Theology in the Raw - Untangling CRT: Where Do We Go From Here? Dr. Ed Uszynski

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Ed Uszynski (MA and MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; PhD American Studies, Bowling Green State University) has been a content specialist for Cru, Athletes in Action, and FamilyLife for over three decades. He also serves as a oneness and diversity consultant for church and parachurch organizations. His first book which releases next week is: Untangling Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know and Why It Matters. His book forms the topic of our conversation about CRT, race relations, and responding to some early critiques of his book. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast. Follow and Subscribe Today! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-lee-warren-podcast/id863481502 Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, do you remember when I had Dr. Lee Camp on the podcast to talk about a Christian political identity? It was episode 1139 and it was a fascinating conversation. Anyway, Lee is one of my favorite Christian writers and thinkers and he also hosts a super engaging podcast called No Small Endeavor. It's kind of like The Old General actually. On No Small Endeavor, Lee will have curious conversations with theologians, philosophers, bestselling authors, all to explore what it means to live a good life.

His diverse range of guests include people like Amy Grant, Tish Harrison Warren, Philip Yancey, Malcolm Gladwell, Eugene Cho, Miroslav Volf, and many others, all asking what it means to live a life worth living. So if you like Theology Neurah or even if you hate Theology Neurah, you've got to go check out No Small Endeavor on whatever app you use to get your podcast. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Neurah. My guest today is my good friend, Dr. Ed Yuzinski, who has an MA and an MDiv from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a PhD in American studies from Bowling Green State University. He is a content specialist for crew, athletes in

action and family life organizations with which he has been with for over three decades. He also serves as a oneness and diversity consultant for church and parachurch organizations. His newly released book, Untangling critical race theory, why Christians need to know and why it matters is in my opinion, um, outstanding. Uh, in fact, I wrote the forward for this book as did Crawford, Luritz. And, uh, it's just a, uh, really, if you want to understand critical race theory from someone who is trying to get inside of this theory, draw the, draw out the good, critique the bad, analyze what it actually is from a extremely well-educated and curious perspective, then this, this book is just

simply outstanding. So that's the topic of our conversation. We talk about critical race theory, you talk about race relations in the church and all that fun stuff. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Dr. Ed Musinski. And what led you to want to write this book and entangling Critical Race Theory. Yeah, Preston. Man, I've been thinking a lot about that lately,

especially in light of the launch of it coming out. And there are already being reviews circulating about it. And the reality is I grew up in a, and I talk about this in the book, but I grew up in a very diverse environment. I grew up at sort of the intersection where the communities and schools overlap between black folks, white folks, and Puerto Rican folks. That was the intersection. It was more diverse than that, but that made up the three largest components. And as I look back and think about my high school years, I lived in all three of those worlds. I was a basketball

player. I was one of the only white guys on the basketball team, which kind of hoisted me into predominantly black culture. For a number of reasons, I wound up in a Puerto Rican community, one of which being that I dated a Puerto Rican girl while I was in high school. And of course, I was white and I lived in a white neighborhood. I was navigating all three of those worlds. I found myself often playing the role of translator. I found myself regularly saying to whatever group I was hanging out with who had these really racist notions or at least prejudiced notions about the other two groups, I found

myself regularly saying, yeah, man, that's not exactly how they think or believe, or that's not actually a fair representation of what they're saying over in that other group. I was doing that all the time. And I didn't have language at the time because I wasn't a Christian until I got into college. And frankly, even in the early years of my Christian life, I wouldn't have had the language of cultural competency to work with. But that's really, really what's always been important to me is that I would not only become more culturally competent myself, that is being able to understand, like really understand

what is going on in cultures different from mine and be able to live inside of those cultures as somebody who, again, I will never be a black man, I will never be a Puerto Rican, but I can at least live in those environments with an understanding that allows me to relate to and to connect with the people that are there. That's always been super valuable to me. And I want other people to have it, especially as a Christian.

I want other Christians to actually be more culturally competent outside of their, the culture that they're most comfortable in. And so that started for me, you know, 35, 40 years ago. And the predominant lanes that I've run in are white and black lanes. And so, especially everything that's gone on in the last decade and all the craziness around critical race theory. I've just wanted to help explain, especially to my white brothers and sisters in evangelicalism, what I've been listening to and hearing and experiencing among my black brothers and sisters for decades that just still doesn't seem to be connecting or resonating with the white church spaces that I hang out in. Do you remember when you first heard the term critical theory or critical race theory?

Honestly, Preston, it wasn't until I started my PhD program that I remember that I actually I knew those ideas in the early 2000s, late 1990s, because I remember reading Peggy McIntosh, for example, who talked about white privilege, although she wouldn't even consider herself a critical race theorist, but whatever. That kind of language and those kinds of discussions I started having in the late 1990s, but it wasn't until 2008 that I realized, oh, this is all part of an ideology. This is all part of a worldview, or at least there's theoretical ideas that attach themselves to a worldview called critical theory and critical race theory. I don't want to spend too much time here because I know, I mean, you

spent several chapters unpacking this in the book and I don't know what I will have said in the intro, but I'll just say this is, it was one of the more helpful summaries of what is Marxism? What is critical theory? What is critical race theory? What it is not, you know? And that you just did a masterful job, just on an educational level, help us understand that. And the book so much more than just, you know, it's, it's highly relational and practical and very ecclesiological. But for, let's just get the basics out of the way. Like what is critical theory? What is critical race theory in particular? And then what is the relationship between those two and Marxism?

And maybe we can just meet the basic understanding of what Marxism is. That, which I'll just chum the waters here. That was one of my favorite parts of the book when you unpack what Marxism actually is. Yeah. Why is that which I'll just chum the waters here. That was one of my favorite parts of the book when you unpack what Marxism actually is. Yeah. Why is that? I remember us talking about that months ago. Do you remember what was it about that that stuck out to you or why was it valuable to you? Because now a number of people have actually said that. And I think even as you're looking there, Preston, I'll just talk for a second. I think part of the reason is that most of us just haven't had a clear encounter with what basic Marxism is. We hear that word get thrown around. We know it's

something negative. We know it's attached to these historical atrocities that have been done, right, in our study of history, but we don't actually know what Marx was about or how he came about or what it was that he was actually confronting. I think people, again, trying to take this very wide ranging because Marx wrote thousands of pages and others have written thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of pages about him. It's really difficult to summarize Marxism. And yet there are just some basic things

that you come back to over and over again that kind of form a ground zero of understanding what he was about. So when he looked at the problems in the world, and again, you said Marxism, critical theory, critical race theory, so that's three huge things. And interesting, I will say this, I argued against having critical race theory

in the title of this book, because I really don't think the book is primarily about critical race theory, as much as it's about understanding the ideas that black Christians have actually been trying to get white Christians to pay attention to for decades, if not arguably centuries. Okay?

And that those ideas still remain largely unaddressed and in some ways ignored or dismissed and critical race theory has now become the latest way to not pay attention to the issues that critical race theory actually wants us to pay attention to. And our black brothers and sisters want us to pay attention to. That's yeah. That's good. There's yeah. Yeah. I have a, so I'm, I'm, this is my advanced reader copy here from my audience. They can, well, they can't see it anyway. It's way back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But let's see you're describing critical theory and I don't know. I kind of resonated with a lot of this. So you say this, you say, you know, critical theory is suspicious. It assumes there's something more

going on than what we plainly see. It refuses to blindly trust systems that require our submission, whether financial, educational, political, or religious critical doesn't believe in God, but it does believe in human fallenness and the desire of the few to control the mini a critical theory tries to see the ideological iceberg controlling people from beneath the water, expose it to everyone, and then hack it, hack at it until it loses its power. And I even wrote next to it. I'm like, I say, gosh, dot, dot, dot. Sounds pretty good. I mean, cause I have this, this, this, whatever I talk about politics and stuff and this, this empire, this, this machine that we're living in and kind of, kind of the,

the charade of democracy and what really drives foreign policy and why we go to war, create wars out of financial kickbacks to the system. Like there's just, once you peek behind the curtain, you're just like, Oh yeah, there's, there's a lot more going on here. So I, and this isn't, I don't know enough about critical theory. So, Oh, okay. That's just, you know, this is a great lens of you things through, but just this, that concern of saying, let's peek behind this curtain a bit. Let's not take everything at face value. Let's not just give our submission to the powers to be just because they are the powers to be. I think that's a healthy posture to have. Well, so Marx believed that capitalism as a way of organizing ourselves economically was dehumanizing, that it caused us to be alienated

ultimately from the work that we do, it caused us to be alienated from the people we work with, and that we end up competing against, and it ultimately caused us to be alienated from ourselves. And in some ways, again, look, I'm not, maybe we should say this at the beginning of this, I am not a Marxist. I am not bought into the critical theory worldview as a way of living. I am a Christian who is anticipating a coming King and Kingdom that is already but not yet among us. And yet I grew to, and I continue to appreciate signs of grace and signs of truth or you know elements of truth that show up in any of these different world systems and I did really did grow to appreciate

