Tag Archives: social justice

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 5)

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In part four of our series on Christianity and the Social Order we explored how Christians will by their existence and day-to-day activities indirectly influence this order. In part five we will pursue the question of whether or not, given the inner nature of Christian faith, some public policies are to be preferred over others. This issue needs to be clarified before we can address the legitimacy of Christians attempting to influence the social and political order directly.

An Introductory Reminder

Many Christians take for granted their right and duty, guided by their faith, to exert through political means a moral influence on the social world in which they live. The only debatable issues are what policies, parties, and candidates are most likely to shepherd society to be more like the kingdom of God envisioned by Jesus. They vote, make campaign contributions, place political stickers on their cars, and run for office—all without asking themselves whether Jesus’s moral teachings warrant or even permit their efforts. I designed this series to examine this unexamined presumption.

Christian Preferences for Public Policies

Believers live in many different forms of political order. It is possible to be a Christian in any of them. My question here is this: beginning with the inherent nature and logic of the Christian faith, are certain public policies to be preferred over others? We are not yet ready to ask whether or not Christians—as individuals or as the institutional church in reliance on Jesus’s teaching—may attempt to influence the state to institutionalize their preferred policies.

The Kingdom of God

Christianity envisions a perfect community, which serves as the ideal by which it measures all other communities, including the church. Jesus taught us to pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). For Christianity, the ideal society involves universal justice, peace, unity and love of neighbor and love of God grounded in unanimous acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as Lord. Paul explains that the humiliation and exaltation of Jesus aims at Christ’s universal lordship:

that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11).

Christians long for the coming kingdom and would prefer that it come sooner rather than later. However, I can detect no reason to think that Jesus or the early church expected the kingdom of God to be realized in its fulness through ordinary political means—war and legislation. It will be God’s work and will arrive only at the end of history when God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Christians should of course prefer that all people freely embrace the values of the kingdom, and in living as light in the world and preaching the gospel, they work toward this end. Given the nature of the kingdom, however, Christians should know better than to attempt to establish the kingdom by political means.

State Church

It seems to me that no Christian should want the state to establish Christianity as the official state religion. Many evils flow from such arrangements: religious persecution, widespread hypocrisy, and the politicization of doctrine. But I think the most basic Christian arguments against church establishment are that the individual act of faith must be free and Christian behavior must arise from sincere love. Legal coercion or worldly advantage are destructive of faith and love.

State Persecution

I don’t see how a Christian could prefer to live under a state that is actively hostile to Christianity. We are called to endure persecution if we must, but we are not obligated to seek it. Surely it is better from a Christian point of view to live in a situation where we can believe and practice our faith freely and share it with others without fear of state persecution.

Freedom of Belief and Practice

The logic of Christianity supports neither coercing people to practice Christianity nor persecuting them for doing so. It seems rather that Christians should rejoice to live within a society where one is free to practice Christianity, some other religion, or none at all.

Next: May Christians argue in the public sphere of a secular state for their preferred public policies? If so, how?

Christianity and the Social Order (Part 4)

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In the first three parts of this series, I argued that Jesus and his apostles addressed their moral teaching to individual believers, not to institutions. I examined three different ways people attempt to apply this moral teaching to the social/political order and pronounced them all failures. Does Jesus’s moral teaching, then, have no relevance to the order and conduct of society? Must Christians keep to themselves and “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60)? Or, is there a way Christians can participate in political society without distorting Jesus’s moral teaching?

No Easy Task

I acknowledge that this is a difficult and controversial subject. I have no illusions that I can resolve issues that have been debated since the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. Additionally, Christians find themselves living in vastly different societies in every country and among every people in the world. I cannot presume to understand their situation well enough to answer their questions. They must think through their own situations. My thought is stamped with the fact that I was born in the United States of America and have lived there my whole life. The best I can do is methodically think through the question, given my experience. Perhaps I can shed a little light even for those who live in other nations.

Indirect Influence

Unavoidable

The first thing on which to get clear is that Christians cannot avoid having some influence on the society in which they live. To live in a society, we will have to participate in the market place and the workplace. We will relate to the state, at least passively, by abiding by laws and regulations, paying taxes, and many other ways. We will interact with family, neighbors, fellow workers, store clerks, doctors, and many others. As those shaped by the moral teachings of Jesus—if we truly are his disciples—even our ordinary interactions with people will witness to our faith. People will notice our “good lives” and perhaps ask why we live this way (1 Peter 2:12). And some may awaken to the moral law written on their hearts long buried by social corruption.

Good Works

We will exert influence not only by being law-abiding, peace-loving and helpful people but by doing good things beyond what we must. Jesus explained to his disciples:

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16).

From the beginning, Christians have engaged in ministries to the poor, widows and orphans, founded hospitals, build schools, helped with famine relief, and braved plague-ridden cities to care for the dying. Christians don’t do these things to exert social and political influence; yet by displaying true virtue they gradually, indirectly transformed the moral ideals of whole cultures.  And these moral ideals gradually influenced the laws, order, and policies of nations.

Evangelism

Jesus imposed on his disciples a mandate for evangelism. Jesus said,

 All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you (Matthew 28:18-20).

As is obvious from these words, evangelism combines the call to believe the good news, to be incorporated into the church and to adopt the way of life Jesus had taught his disciples. Evangelism speaks a message to the world: repent, believe, receive baptism and learn how to live as a disciple of Jesus. Even though the evangelistic message is not a direct attempt to influence social policy or the individual morality of the general public, it may have an indirect influence toward those ends. The evangelist aims to convert people to Jesus Christ and won’t be satisfied with “making the world a better place.” Nevertheless, the good news of Jesus and the call to a life of high morals may indirectly have this effect.

Next: In part five, we will ask if some political orders, systems of laws and social policies are more compatible with Christian faith, morality and practice than others. If so, can a serious disciple of Jesus actively seek to bring about the order most compatible with Christianity?

Jesus and the Politicians

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In the previous instalment I argued that Jesus and Paul did not address their moral teachings to institutions, such as the state, corporations, professions, or clubs. Only individuals can obey Jesus’s moral commands. On what grounds, then, do advocates invoke Jesus’s moral teachings to justify their public policy proposals? And what are their motivations for wanting Jesus’s support?

