Does CRT Belong in Church? (Part One)
Inside This Episode
Critical race theory has taken center stage in our culture’s conversation about racism. For many, it’s also become a proverbial line in the sand. If you question anything about CRT, you risk being called a racist. Suggest anything remotely positive about it, on the other hand, and they’ll say you’re a woke Marxist. In this two-part series, we’ll hear from two leading experts who will help us understand CRT’s origins, its recent entry into mainstream culture, and how it complements or contradicts the Christian worldview. Part one features Neil Shenvi, author of a 2023 book called Critical Dilemma: The Rise of Critical Theories and Social Justice Ideology—Implications for the Church and Society.
Follow Neil Shenvi’s work: https://shenviapologetics.com/
Transcript
Eric Huffman: In part one of this two-part episode of Maybe God, we're tackling the controversial academic philosophy known as Critical Race Theory.
Neil Shenvi: What critical theorists believe is that society is divided into oppressor groups and oppressed groups along the lines of race, class, and gender, and that's something called the social binary. Social justice means destroying the systems and structures which produce the social binary. So they want to level the playing field so that there's no ruling class which imposes its values on culture.
Eric Huffman: Author and scientist Neil Shenvi explains critical theory's origins, its recent rise to prominence, and the specific challenges that critical theory poses to a Christian worldview.
Neil Shenvi: Critical theories function like a religion. You can't have two religions. You just can't. Critical theory thinks that we need to view ourselves primarily in terms of whether I'm oppressed or oppressor. Whereas Christianity says, no, primarily you're a child of God. Your relationship to God is the first thing about you that matters.
Eric Huffman: That's all today on Maybe God.
[00:01:05] <music>
Eric Huffman: You're listening to Maybe God. I'm Eric Huffman. Critical race theory. A few years ago, most Americans had never heard this phrase before. But now, from debates on Capitol Hill to lectures on campuses across the country, critical race theory has taken center stage in our culture's conversation about racism.
[clips of people speaking on critical racial theory]
Critical race theory is being taught in our schools.
Critical race theory is bunk.
Critical race theory is a lie from start to finish.
The Western culture and values that brought forth Christianity in the founding documents are being called evil and racist.
I am not co-parenting with the government.
It is not your job to force these ideas onto my child.
The narrative in this country is that we're all inherently racist and I'm about sick of it.
Eric Huffman: For many, it's also become a proverbial line in the sand. If you question anything about CRT, you risk being called a racist. Suggest anything remotely positive about it, on the other hand, and they'll say you're a woke Marxist. I find this whole conversation to be both challenging and vital.
Challenging because it's so divisive. It's almost impossible to have a real conversation about race in America that doesn't end in a fight. But this conversation is also vital, simply because racism still exists in our culture and in our churches and in most of our hearts and minds. And the only thing more dangerous than talking about it is not talking about it.
Our goal with this two-part series is to talk about racism and CRT in a way that brings people who disagree together, instead of driving them further apart. In this series, we'll hear from experts who will help us understand CRT's origins, its recent entry into mainstream culture, and how it complements or contradicts the Christian worldview.
Neil Shenvi is the author of a 2023 book called Critical Dilemma: The Rise of Critical Theories and Social Justice Ideology. But his background isn't what you might expect from someone who's an outspoken voice on this issue.
Neil Shenvi: I grew up in a really loving, wonderful, but non-Christian home in Delaware. I went to college in New Jersey, grad school in California, met my future wife. We got married when we were pretty young, 22. I now have four kids. She went on to get a PhD and an MD and then an MBA, and I just only got a PhD.
About 10 years ago, I quit my job at Duke to homeschool our four kids. So I do that now, and I'm an author. Google me. Google says I'm an author, not a homeschooling dad.
Eric Huffman: You're that and a lot more. You sped through a lot of your early life there. You said you grew up in Delaware. What was your upbringing like, more or less?
Neil Shenvi: I have great parents. I would have called myself spiritual, but not religious. I kind of looked down on the fundamentalist Christians who, you know, read their Bible and stuff like that. I would have called myself Christian because, you know, I believed in God and I was a good person.
But then meeting my future wife, Christina, in college, when she was a genuine believer and then realizing, Oh, what she calls a Christian is something different than what I was calling a Christian. She actually believes this stuff. I mean, I was intrigued because she was, you know, smart, funny, beautiful, but also humble.
I pretended to be humble, but I was not humble. I was obsessed with being better than other people. So that really was attractive to me that she really seemed to not care so much about her reputation, her excellence. She viewed it as a blessing from God. And that was appealing to me, but also perplexing. Anyway.
We moved out to California for grad school, and that's where I began going to church with her. That's how I heard the gospel and became a Christian.
Eric Huffman: California, huh? That was at Berkeley, right?
Neil Shenvi: Yeah, Berkeley.
Eric Huffman: Don't hear a lot of conversion stories out of Berkeley these days. What was it exactly that sort of got you over the line and all in with Jesus?
Neil Shenvi: I mean the big thing... So I'd read a lot of C.S. Lewis. I read the Screwtape Letters probably 10 or 20 times as a non-Christian. It was fascinating to me because it had such insight into my condition. I couldn't figure out how Lewis knew that. How does he have such insight into my personal struggles?
And of course, now I know the answer is he's a Christian. He's tuned into humanity's struggles. He knows the darkness in our hearts and our need and our opposing and our rationalization. Still it's a brilliant book. So that was one thing. Then knowing my wife and then going to church with her.
The big question for me essentially was, will you humble yourself and admit that you don't really know God? You claim to be so intellectual and smart, you're better than these stupid Christians. But if you become a Christian, you'll have to admit that all that was a lie, that you didn't really have an inside track on theology, you had to enter the kingdom like a little child.
