offer a response review to his newly released book “fault lines.” By respect, I mean that we have some different conclusions and are unafraid to state them, while not disrespecting the other for thinking differently on the tougher cultural issues of that day. This review will be robust, because his book is very much that.
The fault in the framing of the book
On page three, Voddie mentions that John MacArthur calls the current social justice movement “the greatest threat to the gospel in his lifetime.” Two paragraphs later Voddie writes, “Growing ethnic tension is a problem—but it is not the main problem (italics his). While troubling, it is no match for the truth of the Gospel and the unity it creates among those who embrace it (Italics mine).” This sets the stage inaccurately. The issue has never been about the truth of the gospel, but about the application of that truth by those who profess to believe it.
On page forty four, under the heading “Real Justice Requires truth” Voddie acknowledges, “our pursuit of justice must also be characterized by a pursuit of truth.” This is a main theme for “fault lines,” truth versus non truth. Voddie uses a few verses indicating what justice on God’s terms looks like. One verse that shows up on page forty four and forty eight is proverbs 18:17. It is one of my favorite verses and it becomes the grid that Voddie distinguishes between biblical justice and social justice. Proverbs 18:17 says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.”
For Voddie, the first case that presents itself is the Critical Social Justice narrative of systemic racism etc., versus biblical truth that comes to examine the first case, which is what his perspective is. Whether Voddie meant to or not, he frames the book in such a way that biblical truth is to agree with him, and to disagree is submission to unbiblical truth; or rather embracing Critical Social Justice, CRT, Systemic Racism, etc. There are two fundamental problems with framing the book this way.
The first is, the practical application of Proverbs 18:17. “The one who presents his case first seems right,” to Voddie, is the systemic racism, oppressed versus oppressors, police are hunting down black people mantras, and so forth. And while I understand why he would start there, the “Black Lives Matter narrative” is the not the first case that presents itself. The BLM narrative is a response to the “first case” that has been presenting itself since the late 1800’s. I say this as someone who does not support BLM. I have been caring about black issues long before Karen was Karen, and I find BLM to be a demonic distraction to the real issues. They have demonstrated that they do not care about all black lives; just the ones that give them opportunity to promote their cause. However, they are not the “first case”. The first case (narrative) is, "the issues in the black community are solely the result of the culture within the black community. Slavery and Jim Crow have no reverberating consequences, and for many is just an excuse to play the victim.” Some form of this narrative has been pervasive in American society since the Emancipation of slaves in 1863.
“During Reconstruction (Dec. 8, 1863-Mar. 31, 1877), opponents of the black-freedom struggle deployed preemptive, apocalyptic, slippery-slope arguments that have remained enduring features of backlash politics up to the present. They treated federal support for African American civil rights, economic and social equality—however delayed, reluctant, underfunded, and incomplete it may have been—as a cataclysmic overreaction and framed it as a far more dangerous threat to liberty than the injustice it was designed to address. In 1867, not even two years after ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle decried the placement of political power “in the hands of a property-less and ignorant class of the population,” and pronounced that “the pending Reconstruction scheme must be abandoned,” an excerpt from an article in The Atlantic published May 21, 2020 stated.
Ben H. Bagdikian a writer for the Saturday Evening Post in a 1964 article, a month prior to the presidential election, highlighting the sentiments of white voters wrote, “backlashers are not against a better life for the Negro, but they are strongly against this being achieved at the cost of white tranquility.” “The elevation of “tranquility” over equal justice for all was a hallmark of backlash discourse, which ranked white feelings over black rights,” an anecdotal response penned by The Atlantic argued. “Backlashers understood civil rights as zero-sum, and therefore treated campaigns for African American equality as an inexcusable undermining of what they saw as deserved white privileges and prerogatives. A New York Times 1964 poll revealed, in condensed form, the emotional landscape of the white backlash: “Northern white urbanites have no sympathy for the Negro’s plight, and believe the Civil Rights movement has gone too far, while a considerable percentage believes Negroes ‘don’t appreciate what we’re doing for them.’” The extension of sympathy, such as being in favor of a “better life for the Negro,” was, then, conditional on personal convenience and easily withdrawn.” The scope of my article doesn’t permit me to give further examples of this “first case” narrative but the reality is, that even in the civil rights era, blacks were still seen as the ones at fault and asking for too much when equality, not equity, was all that was in question. This “first case” ideology has transcended the horrors of slavery, to the current state of black America, and even downplaying the church’s role in shaping this narrative about black people.