I think these strategies fall into three categories.

Thoughtless Clichés

Some politicians, social media junkies, and political pundits quote the teachings of Jesus, the apostles or the prophets without any attempt to justify using them in contexts and for purposes alien to their original settings. Examples are abundant: one often hears Jesus’s words “Do not judge, or you will be judged” (Matthew 7:1) quoted to deflect criticism of immoral acts. Or, it is argued that we should support a universal right to government funded healthcare because Jesus said that God “has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:18; quoting Isaiah 61:1-2). Again, should not government act as a counterweight to the rich and powerful and take the side of the poor, because, in the language of liberation theology, “God is always on the side of the poor”?  Jesus’s words are often quoted as proof of this liberationist thesis:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort (Luke 6:20-24).

And James says,

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? (James 2:5-6).

Misapplication of the Old Testament

Another group, composed of Christian socialists and Black “prophetic” preachers on the left and so-called “Christian nationalists” on the right apply the Old Testament’s moral and social teachings to the United States of America and other Western democracies to very different ends. But neither left nor right take into account that the Old Testament law was given to the ancient people of Israel, which was a theocratic state governed by a specific covenant with God. The covenant laws—religious as well as moral—were binding on all the people within the realm. In contrast, the New Covenant announced by Jesus (Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25) is based on faith and obedience to Jesus, not on national or ethnic identity. This community is the new covenant people of God; it is not a political entity with sovereignty over all people within its borders—Christians, atheists, moral and immoral. To apply the OT laws given to ancient Israel or the moral instruction given in the NT to the disciples of Jesus to the United States (or other modern states) without due consideration for the differences is a misuse of Scripture and a case of flawed ethical reasoning. The United States of America is neither the Old Covenant nor the New Covenant people of God.

Academic Abstraction and Transposition

In my experience, most academic Christian ethicists understand that the moral teaching of the Bible should not be applied to modern societies uncritically. They are well aware that OT moral teaching was addressed to the ancient covenant people and the NT moral teaching speaks directly to Christians only. Moreover, they understand the point I made in the previous essay in this series, that is, that Jesus’s and the apostles’ moral teaching asserts a strict unity between the inner condition of the soul and external behavior. Good works without love are worthless (1 Corinthians 13). And one who claims to love but does nothing to help others is a liar (1 John 4:20).

The United States of America and other modern states concern themselves for the most part with external behaviors that significantly affect the peace, security and general welfare of society. They do not make policy based on the moral teaching of First Corinthians 13. Jesus said the greatest command is to love God with all your being and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:34-40). No state has ever enshrined these teachings in law—not even in Calvin’s Geneva, Cromwell’s England or John Knox’s Scotland—nor could they be policed if they were. Additionally, modern states find it prudent to allow some external behaviors to be practiced that are clearly taught to be immoral by Jesus and the apostles. How, then, do Christian ethicists develop a Christian political/social ethics for a society that is religiously diverse and contains significant numbers of atheists, agnostics, nihilists, libertines, Marxists, anarchists, and others?

Admittedly, there are a variety of ways Christian thinkers go about developing “Christian” social ethics. But all of them have one strategy in common. They all abstract principles or rules they judge to underlie the moral teaching of the Bible, remove them from their original setting in ancient Israel or the early Christian community and transpose them into a modern secular setting. As one example, as a graduate student in a course in theological ethics I studied the ethics of Reinhold Niebuhr. In his book An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (1935), Niebuhr argues that the Christian ideal of agape love (First Corinthians 13!) cannot be realized even in the life of an individual, much less in political society. But accepting universal love as a moral ideal can inspire us to work toward the closest approximation possible in this world, that is justice. Hence Niebuhr’s theory of ethics is called “Christian Realism.” But is “Christian Realism” Christian in any meaningful sense? The abstract concept of justice as “giving to everyone their due” (Aristotle) is common coinage in all the great ethical systems. What do we gain by calling it an “approximation” of Christian love? How can you have Christian ethics without faith, hope and love, that is, without Christ? Something else is going on, but I won’t take the time here to pursue that issue. I will just say this: Niebuhr’s Christian ethics resembles Roosevelt’s New Deal socialism more than it does Jesus’s radical discipleship ethics.

Liberation theologies—Latin American, Black, Feminist—are also examples of this third type of distortion of Jesus’s and the Apostles’ moral teaching. Liberation theologies latch on to the biblical theme of liberation exemplified most dramatically by God’s liberation of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery in the Exodus and taken up in the NT as liberation from sin, death and the devil. Political liberation becomes the total focus of this theology. Liberation theologians adopt the persona of Moses when he said to Pharoah, “Let my people go.” But of course, modern states are neither ancient Egypt nor unfaithful Israel. And liberation theologians are neither Moses nor Amos. Something else is going on here also. I will just say this: Just as Niebuhr channeled Roosevelt’s New Deal socialism, liberation theologians have more in common with Karl Marx’s utopian communism than with Jesus and Paul.

Next: You may be left with some questions: Do Jesus’s moral teachings have nothing to say to political society? May Christians not bring their faith and moral convictions into public policy discussions? Are there ways to bring our faith to bear on the great issues of the day while avoiding the three mistakes I just outlined? In future essays I hope to address these questions.

Orthodoxy or Progressivism: The Choice all Christian People Must Now Make

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The Change

The decisive choice facing Christian people today is not picking a church based on worship styles or children’s programs. Nor are the most pressing decisions occasioned by the traditional differences among Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox Churches. For sure, each of these great traditions still places before us distinct doctrinal positions. But in the past, one could assume that with all their differences each preserved the essential Christian gospel and a faithful vision of the life of discipleship, what C.S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity.” But lately that confidence has been shattered. Now every believer in whatever tradition must decide between orthodox voices and progressive ones within their tradition.

The Choice

The orthodox voices call us to listen to all of Scripture, deal honestly with the apostolic teaching, and pay attention to the faithful of all times. They urge us to follow the narrow way of obedience and sacrifice. Orthodoxy warns us not to listen to the voice of the world, which often resonates with our lower natures. In contrast, progressive Christianity values liberal social change more than personal repentance. Whatever deference it gives to Christian language, progressivism is not animated by the spirit of obedience. It views miracles as parables and Christian teaching as wisdom for a less enlightened age. Biblical morality is useful only insofar as it contributes to personal happiness. The true authority for progressivism is subjective feeling validated by the spirit of the times. Its religion like all idols has been crafted by human hands.