I remember the night that I became a Christian, I think was when I said to God, I don't even know who you are anymore, but if Jesus is your Son, I'll follow him. That's it. That's the mustard seed of faith. It's like the guy who says, whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know, but I know this, I was blind, now I see. Like, wow, that's not Westminster Confession of Faith level of theological precision there. And yet, it's enough. It's saying yes to Jesus and accepting His offer to rescue you. Of course, I did have a long way to go theologically, but I think that was the night when I crossed from death to life.
Eric Huffman: Interesting. Yeah, it wasn't some positive view of God or some bright light revelation necessarily. It was more about seeing yourself for who you really were and your need for Him.
Neil Shenvi: And just the big obstacle, I think, to Christianity, between me and Christianity, was my pride. I thought I knew everything already. I'd made my own God that was better than the Christian God. But having to say, No, if Christianity is true, then I don't know God and I need to learn and be taught. That was hard for me because I prided myself on my intellectualism and my sophistication. But God meets us-
Eric Huffman: Yeah. I had someone tell me recently his dad used to tell him the beginning of wisdom is realizing and remembering what a jerk you are, which is an interesting perspective. But I find that to be the case.
Neil Shenvi: Yeah. I mean, Socrates said that knowledge is the progressive discovery of our ignorance. And in the spiritual realm, that definitely is true. And same thing with morally too. The more we know God, the more we recognize our own failure and our need for grace. We, I think, objectively do grow in goodness and kindness and love and the fruit of the spirit but subjectively we also are aware all the more of our own need for grace. It's like walking into closer and closer to a streetlamp when you're covered in dirt. You're not getting dirtier, but you're more and more aware of the dirt on you. That's sanctification. We're becoming holier in a good sense, not in a self-righteous sense, but at the same time, we're more aware of our sin.
Eric Huffman: I love that analogy of the street lamp. I'm going to hold on to that. Now, you are an outspoken opponent of sort of the critical theory movement, and particularly you've written a lot about critical race theory. We're going to talk a lot about that in a minute.
But I just want to make sure our listeners understand that this wasn't a fight that you went to school to learn how to fight. This isn't your field of study per se.
Neil Shenvi: No, not at all.
Eric Huffman: What you earn your PhD in and what did you intend to do with your life?
Neil Shenvi: I have a PhD in theoretical chemistry. I've worked as a postdoc research scientist at Yale and then Duke. I mean, I homeschooled my kids, all of that up until like 2015. That's what I was doing. Actually my first book, I believe, is just a standard apologetics book about did Jesus rise from the dead? Do we know God exists? How do we know that? It was very much grew out of my conversion and wanting to share the gospel with my atheist, secular, agnostic intellectual colleagues.
Funny story that for whatever reason, theoretical chemistry seems to actually be disproportionately Christian and evangelical Christian. So when I was moving into my office at Yale, I was going through the drawers. The last postdoc to leave had not quite cleaned out his office desk, and I pull open a drawer and there's a stack of sermon CDs in the desk, and one of the deacons at our church was a grad student in the lab right next to me, and another guy was a Presbyterian.
So there really was an openness in my field to spiritual things. And I think part of that is because that modern physics is so spooky. There are weird things within modern physics that makes you more open to unseen realities. It tends to humble people in terms of their knee-jerk materialism.
Anyway, that's where I came from. So I was doing that stuff for the first, let's see, 12, 15 years of my Christian life. But then around 2016, I finished the first draft of Why Believe? and I was noticing a shift in our culture, probably many of us did, around the time of Black Lives Matter, when it really took off.
And I saw this language being deployed in the culture and within the church that didn't quite sit right with me. Something was wrong with how they were talking about race, class, gender, sexuality, and so forth. But I was noticing these ideas that were bad, and I couldn't figure out where they were coming from.
Around that time, I met my good friend and collaborator, Dr. Pat Sawyer, who was getting a PhD in education and cultural studies and basically studying critical pedagogy within this critical tradition. And when I heard what he was doing with his PhD, that's when the light bulb went off. And I thought, Oh, this is where these ideas are coming from. It's from the critical tradition.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, interesting. What were the sorts of things you were hearing in the culture that troubled you?
Neil Shenvi: Let's take Black Lives Matter, for example. Just the idea that Whites were privileged universally, not just privileged, meaning had under advantages, but they were somehow complicit in oppression. All Whites. And all people of color were oppressed.
To really understand how systemic oppression works, you have to have your lived experience guide your development of a critical consciousness. So you have to kind of get awoke. That was that colloquial term being used... Today it's been used. Or even the idea that the gospel itself is about social justice, not that the gospel implies that we ought to work for justice. I agree with that. But somehow the gospel is justice. The gospel is just a message about social justice, whatever that means. And also it's a very nebulous definition of what social justice means.
I heard this jargon being thrown around and I just knew something wasn't quite right with it. I couldn't put my finger on it. I think a lot of people are in the same boat where they just sense that we're not talking biblically about these issues anymore, but they can't figure out why. So that's where I was.
Another example would be how I would see personally people that I knew, Christians, who began expressing a concern for social justice issues, which I thought just meant biblical justice. I'm like, yeah, it's great. Christians should work for justice. But then, lo and behold, within a few years, their trajectory was getting more and more theologically progressive. They go from saying, I care about social justice, to then saying, well, I don't even think Jesus was God. How come there's only one way to salvation? How do I know that Bible sexual ethics aren't obsolete and regressive?
So that's what led me to investigate this further and try to figure out, is there some logical connection between caring about justice, which at the time I thought was very benign, and I still do if you define justice properly. But then drifting into this more and more theologically liberal approach to life. And there is a connection.
Eric Huffman: Right. As you have said, you discovered that connection is something called critical theory. Could you give us some brief unpacking of what that is or definition of what that is?
Neil Shenvi: Sure. So the term critical theory was coined by a guy named Max Horkheimer in a 1937 essay, Traditional and Critical Theory. He's a member of the Frankfurt School. These are a group of Marxist philosophers and sociologists working in Germany.
