Why Modern Christians Separate Faith and Politics

In every culture, law is religious in origin and so it must be recognized that in any social order the source of law is the god of that society and that to which the people have bound themselves. To change the law order is then an implicit or explicit change in religion – revealing a change of gods (allegiance) in that political realm. This further implies that no absolute disestablishment of religion is actually possible in any society. A culture can certainly disestablish one faith or church, but it merely replaces that faith with another one, be it Islamic, Buddhist or any other humanistic faith. This is clearly what has taken place in the modern West. We have traded the God of the Bible for the god of the state (man enlarged), where the ‘will of the people,’ personified by an elite bureaucracy, now redefines law in the name of the people, the new god. This has been in no small part due to a faulty theology amongst Christians and the consequent abdication of responsibility by the church in the socio-political sphere. Due to the philosophical dualism that has so greatly influenced the church (discussed in chapter two), modern Christians have tended to separate God’s law and covenant from real history and implicitly assumed that the state is not actually accountable to God’s standards.

Joseph Boot in The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society

How to be an Antiracist – A Review

Ibram X. Kendi has been described as one of the foremost historians and leading voices of antiracism. He is a New York Times #1 best selling author and a contributing writer at the Atlantic, just to list a few of his accolades.[1]

In 2019, Kendi published “How to be an Antiracist” which was praised by the New York Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind”[2]

In this book Kendi offers a personal memoir in which he retells significant events from his life and explores philosophical ideas around race and racism. The book maps Kendi’s own journey towards ‘antiracist’ ideology.

What I found particularly helpful about this book is how forthright Kendi is about the radical nature of his beliefs. Many Critical Theorists and grievance hustlers are often too embarrassed to state their true intentions outright. Not Kendi. From out the gate, he is willing to espouse the most radical forms of Critical Theory ideology and put into words what his contemporaries are sheepish to admit.

For example, on page 18 he says this

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. An antiracist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial equity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people. There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups.[3]

Now consider just how radical a claim this is. “Any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity”. By this standard, the policy that makes murder illegal would be considered a racist policy because this policy produces a disparity between the races. What Kendi refuses to recognise is that proportional representation in outcomes is something that has not been achieved or even approximated in any society in recorded history.[4] Moreover, in order to achieve proportionate outcomes, governments and institutions must discriminate against people on the basis of race or ethnicity.

What might this idea look like in practice? Well, in New Zealand, a surgeon might triage his patients and determine who needs surgery most urgently and create a waiting list based on urgency. He may also take into account how long a patient has been waiting. Both these factors would be considered racist by people like Kendi because these sorts of policies produce a disparity between different ethnicities. Instead what surgeons now have to do is give priority to Pacific Island and Maori patients in order to create more ‘equitable’ results.[5] Surgeons need to discriminate against people based on their ethnicity in order to be ‘antiracist’.

Now before I am accused of misrepresenting Kendi’s positions here; Kendi himself is happy to state this explicitly. He says this on page 19;

The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.[6]

Ibram X. Kendi is more than happy to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin. He is happily content to award certain people with advantages and burden certain people with disadvantages based purely on their participation in one ethnic group or another.

By any meaningful standard, Kendi is a racist.

He is an ethnic discriminator. He is the one who treats people differently based on the colour of their skin. The great irony of Kendi’s book is that it is a masterful work of projection. The guy who openly calls for race-based discrimination has the gall to call racist anyone who might advocate for impartiality and equal treatment before the law.

RACIST: One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.[7]

Kendi is not anti-discrimination, rather, in many cases he is pro-discrimination. For Critical Theorists any disparity has to be explained by some form of oppression. Kendi has a predetermined commitment to the worldview of oppression. He does not examine the evidence to determine whether or not racism exists, rather, racism and oppression are the very lenses through which he examines all evidence. So overriding is this principle that Kendi can assert;

A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.[8]

