Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

FOREW0RD

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gag line was that Marxism was dead in Europe and the West, except in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The jest, of course, was not directed just at Harvard or all universities, but at the broader culture of America: its newspapers, theaters, televisions, local schools, and to be sure, its universities. In short, it was directed at all the social institutions. Marxism may have died in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union a generation ago, but it was nevertheless alive and well in American culture. In fact, today it holds the high ground throughout America, as the front cover of Newsweek magazine declared in 2009: We are all socialists now.

Downwind from the culture are the political institutions. Political leaders are constantly trying to read where the culture is and where it is going. After all, one step out of the spirit of the age could cost someone their congressional seat and the perks that come with it. They do not move the culture; the culture moves them. Truth be told, our leaders are followers.

In the same way, the visible church is also downwind from culture. The current philosophies and cultural ideas are often gratefully received in the often-compromised visible church. And many church leaders are busy themselves with trying to understand where culture is going. After all, one step out of sync with the spirit of the age could harm the reputation of a pastor, a church, or a ministry. It might even bring reproach, condemnation, and persecution. We do not move the culture; the culture moves us. Our church leaders are often followers of the culture as well.

Progressivism became the dominant political and social position among American elites in the early twentieth century. A large portion of the visible church, keeping up with the times, moved left with the culture to create a gospel in step with the times: the Social Gospel. As the Social Gospel mirrored the political and liberal trends of a hundred years ago, so the Social Justice Gospel of today (or the Woke Gospel) mirrors the political and liberal trends today. Now that a more aggressive form of cultural Marxism is now in vogue with political and secular elites, it is also fashionable in churches and denominations. False gospels always march side by side with the fashions of an increasingly worldly secular culture. This was true a hundred years ago, and it will be true a hundred years from now. False gospels always follow the world. The Woke Gospel advocates are of the world, and the world hears them.

This book is important for genuine Christians because Christians need to understand that the Woke Gospel is not an add-on to the Gospel. It is a replacement of the true gospel. It is another gospel that God’s people need to anathematize. Jon Harris masterfully demonstrates with primary sources and careful analysis the dangers of this false gospel. He chronicles the history of Social Justice from the French Revolution to modern times in both secular and Christian thought. The solution that Social Justice offers is socialism. Harris shows that Marxism, with a heavy dose of radical racist, feminist, homosexual theories, and postmodernism became the dominate cultural theory of today. As the old Marxists turned Marxism into a secular religion with Stalin and Mao, so the new Marxists have created their new secular religion. This has worked itself into the church as Liberation Theology a generation ago and the Woke Gospel of today. The Woke Church leaders at first made it an add-on to the Christian faith, and then they made the Christian faith an add-on to the Woke Gospel.

Harris then demonstrates how the church has been infiltrated by the Woke Gospel. He uses Scripture to show that the Woke faith is contrary to the Christian faith. The Woke often muddy issues by using terms such as gospel issue or gospel above all or other biblical sounding terms. They often challenge Christians to accept a more holistic gospel, something more than just Christ and Him crucified. Instead, they direct us to a whole gospel that can work inside and outside of the church walls and that can redeem all society.

Most importantly, Harris names the names of the leaders of this woke religion within evangelicalism. Most books on this issue speak in broad terms about the ideas and philosophies but rarely give names and specifics. Many who write or speak against this false gospel fail to name their own pastors and colleagues who teach and promote this false gospel. They are, in fact, covering for them. Jon Harris calling out by name the leaders of this false gospel, his careful documentation, and his excellent analysis make this the best book on the topic.

Jon Harris concludes that this Woke Gospel is a different gospel with its confusion of law and gospel; having different ethics of sin, justice, and righteousness; a different epistemology with its standpoint theory, and a different metaphysic based on humanism.

Reading this book brought back many memories of my teaching at Southern Seminary. In particularly, it brought back a meeting in which Al Mohler defended Critical Race Theory and its teachings at Southern Seminary by now Provost, Matthew Hall. Mohler defended the concepts of systemic racism, whiteness, and white privilege, the crown jewels of Critical Race Theory. He concluded his defense of Matthew Hall and Critical Race Theory with a statement that I will never forget: Marxism has insights.