And so they were trying to apply Marx's ideas more broadly than just economics. Marx wanted to understand how the classes, rich and the poor, the owning class, the working class, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat, that how those classes were created by the means of production, who controlled the means of production, the factories, and how workers were being oppressed through economic means. That was Marx.
Well, critical theorist at the Frankfurt School said that we want to apply Marx's insight more broadly and say, how does, say, mass media or the culture industry, how do those things create oppression? How do those things create a ruling class and an oppressed class? So that was the Frankfurt School in the 1930s.
Today, critical theory is now an umbrella category that has spawned entire disciplines. So things like critical race theory, critical pedagogy, queer theory, postcolonial theory, fat studies. I know it sounds funny, but it's a real thing. All of those are critical social theories that fall under the umbrella today of critical theory. What they have in common are several things, but they all aim to understand how society is divided into oppressor groups and oppressed groups along various axes of identity. So it's race, class, gender, sexuality, physical ability, and a host of other identity markers.
Eric Huffman: Okay, this is interesting to me because I went to seminary in 2001 to 2005 and I attended a very progressive Methodist seminary in the Midwest that was founded in the civil rights era and sort of had that mark, that fingerprint on it in terms of its core identity. People don't believe me now, but all the stuff that is called critical theory now and wokeness and all of that was part and parcel to my theological education in 20-plus years ago, to the extent that we watched a film called The Color of Fear, I think was the name of it.
The whole message of it was White men, bad; straight White men, straight White able-bodied, Christian White men, worse; tall, straight, White, able. You know, all of these layers of privilege and power had implications in terms of how much you were supposed to talk and be represented in the seminary experience. And so we were made to sit... White guys like me were... not made. We were encouraged, let's say, to sit on the floor or sit in places of-
Neil Shenvi: To decenter yourself.
Eric Huffman: Yes. You know, there were incentives to doing that, social and educational, I guess, incentives to go along with it, to not speak in class so that you're making... even if you had something great to say, you know-
Neil Shenvi: Making space.
Eric Huffman: Making space because, you know, we had been so complicit in, you know, the power structures of racism in the world that it was our turn to take a back seat and shut up about it. That was going on years and years ago. We didn't call it... I don't remember calling it critical race theory, although I do remember having a class on queer theory. I didn't have any classes on preaching, but I had a class on queer theory, which is interesting. And people wonder why the Methodist church is falling apart. It's like, this has been sort of insidious and it's encroaching upon the church and especially educating future leaders for many years now. It seems to have snuck up on people more broadly in the culture. Like folks didn't hear about it until COVID, I guess, or George Floyd.
Neil Shenvi: Right. Well, it's been around, like you said, for decades. I think it's just become more and more visible in the culture as the ruling class, the elites who have been educated at these big schools have gone into the workforce, into HR departments, and begun to shape the culture. So these ideas that began in the ivory towers and that trickled into everyday life.
Now you see it at the mall, at every movie, everything you do, every billboard, every magazine, every song. It's everywhere. And I think what you said, too, is that it's not named. One of the big issues that was really frustrating for me for years was trying to get people to stop thinking in terms of labels and start thinking in terms of ideas. Because you can look behind me, I have a whole bookshelf full of books on critical social theory, but many of them don't call it that. They will create their own names, anti-racism, critical pedagogy, critical whiteness studies, whiteness pedagogy.
Eric Huffman: White fragility.
Neil Shenvi: What's that? Yeah, white fragility. But they won't always say, hey, we're doing critical theory. They will just say, Oh, we're just doing race scholarship. It's all we're doing. We're just talking about honest history. And you'll find they won't say, Oh, we're getting this from the Frankfurt School. It just gets snuck in. Unless you dig through the citations, you have no idea where these ideas are coming from.
There's a whole stack of evangelical books on my shelf where you'll see them clearly espousing the ideas of, say, critical race theory. But they're just citing other evangelical Christians. And unless you dig through the layers of citations, you've realized, oh, they've laundered these ideas through seemingly legitimate sources. But it's really all going back to, say, Kimberlé Crenshaw or Robin DiAngelo.
Eric Huffman: You know, the way you just phrased it makes it sound like they all know what they're doing. I don't think they know what they're doing.
Neil Shenvi: No, no, no.
Eric Huffman: Do you?
Neil Shenvi: No, not at all. There's a level of ignorance about these ideas, and I don't expect the average pastor who's busy visiting people that are sick, I don't expect you to be read up on Foucault and Derrida and all these different theorists and Fanon. But now that it's everywhere in our culture, it's time to put on your big boy pants and learn these ideas and why they're so bad. Because we are beyond the point of just being, oh, well, stuff is happening out there in the culture. That's crazy. But it's not happening in here in the church. I'm like, yes, it is. It's happening in the church right now and it's hurting real people that you are supposed to be shepherding.
Eric Huffman: Let's talk about that a little bit more in-depth, because clearly, and I've heard you say this too, racism is real. It's a problem. Sexism, misogyny, it's a problem. I guess you could say homophobia. I don't love the "phobia" phrase, but that's still a problem in our culture. These things exist. So what's so scary or harmful about critical theory in particular that you think the church today should be aware of?
Neil Shenvi: You alluded to it already. So one thing that critical theorists do is they redefine a lot of words. They redefine familiar words that you think you understand, but they offer surreptitiously, implicitly different definitions. Take homophobia as an example. There are people that actually hate gay people and bully them and abuse them. That happens. People get beat up in school. That's bad. That's wicked. We shouldn't hate people for sinning, but we should hate ourselves for sinning. I mean, because we're all sinners, essentially.
