One of the most astonishing and disturbing trends in evangelicalism over the last few years is the significant number of leaders and organizations that have succumbed to the pressure of the “Woke” mob to join them in their attacks upon the so-called “White” culture and traditional Christianity.  Evidence of “Wokeness” in organizations such as the Gospel Coalition, the SBC, and others, is troubling. Dr. Voddie Baucham, in his powerful book, Fault Lines, highlights the dangers to the church inherent in such actions.

The errors in this are not difficult to discern!  The Leftists are not clandestine with their motives and objectives.  We have clarity, and it ought to disturb every Christian that groups and organizations formally known for the Gospel have been badly distracted.

Setting aside the Left’s criticisms of Christians and America for the moment, (which at times and in some ways may be correct), one need only look at their proffered solutions to recognize that they are not of the same spirit as the Church and despise the Gospel of Christ.   It is impossible to be at peace with organizations such as BLM, and the CRT “Woke” crowd and to also be at peace with Jesus Christ or to obey His command to “Preach the Gospel!”

One need only consider how the movement deals with their own members’ faux pas to understand that they know nothing of grace.  They are consumed by hatred, bent on destruction, and are filled with irreconcilable animosity.  They provide no pathway to peace.  If they decide you are the enemy, you are forever the enemy.  Mercy and forgiveness are unknown to them; but James states, “judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy, “ (James 2:13, NKJV).

Add to their lack of mercy the destruction they unleashed upon American cities following the death of George Floyd and it is clear that they are not people of good will.  BLM, Antifa, and other radicals did billions of dollars of damage to property in numerous cities and dozens were slain.  On the other hand, God calls His people to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves;” and we are also commanded to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

How can harmony or cooperation exist between the Body of Christ and such wickedness?  How can anyone who knows and has experienced God’s grace and forgiveness desire to join hands with a movement which despises God’s goodness?  Have these leaders forgotten the admonition of Scripture which states that “friendship with the world is enmity with God?”  Christ noted tersely that those who denied Him He would deny before His Father.

What is especially troubling about these evangelical leaders climbing aboard the “Woke” wagon is that it is quite impossible for them to be unaware of the stark contrast between Scripture and “Wokeness.”  To this writer it recalls James’s blunt retort,

“…you adulterers and adulteresses!  Do you not know that friendship with world is enmity with God?” (James 4:4).

The message of the Gospel breaths God’s grace. From before the foundation of the world He provided that the very course of history would tell the story of His mercy and forgiveness.  For those who at one time hated Him and rejected His rule yet turned to Him in repentance and faith He offers not only forgiveness but full reconciliation and a close personal relationship!

Yet the “Woke” BLM, CRT crowd not only fails to offer a pathway to forgiveness and reconciliation they actively and publicly reject making such an offer.  Their way is that of total and abject surrender by and subjugation of all of those they deem to be offenders.

Students of church history will remember that in the early twentieth century unbelievers took control of many American Christian organizations, seminaries, colleges, and denominations.  They did so by taking advantage of Christians who lived by the love principle of First Corinthians thirteen, “believing the best” about others and giving them the benefit of the doubt.  Those unbelievers veiled their real objectives behind confusing rhetoric while actively rejecting and undermining historic Christian doctrines.

Christians must develop the strength of character to confront their leaders if they are bending to the pressures of a woke and wicked culture.  This is not the time for forbearance, but for “fighting the good fight!”  Those who declare that these things are part of the gospel are preaching a false gospel, and must be abandoned.

Will we see a repeat of that fiasco in the 21^st Century?  We may if true believers do not respond biblically and soon.  For those of you who are paying attention, understand that the “Woke” movement is not about justice and peace.  And it is certainly not about the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

How completely antithetical to the mission of the Church!

One of the most astonishing and disturbing trends in evangelicalism over the last few years is the significant number of leaders and organizations that have succumbed to the pressure of the “Woke” mob to join them in their attacks upon the so-called “White” culture. Organizations, such as The Gospel Coalition, and leaders of the SBC, among many others, have gone on record as supportive of the objectives of BLM, CRT, and other leftist groups. Voddie Baucham, in his powerful book, Fault Lines, highlights the dangers to the Church inherent in such actions.

The errors in this are not difficult to discern!  The Leftists are not clandestine with their motives and objectives.  We have clarity, though it may be discomfiting to Christians and pseudo-Christians who have fallen in love with the world and desire the world’s approval!

Setting aside the message of the Left for the moment, which at times and in some ways may be accurate concerning the majority culture, one need only look at their proffered solutions to recognize that they are not of the same spirit as the Church and despise the Gospel of Christ. It is impossible to be at peace with organizations such as BLM, and the CRT “woke” crowd and to also be at peace with Jesus Christ!

One need only consider how the movement deals with their own members’ faux pas to understand that they know nothing of grace. They are consumed by hatred, destruction, and irreconcilable animosity. They provide no pathway to peace. If they decide you are the enemy, you are forever the enemy. Mercy and forgiveness are nonexistent.

How can harmony or cooperation exist between the Body of Christ and such ungodliness? How can anyone who knows and has experienced God’s grace and forgiveness desire to join hands with a movement which despises it? Have they forgotten the admonition of Scripture which notes that “friendship with the world is enmity with God?” Christ noted tersely that those who denied Him He would deny before His Father. What is especially troubling about their climbing aboard the “Woke” wagon is that it is quite impossible for them to be unaware of the stark contrast between Scriptures and “Wokeness.” To this writer it recalls James’s blunt retort, “you adulterers and adulteresses!” While none of us has the ability or authority to judge whether another person is born again or not, one is reminded of Paul’s scathing remarks to the churches of Galatia that he “stood in doubt” about them.

