Tautology, Tautology, All Is Tautology

The antiracist movement has many of the hallmarks of a [Christian] cult, including staying close enough to the Bible to avoid immediate detection and hiding the fact that is has a new theology and a new glossary of terms that diverge ever-so-slightly from Christian orthodoxy. At least at first. In classic cult fashion, they borrow from the familiar and accepted, then infuse it with new meaning. This allows the cult to appeal to the faithful within the dominant, orthodox religions from which is draws its converts. (Voddie Baucham, fault lines, page 67) 

We will discuss in more details the impacts of the Critical Tyrannies' hijacking of language in a later post. It took me a while to understand how subtle and effective their appropriation of language is. Definitions become fluid. The same word can have extremely divergent definitions in close proximity, too. This is on purpose. 

In this post, I want to show how effective this is with a few terms commonly used by the Critical Race Theorists--the wokesters: racism/racist and white supremacy/supremacist. With both these terms, the true meanings have softened considerably compared to the classical definitions and common, uninitiated understanding of the words. 

In Wokelish, racism generally refers to the disparate outcomes between races in arenas like income, life expectation, representation among management or executives, net worth, grade distribution, medical outcomes, etc, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum.   

White supremacy is the term used to describe the fact that whites are the typically the winners in the disparate outcomes noted above. 

Not so bad, and it does represent reality...apparently. 

This is where it gets tautological, you see. If you don't know what a tautology is, let me enlighten you:

A statement that is true by necessity or by virtue of its logical form.

"A tree is tall or it is not tall" would be a tautology. It can't be falsified. If the tree is short, it's a true statement. If the tree is tall...you get the drift. 

The tautology of systemic racism relies on the uninitiated hearer not understanding what the wokester is really saying. Your typical Joe Shmoe or Jane Doe hears "systemic racism" and thinks "the people in power over the institution [church, school, justice system, etc.] think people of color (POC) are inferior." This sounds really, really bad--but today it also sounds preposterous. Who really thinks that these days? 

So, you might ask the wokester, "How do you know this institution is racist?" The wokester reply will be: "Well, you see, POCs [have low representation in management, more people convicted of crimes, make less money, die at a higher rates of COVID, etc.]. So the evidence presented to prove racism is the disparate outcome. However, in wokester language, inequity of outcome is also the definition of racist or racism. The evidence is the definition. Hence, it can't be falsified.

But they don't tell you the word games they play. Instead, they let the emotional thrust of the classical meaning prick your heart and inflame your emotions, but then play slight of hand with the definitions. It's clever. 

However, if you deny that the institution is racist in the woke meaning, the word quickly reverts back to the classical meaning (relating to the belief in the superiority or inferiority of a race or races) and is then applied to you as an individual. And then the efforts of cancelling begin. 

Here's the good news. When you hit a tautology espoused by a religion or worldview, you've likely found a presupposition/fundamental assumption of the worldview. In other words, you've hit something that is accepted without question--something they take on faith. For wokesters, a key presupposition is this: disparate outcomes spring only from systemic racism. Robin DeAngelo admits this by saying: "The question is not if racism is at play, but how is it at play?" 

This cannot be falsified. It can't be tested. It's truly tautological. But wokeism is also intensely postmodern, so who cares about falsifiability? Power defines truth. Power is synonymous with truth.   

In contrast, Christianity has a fundamental assumption is that the Bible is God's revelation to mankind. However, the Bible also claims to be just that: God's very words. It's my assumption, and I take that on faith. It seems tautological, but it's not. It could be falsified, but in my view, it hasn't. It makes truth claims that could be disproven, and says that God does not lie. That would falsify it. 

However, despite that, one still must accept the truthfulness of the claim on faith. It could be shown false, but never absolutely true by evidentiary means.  

Voddie Baucham - Thought Line in fault lines

How in the world can someone like Colin Kaepernick, who makes millions per year, speak of himself as oppressed? How can he imply that all white people are his oppressors--even the redneck in rural Mississippi who has 6 teeth and makes less than $20,000 per year?  

To the uninitiated in the terminology and operations of CRT, this is madness. But when you understand CRT's roots and the evolution of the ideas it inherits, you begin to see the rationale behind such inane claims. (Calling it rational is a stretch. In fact, they don't like the word.) 

The first part of Voddie's work traces the history of what is known today as Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality: from Marx, through Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, then Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw, to our contemporaries like Robin DeAngelo of White Fragility. 

It is a quick summary of the evolution of ideas starting with Marx's Conflict Theory to what has become Critical Social Justice, Anti-racism, and Critical Race Theory today. It's good, but it isn't robust, and Baucham admits this and refers you to Neil Shenvi, James Lindsay (of Grievance Studies and Cynical Theories), and Helen Pluckrose (also of Grievance Studies and Cynical Theories). I advice you to do this. 

