Near the end of our last conversation on the subject of Critical Race Theory, Bradly Mason remarked that race is a social construct for the subordination of other human beings. His statement did not go without notice. One listener sent a series of questions. If Mason asserted that race was a social construct and Founder’s Ministry agrees with that assertion, then how is it Founder’s views CRT different than Mason. Or, how is it that two agree but cannot walk together?
Here are a couple of the questions: When did race become a social construct in the United States? When did it stop in the United States?
During this third episode in our ongoing series on the subject of CRT, we utilize these questions to talk about how race has been used. You might find it interesting that Mason points to a source that describes how the category of race is used by one European group to subordinate another European group where skin color was not the issue. Subordinating one group to another was the economic goal. How is that not what occurred in the United States, I wondered?
One gnawing matter for me is that when we discover a habit that is inconsistent with the life of Jesus, no matter how I come to learn of its presence within me, how is it I don’t see that as an occasion for sanctification? In other words, if CRT exposes the way other humans beings have been subordinated and that laws intended to change that reality are ineffective, what is wrong with the question, “How did this happen?” Isn’t this the same question post-holocaust philosophers and theologians asked after the efforts to exterminate, subordinate, one group of people by another?
It is clear that a movement is at work to empty CRT of its origins, its history, and infuse it with all perceived cultural evils that must be avoided at all costs. This has actually been stated as a goal. Most call this obfuscation or watch the hand over here so you don’t see what the hand over there is doing. Even some in my denomination seem firmly entrenched in this position. I have yet to see any leaders address the origins and aspects of CRT. Really all we see is an attempt to make this analytical tool the worst thing to come along. And yet, those same Christian people claim to find analytical value in an atheistic worldview. Confounding, I know.
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