The message of the Gospel breaths God’s grace. He who from before the foundation of the world provided that the very course of history would tell the story of His mercy and forgiveness. For those who at one time hated Him and rejected His rule yet turned to Him in repentance, He offers not only forgiveness but full reconciliation and close familial relationship!

Yet the “Woke” BLM, CRT crowd not only fails to offer a pathway to forgiveness and reconciliation they actively and publicly reject making such an offer. Their way is that of total and abject surrender by and subjugation of all of those they deem to be offenders.

Students of church history will remember that in the early Twentieth century unbelievers took control of many American Christian organizations, seminaries, colleges, and denominations. They did so by taking advantage of Christianity’s I Corinthians’ 13 principle of “believing the best” and giving others the benefit of the doubt to veil their active undermining and destruction of historic Christian doctrines.

Will we see a repeat of that fiasco in the 21^st Century?  We may if true believers do not respond biblically and soon.  For those who are paying attention, understand that the “Woke” movement is not about justice and peace. It is about power!

How completely antithetical to the Gospel of Christ!

Long before California’s infamous “ethnic studies” curriculum made national headlines in March for literally suggesting children chant to the Aztec gods of cannibalism and human sacrifice, the insidious weaponization of “race” and “racism” had already overtaken the nation’s government school system.

The racist effort to divide and conquer Americans by “race,” all under the guise of examining everything through the “lens of racism” and fighting “structural” or “systemic” racism, has come to be known as critical race theory, or CRT.

Just think of it as half-baked pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook aimed at stirring up as much racial hatred, resentment, division, and conflict as possible.

Like cult leaders, the growing overpaid legions of tax-funded “experts” in CRT want the public to believe that this is some complicated and mysterious “epidemic” that only overpaid “experts” can understand. But the reality behind CRT is actually pretty simple.

The premise is basically this: All “white people” are racist oppressors with power and privilege, and all non-white people are oppressed victims.

From that flows the silly premise that America—among the least racist nations on earth, studies show—is a “systemically racist” abomination that must be “decolonized” and dismantled.

In fact, any institutions created by peoples or nations of mostly European heritage are evil and must be pulverized. And any people who lack sufficient melanin must repent for their collective guilt.

If all that sounds evil and unhinged, good—it is.

Unfortunately, it’s also now a staple in the diet of impressionable young victims of government schools across America.

The goal isn’t really fighting racism, as its proponents claim.

In fact, a number of studies show that “diversity training,” an offshoot of CRT aiming to put the cult’s views into practice, “can activate bias or spark a backlash,” the Harvard Business Review warned.

“Many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward,” it said.

Duh!

The same is true for children: When they’re bombarded with racial division and hyper-racial extremism, they not only begin thinking in terms of race, they also begin resenting those supposedly in other “groups” alleged to be in conflict with them.

And that’s precisely the point. In the Soviet Union, like Karl Marx decades earlier, totalitarians divided people by “class,” driving a wedge between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.”

Similar divisions were created and exploited by Chairman Mao in communist China.

In America, where the poor live materially better than the rich in many nations, the “class conflict” narrative was not as effective.

And so, as in National Socialist (Nazi) Germany, socialist and communist agents from abroad and homegrown subversives turned to “race” as the key fault line to exploit.

It has been bubbling beneath the surface in America for years—even decades. But in recent months, it has exploded into the national consciousness as increasingly extreme examples of tax-funded CRT indoctrination spark outrage from parents and normal people.

There’s a long history behind this ideology of hate in America.

Part 6 of this series explored the enormous influence of the Marxist Frankfurt School and its “critical theory” schemes on American culture—and particularly in its government-controlled education system. CRT is an outgrowth of this deadly weapon, adapted to the American scene.

A big part of the lie depends on fraudulent history taught to children such as the almost universally discredited “1619 Project” and the debunked diatribes of communist Howard Zinn, as documented in this previous article in this series.

The end result is disaster.

Tax-Funded CRT at School

Naturally, adults of all “races” with even basic critical-thinking skills, common sense, and a rudimentary understanding of history could see right through the CRT propaganda.

But young children in government schools for five days a week? They make for easy victims. After all, mommy and daddy said to listen to the teacher.

That’s why the forces behind CRT are focusing so heavily on targeting children.

What do CRT and the race-mongering look like in practice?

In California, for example, the newly adopted “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum,” approved by the state Board of Education on March 18, suggests children seek help from pagan Aztec gods for “a revolutionary spirit” in a chant.

“The chants have a clear implication: the displacement of the Christian god, which is said to be an extension of white supremacist oppression,” writes Christopher F. Rufo.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest district in the nation, has already indicated that it will be requiring “ethnic studies” for graduation starting in 2023. The whole state may eventually follow. And the cancers that begin in California often spread nationwide.

In one of the wealthiest districts in the nation, Silicon Valley’s Cupertino Union School District, third-grade students were reportedly ordered to “deconstruct” their racial, gender, religious, family structure, and sexual identities.

After that, they were told to create an “identity map” and rank themselves based on the “power and privilege” received from the “intersection” of their various “identities.”

“A white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman,” offered the school materials in an example of how to understand the results.

In short, under this twisted worldview, your melanin content makes you either an oppressor to be destroyed, like the bourgeoisie, or a victim who must destroy others, like the proletariat.