Some of you may be thinking, “yeah, but that was 60+ years ago bro.” You’re right.
On Tuesday April 27, 2021 Business Insider published a brief article on an interaction between two GOP Representatives. “GOP state Rep. Ray Garofalo of Louisiana on Tuesday said that public schools and colleges should teach the "good" of slavery during discussions about race, as part of a bill that he proposed that would bar "divisive concepts" from classrooms.
Garofalo, who chairs the House Education Committee, said during a hearing on the bill, also known as HB 564, that his legislation sought to remove "politics out of the classroom" and cultivate "a learning environment free of discrimination." When Garofalo began to explain how slavery could be taught in the classroom, his comments elicited derision.
"If you're having a discussion on slavery, then you can talk about everything dealing with slavery, the good, the bad, the ugly," he said. His suggestion was immediately dismissed by fellow GOP state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty. "There's no good to slavery though," she said. This is the “first case” narrative at work. Even our elected officials can’t see the reality. Slavery was good only to those who owned slaves. Contrast that with Germany and seventeen other countries, that have made Holocaust denial, and any celebration of Nazi’s, Third Reich, or Hitler, a federal crime, with mandatory five year imprisonments. They understand the horror of their historical sin in the holocaust. In America, we celebrate the confederate heroes as a part of our history; men who were traitors that killed Americans in order to keep slavery alive.
I have never heard a proposal for teaching the good of the Holocaust though.
The most heated moment in the panel discussion with Voddie and Tim that I mentioned above, was when I brought up the residual effects of the church’s complicity of slavery. I said, “1 Peter 1:18 says, ‘For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors. If we’re being honest, we have inherited an empty way of life from our fore fathers in America...as it pertains to the demonstration of the gospel on issues of race, and fairness, equality, all of it. So now you have Christians in this day and age who have no idea how to do it besides just preach the gospel. We have multiple meetings on what Justice is not but never a practical plan of how to work this through. So, to me, I’m actually discouraged that Christians are drawn to social justice, not because of social justice, but because the church has failed to demonstrate how to do that on racism for 400 years.”
Voddie cut me off, “You are using absolutists terms, and slandering the bride of Christ. The fact of the matter is, it’s the church that has gotten us as far we have gotten. Slavery existed in all of the world, in all of world history, and it is only in the places where the gospel has flourished that there was ever a moral argument against slavery. It was our brothers and sisters in Christ that lead that abolitionists movement, and so to sit here and say that for 400 years the church has not exhibited justice...it is in the places where the gospel has pierced and has flourished, that there is the greatest justice the world has ever seen.” To which I responded, “Amen , amen...but the church doesn’t get a pat on the back for ending something that it should’ve never participated in, in the first place.”
After the conference, I was talking on the phone to Christian rap artist KB, explaining to him everything that happened. He sent me a quote from Charles Spurgeon that blew my mind.
“… It is the Church of Christ that keeps his brethren under bondage; if it were not for that Church, the system of slavery would go back to the hell from which it sprung…But what does the slaveholder say when you tell him that to hold our fellow creatures in bondage is a sin, and a damnable one, inconsistent with grace? He replies, “I do not believe your slanders; look at the Bishop of So-and-so, or the minister of such-and-such place, is he not a good man, and does not he whine out ‘Cursed be Canaan?’ Does not he quote Philemon and Onesimus? Does he not go and talk Bible, and tell his slaves that they ought to feel very grateful for being his slaves, for God Almighty made them on purpose that they might enjoy the rare privilege of being cowhided by a Christian master? Don’t tell me,” he says, “if the thing were wrong, it would not have the Church on its side.” And so Christ’s free Church, bought with his blood, must bear the shame of cursing Africa, and keeping her sons in bondage.”
Spurgeon said this in the 1850’s, referring to America, because the slave trade had ended in Europe by then. There are two things that stand out to me from Spurgeon’s thoughts. One, when you push back against the church and it’s complicity in slavery it is considered slander. That is the exact word that Voddie used when describing what I was saying. Mind you, Spurgeon’s comment is 170 years old. Is he woke? An SJW? A CRT aficionado? Of course not. But the way “fault lines” is framed, seemingly any concerns for racism almost inevitably become CSJ. And I believe some would consider Spurgeon "woke" because of his views on slavery and the church. While “slander” described by Spurgeon is not a one- to-one for what Voddie was saying, it is eerie that the identical terminology is still being used today.