Marx's analysis of capitalism not because I think what he tried to replace it with was better Because it's not but the world that I live in doesn't do a very good job of criticizing it in the first place and so that I live in doesn't do a very good job of criticizing it in the first place. And so he very painstakingly showed how this way of arrangement, this arrangement that we've created for ourselves economically is dehumanizing. It's not good for human beings in the long run. It benefits a few at the expense of many. And you said capitalism is going to blow up at some point. It will blow up unless there's an intervention from the state or somewhere else. There are all these contradictions that are built into it and it eventually will implode

on itself. Or the workers themselves will realize that they're being taken advantage of and they will rebel and there will be a revolution and there will be a new system called socialism or as it turned out, it became communism, and that will inevitably happen, is what he predicted. Well, in the early 1900s, there were all kinds of social environments where it should have happened, okay,

according to kind of the science, his science of economy, it should have happened, but it didn't. Critical theorists in the early 1930s, 1940s came along and said, well, in light of the fact that the economy hasn't melted down the way Marx predicted, what is it that allows it to continue to be sustained? Why do people continue to submit themselves to a system that's alienating and dehumanizing? And why do they submit themselves to really fascist dictators? That was all the rage back in the 30s with Hitler and Mao and Stalin.

That was going on all over the place. How does that come about and why do people continue to submit themselves to it? And so their analysis was to look at how it is that people continue to surrender themselves to systems that ultimately are dehumanizing. Here's another. So this comes on page 39 of the, of the, so I got, so I got two copies of your book here. The pre arc here. And then the final that just, uh, I got the early copy of it.

Um, yeah, your description of, I mean, so his, well, it seems like Marx was in part critical of the, well, you said the dehumanization that happens through capitalism, specifically the commodification of products and people and work environments and everything. So you say Marx hated it. He hated what the mechanics of the capitalistic social system did to everyone involved. Industrialization forced workers to leave agricultural and artisan work for soul-sucking jobs in factories, working long hours, repeating mind-numbing tasks. Instead of people making goods simply because they were needed for

survival, people produced commodities for profit and the products they made started to take on a mystical fetish, fetishistic value of their own and a quasi spiritual way products for mass consumption became personifications of a competitive value. And in time they became more important than the humans who made them hashtag iPhone. And what's the name of the person who created your iPhone? I mean, you know just, you need the product, dude. Right. I mean, eventually people experience alienation in their relationships to the work of their own hands, to their coworkers and even to themselves. Like, what in that it's raw. Like that critique is legit. Right. No, I'm not saying that I don't want to reduce. Therefore that's all bad. But there are aspects in his original concern. Like, I'm not saying that I don't want to reduce. I'm just saying

that I don't want to reduce. I'm not saying that I don't want to reduce them, but therefore that's all bad. But there are aspects in his original concerns within the cultural context, which he's writing, which is different than ours today. Like there is a cultural context that some of his, some of his concerns of capitalism is legit from a Christian point of view. Right? I mean, that's kind of your point here. You're like, Hey, there's pros and cons and really bad stuff and really good stuff and some neutral things. And let's just, let's just not broad brush Marxism. Well, he's a Marxist. Like even that, like, what do you mean by that? There are layers and

layers of complexity here that once you start picking it apart, you can find some redemptive or at least you could understand why certain people would have been attracted to this way of thinking and may be suspicious about a total capitalistic system. Yeah, man. So I think, why are we not able to criticize capitalism? The way I would answer that for myself is, well, because I only have one alternative and I know that that's worse. And so we do this all the time. Again, I will say broadly, we figure out what our tribe is,

figure out what our worldview is, figure out who the others are, figure out what the other worldviews are that we're against, and then we spend all of our energy defending ours and criticizing theirs, whatever it is. I think even, again, just from my own personal life, I think what's happened with me in the last 15 years or so is that I am realizing more and more what an idolatrous relationship I've had with a more conservative view of life, a more politically conservative and capitalist view of life.

I've had a somewhat idolatrous relationship with that in that I believe, even though I would say that I don't really believe that it's going to save me, I think that inside I really do put a lot of hope in it or trust in it or gain security from it. And I think what happened with me when I started reading Marx and the critical theorists is they actually have a very scathing view. They're looking through a lens saying, what's on that conservative and capitalist side

is dehumanizing. It is just as much of a trap as anything you've ever experienced in your life. And I don't ever listen to those guys because they've already been, they're Marxists, right? It is just as much of a trap as anything you've ever experienced in your life. And I don't ever listen to those guys because they've already been, they're Marxists, right? We don't listen to the Marxists. But in listening to them and at least entertaining what they're saying about how the world works, I found myself saying, wow, there really isn't a world system that's going to ultimately

benefit people and be humanizing. There isn't a world system that's going to ultimately benefit people and be humanizing. There isn't. Again, what do we say? I know people even listening to this. Some are better than others. Yeah, some may be better than others, but Preston, this is why I so much appreciated your book, Exiles, is that I think as a Christian, I need to be able to separate myself from the system that I've aligned myself with well enough

to see that it ultimately does not have Jesus at the center of it. It's actually trying to bring in a very different kingdom than the one that I say that I'm aligned with. And I need to be separated from it more. Again, I'm not going to try to say that for everybody, but I know that I needed that to be true for myself. And so what's ended up happening for me is I've just been, I think, been able to see more clearly what's wrong on both sides. And I also then I'm able to see a little bit easier, I think, what's right, and be able to embrace what's right on both sides of the political aisle. What do you hope the reader walks away with? Because I mean, and we, you know, we're focusing on kind of some of the foundational chapters here,

but there's a lot more on, I mean, specifically, your ultimate concern is race relations in the church. Your ultimate concern is extremely theological and ecclesiological in the book. So it's not just like a textbook CRT. Well, somebody said this, and I thought this was a good way to say it, that for the first five or six chapters, I'm playing the role of professor and talking about Marxism and critical theory and critical race theory as disciplines. And for the last nine chapters, I'm pastor and talking about how does, how does any of this land in real life amongst real people? And

again, what is it that black brothers and sisters or just non-white folks have been trying to get white evangelicals to pay closer attention to through the years? And that's really what I hope will happen. I hope that the beginning of the book will at least take the complex and make it a little bit more graspable and explain what critical race theory

really was trying to do in the late 80s and early 90s, which again, I guess I haven't even answered that yet. So, black folks looked at critical theory and said, well, you all are looking at the iceberg. You are. You're willing to take a look behind the scenes to see how power is working in society, but you won't look through a racial lens.

As mostly white people who are working in that field, you continue to ignore what it means to be black, in this case, to be black in America, and you continue to ignore the way that law maintains inequalities and law is actually being used to, well, that's the best way to say it, it's being used to maintain and further inequalities. So critical race theory comes along and winds up being a confrontation with a particular

view, a particular racial narrative that existed in America at the time and still exists today, which is one that says, we're all good now. After the civil rights movement and the things that happened in the 1960s, we're good. We don't need to talk about race anymore. It's an even playing field. Jim Crow is gone now. We're all good. The critical race theorists, the scholars that were writing within law, were saying, yeah,

that's not really true, man. There's still stuff that's in place. There's patterns, there's policies, there's ways of being that continue to hinder the advancement of non-white peoples in this country. So again, that's what they were doing in the late 80s and 90s. That's obviously expanded.