This sort of madness is taking place all across “red” states, too.

North Carolina’s largest school district, Wake County, for instance, launched a campaign to eradicate “whiteness in educational spaces.” As part of that, teachers were ordered to “disrupt whiteness” and “override families,” according to Rufo.

It’s not new, either. In 2017, outraged parents fumed at a Rockingham County, North Carolina, Board of Education meeting after learning that a teacher forced children of European heritage to stand in front of the class and apologize for their “white privilege.”

In Ames, Iowa, and other cities and towns across America in recent years, the “Black Lives Matter Week of Action” has been peddling “diversity and globalism,” “the disruption of the Western nuclear family,” “transgender, queer affirming, and collective value,” and more.

To understand just how aggressive the peddlers of this Marxist narrative in schools have become, consider news reports from mid-March about government-school teachers who plotted to “infiltrate” parents’ groups opposed to the indoctrination, use “hackers” to mess with their communications, and even “expose these people publicly” for speaking out.

Similar Tactics in Communist China

Victims of these tactics who have lived through the horrors that stem from them recognize the same schemes clearly.

Prominent Chinese exile Lily Tang-Williams, who grew up under Mao but eventually fled to the United States, remembers those exact tactics being used in Mao’s government-indoctrination centers for children, masquerading as “public schools.”

“It creates hatred, guilt, and division in our country,” she said about CRT being peddled on children in school. “It is a tool used by the radical left to divide and conquer.”

Having grown up during Mao’s reign and experienced the entire 10-year Cultural Revolution, Williams sounded the alarm about what’s happening in America today.

“Let me tell you, this racist theory is nothing more than a tactic to separate citizens into ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressor’ classes, and it is something I have heard before,” said Williams, who recently testified before the New Hampshire legislature on this issue.

Mao’s regime sought to destroy the “four olds,” she claimed, referring to the mass-murdering communist Chinese tyrant’s campaign to eradicate China’s old ideas, culture, habits, and customs.

“He and his regime used identity politics to divide people into 10 classes: five red and five black,” she explained. “The red classes included poor and lower-middle peasants, workers, revolutionary soldiers, revolutionary cadres, and revolutionary martyrs. The black classes were landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad-influencers, and rightists.”

Every member of the “black classes” was considered guilty by association, simply for having been born into a family, and was said to have been “born black.”

“Mao urged Red Guards to publicly shame the black classes by raising their fists, making them do self-criticism, confess and denounce themselves, or they would get beat up, locked up in a room to write about their ‘blackness,’ apologize for their families or themselves, and be sent to re-education camps to do hard labor,” Williams continued, adding that some young members of the families would do anything to escape the shame and association, including reporting their own relatives to the Chinese Communist Party.

Tens of millions of Chinese died amid the Cultural Revolution “due to those murderous policies,” said Williams, who serves on the advisory board of U.S. Parents Involved in Education along with this writer and others in the field.

“What is happening in America today with CRT, in our schools, in our workplaces and governmental agencies, really reminds me of what happened during the Cultural Revolution,” she added.

Bad for Children

Aside from being destructive to society, the CRT madness is going to harm children of all types, too, experts say.

“It is horrendous and utterly harmful psychology to tell people, especially young children and teens, who do not believe that they are racists, and may actively despise racism, that there is nothing they can do to stop themselves from being racists,” explained Doctor of Clinical Psychology Gary Thompson with the Early Life Child Psychology and Education Center.

“Woke Supremacy is just as psychologically destructive on people as White Supremacy,” added Thompson, who happens to be a black American.

Thompson claims that many public schools are now teaching children as young as second and third grade that “whiteness is synonymous with evil, that the police systematically hunt down and murder black men deliberately, and all these other highly charged political convictions that they’re teaching as if they’re uncontested fact.”

How to Fight Back

Parents across the nation are scrambling for ways to fight back and protect their children.

Thompson, who also serves on the advisory board of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, said his personal opinion is that attempts by average parents to eliminate CRT from their children’s public school would be “futile.”

“If CRT does not fit your family values, the option of leaving public schools may be a viable option for parents,” he said, echoing a growing sentiment in America as enrollment in public schools continues to plummet.

Partly in response to CRT propaganda, millions of parents have fled government schools over the last year for homeschooling and private schools.

Unfortunately, the CRT madness is no longer confined just to government schools. Even many “woke” elite and self-styled “Christian” schools have been jumping on the bandwagon, so parents must do their due diligence.

Ignoring the voices of some of America’s most prominent black Christian leaders—Voddie Baucham and Bishop E.W. Jackson, for instance—many liberal churches and seminaries have taken the plunge, too.

Some critics have argued that indoctrinating children with CRT at taxpayer expense is already against the law.

Wu Wenyuan, executive director of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, has been fighting the battle in California and beyond for years. She argues that CRT in the classroom is “illegal and unconstitutional.”

“Teaching CRT that’s predicated on racial divisions and a social dichotomy of victim versus oppressor fundamentally violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—which guarantees equal protection of the laws—Title VI/VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, California’s constitutional principle of equal treatment, and a plethora of anti-discrimination laws,” she warned.

In Florida, top officials are taking action. In fact, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis just promised the ideology would not be included in his state’s public schools.

“Let me be clear there is no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory, teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money,” DeSantis said.

“They’re trying to make people view each other based on race, I want to do the opposite. I want to treat people as individuals,” he added. “I want to treat people based on character.”

