Talking about race

Dear Editor,

I was saddened to see Paul Lusk’s letter (en December 2020) and Duncan Forbes’ article (en October 2020) promoting the book We Need to Talk About Race (SPCK 2019) by Ben Lindsay. While his title is not wrong, the content of this book is partisan and less than Biblical.

Lindsay’s book owes far more to the liberation theology of James Cone and his modern ‘woke’ disciples such as Anthony Bradley and Duke Kwon than it does to Scripture, and to modern critical race theory than to the Civil Rights tradition of Washington, Douglass or King. To ‘woke’ evangelicals, facts, rational argument and even Biblical categories must give way to the ethnic gnosticism (Voddie Baucham’s assessment) of the ‘black experience’. Thus, in this book, key Biblical doctrines such as sin, justice and repentance are redefined: instead of being an intentional thought or act, the sin of racism becomes the phantom menace of ‘systemic racism’ for which Biblical repentance is inadequate, even impossible. Paul asserts that ‘love does not keep a record of wrongs’, but the woke even keep records of imagined slights, feelings of discomfort and perceived ‘funny looks’. And the records return to the tenth generation: you are guilty of your ancestors’ sins. Your only recourse is the modern equivalent of indulgences – reparations, by which you may hope, not to release your ancestors from purgatory (as in the medieval example), but to free yourself (perhaps only temporarily) from the burden they bequeathed to you: your inescapable ‘whiteness’. There is a caveat here and there in the book, but Lindsay’s is essentially the standard woke message.

I thank God that even in secular society a large number of black people dissent from this narrative: a whole stream of conservative intellectuals in the USA (Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, etc.), but many in the UK too (the writers at the Equiano Project, journalists like Esther Krakue and Calvin Robinson, MPs like Bim Afolami, and Kemi Badenoch – who believes the UK is the best country in the world to be black). Pastor Lindsay believes that ‘Christians are called to redeem entire cultures’. Even if you believe that, this book’s attenuated gospel will only confirm modern society in its idolatrous rush towards the abyss. Moreover, it will divide the church – the whole point of wokeness is division.

Lindsay seems unaware of all this, and equally oblivious to the many Christians who have written wisely on these matters, such as Kevin DeYoung and Tim Challies. If a black Christian voice is required, there are many sermons, articles, blogs, podcasts, etc. online from Voddie Baucham, Abraham Hamilton, Samuel Sey, Darrell Harrison, or Virgil Walker. I would urge Pastors Lindsay and Forbes, and readers of this letter to acquaint themselves with these godly writers. Here is a sample from Samuel Sey:

‘… the gospel isn’t about liberation from oppression. Social justice isn’t a gospel issue. Racial justice isn’t a central message of the gospel. And any theology that says otherwise is ashamed of the gospel.’

Yours in Christ, Prof Colin Reeves Rugby