I think we can reject that actual bigotry and hatred. But they've redefined, say, homophobia to mean if you think that homosexuality is a sin, well, you're homophobic. I say, wait, that's a phobia? I'm not afraid of people that are gay. I'm just saying it's wrong. It's immoral. I say premarital sex is wrong. Heterosexual premarital sex is also wrong. I'm not premarital sex phobic. But again, they've redefined this term.
Or bigotry. It used to mean implacable, immovable, irrational hatred of some group of people. But now it basically means anything that doesn't conform to a progressive standard of morality. Well, they've redefined these terms and we can throw them out there without realizing it's a bait and switch.
Racism is an example. Racism has been redefined. So in the dictionary, it's defined as racial prejudice. But critical race theorists will define racism in many different ways. The most common definition is prejudice plus power, plus institutional power. They'll use that definition to claim that people of color cannot be racist by definition because they lack institutional power.
Eric Huffman: Even if they're prejudiced, they're not racist.
Neil Shenvi: They can be prejudiced, but not racist. And I just say, right off the bat, you can't redefine words like that. I mean, imagine I said, you know, women can't commit adultery. They can't. They can cheat, but they can't commit adultery. What? Why? Because they don't have power in our society. They're underneath the patriarchy. I'm like, wait a minute. Sin is sin. Adultery is a sin, and we sin against God primarily, and only secondary against other people. So regardless of the power structure within society, adultery is a sin for men and women.
So they're playing this language game where they've redefined certain words to make certain people, say, more complicit, more guilty, and to downplay the degree to which, say, anybody can be racist. Anybody can be a sexist. Anybody can be a bigot. So that happens all the time.
They are masters of changing and playing with language. A great example is how we've redefined the word "gender". So gender used to be a synonym for sex back to 1950s, say. But in the 60s, feminists began to redefine gender to refer not to sex, but to refer to the social category that you were put in. So sex referred to your biological sex, meaning XY chromosome, XX chromosomes, your secondary sexual characteristics, things like that. But gender referred to this category that society put you in, say masculine or feminine.
And from there, then queer theorists later then redefined gender to mean basically your internal sense of self, your gender identity now. So it's completely divorced from your actuality. So you've got to be really careful not to adopt their language. Or if you do, you have to define what you mean right up front. So I do not mean this, I mean that. Otherwise, we're giving the game away.
Eric Huffman: Well, I think it's important not just to critique the other side, but to cast a better vision. Let's take justice, for example. Could you give us sort of divergent definitions of a critical theory definition of justice versus a biblical idea of justice?
Neil Shenvi: Sure. So biblically I think a good definition, I think, it goes back to the Greeks, but it fits the Bible too. But justice means rendering unto each person what is their due, or giving them what they deserve. Of course that starts with giving God what He deserves, which is our everything, our heart, mind, soul, and strength, loving Him supremely. That's justice.
But that also applies to other people. So we have a duty to provide for our families. We have a duty to provide for our neighbors, to love our neighbors, to care for them.
And then, of course, it extends also to law. So you can talk about unjust laws, like abortion law, laws permitting abortion, laws permitting slavery. Those are unjust laws,. And so to Christians, part of biblical justice is making sure that our laws as a society are just. So there's some overlap there between what critical theorists might say is a requirement of social justice and what Christians might say is biblical justice.
That said, critical theorists do not define justice vertically at all, period, because they're not a theistic ideology. But they also define social justice to mean, this is a quote, "the elimination of all forms of social oppression where they can be based on persons, race, class, gender, sexuality, physical ability, etc."
So what critical theorists believe is that society is divided into oppressor groups and oppressed groups along the lines of race, class, and gender. And that's something called the social binary. There are all these oppressor groups and oppressed groups. There's men oppressing women. There's Whites oppressing people of color. There are straight people oppressing LGBTQ people.
Social justice means destroying the systems and structures which produce the social binary. So they want to level the playing field so that there's no ruling class which imposes its values on culture. This idea that men impose patriarchal values on culture, those values oppress women. Whites impose their white supremacist values and norms on culture, and that's White supremacy that oppresses people of color. Straight people apply their heterosexist norms and values to culture, that's heterosexism.
Well, critical theory works to dismantle all of those hegemonic norms, all of those values that are imposed on culture by the ruling classes to justify their own dominance, to get rid of those things, and to create a society in which all groups are treated equally. There's no one dominant narrative that justifies anyone having social prominence. That's their definition.
So right off the bat, they would say the gender binary is oppressive because it creates a class of people that are normal and are doing what... you know, the gender binary is normal, then you have people that are transgender are outside of that binary, so they're labeled as deviant, and it's unnatural, it's not... So they would say that's oppressive. The very idea of gender binary is oppressive. Or the idea that marriage is between one man and one woman for life, that's an oppressive idea. It's a patriarchal, heterosexist idea that must be dismantled in the name of social justice.
So there's lots there, but that bottom line is that that's too different definition of justice. And some of the things that they would say are unjust we would say are actually just. They're God's design for humanity, and so we should actually not dismantle them. We should actually value what God values.
Eric Huffman: I remember hearing when BLM really started making headlines, it was, you know, George Floyd and we were all at home for COVID and we're just watching the news and getting, you know, inflamed in one way or another politically. And I remember hearing critiques of the BLM movement early on that I still hear today that it's wrapped up in Marxism and that it initially, although they removed this from their website, initially it sought to dismantle the nuclear family. And that really struck a lot of people as odd.
From what I'm hearing from you it would make total sense because all these critical theory movements are sort of in cahoots, they're intertwined in a way. There's an expectation that if you are a proponent of critical race theory, you're also a proponent of queer theory, for example, and dismantling those systems as well. Is that is that accurate?
