Social Justice And Critical Theory 1

Recognize Neil Shenvi as the originator of the outline used in this lesson.

Credit to Neil Shenvi for the outline to this lesson.

Thanks to Jeff who did an incredible job last week explaining for us reasons why we believe the Bible holds the authority to shape our worldview.

The first week, I talked about what a worldview is.

The second week, I taught on a Christian view of politics and political engagement.

Now, for the next two weeks, I want to talk about social justice and critical theory.

First, I want to say, my desire to talk about social justice and critical theory is not politically motivated, but it is theologically motivated.

What I mean is, while these kinds of terms get thrown around in political conversation, I want to show you how social justice and critical theory has actually turned into a worldview for many people in our culture, and I want to show you how these worldviews stand at odds with the Biblical worldview.

So, we are going to learn some things together about this secular worldview that is dominating more and more of our culture everyday then learn the biblical worldview response to it.

You know, I grew up in the day where Christian companies were always ripping off secular companies ideas:

Testamints

Jesus - Pepsi shirt

Mayo Light Shine

Abreadcrumb & Fish

And in the same way, a lot of Christians today are trying to mesh the teachings of social justice and critical theory with Christianity, but it just don’t work.

But first,

I. Why Should We Care?

I want to list off for you a list of terms that you have heard recently if you have any cultural engagement at all:

Terms that we hear in our culture these days:

Marxism, feminism, ageism, ableism, being woke, LGBTQ+, systemic racism, whiteness, liberation theology, deconstructing the faith

All of these terms and so many more have dominated cultural conversation in the past 3-5 years, and believe it or not, it is all because of the growing worldview of what is known as social justice and critical theory.

Our concern for this study is theological.

Here is how, many Christian young people are leaving their Bible believing churches and are going off to colleges that teach them things like:

Christianity is an oppressive religion.

Christians should be a lot less focused on teaching and doctrine, and much more focused on liberating the poor and oppressed.

The hope of society really takes place through activism and revolutionizing society.

And these kinds of ideas lead young Christians to deconstruct their faith.

Have you ever heard seemingly crazy ideas like in these fake texts?

By showing people how to recognize the fundamental assumptions of critical theory, I hope to equip them to evaluate it carefully and biblically.

II. What Is Critical Theory?

Of course, if we were in an academic setting, we might walk through the history of social justice and critical theory, but for our purposes, I want to simply teach you the basis premises.

I’m going to show you six: three major ones and three minor ones. In this section, I’ll explain each belief and illustrate it.

I’m hoping that you’ll see how pervasive these ideas really are. You see them all the time, in movies, in music, on social media, on the news, and in lecture halls all over the country.

Oppressor vs. oppressed

Premise 1: “our individual identity, who we are as individuals, is inseparable from our group identity.”

In particular, our individual identity depends on whether we are part of a dominant, oppressor group or a subordinate, oppressed group with respect to a given identity marker like race, class, gender, physical ability, or age.

For example, Peggy McIntosh, who popularized the phrase ‘white privilege’ in a seminal 1988 paper, writes “My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor”

In other words, she was an oppressor, but she didn’t know it.

“…I was taught [wrongly] to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will.”

According to critical theory, it’s not possible for you to say “Ok, I understand that there are racist white people out there. I’m not denying that. But that’s not me. I should be treated as an individual, not just as a member of a group.”

Critical theorists deny that you can understand your identity apart from your membership in a dominant group.

How do we see this claim emerge in practice?

Here’s an interesting example.

First, in debates about tech industry leadership, people often criticize figures like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk not just for their individual decisions, but for being part of a larger demographic group.

For instance, complaints may center around “tech billionaires” or “rich white men in Silicon Valley,” suggesting that these individuals represent a broader class or group. Rather than focusing solely on Zuckerberg's or Musk's specific actions, the criticism broadens to address the power and influence of wealthy white men as a whole in the tech industry.

Tech billionaires are harshly criticized all the time in our society.

I read in a very popular paper where a professor said that all tech billionaires deserve to die miserable deaths.