My Growing and Shrinking Family

I am a life-long member of a fellowship of believers that reaches back into the early 19th century. I treasure it and remain committed to its central aims…that is, of being simple New Testament Christians without too many “addons.” For most of my life I’ve respected believers from other traditions, but I never felt the desire to join one of their denominations. And I still do not.

But within the past few years I’ve realized that I have more in common with orthodox Roman Catholic, Global Methodist, Orthodox Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Baptist, Bible Church Evangelical, Pentecostal, or almost any other group of orthodox believers than with the progressives in my own tradition. I share with the progressive wing a common history, traditions, institutions, heroes and villains, but sadly, we are no longer led by the same spirit. Our diverging paths grow further apart with every step.

Evangelicals: The Group Progressives Love to Hate

Progressives love to hate evangelicalism. The reasons for this antipathy are clear. Progressives lean to the political left; American evangelicals lean right. Progressives adopt a permissive view of sex, gender, and marriage.  Evangelicals hold to traditional sexual morality and marriage. Progressives are doctrinally liberal while evangelicals are orthodox. Most progressives are former evangelicals embarrassed by their roots and eager to demonstrate their enlightened credentials.

Pan-Orthodoxy

Evangelicals are orthodox but not all orthodox Christians feel at home in American evangelicalism. It’s too emotional, entrepreneurial, doctrinally shallow, political, culturally narrow, etc. I suggest that orthodox believers need not feel locked into a choice between American evangelicalism and progressive Christianity. Orthodox Christianity was not born with the American evangelical movement. It can be traced back to the New Testament through all the great traditions, despite their cultural differences and distinct doctrinal emphases. It’s in that line of true faith, that spirit of obedience, where I feel most at home. I am brother to all my orthodox brothers and sisters wherever they worship the Lord Jesus. I stand with you. We can work out or bear patiently our differences as long as we share that loyalty. Let’s find each other and stand together “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3).

Christian Stoic or Social Justice Christian?

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The Stoics

Like all philosophical schools in the ancient world—Platonists, Epicureans, Academics, et al—the Stoics sought the truths, attitudes and conditions that would facilitate a good human life. They observed that such negative emotions as fear, desire, and anxiety are generated by thoughts about attaining or avoiding that over which we have no control. Clearly, these negative emotions are incompatible with the good life. The best life is one of undisturbed contentment with the gift of existence in our inner being wherein we are always in the immediate presence of good things that cannot change. For the Stoics, there is only one thing and one place over which we have control, that is our own free will. It is the only thing that we can have purely by willing it. The external world, including our bodies, operates under other laws over which we have no immediate control and to which we must adjust. And the free will of other human beings is completely beyond our control because it is totally under their control. To banish negative emotions, we must refrain from desiring to control that over which we do not have immediate and total control. Stoics determine to accept the flow of the events that happen in nature as their lot. These external events cannot threaten or even touch the inner world of free will unless we allow it to do so.

Social Justice Christians

There is a kind of Christian ethics that in effect proposes that we ought to remain in a state of discontent and outrage until we right every injustice done in the world. And because we cannot accomplish such radical changes in the world by appealing to the free will of others by doing good, speaking truth, and setting good examples, these same Christians resort to using force: intimidation, insults, rudeness, disruption, legal action, and, yes, even violence.  Apparently, these social justice Christians think that the coming of the kingdom of God depends on our human efforts to establish their ideal political order that includes everybody, believers and non-believers, saints and sinners. They turn the Stoic understanding of a good human life inside out. What matters most are the external conditions of life: equal access to bodily pleasure, equality of material goods, equality of social respect, and equality of external freedom. Because this level of control over the external social, political, and natural order is impossible, these social justice Christians ensure that everyone is angry, unhappy, fearful, and offended all the time. Not a happy life.

The Christian Stoic

There are, of course, great differences between Stoic metaphysics, cosmology and theology and the Christian view of God, creation, salvation, and providence. Jesus’s teaching concerning God’s providence and against the need for anxiety, however, bears some resemblance to the Stoic doctrine of limiting our concern to the place where we have immediate control, our free will. Jesus tells us to trust and align our wills with God’s will. Also, neither in Jesus’s teaching nor in the rest of the New Testament is there the slightest hint that Jesus’s disciples ought to seek to remake the world into a social justice paradise by political means. That day is an eschatological hope dependent completely on God’s power. To attempt to control the world in the name of God in a way only God can produces only tyranny and rebellion. The only community in which there is a little hope for an approximate realization of the kingdom ethics taught in the Sermon on the Mount is the church, that is, the community of those truly converted to Jesus Christ in their inner being. But history demonstrates that this kingdom community has never become a concrete reality even in the church, the community divinely commission to become such. Much more is it a vain dream that it will be realized in a society of the unconverted!

What is the Christian Stoic to do? First, we must understand that apart from God’s grace in the Holy Spirit our free will is not free in the most radical sense, that is free to know and love the true God above all things. Only God can make God present to our minds so that we can know and love him in this way. But given God’s grace, we can love God in return for his love for us. In loving God above everything else we live free from anxiety about all those things over which we have no control. Moreover, we know that the God who loves us possesses power to control all things for our good.

Christian Stoics know they cannot right every wrong and transform the world into a social paradise. This task is not under their power and therefore is not their job. Their main job is, with the help of God’s grace, to allow themselves to be transformed into the image of Christ. From that transformed inner world they can turn outward to do good, speak truth, and love neighbor and enemy. God may use their good works and words to transform others.

Christian Stoics refuse to be unhappy because the external world does not submit to their control. We have come to know that our primary task in life is purification of our own souls. That in itself is a dauting task and the work of a lifetime.

Is God Always on the Side of the Oppressed?

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In my previous essay I recounted my failed search for the Social-Justice Jesus. In reading through the Gospel of Matthew, I did not find a social revolutionary protesting systemic injustices or an advocate of the economic interests of one class in preference to another. Jesus was not a royalist, democrat, republican, anarchist, or a libertarian. In fact, I did not find Jesus preaching a worldly sociopolitical order at all. What I found was Jesus’s indictment of the greed, envy, lust, pride, and idolatry that corrupt every world order. And these vices find their home in every human heart.