Neil Shenvi: What's happened is all of these critical social theories, critical race theory, queer theory, critical pedagogy, they've sort of coalesced within an intersectional framework. So the term "intersectionality" was developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a critical race theorist in 1989. And she used that term to describe the way in which, say, a Black woman is doubly oppressed. She occupies this unique social location where she's both a woman and she's Black, and both of those identities shape her experience of oppression. You can't separate them out. Being a black woman makes uniquely vulnerable to discrimination. But she intended that to be expanded to other categories like your sexuality, your physical ability, your class, all those other categories, they can make you triply, quadruply oppressed or triply, quadruply, multiply privileged. So you have sort of a hierarchy of oppression now.
What that does though is because she's arguing that these different oppressions are inextricably linked. You can't just say, oh, you're just oppressed by racism. No. Your racial oppression intersects with your gender oppression and your sexual oppression. Because of that, you can't then pull them apart and treat them differently.
So this is an incredible quote from a 1993 anthology called Words That Wound. It was co-authored by four of the co-founders of critical race theory, Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence, Richard Delgado, and Kimberlé Crenshaw. And this is four years after the movement coalesced. They list six defining elements of critical race theory, and number six says that they're committed to dismantling racism, sexism, and heterosexism through, quote, "massive social transformation." And that critical race theory, it's a funny element, is it's part of a larger liberatory enterprise that seeks to liberate all of these oppressed social groups.
So when people say things like, well, we can eat the meat and spit out the bones of critical race theory, I'm like, this is a defining element of CRT. Their co-founders are saying, you cannot just take one thing you like from CRT and ignore sexism and heterosexism and homophobia and transphobia. Our movement is committed to all of these things, abolishing all of these systemic oppressions. From the beginning, it's been about this holistic, comprehensive approach to liberation.
Eric Huffman: I want to talk about why this should raise alarm bells for us. Because whenever it's brought up publicly or on Twitter or somewhere, you always see the pushback: That's not that dangerous. We're overreacting. We're whatever.
I remember when my daughter was in eighth grade and she came home and in the middle of a conversation, she just said, "You know, the worst thing to be is a basic White guy." And I thought, that's the weirdest thing for an eighth grader to say. And I just asked her sort of what she meant. And she was like, You know, basic just sort of means plain old, regular, normal, White guy, and that's the last thing you want to be. And I just thought, How odd.
It occurred to me that there are social incentives built into a lot of school cultures, let's say, to identify as something on that oppression hierarchy that you described earlier. But what are some of the dangers you see in the real world as this stuff sort of materializes and critical theory surfaces in everyday life?
Neil Shenvi: I mean, I actually saw a poll just a few days ago saying — it was a poll of Harvard students — that 67% of Harvard students believe that Whites were oppressors. Then I think it was 67% believe that Jews were oppressors. 71% believe that Whites were oppressors. That's people age 15 to 24. As you got older, older demographics reject those ideas. But the younger kids, this is just their bread and butter. They see the world through this lens of oppressor and oppressed. And it's not your behavior, it's just the fact that you were born into this certain race or gender or whatever. That's terrible.
And we're seeing... it's funny, it's creating a backlash. I am, I think, seeing a concomitant upswing in actual racism and anti-Semitism on the right. Because in reaction to people being like, all Whites are racist, you're trash because you're White, the people that are White being like, well, fine, if I'm racist, I'm going to go ahead and just be racist.
I keep telling people, I was warning this four years ago, I give a talk, how we need to reject both racism and critical race theory. And you can't, as a Christian, make excuses and say, well, they started it, and I'm going to go ahead and just be racist because they called me. That's not going to be an answer when God calls you to account for your sin. I understand why people, in reaction to say critical race theory, will as a defense mechanism embrace racism but it's still a sin, it's still wicked and we can't do that. You can't fight sin with sin. You can only fight sin with holiness.
Eric Huffman: Yeah. I want to talk more about that because I think my primary concern about the conversation we're having now about race, given the rise of critical theory into popular culture, which I think has happened, I think that's undeniable. And we are now defining racism differently. We're defining it structurally and instead of individually, right? Which I think it should be both to a certain extent. I think you would agree with that to a certain extent.
What has happened now that we're just defining it structurally, I see two things happening. First, we have taken the honor out of a racist coming to knowledge of his or her racism and repenting of it individually and testifying to that fact and, you know, bringing others into that sort of same realization that I was a racist and I see the error of my ways. That doesn't matter if all racism is structural and institutional.
The other thing I see is it is letting... let me say this a different way. I see this providing cover to real racists. And what I mean by that is, and I hesitate to share this because, and I would never tell this person's name or whatever publicly. But I'm from Red Lick, Texas, and it's the smallest town you would ever imagine and especially when I was there growing up. And racism is just real. I didn't go to school with any kids of color until middle school, you know, seventh grade. You're raised with certain ideas.
Anyway, I ran into a guy that I went to school with and he still lives in Red Lick and we were texting and I said something nice to him about something related to his family. And he said to me, he responded, "That's mighty White of you." "That's mighty White of you," he said. And I was just like, "Dude, really?" Like, that was my response. I was like, "Dude, really? That's mighty white of you?" That wasn't the first time I'd ever heard that phrase. It's just something that, you know, racist individuals say to suggest that when you do or say something polite, that's a White thing.
That sort of mentality is real. But when I pushed back against it and I was like, "Dude, seriously? That's mighty White of you, what are you talking about?" And he was like, "Don't give me that woke BS." So there it was. He was excusing himself, and I was the bad guy all of a sudden because I sounded woke.
So what I'm trying to say is the rise of critical theory and this language of wokeness in our culture is providing a kind of cover to this insidious racism that exists, I think, in every human heart to a certain degree, but it's making it okay to come out of that closet. I just think it's dangerous in the long run.