Those ideas now have expanded into other disciplines and other fields, and they've sort of taken on a life of their own politically in this last decade. But that's what those guys were trying to do. So a couple of years ago, I had on Dr. Lee Warren on the Algenra, it was episode 1101, and he came on the show to talk about the brain,

the body and dealing with trauma. And it was a fascinating discussion. Well, I want to let you know that Dr. Warren has a podcast titled, you guessed it, the Dr. Lee Warren podcast. So if you don't remember, Dr. Warren is a neurosurgeon and author, and in his podcast, he delivers weekly lessons from neuroscience, faith, and common sense on how to lead a healthier, better, and happier life. He's had on several guests such as Max Picado, Philip Yancey, John Bevere and many others.

And he will oftentimes just address various issues that surround faith and the brain. So one episode is titled, The Myth of Multitasking. Another episode is titled, The Opposite of Depression. Another one is, How to Pray Here and Find God. Another one is, Problem Solving Through problem solving through perspective shifts. So this podcast is really engaging. I invite you to check it out. Again, it's the Dr. Lee Warren podcast and you just have to subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app. Hey friends, my book, Exiles, The Church in the Shadow of Empire is out now. I am so excited

and a bit nervous about the release of this book. This is a topic I've been thinking about for many, many years, and finally put pen to paper to write out all my thoughts. Specifically, I'm addressing the question, what is a Christian political identity? As members of Christ's global, multi-ethnic, upside-down kingdom scattered across the nations,

how should we as members of that kingdom think through and interact with the various nations that we are living under? So, the book is basically a biblical theology of a Christian political identity. We look at the nation of Israel, we look at the exile of Israel, we look at several parts of the New Testament, the life and teaching of Jesus, several passages in the book of Acts, the letters of Paul, do a deep dive into several passages in the book of Acts, the letters of Paul, do a deep dive into 1 Peter and the book of Revelation,

and then explore some contemporary points of application. So I would highly encourage you to check out my book, Exiles, and would love to hear what you think, whether you hate the book, love it, or still think it through it, would love to hear what you think by dropping a review on Amazon or, I don't know, post a blog, just, you know, ripping it to shreds, I don't know, post a blog, just,

you know, ripping at the shreds. I don't really care. I would love for you to just wrestle with this really important topic in this really volatile political season that we're living in. Let me, let me play the devil's advocate a bit. And not, not even really devil, but just like kind of the, what about like, yeah, let's let's, you know, we live in a post civil rights era. We had a democratically elected black president, you know? And then people often say, well, yeah, okay. So he got 40% of the votes, but it's like, well, I mean, the people that didn't vote for him, Obama, they would have voted for a black conservative. In fact, they did,

you know, we've had some black conservatives running for president that so yeah. So, so I democratically elected black president, civil rights era. Yes. There's always going to be racist individuals, but we have come such, such a long way. If all we do is keep talking about our past as a nation with slavery and Jim Crow and all this, it's like, look, we're so far from that. In fact, we've gone so far that in some circles, like to be a, you know, white cisgender hetero male or whatever it can be seen as like, that's, that's almost like worse off, you know, try getting a job teaching English at Berkeley university as a white Christian, you know, like, and there's certain space, you know, even with affirmative action,

everything like it seems like, like what more can we do? Like, of course, especially at social media and everything, you're going to capture this racist incident, this thing or whatever the, you know, the, again, the, the George Floyd incidents is, is horrific as that is it's like in a, in a country of 350 plus million people, there's always going to be that. But that doesn't mean that the entire system is still like bogged down with all these intrinsic racist, you know, motivators or whatever. How do you, did I sum that up? Well, is that my I have had and we started this three or four years ago whenever we first had our first conversation about it on this podcast.

So you just said a whole bunch of different stuff. Here's what I want to know. No, I'll say this for myself again. The congregations that I've been a part of, and I don't know what all is going on in culture or how we measure cultural progress when it comes to race and racial healing. The predominantly white congregations that I've been a part of are not necessarily

all that much further along in their cultural competency, their understanding, again, let's just stick to black culture, their understanding of black culture, their understanding of black culture, their appreciation of it, their desire to be inclusive when it comes to how we operate as a body of people. You know, I work in crew. I've worked with a parachurch organization

for the last 30 years. In pockets, there are people that do have understanding. Again, I'm talking about white folks that have put effort and energy into trying to understand people that are different culturally from them and including them then in the process of leading on campus or leading in their part of their organization of crew. But there's a whole bunch who haven't.

And again, the congregations that I've been a part of, everybody keeps trying to talk about how far we've come while Christian nationalism, like really bad versions of very racist stuff are in the news almost every day. I'm not even exactly sure what to do with that or how seriously to take it, but that sure hasn't gone away from the public conversation. More importantly, I wanna know and I wanna look at what are the patterns and policies and ways of being that we have amongst ourselves as a congregation

or as a denomination, as a Christian school, as a Christian parachurch organization. Inspect the way that you're operating and just ask and see, are there roadblocks, are there ways of being that have become part of our history that we don't even realize that we're doing in the way we hire, in the way we bring people into leadership, in the way we decide what issues are going to matter to us, in the way we think about discipleship and what verses or portions of scripture are gonna be important to us.

Whether the concept of justice, which gets thrown around a lot these days politically, whether that's anywhere in our discipleship program to teach people how to think about what justice means or doesn't mean socially in our society. So even all that stuff that you just said, having black presidents and this, that, and the other,, honestly, I don't even know how to make sense of that these days in so many ways. What I want is the people that I do church life and

Christian life with to become more cross-culturally competent. And I'm not at all convinced that there's a majority, or let me say that the majority of people that I hang out with still feel to me like there's a lot of work to be done, regardless of whatever's gone in society. There's a lot of work to be done in understanding. Are you not convinced of that? As you think about the people that you go to church with or that you spend the majority of time with,

do you feel differently from me about that? Do you feel like, like I was on a podcast with Neal Shenvy the other day and I was talking to him and I asked him like, what kind of white people do you hang out with? And he said, they're just the most wonderful people and they're kind and they're gentle and this that and that. And I'm like, well that, I'm not talking about whether they're nice people.

I wanna know what their ability is to connect and understand with people who are different from them. Because the people that I hang out with in Ohio, for the most part, like I said, ability is to connect and understand with people who are different from them. Because the people that I hang out with in Ohio, for the most part, like I said, just have a long way to go. I don't even know exactly how I want to put a label on that, but they have a long enough way to go that I want to be part of trying to help that happen for them. I don't look around and say, oh no, we're good.

These folks are missiologically deep when it comes to getting outside of their own cultural background, their own cultural heritage. They've done inspection on the patterns and policies and the way they operate. They have a sensitivity and an awareness of other people's differences

and they know how to embrace those while being secure in their own. I don't hang around a ton of people that are great at that. Yeah, no, dude. I mean, just, I think you and I are extremely similar pages on all this stuff. Um, I don't know if I was always there. I mean, I, I, I've thought through the race conversation for a while, but nowhere near the level you have. So I, I, I'm, I'm still kind of on the sideline, just kind of watching, watching the books fly around the discussions happening. And I, for me, and this is totally anecdotal, I think most white people I'm around don't,

don't give off the air of any kind of like blatant racist, you know, kind of tendencies, you know, like the people, you know, that if they own a business, like, I don't care what color you are, just work hard and you're hired, you know, that, that, you know, whatever. So like I, that, that kind of like in your face, discrimination, even in Idaho and, and you know, there are some definite racists up in the mountains and I wouldn't want, you know, but even in a very conservative, very white state, and I would say the majority of the people we hang around are, are, are black. So I, I can see like when we go. So I can see like

when we go places, I can see a little bit kind of like you growing up in Cleveland, you know, like, and, and, you know, we have race conversations all the time and, and yeah, that kind of blatant interface racism, very minimal. But what I see is the kind of paternalistic, yeah, you would hire a black person, but would you have their family over for a meal? And if you did, would that be kind of a big deal? Like, Hey, all right, this family's coming over and you know, like, or would it just be like, you're just having a meal with your friends? You know, like I even, I talked to one guy who's, um, I don't want to get excited. He hasn't given permission to share a story,

but um, yeah, I mean, he made a comment that my, my family is like one of the first families in the last decade that just treats them like an older person, not like, Oh, and now here's the black person. Like, and they get it not, not in a rate, but just in more of a kind of pandering, a little bit of a kind of that white liberal guilt, kind of that, like, Oh, you know, like just, there's still that subtle unintentional othering that I think white people can do without realizing it until you sit down and have frank conversations and get an honest feedback.

