Using the explicit terminology of Critical Race Theory and Identity Politics, the website belonging to JD Greear just posted a daily devotional explaining why Christians should be giving up their “privilege.”
JD Greear is the ‘woke’ President of the Southern Baptist Convention, and you can read more about him here. Greear has recently been tweeting the ultra-leftist views of a lesbian, has said that voting for Democrats in 2020 is “great,” has claimed that saying Muslims and Christians worship the same God ‘has merit,’ and earlier in January of this year preached that it’s our obligation as Christians to “spread the privilege around,” which is how Neo-Marxists say, “redistribute wealth.”
In a podcast back in January, Greear defined “privilege” as “a kind of invisible set of [unearned] assets.” Christians call such things “blessings,” while Marxists call it, “privilege.” Christians praise God for blessings, Marxists lament them. Christians pray for more blessings, Marxists demand that people give up the privilege they already have. At the time, Greear’s remarks – clearly stained with overt Identity Politics – got the attention and received the ire of theologians like Alex MacFarland, who called it plainly for what it was.
However, in a devotional today that went out on Summit Church’s website entitled, Three Ways to Lay Down Your Privilege, the author uses James and John’s argument about the seating arrangement in Heaven as recorded from Mark’s Gospel and then makes the following bizarre eisegetical twist:
In one statement, Jesus flips the world’s relationship with power upside down. Everyone who possesses power, in this world or God’s kingdom, possesses privilege. Those in the world use their privilege for their own benefit. Those of us in God’s family, however, have the privilege of laying down our power for the benefit of others.
Jesus’ comment in the passage was, “Whoever wants to become great shall become a servant.”
This was nothing about ethnic power dynamics, systemic prejudices, White Privilege, or the Proletariate versus the Bourgeoisie. This is Scripture-twisting on the part of JD Greear, not unlike that engaged in by the many theists who have wed a perverted theology to Marxism over the years.
Greear’s website writes…
Do you live, work, or worship in an environment where your race, gender, or even personality type is the majority? If so, you possess power and privilege. Don’t apologize—rejoice! You have a unique opportunity to love God and others well. Here are three ways our church is learning how to do this-
Again, this idea is Critical Race Theory. It is not like Critical Race Theory. It is not similar to Critical Race Theory. It is not derivative of Critical Race Theory. It is Critical Race Theory.
The notion that if you belong to a majority identity group you innately have power or privilege should be explained to the great many homeless people in Portland who are Caucasian, or should have been explained to black people of South African during Apartheid. Likewise, the idea that a person of a minority identity group doesn’t have power or privilege (say, for example, a black president of the United States), is equally asinine.
The three demands placed upon those in majority identity groups in the article include: (1) look at minority identity groups, (2) listen to minority identity groups, and (3) hand over your privilege and blessings to them.
Alan McCulloch, who wrote the article for Greear’s website, says…
My prayer for the church is that we would rejoice in the privilege of laying down power rather than wallowing in the bondage of protecting it.
The “power” terminology is, again, part-and-parcel to Critical Race Theory, which views everything through the lens of a power and privilege dynamic.
As the Harvard website explains about CRT, “Critical race theories combine progressive political struggles for racial justice with critiques of the conventional legal and scholarly norms…One key focus of critical race theorists is a regime of privilege maintained despite the rule of law [which already provides] equal protection of the laws.”
The solution to race-based privilege, according to CRT, is to guilt majority classes into giving minority classes their wealth, privilege, or power and if unsuccessful, to redistribute such things through the power of democracy.
Albert Mohler recently denied there was a leftward turn in the SBC in the Baptist Press. However, it’s hard to say that with a straight face considering this far-left extremism is coming straight from the Southern Baptist president.