Neil Shenvi: Yeah, definitely. I've seen that as a... you know, the backlash against wokeness is that people are like, Fine, I'm not gonna even bother caring about racism. It's all Marxist progressive nonsense. I'm like, well, There's also real racism. I mean, I've had it impact me personally. I'm half-Indian. I get told on Twitter to go back to India. I'm like, I'm from Delaware, man. But there are people out there, professing Christians, who are just straight-up racist. Again, it's sin, we mortify it. It's not worse than other sins. Sins are all bad. They're all dishonoring to God, and they're all repellent. We repent of it, though. We acknowledge it, we admit it, and we fight it.
One, critical race theory, for example, it doesn't empower people who are just anti-White racists. They just hate White people. But it's okay because Whites are oppressors. Like, no, no, no, no. As Christians, we don't allow that. We don't say it's fine to be a racist against Whites. Because you can't really be racist against Whites because... no, you can. It's a sin. And then same way though, we say also you can't be racist against Black people or Asians.
So I think we have to, it's a biblical standard. Racism is essentially a sin of partiality. You're partial towards your own group in a sinful way. There are all kinds of ways you can take pride in your own group over other people. But all of that has to be repented of. And we have to say, no, God desires us to be impartial. And especially within the church, God desires us to treat each other like family.
So I can't walk in a church thinking, that's an oppressor Christian, that's an oppressor Christian, that's an oppressed Christian. No, in the church we're a family, the people of God, and we should treat each other that way.
Eric Huffman: I guess the other side of that argument would be, to play devil's advocate a little bit here, is just... there are people I trust who would say that's not enough, Neil. You know, we have to have real conversations about individual and structural racism in our culture today if we're gonna really honor Christ and really be a family. I guess I would ask, what is the answer to that problem? If not, you know, critical race theory, and if not, maybe what... the traditional answer used to be, colorblindness, right? Just don't see color. What do you think is the answer for churches that are trying to do the right thing?
Neil Shenvi: I think this is why critical race theory has such a hold on a lot of people, because evangelicals are sort of ashamed of the sort of tepid evangelical response to the civil rights movement. And it was very mixed. There were some Christians who were pushing for civil rights and some that were just not, some were even opposed to it. And I think as a response to that, we now are thinking, well, we're going to atone for our mistakes by embracing critical race theory and showing that we're serious about racism. I think, no, because some of these approaches are just wrong and unbiblical.
So take systemic racism. We have lots of stuff in our book on this. But the way that most critical race theorists define systemic racism is in terms of outcomes. Ibram X. Kendi is the clearest on this. He says that if you believe that any racial disparity is caused by anything other than discrimination, you're a racist. So let me say it again.
Eric Huffman: Any racial disparity out there.
Neil Shenvi: Any racial disparity at all, if you think it's due to anything other than purely discrimination, then you're a racist. That's what he said flat out in his book, How to Be an Antiracist and also in his book, Stamped from the Beginning. And then people pressed him on this because it's nonsensical. People are like, Ibram, the NBA is 75% Black. It's a disparity. It's way more than, you know, random chance that... So is that because of discrimination? People point there are all kinds of disparities that are not caused by discrimination. It'd be madness to think that.
No one's discriminating against White players and hiring Black players in the NBA. It's just because Black players tend to be better on average. But he just punts that he will not... Actually, in his recent update to this edition of the book, he just removes that sentence.
Eric Huffman: Really?
Neil Shenvi: Yeah. But if you look at… He's not alone. He says it most clearly. In our book, we have numerous quotes from NAACP president, from books talking about how they tend to equate all racial disparities are the product of systemic racism. That is what it means. But we point out that's just not rational to think that it's all caused by this nebulous, insidious, forces. There are many causes for disparities. Can actual discrimination cause disparities? Of course, it can. Yes, absolutely.
We cite papers showing that some racial disparities are caused in part by discrimination. There's lots of data on that. That said, it's not all due to discrimination. Some of it is due to all kinds of other factors.
Eric Huffman: It's a multivariate, in other words.
Neil Shenvi: Exactly. The only point we make is that it's multivariate. Another example would be speeding tickets on the New Jersey Turnpike. It's often used as an example that Blacks get pulled over for speeding about twice as often as Whites on the New Jersey Turnpike. Well, they studied that example. They said, Oh, this is systemic racism. What they found, though, is that the reason that Blacks got more speeding tickets was that Blacks tended to speed more. Okay. When they actually measure people's speeds, the Blacks are speeding more. And Blacks are especially speeding at extremely high rates. They're disproportionately Black drivers speeding.
Now, why is that? Are Blacks bad drivers? It turns out Blacks are younger. These young kids are speeding, and demographically, they're more young drivers who are Black. Again, it's one of those things where you can't assume. It's just madness to assume that all racial disparities are only due to discrimination. It's multivariate. You have to analyze.
And by the way, in our book, we do that. We actually have examples where the sociologists have carefully parsed the variables and have shown real discrimination effects. But it's not as simple as saying disparity equals discrimination. It's not. Actually, Thomas Sowell, who's a Black economist, wrote a book entitled Disparities and Discrimination, where he gives all these examples of how disparities are not always caused by discrimination.
Eric Huffman: Well, I think the case could also be made that that point, it was just... it's well taken that point you just made, but it's still not enough to suggest that we shouldn't be doing more to help people of color get a leg up and have equality of opportunity. Are you across the board against things like social programs or affirmative action or anything... you know, programs like these that are meant to help even out the, if not the outcome part, the opportunity part, where we're all starting from a similar place as possible?
Neil Shenvi: Right. And that's the key. So critical theorists have redefined the word "equity". Equity used to be a synonym for equality. Now, equity means equal outcome. Well, it's a little tricky. They will claim all we want is equal opportunity. They'll say that. If you ask them, though, well, how do you know whether you've achieved equal opportunity? And they will say, when you've achieved equal outcome. So it's essentially a bait and switch. They really are pushing for equality of outcome.
