In his talk about Critical Race Theory (CRT), Dr. Voddie Baucham maintained that the Gospel remains to be the "answer and solution" to racism.
In a recent interview with Faithwire, Dr. Voddie Baucham expressed his concern with how the CRT worldview has crept into churches, thereby influencing Christianity's concept of social justice.
"This is a religious movement," Baucham said of CRT. "It has all the trappings of a religion. It has its own cosmology, it has its own saints, it has its own liturgy, its own law. It has all of those elements. And a lot of those things are very subtle, which makes them rather attractive to religious people."
Baucham warned that while the CRT philosophy may sound "appealing" to Christians who are bent on social justice, its tenets are not grounded in the Scripture. He also warned against the temptation of taking some of its elements while disregarding others.
"We don't need critical race theory to teach us on race, on partiality, on the sin of partiality," he said.
Acknowledging the fact that there are issues to which the Bible does not directly speak to, the 52-year-old preacher still believes that the directives found in it are sufficient.
"There's a whole lot of things that the Bible is not, but, when it comes to the relationships between people, when it comes to sins based on partiality, the Bible is absolutely a textbook on that," he added.
Also an apologist, Baucham explained how CRT elevates humanism over what the Bible say about the universal nature of man. He also pointed out how over exposure to it could override a Christian's critical thinking. The storytelling methodology is truly effective in highlighting social issues that need addressing. But since most of these stories are coming from an emotional standpoint, a Christian would be torn between executing a "just judgment" and being a sympathetic ally of the "marginalized."
"In critical race theory, if you want to know the truth when it comes to race and racism, you have to elevate black voices, you have to listen to the voice of the marginalized - and this is what people are talking about in church today, right?" explained Baucham.
"[W]ith critical race theory, we do this because that's the way you know truth. Not through knowing God, not through knowing God's Word, but through listening to the voices and the experiences of the people who we determine to be marginalized."
CRT as a Construct of Oppression
Further in the interview, Dr. Baucham was asked if CRT could lead people to wrongly believe Christianity. Since the philosophy mainly zeroes in "white privilege," it pits Americans (by virtue of citizenship) against each other. Baucham fears that CRT's "divisive rhetoric" would not really help, but only compound the problem on racism.
"A few years from now, people are going to be fed up with critical race theory, and there's going to be a backlash," he said. "I worry about the fact that there's going to be a rise in actual white supremacy because of the rise of critical race theory. I worry about the fact that there's going to be a rise in actual racism because of the way we're dealing with this now."
On the subject of ethnicity, the pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church directs believers to go back to what the Bible has clearly stated, with Ephesians 2 and Galatians 3 as examples.
"When the Bible talks about no longer being a Jew or Greek and also being a male or female or slave or free, the Bible is talking about divisions that are real and divisions that, in many instances, God established," explained Baucham.
"So the Jew-Gentile divide that Paul talks about in the latter half of Ephesians 2, that is a real divide that God established. ... The black-white divide is not a real divide, it's not one that God established. So if God speaks to something that will obliterate a real divide that He established, we better well believe He will also take care of a false divide that men established."
Learn more from Faithwire's full interview with Dr. Buacham here.
