It’s Time for Christians to Actually Meet Critical Race Theory

by John Ellis

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is currently one of the hottest of the hot button issues boiling within evangelicalism. I first became acquainted with it in 2017 when a man in our church began warning the elders (and anyone else who would listen) about its presence in some of the seminaries and para-church organizations we supported. As more church members started asking me questions about racial justice issues and this “new” mysterious thing called Critical Race Theory, and having few answers for them, I began my years long (and continuing) journey into studying CRT.

Dr. Eric Mason’s Woke Church was a catalyst in my growing realization that something was deeply amiss in the criticisms and fearmongering dominating the conversation in conservative spaces.[1] Having been warned about Dr. Mason’s growing apostasy, I opened the pages of his book in 2018 not sure what to expect. Turns out, the warnings I had received about the book did not match what I found. A deeply orthodox work calling followers of King Jesus to pursue Kingdom ethics in the realm of racial justice, Woke Church is a pointed challenge to white evangelicals but not one that compromises the gospel at any point. Even now, six years later, I’ve come to expect a negative response to my endorsement of Dr. Mason’s book, especially from those who haven’t read it.

My experience with Woke Church has been the template for my continued experience with conversations about racial justice, wokeness, and, of course, CRT. It continues to be a topic that I’m frequently asked about by brothers and sisters in Christ. Sadly, I’ve come to expect tension and even anger whenever I ask what to me should be an obvious question, “have you read any CRT for yourself or only about CRT?” Like with Woke Church, I’ve come to expect indignant, if not angry pushback, born out of calcified presuppositions created by bad actors in the debate.

The thing is, Critical Race Theory is complex, often deeply and densely so. I recently confided to my pastor that some of the CRT essays in my library are so dominated by dry legalese that my brain resists reading them. By God’s grace, though, I’ve read quite extensively in CRT and its related fields like critical social justice, critical discourse analysis, and whiteness studies. And over my years of study, I’ve come to not only appreciate CRT but to understand its value as an epistemological tool for Christians desiring to see God’s justice enacted in the area of race. The problem is how to get others to see what’s taken me years of study to discern.

Over the last few months, I challenged myself with this: Is there a way to succinctly and accessibly describe CRT while doing justice to its complexities and retaining much of its “meat” to curious novices? It didn’t take me long to conclude that the answer to that question is a resounding, “no!” Its complexities defy oversimplifications.

I then transitioned to challenging myself to find a way to introduce CRT in a way that holds enough meat to whet the listeners appetite, causing them want to learn more on their own while also undermining the strawmanning, confusion, and flat-out deceit offered by the anti-CRT voices dominating the conversation within our churches. I believe that I’ve found that answer.

My objective with this article is not to convince anyone that CRT can be a net positive for Kingdom ethics (even though I believe that to be true). My objective is merely to soften some of the hardness built up by years of the anti-CRT crowd’s loud, relentless, and dishonest hammering against the complex legal theory. To that end, I am not holding out a full-throated argument and defense of CRT. I’d love to write that defense (and I have begun that argument in other places), but that’s not possible here. Along those lines, this article is also not intended to be an intro to CRT in the same vein as an Intro to Biology class in college is. This is an introduction more like, “hey Sally, I’d like to introduce you to my friend CRT” with the hope that Sally will be intrigued enough to get to know CRT more on her own. And please keep in mind that this article doesn’t contain a description that can be translated into an answer that will allow you to ace a quiz on CRT (or even get a D). It is also not intended to respond to every criticism of CRT nor offer a full-throated apologetic for it. It’s simply a friendly introduction between mutual friends of mine.

To start, it’s important to understand that CRT is not a worldview. CRT’s canon contains neither soteriological nor eschatological dimensions. It also doesn’t hold to an immutable anthropology that casts certain races as innately bigoted. Do people read those things into CRT? Yes, of course. But neither strawman versions nor the attempts to discredit CRT by knocking down those strawmen are honest nor helpful depictions of the theory. To counter the strawman criticisms that interact with CRT as if it presents a worldview in rebellion to a biblical worldview, it’s important to understand that CRT largely operates within an imminent framework of structuralism.[2] That’s a longwinded way of defending this paragraph’s claim in its opening sentence that CRT is not a worldview. For the record, I’m using structuralism with its most boots-on-the-ground colloquial definition. Here’s an illustration to help.

My wife and I have three children: two teenagers and a one-year-old. Our two eldest are smart, imaginative, resourceful, friendly, and well-adjusted. As my wife and I contemplated the birth of our late-life surprise (a wonderful surprise, to be clear), we’ve concluded that we put way too much work into our parenting with our first two. Most of our efforts were probably a waste of time and energy because they’re such good kids. So, we’ve decided that with our third, we’re going to take it easier. There’s no reason to haggle over bedtimes nor argue about eating fruits and veggies instead of fast food and soft drinks. And the energy needed to require reading books instead of screentime? Well, that’s energy we can use on our own hobbies and desires because it doesn’t matter. If she’s like her siblings, our youngest will turn out just fine.