But of course, dividing people is the goal—not an unintended side effect—and the constant appeals to “white supremacy” are simply a red herring designed to force critics to remain silent.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

CRT’s leaders and cult-like adherents have labeled virtually everything the far-left and Marxists hate as “white supremacy”: the U.S. Constitution, Christianity, math, the rule of law, punctuality, individualism, Western civilization, the nuclear family, objective truth, and more.

Nothing and nobody is safe.

Adults largely recognize the evil and idiocy of this. However, America’s children—like children in other nations who have been indoctrinated to hate their parents and their compatriots before committing ghastly atrocities—do not know better.

It will be up to parents to protect their own children, and thereby the nation and its freedoms.

This article as originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

Written by Ryan Scott Bomberger

I’m half white and half black. My melanin doesn’t change my worth or my propensity to sin. Yet we live in a culture where we are told that our skin color confers upon us a status that is fixed, assigned by an elite class of humans who call themselves “scholars.” They want us to see everything through the broken lens of “race”—a human construct that has only served to dehumanize us throughout history. As a person with brown skin, I reject my assigned “status” and refuse to see everything through that distorted prism.

It leads to blindness.

Instead, I choose to see through the breakthrough filter of Scripture that opens our eyes to the truth of our identity, the perfect bond of love, our oneness through Christ, and the freedom of forgiveness. Our human condition, and the frailty that marks us, can never be illuminated by the darkness of tattered theories.

And that’s exactly what Critical Race Theory (CRT) is.

How can a theory derived from anti-Semites who were virulent racists hell-bent on abolishing the family and religion bring healing to the sin of racism? Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw Christianity as an impediment to their socialist ideology. How can a godless theory be used as an “analytical tool” to address issues needing a Godly solution?

I’m particularly irked by Christians who don’t want the struggle of wrestling with solutions but simply hop aboard the latest bandwagon sponsored by an insanely profitable victimhood industry. Racism is evil as is every other sin known to humankind. Sin diminishes and destroys us. It is a brokenness that cannot be remedied by more brokenness. But for many, the goal is not to offer a solution but a continual subscription.

Famed educator and leader Booker T. Washington, a former slave, explained this industry well on page 144 of his book “My Larger Education”:

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Today, that class of people is of varying hues and NY Times bestsellers capitalize on a form of activism that seeks to divide us, erase equality, and offer forced redistribution in the form of “equity”. Dr. Carol Swain, the brilliant former (black) professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, offers a helpful definition of Critical Race Theory:

“Critical race theory is an analytical framework to analyze institutions and culture. Its purpose is to divide the world into white oppressors and non-white victims. Instead of traditional forms of knowledge, it holds up personal narratives of marginalized minority “victim” groups (blacks, Hispanics, Asians) as evidence (considered irrefutably by its nature) of the dishonesty of their mostly white heterosexual oppressors.”

As someone who is “biracial,” I’m both the “oppressed” and the “oppressor.” Through no fault of my own, since no one controls the circumstances of his or her conception, I’m foisted into perpetual perplexity simply based on the sins or the sufferings of my lineage. Just to further illustrate the absurdity of this deeply prejudiced CRT approach to classification, I can simply highlight my own origin story. I was conceived in rape. So, am I responsible for my (black) biological father’s heinous act? Of course not. Interestingly, my white father—who chose to adopt and love ten children (of varying beautiful hues) that other men abandoned—is branded as part of the “white supremacist patriarchy” that is guilty of every negative outcome of black Americans. My dad, Henry Bomberger, recently passed away. The only legacy he left behind was one of unconditional love and self-sacrifice. His devotion to us proved that it’s not color that binds us; it’s love.

Despite Scripture’s insistence on the unity of believers and how Christ makes us one (Galatians 3:28), CRT diabolically separates us using the deeply flawed human construct of race. Ironically, in a culture that rejects the science of binary gender the progressive priests of CRT demand we can only be the “oppressed” or the “oppressors”. How nihilistic. It also preaches perpetual “guilt” and undeserved “privilege” based solely on one’s skin color.

Fake guilt will never erase real problems.

As Christians, we are all privileged to know and worship a God who could’ve merely condemned us but chose to redeem and rescue us (John 3:16-17). We are privileged to no longer be slaves to sin (Romans 6:6). We are privileged, through Christ’s strength, to be more than conquerors (Romans 8:37).

The Bible tells us to no longer conform to the pattern of this world in Romans 12:2, yet this is exactly what we do when we embrace the warped worldliness of CRT. Blame, Deceive, Repeat. This destructive pattern is recognizable throughout Scripture. Satan is the accuser, and he constantly coaxes us to embrace the lie instead of the Light.

CRT is a debilitating disease. Its malignancy in the body of Christ is spread by pastors who don’t believe the Word is enough. Some of these leaders apparently think the World has the answers to the temporal and eternal devastation of sin.

Mainstream media gave voice to a handful of black pastors who support using CRT and several who left a major denomination over it. Pastor Charlie Dates, of the Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, exited the Southern Baptist Convention over SBC Seminary presidents’ rejection of Critical Race Theory, despite their clear denouncements of the sin of racism. I thoroughly agree with their statement. I’m not a Southern Baptist, so I have no interest in defending a denomination but merely want to uphold the Truth. Pastor Dates, who embraces unbiblical Black Liberation Theology and the Black Lives Matter movement, issued a defiant (and historically challenged) OpEd sharply condemning those who oppose CRT. He claims the rejection of CRT is due to “fear of liberalism.” I don’t fear liberalism. I wholeheartedly disagree with it because of its dependence on deception and division. Dates strangely then attributed certain social movements to “liberalism” (aka the Democrat Party) such as abolition, women’s suffrage, and civil rights. On all three, Republicans led the fight. But CRT and its advocates value feelings far more than facts.

