We don't need to be afraid of CRT

[Ken]

Out of curiosity, I looked up the demographics of every county in my state. There was only 3 counties out of 36 that had 1% Black/African-Americans. Out of the three that were, one was 6.0%, one was 1.37% and one was 1.2%. No statistics on red headed people at the county level could I find. However, I think we we are okay on that quota, since we have 1.5 red head in the congregation. (How many can your church boast of?)
The diversity in this state are predominately Native Americans, and Central Americans, and then Asians, then African-Americans. Sure, this state had racist reason as to why there is no blacks here. But that does not translate into "white churches are racist because of their lack of black people" here.

I sometimes think about Maslows hierachy of human needs. I think its top stops short, in is incomplete. What it needs is one more layer to be the top. It actually is present in all the layers. And that is the spiritual hole that is within humans. Mazlow was an atheist and did not believe in religion. He simply placed it in Psychological/Social needs. To him there is no need for God or real spiritual needs. Especially as the West becomes rich and has Maslows 5 needs well and long ago met, life becomes more meaningless. And the spiritual need is obviously not being filled with any of the 5 categories. Life is hollow. And so, what we see in these wealthy secular people, is a need to do something to show their virtue, and a genuine need to set right wrongs. And since they have rejected God, they adopt secular ideologies as their faith and religion. They act with vigor and conviction and force to make people do and think what they ought - just like the Catholics used to do, and the Muslims still do. While we can have opinions and discussions on various ideas such as CRT, I don't think we should be hooking up our wagon to them, nor even creating an alliance with them.

Honestly, I don't think it is really a question about whether churches are racist. Especially small and relatively powerless churches of the sort you are talking about with most CA churches.

I think the larger and more important question is whether there is individual or systemic racism in the larger society and the extent to which church members are part of the problem or part of the solution. In your part of the world the issues probably have less to do with racism and more to do with equity. For example, how do the schools in affluent neighborhoods of Bend compare to those on the Warm Springs Reservation an hour away? Are the children of Hispanic migrant workers performing equal to their more affluent white counterparts? If not, why not? That sort of thing. And then there is the larger question of what responsibility do you as a citizen and as a congregation have to involve yourselves if you do find inequities and injustices in your community? Maybe you decide it's not your problem at all.

Not every problem we encounter in our society is equally severe or equally solvable. We do have to make priorities and decide what issues we can or should even get involved with. But I still think it is worth asking these sorts of hard questions about our community and society. Honestly I think that is really all this CRT stuff is all about.

[RZehr]

Sudsy,
To me there is a pretty significant difference between the two. I’d personally tilt in favor of being excommunicated even severely, such as having to eat at a separate table. I find that more than a smidgen more accommodating than literally getting my head chopped off. I’d also find severe excommunication the way the Amish practice as more preferable than the economic sabotage of the woke left.

[Sudsy]

Sudsy,
To me there is a pretty significant difference between the two. I’d personally tilt in favor of being excommunicated even severely, such as having to eat at a separate table. I find that more than a smidgen more accommodating than literally getting my head chopped off. I’d also find severe excommunication the way the Amish practice as more preferable than the economic sabotage of the woke left.

Thankyou.

[Sliceitup]

Sudsy,
To me there is a pretty significant difference between the two. I’d personally tilt in favor of being excommunicated even severely, such as having to eat at a separate table. I find that more than a smidgen more accommodating than literally getting my head chopped off. I’d also find severe excommunication the way the Amish practice as more preferable than the economic sabotage of the woke left.

If you think the Amish method of shunning doesn’t involve some hefty economic shunning then I got a bridge to sell you.

[Bootstrap]

While we can have opinions and discussions on various ideas such as CRT, I don't think we should be hooking up our wagon to them, nor even creating an alliance with them.

I agree.

I'm trying to understand why it's important for followers of Jesus to affirm "good" things in secular ideologies.