What I would say is to take affirmative action. I don't think that affirmative action programs as they're currently run, and the Supreme Court agrees with me now, but I think that giving people a boost on race alone is wrong. But I do think there's a very obvious way to call it affirmative action. I wouldn't call it that. What I would call it is something that's called class-based affirmative action.
What it means is you take into account people's opportunities when you assess their performance. If you were a basketball recruiter or a football recruiter and one kid grew up as a high-performing football player, but he's a rich parent who's going to a summer camp, had the best trainers, his parents hired tutors for him to be an incredible player. But then you have a guy who performs a little bit worse than this other kid, but he grew up in Backwater, Arkansas, had no support from his family, was working a job because he was poor, did not have tutors, did not have any special opportunities, did not go to camps, and is still competing at this level. If you're a recruiter, Don't you think you'd be like, oh, maybe this guy has incredible talent that's been untapped? I'm going to give him a little bump and at least give him a chance. He's probably got incredible innate talent. Let's be able to harness that.
Are you going for quality of the outcome? No. What you're saying is they've done... if you can get 95s with very few resources, you're probably innately harder working and more talented than the guys getting 96s, but had tremendous resources. So that could be an approach to, say, university admissions, which you genuinely take into account people's opportunities in order to assess how they're going to perform in college.
What you don't do is you tend to just say, well, he's Asian, he's Hispanic, he's Black, therefore we're going to do this to his essay. You shouldn't do that. That's partiality. And ironically, because, say, Blacks and Hispanics tend to have lower wealth, lower opportunities, things like that, worse schools in general, on average, than, say, White or Asian students, then if you do this sort of... I don't like the term, but class-based affirmative action, where you take into account their resources, it will disproportionately benefit Blacks and Hispanics. So you're getting a similar outcome, but it's not based on race, it's based on opportunity. It's much better to think about this issue.
I really get disappointed that politicians don't talk about that more because you want... I would argue that's a fair way to do admissions, say, and it's going to give you a similar result and yet not be partial.
Eric Huffman: It's a harder thing to measure, though, Neil. It seems to me that race could still be a factor in that whole formula because it does tell you something about how their background might have advantaged them or not. I'm not saying we should just do univariate racially motivated affirmative action type things, but you know, it's like any of those factors, whether someone had to work a job or not Well, if you worked a job, but you have two parents at home, you know, is that a wash? Do those even out? How do you do this if not by something as clear as race and ethnicity?
Neil Shenvi: Well, that's exactly why the Supreme Court made the decision it did, is because if you use race by itself as a factor, even as a proxy for opportunity, it's not very good. So a guy who's Black, both his parents are doctors, right, they both went to Harvard, why are we giving him any kind of boost? He has incredible opportunities. There are plenty of very educated Black parents that are professionals. They're doing way better than some poor rural White people in Appalachia. So I don't think we should be using race as a proxy for opportunity. I think it just doesn't work that way.
Now, 200 years ago, was that more reasonable? Yeah, 200 years ago. But 2023, things have changed quite a bit. So I think we have to be much more careful about applying that. I think we tend to be stuck in this mindset of we're like living in Jim Crow South or the antebellum South. We're not, though. We're not anymore. We have to then change how we view things like race.
Eric Huffman: Interesting. Now, how does the Bible shape your views in regard to these issues and topics we've discussed today? What does the Bible have to say about race and critical theory and the things we've been talking about?
Neil Shenvi: In our book, we go through critical race theory, queer theory, and talk about the immense problem. There's more than I could list. Briefly, critical theories function like a worldview. It's a way of viewing reality. It's basically acting like a religion. You can't have two religions. You just can't. And we give all the examples of all the ways in which you can either choose to prioritize the values and the ideas and the emotional investment of critical theory or Christianity. You can't do both.
And to the extent you try to, you're going to either reject Christianity or reject critical theory. It's like saying, I'm going to be an atheist and also a Christian. No. You can't. They're fundamentally incompatible. So that's one problem.
Number two is that Critical theory thinks that we need to view ourself primarily in terms of whether I'm repressed or oppressor. My whiteness, my masculinity, my femininity, my sexuality, all of those things define who I am primarily. I'm primarily a member of certain groups locked in a battle for dominance. Whereas Christianity says no, primarily you're a child of God. Your relationship to God is the first thing about you that matters. And then I view everybody else around me in terms of, are they part of God's kingdom or are they not?
So the vertical dimension of our identities is primary and everything else is secondary. Well, again, that conflicts with the way that critical theory teaches us to think about our identities. In terms of how we know the truth, critical theory prioritizes lived experience. Your lived experience is what helps you determine what is true about reality. Your experience of oppression, racism, sexism, classism, those things give you authority to speak about your sexuality or it gives you insight into justice that White men don't have.
But we would say no, the ultimate authority and standard is the Bible and God's revelation in nature. We have to test our own lived experience against the Bible and against the objective evidence out there in reality. We can't just rely on our feelings to determine truth.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, that's interesting. You know, I have to check myself sometimes, and I know you probably do too, just because we all are prone to follow our incentives and you know, the path of least resistance, I suppose. And for an able-bodied, tall, middle-class, middle-aged, White, straight guy like me, the path of least resistance is the eradication of these ideas of critical theory, like it is to reject or at least ignore these theories.
So I have to check myself sometimes and realize it can't be that simple. I need to wrestle with these ideas and maybe even see something in them that makes me uncomfortable and learn from that, right? And in terms of the Bible, man, it's, you know... I know you're aware, but there are plenty of passages and not just cherry-picking verses here and there, but like whole swaths of scripture that would seem to at least align with the heart of some of what I hear from the critical theory community, right, the anti-racism community and these power dynamics. Some of that is biblical. Like I can't get around the fact that... you know, Mary's song, for example, you know, bring down the haughty, bring down the high and mighty, lift up the lowly, like that sounds similar in some ways.
Neil Shenvi: Like Marxist, she's a Marxist.