Two, the arguments that Spurgeon listed, then, are just as potent as they are today. Especially among the American Evangelical Church. They just call slave owners “men of their times,” or use phrases like, “I guess we can’t refer to men like David since they were sinful. We have to throw out everything they did since they weren’t perfect.” Sigh. David didn’t inspire or instill in other men that it was okay to have sex with someone else’s wife and then have the man killed to hide the sin. The “men of their times" deceived a lot of people into thinking, agreeing, and accepting the horrors of slavery and the wickedness done to other image bearers. The "theology" of such “trusted theologians” still has consequences today. Spurgeon saw it back then, and the same ideology is used now. It is a demonic ideology that takes the blame off of everyone accept blacks historically and presently. And it tries to minimize the impact and the reverberating consequences of slavery, Jim Crow, and the psyche of many in the black community.
There is a sense that the view of black people is more accurate than the view from many black people. Or at the very least, black people are just making stuff up. Which is really what “playing the victim” means. Again, Voddie’s framing of the book, allows him to cover any objection with subtle acknowledgments that blacks have “had run ins with cops who are on power trips, having a bad day, or really were racist.” However, the overwhelming direction of “fault lines” is that the “black narrative” is not true. For this and many other examples that are more appropriate for a longer treatment than this one, I do not agree with the way Voddie has framed the book. “Truth” agrees with his narrative, and a rejection of his narrative disagrees with “truth.” As much as I do not support BLM, CSJ, or CRT, they are not the first case presenting themselves, they are a response to the first case that has been presenting itself for over 150 years, that black people are solely responsible for our current cultural calamities. The second fundamental problem with the book’s framing, is that truth is way more complicated than what Voddie presents.
The fault with simplicity
On page 48 under the heading Extensive Research, Voddie uses studies and stats to make his claim that police shootings aren’t racist, primarily because police shoot white people at a higher rate. To prove the point he quotes a study done by Harvard Economist Roland Fryer. This study is one of the most cited studies by conservatives, and/or those blacks who do not “fit the narrative” that police are racist, etc. Voddie quotes Fryer saying, “We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.” This seems pretty open and shut that police aren’t racist, or that blacks that are killed by police aren’t racially motivated.
The problem with simplicity is that it’s always more complicated than that.
In a Wall Street Journal article published on June 22, 2020, Roland Fryer made it clear what his study does and does not say. "To my dismay, this work has been widely misrepresented and misused by people on both sides of the ideological aisle. It has been wrongly cited as evidence that there is no racism in policing, that football players have no right to kneel during the national anthem, and that the police should shoot black people more often."
He also listed with statistical proof these findings:
There are large racial differences in police use of nonlethal force. My research team analyzed nearly five million police encounters from New York City. We found that when police reported the incidents, they were 53% more likely to use physical force on a black civilian than a white one.
Compliance by civilians doesn’t eliminate racial differences in police use of force. Black civilians who were recorded as compliant by police were 21% more likely to suffer police aggression than compliant whites. We also found that the benefits of compliance differed significantly by race. This was perhaps our most upsetting result, for two reasons: The inequity in spite of compliance clashed with the notion that the difference in police treatment of blacks and whites was a rational response to danger. And it complicates what we tell our kids: Compliance does make you less likely to endure a beat-down—but the benefit is larger if you are white
In response to people using his study to disprove racism by police Roland Fryer also said, "People who invoke our work to argue that systemic police racism is a myth conveniently ignore these statistics (the first two bullets above and others I did not cite).
His study says much more against Voddie's narrative than it affirms.
There are other fundamental problems with the idea that police can't be racist/white supremacist because they kill white people. This kind of logic seems flawless until you realize that white supremacy is not necessarily about pigmentation. Just ask yourself, what color were the Jews that Hitler killed?
Charlottesville Va., August 11-12, at the “Unite the Right” march, self proclaimed white supremacist chanted, "The Jews will not replace us! You will not replace!" By the two year anniversary of the Unite the Right march, white supremacists committed at least 73 murders since Charlottesville, 39 of which were clearly motivated by hateful, racist ideology. These numbers include the deadly white supremacist shooting rampages in Parkland, Pittsburgh, Poway and El Paso, the deadliest white supremacist attack in more than 50 years. In each of these cities, white supremacist murderers acted on the threat embodied in the chant made famous in Charlottesville: “Jews will not replace us! You will not replace us!”
