As a Christian minister, I’m used to being stifled when I talk about my religion outside of church. If I bring up faith in Jesus Christ, the guardians of the secular public square are quick to inform me that my religion is strictly a private matter.
But these days I’m stifled not because of the religion I practice but because of one I reject: the religion of antiracism, which is now the established church of academia, government, the media and business.
One dogma of this new religion is that America “needs to have a conversation” about race. But Americans have been talking about race since at least the 1860s. Nobody is trying to avoid talking about race, but many are trying to control what is said.
The elites of our society urge us to “elevate black voices,” but it is important to understand what they mean. They don’t want to elevate all black voices, but only those who subscribe to the creed of Critical Race Theory. If you don’t avow that our society is infected with systemic racism and that white supremacy, white privilege, and white fragility are the root of all of the problems that black people face, then you are a heretic. Your consciousness is “white” and therefore oppressive, no matter how black your skin may be.
I am a descendant of slaves and a child of the Great Migration, but antiracists will tell you that I’m not really black. I suffer from internalized racism, they insist; I’m trying to “curry favor with white people.” They dismiss me and other black nonconformists as sellouts, traitors, or Uncle Toms who are “skinfolk, but not kinfolk.” Consider the slurs that the voices of “tolerance” have flung at Sen. Tim Scott since he gave the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
What does it tell us about our “conversation” about race that the very people who demand it would exclude unconventional black thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Carol Swain, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter and the late Walter Williams? There is no rational debate in the church of antiracism, for it demands a blind faith. And it is punitive, for it is a religion without grace.
That’s why antiracist ideologues try to silence black voices like mine. We threaten not only their opinions but their religion, their god. Even Barack Obama falls short. The “woke” priesthood prevented a public school in Chicago from being renamed for the former president because “he didn’t do enough for illegal immigrants.”
Antiracism and the “woke” priesthood are targeting not merely the “wrong” black voices. They are coming for all of us. You might acquiesce to their demands today, but they will continue to demand more and more of you. Your official statements will not be remorseful enough. Your reparations packages will not be big enough. Your diversity initiatives will not be diverse enough. You cannot appease the god of antiracism.
I have devoted my life to preaching the Gospel of Christ. Now I am confronted with the anti-gospel of antiracism, which preaches that there is no forgiveness for America’s “original sin” of racism, no repentance for white privilege. At the preaching of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officers, corporate CEOs and university presidents tremble and cry, “What must we do to be saved?” Apparently, they missed the fine print.
Perhaps they need to start listening to a different set of black voices … or at least practicing a different religion.
Dr. Voddie Baucham Jr. is the author of “Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe” (Salem Books), out now. For more information, visit www.voddiebaucham.org
