This Sunday is “Racial Reconciliation Sunday,” as bequeathed by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. As a part of that effort, they have released free bulletin inserts to advertise the theme-day and promote the ERLC.
The insert begins with a quotation from Martin Luther King, who they said “famously spoke of the ‘fierce urgency of now’ in the pursuit of racial justice.”
Matthew Hall, the author of the ERLC piece, writes, “While his critics seemed to assume that the ‘wheels of inevitability’ would bring about progress, King recognized that the call to direct action was one deeply rooted in a realistic and biblical vision of the world and God’s purposes.” Research into the doctrines and beliefs of King might reveal a less-than-adequate “biblical vision,” but we can’t really blame the ERLC for invoking King’s name and that’s not the point of this update. The point, rather, is to apprise you of the term “racial justice” as repeatedly used by the ERLC, its origins and meaning.
Whereas racial equality is a Biblical and God-honoring mandate for Christian cultures, “racial justice” is a term steeped in, born out of, saturated with and irrevocably linked to marxist social progressivism.
“Racial Justice” is defined as “a proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes and actions that produce equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment, impacts and outcomes for all” (source link). And “racial justice” is repeatedly written of as a godly goal of the ERLC in their insert they’ve designed for this Sunday (pictured below). Frankly, the insert looks like something that one could expect to see in a American Baptist or United Church of Christ bulletin.
A Biblical worldview aims to declare the equality of people from all races and inherent equality in their design before God and their legal standing under the civil magistrate. The concept of “racial justice” demands the equitable “power” and “outcome” for all people. Conservatives think of equality in terms of opportunities and social progressives think of equality in terms of outcomes. This is why those who incite racial disunity like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson will never meet their desired end; the end does not come until all individuals have an equal share of the economic pie.
Pivotal to the promotion of “racial justice” is the notion of institutionalized and systemic racism, and the diminishing of individual responsibility. The ERLC has regularly promoted the idea that institutionalized and systemic racism exists in America over the course Russell Moore’s tenure (source link). This systemic and institutionalized racism can be proven, Moore and other progressives argue, because there are demographic “inequities” that make certain ethnicities “disadvantaged.” This class and race warfare, ironically enough, leads to the exact opposite of racial harmony and reconciliation.
The fact is, conservative organizations simply do not talk about “racial justice” because they recognize that it is a Marxist catchword that prevents racial harmony and promotes social progressive political theory designed to “level the playing field,” but ends up perpetuating mass poverty and government dependency. Russell Moore’s ERLC continues to use the term racial justice frequently nonetheless. However, the ACLU, United Methodist Women, Bernie Sanders and other progressivist outfits use the term racial justice with frequency because it is from their lexicon. Why is the ERLC using the term?
So-called “racial justice” is fundamentally opposed to a Biblical worldview, and is a part of the field of Marxist “social justice” (read here to understand the link between social justice and Marxism). And simply put, the SBC’s new Moore-led ERLC has absolutely no problem with social justice.
Moore and his defenders, no doubt, will probably argue that he’s just slyly adopting the terminology of the left, that he means the term differently than the way everyone else uses it, and that its his way of “engaging the culture.”
Either that, or the former Democratic staffer is exactly who we’ve been warning you he is…a social progressive trojan horse in the SBC.