selective focus photography of three books beside opened notebook
selective focus photography of three books beside opened notebook

The Marxist Eschatology of Critical Race Theory

In his classic book Christianity & Liberalism, noted twentieth-century Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen said,

Modern liberalism in the church, whatever judgment may be passed upon it, is at any rate no longer merely an academic matter. It is no longer a matter merely of theological seminaries or universities. On the contrary its attack upon the fundamentals of the Christian faith is being carried on vigorously by Sunday-School “lesson-helps,” by the pulpit, and by the religious press. If such an attack be unjustified, the remedy is not to be found, as some devout persons have suggested, in the abolition of theological seminaries, or the abandonment of scientific theology, but rather in a more earnest search after truth and a more loyal devotion to it when it is found.[1]

I find Machen’s words to be germane to the topic of critical race theory because a question many professing Christians are asking today is: “What is critical race theory?” That is both a good and a necessary inquiry to pose. I believe Christians everywhere, regardless of denominational affiliation or political persuasion, would do well to inform themselves as much as possible about what critical race theory is—and I will address that to some degree in this essay. However, I want to submit to you that the question “What is critical race theory?” is merely a secondary inquiry. The primary and more important question we should be considering, is the question Pontius Pilate proposed in John 18:38, “What is truth?”

As followers of Jesus Christ, we are to be people of truth. We are to be people of truth because we are people of the truth. In John 17:17, before he was arrested and subsequently crucified, Jesus petitioned his heavenly Father to “sanctify them”—with the pronoun them referring to all who believed and would believe in him—“in the truth; your word is truth.” In John 18:37, the verse immediately Pilate’s aforementioned question, Jesus said, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” So, by definition, Christians are people who, by God’s sovereign grace, have heard the “voice” of Jesus—not audibly of course, but by virtue of having heard the truth of his Word, the gospel, preached and, consequently, by having that truth made effectual unto salvation by virtue of the Spirit of God regenerating their sinful hearts and bringing them to faith in Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:30; Eph 2:8–9).

It is that same truth of the gospel that should serve as the compass by which believers in Jesus Christ navigate this sinful world in which we live, a world which, according to 1 John 5:19, “lies in the power of the evil one.” The phrase “the world” in that verse is speaking of the ungodly and unbiblical systems and means by which this world operates, which encompasses the worldly ideologies, philosophies, and, yes, theologies that come against God’s Word and his church. Believers in Jesus Christ are to have a gospel-centered—meaning a truth-centered—view of the world. Another way of saying that is that we are to have a biblical worldview about everything that comprises the world.

The early twentieth-century Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck framed that idea as follows:

Truth is objective; it exists independently of us. It does not direct itself toward us; we must direct ourselves toward it. But just as the wisdom of God became flesh in Christ, so should the truth also enter us. In the path of freedom, it [truth] must become our personal and spiritual property; through a living and true faith, it must become constitutive of our thinking and doing.[2]

In asserting that the truth of the gospel become “constitutive of our thinking and doing,” Bavinck is exhorting Christians to develop—and consistently apply—a biblical worldview. For a Christian to possess and employ a biblical worldview is to filter everything about this world through the lens of what Scripture says about it. As J. C. Ryle writes in his classic book titled Holiness, “If a man does not realize the dangerous nature of his soul’s disease, you cannot wonder if he is content with false and imperfect remedies.”[3]

Among those “false and imperfect remedies” the church faces today is critical race theory.

