What are your thoughts re Hegelian Dialectic & CRT in the Church?

[JohnH]

That is not what the documentary claims at all. I watched the brief section where they discussed race

Perhaps you should have watched the entire thing, because then you would have grasped what they were actually claiming. (The same thing went on with The Summit Church's attempt to take over Faith Baptist, which included such shennanigans as Faith Baptist's new leadership colluding with Summit Church to give the building away to Summit Church; spending nearly a million on legal fees; locking the doors so the members couldn't meet for church and instead just set up chairs in the parking lot; filing a bankruptcy immediately after a court ordered the current leadership to relinquish control back to the members; and best of all, revoking the membership of a Vietnam-era veteran who happened to be a black man the day before an important vote was held, whilst simultaneously claiming the membership of the church wasn't willing to "repent of whiteness" and so forth.)

[Ken]

That is not what the documentary claims at all. I watched the brief section where they discussed race

Perhaps you should have watched the entire thing, because then you would have grasped what they were actually claiming. (The same thing went on with The Summit Church's attempt to take over Faith Baptist, which included such shennanigans as Faith Baptist's new leadership colluding with Summit Church to give the building away to Summit Church; spending nearly a million on legal fees; locking the doors so the members couldn't meet for church and instead just set up chairs in the parking lot; filing a bankruptcy immediately after a court ordered the current leadership to relinquish control back to the members; and best of all, revoking the membership of a Vietnam-era veteran who happened to be a black man the day before an important vote was held, whilst simultaneously claiming the membership of the church wasn't willing to "repent of whiteness" and so forth.)

I'm not arguing that there aren't all manner of church takeover shennanigans happening, legal or illegal. Clearly that sort of thing seems to be happening in the big money megachurch Baptist arena.

I'm simply taking issue with YOUR contention that CRT is a weapon used in evangelical or Baptist church takeovers. The videos provide no evidence of that and don't even make that argument.

[JayP]

For an awful long thread with a lot of comments I am not sure this is going anywhere because the topic is too broad.
Maybe the original poster might redefine the topic.

Just tossing in terms like Hegelian Dialectic, CRT, and in the church does not reall6 say anything?

Is the topic that church leaders and thinkers are too driven by use of the dialect OR those trying to infiltrate church thinks use it?
Are we debating the value of it?

Same with CRT.

I stand by the view that CRT is NEVER beneficial because it includes assumptions that it’s supporters view as unquestionable.
That all institutions are inherently racist. I do not agree. Not systemically.

In regards to the dialectics, be in Hegelian or otherwise, the concept are not without value but hardly all conclusive.
I much value a Platonic Dialogue in addressing church matters over. Dialectic methodology.

One must ALWAYS be suspicious of fans of a dialect model in todays society because it is either an attempt to support a Marxist dialect or will end up there. Which by the way is completely wrong (says I).

So much in thinking today mistakes assumptions for conclusions. Take a phrase like diversity is good. I do not see that as proven.
My statement does not mean I reject the reality when diversity has happened (the USA is an example of diversity being of value). But taking a non diverse culture like Sweden, a high trust society with well defined ethos and attitudes towards how they wish their society to function, and injected large numbers of poorly educated Muslim immigrants, who have no interest in assimilation, who do NOT view diversity as a good, does not create a “diversity heaven. It creates conflict. In fact there is your Hegelian dialect in action. Conflict between two different povs about everything from religion to how law works ina society, to language and you get the Hegelian conflict that leads to a new place, BUT the dialect does not guarantee it is a change for the good…just it explains HOW your conflict creates a new reality.

Do not take that as an attack on diversity. It is an example of how “thinkers” set a new reality for us without any real proof.
That is how we get multiple genders and the idea of he/she/they. No one made them PROVE there is any truth to this idea of gender fluidity. Future generations may well look at this movement and equate it with the “learned leaders” that locked Lister away for daylong doctors should wash their hands. Or drowning people to see it they are witches.

[temporal1]

P.40, i’m guilty of reviving a dormant topic.
i’m not responsible for response.

In a politics topic, i added this link below, which i’m quite interested in.
i talk with my grdaughter about it. she and i are oddballs in the family. religion and history. and loads more. everything.
she’s 17 now. we started in on this before she taught herself to read, before school.

when i explained to her in elementary school about life before books and general literacy, she nearly wept.

Voegelin / The Inseparable Marriage: Athens and Jerusalem
https://voegelinview.com/the-inseparabl ... jerusalem/

[Szdfan]

That is not what the documentary claims at all. I watched the brief section where they discussed race

Perhaps you should have watched the entire thing, because then you would have grasped what they were actually claiming. (The same thing went on with The Summit Church's attempt to take over Faith Baptist, which included such shennanigans as Faith Baptist's new leadership colluding with Summit Church to give the building away to Summit Church; spending nearly a million on legal fees; locking the doors so the members couldn't meet for church and instead just set up chairs in the parking lot; filing a bankruptcy immediately after a court ordered the current leadership to relinquish control back to the members; and best of all, revoking the membership of a Vietnam-era veteran who happened to be a black man the day before an important vote was held, whilst simultaneously claiming the membership of the church wasn't willing to "repent of whiteness" and so forth.)

I'm not arguing that there aren't all manner of church takeover shennanigans happening, legal or illegal. Clearly that sort of thing seems to be happening in the big money megachurch Baptist arena.