What color were the Jews that they were worried would replace them? They were white. White Supremacists also kill white people because white supremacy is an ideology as much as it's a skin issue. There is a certain type of white person they care about.
In fact, from 1882-1968, 1,297 white people were lynched by other white people. Yet, during that same time period no one suggests that the 3,446 black people that were lynched was not racially motivated. And space doesn't permit me to talk in detail about Eugenics. The forced sterilization of certain types of white people to prevent them from having kids. A History News Network article explains the sadistic motive of Eugenics (largely populated in America that inspired Hitler) well, "The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists. How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves." This is not Critical Race Theory or Critical Social Justice. This is not Marxism. This is America. Google it.
White people have historically had no problems being white supremacists and killing other white people. And hardly anyone assumes that because it happened to whites that it wasn't racially motivated when it happened to blacks. This doesn’t prove it is racially motivated either. What it does prove is truth is more complicated than Voddie's presentation of it.
Many are unaware that, in 2017, the FBI reported that white supremacists posed a “persistent threat of lethal violence” that has produced more fatalities than any other category of domestic terrorists since 2000. Alarmingly, internal FBI policy documents have also warned agents assigned to domestic terrorism cases that the white supremacist and anti-government militia groups they investigate often have “active links” to law enforcement officials."
June, 1, 2019, Buzzfeed covered a story on this very issue. The headline of the article read, "Cops Across The US Have Been Exposed Posting Racist And Violent Things On Facebook. Here's The Proof." The subtitle read, "A review of the Facebook accounts of thousands of officers around the US — the largest database of its kind — found officers endorsing violence against Muslims, women, and criminal defendants."
The rest of the article, borrowing data from Injustice Watch, stated,"Police officers saying bigoted and racist things online has been an issue since the beginning of social media. The behavior was especially scrutinized after the Black Lives Matter movement blasted into the national conversation — and that scrutiny has continued even after that movement began grappling with its future. What was never really captured was the scope of problematic online posts from police officers. But a new review of police behavior on Facebook documents the systemic nature of the conduct across several departments. The Plain View Project, launched by Philadelphia lawyer Emily Baker-White, examined the accounts of about 2,900 officers from eight departments across the country and an additional 600 retired officers from those same departments. She compiled posts that represented troubling conduct in a database that is replete with racist imagery and memes, and in some cases long, vitriolic exchanges involving multiple officers."
Injustice Watch had some troubling conclusions about racist police after reviewing significant data to present their concerns to law enforcement agencies across the country. "The project was able to identify about 1 in 5 of the roughly 14,400 officers on the rosters through a combination of profile name, URLs, photographs, badge numbers, and other identifying information. Many officers could not be included because they had common names or used nicknames, their profiles were private, or they did not have a Facebook profile.
In Philadelphia, which has roughly 6,600 officers, the Plain View Project identified 1,073 on Facebook, about a third of whom had made troubling posts or comments. The Plain View Project shared its research with Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom, which discovered many officers who made offensive posts were also accused of brutality or civil rights violations. Of 327 officers in Philadelphia who posted troubling content, more than a third — 138 officers — appeared to have had one or more federal civil rights lawsuits filed against them, based on name, badge number, and other corroborating details. Of that group, 99 ended in settlements or verdicts against them or the city."
On April 16, 2021, The Washington Post, reported, "Fairfax County prosecutors are moving to throw out more than 400 criminal convictions based on the testimony or work of a former patrol officer who is accused of stealing drugs from the police property room, planting drugs on innocent people and stopping motorists without legal basis, court filings show. In a hearing Friday, a Fairfax judge said he was inclined to vacate felony drug and gun convictions against a former D.C. firefighter and order him released from prison next week after serving nearly two years because of the actions of former officer Jonathan A. Freitag...Fairfax prosecutors said Freitag had been involved in 932 total cases during his three years as an officer, mostly traffic and misdemeanors, resulting in about 400 convictions. Seven were felonies, prosecution spokesman Ben Shnider said. Prosecutors have dismissed at least 21 cases which were pending, including a case where a man was charged with felony assault on Freitag, but the former D.C. firefighter Elon Wilson is the only defendant currently incarcerated. Wilson’s case would be the first conviction to be vacated as a result of Freitag’s actions. Freitag has not been charged with any crimes, but prosecutors said a criminal investigation of him is ongoing."