You're never really gonna kind of see it. Does that make sense? I'm kind of searching for how to describe, yeah. So I- And this is why, and I say this repeatedly and I've been saying it, I'm not sitting around trying to figure out who the racists are. And I know that that still is still debated

and kicked around all over the media. Okay. And I'm One more thing. There's a statement I wanted to say it. I didn't, I didn't say it, but it kind of summarizes. I think the white people I know are very fine with assimilation. They're nervous about integrations. We'll explain what you mean by that. There is a, we are blind to what a white culture is as much as a fish is blind to, you know, swimming in water. And so as long as other fish come and swim in our water, you know, like assimilate into this kind of culture, that's fine. We, you know, having even a black preacher, black worship, whatever, like on state, Oh yeah, totally.

You know, but if there's any semblance of like a black culture that starts to get integrated into our white culture, then we get a little bit like, well, hold on here. You know, like it's like when, you know, Lecrae and other people, you know, these black reform conservative Christians started, I think in his own words, you know, started becoming too black. You know, they started to talk about race conversations and then people were like, Oh, hold on boy. You know, like, that's like, that's it. Let's not get crazy here. You know? And that's why there's been such a massive exit from the white dominated church from like, again, theologically conservative, even politically conservative black Christians.

And we've, you know, talked about this at exiles and other spaces. Yeah. So I think that's a problem. Not everybody does, you know. Again, there's a lot of voices out there on social media these days that are crying for a particular form of nationalism, a particular form of Christian nationalism, although I don't even think those two words should be put together. The great replacement theory and just some of these fears that, yeah, we don't really wanna be integrated.

In fact, there's arguments being made that that's not a biblical idea. And so, man, again, when we say we need to talk more about race and not less, this is why I just think it's such a naive perspective to act like everything's good and we should move away from having these conversations when it's almost impossible not to deal with race. I mean, Emerson and Christian Smith in Divided by Faith, right? Back in 2000, 2001, coined that idea of racialization,

which basically just means you can't not see race. You can't not, because of our history, because of the way that we've been structured and wired, you can't not see race. Now, you may do different things with it. Everybody's gonna do different things with race when they see it, but you can't act like it just isn't there anymore.

Everything that you just said, Preston, you said, what do I hope happens with my book? I hope that people... I am on the side of being more integrated. I think that is what the church should be like. That doesn't mean that every congregation has to be integrated. Again, these things end up spinning out and becoming these side arguments. It's more of a mentality that says, I am going to even go back where we started. I want to be cross-culturally competent.

I want to let go of some of my, in this case, my white normativity, there's a phrase that gets used a lot in these circles. What's normal for me, expecting it to be normal for you, I wanna give up on that, I wanna stop doing that and start looking to see what does it look like for us to coexist in the same space

and for me to benefit from you and you to benefit from me and us to kind of take the best of what both of us bring together as cultures and that's what the culture becomes. And that happens in some places, it doesn't in most. In most places it's what you just described, which is there's this white normativity, there's sort of a white superiority, an unspoken white superiority, and yes, you're welcome here. We're no longer,

we don't have our Jim Crow signs out anymore. Like you said, we'll give you the stage for a day, or we'll have one of you be part of our leadership team, but don't start messing with what we consider normal or the way we do business. And that's what needs to be challenged. Yeah. Hmm. That's good. Not for progressive reasons, but for gospel reasons. Yeah.

That's good. Well, what's the difference there? What do you mean by that? Yeah. I think ultimately, progressive ideology is just trying to trade one humanistically driven power ideology. It's trying to trade that in for another one. That I'm gonna take your power so that I can have power over you. That's what I always felt when I was in school and whenever I was talking, whenever I'm talking, again, this may not be fair, this is how I read it.

Whenever I talk to my really, really progressive friends, especially non-Christian ones, and I ask them what they will do when they get power, I don't get the sense that they're gonna make sure that everybody gets taken care of. I get the sense they're just gonna become another version of the very thing that they hate right now themselves, okay? From a Christian perspective,

I'm supposed to take power and use it to benefit other people. I'm supposed to take power and use it to benefit other people. I'm supposed to take whatever power and privilege that I have and in a sense, lay that aside or invest it in a way that other people are benefited by it. Not so that I can become more powerful myself and I can become a tyrant just under a different banner. I'm supposed to use it so that other

people benefit by it. And I was supposed to look out for and watch out for marginalized people and people that are vulnerable and people that are going to, that are going to have a tendency to be taken advantage of. And isn't that the critique of like Marxism that, okay, let's look and see how that's gone. Well, uh, every Marxist regime turned into a totalitarian blood bath. And I know, I think you even raised this comment against some of your Marxist full on capital M Marxist classmates back when they're doing their PhD. You're like, all right, how's it worked? Yeah. Capitalism point out all the bad stuff, whatever, but we don't have pole pot in the government.

We don't have Mao like, yeah. There's massive problems with capitalism. The other option is way worse. We're kind of drifting back now into more Marxism. I don't want to take us too far. We are. Listen, I don't know how to make secular politics look more Christian. Again, I know that's being talked about a ton these days. I'm not even trying to get into that. I'm really not. I'm asking the church and people that again are in parachurch organizations, people that align themselves with a different kingdom should have already been doing the very work that we're talking about doing right here when it comes to integrating and being cross-culturally competent. That should just be part of our DNA as Christians.

It hasn't been collectively throughout our history because we've aligned ourselves with really a secular political worldview when it comes to race. We've operated like secularists when it comes to race, far too often and for far too long. So again, is that happening in every white dominant congregation across this country? I don't know what the numbers are.

I know Michael Emerson and Glenn Bracey just wrote a book called The Religion of Whiteness. Have you seen this one, Preston? Everybody's been telling me about this and I finally just got it for myself. No. Who is it? So this is almost a follow-up. It's Emerson and a guy named Glenn Bracey, who's a sociologist at Villanova. Oh, yeah. And it's just now a deeper dive into how far we've come since 2001 when Emerson wrote divided by faith

It would appear that there is still a significant enough percentage of people that are actually like I haven't come that far away from whiteness as an ideology and That's interesting white superiority or again, whatever language that we wanna use, it would seem that that's still enough of a problem that reputable sociologists are saying, hey, we should look at this and pay closer attention to this. Here's another one, the great de-churching.

Jim Davis is a friend of mine, okay? And one of the chapters in this book is specifically about BIPOC people leaving the church. That as they did this general study of why it is that people leave the church, one of the top four groups that arose were BIPOC folks, non-white people. And one of their conclusions actually was, I just read it the other day, let me see if I can find this real quick, but basically what they end up arguing is that we're just not cross-culturally competent enough

as white people. Again, wear those shoes however you want. That's the thing. Everybody right away gets defensive about that statement. And I wish what we did is just say, all right, tell me more about that. What would that look like in my life to be more cross-culturally competent?

I wish that was the first response instead of right away telling me about Obama being the president and you know, we had a black person speak at our conference and the conclusion of these sociological studies is no, we need to do a better job. Is it, is it limited the lack of cultural competency? Is that unique to white people or whiteness or white culture? Or is that just any kind of racial category of people is going to have a natural in competency with another culture? Good. No, I think that's a great question, Preston. And I would argue that it's definitely true for everybody. So that this thing that I'm arguing, I think everybody needs

to put these shoes on in different ways for sure. In this country though, and again, I'll just speak in our churches and the way we've operated as Christians in this country, I do think that if you've been part of a marginalized group, again, let's just even talk white, black, that black folks have been forced not only to understand their own culture, not forced to, but they understand their own culture, but they've been forced to understand white culture. They've been forced to become cross-culturally competent about at least dealing with white folks, while white folks have not been forced to become cross-culturally competent beyond their own lines. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you and I, you know, we've been in many different cultural contexts and there is that when you're, when you are in, when you are a minority in a majority cultural context, you are sort of intuitively forced to pick up on cultural cues. I have been in some all black churches that are in very urban environments that really are pretty isolated from white people and understanding how white people think and the best sense of that idea. I'm not just talking about knowing that they live amongst racists. There is some percentage of people that are racist and they know that.