I don’t think there’s any more eloquent a pastor speaking about cultural issues and Biblical authority than Pastor Voddie Baucham. As a black adoptive father, he embodies what many Christians should aspire toward—Godly character and critical thinking. He exposes and denounces CRT—not with emotionalism (like Pastor Charlie Dates) but with factualism.

Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, credited as a co-founder of “Critical Race Theory” (of course, derived from Marxist Critical Theory) is a leading proponent of this poison. Never mind this accomplished black woman was the recipient of Ivy League education at Cornell and Harvard Law School. But, you know, systemic racism. She sees it in everything…well except the abortion industry which massively and disproportionately kills black lives. Crenshaw, who is radically pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, anti-nuclear family and denies the clearly evident consequences of fatherlessness, blames racism for everything that victimizes black people and other “marginalized” groups. Her organization, the African American Policy Council, is holding an event on April 29th featuring Crenshaw, Brad Sears (Executive Director of UCLA’s dubious and radically pro-LGBT The Williams Institute) and Planned Parenthood’s President, Alexis McGill Johnson, as keynote speakers.

But sure, let’s use Critical Race Theory—an ideology that is hostile to Christianity in countless ways—as a means by which Christians should see the world. CRT activists claim to fight for justice but regularly reject truth and morality. Psalm 89:14 says: “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne. Mercy and truth go before Your face.” You cannot have justice without mercy (the compassion or forgiveness toward an offender) and truth. To ignore this is to welcome a cancer instead of the cure.

This article was originally published at TheRadianceFoundation.org.

Join us in Collinsville on Saturday, May 22nd for an IFI Worldview Conference about CRT!

It’s a curious phenomenon that racists rarely see their own racism—the plank in their own eyes. That was true during the long, torturous days of slavery. It was true during the long torturous days of Jim Crow laws. It was true during the Civil Rights Movement. And it’s true now. No, it’s not conservatives who are spreading racism while remaining blithely blind to it. It’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and BLM who are spreading racism like manure throughout our cultural system. And it’s racist Ibram X. Kendi who sees himself as “anti-racist” and wrote,

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

And like racists of yore, they profit handsomely from their efforts to encourage Americans to judge people by the color of their skin.

Leftist change-agents posing as “diversity educators” have captured the wills of corporate executives. Now Big Business is in the business of not only selling goods and services but also in repackaging racism as “antiracism” and browbeating employees into pretending they believe it.

Prior to capturing the wills of corporate execs—not known for their familiarity with or investment in arcane academic theories or for steely-spined moral integrity—leftist change-agents in sullied ivory towers captured the wills of teachers and administrators—not known for independent or “critical” thinking, or for commitments to diversity, inclusivity, or tolerance. In my experience, will-capturing of yellow-bellied teachers and administrators is an almost effortless task. All it takes is a bit of name-calling topped by a dollop of mockery, and the spineless among us bend like paper straws dipped in a Big Gulp.

Now states are requiring ongoing critical race theory (CRT) indoctrination for staff and faculty. Schools are forcing white students to engage in exercises designed to make them feel shame for their skin color (goodbye self-esteem movement).  And schools are racially segregating students in what are euphemistically called “affinity” groups. “Separate but equal” has returned with a vengeance thanks to vengefully regressive “progressives.”

That probably explains why administrators and faculty said next to nothing when the increasingly woke, decreasingly conservative evangelical Wheaton College held a racially segregated pre-graduation ceremony for colorful people on May 8, 2021, which was advertised as “RACIALIZED MINORITY RECOGNITION CEREMONY” (all caps in original) and held in the campus chapel. While it was created “Especially for undergraduate students, staff, and faculty of color,” the school provided “limited seating” for colorless people. I wonder if those seats were way in the back.

One Wheaton faculty member who likely loves Wheaton’s embrace of re-segregation is associate professor of philosophy and critical race theorist Nathan Cartagena who was recently interviewed for leftist Christian Jim Wallis’ Sojourners’ magazine. In this interview, Cartagena explained how he sussed out Wheaton’s friendliness to CRT by delivering a visiting lecture on controversial critical race theorist Tommy Curry during the interview process:

I wanted to see: Is this a place that would welcome such reflection? I received a warm welcome from the students, my department, etc., so I thought “OK, this is a place where I can do this.”

And by “do this,” Cartagena meant, not expose students to the debate on CRT, but to promote CRT:

I taught a reading group my first year at Wheaton that involved one of the important texts in the critical race theory movement, Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell. The following year I asked if I could teach a half-semester class on critical race theory—I got a full thumbs up.

Derrick Bell is another controversial figure in the critical race theory movement “whose writings on ‘critical race theory,’” conservative African American economist Thomas Sowell explains “promoted an extremist hostility to white people.”

Sowell described the academic transformation of Bell, attributing it largely to his scholarly inadequacy at Harvard:

As a full professor at Harvard Law, Derrick Bell was … surrounded by colleagues who were out of his league as academic scholars. What were his options at this point?

If he played it straight, he could not expect to command the respect of either the faculty or the students — or, more important, his own self-respect. …

Derrick Bell’s options were to be a nobody, living in the shadow of more accomplished legal scholars — or to go off on some wild tangent of his own, and appeal to a radical racial constituency on campus and beyond.