Again, truth is more complicated than Voddie's presentation of it.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. I am not saying this proves systemic racism among police. I have friends that are cops, and officers that are members of my church. I have talked about these things with them, and they share many of my concerns themselves. What I am saying is that truth is way more complicated than what Voddie is telling us in "fault lines."
He critiques the faults that he also celebrates
On page 92, Voddie quotes scholar Tara J. Yosso as saying, “CRT recognizes that experiential knowledge of People of Color is legitimate, appropriate, and critical to understanding, analyzing and teaching about racial subordination.” He will later call this standpoint epistemology or his coined term “ethnic gnosticism.” As he explains elsewhere in the book, narrative is critical (pun intended) for CRT to infiltrate the collective American conscience. But then on page 20 he writes, “Advocates of this victim mentality think the only thing that can cause a man like me to focus on the centrality of family and personal responsibility is internalized racism, a lack of sensitivity, catering to white folks, being out of touch with blackness and/or the black experience, or all of the above. Well, those people don’t know me. They don’t know my story. And, in fact, until you hear everything else I have to say, you don’t know my story either.”
Voddie critiques the use of narrative, but then spends two chapters making sure we get to know his narrative. Voddie is intelligent. He understands that narrative is important to give one validity. In fact, in a Founders Ministries talk on February 21, 2019, at the 50:50-57:40 minute mark he gives some passionate, truthful, commentary, about the black community and the brokenness of the justice system. But he is well aware of his narrative that doesn’t “fit with the black narrative,” all the while acknowledging that he has “magic melanin.” He recognizes that his skin color, which is a part of his narrative, is important. It gives him credibility, especially among those who accept his narrative as true.
Narrative is fundamentally human. There isn’t a person alive that does not trust narrative. Just about everything we do, think, and engage in is narrative. Hebrews 2:17-18 , tells us, “Therefore, he had to be like his brothers and sisters in every way, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in matters pertaining to God, to make atonement for the sins of the people. For since he himself has suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.” The Gospels are Jesus’ lived experience. This is fascinating. God chose to experience humanity in order to redeem it. Lived experience is important. It is God given. You cannot say lived experience is not truth unless you're including your own and everyone else’s. This does mean everyone lived experience is monolithically true. No, of course not. But the framing of “fault lines” dismisses any narrative that comes to a different conclusion than Voddie. In this vein, Voddie critiques what he celebrates. It is clear that it is not lived experience versus truth that matters. It’s lived experience that I accept and lived experience that I reject. Voddie and others reject millions of people’s lived experiences but then say his lived experience needs to be listened to. Same idol different altar.
One of the main critiques of CSJ, and CRT is that they use/depend on unbiblical conceptual frameworks to understand and act on racism. On page 126, after critiquing Eric Mason’s “Woke Church,” Voddie states, “…the CRT crowd in evangelicalism are not men who have been challenged on their interpretation of scripture—they are proclaiming that sources outside of scripture have brought them to a new, better, and more complete understanding of Gods truth on race.” Voddie is clear that scripture is sufficient to understand all that we need to know about race. Again, he covers his tracks well, in that he acknowledges reading broadly is good, but that scripture alone, that others that he mentions in the book seem to be rejecting, is sufficient for understanding race.
I believe is Voddie 100% genuine when he says this. But I found it odd that men like Thomas Sowell, an atheist, are featured prominently to give us "objective" understating of race/black culture, not scripture. Voddie definitely has scripture peppered throughout the book, but there was no thorough exegesis of texts like his Cosmology of the Cult of Anti-racism” in Chapter four. He quotes scripture but never really gives us a robust Biblical Theology of Justice. It’s presumptuous at best. You would think that an issue that is “the greatest threat to the gospel” would have presented so strong a case of biblical justice that it would be unmistakable. Not today Satan!
What we do get as objective truth is Thomas Sowell. A favorite of those on the “anti-woke” side. Thomas Sowell is a brilliant man. He could run circles around me and many others easily. He is a Goliath of economists to say the least. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a few smooth stones in my slingshot.
Thomas Sowell’s summarized narrative of the black community can be described as, “Dysfunctional values and behaviors associated with “redneck culture,” inherited by the British in the Antebellum South. These character traits include: “an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, and lively music and dance (p.4 in Black Rednecks).” For Sowell, the Welfare state of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” in the 60’s is where it all comes to fruition. The crime rate, that rose to new levels in the black community, after Civil Rights legislation in the 60’s designed to work in blacks favor proves this inherited redneck culture to be true. For Sowell, it is inherited culture, not inherited inequalities, or racism, that blacks brought with them when they migrated from the south to northern cities. Redneck culture is the sole factor for the disparities in the black community. And leftist policies have done nothing but perpetuate the redneck culture in the black community today.