Critical Race Theory

No, you won’t find the term critical race theory in the Bible, but a primary reason critical race theory has become such a point of division, derision, and consternation within the evangelical church today is that many professing believers have failed to allow the gospel to, as Bavinck said, become “constitutive of our thinking and doing” and especially of our thinking. It is a failure which, I would argue, is largely attributable to our collective ignorance in the church of what the Word of God has to say about such unbiblical philosophies as critical race theory. To put it another way, our churches are full of people who read God’s Word but who don’t actually study it. As the late R. C. Sproul said, “Everyone’s a theologian.”[4] Likewise, pastor John MacArthur said, “If we’re going to study the Bible, we’ve got to be committed to the fact that it needs to be studied.”[5]

The Derrick Bell Reader, so named after the late Harvard University professor Derrick A. Bell, known in most CRT circles as the “father” of critical race theory, states, “critical race theory sprang up with the realization that the civil rights movement of the 1960s had stalled and needed new approaches to deal with the complex relationship among race, racism, and American law.”[6] Conversely, in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, authors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic define the critical race theory movement as

a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power . . . critical race theory questions the very foundations of liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law. . . . After the first decade, critical race theory began to splinter and now includes a well-developed Asian American jurisprudence, a forceful Latino-critical . . . contingent, a feisty LGBT interest group, and now a Muslim and Arab caucus. Although the groups continue to maintain good relations under the umbrella of critical race theory, each has developed its own body of literature and set of priorities.[7]

That is why critical race theory is not only about race, as CRT defines it anyway, but is also about promoting what is known as intersectionality—a concept developed by UCLA law professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. Michael Dumas describes Crenshaw’s motivation: “Intersectionality has been advanced within CRT as a way to capture the dynamic relationship between race and other “differences,” including gender, sexual identity, disability, and, of course, social class.”[8] As a philosophical construct, critical race theory has its origins in one of the most demonic and destructive ideologies ever to exist in human history, namely, Marxism.

Marxism, so-called because of its namesake Karl Heinrich Marx, a German-Jewish Argentine atheist and anti-Semite, was very influential in the formation of the Critical Legal Studies, or CLS, movement of the 1970s that gave rise to the critical race theory, or CRT, movement of the late 1980s. According to The Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education, The CLS movement was “composed predominately of white neo-Marxist legal scholars and intellectuals who sought to expose and challenge the view that legal reasoning [in America] was neutral, values-free, and unaffected by social and economic relations, political forces, or cultural phenomena . . . For CLS proponents, American law and legal institutions tend to serve to legitimize an oppressive social order.”[9] Please note that the phrase “oppressive social order” is classic Marxist language.

Marxism

Given the considerable role that Marxism has played in giving life to the CLS movement which, in turn, birthed the critical race theory movement, I think it is both relevant and germane to our understanding of critical race theory to also have some idea of the significant role Marxism played—and continues to play—in it. That understanding begins, I believe, with our gaining some insight into the kind of person Karl Marx was. In his book titled A History of Western Philosophy and Theology, John M. Frame, professor emeritus of systematic theology and philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary, writes,

Marx was an admirer of Charles Darwin. . . . He [Marx] believed that the ultimate causes of events were material, not mental. . . . Further, in his view, those ultimate causes were economic. The attempts of people to achieve material well-being are what motivate the events of history. In his analysis of the production of goods, Marx distinguished between factors of production (food, clothing, shelter, work skills) and relations of production (master-slave, owner-worker, etc.). It was the relations of production Marx thought to be the more important in understanding historical change. So in his understanding, all past history has been determined by class conflict. There is always an upper class and a lower class, haves and have-nots. In ancient times, the haves were the slave-owners and the have-nots the slaves. The interests of these two groups were entirely opposed. Any increase in the prosperity of the owner is at the expense of the slave, and vice versa. It is a zero-sum relationship. So conflict is an unavoidable consequence. . . . Christians were in the vanguard in abolishing the slave trade and slavery itself, also in the care of orphans and widows, improving education, encouraging science and art. But Marx thought that religions and liberal social movements should not be encouraged. In his view, they were counterproductive because they was precious time and energy and do not get to the root of the real problems. The real problems, he and later Marxists argued, are structural. They cannot be solved until there is a radical change in the very nature of society. The means of production must be taken away from the rich capitalists and given to the representatives of the poor. So Marx described religion (particularly Christianity) as an “opiate,” a kind of drug given to the poor by the rich to persuade them that revolution is not needed. Under the influence of the opiate, they come to think that they will get their due reward through normal social change and, eventually, a reward “in the sky, by and by.” So Marxists regard religion [especially Christianity] as a barrier to revolution and therefore a barrier to truly radical social change.[10]