Second, try substituting any other demographic group for “tech billionaires.” Could you imagine how much greater the outrage would be if a professor “miserable deaths” of “old Asian women” or “poor Hispanics”?  What’s the difference?

The difference arises from power dynamics. These other demographic groups are not dominant oppressor groups; therefore, it is not socially acceptable in most settings to mock or deride them as a group.

On the other hand, it is not as problematic to mock or deride “tech billionaires” because they are an oppressor group.

Oppression through hegemonic power

Premise 2: “Oppressor groups subjugate oppressed groups through the exercise of hegemonic power.”

Hegemonic power is the ability to impose your group’s values, expectations, and norms on the rest of society.

In this way, hegemonic power is distinguished from money, or influence, or mere numbers.

Listen to Sensoy and DiAngelo: “In any relationship between groups that define one another (men/women, able-bodied/disabled, young/old), the dominant group is the group that is valued more highly. 

Dominant groups set the norms by which the minoritized group is judged.”

Given this premise, we can see why men or whites or heterosexuals or the rich are classified as ‘oppressors.’

When critical theorists make this claim, they are not necessarily saying that all men or all whites or all heterosexuals engage in “prolonged or cruel unjust treatment or control.” 

That would be the dictionary definition of ‘oppression.’  

That’s not the definition that critical theorists are using.

Instead, they’re arguing that these dominant groups, as groups, have imposed their values on society.

That’s why they can say that a man is an oppressor even if he has never treated a woman cruelly or unkindly in his entire life.

It also explains why power has nothing to do with numerical size.

For instance, only 31% of the U.S. population is white and male and only half of white men are older than 45. 

Yet ‘old white men’ are regarded as the canonical dominant, oppressor group, despite being only a small fraction of the U.S. population.

This is also why you experience the phenomena of otherwise very progressive people preferring Islam while hating Christianity.

Or why people on college campuses protest against Israel in favor or Hamas.

Liberation as a moral duty

Premise 3: “our fundamental moral duty is freeing groups from oppression.”

Here’s feminist Suzanne Pharr: “These political times call for renewed dialogue about and commitment to the politics of liberation…

Liberation requires a struggle against discrimination based on race, class, gender, sexual identity, ableism and age.” 

What are the implications of this commitment?

Notice that ‘liberating groups from oppression’ is our fundamental moral duty.

It’s very rare for proponents of critical theory to explicitly affirm or promote moral duties like honesty, kindness, patience, chastity, marital fidelity, or self-control.

Even when they talk about money, the duties of personal charity, personal generosity, and personal giving are rarely discussed.

Instead, the discourse centers on dismantling unjust structures. This focus on group liberation can have serious implications.

One example of ‘liberation’ displacing all other moral concerns can be seen in groups like Antifa.

Two years ago, a member of Antifa hit a Trump supporter in the head with a bike lock, not because he was doing anything violent – he was just talking- but because he was a Trump supporter.

Amazingly, the man who committed the assault had taught ethics at a local university.

Here, even moral imperatives like “you shouldn’t hit people with bike locks” are considered to be less important than abstract goals like “resisting oppression.” 

Obviously, Antifa is an extreme example, but it shows this principle at work in practice.

Lived experience vs. objective evidence

Premise 4: “‘Lived experience’ is more important than objective evidence in understanding oppression.”

Listen to Anderson and Collins: “The idea that objectivity is best reached only through rational thought is a specifically Western and masculine way of thinking – one that we will challenge throughout this book.”

What do they propose to supplement rational thought?

Story. Narrative. Personal testimony. Lived experience.

Furthermore, because ‘lived experience’ outweighs evidence, people from oppressed groups have special insight into truth that is fundamentally unavailable to people from oppressor groups.

If you are not a member of an oppressed group, you are expected to listen and learn from oppressed people; you are not permitted to challenge their claims.

We can see this premise at work in the abortion debate. It’s common for men who attempt to discuss abortion to be told: “No Uterus, No opinion.” 

