We know institutions like InterVarsity Press, Christianity Today, Urbana Conference, and Fuller Theological Seminary as evangelical institutions. That is why I was surprised to learn of their close ties to three Christians who espouse post-modernist, cultural-Marxist ideas, if not, ideology. These Christians use critical theory not merely as an analytical tool to understand matters of social justice but as a means of change, having a vision toward a particular telos or goal. Who are the three Christians?
The first is Christena Cleveland. She has been an Urbana Conference speaker, contributor to Christianity Today, published with IVP, and professor at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, before taking a position at Duke.[1] Last summer at Cambridge University, I attended the Newbigin Summer Institute and Cleveland was a plenary speaker. The theme of the conference was justice and Newbigin’s view in particular. In a rather awkward situation for many conferees, Cleveland took the opportunity to identify Newbigin as a colonialist oppressor, following both post-colonial and critical race theories, stemming from the fact he was a white missionary bishop in India. It was evident to most (not all) in attendance that she did not know Newbigin very well but presented him in the light of her pre-agenda which prompted a bit of heckling from a few listeners in the audience.
Cleveland taught at Bethel University as the Reconciliation Studies Professor. Her classes were filled with a number of white female students from the upper Midwest who she would lecture (illustrated condescendingly) about their white privilege. She also caused a stir with Bethel’s initial discussion of BLM that follows CRT, in contrast to the biblical vision of justice and reconciliation.[2]
At the Urbana Conference in 2015, Cleveland spoke about “The Priesthood of the Privileged” with the description that read: “All people should have an equal seat at the bountiful table of God. But in our world some people have more access to resources than others.”[3] She also authored The Priesthood of the Privileged that “examines power and inequality in the Church." Moreover, she contributed articles to Christianity Today.[4]
When I heard her speak
at Cambridge, I learned that she had just left Duke Divinity School after
accusing the school of racism. In a scathing letter she wrote: “When I
joined the faculty in 2015, I was excited and hopeful that DDS would be an
enriching environment in which to continue my work on theology and justice. On
the contrary, I encountered an ongoing and insidious legacy of anti-Black
racism that produces an environment that is insufferably hostile to Black
people. Hence my resignation.”[5]
Christena Cleveland now leads the Center for Justice and Renewal.[6] Recently, she responded to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s policy on gay marriage. In a tweet, she said: "I'm so tired of evangelical orgs further marginalizing ppl who are already marginalized by society. It’s the opposite of the Jesus way.” Cleveland makes claims about “Jesus’ way” while shaped, perhaps, more by post-modernist, critical theorist views of marginalized and oppressed groups (LGBTQ) than the teachings of the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles. This is not to suggest that there are not cases of biblical injustice toward the LGBTQ community. She simply advocates for intersectionality and moral authority rooted in the epistemological standpoint of those within an oppressed social location.
Since Cleveland left Duke, she has written a new book titled Christ Our Black Mother Speaks. In the preface she says: “Our conditioning has taught us to automatically perceive femininity as untrustworthy and blackness as dirty. So, black femininity is perceived as wholly unholy. There’s something very evil about the way black women in particular are perceived as distant from the Divine. It brings to mind the Jezebel stereotype, the idea that black women are lascivious by nature, which has long plagued black women… [and] continues to thrive today… In this volume of essays, I turn toward images of Christ on the cross. As I continue my exploration of the wholly holy female face of God, I ask a deeper question. What does God’s femaleness and blackness practically mean for my particular black female experience? And what does God’s femaleness and blackness practically mean for all of us?”[7]
The second Christian to follow the ideas of critical theory is Willie Jennings. He contributed a chapter to the volume Can White People Be Saved? published by IVP, edited by Love L. Sechrest, Johnny Ramirez-Johnson, and Amos Young.[8] Jennings delivered a lecture by this title at Fuller Theological Seminary.[9] After the lecture, Mark Labberton, President of Fuller, responded positively to the message, affirming what would become the future direction of Fuller. Curious about what I heard after viewing the lecture I ordered the book. It sat on my shelf until this summer when the marches and riots tied with BLM continued, along with the popularity of books and podcasts on “whiteness,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility.”
I read Jenning’s chapter closely. I provide below some
excerpts and brief comments. I found the chapter rooted
almost entirely in post-colonial theory, with a sprinkling of a Bible verses. Jennings says, “No one is born
white. There is no white biology, but whiteness is real. Whiteness is a
working, a forming toward a maturity that destroys. Whiteness is an invitation
to a form of agency and subjectivity that imagines life progressing toward what
is in fact a diseased understanding of maturity, a maturity that invites us to
evaluate the entire world by how far along it is toward this goal.” (p.
34)
While Jennings’s description of “whiteness” is extremely
subjective, he concludes that it leads to destruction.