The phrase “radical social change” is a fundamental goal of Marxism. In fact, according to two of today’s leading critical race theorists, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic: “critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt. It also draws from certain European philosophers and theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida.”[11] However, in acknowledging the debt that critical race theory owes to such men as Gramsci, Foucault, and Derrida, what Delgado and Stefancic do not tell you is that all three of those individuals were Marxists.[12]

It is the Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci who is generally considered to be the founder of what is known as Cultural Marxism.[13] Cultural Marxism is that brand of Marxism that fuels the critical race theory movement today. In an article for the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), “Antonio Gramsci: the Godfather of Cultural Marxism,” author Bradley Thomas writes,

There’s little debate that modern-day American universities, public education, mainstream media, Hollywood, and political advocacy groups are dominated by leftists. This is no accident, but part of a deliberate strategy to pave the way for communist revolution developed more than eight decades ago by an Italian political theorist named Antonio Gramsci. Described as one of the world’s most important and influential Marxist theorists since Marx himself, if you are not familiar with Gramsci, you should be. Gramsci wrote in the 1930s of a “war of position” for socialists and communists to subvert Western culture from the inside. The Italian communist (1891–1937) is credited with the blueprint that has served as the foundation for the Cultural Marxist movement in modern America. . . . In his view, a new collective will is required to advance this war of position for the revolution. To him, it is vital to evaluate what can stand in the way of this will, i.e. certain influential social groups with the prevailing capitalist ideologies that could impede this progress. Gramsci spoke of organizations including churches, charities, the media, schools, universities and “economic corporate” power as organizations that needed to be invaded by socialist thinkers.[14]

On August 17, 2020, the website of Catholic World Report published a review of a new book written by Paul Kengor titled The Devil and Karl Marx.[15] The following is an excerpt from that review:

In the chapter entitled “My Soul is Chosen for Hell,” Kengor provides excerpts from the demonic poetry and prose of Marx—written several years before his Communist Manifesto (1848)—in which he waxed poetic about “the hellish vapors that rise and fill the brain, Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed. See this sword? The Prince of Darkness sold to me. For me he beats the time and gives the signs.  Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.” Remarking on that poem, entitled “The Player,” Kengor notes, “The blood violinist is not destroying the world because he hates it, but is doing so in order to spite God, out of derision and mockery against the Creator.  He is a rebel, like Satan, the ultimate rebel against God and Heaven.” Marxism does the same by destroying the world as it exists, creating a new world in which God is destroyed and man is elevated.”[16]

Those four words—“creating a new world”—is not only the goal of Marxism, but also of critical race theory.

CRT and Marxism

That CRT and Marxism have those goals in common is why I titled this essay as I did. Contrary to popular narrative and opinion, critical race theory is not merely a “new way to view history” (as many critical race theory apologists would to suggest). CRT is not merely some innocuous, inoffensive, unobjectionable approach to teaching white people how not to be “racist” (because in critical race theory only white people can be racists). Quite the contrary. Critical race theory, like the Marxist ideology that undergirds it, is thoroughly eschatological in that it seeks to destroy Western society and replace it with an altogether new society in which ethnic partiality and sexual and cultural intersectionality are normative. That vision is reflected by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction:

Although CRT began as a movement in the law, it has rapidly spread beyond that discipline. Today, many scholars in the field of education consider themselves critical race theorists who use CRT’s ideas to understand issues of school discipline and hierarchy, tracking, affirmative action, high-stakes testing, controversies over curriculum and history, bilingual and multicultural education, and alternative and charter schools. . . . Political scientists ponder voting strategies coined by critical race theorists, while women’s studies professors teach about intersectionality. . . . Ethnic studies courses often include a unit on critical race theory, and American studies departments teach material on critical white studies developed by CRT writers. Sociologists, theologians, and health care specialists use critical race theory and its ideas. Philosophers incorporate critical race ideas in analyzing issues such as viewpoint discrimination and whether Western philosophy is inherently white in its orientation, values, and method of reasoning. Unlike some academic disciplines, critical race theory contains an activist dimension. It tries not only to understand our social situation but to change it, setting out not only to ascertain how society organizes itself along racial lines and hierarchies but to transform them.”[17]

