The program explains to teachers that “we are all products of a racialized society” and that “Whiteness affects everything … inside and outside the classroom.” “When we use Clarifying Conversations we deconstruct whiteness,” according to the program’s training documents. “People experience compounded disadvantages or advantages as a result of intersectionality.”

A program designed by the University of North Carolina teaches 3- and 4-year-old disabled preschoolers to “deconstruct whiteness,” according to a report from Education First Alliance.
Education groups called on the North Carolina General Assembly to stop funding a statewide program that teaches critical race theory-aligned ideas to special education students, according to a press release from Education First Alliance.
The North Carolina State Board approved the extension of a contract with UNC Chapel Hill’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, which has worked with the Office of Early Learning of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction since 2013.
The program, called Equity and Cultural Responsiveness, defines whiteness as how “customs, culture, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other groups are compared.” It encourages “deconstructing whiteness” by “challenging it” and “developing a personal vision for racial justice, and building skills to be accountable allies to people of color.”
Critical race theory holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “anti-racism” through the end of merit and objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
“With this vote, North Carolina’s schools became the most radically divisive education system in America,” Education First Alliance President Sloan Rachmuth said in the press release.
“Yes, we are seeing critical race theory in schools elsewhere, but it’s mainly taught in the higher grades,” Rachmuth said. “But preying on disabled 3-year-old children, getting them to participate in a political movement, and to hate themselves based on skin color in the process, shows our public schools to be more morally corrupt than all others.”
The $7 million extension continues the program through 2025, and it is funded through an Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Preschool Handicapped Grant awarded to the state by the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education, according to Education First Alliance.
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Similar pressures might tempt churches to claim that Paul was not really that clear after all about not allowing women to preach to the gathered church, at least occasionally. Some unordained persons are quite gifted, they might claim. The church would be deprived of a blessing, they might reason. Obviously, such a thing is hard to imagine in a biblical, confessional denomination.

While civil disobedience may sometimes be acceptable in the socio-political sphere, ecclesial disobedience (especially on the part of church officers) is only justified in the most extreme cases. If defying or ignoring church law makes a sort of sense in congregationalism (where the majority/mob rules) or in an episcopal structure (where unjust and arbitrary rule may easily flourish), it makes no sense in a well-ordered, biblically-faithful presbyterian church.
Presbyterians, who believe every square inch of church life ought to be decent and orderly, have processes for enacting and changing church laws. Following those laws (or rules, if you will) is never optional. Loophole finders, envelope pushers, and “creative” compliers are (or ought to be) frowned upon in presbyterian establishments. Being an orderly, law-and-process-bound bunch does not equal a Pharisaical legalism that finds ways to just honor the letter of law while trampling its spirit.
Taking the Pharisaical line (“Well, it doesn’t say we can’t do X so we can!”) and employing endless qualification and linguistic gymnastics is a normative approach where that which is not strictly prohibited is allowed. Presbyterians famously espouse a regulative approach to worship in particular. Church government ought to have a regulative principle as well, and that principle ought to honor the letter and the spirit of its biblical standards and the Bible. A regulative principle of church government requires compliance and submission, both to fellow elders and courts of the church, and to the standards.
Indeed, presbyterian officers (and thus the courts they inhabit) take vows to be regulated by the standards of their communions. In the PCA, for instance, officers vow at ordination that they “approve of the form of government and discipline of the Presbyterian Church in America, in conformity with the general principles of biblical polity.” Officers also “promise subjection to (their) brethren in the Lord.” And even though the PCA (for the last two decades) may almost-routinely allow exceptions to a few points of doctrine in the Westminster Confession and catechisms, there is still no way to opt out of the Book of Church Order. No room is given for ecclesial disobedience. Or is there?
There is the written, vowed-to law of the church. There is also the disorderly and subjective law of what is allowed. Laws flouted and violations unprosecuted over time lead to a sort of episcopacy—not of a person, but of a pontiff we may style Pope Precedent the Last. Just like other papists, those ruled by Pope Precedent the Last point primarily to tradition, even if that tradition is quite young and local. Many of those appealed-to precedents fall far short of “We’ve always done it this way.” Decisive, authoritative “tradition” can rest on cases as thin as Someone somewhere was allowed this practice…or at least was never convicted for it! Ironically, Pope Precedent the Last (though thoroughly episcopal) has friends who are as biblicist as the rankest congregationalist—many precedent setters rely on a single verse (or word) to justify ecclesial disobedience.
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As members of Christ’s body, we should connect ourselves as members of a local expression of that body. Digital space disconnects us from our bodies, communities, and physical locations, and swirls us about in cyberspace, but the church roots us in reality, grounds us in love, and is ground zero for our life with Christ. 

It’s no secret that the church is experiencing an institutional crisis. Forty million people have left over the last 20 years. Not everyone is leaving for the same reasons, and just because they’re leaving the church behind doesn’t mean they’re leaving God. About 50 percent of people who have “hardly any” trust in organized religion still believe in God “without a doubt.” And while the reasons for leaving the church are wide-ranging, it’d be naive not to look at our digital practices as the church to see in what ways we are contributing to it.
In their book, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?, Jim Davis and Michael Graham write,
“Most dechurched evangelicals still worship online (which is more common among evangelicals anyway), but they do so at their convenience. Many evangelical churches now call their online worship services ‘on demand,’ and that is exactly what people are choosing to do. What is intended as a new front door is often having the opposite effect by helping the dechurched leave through the back door. Our research showed that physically going to a church in our consumerist digital age has become inconvenient, and many people concluded that they had other priorities for their time and money.”
This doesn’t mean that you should shut down your live stream. That would need to be determined on a church-by-church basis, and there are good reasons to have a live stream. What this does mean is that we need to take a closer examination of our ecclesiology in a digital age. What are we communicating about the church in an age of institutional distrust and digital convenience? Can church really be “on demand”? Or have we lowered our ecclesiology to the lowest possible rung, happy to have views when Jesus called us to make disciples?
The proliferation not just of live streams but of Christian influencers and podcasts makes it easy to consume religious content and get the weekly dose of spirituality one feels one needs without the messy realities of dealing with a community of fellow sinners.
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