My primary concern has never been politics, but has always been the spiritual health of individual people. I agree that, politically, the threat of actual White nationalism is negligible compared to the threat of progressive ideology. Neo-Nazi groups spout their propaganda from anonymous Twitter accounts, not from the podiums of prestigious universities. But Neo-Nazi race hatred is as harmful to the soul as the lies of queer theory. At an individual level, both are threats and both must be opposed. Additionally, our cultural location matters. The “greatest threat” to a church in downtown Portland is probably wokeness.

For the past 6 years, I’ve been reading, writing, and speaking extensively about critical theory. My work culminated in the publication of Critical Dilemma with Dr. Pat Sawyer, a thorough analysis and critique of the devastating effect that critical theory is having on the church and society.
During this time, I faced consistent resistance from the woke-sympathetic, who viewed my work as -at best- misguided and -at worst- racist. Then, about a year ago, I noticed an odd change. I began to face pushback not from the woke, but from the anti-woke. I began to see people insisting that I’d changed, that I was now a mushy third-way moderate, woke-adjacent, or even a secret progressive.
Consequently, I decided to try an experiment: I began posting quotes from sources which were, a few years ago (or even a few months ago!), viewed as unimpeachably anti-woke. How would people react? Surely, our discourse hasn’t evolved so rapidly that conservative statements from 2017 or 2019 or 2023 (!) are already viewed with skepticism?
But it has and they are.
In this essay, I’ll provide some illustrations of how evangelical perspectives on race are changing, and will then offer a few tentative explanations for this change: 1) CRT, 2) politics, 3) context, and 4) the (hopefully negligible, but troubling) acceptance of racism.
Examples
As I said, when I began noticing increasing criticism of my writing from the anti-woke, I decided to start posting verbatim statements from what had, until a few years ago, been regarded as canonically anti-woke conservative evangelical sources.
For example, on January 1, I posted the following statement:
“Racism is a sin rooted in pride and malice which must be condemned and renounced by all who would honor the image of God in all people.” 8:54 AM · Jan 1, 2024 186.9K Views
Here are a handful of the responses:
Define “racism”
What is “racism”? And even if you give a definition that would make “racism” genuinely sinful, would it coincide with how the term is actually used? If not, you’re just positing an idiosyncratic definition and insisting that we use it.
Wrong. You might be gaslighting. In group preference is displayed by every single race on earth. It is always normal, godly, and noble- except when white people do it, according to the world system we are not supposed to be taking our cues from.
Trashworld has one virtue and one sin, consent and racism. Racism mainly because it is a convenient tool to dominate others.
Racism is nifty actually. We should respect our own people and our families.
Universalist twaddle
What’s fascinating is that my post was a verbatim quote from the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, a 2017 document written by John MacArthur, Voddie Buacham, James White, Tom Ascol, and others. When this statement was originally published it was considered highly controversial because of how anti-woke it was. Seven years later, its condemnation of racism is considered ambiguous –at best– and a manifestation of woke “gaslighting,” “domination,” and “universalist twaddle” at worst.
Then, on Jan. 8th, I posted the statement:
“I utterly repudiate sinful ethnic partiality in all its forms.” 4:09 PM · Jan 8, 2024 102.9K Views
This sentence came from the Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel, a document written by self-identified Christian nationalists –including James Silberman, Dusty Deever, William Wolfe, and Joel Webbon– to explain their core beliefs.
Responses included:
Stunning. Brave.
Publicly self-congratulating one’s righteousness avails nothing for God’s kingdom. Luke 18:9-14
I don’t repudiate ethnic partially.
To “utter repudiate sinful ethnic partiality” in the present age of massive monstrous manic race consciousness and propaganda of humiliation & power over culture w a lying ideology is probably not a good idea, imho.
Then I repudiate the Gnosticism you call Christianity.
One final example:
On Feb. 7th I was preparing to teach a U.S. history class on the Civil Rights Movement and posted Norman Rockwell’s famous and deeply moving painting The Problem We All Live With, which portrays the hostility 6-year-old Ruby Bridges faced when she integrated her all-white elementary school. I offered no commentary, but simply posted the painting with its title and date.
In response, one commenter wrote:
That’s not the problem we live with now. The problem we live with now is a white child being beaten by a gang of black ‘teens,’ who go unpunished.
His comment received 125 likes. A second comment:
And how did that school fare? Did it get better? Was it more peaceful? Did it gain from diversity?
And a third:
Living with whites is not a human right.
What are possible explanations for these reactions, which I was not seeing 5 years ago, or even 18 months ago? I’ll offer four suggestions.
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If Christians come to view other Christians as oppressors based solely on their ethnicity or gender, if we exalt lived experience over the Bible, if we see oppression rather than sin as our fundamental problem, and if we see activism rather than Jesus as the fundamental solution, we’ll have deeply undermined this good news. God forbid.

Two weeks ago [04/10/22], David French wrote an article about the battle over Critical Race Theory that has engulfed both our culture and the evangelical church. If you haven’t read it in its entirety, I suggest stopping now and reading it here. Because French cited Dr. Pat Sawyer’s and my Gospel Coalition article “The Incompatibility of Critical Theory and Christianity,” I’d like to offer a few points of agreement/pushback.
