Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation

Book Review (Robert Chao Romero and Jeff M. Liou)

What is CRT? Critical race theory examines the intersection of race, racism, and US law and policy. In other words, it looks at how US laws and public policy have been manipulated and constructed over the years to preserve privilege for those considered “white” at the expense of those who are people of color. p.19

I know plenty of things that CRT isn't, and most of those involve the hostile representation of CRT by those on the right, inside and outside the church. I also know that it's of deep importance to listen to the voices of people of colour, whether we agree with them or not, and it behoves us all to engage critically with all disciplines and discourses, seeking what is true and right. That's the posture I come to with this book, with respect for Chao Romero and Liou as scholars, and as Christians, and seeking to have exactly what the subtitle of this book says, a "faithful and constructive conversation". That is, what is CRT, and what about it forms a useful lens, a way of seeing and a language to express what is the everyday lived experience of racism. The authors of this book engage in appreciation, appropriation, and critique of CRT from a theological framework.

In terms of critique, Liou points out the lack of hope in many strands of CRT, and the lack of eschatological hope altogether. Chao Romero notes that some, not all, of CRT does indeed skew Marxist in its analysis. "But prophetic criticism of economic and racial injustice does not mean that one is a Marxist—just look at the more than two thousand verses of Scripture that speak of God’s love and justice for immigrants, the poor, and all who live on the margins of all societies of all times." (p.21)

The book has four main chapters: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation, which I want to highlight some of they arguments made:

Creation looks at the longstanding and pervasive view of other cultures and ethnicities as being defined fundamentally by their lack. This is a view that communities of colour are "sties of cultural poverty and disadvantage". One doesn't have to go far to find examples of this in an Australian context, if you just open your eyes. It goes like this, most often: people of X background are lazy, are welfare dependent, are welfare chats, are criminals, don't value education, have absent father problems, have entrenched cultural values that heighten domestic violence and sexual violence, and the failure of individuals to escape poverty and societal failure is the product of their minority culture. The best solution thus is to assimilate individuals into majority culture.

CRT instead offers a framework of "community cultural wealth" - that communities of colour actually possess vast resources, cultural knowledge and practices, that are valuable in and of themselves are not present in majority culture. The authors of this book find an analogue in Revelation 21:26-27, the "glory and honour of the nations". Revelation as a book offers a counter-imperial picture of multicultural worship of Christ, where "By God’s design and plan, every ethnic group of the world possesses cultural treasure and wealth that is of eternal value," (p54) and those treasures, by being brought into the New Jerusalem, endure forever. This involves both tangible and perceptible elements of culture, but also "The distinct lenses and perspectives that every ethnic group brings to the world and the body of Christ" p.56

What follows is an exploration of the ordinariness of racism, in a frame that includes the pervasiveness of sin. If, as Christians, we have a robust doctrine of sin (i.e. total depravity - that no aspect of human existence is free from sin's effects), we should be unsurprised that sin is so pervasive that racism is "ordinary". It is not just that people have personal prejudices, it's that whole ways of thinking, framing laws and policies, and doing life and business have treated whiteness as default, and marginalised, excluded, and disadvantaged people of colour. There is discussion and history here of segregation, redlining, health care and insurance, schooling, and incarceration, all realms where systemic racism is found.

This moves us into chapter 2, where we learn about the ordinariness of racism. For people of colour, everyday experiences of racism are indeed ordinary, and for white people this often comes with "surprise and shock", because they conflict with "a mythical view of a polite society in which racial discrimination and bigotry are rare".

In this chapter we contend that the raucous public discord in which CRT is repeatedly (and often speciously) named is emblematic of an uninterrupted legacy of callousness to the voices and cries of people and communities of color that suffer white supremacy. p.77

Not only that, but this chapter "consider[s] various Christian traditions’ formulations of the doctrine of sin, examining the unspoken commitments that lead Christians to react instinctively and negatively against CRT. " (p.78)

Some of this divide, the authors posit, is that there are two major definitions of racism in use. The first is personal, individual prejudice in one person's attitudes and actions to another individual. The other, sees racism (also) in structures and systems, not merely individuals. Taking the time to look at the Scripture's whole vocabulary for sin, not just a highly individualised account of personal moral responsibility, helps in this regard. How we consider sin maps pretty well to how we consider racism. For this reason the authors turn to an examination of various accounts of sin, in terms of acts, interiority, systems, and so on.

This is a pretty technical chapter at times. There's also a painful awareness of just how difficult it is for people who have a thorough-going individualist framework to view the issue of racism through a different lens, and not perceive the voices of those who have suffered pervasive, systemic discrimination, as in fact the cause of division and discord.

Chapter 3 asks, as an example, "How should Christian institutions such as churches, denominations, nonprofit organizations, seminaries, and Christian colleges and universities respond to what God is doing in our midst?" p.115 That is, in one particular area (education), what tools does CRT provide, that can serve to combat racism. This includes listening to the voice of colour, in the context of Latina/o theological education - who better to understand the needs of minoritised peoples than they themselves?

I have shared previously the incisive and devastating critique of reactionary colourblindness, found in this chapter. Colour blindness is a position that silences diversity in the name of equality, denies the lived experience of those who have experienced racism, and insists that if we just don't acknowledge race and don't talk about it, there's no problem. One of the authors (Robert, I believe) shares his counterstory, of applying for a position for a high-level diversity position in a Christian university. Reader, it did not go well. Many Christians talk about their commitment to diversity, but it is a passive commitment, on their terms, without real conviction.

The authors turn to Acts 6 as an antidote, the proactive decision of the early church to address the needs of ethnic disparity between Hellenistic and Hebraic Jews in the early Jerusalem community

Chapter 4 looks at the issue of hope, drawing upon the notion of the Beloved Community indebted to MLK. The authors consider the Beloved Community (BC) to be a kind of "intermediate space" - more than the church, less than the kingdom. It is a form of semi-realised eschatology. Transformation that is more than merely personal (and pietist), but social without being totalising. The authors here also take their leave from much CRT, since the latter often rejects objective truth, neglects the Black Ecclesial Tradition, and lacks any profound hope for a truly better future.

Dr. King’s hopeful sermons and speeches are replete with references to the prophets. After all, the “arc of the moral universe” does not bend effortlessly toward justice as if racial equality were only a matter of time. It does so in the Christian tradition, however, because it is bent by a moral agent—principally, God in the person and work of Jesus Christ—whom we herald and is embodied as a prophetic symbol in God’s creation of the family of Christ. p.168

This is, as the subtitle puts it, a faithful and constructive conversation piece. It is not naive, it is not blind to CRT’s problems, it does not capitulate its world view, but it seeks to appropriate the tools that CRT brings to the analysis of race and injustice, and put them into meaningful conversation with the riches of the Scriptures and the theology of the Bible.