Jon Harris conclusively demonstrates that these Marxist insights, the foundation of the Woke Faith, is another gospel contrary to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Russell Fuller,

July 2021

INTRODUCTION

It feels like it was yesterday—standing across from my seminary professor in his office as he sat at his desk and motioned for me to close the door. I quickly did so and hurried back, sitting on the edge of the chair facing him and waiting to hear the answer to my important question. He then spoke in something approximating a whisper as if KGB officers could possibly come in at any moment and disrupt our unauthorized meeting. He turned away from his computer, looked me directly in the eye, and warned: If I were to say what I think about what’s going on at this campus I would be fired. My heart sank as I processed the momentary shocking sensation. How can this be possible? I thought to myself. This man is both professional and, I assumed, well respected. But it was.

Admittedly, at the time I suspected there was an unspoken rule at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary that students, staff, and faculty were not supposed to question or even acknowledge the incursions made by the social justice movement at the school. Almost overnight some of us felt like we were swimming in a sea of political rhetoric, but everyone else acted like it was normal and nothing was happening. I remember sitting in a car with a student friend one warm Southern night struggling to explain the change we both noticed. It seems an awful lot like Marxism, I observed. Except, instead of feeling guilty for wealth we are made to feel guilty for being white or conservative.

In some ways, I was probably thinking back to my undergraduate experiences at a secular college. One of my sociology professors openly admired Karl Marx. Some of the things she and other progressive teachers said reminded me of what we were encountering in seminary. Except, unlike my anti-Christian professors in college, those pushing a similar agenda in seminary camouflaged it underneath a veneer of Christianity. Chapel messages were filled with social justice rhetoric. I remember one speaker telling future pastors: If caring about justice makes you a liberal, then I’m here to say that God himself is a liberal and you better become one.

Likewise, blog posts hosted, promoted, and sponsored by the seminary pushed the narrative that white brothers and sisters needed to repent for things like silence and lack of participation in racial reconciliation. Of course, something as small as working for a company with only white leadership may qualify as complicity. Students were also encouraged to interpret through the eyes of other ethnicities, glean positively from postmodern thinkers like Jacques Derrida, as well as read books shot through with critical race theory, like The New Jim Crow by Michele Alexander.

The relatively new Kingdom Diversity department hosted talks on kneeling at football games, taking down Confederate monuments, and honoring people like black liberation theologian James Cone. In one semester, three statements condemning Donald Trump or the alt-right originated or were heavily supported by administration and faculty members. Yet I could not remember one statement, other than perhaps the Manhattan Declaration, that anyone in school leadership signed to oppose threats streaming from the left during Obama’s presidency.

The impact on the student body was obvious. Mostly young and idealistic aspiring church leaders absorbed what they heard both on campus and in some of their classes. I observed and heard about previous political conservatives who became progressives, and then started liberalizing their theology, during the course of their time at Southeastern. In one class I remember a student publicly condemning the folks back home for their disapproval of the NFL because it allowed what seemed to them like disrespect for the American flag. He went on to say that Christians should apologize for the holocaust. I thought the professor would surely correct this misguided student for his ignorance and arrogance but instead the teacher nodded along and expressed approval. Something was changing, and I knew it was not the Bible or me.

At one of the largest evangelical seminaries, well within the boundaries of the Bible Belt, I felt like an outsider. Not just because of my political conservatism, but also my theological convictions. Since that time, I have taken different positions, pursued new areas of study, and moved to different regions of the country, but the battle remains the same. Most of us can now clearly see the attacks on objective truth, the created order, natural affection, impartial justice, and the gospel of grace are not going away any time soon. Even within Christian ministries where members are free to disagree on secondary matters such as eschatology, creationism, and predestination, they are frequently bound by an often-unspoken rule not to publicly question the social justice movement.

That is exactly what this book is about though—questioning the social justice movement. After I asked my professor what was happening to our campus, I wanted to know what could be done about it. His advice was to first be a good student—to learn, grow, and use whatever platform I had, even if it was simply talking with classmates, loving others and telling the truth. Today, I am passing this advice on to you. The first step in fighting against the social justice movement is understanding what it is. That is the primary purpose of this book. The second step is loving others and telling the truth. May God bless you as you learn, grow, and contend for the faith once delivered.