That critical race theorists seek to “change” and “transform” Western society is what makes that ideology eschatological. Delgado and Stefancic acknowledge that “critical race theory contains an activist dimension” toward that very end. And they are not the only ones. Self-described “trans-queer activist,” “Latinx scholar,” and “public theologian” Robyn Henderson Espinoza shares that visage as well. In her book titled, aptly Activist Theology, she writes,

Activist theology is normative in this sense, because it enfleshes an eschatological horizon, on that is always about collective liberation. . . . When we lean into rupture and likewise into the political subjectivity of becoming, we see the possibility of radical social change emerge in the entanglement of protest and revolution. Radical social change materializes with a commitment to militant peace in the practice of bridging radical difference, creating threshold spaces so that another world is possible. While militant peace is embodied in the discipline of dismantling systems of oppression, militancy is productive because it demands a deep commitment to midwifing shalom in the world in order for the beloved kingdom to materialize.[18]

Marxist Eschatology vs. Biblical Eschatology

In biblical theology, eschatology, taken from the Greek noun eschaton, is the study of what the Bible has to say about the end times. More specifically, biblical eschatology has to do with God destroying this present world and replacing it with an altogether new one. I would venture to say, however, that the overwhelming majority of professing Christians today, when they think about eschatology—to whatever degree they do think about it—and what it entails, tend to think apocalyptically and, consequently, immediately turn to the book of Revelation to have their curiosity assuaged. Indeed, the book of Revelation does have much to say concerning how this present world is destined to end. But not all biblical eschatological language is found in the book of Revelation. In fact, one of my most reassuring eschatological verses of Scripture is found in verse 13 of the epistle of 2 Peter which read reads, “But according to his promise we are looking for a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells” (NASB).

The words of 2 Peter 3:13 serves as an excellent example of the distinction between biblical eschatology and the eschatology that is proffered in critical race theory. Biblical eschatology teaches that “the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Pet 3:7) and that there will one day be a completely new heaven and a completely new earth which God will Himself bring to reality (Rev 21:1). Contrast that with the man-centered eschatology of critical race theory, which proffers that humanity innately possesses the ability—and obligation—to bring about a new world in the here and now, not physically of course, but societally. This view was expressed by Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research, in an interview in 2021:

Jesus was a revolutionary; and the job of the Christian is to revolutionize society . . . The job of the Christian is to liberate society from the powers on earth that are oppressing humanity.[19]

Needless to say, what Ibram X. Kendi is saying is not the biblical gospel. Christ came to save sinners; he did not come to save society.

I mentioned earlier that the critical race theory movement of the 1980s was borne from the Critical Legal Studies movement of the 1970s. But that leaves the question: What gave rise to the Critical Legal Studies movement? The answer to that question is provided by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, professor of history at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, in her book titled Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution, in which she states,

Out of the maelstrom of the 1960s rose an army of race experts whose ministrations unintentionally helped prolong old racial tensions and foster new misunderstandings and anxieties. The interpretations of our racial situation offered by these experts stand in the way of our adjustment to an integrated America. Understandably enlivened by the real revolution that civil rights brought to this country, and by the implications of that revolution for a radical reconstruction of social and political life, self-proclaimed experts sought to continue the revolution to its logical conclusion. Persuaded by 1960s rhetoric and social science theorizing, they believed that the new frontier of revolution was the mind, particularly individuals’ “attitudes.” . . . Convinced of the entrenched bigotry of Middle America [translate: white, non-urban America]  and of their role in its exposure and enlightenment, experts carved out niches for themselves in established fields, like teaching, social work, and psychiatry, and created altogether new professional roles, such as those of interracial etiquette advisors and diversity trainers. . . . The race experts moved in to fill a void created by the collapse of the civil rights coalition and the loss of the clarity of the early movement, capitalizing on a long-term trend in American culture toward reliance on experts for guidance in all aspects of public and personal life.[20]

The “race experts” of which Lasch-Quinn speaks were the neo-Marxist legal scholars who launched the CLS movement.