Many people, and based on the usage of Sowell in “fault lines” may include Voddie too, have accepted this as the objective truth of segments of the black community’s plight. However there are many empirical data problems with this view.
Sociologist Dawson Vosburg, is exceptional in his critique here. “If ‘redneck’ culture accompanying Black migrants to Northern cities was the cause of increases in crime in those cities, why did homicide rates increase after the second wave of the Great Migration, but not the first? Why wasn’t there a similar racial disparity in crime in the South, where Black people were moving to cities from?
Why did crime rates only begin to rise in the 1960s (at the same time low-skilled Black unemployment rates began to soar)? Why did the rise in single parenthood that coincided with the rise in crime and unemployment wait until some 20 years after the second wave of the Great Migration to take effect, if we’re to believe that this is all caused by “redneck” culture, passed along in the 18th and 19th century and not taking full effect until the second half of the 20th?
Thomas Sowell does not disprove systemic racism, and its inherited inequalities, he simply ignores them. They do not fit his narrative, which is not biblical justice/truth, it’s conservative justice/truth. Space does not allow me to point out the variety of areas where Thomas Sowell, and Voddie’s for that matter, are just intellectually dishonest. This does not mean that the BLM narrative is true. Not hardly. What it means is that it’s more complicated than we are giving it credit. It’s easy to say it’s only racism or it’s rarely racism. But the truth is somewhere in between. However, this is a post. In the forthcoming book, “Will the real Justice please stand up,” a deeper treatment will be given. If you can’t wait that long go to https://curtkennedy.substack.com/p/facts-on-black-crime.
There is much more to say but I've already overstayed my welcome. I'll just say this in conclusion.
As a Christian, I am disappointed that systemic racism which, supposedly ended in the 1964 civil rights legislation, was was led by the world. It wasn't contrition led by the church that ended slavery or Jim Crow. And why did it take 31 years for the largest denomination in the country, the Southern Baptist, to publicly apologize for its complicity in slavery and racism (1995 SBC Resolution on Racial Reconciliation)? And why did it take the Presbyterians another eight or nine years to join the party(2004 Pastoral letter on racism)?
We are the church. We were supposed to lead in reconciliation not follow. We have to be honest, the church hasn't been the example we should’ve been. Many believers downplay slavery because it existed in other nations before the US, but the reality is, America is the only nation that promoted itself as the freedom in Jesus Christ country, but instead used it to enslave people in the name of Jesus.
If a man rapes a women it is tragic. But if her father does it it is more outrageous. Why? Because of who he is. It hits differently depending on who does it. It is poor reasoning to appeal to slavery elsewhere simply because Christ wasn’t there (by that I mean they were not a “Christian nation”). The name of God has been blasphemed among the gentiles (unbelievers) because of large swaths of the church’s complicity in severe wickedness towards black image bearers; and in some senses today, still don’t think there are reverberating consequences for doing so.
Sadly, Voddie and his book are following a long line of people who oversimplify a complex reality and package it as truth. There is definitely truth in fault lines. And there is an opposition to social justice, but it is not biblical Justice. It’s conservative justice. It is why I think “fault lines” will become a self fulfilling prophecy and deepen the fault lines that already exist. That would be a simple response and further complicate the situation.
You can’t handle this truth!!
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Twitter: @imcurtkennedy
Thanks Curt! You’ve opened my eyes on a few points I’ve been wrestling with when it comes to race and culture…VODDIE has also helped to expose the whole social Justice movement…I’ll just keep chewing the meat and spitting out the bones…Statistics are difficult to use to make truths out of because like you said…It’s more complicated than what the statistic presents
Great assessment. Like Spurgeon, both Martyn Lloyd Jones and Carl FH Henry both affirmed the centrality of social justice to Christianity. John MacArthur has regarded both as great theologians and Henry as a personal mentor.
Your point on the use of secular frameworks echoes one of mine in that it is often embraced by Voddie and countless evangelicals. Sowell’s is just one . The issue isn’t the rightness of it or CRT, but the dishonest measure and equal weighting employed in leveraging the extra biblical in conservatism yet decrying it elsewhere.