Superficial Plausibility

Before I subject the assertion that “God is always on the side of the oppressed” to criticism, let’s consider its superficial plausibility. Interpreted in the most generous way I can imagine, the statement could be saying that God judges justly between the victims of injustice and their persecutors. God always rules in favor of the victim and against the perpetrator. Or, just as in a natural disaster, first responders help the worst injured before attending to the walking wounded and unscathed, God attends to those with the greatest need before he turns to those who need less. The former act embodies the principle of equal justice and the latter the principle of just proportionality or equity.

Liberation Theology

Unfortunately, those who assert that “God is always on the side of the oppressed” cannot be interpreted as merely asserting God’s justice and equity. That God favors the oppressed was a central claim of Latin American Liberation Theology, a creative fusion of Christianity and Marxism that became popular in North America in the 1970s. In the form I see it most often today, it replaces the economic categories of Karl Marx with those of race and gender.

“God [is]”

In the assertion that “God is always on the side of the oppressed,” we find at least four significant components that need to be clarified: (1) “God,” (2) “always,” (3) “on the side of,” and (4) “the oppressed.” Let’s assume that the “God” spoken of here is the God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must not, then, derive our picture of God from our own subjective ideals or a cultural image of a liberating power. We must, instead, examine the narratives and teaching of the Old and New Testaments. I do not have space here to construct a complete picture of the God of the Bible. But I think such a study would conclude that God is faithful, just, knowing, and merciful. God judges justly between the victim and the perpetrator of injustice. But there is more to consider.

“Always”

To say that God is always on the side of the oppressed is a bold claim, and I think it goes too far. Does “always” mean under all conditions, thoroughly, and in every respect? Even if an individual is treated unjustly in one respect might they not in other respects be guilty of sin, of injustice, greed, hatred, envy, lust, etc.? Is God a mere partisan who overlooks the sins of his friends because they are mistreated in some respects by individuals whom he does not favor? This “always” obscures the perfect unity of God’s judgment and mercy. Perhaps in human courts we must distinguish starkly between innocent and guilty parties, pure victims and pure perpetrators. But God judges the human heart, and no one is purely innocent.

“On the side of”

What does it mean to say that God is “on the side of” the oppressed? In the preceding paragraph I raised the possibility that this assertion makes God a mere partisan, motivated not by justice but by favoritism. What does the assertion say about the speaker? It sounds high-minded at first, but then you realize that implicit in the statement is a claim about the speaker: “I too am on the side of the oppressed. God and I are on the same side!” This claim does not place you in good company. During the American Civil War both the North and the South claimed that God was on their side as they slaughtered their brothers, sisters, and cousins. The present Russian Patriarch claims that God is on Putin’s side in “liberating” Ukraine. Iran, ISIS, Hezbollah, and Hamas cry “God is great!” as they slit the throats of pregnant Jewish women. For some, God is white. For others, God is black, or gay, or lesbian.

Sadly, history shows that when people claim that God is on their side, they often do so to justify using extralegal and immoral means to achieve their ends: violence, theft, genocide, betrayal, murder, rape, lying, and deception. In the Bible, God is the judge of all the earth; it is spiritually safer, then, to assume that God is not on anyone’s side! Perhaps we should focus on striving to be on God’s side, without, however, presuming that we actually are!

“The Oppressed”

Who are the “oppressed”? What does it mean to be oppressed or to be an oppressor? Each of the other terms in the sentence, “God is always on the side of the oppressed,” opens the door to mischief. But the concept of “the oppressed’ blows a hole in the wall. In contemporary progressive culture, the official list of the oppressed grows longer every day. It seems that everyone wants to be oppressed. People of color, black women, black lesbians, white lesbians, gay people of all colors, trans and bi, questioning, nonbinary, fat people, short people, indigenous people, differently abled…God is on your side always! In the case of these groups, what does oppression mean? Are they legally proscribed or stripped of civil rights? Have they had their goods confiscated unjustly? Are they prohibited from pursuing the professions or attending university? What makes a black, lesbian professor of law at Harvard or a gay Secretary of Transportation one of the world’s oppressed?

Again, what does it mean to be oppressed? What do all these people and groups listed above have in common that makes them oppressed? Of course, you can find instances, past and present, wherein members of these groups have been treated unfairly. But you can also find among these “oppressed” people rich, famous, powerful, and glamorous individuals. It seems that what they all have in common is that they are not white, straight, and male. Perhaps I am oversimplifying matters, but it seems to me that the ideology that determines who gets recognized as oppressed has been designed with one purpose in mind; to dethrone the group it views as having at the beginning of Western civilization illegitimately acquired hegemonic power to which it still clings.

What does it mean to be an oppressor in contemporary social theory? It does not mean that you cheat widows out of their houses and orphans out of their inheritances. Nor does it mean that you enslave people on the official list of oppressed groups. In fact, you may be a benefactor to widows, orphans, the homeless, and the poor. Or, indeed, you may be among the poor yourself. Nonetheless, if you are white, male, and straight you are an oppressor. And if God is on the side of the oppressed, God is not on your side. The only option for you is to engage in perpetual confession and continual penance for being born into privilege. And one of those penitential exercises is to repeat the assertion, “God is always on the side of the oppressed.”

Tear Down this Wall (Ephesians 2:14)

The New Testament envisions a community of brothers and sisters under Jesus Christ, indwelt, transformed, and made one by the Holy Spirit, forgiven, reconciled, and directed to the Father from whom all good things flow.

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:1-5).

Judged by this standard, the assertion “God is always on the side of the oppressed,” as it is used by contemporary liberationist theologians is profoundly heretical; for dividing the church into oppressors and the oppressed is a grave sin against the unity of the body of Christ.

In Search of the Social-Justice Jesus

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I heard a fine sermon Sunday (9/22/24) about the subtle dangers of hypocrisy and the temptation to judge others by standards we cannot meet (Matthew 7:1-5). With our x-ray moral vision, we can detect microscopic faults in others but are blind to the huge train of sins we drag behind us! Ouch! It was a time for self-examination! I was struck with how comprehensive Jesus’s demand for individual conversion is; each of us must change from head to toe, inside and out, body and soul, act, being, and affections!