K–12 Education

It should not be overlooked that when Lasch-Quinn says “all aspects of public and private life,” all is precisely what she means. I say that because as I write, critical race theory is being taught at various public education institutions across America, not only at the university level, as many CRT apologists would have you believe, but at the K–12 levels as well. Public schools are vital to critical race theorists’ achieving their eschatological objectives, especially as those objectives relate to shaping the worldview of young black children. As David O. Stovall, professor of black studies, criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois Chicago, writes,

CRT challenges dominant ideology surrounding the ability of students of color to excel inside and outside of K-20 spaces. This problematizes over-reliance on standardized test performance and normalizing views associated with White, western-European Christian male standpoints as the standards for culture and academic achievement.[21]

The truth is public schools have long been the conduit-of-choice for pushing ungodly ideologies like Marxism, and now critical race theory, into society and, consequently, into the minds of society’s children. After all, it was Karl Marx himself who declared an essential principle of communism to be “Education of all children, from the moment that they can leave their mother’s care, in national establishments at national cost.”[22] What is most fundamental to understand about critical race theory is that it “situates race at the center of social analysis. Differences such as social class, gender, ethnicity, and language are acknowledged and understood as dimensions of intersectionality that impact how race shapes policy and everyday life; however, race is the primary object of analysis, and explanations of social phenomena are primarily offered through a racial lens.”[23]

The reality that critical race theory views society “through a racial lens” raises the question, how, exactly, is “race” defined in critical race theory? The answer to that question depends on who you ask. When considering the eschatological similarities between Marxism and critical race theory, it is vital to understand that in critical race theory race is a social, not a scientific, construct. As Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor of urban education in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains,

Biologists, geneticists, anthropologists, and sociologists agree that race is not a scientific reality. Despite what we perceive as phenotypic differences, the scrutiny of a microscope or the sequencing of genes reveals no perceptible differences between what we call races. As members of the same species, human beings are biologically quite similar. Just as a tabby cat and a calico cat are the same species with the ability to reproduce within their species, so it is with humans. However, humans have constructed social categories and organization that rely heavily on arbitrary genetic differences like skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and lip size [Darwinism]. They have used these differences as a mechanism for creating hierarchy and an ideology of White supremacy. . . . Thus, while critical race theorists accept the scientific understanding of no-race or no genetic difference, we also accept the power of a social reality that allows for significant disparities in the life chances of people based on the categorical understanding of race.”[24]

It is not an insignificant matter that in critical race theory, race, asbLadson-Billings said, is primarily a “social category,” and a “social reality.”

It is by design that critical race theorists view race fundamentally as a social construct, for it is through the lens of race as a social reality, which is dynamic, as opposed to a scientific or biological reality, which is static, that they are able to apply the Marxist concept of dividing people into different classes and groups and, further, to pit those classes and groups against one another so as establish a rationale for their eschatological apologetic. That is how the eschatological vision of critical race theory is achieved—through intersectional class warfare—which is the same eschatological vision Karl Marx himself held. As Michael J. Dumas, assistant professor of African-American studies and African Diaspora Studies at the University of California Berkeley, writes,

If indeed racism is founded in class relations, and in the logics and institutions of capital, then any analysis of the construct of race or institutional and cultural practices of racism must be bases in a class critique. Put another way, in Marxian analysis, discussion of race is only critical, and only makes sense, when racism is understood as a powerful instantiation of capitalism. Given the relationship between racism and capitalism in a Marxian framework, it becomes imperative to theorize how capital works in processes of racialization and racial exploitation and violence. . . . In CRT, class is most often presented as a dimension of intersectionality, in which class (alongside such categories as nationality, gender, and ability) is a social identity and descriptor of personal life experience, rather than a pervasive and structural exercise of the power of capital.[25]