Well, there is also something just about white culture that's good and can be embraced, which doesn't that stuff doesn't get talked about enough. Yeah. Um, so I do think the shoes fit in any cultural setting. But I'm a white guy who's trying to deal with one particular problem, which is that my white church friends and my white pair of church friends, I think have, again, to put it negatively, have done a poor job of being cross-culturally competent. Where to put it positively, we could put more energy into it. We could invest more energy in trying to understand more.

Is your book written, when you picture your audience, is it primarily a white, more conservative, evangelical Christian? Is that... Yeah, totally. Like you're trying to translate. Yeah, I say that right up front. That I think there's something to be gained for everybody in here, potentially. But I definitely have my white Christian friends in mind. Again, my white Christian friends who want this and are open to the discussion. Some of my white Christian friends don't have any more questions about any of it. They're already settled in what they think.

I think that's a problem, I think it's wrong, but that's just the reality. They think they're good to go, they don't think this is a problem. Some of my white Christian friends are just very suspicious anytime race gets talked about because they get thrown out politically, or because again, that's part of the reason why I think

I've tried to kind of redeem the best of what critical race theory is and how it can be useful and helpful to us. The questions that it gets us to ask can actually be helpful, but I wrote it for the people out there that are actually trying to think better about this. And so, you know, there's a couple of chapters in there that talk about objections, objections to CRT or objections in this whole

racial conversation. And there's- What are some of those? What are some of the big ones, the ones that come up in nine out of 10 conversations you have about race? These are the questions that often come up. That if we start to talk about justice or racial issues that we will necessarily fall into mission drift. That if we're a gospel-driven organization, that the place of talking about justice is a secondary issue. It shouldn't be talked about alongside the gospel. That white people are being asked to repent of the sins of the past and they're constantly being held guilty for what's happened in the past.

What about this? And this is a genuine question. The critique often here is CRT and you see this in the news a lot, right? That CRT teaches white people to hate themselves. Yeah. What about that? Is that legit? Is the CRT teach white people to hate themselves. Yeah. What about that? Is that legit? Is the CRT teach white people to hate themselves or certain forms of it? Is that, is that an issue? Like, and we can get to some of the critiques of your book and I know that was kind of brought up like, um, well, we won't jump right now, but I don't think it has to. I've been in situations where race was being talked about, and whether or not people end up being kind of shamed into a corner has way more to do with a facilitator

than it does the content. Across years, I've seen, and most of the time actually, I've seen race conversations and digging into conversations about privilege or what white supremacy means in the church or any of these kinds of things, which are really incendiary ideas and topics. When that's facilitated well, it almost always is redemptive in the end. When it's facilitated poorly,

things can go sideways pretty quick because there's such emotional topics and people can wind up feeling like they're being blamed for something that they don't feel like they did. On the other hand, I would say, anytime you talk about race and racial history and you're a white person, I don't think it's,

I think it's to be expected I might feel bad, that I might feel some kind of not good feeling. You know, I don't see why we have to protect ourselves from that. It's a crappy past. It is a crappy past, but I didn't even want to get stuck on that. That's where I feel like Shenby and others always want to talk about the past. I think it's a pretty crappy present. That's, that's, I think it's a way crappier present than most white people realize. And the fact that you, you

mentioned Lecrae or, youe or the Jamar Tisbes or these movements of leaving evangelicalism or leave loud, like what is going on there that so many of our thoughtful orthodox in their theology, black brothers and sisters are saying, we gotta get away from this. We gotta get away from what. We got to get away from what's getting called white evangelicalism. Why is that? Why are they doing that? Why

is it still being written about in the great the Churching that we're saying that somebody is concluding to white guys are concluding, who didn't come into it looking for this conclusion, but based on their studies are saying, wow, we need to do a better job of listening and understanding and again, becoming more competent in our understanding of what's going on with non-white people. Why is that happening? Because maybe things are not as good as we want to think that they are. We keep telling ourselves that everything is okay and that we don't need to be talking about this, that this is just the product of race baiting and it's the product of radical progressives. And look, some of it is, but this has been getting talked about for decades, way before critical race theory was getting talked about. This problem of white evangelicalism not

making space for people different from them at the table, at the leadership table, or in the congregation, or in the planning process for what our priorities are for this year. That problem has been getting talked about across my Christian life, which started in the 80s. And it's still being talked about and apparently is lacking today.

I want to get to some of these critiques because I, your book isn't even out yet. Well, it, by the time this recording is released, I think it will be, but you've already had, I mean, you had a, a pretty critical review in Christianity today by Dan darling. That came out April 22nd. So while back and then you had a really long critical review from Neil Shenvy. And when I say critical, they acknowledge some positive things upfront. Let's I have the CRT the Christianity today one here. I it's your book and it's been a gosh, eight months since I read it. So I mean, I, you know, I'm probably not the best one to evaluate this review. You read, you read this review,

right? Do you have any, I was going to, maybe I should summarize a couple of the critiques and have you respond on the Chris. Let's talk about one at a time. Sure. Let's do the Christian today one. So he says, what was he, I think he acknowledges some positive things. But then he says first, you know, in critique of you, you too often assume a context of evangelical failure. His writer, your writing is replete with broad brush critiques and dismissive descriptors. And he seems unwilling to find anything redemptive and evangelical attempts to bring about racial reconciliation. Do you want to have any thoughts on that?

Do you think it's fair? Well, first of all, let me just say this. I did, I really did appreciate Dan Darling taking the first swipe at it. So he was the first one that wrote kind of a robust effort to review it. So that's cool. And I appreciate that.

I was disappointed with comments like that, because I'm always disappointed when I'm in a meeting or when I'm with someone, and they need to hear all the good news before we get to the bad news. That's what I felt when I saw that. Number one, there's definitely some things we could have pointed to that have been movements forward.

The Promise Keepers back in the 90s. And I'm not even thinking, I kind of wonder, what does he have in mind when he's saying that. I think of the Lenz's Institute in Crew, which some of your listeners will know about there, where there's been these pockets of intentional effort within white evangelicalism to create a space to get better at this. Absolutely. InterVarsity itself as a movement has always been conscious of being cross-culturally competent in the way that they do ministry. Yes. And so I chose

not to use a lot of time on that because I feel like y'all, that's, I don't want to massage you with that. I want you to recognize and be disturbed and provoked that there is still a huge problem. There is, again, a huge problem. Some people are gonna hear that and just kind of immediately recoil. There is still a problem that needs to be addressed. And let's ask ourselves,

what is going on in my community? Right now, let's not keep talking about the whole church or all the stuff that's gone on and the great progress we've made. What progress has taken place inside of your community? Yeah. Is what matters. Yeah. He said, he said, you, you know, you're ignoring good faith efforts to reckon with and repent of these sins is both uncharitable and a historical, I just, I all, and I, I really like Dan. I think he's a great thinker and I think the review is overall. Well, I, I, yeah, I got

some issues with the review. I was trying to be really positive, um, to say it's a historical, like by it's to me, a, I don't say false dichotomy. It's just, it's unfair to say, because you didn't also emphasize this is because you chose to emphasize this, therefore you being unhistoric, you could say like you're building a certain maybe narrative and you say, I mean, you make it really clear that yeah, by, by identifying some areas that we need work in maybe significant work in that doesn't therefore deny the many, you know, progress that we made. And you're not saying there are no churches out there, no denominate, no organizations that have made great progress. So I don't know. Like I don't, I thought that was kind of unfair, but I did too. And it's always strange when somebody is critiquing something that, you

know, I just gave birth to, and I'm trying to put on my big boy pants, Preston, you and I have talked about this, man, if you're going to put ideas out there and especially ideas about controversial stuff, I better get ready for people to say hard things and I better be able to listen to it and try to, you know, again, if the shoes fit, I need to be able to put them on where they do fit. And I, okay, great. So we could have used a couple more pages on affirming good things that have happened. Again, I've said pretty clearly upfront in the book, that's not what I'm here to do.