I'm simply taking issue with YOUR contention that CRT is a weapon used in evangelical or Baptist church takeovers. The videos provide no evidence of that and don't even make that argument.

So I watched all three parts of the Faith Baptist vs. Summit Church documentary and looked at the transcript. There’s no mention in the documentary at all that anyone claimed “the membership of the church wasn't willing to "repent of whiteness" and so forth.”

I only found two mentions regarding CRT or race in the three part, three hour doc, both in Part 2:

At 7:59, one of the congregants complained that a Bible study written by JD Greear was CRT:

The church that we were attending at the time actually did a Bible study—one of J.D. Greear’s Bible studies. My wife and I were kind of detecting something that wasn’t quite right, but we couldn’t put our finger on it. And come to find out later, he was promoting an ideology which we felt was contrary to the Bible leaning towards the CRT, DEI, and basic woke ideology.

This is clearly an individual person’s interpretation of a Bible study they read at another church and not an accusation that Summit leadership used CRT as a way to take over Faith Baptist.

The second mention is at 12:06 when a congregant criticizes JD Greear for mentioning that he had baptized a black guy;

When JD Greear was talking about himself, he was telling a story about a kid he baptized, and he was like, he made sure that he referenced that he was a Black kid. All these guys—the first Black person that I had ever baptized—and it was, it was amazing. And me and my wife looked at each other like, ‘What does it matter?’ That was weird that he had to reference what color the kid was.

That’s all I could find.

What Summit Church did to Faith Baptist was horrific and there’s a lot to unpack here, but I was not able to find any claim in the documentary at all that CRT or race was used as a way to get control of the congregation. I did not find any claim in the documentary that Faith Baptist was told to “repent of their whiteness.”

John, I’d appreciate a time stamp from the Faith Baptist/Summit documentary that would support your claim.

I’ll try to get to the David Platt documentary soon.

[barnhart]

From my own experience those who warn against CRT and the damage it causes are often not able to define it or raise concrete examples. It's always a looming threat "out there".

As I recall Hegel simply observed a pattern of development that most human civilization seemed to follow and projected where it might lead to in the future. The contribution of Marx was to make it doctrine, civilization MUST go in this specific direction.

I think we can learn a lot from both of them, the problems and critiques they raise are based in reality. What we shouldn't do is blindly accept their "solutions". I haven't read widely of either but nearly every solution offered by Marx seems a terrible idea.

One tell that something is has gone off the rails in the anti-CRT movement is many of the same people who warned against the Hegelian dialect dividing society into groups or classes and spoke out about the individual nature of sin precludes institutions from becoming corrupted are now telling us government is corrupted, immigrants are destroying society and to succeed the culture must be controlled by Christians.

I don't know for sure what happened at the Baptist church in question but I would guess the operative sin is power worship, "lording over one another like gentiles" as Jesus said. CRT looks like a convenient boogeyman to stoke culture war outrage.

[Ken]

Same with CRT.

I stand by the view that CRT is NEVER beneficial because it includes assumptions that it’s supporters view as unquestionable.
That all institutions are inherently racist. I do not agree. Not systemically.

This is typical of the criticism of CRT and it is off-base because CRT makes no such claims at all. CRT is simply an analytical tool that can be used to examine how racial bias can exist within institutions despite the fact that the individuals working in those institutions are not, themselves, racist.

I could show you actual concrete examples of this from the world of education if you like. Such has how school district lines are often contain historic gerrymanders that introduce racial bias and economic inequality despite the fact that people working in school districts today are not necessarily racist.

If we cannot understand how these inequalities originate we are unlikely to do a good job addressing them.

[temporal1]

Queen Gertrude:
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

[Bootstrap]

Same with CRT.

I stand by the view that CRT is NEVER beneficial because it includes assumptions that it’s supporters view as unquestionable.
That all institutions are inherently racist. I do not agree. Not systemically.

This is typical of the criticism of CRT and it is off-base because CRT makes no such claims at all. CRT is simply an analytical tool that can be used to examine how racial bias can exist within institutions despite the fact that the individuals working in those institutions are not, themselves, racist.

I could show you actual concrete examples of this from the world of education if you like. Such has how school district lines are often contain historic gerrymanders that introduce racial bias and economic inequality despite the fact that people working in school districts today are not necessarily racist.

If we cannot understand how these inequalities originate we are unlikely to do a good job addressing them.

JayP, I hear your concern — but I don’t think CRT actually claims that all institutions are inherently racist.

For example, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund puts it this way:

Critical Race Theory recognizes that racism is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities.

That’s a lot less extreme. It says that systems that seem neutral can still lead to unfair outcomes — especially when shaped by past injustices. CRT says institutions may need to change if their structures consistently produce inequality, even without proof of racist intent.

Ken, I agree — people can be working in good faith and still be part of systems that need reform. I think CRT can be a helpful lens, as long as it’s not treated as the only one. And some of the louder, more extreme applications of CRT generate more heat than light.

That said, I’m still not seeing CRT as a major influence in most churches.

[JayP]

Actually, we are all right and all wrong about CRT. That is exactly my objection.
It is not a single, “official” thing that you can attest to. Who is THE authority on exactly what CRT Is and is not.

You might not wish to be Catholic. But you can open the catechism and read EXACTLY the RCC position.
CRT is open to various interpretations and descriptions.

And If people think the struggles African Americans have with succeeding within the public education system are primarily dipped to historical racism or that the system is inherently racist you are simply a fool.