Dumas’s words are steeped in the vernacular of the Marxian dialectic. Critical race theory leverages Marxist dialectical language in order to advance the proposition that racism—and remember that in critical race theory racism is a social construct—is the fault of capitalism, which in critical race theory is also a social construct, so that capitalism can be replaced with a more egalitarian system that is grounded in Cultural Marxism, so that the “oppressed” and “marginalized” classes—and those classes are intersectional, not merely “racial”—become the new oppressor class and white people become the new oppressed class.

In 1941, the book Reason and Revolution, written by the German Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, regarded broadly as the founder of modern American Marxism,[26] was published. Marcuse, who lived from 1898 to 1979, was “one of the most prominent members of the Frankfurt School or The Institute for Social Research.”[27] In Reason and Revolution, Marcuse had this to say about the function and purpose of the Marxian dialectic:

The historical character of the Marxian dialectic embraces the prevailing negativity as well as the negation. The given state of affairs is negative and can be rendered positive only by liberating the possibilities immanent in it. This last, the negation of the negation is accomplished by establishing a new order of things. The negativity and its negation are two different phases of the same historical process, straddled by man’s historical action. The ‘new’ state is the truth of the old, but that truth does not steadily and automatically grow out of the earlier state; it can be set free only by an autonomous act on the part of men that will cancel the whole of the existing negative state.[28]

In critical race theory, the “prevailing negativity,” to quote Marcuse, is systemic racism.

Systemic Racism

Remember what Herbert Marcuse said—he said that the “new” state is “the truth of the old.” In critical race theory, the “truth of the old” is that America is as racist today as it was in the 1860s. Nothing has changed since then. Everything about America is racist. It always has been and always will be. In critical race theory, the “truth of the old” is that all white people are racist. They always have been and always will be. But critical race theorists believe that they can “liberate the possibilities” by “establishing a new order of things.”

And therein lies the eschatology of critical race theory—to bring about an entirely “new order of things.” Critical race theorists will usher in this new order of things by canceling the whole of the “existing negative” (e.g,. the racist systems, structures, and institutions) and then reconstructing them in the likeness of the intersectional utopia they envision. Such is the goal of groups like Black Lives Matter. So when you understand the Marxian dialectic, you also understand that the term “cancel culture” is not just some politically-correct moniker concocted by the liberal mainstream media.

The term “cancel culture” is pure, unadulterated Marxian dialectical language. And such is the attraction of Marxism to critical race theorists. Critical race theory views capitalism as the enemy of the oppressed, particularly of black people, and therefore must be replaced with a more intersectional and egalitarian system. And since only white people benefit from capitalism, and predominately at the expense of black people—an idea which in critical race theory is known as zero sum—then, they, too, must be removed from their positions of power and privilege. As UCLA law school professor Cheryl I. Harris writes in her seminal white paper titled, “Whiteness as Property,” originally published in the June 1993 edition of the Harvard Law Review:

Because the law recognized and protected expectations grounded in white privilege (albeit not explicitly in all instances), these expectations became tantamount to property that could not permissibly be intruded upon without consent. As the law explicitly ratified those expectations in continued privilege or extended ongoing protection to those illegitimate expectations by failing to expose or to radically disturb them, the dominant and subordinate positions within the racial hierarchy were reified in law.95 When the law recognizes, either implicitly or explicitly, the settled expectations of whites built on the privileges and benefits produced by white supremacy, it acknowledges and reinforces a property interest in whiteness that reproduces Black subordination.[29]

Conversely, Michael Harriot, in an article titled “White People Are Cowards,” published on June 19, 2018, on the website The Root, said:

Everyone knew that slavery was evil. Everyone knew that Jim Crow was evil. Everyone knew that lynching was evil. Everyone knows that any kind of injustice or inequality is evil. These things persist because most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate them. And most white people don’t actively fight to eradicate inequality and injustice because they usually benefit in some small way. The Southern economy was built on evil slavery. Jim Crow laws maintained a national order with white people firmly planted atop the social hierarchy. Systematic injustice keeps black people in their place, but it also comforts white people to know that the big black bogeymen are being kept behind bars.[30]

Conclusion

Critical race theory is as demonic a worldview as is Marxism. They are two sides of the same satanic coin and whose eschatological vision is from the pit of hell itself. Critical race theory and Marxism have much in common. But what makes critical race theory especially devious is that it uses stories and narratives to weaponized historical grievances like slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining, and pits people of different socio-cultural and economic backgrounds against one another so as to paint America, the evangelical church—and white evangelical Christians in particular—as being just as systemically racist and oppressive today as it was in, say, the 1860s.

For all its talk of anti-racism,[31] the truth is there is no anti-racism in critical race theory. Quite the opposite in fact. In critical race theory, anti-racism is the new racism. Critical race theory is simply Cultural Marxism in disguise. It is a hate-filled ideology that is rooted in hatred and vindictiveness that pits image-bearers of God of various shades of melanin and socio-economic stations against one another under the guise of justice and equality.

In a sermon titled “Place for the Word,” the “Prince of Preachers,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon said, “The truth is as old as the everlasting hills. Therefore, dear friends, be not touched with that . . . madness of always seeking after some new thing. Did you ever hear of new gold? To all intents and purposes, all gold that is worth having is old.”[32] Conversely, in a sermon titled “Questions and Answers Concerning Zion,” Spurgeon declared: “I cannot agree with those who say that they have “new truth” to teach. The two words seem to me to contradict each other; that which is new is not true. It is the old that is true, for truth is as old as God.”[33]

Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?”

The apostle Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2-4: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”

Critical race theory is not the truth. Critical race theory is a lie.


[1] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, New Ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2009), 15.

[2] Herman Bavinck, Christian Worldview, trans. N. Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory C. Brock (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 132–33.

[3] J. C. Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010), 20.

[4] R. C. Sproul, Everyone’s a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology, First Edition (Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2014).

[5] John MacArthur, “Who Can Study the Bible?,” accessed July 31, 2021, https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1381/.

[6] Richard Delgado, ed., The Derrick Bell Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2005), 468.

[7] Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 3.

[8] Micael J. Dumas, “Doing Class in Critical Race Analysis in Education,” in Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education, ed. Marvin Lynn and Adrienne D. Dixson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 116.

[9] Kevin Brown and Darrell D. Jackson, “The History and Conceptual Elements of Critical Race Theory,” in Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education, ed. Marvin Lynn and Adrienne D. Dixson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 12.

[10] John M. Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology (Phillipsburg, N.J: P & R Publishing, 2015), 282–85.

[11] Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, 5.

[12] See Mark Kelly, “Foucault, Michel: Political Thought | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy,” in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed July 31, 2021, https://iep.utm.edu/fouc-pol/; Hanne Nabintu Herland, “Neo-Marxist Jacques Derrida and His Leftwing Racist Deconstruction Theory,” The Herland Report (blog), November 18, 2020, https://hannenabintuherland.com/usa/neo-marxist-jacques-derrida-and-his-leftwing-racist-deconstruction-theory/; “Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937),” accessed July 31, 2021, https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/.

[13] Chris Calton, “What Is Cultural Marxism?,” Text, Mises Institute, June 21, 2018, https://mises.org/wire/what-cultural-marxism.

[14] Bradley Thomas, “Meet the Godfather of Cultural Marxism,” Foundation for Economic Education, March 31, 2019, https://fee.org/articles/antonio-gramsci-the-godfather-of-cultural-marxism/. Emphasis added.

[15] Paul Kengor, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration (Gastonia: TAN Books, 2020).