I suspect that most readers would be aghast at the previous paragraph if they believed I meant it. As parents, we make choices for our children that aid in their cognitive, physical, and emotional development. Lack of sleep and a poor diet have negative effects on brain development, for example. In short, my wife and I control certain material structures in our kids’ lives to help ensure that they’re on a path that can lead to success. Of course, our children can make poor and sinful choices that lead to ruin, but that doesn’t stop us, by God’s grace, from doing what we know we’re called to do as their parents.

Putting a pin in that illustration to turn back to CRT, an important tenet of CRT is that race is a social construct. I believe that’s almost universally accepted in our country as evidenced by conservative mantras like “I don’t see color” and calls for a color-blind society. The fact is that most of us who are not nakedly bigoted understand that being white does not confer innate abilities that Black people lack. Claiming so would be denounced, and rightfully so, by politicians in both parties as wickedly racist.

So, with that truth in mind, an important question must be asked: if race is a social construct (and it is), why do stark disparities exist between white communities and Black communities in terms of things like poverty, incarceration rates, life spans, and educational achievements? If being white confers no innate advantages over being Black, why do those gaps in society exist? And that’s the question CRT interacts with and seeks to answer.

As parents, we make choices for our children because we understand that how we shape the structural systems around them will either aid them as adults or hinder them. Looking at the long-standing disparities between white and Black communities, CRT seeks to understand and expose the structures of society that leads to a 10.5% poverty rate among whites while the poverty rate among Blacks is 17.1%, for one example.[3] Not to mention that “between 2019 and 2022, median wealth increased by $51,800, but the racial wealth gap increased by $49,950 – adding up to a total difference of $240,120 in wealth between the median white household and the median Black household.”[4] I could weigh this article down with statistic after statistic because the evidence is clear that a substantial wealth disparity exists between white communities and Black communities. But why does that wealth disparity exist? If you reject CRT, you’ll be hard pressed to answer in ways that contradict CRT’s overall program without steering into sinful bigotry. If there are not innate flaws in being Black (and there are not, to be clear) then we need to look somewhere else for the answers. This is what CRT does. It shines a critical spotlight on the often unseen structures of society that create these disparities.[5]

None of this means that we should uncritically embrace everything CRT argues. Even CRT scholars counsel against that because CRT isn’t a monolithic set of theories, to begin with. It does mean, though, that we should be careful about uncritically accepting the arguments of those who traffic in denouncing strawman versions of CRT or those, often the same people, who flat-out lie about it. Nor does this mean that we should water down the truth that the full and final hope for racial reconciliation is found only through the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

As Christians, CRT’s objective shouldn’t be viewed as a threat. Genesis 3 tells us that sin’s Curse has severely disrupted human relationships. Because of the Curse, it should not surprise God’s people when society’s structures contribute greatly to injustice and oppression. The Bible tells us this will happen; we should expect it. And it’s a sinful fact that the Black experience in this country is different in negative ways than that of whites. Christians should not be afraid to ask why that is. CRT is simply a tool that helps explain how the Curse’s effects are being worked out in our fallen, rebellious society. Christians should be willing to avail ourselves of tools like CRT that aid us as we seek to live and work out God’s justice in a fallen world while being better witnesses to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

(For a fuller treatment of CRT from an evangelical Christian perspective, I recommend preordering IVP’s upcoming Untangling Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know and Why It Matters by Ed Uszynski. I’ve had the privilege of reading it already, and I can’t wait for it be published so that I can give it as a gift to friends.)

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[1] While Dr. Mason does interact with some of CRT’s themes and tenets in Woke Church, it is not CRT canon. This actually speaks to one of the problems: people, including many of its critics, do not know what CRT is, meaning that anything and everything about race and social justice that provokes displeasure can be (and often is) slapped with the tag “CRT” and then demonized via further deceits and an army of strawmen.

[2] For those fluent in structuralism, please take note of my use of the article “an” instead of “the”.

[3] Those statistics are available at Poverty in the United States: 2021 (census.gov), specifically the link to the table “People in Poverty by Selected Characteristics: 2021-2022.”

[4] Andre M. Perry, Hannah Stephens, and Manann Donoghoe, “Black wealth is increasing, but so is the racial wealth gap.” Brookings, Jan. 9, 2024, accessed Feb. 16, 2024, Black wealth is increasing, but so is the racial wealth gap | Brookings

[5] Can individuals overcome these structures? Yes, and many do. But that fact doesn’t wash our hands of the requirement to seek to dismantle and rearrange the structures creating disparities. Instead of yelling at people for failing to overcome obstacles we don’t face, we should be seeking to remove those obstacles instead.