And I've gotten myself in trouble with different leaders over the last decade actually because my way of doing things again This is just sort of how I'm wired is I don't want to I don't feel like I need to come in and cushion you With all the good news before I tell you what the bad news is And maybe I do need to do a better job of that Maybe she's caught a bad news. You should coddle should coddle, you should deal a bit more coddling of our white fragility. I'm just kidding, that's not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no need to do a better job. It is probably more loving to be a little more coddling than what I would typically find comfortable myself. But again, on the other hand, there's a part of me that wants to say, dude, tell me what all the advances are. What exactly do you have in mind? I really just want to hear that. The advances that have so transformed the body that you're a part of right now. I really mean that. When you look around yourself, do you feel like everything we've already said

in a bunch of different ways, that the people that you do life with are cross-culturally competent? They have understanding about other cultures in such a way that they do know what integration actually really looks like. They do know what it means to be, what integration actually really looks like. They do know what it means to be, what inclusion actually really looks like.

I'm not around a lot of people like that. So maybe you are, okay. So maybe you feel like in justified, we're in a really, really good place. I'm talking to people all over the country, black people and white people. And the majority of white people I talk to, I don't feel like it put a lot of effort or energy into it.

And the majority of black people that I talk to have been low-key exasperated across their life as a Christian trying to do ministry or just coexist inside of white evangelical spaces. I've got outliers, but again, I'm not trying to write about the outliers. I'm trying to write about the problem. And to critique a book on what isn't stated in the book is a little bit... Well, I think that's become kind of fashionable too, man, especially whether it's talking about sexuality and gender, but definitely in this race space that it has become fashionable

to critique a book for not being the book you wanted them to write. You think these things should be talked about and it's like, okay, then you write that book. I purposely chose not to do some of the things. So there was another critique in there that really bothered me because I actually wanted to do this and he said that there wasn't enough reference to different voices, especially within the black community

who have a problem with CRT. And I actually wrote two pages, three pages actually, that didn't make the final cut, which for whatever matters to people who are getting to look behind the curtain right here, we cut five chapters. They already gave me way more pages than I think they intended to at first, but we still cut five chapters. And one of the last things that got cut

were three pages from the intro where I actually did, you know, show some of the different views of why CRT, the current CRT and the way that it's manifesting itself in culture, why it is that different black intellectuals and people from different strains of thought are rejecting it. And I totally have an appreciation for that. But I actually still think you can use it in ways that raise questions for Christians that actually can be redemptive. support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And in doing so, you get access to all kinds of different premium content. And most of all, you just get access to the theology in the RAW community.

We have all kinds of awesome chats and messages back and forth. And it just, it means the world to us that you support the show. As the show has grown, so have all the expenses and all the work that goes into pulling it off. So again, if you would like to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology and raw. And I just want to thank my, uh, the people that are, are already supporting the show. Thank you so much for keeping this show not only going, but also thriving. So patreon.com forward slash theology and rock. You said you ignore important conversations happen taking place in scholarly and journalistic

circles among ideological mavericks like Glenn Lowry, Thomas Chatterson, Chatterton Williams, Barry Weiss, Bill Maher, Bill Maher, none of whom can plausibly count as evangelical or politically right wing. I mean that it, I would even throw in, you know, Coleman Hughes and who's Glenn Lowry's dialogue partner, the water, John McWhorter. And yeah, yeah. These, these guys are super. Yeah. They're great. But again, it, yeah. If you had another chapter, if you had another 10, 20,000 words to add to a book that was already getting fairly, that's an average size book, you know? Yeah. That would have been interesting. But I, I just, I would, I would say when in a critical review critique the content of what you're actually saying, not, but you didn't

mention this, you didn't mention, you know, like, and this is the word I live in with sexuality, right? Like every, anything like, wow, you didn't talk about this. I think what bothered me the most about that review precedent is that what I think, what I'm trying to do in this book predominantly is answer the question, can critical race theory be used redemptively within the church? Right, right. Neal Shenvy is saying no, because for he,

it's a worldview, and that's it. I'm arguing that theories do not necessarily have to always be part of a worldview. They contribute to worldview for sure, but theories are lenses through which we look. And this all goes back to the whole Southern Baptist Convention and Resolution Number Nine, and this is what they argued about. And there was a bunch of guys that said, no, it's always incompatible. And there were others that when the resolution actually got written that said, coming from a secure Orthodox biblical

position and foundation, we can look through these lenses and gain benefit. What they didn't do is show how or talk about how, at least not that I saw, maybe they did in their own circles and I just never came across. So a big chunk of the book is actually showing how that each of the tenants or at least the eight tenants that I look at, we can look through these lenses and we can ask questions that can be beneficial to us as theories.

So when critical race theory says that racism is endemic, that it's normal, that it's just woven into the system and the fabric of the way we do life in America. I wanna ask, again, I always just wanna say, tell me more about that. What does that mean? What does it look like? What would it look like for racism

to be woven into the fabric of my church congregation, for example? What it doesn't mean is that everybody there is racist or that we're even supposed to try to figure out who the racists are. What it means if actually if you dig into even what critical race theory as it gets applied is doing in that particular with that particular tenant, is it saying what are the patterns, policies and just procedures that have been in place for so long, nobody even

ask questions about them anymore. They're actually prohibitive or create some roadblock for non-white people to feel like they're a part of this community or to flourish in this community. And don't just quickly scoff at that question. Really think about it and talk about it and ask questions about it. And maybe ask minorities, create space for minorities to actually be able to speak to and answer a question like that, where they really will give you honest answers and just see what happens. And maybe you're cool.

Maybe, no, maybe we actually have done the work and there's nothing that's in the way here. But until you've actually asked the questions, you don't know. Just as one example, that's just one tenant that gets thrown around and just summarily usually cast aside because it's like, we're not racist anymore.

Okay. We got black friends. We have black friends, we whatever. You know, we had a black speaker. We've got black people in this congregation that don't have a problem. They love being here. You don't know until you've actually sat down and tried to have those conversations. And it's surprising sometimes what ends up coming out.

Have you seen the movie? I get out. Yes. Yeah, no, that's what those guys, that's what, that's what peels going after. That's what Jordan Piel is exactly what he's kind of attacking. I would have voted for him a third time. That, that, that, that, it's that brand of like white liberal racism that I see for lack of better terms. That's a broad breast statement, but you know, like that. Yeah. Yeah, that, that movie just is so brilliant. Anyway. I mean, I think it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a,

it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a. So I don't, I just know him from a distance from social, you know, like his name gets tossed around and stuff. So, but right. He's one of the more prolific, um, critics of critical race theory from a conservative evangelical

perspective. Is that a good way to summarize? Yeah, very much so. And, and I came across them maybe five years ago. I think when he first started writing, cause one day I did five years ago, I think, when he first started writing, because one day I did a Google search, I typed in critical theory and Christianity, because I was just curious to see was anybody actually writing from a Christian perspective about critical theory. Five years post my PhD being done. And he immediately came up, he actually did a really good job, I think of building a brand around it and becoming the voice.

Yeah, so we just had a conversation and did a podcast together. Not surprisingly, he has major problems with some of my takes in the book. The reason why it's not surprising is because I disagree with him and the way he does some things. And so I'm writing the book actually to counter some of what he does.

What would be some of your big picture maybe disagreements? Yeah. And I want to write, I want to write this actually. He's kind of forcing me now to create a platform to write this kind of stuff on. And I think I need to do it. I think he sees, and again, we'll talk kind of in general. And I think I need to do it. I think he's seen, again, we'll talk kind of in generalities. He sees everything as a worldview. His problem with, with critical race theory and critical theory is as a worldview. And I have a problem with it

as a worldview too. And he doesn't mean it, meaning the total packet, like either take the whole package deal or you either accept it or you reject it rather than there could be aspects within these theories. Yeah. Look, I read about this in the book. For the five years that I sat with people in my PhD cohort, there were four different responses that people had to all this theory talk. One of them where there was a couple of Christian people that were in the room, I was one of them, who coming from a Christian worldview were able to kind of dissect what was good and what was bad and took and used what was good and actually maybe in some cases were confronted in their own thinking like I told you I was and had to kind of change some of

my own thinking as a Christian as I looked through these lenses, okay. But I didn't fundamentally give up my Christianity to do it. I could say yes to this, this, and this, and this. I disagree with that application. Okay. So that's at one end. At another end were people who the critical worldview was their religion. It was their religion. And so everything is nothing but a power game. There is no God. First of all, there is no God. There's nothing coming from outside the system to make any kind of a difference for us. And that's fundamental to maybe every, everything you're saying that that is a fundamental component whereas somebody else might embrace aspects of the system, but it's not all founded upon an eight.istic. Yes.