[16] Anne Hendershott, “A Disturbing Guide to the Devilish Karl Marx,” The Catholic World Report, August 17, 2020, https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/08/17/a-disturbing-guide-to-the-devilish-karl-marx/. Emphasis added.

[17] Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory, 17–18.

[18] Robyn Henderson-Espinoza, Activist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019), 68–69.

[19] Judson Memorial Church, How To Be Anti-Racist: Ibram X. Kendi in Conversation with Molly Crabapple, accessed August 4, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhbbmjqcRvY&t=0s.

[20] Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), xii–xiii.

[21] David O. Stovall, ““Fightin’ the Devil 24/7”: Context, Community, and Critical Race Praxis in Education,” in Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education, ed. Marvin Lynn and Adrienne D. Dixson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 293.

[22] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1884), ed. Jeffrey C. Isaac (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 63, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/swbts/detail.action?docID=3420865.

[23] Dumas, “Doing Class in Critical Race Analysis in Education,” 114.

[24] Gloria Ladson-Billings, “Critical Race Theory—What It Is Not!,” in Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education, ed. Marvin Lynn and Adrienne D. Dixson (New York: Routledge, 2013), 38–39. Emphasis added.

[25] Dumas, “Doing Class in Critical Race Analysis in Education,” 116.

[26] See Howell Woltz, “Meet the Founder of Modern American Marxism—Herbert Marcuse,” Richardson Post (blog), July 22, 2020, https://richardsonpost.com/howellwoltz/20818/meet-the-founder-of-modern-american-marxism-herbert-marcuse/; Tyler Brandt and Jon Miltimore, “Meet the Philosopher Behind the Ideology of Antifa,” Foundation for Economic Education, February 1, 2019, https://fee.org/articles/herbert-marcuse-the-philosopher-behind-the-ideology-of-the-anti-fascists/.

[27] Arnold Farr, “Herbert Marcuse,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2021), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/marcuse/.

[28] Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (London: Woolf Haus Publishing, 2020), 232.

[29] Cheryl I. Harris, “The Persistence of Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (June 1993): 17.

[30] Michael Harriot, “White People Are Cowards,” The Root, accessed August 4, 2021, https://www.theroot.com/white-people-are-cowards-1826958780.

[31] Hontas Farmer, “Critical Race Theory And Anti Racism Are Not Racist Against Asians Or Anyone Else. The Model Minority Myth Does Not Disprove CRT.,” Science 2.0, July 19, 2021, https://www.science20.com/hontas_farmer/critical_race_theory_and_anti_racism_are_not_racist_against_asians_or_anyone_else_the_model_minority_myth_does_not.

[32] C. H. Spurgeon, “Place For The Word” (Sermon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, April 8, 1883), https://answersingenesis.org/education/spurgeon-sermons/2584-place-word/.

[33] C. H. Spurgeon, “Questions And Answers Concerning Zion” (Sermon, The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, November 8, 1883), https://answersingenesis.org/education/spurgeon-sermons/2612-questions-answers-concerning-zion/.

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Author selective focus photography of three books beside opened notebook

Darrell B. Harrison

Lead Host Just Thinking Podcast

Darrell is is a native of Atlanta, Georgia but currently resides in Valencia, California where he serves as Dean of Social Media at Grace To You, the Bible-teaching ministry of Dr. John MacArthur. Darrell is a 2013 Fellow of the Black Theology and Leadership Institute (BTLI) of Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, and is a 2015 graduate of the Theology and Ministry program at Princeton Theological Seminary. Darrell studied at the undergraduate level at Liberty University, where he majored in Psychology with a concentration in Christian Counseling. He was the first black man to be ordained as a Deacon in the 200-year history of First Baptist Church of Covington (Georgia) where he attended from 2009 to 2015. He is an ardent student of theology and apologetics, and enjoys reading theologians such as Thomas Watson, Charles Spurgeon, and John Calvin. Darrell is an advocate of expository teaching and preaching and has a particular passion for seeing expository preaching become the standard within the Black Church.