One of Gary North's articles (Video: Why "Cultural Marxism" Isn’t Marxist, and Why Anti-Communism Is Impotent in Dealing With It (garynorth.com)) has a video called "The Great Awokening" featuring Lindsay. This was my introduction to James Lindsay. It covers the same material as Baucham, but in more detail and covers the postmodern influence on the Critical Social Justice movement--particularly CSJ's weaponization of it. 

I advise you to chase this rabbit. Why? Because the rabbit trail leads to a worldview that is inherently and intensely totalitarian and authoritarian. The Marxist utopia still lives in the ideologies, as does the demand for revolution. The CSJ ideologies are fiercely religious and all-encompassing. "The Great Awokening" is an extremely apt description, as it adherents are evangelistic via a figurative social sword or gun, with a "gospel" without grace. You need to understand it. You need to be able to recognize it because it always starts seemingly innocuous.

The Marxist language is no longer in the terms of class, but the categories of race, gender, sexuality, sex, weight, attractiveness, intelligence, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. These categories substitute for Marx's category of class. Moreover, Gramsci's influence is immense, and the strategies Gramsci suggests have been successfully employed and utilized--with amazing patience and endurance. 

Gramsci understood that Marx was wrong--the focus on production and economics isn't going to lead to the revolution. The "cultural hegemony" keeps the revolution from happening. An infiltration is needed, as is the construction of counter hegemonies, to bring down the resistance to revolution. 

That infiltration is all but complete for public institutions. The march through the churches is afoot now, and it is coming for your church.

First Slowly, Then All At Once. Voddie Bacchum's fault lines Review

Some of you have noticed that within conservative evangelicalism--particularly in the last year--the same words are used in preaching but the meanings don't feel quite right or the same. Things may have been ho-hum, but then suddenly, the atmosphere changed within your church, your denomination, your seminaries.

Others who are more involved in their denomination's conferences and events see that the ground has shifted, and not for the better. Things are more hostile, divisive. 

The ones on the front lines know what it is. The virus that has infected evangelicalism is the ideology called Critical Theory. It goes by a host of names: Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, social justice, wokeness, etc. And infect is the right word. It is virulent and contagious. It starts small within a church or denomination, and then replicates itself in the minds of the community using the medium of guilt, envy, and the signal of virtue to transfer to its next host. 

I recall a debate between Daniel Dennett and Alistair McGrath at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary back in 2003 or 2004. Daniel Dennett spent a lot of time discussing how memes (or ideas in the human mind) seemingly evolve like biological life as it reproduces in the minds of other people. The impetus of the argument rested in an analogy: ideas are like living things who have a desire within themselves to pass its legacy to the next generation. He even intimated that memes are evidence of biological evolution. 

I remember walking away from that debate thinking two things. First, it's a crazy idea to think memes seek to replicate themselves. Second, on an unrelated topic, he did more to demonstrate intelligent design because memes require an intelligent host to exist. 

Critical Theory, particularly Critical Race Theory, is the best proof that Dennett might just be right. So may have been Carl Jung: "People don't have ideas. Ideas have people." 

It has been brewing in academia for decades, but in the last 10 years, the adoption of various sorts of critical theories (Race, Gender, Queer, Fat, even Nutritional) in public schools, private schools, universities, workplaces, and churches has exploded. It is everywhere. The media. Government. Professional sports. Corporations. Churches. Your local pizza joint. 

"First slowly, then all at once" is what if feels like. That's how exponential reproduction works, and Critical Theory has been busy creating a mass of zombie hosts in search of the next casualty. The zombies are everywhere now--including your conservative denomination. 

My denomination, the SBC, has been in the throes of controversy over CRT (Critical Race Theory) for the better part of 5 years. But the fight, if you can call it a fight, has been within its seminaries for the most part. In 2019, the annual convention passed "Resolution 9", which has a very alarming story behind it. Despite the controversy, most only those who were in ministry and denominationally active knew what was going on. The laity and pastors who focused on their own churches hadn't even heard of CRT a year ago. But the last year and a half has changed that. 

First slowly, then all at once. 

Voddie Baucham--a black Baptist preacher--has been sounding the alarm specifically on Critical Theory since Obama's first campaign. No one within the SBC listened. However, events of the last year, like J. D. Greear's prostrating before every wind of social justice doctrine, David Platt's apologizing for his own sin of whiteness, Tim Keller's thinking that biblical Hebrew had a contemporary concept of social justice, among countless others has finally awakened the concerns of many laity within the denomination.  

Baucham's book is a solid first step for the coalescing "the concerned" in the denomination into a movement against the deceptive, insidious tactics of the social justice crowd in the SBC. But it is also informative for anyone facing CRT in their own workplace, church, academic setting, or denomination.