His writings showed clearly that the latter was the path he chose. His previous writings had been those of a sensible man saying sensible things about civil-rights issues that he understood from his years of experience as an attorney. But now he wrote all sorts of incoherent speculations and pronouncements, the main drift of which was that white people were the cause of black people’s problems.

Cartagena openly admits the cunning way he gets his students to accept CRT:

When I was first teaching on CRT, I was very explicit about when something was a CRT essay or quote. Now, one of the things I do is I present CRT literature without telling students that it’s CRT literature. Then I ask them what they think about it. The overwhelming response from the students is: “Wow, this essay is so rigorously researched, so clear, and so well-argued. Even if I don’t agree with every claim, I learned so much,” etc. Then, after they’ve sung a little praise song, [laughs] I tell them they’ve read a piece by a critical race theorist. You can see a look of disillusionment set in — this part gets really hard, if I’m honest. On the one hand, it’s a healthy destabilization. You’ve gotta remember that a lot of my students are racialized white folks. If they’re not now going to say that everything they just said was false, how do they reckon with believing there are things to learn from critical race theorists while knowing that the stakes, in some of these communities they’ve been a part of, are so high that to say such is to find themselves ostracized?

While this tactic appears to be a means to enable students to approach ideas objectively, with a mind decluttered and “decolonized” by the detritus of white privilege and systemic racism, educators know it’s a tactic that can be used to propagandize. Presenting students with an interpretive lens beclouded by jargon, ambiguous language, assumptions, and subtexts with which students have no familiarity doesn’t educate; it indoctrinates.

At least as offensive is Cartagena’s evident pleasure in “destabilizing” his students and emotionally manipulating them by manufacturing cognitive dissonance.

Enquiring donors and parents considering sending their children to Wheaton may want to know if Cartagena spends equal time having students study any of the many works of criticism of CRT like Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everyone or Voddie Baucham’s book Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe.

Anthony Esolen, professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts, senior editor at Touchstone Magazine, and contributing editor at Crisis Magazine, opposes the teaching of CRT in schools:

The problem is that the schools shouldn’t be teaching any “theory” of human behavior at all, for two principal reasons. First, the students do not have anything close to the learning or the broad human experiences that would serve as evidence for checking the theory. For the same reason why it is pointless, and perhaps destructive, to teach literary theory to young people who have hardly begun to read literature at all, because they have no evidence or experience from which to judge the theory, and they will instead be prone to force what literature they do encounter to fit the predeterminations of the theory, so it is pointless, and probably destructive, to teach some theory of human behavior to children who need first to have the experiences, personal or vicarious, that the theory purports to explain.

But the second reason … is more grave. It is that human behavior does not admit of that kind of theory at all. I am not talking here about moral philosophy, or about anthropological observations, or about history and its more or less reliable guidelines. All “theories” of human behavior are necessarily ideological and reductive: whether it’s from Skinner or Marx, it doesn’t matter. The simplest things we do in a given day are steeped in so many motives, passions, thoughts, physical exigencies, and moral commitments, we dare not simply paste a label on them to explain them away and have done with them.

There are glimmers of hope that Americans on both the right and left may be approaching their limits with the racist “antiracism” movement. Virtually everyone on the right and increasing numbers of people on the left are fed up with the ubiquitous manifestations of critical race theory. Americans see CRT is corrosive and divisive. They see CRT is being used to control discourse. And they see that “progressives” are passing CRT off as inarguable, objective truth. “Progressives,” in control of most of the levers of power and influence, feel no obligation to debate CRT’s arguable assumptions. Nor will they acknowledge that CRT is arguable as they use hard-earned tax dollars to promulgate it in government schools. And hoo boy, are they promulgating.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CRT-at-Wheaton-College.mp3

Join us in Collinsville on Saturday, May 22nd for an IFI Worldview Conference about CRT!

In light of recent events that have led to racial unrest, protests (both peaceful and riotous), looting, and calls for sweeping societal changes, Dr. Voddie Baucham asks the question that every Christian today must consider and answer: “Is the Bible sufficient for racial reconciliation?”

In his 2019 address at the Southeast Founders regional conference, Dr. Baucham relates his own experience and approach to racial reconciliation and contrasts the “new hermeneutics” and “new canon” with the supremacy and sufficiency of the Bible for all matters of faith and practice. Drawing from Ephesians 2, he proclaims that God has already broken down all divisions, ethnicities, and classifications in reconciling us through the blood of Christ.

Dr. Baucham is Dean of Theological Education at African Christian University in Zambia, and is an author, conference speaker, and former pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, Texas.

Please watch Dr. Baucham’s powerful presentation and make it a priority to share this timely video with friends and family.

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IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his letter from the Birmingham Jail. In it, he argued that “there are two types of laws: just and unjust,” King went on: “A just law is a … code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with that moral law.”

King then said, “Any law that uplifts [the human being] is just. Any law that degrades human [beings] is unjust. All segregation is unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the [human being].

“Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber,” contended King, “substitutes an ‘it’ for a ‘thou’ … and ends up relegating persons to the status of things [such as a color or a race].

“Segregation is morally wrong and sinful. Sin is separation … and segregation is an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness.”

In other words, what King was clearly saying was this: When you divide what should be united, you are not an integrationist. You are a segregationist. And you are guilty of sin.