Issue #1. The term “Critical Race Theory” is sometimes used extremely broadly and carelessly.
I agree. We can all find pundits and politicians who rail against CRT (or anything else) without apparently understanding what that term signifies other than alignment with their political opponents.
However, French writes that the label “CRT” has been “fundamentally and intentionally changed by conservative activists to encompass an enormous number of arguments and ideas about race, including arguments and ideas that have nothing to do with CRT.” This statement is more questionable, mainly because the category of “CRT” has evolved substantially over the last three decades.
For example in 2001 –long before “CRT” had appeared on the radar of most conservative pundits– CRT cofounder Kimberle Crenshaw wrote: “the name Critical Race Theory [is] used as interchangeably for race scholarship as Kleenex is used for tissue.” Similarly, in their seminal text CRT: An Introduction, Delgado and Stefancic state plainly that “although CRT began as a movement in the law, it has rapidly spread beyond that discipline” (Delgado and Stefancic, CRT: An Introduction, p. 7). They go on to mention education, political science, ethnic studies, sociology, theology, and health care as fields in which critical race theory has taken root (ibid, p. 7-8). Even more recently, the African American Policy Forum –which is led by Crenshaw herself– wrote that “Critical race theory originated in law schools, but over time, professional educators and activists in a host of settings –K-12 teachers, DEI advocates, racial justice and democracy activists, among others– applied CRT to help recognize and eliminate systemic racism.” Consequently, suggesting that conservative activists like Chris Rufo were solely responsible for the broadening of the term “CRT” is incorrect.
That said, when French states that “extreme manifestations of CRT can clash with Christian orthodoxy,” he’s implicitly recognizing that these ideologies are indeed properly included under the heading of “CRT.” So we may be in agreement here.
Issue #2. CRT is not the best term for the ideology Christians are concerned about.
On the one hand, I think we should use terms as accurately and precisely as possible. When I talk about the all-encompassing oppressor-oppressed worldview permeating our culture, I tend to use terms like “contemporary critical theory” or “critical social justice” rather than “critical race theory.”
On the other hand, we also should be wary of playing an endless semantic shell-game: We can’t critique “cultural Marxism” (“a Neo-Nazi conspiracy theory!”); we can’t critique “wokeness” (“cultural appropriation of African-American vernacular!”); we can’t critique “postmodern Neomarxism” (“Jordan Peterson’s made-up bogeyman!”); we can’t critique “critical race theory” (“it’s just a legal discipline!”). And on and on. This strategy makes it impossible to offer any critique whatsoever because any term we use will be deemed “problematic.”
To illustrate, this same strategy could easily be deployed against French himself. In 2018, French wrote an article entitled “Intersectionality, the Dangerous Faith” in which he repeatedly compared intersectionality to a religion, writing:
rising in the heart of deep-blue America are the zealots of a new religious faith. They’re the intersectionals, they’re fully woke, and the heretics don’t stand a chance.”
And
I’m hardly the first person to make this argument [that intersectionality is a religion]. Andrew Sullivan has noted intersectionality’s religious elements, and John Sexton has been on this beat for a year. Smart people know religious zeal when they see it.
And
There’s an animating purpose — fighting injustice, racism, and inequality. There’s the original sin of “privilege.” There’s a conversion experience — becoming “woke.” And much as the Christian church puts a premium on each person’s finding his or her precise role in the body of Christ, intersectionality can provide a person with a specific purpose and role based on individual identity and experience.
If I were a critic, I could write a long diatribe claiming that French is misusing the term “intersectionalty.” I could point out that the academic literature describes “intersectionality” not as a religion but merely as “an analytic tool [that] gives people better access to the complexity of the world” (Collins and Bilge, Intersectionality, p. 2). I could add that in his 2022 article, French says explicitly that Crenshaw’s 1989 article on intersectionality was “immediately enlightening.” I could therefore portray French’s 2018 article as a slanderous hit-piece aimed at pandering to his conservative base and riling them up over an esoteric sociological framework.
But, of course, all of that would entirely miss French’s point. Clearly, there is some set of extremely pernicious ideas that has a vice grip on our culture, our elite institutions, our major corporations, and even on some churches. What we choose to call it (whether “intersectionality” or “critical race theory” or “cultural Marxism”) seems like a secondary issue. And, to be fair to French, it is indeed possible to show that the concerns French had in 2018 about a “hierarchy of oppression” and the valorization of “lived experience” can indeed be traced to both intersectional scholarship… and to critical race theory.
For my part, I’ve emphasized over and over in my talks that what matters is the ideas themselves, not the labels we use to describe them. Moreover, even apart from considerations of precision and accuracy, conservatives need to recognize the practical importance of focusing on ideas rather than labels. If you firebomb a particular term like “woke” or “CRT,” scholars will simply swap out the offending term and continue promoting the same bad ideas under a new heading.
Issue #3. “Anti-CRT” bills don’t actually target CRT.
Issue #4. As long as we don’t treat CRT as a worldview, it’s compatible with Christianity.
Issue #5. CRT is not really making inroads within conservative evangelicalism.
Issue #6. The furor over CRT is partisan culture-warring.
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