In his attempt to get rid of any other explanation for disparities, Kendi wants to make clear that the cause for disparity cannot be the results of any factors within the group itself. For example, suggesting that educational disparities between Asian students and Black students are a result of cultural difference, namely that Asians generally value education more than Blacks, is considered racist. Yet studies show that Asian students prefer to spend more time doing school work than Blacks.[9] These disparities are not peculiar to Blacks in America. In Australia, Chinese students spent more than twice as much time on homework as their White counterparts.[10]

Kendi is not concerned with these kinds of explanatory tools, however. Like other Critical Theorists, he simply considers empirical evidence, soundness, and reason to be tools of oppression.[11]

Anyone who would suggest paths of cultural improvement is merely an ‘assimilationist’;

ASSIMILATIONIST: One who is expressing the racist idea that a racial group is culturally or behaviorally inferior and is supporting cultural or behavioral enrichment programs to develop that racial group.[12]

Seventy percent of black children are born to single mothers. The black community would be enriched if they raised children in stable two-parent households. Children from fatherless homes are more likely to be poor, become involved in drug and alcohol abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to become pregnant as teens.[13] Pointing this out is not racist. Refusing to recognise responsibility for this cause of disparity and suffering is what truly damages communities and cultures.

The full destructive force is seen later in the book when Kendi advocates the tearing down of capitalism, and why not? When people are free to own property and make decisions based on their own preferences, disparity will result. Some ideas are better than others. Some products are better than others. Some people are able to generate more wealth and produce more than others. All of this, by Kendi’s definition, is racist;

To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism. The conjoined twins are two sides of the same destructive body.[14]

Kendi’s vision of utopian equity is unachievable in a free society. When people are free to make decisions for themselves disparity will always exist. This is not a bad thing. No one complains that Pacific Islanders are ‘over-represented’ in the All Blacks. No one complains that Blacks are over-represented in the NBA.

If we want to manufacture equal outcomes in all institutions, then the only way this is achieved is through the kind of tyrannical oppression that has wrought misery and suffering throughout the globe. Communism and socialism share Kendi’s goals of equitable outcomes, and the fruit of this ideology has been 100 million dead in the last century.

It is frightening that Kendi seems fine with top-down oppression in order to achieve his utopia. It is even more frightening that people who consider themselves compassionate and on the side of the oppressed are praising his book and supporting his deadly ideas. Elsewhere Kendi has advocated an “antiracist amendment” to the constitution;

To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different racial groups are equals. The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials (with “racist ideas” and “public official” clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees. The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies to ensure they won’t yield racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.[15]

Great! Just what we need… An antiracist police force that can wield disciplinary tools over those who aren’t discriminating against people based on race. Will these disciplinary tools include Gulags?

So, in summary, in order to be antiracist, we all need to start discriminating against people on the basis of race, we need to abandon capitalism and we need a tyrannical government agency to punish anyone who doesn’t get with the program.

With that in mind, I guess I’m okay with being the kind of hideous racist who thinks that we should treat all people equally.


[1] For more bio information see this link; https://www.ibramxkendi.com/about

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/books/review/how-to-be-an-antiracist-ibram-x-kendi.html

[3] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 18). Random House.

[4] Horowitz, D. L. (1985). Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley, University of California Press. p. 677

[5] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/121640802/mori-and-pasifika-given-priority-in-elective-surgery-waitlists

[6] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 19). Random House.

[7] Ibid (p. 13)..

[8] Ibid (p. 20).

[9] Thomas D. Snyder, Cristobal de Brey and Sally A. Dillow, Digest of Education Statistics: 2015, 51st edition (Washington: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2016), pp. 328, 329.

[10] Sowell, Thomas. Discrimination and Disparities (p. 102). Basic Books.

[11] Bailey, A. (2017) Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback. p. 181 “By interrogating the politics of knowledge-production, this tradition also calls into question the uses of the accepted critical-thinking toolkit to determine epistemic adequacy. To extend Audre Lorde’s classic metaphor, the tools of the critical thinking tradition (for example, validity, soundness, conceptual clarity) cannot dismantle the master’s house:”

[12] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 24). Random House.

[13] https://fathers.com/statistics-and-research/the-consequences-of-fatherlessness/

[14] Kendi, Ibram X.. How To Be an Antiracist (p. 163). Random House.