My Search for the Progressive Jesus

Now, don’t tell the preacher, but after reading Matthew 7:1-5, I turned back to Matthew 5 & 6 and forward all the way to the end of the Gospel of Matthew, looking for the social-justice Jesus progressive and liberal Christians keep talking about. I kept thinking: could it be that looking for systemic injustices perpetrated by “society” instead of examining our own lives is another way of evading Jesus’s demand for personal repentance? Is our obsession with systemic sins a modern form of the hypocrisy against which Jesus warned?

When I got home after church, I looked through the Gospels of Mark and Luke also. Still, no sign of a first-century Che Guevara, Angela Davis, or Ibram Kendi. Nor did I find a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian Jesus. He’s not American or Brazilian or Chinese or Indian. He’s not even Jewish in the political sense.

The Politics of Heaven

In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s first public words were, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt 4:17; cf. Mark 1:15). There is not a single place where Jesus addresses impersonal “systems of privilege and oppression.” Not even one! Impersonal systems cannot repent or believe. In every case in which Jesus addresses the “poor,” “rich,” “self-righteous, “powerful,” “outcasts,” or the “oppressed” he speaks directly to individuals. Jesus proclaimed something much more radical, much more comprehensive than political reform or revolution. He proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is just around the corner. His requirements for entry to the Kingdom and his demands for life within the Kingdom are completely unrealistic for any worldly political order. His is a heavenly politics, and in that sense stands in judgment on every earthly kingdom. Read the Sermon on the Mount! Very few people in any nation would even try to live up to it. And even fewer would come close to success.

The Mustard Seed Kingdom

What, then, was Jesus up to? In reading the Gospel of Matthew it becomes clear that Jesus never expected the entire nation to respond favorably to the gospel of the Kingdom:

 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (7:13-14).

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (7:21).

Think about the parables of the Kingdom in Matthew 13: The Sower, The Weeds, The Hidden Treasure, and The Net. Each of these parables assumes that the Kingdom will be much smaller than the whole people. The Kingdom message will sort (13:1-58) and divide people, even families (10:34-39).

The Church and the Kingdom

Again, what is Jesus up to? In response to Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus said,

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matt 16:17-18).

Jesus plans to set up his own community within the world, and this community will be made up of serious disciples of Jesus. In their way of life as individuals and together in community they will be “salt” and “light” in the world (Matt 5:13-16). They will shine into the world a ray of light that anticipates the bright dawn of God’s comprehensive reign over his creation. They will honor God in humility, faith and obedience and love each other from the heart. They will do justice to all people and even love their enemies. As need arises, just as Jesus did, they will do good to everyone. They will feed the hungry, visit the sick and those in prison, befriend the abandoned, and they will speak up for those suffering injustice. They will establish hospitals and educational institutions. The Spirit of Jesus will drive them to do all sorts of good works…in his name!

But will they do all these things without abandoning the message Jesus preached, “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near.” For they know that reforming systems apart from reforming hearts will simply substitute one system of injustice, greed and envy for another! They know that “man shall not live by bread alone,” that loaves and fishes will not by themselves satisfy but merely anesthetize the soul.

My search failed!

There is no social-justice Jesus in the New Testament. He is a figment of progressive and liberal Christians’ imaginations, a composite character constructed of elements drawn from Amos, Spartacus, and Che Guevara. Back to Matthew 7:1-5. It is much easier for the modern social justice Christian to curse the injustices of the world than to do justice in their own families and to their neighbors and enemies. As long as we focus on the sins of others or systems of privilege, we do not have to repent and prepare ourselves for the Kingdom of heaven.

Next Time: We will examine this progressive assertion. “In the Bible, God is always on the side of the oppressed.”

The Christian College* and the New Left

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This essay concludes the seven-part series containing my review and reflections on Christopher Rufo, America’s Cultural Revolution. The series began on May 03, 2024. Look for it: in a few days I will post a compilation of the whole series so you will have access to the entire review in one document.

The Collapse of the Modern Liberal University

In the previous essay we learned why the era of the modern liberal university, which began around 1870, came to an undignified end around 1970. The modern university adopted a critical, skeptical, never-ending research model of academia and exempted no moral tradition or religious dogma from critical scrutiny. Though it praised the quest for truth, progress and scientific discovery as its founding principle, its operational values were completely negative. Modern academic leaders were especially on guard against Christian fundamentalism and cultural conservativism; hence they focused exclusively on the dangers from the Right. This one-sided focus, however, made them vulnerable to criticism from the Left. When the Left accused the liberal establishment of not being radical enough in its criticism of the forces of conservativism, the establishment could make no reply. For though it examines everything, it believes nothing. Because it could not appeal to positive political, moral, historical, religious or metaphysical beliefs, the modern liberal university collapsed like a house of cards.

The Christian College: A Place to Stand

In contrast to the modern liberal university, the Christian college, if it takes Christianity seriously, can draw on a worldview authoritative for the Christian tradition and integrated into the charter and mission of the school. It can resist the critical, skeptical, know-nothing philosophy of the modern liberal university as well as the New Left’s subversive combination of criticism and dogmatism. The modern liberal university founded itself on the illusion that perpetual criticism of tradition will eventually generate scientific truth. The post-modern leftist university justifies its existence by repeating the groundless dogma that destruction of every actual thing will bring about utopia. The Christian college is founded on faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the authority of the canonical Scriptures accepted by the ecumenical church, and respect for the two-thousand-year Christian tradition.

The Christian college can assert with confidence that world history cannot be explained with the simple formulas of the neo-Marxists. The true human situation cannot be illuminated by dividing people into the villainous oppressors and the innocent oppressed, and it cannot be improved by instigating an endless war of liberation from ever smaller micro aggressions. For the Christian, violence, hatred, envy, greed, division, and all other sins against human community derive from abandonment of obedience and worship of God the Creator (Romans 1:18-32). There will be no reconciliation among human beings until there is reconciliation with God. Liberal platitudes and leftist threats cannot overcome division between races, classes, nations, sexes, or any other binary. Hatred cannot overcome hatred, racism cannot expel racism, violence cannot end violence. Satan cannot cast out Satan. Only the Holy Spirit can do that!