Voddie Baucham, dean of Theology at the African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia, says it this way,

“The concept of race is not a biblical idea; it is a constructed idea. You won’t find the idea of races in the Bible. [In Scripture], we are all the race of Adam. One race, one blood … The separations we have created — the racial categories — are artificial … They are not real … Racial distinctions are things that we have made up to divide ourselves … But the all-sufficient Word of God says to us, ‘That’s a lie, stop believing it!’”

The take-home from both King and Mr. Baucham is this. We are made in the image of God. He designed us and defined us, and when we compromise His description of who we are — when we hyphenate our identity through our contrived definitions and divisions — we not only compromise the dignity of man but also denigrate the very definition of God.

St. Paul says,

“There is ONE body … and ONE God. For in Christ … there is neither Jew nor Greek … You are all ONE [emphasis mine] in Christ Jesus.”

In Genesis 1:27, we are told that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him …” Moses is very clear. God did not say he created humanity and then divided us by categories. All men and women are created as a singular race that is a direct reflection of the unity of triune God himself. There is absolutely nothing here that suggests otherwise.

In the “moral law of God,” there is no black and white. There is no such thing as a hyphenated human being. There is no such division. The only definition of man that we have in the Bible is that God created us as a unified “thou,” not a bunch of divided “its.”

Any segregation of this image — of the Imago Dei — into separate categories based on the “color of one’s skin rather than the content of one’s character” is “an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness.”

The enemy of human dignity and human freedom knows this. He knows that all that’s necessary to conquer us is to divide us from each other and divide us from God.

Our nation’s seal says E Pluribus Unum and not E Unum Pluribus for a reason.

It is out of many, one! Not out of one, many!

United, we stand. Divided, we fall.

The consequence of abandoning this truth is always anarchy, not freedom. Lies always result in more and more bondage and less and less liberty.

Remember this in November.

Never vote for anyone shouting diversity rather than unity.

Never vote for anyone marching for “us” vs. “them.”

Never vote for anyone who focuses on black vs. white; the 99 percent vs. the one; the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie.

Never vote for anyone who implies that some “lives matter” and others don’t.

Never vote for anyone who is “out of harmony with the moral law of God.”

Never vote for dividing and segregating the Imago Dei.

Never vote for anyone who waves the banner of the “it” vs. the “thou.”

Such people care little for those they claim to defend. They only care about power.

Such people know that if they can divide us, they can control us by manipulating our anger, resentment and our desire for revenge.

Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. He understood not only the lessons of Scripture but also those of history. He knew that a message of division and retaliation rather than one of unity and repentance always brings the “guillotine” and blood flowing in the streets.

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).

This article was originally published at The Washington Times.

There are a lot of really bad ideas swirling around our culture right now.  (That headline is one of them.)

Among many bad ideas, I am concerned about the things being embraced by various people and groups in a manner that has been termed “virtue signaling.” If you have not heard of this, think of Nike’s new commercials decrying racism, as if the whole world was eagerly waiting to know what a shoe company thinks. After all, we all know that the shoes we wear impact how we speak and behave towards each other. We must all think good things about Nike now. Their shoes care.

This is akin to white guilt.  It is something I also do not understand. I have enough of my own faults to deal with in the here and now. I do not need to take on the sins of people I never knew, people I had no impact upon, and people who did things 150 years ago that I wouldn’t ever do. I can declare such things as evil, but I feel no need to wring my hands and apologize for the wrongs of the ancient dead.

The problem of humanity is sin, and it is universal. Racism is a sin. It is not a sin unique to one’s color or to this point in history, and it is certainly not unique to America. (For starters, we did a lot wrong, but we are also one of the only nations to ever violently spill our own blood to end slavery.)  Yet, this issue has taken on almost a cultic status in some circles, including churches, as the be all and end all defining issue.

So, with the understanding that racism is wrong, how do we address it without embracing wrong ideas or ideologies?

To perhaps jump start your thinking on this . . .  I would encourage you and your family to make a point of watching the incredible thinker and speaker, Voddie Baucham, in this important talk titled, “Ethnic Gnosticism.” I believe you will find this educational and something helpful for discussion of this within your family.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the corona virus pandemic has been the cancellation of numerous conferences and other events. With the benefits of technology, many of those events have been able to take place online. The full experience may not be the same, but at least we don’t have to miss out completely!

One such event my wife and I were planning to attend this year was the annual Family Conference hosted by Illinois Christian Home Educators. Aside from fond personal memories—the two of us met each other for the first time at the conference ten years ago—it’s a great opportunity to hear solid teaching, interact with other Christian families, and peruse curriculum and other resources.

This year, the ICHE board of directors made the decision to host the conference virtually. It may not be the same as the in-person event so many families have come to love, but it certainly has its advantages: no commute, no food or lodging expenses, and—thanks to the generosity of ICHE—no registration fee! (Registration is still required, but the cost is waived.)

The conference is much more than just a homeschool event. As Kirk Smith, Executive Director of ICHE shared with me, it’s “a marriage conference, family conference, parenting conference, biblical worldview conference, economic conference, spiritual renewal conference all rolled up into one.”

A review of the event website (check it out for yourself here) reveals a broad lineup of speakers and subjects. Topics range from the practical, to the inspirational, to the philosophical. Here’s a smattering of the presentations you can enjoy:

• Thoroughly Christian Education (Voddie Baucham)

• Time and Home Management: Managing Life and Home While Homeschooling (Nancy Bjorkman)

• When Motherhood Feels Too Hard (Kelly Crawford)

• Homeschool High School with Confidence (Cheri Frame)

• One Race, One Blood (Ken Ham)

• How to Spot Fake News (Carl Kerby)

• Homeschooling 101 (Jeff Lewis)

• Three Things Every Young Christian Artist Must Know (Dan Lietha)

• The 5 Flavors of Homeschooling (Sonya Shafer)

• Preparing Our Children to Navigate the LGBTQ Movement in Truth and Love (Elizabeth Urbanowicz)

• Motivating the Reluctant Learner (Krisa Winn)

• And many, many more!