Yes. So that's very different. Like this for them is a worldview. There is no redemption in this worldview. It is all a power game. It is all about who has the most power toys in the end. It is about dismantling the current system and completely doing away with what it represents and replacing it with our own system and completely doing away with what it represents and replacing

it with our own system and on and on. They were committed to that as a worldview. Then there were people everywhere in between that, where some people were just trying to figure out what they think about anything in life. They've got this bricolage where they're taking a little bit of critical theory and a little bit of Christianity and a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Again, that doesn't work in the end, but that's what they were doing. And then there were some other people there that were just committed politically to conservativism.

They were Fox News conservatives. And so anytime anything got talked about, just like Rush Limbaugh used to do, anytime anything got represented from this other side, they shot it down. And that's how they interacted with critical theory. They just shot it down. They didn't even think about it. So for me, there were four different ways of encountering different kinds of critical theory.

For Neal, it seems like there's really only one, even though he might say yes to all those, he critiques it as though it's an all-encompassing worldview. And that the way he sees it, I think the other thing that bothers me, you asked me kind of where we're different, is that I just think he's very committed to the idea that his subjective view of the world is where objective truth is found, that he's got it.

He's got an angle on the objective truth. And I just don't operate that same way. I think the whole talk about objectivity is way more slippery. At the end of the day, I believe in Jesus Christ and Him crucified, risen, and coming again. And I really do believe wholeheartedly in the Bible as I'm able to understand it, but kind of this sledgehammer idea of objectivity, which you know blew up Cedarville, right? When you were at Cedarville, right? This sort of a lack of humility before the fact

of my own inability to ever really consume things in an objective, totally objective way, just causes, I think, real problems. And so again, he thinks he sees it all perfectly clearly. He has real, real problems with some of the ideas like white supremacy or white privilege or any of these ideas. He just completely dismisses those.

Even if he kind of gives a nod or an affirming nod that there can be some value to it, he doesn't work very hard at exploiting what that is or explaining it. Meanwhile, he'll write, you know, 10 pages on what's wrong with it. And I just don't agree with a lot of what he's saying is wrong with it. One of the things I just in glancing at his review that you insist in the book, according to him, that evangelicals are exaggerating the dangers of CRT. And he's then he cites lots of evidence. Like, well, look at this, look at this, look at this. Like there are some incredibly profound dangers of CRT. Would you, do you agree with that? Do you, do you think

that you, do you think evangelicals exaggerate or would you acknowledge that there again, are certain people who are advocating for certain forms of CRT where it very much is teaching white people to hate themselves or like, you know, Speaker 3rd-5 And just even in keeping with what I just said about objectivity, man, I've got my experience and my experience has taken me all over the country and I'm an extrovert and I talk to people and listen to their stories and I listen to what's happening and I read. Okay. Again, I don't know where he's getting his information from.

That's just being honest. Where do we get our information from? From our experience with people. I think it's an exaggeration because the churches that I'm in and that I get exposed to are not going over the edge because of critical theory. They're not trading in their biblical orthodoxy for a critical Marxist worldview.

There are some that are doing that. They're, or they're becoming, you know, it's the United Methodists and what they're doing with sexuality. So this is the other thing is like, which issues are we gonna say are the litmus test for whether you're remaining Orthodox or not? We know what the usual suspects are.

One of them is sexuality. And that's really become messy for us as Christians. But when it comes to race, my experience has not been that most churches are in danger of embracing these radical Christian, these radical secular thoughts, okay? My experience has been that the majority of people continue to ignore or remain ignorant about the concepts

and ideas that black people want them to care about And it is Listen president he keeps dragging Christina Cleveland out like in every episode that I watch him or read him Christina, Cleveland Truths table podcast That she hosts with two other women who has become In his words apostate and she she is, she's doing some things that are way outside the lines and are just kind of radically progressive. Okay. And his concern for, first of all, the other two women that she works with have not, and they're

interacting with all the same kind of racial content. So why is it that one has gone over the edge because of critical race theory, but the other two haven't. Let's just explain that to me. Number two, you don't know, like people's spiritual journeys are complicated, man. They're complicated. And so I'm not going to overreact. If there's anything I've learned in dealing with students on campuses that you don't overreact when they sound like they've gone off the edge for a while. And you don't overreact when they sound like they're hugely orthodox because it's a long journey. Okay? And she may just be in a phase right now. And why

is she in this phase? He wants to argue that it's because of critical race theory. I want to argue that the reason why somebody that is normally orthodox, who's black, who starts to slide away from orthodoxy is not doing it primarily because he or she has a theology problem, but an anthropology problem. They're having problems with people. Their testimony is saying, I am experiencing something in this thing called white evangelicalism that is turning me off to the faith. It's Tim Whitaker and all his, everybody that's following. I am having a negative experience, okay, with the pastors, with maybe a tyrannical Christian school that sucked the soul out of me, okay, because of the way it operated

that wasn't really in a very Christian way. And I am reacting to that by going in the opposite direction, either permanently or for a period of time. That is way more of a problem, I think, in churches than critical race theory, which is kind of this recent phenomenon. Does that mean we don't need Neal Shenby? No, I think Neal's done a great job of saying, look, if your church is going off the edge with this kind of teaching, this is wrong. And this is how you get back to orthodoxy. I think

there's a place for that. Meanwhile, again, in the space of white versus non-white people, there hasn't been a lot written that is saying maybe the reason why people are maybe the reason why black folks and non-white folks are going off the edge has more to do with us than it has to do with their, this theological slippage. That's what I would, that's what I'm trying to argue. Preston says it's so good. It's so, so you're saying his critiques and, and just to go back to his review, you're saying his, it's not that his critiques or concerns or his quotes from somebody who's kind of more radical statements are not legitimate. And if he is going, let me just say this. Some of

them are, some of them aren't like he gets all worked up about Latasha Morrison and David Swanson. And I agree with their statements. I don't have any problem with saying that there's, there's, there's a deficit inside of white people when it comes to thinking about race. I don't have a problem with owning that for myself as a white person or saying it appropriately in the midst of other white people. I don't think that that's an unbiblical idea to say that sociologically we've been carried along by a current that has left us at a deficit when it comes to dealing with non-white people, both in our churches and what's been handed to us in society. I don't have a problem with

that. He does, but go ahead. Some of their statements are out of line. And so his, his concern is more to address progressive drift. Um let, let's just assume there are aspects of that that are legitimate and he's focusing on that. And it might come down to, would this be fair? Him wanting your book to be concerned about the same thing. And when it's not concerned about the same thing that he's concerned about, then, you know, and I hear you, I hear you though, and this comes up in the sexuality conversation too. Like are there, well, that there are parts of the white dominated evangelical church that all they are, are concerned about this radical statement, this clip from libs of tech talk, you know, this DI training

that was just radically racist, you know, like, and, and, and, and the people in, in the little amount of time that some white evangelical churches, Christians, leaders, whatever might spend in understanding this conversation and CRT in particular might be just focused on that. These sound bites that are in, they are actually really dangerous and radical, but it's like, if that's all you do, I mean, you're, you're missing this whole other conversation that needs to be happy. It's okay. The only I can understand is in sexuality conversation. If I look at right wing clips of drag queen story hour and these, you know, yeah, you, you're going to have a certain worldview of what all, you know, trans people are going to be like, or if all you do is pay attention to maybe some of the

radical trans activists, you're going to have a certain perception of the conversation. And when I look around, I'm like, I, you know, I know, you know, I got to know quite a few trans people over the years. I've still yet to meet anyone that identifies as trans that res would like advocate for drag queen story hour, or even would resonate with most of what trans activists even talk about. Like not that those things aren't happening. Not that there are male, male trans identified people in female sports, blowing people out of the water. I just watched a clip to, you know, just yesterday, this race where it's like all the females back here and there's a male, like, you know, a hundred yards in front of everybody. And it's like, but if, if that's all you focus on,