Jennings describes nationalism, saying “Nationalism was ownership, property ownership made plural and made the universal right of a people to their space. Yes, there was attachment to the land; yes, there was blood bound to soil; and yes, there was deep sentiment and sensibilities born of living in a land, but this was different. This was owning the land, not being owned by the land. This was speaking for the land as one who controls it, not having land and animal speak through you, as though you extended their lives through your life. Nationalism places people inside borders, and borders inside people; place-centered identity removes the borders between people and the actual world and points to the artificiality of all borders. Yet few people see the artificiality of borders because the transformation toward citizens has distorted our view of the world. It creates a sense of sovereignty that Christian conversion has been forced to serve. Conversion to faith has been brought inside the cultivating work of turning immigrants into citizens. Christianity indeed makes good citizens.” (p. 37-38)
While admittedly difficult to understand all Jennings is saying, he identifies with pre-colonial indigenous peoples of the Americas, even defending their animism, it seems. It is the “whiteness” of colonialism that embodies Christianity. When I read this, I immediately questioned his understanding of nations and property that appears in ancient civilizations. Of course, his context is Western colonial/ post-colonial Americas but he seems to have little understanding of, or appreciation, for example, of the Greco-Roman world. Why begin with los reyes catolicos Isabella and Ferdinand [my words, not his] and not God’s promise to Abraham of a nation and land, or Alexander the Great’s advance, or slavery within the Roman Empire? It does not fit the narrative of post-colonial theory.
Under the heading “The Feeling of Whiteness” (p. 40), Jennings writes:
“Whiteness feels normal and natural. It feels normal and natural because it is
woven into how we imagine moving toward maturity. Whiteness feels. It has an
affective structure. So, like extremely comfortable clothing that moves with
the body, whiteness becomes what Anne Anlin Cheng calls a second skin.
Whiteness is being questioned at this moment like never before, and it feels
terrible to so many people. We have to talk about whiteness in relation to
affect and feeling because how whiteness feels is how whiteness thinks. Agency
and subjectivity form in how we feel and think as one single reality of
personhood.” (pp. 40-41).
Obviously, whiteness is highly subjective, as Jennings admits. This fits well with post-modernist, post-rationalist thought. Epistemology is rooted in feelings.
The final section of the essay offers more concrete ideas. Jennings says, “Whiteness comes to rest in space. The maturity whiteness aims at always forms segregated places. … It constructs bordered life, life lived in separate endeavors of wish fulfillment.” (p. 43). His says whiteness segregates. He continues: “We fight against the segregation that shapes our worlds, and we work to weave lives together… Indeed, this is what Christian mission at its best was always aiming at—following Jesus into new places to form new life, life together.” Here he claims Christianly that Jesus integrates. However, Jennings fails to connect conversion to Christ or any theological vision for that matter to this conclusion. He ends by saying: “I want to turn us from a formation that is yet compelling people to aim their lives toward a vision of maturity that is bound in death. I want to save us from becoming or being White people.” (p. 43) In other words, you wants us to abandon whiteness. The solution is to leave “the life progressing toward what is in fact a diseased understanding of maturity.”
This essay is a case of the tail wagging the dog. It is essentially post-colonial theory (within critical theory) examining “whiteness”—a feeling—as colonial power with a few “prooftexts” plopped in. Theologically, the essay offers no direct tie to the gospel’s power to transform people, or to critique colonial Christendom. It is strange that Jennings ties conversion to whiteness but calls for Jesus to transform. The essay lacks logical coherence.
The third Christian to follow the ideas of critical theory is Angela Parker. She was a plenary speaker at the Liberating Evangelism Conference in 2019, in Chicago. The event was sponsored by InterVarsity Press, North Park Theological Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, Evangelicals for Social Action, etc. The plenary speakers most recognized by me were Soong-Chan Rah and Sandra Van Opstal.[10]
I became aware of Angela Parker when watching an interview with Neil Shenvi.[11] He quoted a tweet from the Liberating Evangelicalism Conference in which Angela Parker said, “Inerrancy and infallibility are orthodoxies of white supremacist thought."[12]
One has only to read other speakers’ bios to see the obvious influence of critical theories including queer theory, race theory, post-colonial theory, and feminist theory. For example, Myles Markam, a plenary speaker is a “trans person of faith with mixed-Asian American/Native Hawai’ian ancestry.”
Concluding Thoughts
The liberating (de-colonizing) evangelicalism movement is very real and maintains ties with historic evangelicalism. While one may learn from post-colonial theory, CRT, and even queer theory as methods of analysis, many today who apply these theories have an agenda driven by cultural-Marxist ideology and postmodernist epistemology (tribal truth) to deconstruct historic evangelicalism. This cuts at the root of historic evangelicalism with statements like Parker’s line: “Inerrancy and infallibility are orthodoxies of white supremacist thought.” Of course, white supremacist is not simply overt but covert—the type that permeates all of Western society.
The need of the hour is for Christians to lay open the differences between the sources, means, and ends (telos) of critical theory and biblical Christianity. A side-by-side contrast can awaken Christians to the differences. While Christians are familiar with the biblical and theological basis of God’s justice and reconciliation in Christ, and even ways that sin is systematized in society, they are ignorant of the critique of the popular social movement of social justice and critical theory’s pernicious influence.
[1] Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden
Forces that Keep Us Apart (Downers Grove: IVP: 2013).
[5] https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/christena-cleveland-resigns-from-duke-divinity-school-in-scathing-open-letter/
[8] Willie James Jennings,
“Can White People Be Saved?” in Can White People Be Saved?
Triangulating Race, Theology and Mission, edited by Love L. Sechrest,
Johnny Ramirez-Johnson, and Amos Young, IVP, 2018.
[12] Tweet Brock Bahler @brockbahler · Sep 20, 2019
“Inerrancy and infallibility are orthodoxies of white supremacist
thought”—Angela Parker https://twitter.com/brockbahler/status/1175086027880443904