The Christian College: Friend of Truth

The liberal university argues that truth is illusive, and the post-modern university asserts that there is no such thing as truth and reason is a slave to self-interest; power alone is real and acquiring it is all that matters. The Christian college rests in the truth of faith and finds this truth reliable in producing light, love, joy, unity, and peace. Its knowledge grounded in faith gives the Christian college the right, the confidence and the determination to assert truth claims against liberal quibbling and leftist intimidation. Its faith knowledge bestows on the Christian college a mandate to establish and enforce community standards. The open secret is that liberal faculties perpetuate themselves by hiring and retaining other liberals and leftist faculties hire and promote their fellow-travelers. With much more integrity, Christian colleges have the right to hire and retain administrators, faculty, and staff who affirm Christian faith. Moreover, they have the right to define in statements of faith and codes of conduct what they mean by the “Christian faith.”

The Christian College: Courage to Push Back

Academic freedom and tenure are not absolute even in the most liberal and leftist universities. Those institutions have the right to define the boundaries of academic freedom and, under certain conditions, the right to revoke tenure and terminate employment. Like other colleges, Christian colleges do not acknowledge unlimited academic freedom or irrevocable tenure, but they define the limits differently. Christian colleges encourage faculty to speak about their faith in and outside the classroom and commend the Christian faith to their students. Professors are free to critique anti-Christian philosophies and lifestyles. In contrast, these activities are restricted by law in publicly funded universities and by custom in elite private universities. At the same time, liberal and post-modern universities give faculty unrestricted freedom to affirm atheism, Marxism, and libertinism. As long as they do not engage in sexual harassment, they are free to live immoral lives. Christian colleges deny faculty members these freedoms. Faculty members who feel restricted by this denial do not belong in Christian colleges. If they are serious about maintaining their Christian identity, Christian colleges should make clear to faculty members that academic freedom and tenure will not protect them if they violate their contractual obligation to abide by the college’s faith statements and codes of conduct.

The Christian College: Its Critical Principles

Every academic endeavor must employ critical principles; otherwise, it has no criteria by which to distinguish possible from impossible, true from false, valid from invalid, probable from improbable, good from bad, wise from unwise, right from wrong, and just from unjust. For an academic community to exist and work together, its basic critical principles must be accepted by all members of that community. Christian colleges no doubt share many critical principles with other colleges, especially in the areas of logic, mathematics, and other hard sciences. In areas of morality, history, theology, and metaphysics, however, they differ dramatically. The liberal university denies that it gives any positive belief, moral, historical, theological, or metaphysical, the status of a critical principle by which to judge other beliefs of this type. The post-modern university, in contrast, asserts the morality of diversity, equity and inclusion and the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed as critical principles by which to judge other moral beliefs and narratives. The Christian college asserts the morality of faith, hope, and love and the biblical narrative of God, creation, sin, incarnation, reconciliation and redemption as critical principles by which to judge other moral beliefs and narratives. And it may in good faith exercise this power with boldness.

The Christian College: Learning to Say “No”

Most Christian college professors and administrators received their terminal degrees at universities dominated by the New Left. Having been immersed in Critical Theory, CRT, DEI, and Critical Pedagogy throughout their graduate studies—especially those studying education, social sciences, religious studies, literature, and all identity-based programs—new professors bring these theories and activist teaching methods with them to the Christian college and begin employing them in their teaching and institutionalizing them in training programs. These programs, sponsored by various administrative offices, often appear on the academic agenda without any justification at all. When questioned, their sponsors appeal to “best practices” or the latest educational literature. Or, they attempt to justify these neo-Marxist programs on Christian grounds, arguing that standing up for the poor and oppressed, working for social justice and against racism, and seeking diversity, equity, and inclusion embody the highest ethics found in the Bible and the Christian tradition. Who could object to that?

If you read the previous essays in this series, you won’t be surprised to learn that I completely reject these arguments. They are usually made by people who have only a superficial understanding of Critical Theory—of Marcuse, Davis, Freire, and Bell—and even less understanding of Christian doctrine and history. They mistake a small linguistic overlap between Christian vocabulary and neo-Marxist vocabulary for substantive agreement. The words diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism, oppression and justice as used by the New Left possess no more than verbal resemblances to Christian concepts, and sometimes they mean the direct opposite.

Suggestions for Christian Colleges

1. Don’t allow programs based on Critical Theory, CRT, DEI, intersectional identities, and Critical Pedagogy to be instituted. Discontinue them if they are already in place. Beware: these neo-Marxist programs appear under a variety of innocent sounding names. Read the fine print.

2. Replace teacher workshops rooted in Critical Pedagogy with workshops firmly centered in Christian Pedagogy, and discontinue programs that train faculty and staff in diversity, equity, and inclusion and institute programs that teach faith, hope, and love.

3. Institute continuing education programs that help your faculty and staff understand the Christian worldview at a deeper level.

4. Scrutinize every program and office in view of the critical principles listed above, and make sure that every other narrative and identity is thoroughly subordinate to the Christian narrative and identity.

*This essay focuses on higher education, but it applies equally to primary and secondary education.

Derrick Bell and the Origins of Critical Race Theory: A Review of America’s Cultural Revolution (Part Four)

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Today I will summarize Part IV of Christopher F. Rufo: America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (Broadside Books, 2023). By now you have no doubt heard of Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. They’ve been around a long time, since the 1980s in fact, but they burst onto the national consciousness in the summer of 2020 with the George Floyd protests and riots. In Part IV, Rufo tells the story of the origin of CRT and DEI in the thought of Derrick Bell (1930-2011).

Derrick Bell: Prophet of Racial Pessimism

After a brilliant career as a civil rights attorney working to make the racial equality promised in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a reality in the lives of black people, he grew pessimistic about achieving that goal. By the late 1960s, Bell had concluded that whatever the law said, white people would never accept black people as their equals. They would always find a way to keep them down. In 1969, Derrick Bell became the first black Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. And in 1973, he published a huge (1,000 pages) casebook, Race, Racism, and American Law. In this book Bell adumbrated what later came to be known as Critical Race Theory. Bell interpreted all the “advances” in civil rights—Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act (1964), and all the rest—as cynical moves designed to preserve white supremacy in different historical circumstances. White racism is built into the system.