CHAPTER 1

The History of Social Justice

In Birmingham Alabama, on June 1, 2019, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the Southern Baptist Convention, approved a resolution endorsing two modern social justice teachings, critical race theory and intersectionality, as analytical tools which could aid in evaluating a variety of human experiences so long as they were subordinate to Scripture.¹ Pastor John MacArthur, a popular evangelical leader outside the denomination, predicted the SBC’s demise since the majority approved of using external cultural cues to interpret the Bible.² James Lindsay, a secular expert on critical theory, concurred stating that the move invited a huge wooden horse outside [the] door that would be used as an eisegetical tool.³ A writer for The Federalist, a politically conservative news source, stated: The Southern Baptist Convention is being infiltrated by an ideology that is antithetical to the Christian religion.⁴ Yet, most messengers representing the denomination did not see the problem.

Pastor Tom Ascol, one of the dissenting voices at the convention, believed people were played because they didn’t understand what they were voting for.⁵ Yet, since the recent increase in social justice rhetoric inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, it now apparent that many professing evangelicals embrace some of the core assumptions of modern social justice theory.

The Gospel Coalition, a popular reformed evangelical organization, hosted a lament session where influential evangelicals denounced white privilege and systemic racism in both the country and the church.⁶ Phil Vischer, the creator of the popular Christian children’s show Veggie Tales, argued in a viral video that racism was normative in the United States.⁷ Most of his information came from Michelle Alexander’s revisionist work The New Jim Crow, which drew directly from critical race theorists like Derrick Bell and Mari Matsuda.⁸ J.D. Greear, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, proclaimed the phrase Black Lives Matter to be a gospel issue and moved to retire the use of both the name of the denomination and the gavel used to preside over meetings by associating them with slavery.⁹ These examples only illustrate the tip of an iceberg that includes many denominations, seminaries, Bible schools, ministries, and individual Christian leaders who take it upon themselves to show solidarity with the latest incarnation of the social justice movement.

Despite new terminology such as get woke, decolonize, and mansplain, the current call for social justice is not a recent phenomenon. It is a repackaged configuration of egalitarian ideas heavily influenced over the past century by postmodern and Marxist derivatives. Because groups as diverse as traditional socialists, secular New Left scholars, progressive religious leaders, and today’s critical theorists all appeal to the principle of social justice in furthering their agendas, the various movements and contributions that fall under the umbrella of the term’s modern usage make it difficult to define.

In 1971, political philosopher John Rawls released the popular book A Theory of Justice, which conceived of social justice as the kind of benefit allocating system reasonable people would choose if they did not know what social identity, such as gender or race, they would be born into before their existence. Five years later, economist Friedrich Hayek concluded that social justice was a vacuous term used to justify the re-distribution of larger shares between unequal social groups.¹⁰ Today, Oxford Dictionary defines social justice as Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.¹¹ This basic understanding developed organically in common parlance over the last century-and-a-half.

Though disagreements over the nature of the social problem, as well as differing solutions, emerge between organizations claiming the mantle of social justice, the commonly shared belief is that disparities in advantages between social groups are immoral and must be rectified through some kind of reallocation. It should be noted that before the influence of Karl Marx, the term was rarely used and generally referred to protecting the legal rights of citizens equally.¹² In fact, Roman Catholics had a short history of teaching a type of social justice without advocating redistribution, but they too eventually succumbed to the conventional definition.

Redistributive Justice

Following the Industrial Revolution, Roman Catholic social teaching sought to preserve the natural order which had previously existed through agrarian social bonds and obligations. Neither capitalism’s unrestricted competition of forces, nor socialism’s opposition of classes, was an acceptable philosophy. Instead, a social justice concerned with the common good, was to ensure both the right to private property and a living wage.¹³ However, beginning in the 1960s, Catholic teaching started highlighting economic and social differences between groups like nations and genders as well as accommodating a more expansive understanding of the state’s regulatory role.¹⁴ In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI promoted a distributive and social justice that supported