and then you get upset if a book doesn't, you know, Mike, say my book on, you know, in body doesn't address that. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I could feed red meat to the church all day long. And all they're going to do is keep cultivating more and more and more of a distance from the actual trans people, you know, that are outside or inside the walls of their church that are just trying to say, who is this Jesus person? You know? So with that, I don't want to hold it in your mouth, but it sounds like that. You're, you're, you're just addressing a different side of this conversation. It's a different problem. Yeah. What, what problem do you think is the bigger problem is the question? Why that's, that's the question. And I don't, I don't think that the bigger problem that everybody's getting

hysterical about is in the church. So I even keep saying this, that you need to separate out even what's going on in church versus what's going on in political culture. Those are different conversations. Okay? So let's just focus on the church. I don't think it's the greatest threat, since the Reformation and some of these quotes that I've read that are just over the church. I don't think it's the greatest threat, you know, since the Reformation and some of these quotes that I've read that are just over the top. I think that's just ridiculous. I think the much, much bigger threat has already been present for decades. And we go through these little windows of time, maybe where there's a trauma that causes us in white evangelicalism to pay a little closer attention to our race relations and

how we're operating racially. And then we go right back to normal again. That's what I think is the big, and that'll be the biggest, still a problem five, 10 years from now. That's why I still thought it was worth writing this book, even though I didn't want critical race theory to be in the title. Honestly, I didn't because I think it's about more than just critical race theory. It's about a way of relating to one another, white folks and non-white folks relating to one another in the church. What I even feel about Neil is that when he's pulling quotes

all the time from the critical theorists, I do feel like he takes them to these extreme application places, which I totally agree with him about. But I also think that by taking these quotes out of their original context and not doing justice to why they're making the quotes in the first place, okay? So he's just analyzing the rightness or the wrongness of this quote or this paragraph even that gets pulled out of its context. And I say, dude, we need to do a better job of asking how that wound up in the larger piece in the first place. Like, what is the story behind why they're writing

this? What is the situation that they're actually talking specifically about? Because when you take it out of its context and just start applying it willy-nilly to different situations, that's not doing justice to why they said it in the first place. And I think he's guilty of that all the time. And I know you didn't just understand anything that I just said, but maybe everybody that's listening, because I know I, I, I'm listening to you. I'm reading the thing here where he adjusted that. This was like, again, and that's just to it. He doesn't do justice to it. And again, to be fair, I have not, I don't think I haven't read anything by him. I've only skimmed a review. So don't, this is taken with a grain

of salt, but his first complaint is that your book contains very few lengthy quotes from primary sources on CRT. This approach certainly makes the book more accessible, but it means that the reader is one degree move from academic literature. So, you know, he, he wanted longer quotes to be able to get the context. But then as I skim down and he quotes extensively from Austin Channing Brown, Brown. Yep. And all he does is have one line quote. Like he does the exact same thing. He's accusing you of, is that a fair? And if Neil's lists, I mean, I, I, well, maybe I would, I'm this

isn't like a formal critique of it. Just, I just found a little odd that the very thing he critiques you of not quoting full content. Cause he has, you know, he quotes Brown saying like white and is this Brown? No, this is a different, hold on. Actually there's tons of places where he takes one line quotes from books he disagrees with. And I thought it was a little odd that he critiques you for citing a book when he goes and finds other places, other places in the book that he finds disagreeable with a one line quotes. So you gotta throw the whole book out. If there's anything in it that's disagreeable,

which again, you and I already have a problem with that just in general operating that way. I think again, I appreciate Neil. Neil's done way more work on this than most Christians that I know, okay, than either of us know. And I appreciate the effort to dig. I would critique though his process. And yeah, man, I didn't, he already wrote a 485 page book full of quotes. Why would I need to do that same thing? Anyways, I was feeling that way the whole time I was in the writing process is what do you keep, what do you get rid of? How much do you overwhelm people with quotes and how much do you reference?

And okay, so I choose to go a lot skinnier on, I'm not going to pull a ton of quotes out. Also because I think when you pull a quote out to do justice to it, you need to talk a lot about it and how that quote wound up there. And he doesn't do that. He strips them of their context because he's trying to make an argument that says this is all bad. And here's examples of the all badness. And almost every time I read his quotes that he pulls,

I say, oh yeah, why did they say that? Where is that coming from? He wants to talk about why this sentence is wrong. I wanna talk about why it got written in the first place. So he quotes, like Austin Channing Brown has a chapter titled, White are exhausting. And he quotes that. Yeah. And I read that. I'm like, yeah, I don't like, like, can you imagine anybody describing a whole entire waste? Let's just replace white people with any other, you know,

Brown people. If I wrote a book and I said black people are exhausting, that's what title chapter. Like I don't think that would fly. And that's probably his point. Like how could you use his point? It's totally his point. And this is again, where I just, this is the whole white fragility thing. And it's like, again, this isn't a new conversation. This is a minority group that has been trampled by the dominant group throughout history, throughout history, they have been trampled by that group. And if she is saying that being around white Christians is exhausting, my first reaction, again, I'm not saying I even do this very well all the time

because my natural first reaction is to get defensive. My first reaction should be, tell me more. Why do you feel that way? What has happened? Tell me about that experience. That experience matters. She's not just trying to pick a fight. You know what I'm saying? All of these black authors that have written some of these provocative things are not out there for the most part, I don't believe, just trying to stir things up and make life miserable for themselves. They're trying to get people that have been kind of hard headed about this.

Dude, again, this is what I end up feeling for a lot of my black minister friends. Okay? What else are we supposed to do if words won't work? If we've sat in your meetings and we've gone through your processes and tried and we've used words to try to get you to feel what we feel or to understand what we're feeling or to see what we see and words don't work, what are you leaving? What options are you leaving for us? Some people's options is to burn stuff down, right? Blow things up.

That's the secular response. And a lot of our Christian friends are actually like, light the match, man. Go ahead. I can't say it publicly, but light the match. Some of our friends are still trying to use words, but they're using them just way more provocatively. They're saying offensive things. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that.

I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. Yeah. If I, if Austin read this, I think just the constant one pulling one liners out. And again, this comes several paragraphs after you accused you of kind of doing the same thing. I just, I would be frustrated. Cause I get this all the time. People pull one line out of my thing and like, did you read the paragraph? Like how is that line functioning and the overarching point I was trying to make? Like, how is that line functioning? And the overarching point I was trying to make, like she says, whiteness constantly polices the expression of blackness allowed within its walls. Period. That's it. That's all I got page 70. Well,

in and of itself, I could see where I could get defensive, but it's like, what is that? I'm like you, man. I'm like, tell me about that. Cause I think there's something here. I'm like, yeah, yeah. If you mean this, then I could, I think that's actually really legitimate. If you mean this, then I don't know. But like I unpack that for me. Maybe she does. And you know, in this chapter of these points, but you should be asking questions rather than writing condemnations. That's what I'm saying. And so, man, again, what the problem he's trying to solve is to warn people about the dangers of critical theory and kind of a progressive worldview. I'm all for it. I get it. I don't think that's the problem that he thinks it

is. I think the problem that she's describing is actually the one that we should slow down enough to ask more questions about and just see again, do the shoes fit? Does the, do the walls within which I function and operate as a white Christian, would she feel the same way inside with me, inside those walls? That's the, me and not just me,

but the people that I work with and the people that I minister alongside, because it's not even just about me. That's another way that I just think we've become too dismissive about this is I'm with a team of people. I'm with a team of ministers. I'm with a team at church.

So it's not enough for me just to say, yeah, no, I'm doing the work. I'm working to be understanding. Oh, if there's nine other people though, that are in the room that aren't that she's experiencing, then you're not enough, man. She's still feeling again, oppression or whatever the word is that we want to use, but let's at least explore it before just immediately shutting it down. Hey, I got another meeting coming in in one minute and I've already pushed them back 15

minutes. I can't do it again. So we got more. We have a bro. Always great talking with you. Where can people find you and your work? Yeah. You know, by the time this comes out, hopefully I'm going to have a website up for the book launch, which happens June 25th. And I want to create an untangling CRT.com website. I'm in the process of working on that right now. I should have done it five months ago, but here we are. And so people can find me there. My response to Neil will eventually be put up there. And the book's already at Amazon or IVP.com if they want to get it.

So definitely open to hearing people's feedback and want to get better in the conversation, man. It's not over. Thanks again, man, for being yet another guest or being a guest yet at another time on the odds and wrong, man. Appreciate you. Thanks, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.