“I Live to Harass White Folks”: The Politics of Eternal Resentment

Bell did not write in the academic style typical of a Harvard Law professor. Instead, he wrote fiction. Beginning with his 1983 foreword to the Harvard Law Review’s Supreme Court Issue, Bell wrote a series of allegories dramatizing ways in which white people always thwart black progress: “The Chronicle of the Celestial Curia,” “The Chronicle of the DeVine Gift,” “The Chronicle of the Amber Cloud,” and “The Chronicle of the Slave Scrolls.” These stories and others were published in two books, Faces at the Bottom of the Well and And We Are Not Saved. These stories explore white perversity in all its manifestations. His most famous story is “The Space Traders.” In the year 2000, space aliens come to earth and offer the American people advanced technology and medical science in exchange for all black people, whom they wished to take to their home planet. After some debate, American lawmakers decided to accept the space traders’ offer contingent on the outcome of a popular referendum. The legislators endorsed a “yes” vote on the referendum in the following words:

The Framers intended America to be a white country…After more than a hundred and thirty-seven years of good-faith efforts to build a healthy, stable interracial nation, we have concluded—as the Framers did in the beginning—that our survival today requires that we sacrifice the rights of blacks in order to protect and further the interest of whites. The Framers’ example must be our guide. Patriotism, and not pity, must govern our decision. We should ratify the amendment and accept the Space Traders’ proposition” (Quoted in Rufo, p. 225).

The referendum passed 70% to 30%. Black people, men, women, children, and babes in arms, were then herded at gun point, anguished and weeping, into alien spaceships.

Bell’s Harvard Law School career came to an end after he engaged in a two-year strike designed to pressure Harvard into hiring a black woman, specifically visiting professor Regina Austin, a radical critical race theorist who castigated white people in print and in front of her white students and celebrated the “Black Bitch.” After a two-year campaign of intimidation and name calling, Harvard fired Bell based on its policy that a professor could not take more than two years of unpaid leave.

The Rise of Critical Race Theory

During his career as a law professor Derrick Bell gathered about him many likeminded students. In 1989, one of his students Kimberlé Crenshaw organized a conference to address the question of what to do in view of the pervasive and permanent racism of America. Looking back a decade later, Crenshaw summarized the gist of the conference in these words: “We settled on what seemed to be the most telling marker for this particular subject. We would signify the specific political and intellectual marker for this project through [the term] “critical,” and the substantive focus through [the term] “race,” and the desire to develop a coherent account of race and law through the term “theory” (Quoted in Rufo, p. 232). Thus, Critical Race Theory was born. The definitive documents of CRT were published in two 1995 books: Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge and Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement.

As documented in these writings, CRT combines Derrick Bell’s cynicism and pessimism, post-modernism’s reduction of truth claims to power moves, and neo-Marxism’s distinction between oppressor and oppressed viewed through Crenshaw’s prism of intersectionality. Rufo outlines CRT’s strategy under three headings. (1) It adopts the post-modern dismissal of truth as a mask disguising the quest for power. This assertion allows CRT activists to dismiss any “rational” argument against their agenda and to employ any argument, narrative, or label that advances their goal, that is acquiring power for themselves. The black experience is the truth. Truth is whatever advances black people. (2) Kimberlé Crenshaw operationalized the concept of intersectionality for CRT. Rather than a simple dichotomy between oppressor and oppressed, she proposed a multilayered hierarchy of oppression. The white male reigns at the top and the black female lies at the bottom of the scale. Being the most marginalized, the black female possesses the most truth about the system of oppression. According to Crenshaw, all oppressed people—black women, homosexuals, the disabled, etc.—should join forces to push back against the quintessential oppressor, the white male. (3) CRT theorists incorporated the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of “cultural hegemony” and the “war of position.” With the guidance of these concepts, CRT activists set about the task, not of destroying American institutions by means of street violence, but of achieving power within those institutions, the university being the first target.

DEI and the End of the Constitutional Order

Critical Race Theorists needed to translate their ideology into a practical program and an effective rhetoric for acquiring power within American institutions. The triad of diversity, equity, and inclusion served this purpose brilliantly. The call for diversity could be mistaken for a call to make the institutions “look like America.” In fact, however, diversity calls for the inversion of the intersectional hierarchy of oppression. Marginalized identities and their interests are moved from the periphery to the center and dominate the institution. As Derrick Bell said, “The goals of diversity will not be served by persons who look black and think white” (Confronting Authority, 1994, quoted in Rufo, p. 253). Diversity in the CRT universe, then, means almost the opposite of what first comes to mind when you hear the word “diverse.” The word equity could easily be taken as a synonym for equality. In the traditional American understanding, “equality” applies to individuals and concerns individual negative rights. In the CRT world equity applies to groups, asserts positive rights, and aims at equality of outcomes. At first, it might seem that “inclusion” is another way of saying “diversity.” However, inclusion focuses on making those previously felt excluded feel fully accepted and comfortable. The mandate for inclusion lies at the root of all hate speech codes that exclude racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic expressions. It is the origin of sensitivities to “microaggressions,” and “unconscious bias;” it is the mother of cancel culture, (p. 254). In other words, almost all limits on free speech on college campuses, government agencies, and corporate cultures find their justification in the mandate for inclusion.

Rufo asks us to consider what it would take to make DEI truly effective in American culture. DEI theorists don’t leave us wondering how these goals are to be achieved. Derrick Bell’s disciples Cheryl Harris, Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence III, Richard Delgado and Kimberlé Crenshaw lay out a roadmap. (1) The notion of private property must be abolished so that the government can redistribute wealth from white to black people. (2) The Constitutional system of individual rights must be replaced with group rights and entitlements. (3) The First Amendment must be reinterpreted to outlaw speech that harms black and other marginalized people. As Rufo points out, instituting these changes would constitute nothing short of a regime change. Ibram Kendi, for example, proposed an anti-racist constitutional amendment establishing a Department of Anti-Racism with authority to regulate every aspect of American life. This Department would answer to no one—not congress, not the executive branch, and not the judicial branch. To serve the cause of anti-racism, CRT theorists would “limit, curtail, or abolish, the rights to property, equal protection, due process, federalism, speech, and the separation of powers” (p. 266). DEI spells the DEATH of the American constitutional order.