With schools closed down for the past couple of months, many moms and dads have become unexpected homeschoolers. If that describes you, and if you’re considering homeschooling long term (I highly recommend it!), this event could be a great way to learn more about how homeschooling works in a more traditional context. Of course, as Kirk Smith points out, “There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach with homeschooling. At the ICHE conference, you will be able to hear a variety of approaches and be able to tailor your school experience for what best fits your values and priorities as a family.”

The ICHE Family Conference will be taking place May 28-31. It will be hosted using the event app Whova, and you’ll have access to the conference sessions via Whova for a full year afterward.

There are at least three groups of people who should consider registering for this conference:

• Homeschooling moms and dads who were planning to attend the regular, in-person event

• Parents who have considered attending the event in the past but were unable to do so because of distance, budget, childcare, etc.

• Anyone interested in learning more about homeschooling (parents, grandparents, pastors, etc.)

Homeschooling is really an extension of parenting. It’s the opportunity to teach and disciple our children with a degree of intention unmatched by other options. As Kirk Smith pointed out, “So many dads and moms want to do parenting right, they just lack examples and resources. The conference will give them both.”

So if you want to be a better homeschooler—or a better parent—be sure to check out the ICHE Family Conference! Check it out HERE.

We take very seriously the trust you place in Illinois Family Institute when you send a gift.
We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. 

IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.

Speaking at a recent conference on Social Justice and the Gospel, Dr. Voddie Baucham, Jr. addressed the meaning of social justice and explains that the term doesn’t mean what we think it means. Dr. Bauchman is a Dean of Theological Education at African Christian University in Zambia.

He begins by quoting Dr. William Young, who defines social justice as the redistribution of advantages and resources to disadvantaged groups to satisfy their rights to social and economic equality.  In theological terms, God demands justice, and therefore injustice is “sin.”  Accordingly, any disagreements cannot be allowed as this would be “injustice” and contrary to the Divine will.

But It’s important to remember that social justice is not about whether the individual experiences success.  It is always about the group: it is important to identify disadvantaged groups that require justice.  And it’s not about numbers.  Take women, for example.  They comprise more than half the population but are still considered disadvantaged.

This leads to the concept of “identity politics,” i.e., what politicians will do for “our group.”  If some group is not doing well – never mind any particular individual – we need to find out who is to blame.  There needs to be a redistribution of resources to address any disparities.

If we claim that the individuals in any particular group are responsible for their own disadvantages, that would amount to the dreaded accusation of “victim blaming.”  In fact, social justice assumes that those in “privileged” groups – as, for example, white people, who are successful, financially or otherwise, have acquired those resources illegitimately.  According to social justice, the answer is to redress the perceived grievances.  The fact that extremely high-paying professional sports is dominated by players of another color is an anomaly that is ignored or considered just.

Social justice demands that resources that are “unjustly” gained be transferred to those of an underrepresented minority.  Accordingly, a white person who started from nothing and became successful means nothing and is still considered the unjust one.  On the other hand, someone from a minority family of financial means deserves whatever privileges they enjoy.

Thus, central to the idea of social justice is the idea of “redistributive justice.”  According to its adherents, only this can guarantee genuine democracy.

Dr. Baucham cites the largest online professed Christian community that is claiming to fight for social justice.  The site, Faithful America, lists their victories and exploits in fighting for social justice.  Topping the list is their fight against a company called Hobby Lobby, which has stood for Christian values.  Number two on the list of Faithful America’s list of “victories” is convincing Google to delist World Vision, a worldwide Christian ministry.  Third on the list is their success in forcing MSNBC to drop the Family Research Council, which fights for Christian values in Washington D.C.

A pattern is beginning to emerge.  Faithful America also defended a pastor who was defrocked for performing a same-sex wedding in violation of the stated principles of his denomination.  If we recall the social justice assertion that injustice is “sin,” then standing for traditional marriage and refusing to sanction gay marriage is considered “sinful” behavior.

According to Dr. Baucham, the social justice movement centers on three main areas.  The first is minority equality; the second is feminism and women’s rights; and the third is the LGBTQA+ movement, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, the allies of the aforementioned, and anyone other aberrant sexuality not on this list.

Dr. Baucham refers to the classic gay propaganda strategy book of the last century, After the Ball, How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Homosexuality in the 1990’s.  The book describes three strategies to accomplish this goal: desensitizing, jamming, and conversion.  All involve acclimatizing “normal” heterosexuals to seeing – and eventually accepting – LGBTQA+ people by “bombarding” them through television, movies, the media, and the educational system to “getting used to” their abnormal lifestyle.  Those who resist are to be identified with neo-Nazis and the KKK, etc.

Thus, it has come about that those who hold to marriage and family as historically understood have become the enemies of “social justice.”  If such a thing can be imagined, it has come to the point where the views of traditionalists are considered “sinful,” and worthy only of an unforgivable disapproval until if and when they “see the light” and not only tolerate but celebrate the homosexual lifestyle.

This video and his message is well worth your attention:

IFI Worldview Conference

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.