You can even buy T-shirts emblazoned with that slogan.

Why? One reason is that a man, as an oppressor, cannot understand the lived experience of women, who are oppressed.

Therefore, he should have no opinion on what are considered to be “women’s issues.”

As an oppressor, he must defer to the opinion of the oppressed group.

The guise of objectivity

Premise 5: “Oppressor groups hide their oppression under the guise of objectivity.”

The claim being made is that there are no completely neutral observers who present us with totally objective ‘facts.’

Instead, oppressor groups ‘claim’ that their observations are neutral, but this claim is only a strategy to cloak their will to dominate.

One might think that this premise would be limited to controversial statements about politics or psychology, but some critical theorists are willing to take this claim to an extreme conclusion.

For example, the abstract of a recent paper on feminist glaciology (glaciology is the study of glaciers) argues that science can be “gendered” and that “the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.”

I know that sounds like a hoax, but it is a legitimate peer-reviewed article written by a sincere author.

And it’s fully consistent with the view of human knowledge put forward by critical theorists.

Intersectionality

Premise 6: “Individuals at the intersection of different oppressed groups experience oppression in a unique way.”

Here’s a quote from the authors of an influential book on critical race theory: “Imagine a black woman [who may be] a single working mother… She experiences, potentially, not only multiple forms of oppression but ones unique to her and to others like her.” 

The authors here are expressing the concept of intersectionality: the idea that our identities interact in complicated ways.

Where do we see intersectionality?

Here are two photos from the Women’s March in 2017.

This first sign provides a good example of intersectionality.

On the one hand, women of all color can find solidarity in their common experience of male oppression. But not so fast! 

The woman with the sign points out that a majority of white women voted for Trump.

Even at an avowedly anti-Trump event that was organized to protest his election, intersectionality is relevant.

Race and gender intersect so that shared gender is not necessarily enough of a basis for solidarity.

As the second sign declares: “Feminism without intersectionality is just white supremacy.”

Women of color will not necessarily have the same concerns as white women, so any feminist coalition needs to avoid centering the concerns of the dominant group.

I hope I’ve convinced you that critical theory helps to explain many phenomena. If we understand it, we can understand a lot of what’s happening in the secular social justice movement, in academia, in our culture, and in our politics.

III. Why is Social Justice and Critical Theory Attractive?

First, the greatest strength of critical theory is its recognition that oppression is evil. The Bible is emphatic in its condemnation of oppression in both the Old and New Testaments. 

Jesus himself is described as ‘oppressed and afflicted’; God identifies with suffering people and commands his followers to seek justice on their behalf.

Now, keep in mind that the Bible and the dictionary define ‘oppression’ very differently than critical theorists.

Nonetheless, when those in authority are using their power to crush and abuse the powerless, Christians should absolutely be defending the rights of the powerless.

Second, critical theory’s focus on groups rather than on individuals provides insight into how laws and institutions can promote sin.

Take chattel slavery in the U.S. or the Holocaust or apartheid in South Africa.

Clearly, these horrors shouldn’t be exclusively understood as individual acts of immorality.

In all of these examples, immorality was codified and written into law. 

The law then informed and shaped human moral intuitions, as it always does. 

Human beings were individually morally responsible for their actions, but laws and institutions and systems dramatically amplified the effects of human wickedness.

Finally, hegemonic power does exist and it can have an insidious effect on our norms and values. 

Here’s an example that will resonate with conservatives: think about how Hollywood and Madison Avenue define standards of beauty and sexuality.

Think about how hard we have to work as Christian parents to teach our children that women are not sex objects and that real beauty is internal, not merely external.

The way in which the entertainment and advertising industries shape how we understand human value is an example of hegemonic power with respect to beauty.

Next week, we will look at how the worldview of Social Justice and Critical Theory conflicts with a biblical worldview.

IV. Books For Study Further:

Critical Dilemma: The Rise of Critical Theories and Social Justice Ideology - Implications for the Church and Society

By Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer

Faultlines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe

By Voddie T. Baucham Jr.