Eric Huffman: Yeah, right. I know she isn't and wasn't, and yet the heart of it is we have to pay attention to that. There's something about the heart of God that does seek to humble the arrogant and powerful and lift up the lowly and powerless. How do you reconcile that biblical truth with these sort of political ideas?
Neil Shenvi: One thing that's important is to recognize that the Bible does see our primary problem as our alienation from God. So in the Bible, the humble are not just poor, right? You can be poor and wicked in the Bible, and there are examples of that. But the reason that the poor were one, they're vulnerable, and so God does care for even poor people that are not necessarily righteous, but He cares for them because they're hurting. God cares for the lowly and the humble.
But in the Bible, generally speaking, the reason the poor are beyond the fact that they're just vulnerable, the reason the poor are seen as somewhat praiseworthy, it's because they realize their need. That's the haughty. It's not that they're just rich. I mean, there were rich people in the Bible like Abraham and David and Solomon. There were rich people that followed God, that God loved.
But the danger in the Bible, especially in Jesus' teaching, is that if you're rich, you feel like you don't need God. Whereas if you're poor, you realize your need for God. That's the real dividing line. It's not that God just despises rich people and loves poor people. It's that people that are in poverty, and then Paul talks about this, people that are weak, that are despised, that are the outsider, they realize their need for something more. Whereas people that are rich and competent and successful, they got their life figured out. So that's really the actual dividing line in the Bible is between, essentially, it's not rich and poor. It's actually the proud and the humble.
So I think that that's the big difference between, say... people have called Marxism a Christian heresy because it just maps those biblical categories of, say, proud and humble onto economic categories, and then tries to solve the problem, not in terms of like, well, then trust in Jesus to rescue you, but in terms of, let's just fix the economy, and we'll uplift the oppressed and the poor, and we'll fix society. It's just a perversion of Christianity, which has a vision of the future and of the kingdom and of liberation.
Again, I don't want to discount the fact that we are called to care for the physically poor and the physically downtrodden. But I do think Christians have to see our fundamental problem as a spiritual one. And Jesus Himself said, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? So, you know, no one gets a free pass for their sin because they're poor or rich. Our sin is there and needs to be atoned for. And then through Jesus, that's how it's accomplished. It's not through "I'll just give enough money away and then I'll be right with God". No, no. Jesus had to come and die for that.
Eric Huffman: What you just said, made me think of a Chesterton quote about virtues and vices in the post-Christian world. It's like... I'm going to butcher this. But he said something like in the post-religious, post-Christian age, our biggest fear shouldn't be vice gone, like vices gone awry or vices being unleashed on the world but virtues becoming untethered from the source of virtue.
And some of what you're saying about Marxism and critical theory seem like virtues that have just become untethered from the capital S source of the virtues. And it can be very difficult for the average person to discern one from the other. And I think that's what makes this such a serious important topic.
One last thing about power dynamics. It seems like critical theories answer to power is power must be dismantled, all power structures are inherently evil and must be torn down. What does the Bible say about power?
Neil Shenvi: Critical theory basically can only envision fixing power by reversing it. It's like, the problem is they're powerful people and we've got to either get rid of power totally or swap the powerful and the powerless, give the powerless power. Christianity has a totally different answer, which is not to get rid of power and authority, but to use power and authority to serve.
Jesus never said, you know, no one's going to be great among you. He said, the one who will be great among you is the one who serves. The one who wants to be a leader becomes a servant, a slave of all. And think about it. Jesus had power, He has power and authority, all authority, but He uses it to serve His people, to love His church.
In the same way, we're supposed to take our power, genuine power and authority, but we're supposed to use it to bless those who are under our power and authority. The best example of this, although it's unfortunately even, we're destroying this as a culture. But parents and kids. You know, before I had kids, I was kind of like, I'm gonna be one of those cool parents who's not gonna... not cool, but I'm not gonna lord it over my kids and give them orders, make them obey. I'm just gonna talk to them and reason with them and, you know, convince them that what I do is right.
But I quickly realized, one, that's not gonna work. Number two, It's actually good for them to submit to my authority. I mean, I am a sinner. I'm not always giving the right commands. But generally speaking, 95% of my commands are for their good. I'm like, kid, if you obeyed me, you'd be three times happier every day, 10 times happier if you just obeyed. Why? Because I'm doing it for you. I'm not doing this for my good. I'm doing it for your good.
So being a parent has really taught me that power wielded properly is a blessing. Guys, think about God has all the power. Isn't God's power a blessing to you? Isn't God's law, His commands, aren't they ultimately for your good? I mean, Spurgeon said the heart of the law is do thyself no harm. To obey God's law is to bless yourself, and to disobey God's law is to curse yourself. Like, that's understanding of power is so counterintuitive. Again, critical theory doesn't understand it. Critical theory is just like, either get rid of power or invert it. The idea of actually taking power and using it to bless others is just radical, but Jesus exemplified that.
Eric Huffman: I want to thank Neil for taking the time to share his perspective on racism and CRT with us. And I want to thank you, our Maybe God community, for always caring enough about these issues to listen, especially when you're challenged by what you hear.
Next week, we'll share part two of this series, which will include a conversation with a man who believes that Christians and churches should listen carefully to what proponents of CRT are saying because we have a lot to learn when it comes to healing the wounds of racism in our culture. I'll also be sharing my own perspective on this conversation at the end of part two, so be sure to check it out next week and let us know what you think. Thanks again for listening to Maybe God.
Julie Mirlicourtois: This episode of Maybe God was produced by Julie Mirlicourtois, Adira Polite, and Eric and Geovanna Huffman. Our editor is Justin Mayer, and Donald Kilgore is the director of Maybe God's full-length YouTube videos. Please help more listeners find Maybe God by rating and reviewing us wherever you're listening today. Thanks for tuning in.