Next Time: We will review Rufo’s recommendations for how a counter-revolutionary movement might push back and replace the now entrenched New Left.

If I Didn’t Know it Was True, I Would Think It’s a Wild Conspiracy Theory

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I just finished reading James Lindsay’s new book The Marxification of Education: Paulo Freire’s Critical Marxism and the Theft of Education (2022). I recommend it to anyone concerned about education in the United States and, indeed, the world. If you are a teacher or a professor, if you have children or grandchildren, if you care about future generations, read this book. Or listen to Lindsay’s podcasts. If you know someone that falls into these categories, share this post with them. If I did not know from forty years of experience in higher education that Lindsay is telling the truth, I would think he was spinning a wild conspiracy theory.

In his book, Lindsay documents the work and influence of the Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire on American schools of education and, through the teachers trained there, on all levels of education. Until a week ago I had never heard of him, but he is one of the most influential theorists in contemporary education. His methods are used in virtually every school in the United States, public and private. Much of the time teachers, administrators, and facilitators have no idea of the theoretical background of these methods or of their aims. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, for I hate to think they know what they are doing.

Background

South American liberation theology—a mixture of Marxism and Roman Catholicism condemned by Pope John Paul II (1978-2005)—was a formative influence on Freire. And the religious aspect of his work comes through quite often. He speaks of his educational method as inducing “conversion,” and an “Easter” experience. He speaks of hope for the coming “kingdom of God,” that is, socialist utopia. Che Guevara is at the top of his list of saints. Freire’s first book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was published in 1970, but the book that made him famous in the United States was his 1985 book, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation. When I say that Freire is a “Marxist,” I am not speculating or trying to discredit him by association. He makes his adherence to Marxist analysis unashamedly clear in his own works.

Educational Aims

In traditional education the goal is to transfer to students the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in the culture in which they live. Freire calls this the “banking” or “nutritionist” view of education. It reproduces the teacher in the student and hence perpetuates the status quo of society. But through his Marxist lens, Freire sees society divided into those who have power and those who don’t, the oppressors and the oppressed. Society should be changed radically in a socialist direction. He offers his method of education as a means to this radical end. Freire redefines what it means to educate, to be educated, and to know. “To educate” means to awaken the oppressed to their status and empower them to take charge of their lives by working for societal change. “To be educated” means to be awake to the power dynamics in society. “To know” is to be attuned to the nuances of your own experience as oppressed. The oppressors, too, need to be awakened to their guilt and complicity in oppression. The “oppressed” become perpetually angry and offended, and the Woke “oppressor” enters a life of self-loathing and perpetual apology. And everyone becomes an activist.

The upshot of all this, according to Lindsay, is that students get robbed of a real education in reading, writing, mathematics, and every other content area. And they become “emotional wrecks” in the process.

The Method

Freire’s method unfolds in three phases: generative, codification, and decodification. “Teachers and students” are replaced by “educators and learners” who learn together through a “dialogic” (conversation) method. In the first phase of the dialogue, the educator generates from the learners information about their “lived experience” in search of hidden relationships of power, privilege, and oppression. In codification, the educator creates an image that pictures these structures of power, privilege, and oppression in an objective way so that the learner can see them from a distance. The learner, then, comes to see themselves in this generalized image, but now they understand themselves as a part of a class of victims in an unjust power structure. Thirdly, the process of decodification applies the Marxist analysis to the codified image. Decodification awakens the learner to the systemic causes of their oppression and to the possibility and necessity of wholesale societal change. It sensitizes them to the subtle ways in which traditional language, rules, traditions, expectations, and norms serve to justify and reinforce the power structures of stratified society.

Applications

The Marxification of Education explores dozens of ways Freire’s educational theory and its offshoots are applied in colleges, universities, and K through 12 schools. I can highlight only two. Read the book!

Race

The Freirean educational model is a perfect way to educate learners in Critical Race Theory. CRT contends that the United States is systemically racist and has been so from its founding. Only a radical reordering of society along antiracist lines (diversity, equity, and inclusion) can address systemic racism. In Freire’s “generative” phase, learners are canvased or surveyed looking for indicators of unequal power between people of color and white people. The next phase encodes those indicators in objective images, for example, a video clip of a white person double checking to see that their car doors are locked after parking in a black neighborhood. In the third phase, the coded images are decoded and interpreted through the lens of Marxist theory, that is, Critical Race Theory.

Sexual Minorities

Perhaps you have wondered why many public schools require young children to read or listen to books such as Gender Queer (written in comic book style) and others that contain pornographic illustrations of sex of all kinds and at all ages? And why would school districts and public libraries sponsor “Drag Queen Story Hour”? I did not understand these trends until I read Lindsay’s explanation of the aim and method of Paulo Freire’s theory of education. Reading Gender Queer and watching a grown man dressed in “women’s” clothes dance provocatively are part of the generative and codification phases of learning. These experiences elicit information from children about their understandings of gender, family, and sex, which can then be used in the decodification phase. The drag queen is a living illustration that rules are made to be broken, that the present social/moral order possesses no real authority but is imposed by those who benefit from it. Drag Queen Story Hour is a defiant and irreverent attack on the “oppressive” societal structures associated with sex, family, and gender identity. Children are thrown into a world without boundaries, they are robbed of their childhood, and their education is stolen from them. And Freirean educational theorists call it “learning.”

Optional Homework

Lindsay discusses many other terms and concepts associated with Freire’s educational theory. You may have heard of some of them without realizing their theoretical meaning. Do a quick search on some of them. Wikipedia usually has the basics even if it tends to sanitize the ideas a bit:

Cultural Competence, Comprehensive Sex Education, Culturally Relevant Teaching, (Transformative) Social-Emotional Learning, Problematization, Knowledges, Critical Pedagogy, Liberatory, Project-based learning, Decolonization, Conscientization, Queer Marxist Theory, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Antiracism, and Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity (SEED).

To be continued…