First off, I think it's important to note that the current political campaign against CRT is just as secular as CRT is, I don't think we should hitch our wagon to either. But Christians do learn from secular sources. Some people learned secular auto repair to be able to earn money. I have learned secular computer science and secular linguistics and secular modern history. The Bible doesn't tell me a lot about these things. To understand the dynamics of race relations in modern America, I think it's helpful to read things that are being written by modern Americans, including both Christians and non-Christians.

But if we want to weigh in on racial issues, I think it's especially important for biblical white American churches to listen to what our brothers and sisters in biblical black American churches are saying and teaching. There aren't a lot of biblical black Mennonite churches, so we may need to look more broadly than that. I think it's probably a lot more important for Christians to read people like Esau McCaulley (e.g. "Reading while Black") or Howard Thurman ("Jesus and the Disinherited") than it is for us to read CRT.

But CRT addresses some of the dynamics of race in useful ways. Let me use an analogy. There are plenty of Christian men who have depressed, frustrated wives, even though they intend to love them and are trying hard to do so. The Bible teaches quite a lot that is important for them to learn, but there are also some things we need to become sensitive to about how women in general or particular women think, feel, and relate in modern American society. In important ways, that may be different than the way Hellenistic female Jews thought, felt, and related. Christian psychologists like Cloud and Townsend are the ones I prefer, but they have learned a lot from secular sources, too. To me, CRT is like that, one secular approach to understanding the dynamics of race.

To me, Esau McCaulley is kind of like Cloud and Townsend.. He says he is not a CRT scholar, but he is not afraid of CRT either, and he is in conversation with people who are, identifying some of what CRT gets right. He teaches at Wheaton, a conservative biblical seminary with a long tradition of orthodoxy. He is more concerned with biblical interpretation, building understanding across divides, and building the church than with advancing political causes. "Reading while Black" is really about how we all read the Bible from our own perspectives, and why dialogue across those perspectives is important so that we can see where our own background has blinded us to what is actually in the text.

[temporal1]

[Josh]

This isn’t a joke. My nieces got some school supplies as gifts and accidentally got ones with rainbow unicorns and the word “pride”.

Fortunately, their parents were able to explain that pride is a sin, and we don’t want to promote sin.

[Josh]

Bootstrap,

There aren't a lot of biblical black Mennonite churches

This is patently false. The black-skinned Mennonite world has more members than the European background light skinned world.

In my own denomination there are about 1,500 members and somewhere around 50 in leadership who would meet the definition of “black” and “Mennonite”, and presumably I think our denomination is “biblical” too.

[RZehr]

Sudsy,
To me there is a pretty significant difference between the two. I’d personally tilt in favor of being excommunicated even severely, such as having to eat at a separate table. I find that more than a smidgen more accommodating than literally getting my head chopped off. I’d also find severe excommunication the way the Amish practice as more preferable than the economic sabotage of the woke left.

If you think the Amish method of shunning doesn’t involve some hefty economic shunning then I got a bridge to sell you.

Okay that is news to me. What does it entail? Things such as refusing to be in partnership? Refusing to hire a the excommunicated person, maybe because of bad influence? Refusing to personally patronize the excommunicated persons business?

Or do the Amish go as far as putting what they don’t like about the person online, social media etc., and call for a all out boycott for by everyone, pressure the customers to take their business elsewhere, shame their customers, and attempt to sue the person out of business? That is how the world does. The world will be outraged without first hand knowledge, mob style. Doesn’t matter if they know little about the situation and don’t know the person.

I would imagine the Amish are intimately knowledgeable about the person and aren’t out to ruin the person. But I don’t know. I didn’t know they did at all. At the end of the day, King David cast himself on the mercy of God instead of choosing a punishment. As such, I’d rather be punished by the people of God any day, that to take the treatment of the wicked.

[Bootstrap]

Bootstrap,

There aren't a lot of biblical black Mennonite churches

This is patently false. The black-skinned Mennonite world has more members than the European background light skinned world.

In my own denomination there are about 1,500 members and somewhere around 50 in leadership who would meet the definition of “black” and “Mennonite”, and presumably I think our denomination is “biblical” too.

In the United States or elsewhere? I was very much thinking of the United States when I wrote that.