[15] https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politics-in-america/inequality/pass-an-anti-racist-constitutional-amendment/

Don’t Be This Parent

Here is a quote from Father Hunger by Douglas Wilson. He is commenting on what often happens when parents finally ask for outside help after experiencing persistent long term parenting difficulties.

When parents finally get real help from someone who is willing to be honest about what is going on in their family, and how they got to where they are, it is in the highest degree likely that father or mother, or both, will be offended. Part of the reason why they have gotten this far without hearing what they need to hear is that many of their friends instinctively know this. The temptation for the struggling parent will be to think that the person who finally speaks up “doesn’t understand,” or “has a simplistic approach,” or “doesn’t know the family dynamics,” and so on. And the longer it takes for someone to finally say something, the more it seems like an intervention when it finally does happen.

Douglas Wilson in Father Hunger

Excuses for Avoiding the Responsibility of Christian Education #2

Christians in the West are gripped in a fearful idolatry. We, like the ancient Israelites, cannot decide who we worship. Elijah asked the Israelites, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” Today we could say, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions. If Christ is king, follow him, but if the state, then follow it.” Nowhere is this idolatry more obvious than in our capitulation in education. Christians give their children to the enemies of Christ in the hope that their minds will be trained. A few weeks ago we began a series on the excuses Christian parents make for avoiding the responsibility of Christian education. There we looked at perhaps the most sanctified excuse – that of wanting our children to be salt and light. Today we investigate another common excuse: socialisation.

Excuse 2: Socialisation

Many parents have noticed that children who are homeschooled, and even to a certain extent children who attend Christian schools (and I’m not talking about the Christian veneer type schools, but Christian down to the roots types), are…well different. They tend not to be as aware of or obsessed with current fashions in clothing, music and thought. It shows. And parents, because they love their children, do not want their children to have a tough time. They want them to have friends and fit in. They don’t want ‘nerdy’ children. They often want their children to be ‘cool’.

However, this ought not to be the primary goal of a Christian parent. We should seek holiness for our children. And that ought to mean they are different to the children brought up with the secular values of mainstream society. Socialisation is the process of a child internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Now if a society is secular and anti-Christ, then we ought not to want that for our children. In fact, if we want that, we cannot call ourselves Christians in any meaningful way. A Christian wants what Christ wants, and Christ wants followers who are not of the world. We want our children to be different. They ought not to fit in. They ought to be an irritation to a society that is in high rebellion to Christ because they will be constantly reminding them of their need to repent, not only by their speech but by their different values expressed in the way they live with Christ as Lord of all.

In Idols for Destruction, Herbert Sclossberg deals briefly with the concept of socialisation and a Christian response.

Society’s most important institutions serve the socializing function, making people better balance and adjusted to the way things are. And that is why they are so dangerous. All education is of necessity value-laden, and the public school is the most powerful of these instruments of conformity. Its goal is to instil society’s norms and to discredit deviant ideas. The best elements of the Christian school movement…is a determined No! by parents to the homogenization of American life, a recognition that the model to which their children are intended to be conformed has become evil.

Masculinity

Simply put, masculinity is the glad assumption of sacrificial responsibility. A man who assumes responsibility is learning masculinity, and a culture that encourages men to take responsibility is a culture that is a friend to masculinity.

Douglas Wilson in Father Hunger

The Directory for Private (Family) Worship #14

Today we complete our look at the Directory for Private Worship with the fourteenth direction and the concluding paragraph. First the last direction.

XIV. When persons of divers families are brought together by Divine Providence, being abroad upon their particular vocations, or any necessary occasions; as they would have the Lord their God with them whithersoever they go, they ought to walk with God, and not neglect the duties of prayer and thanksgiving, but take care that the same be performed by such as the company shall judge fittest. And that they likewise take heed that no corrupt communication proceed out of their mouths, but that which is good, to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace to the hearers.

The authors of the directory recognise that there will be times in life where members of a family may be away from each other and perhaps thrown together with other Christians. These Christians will greatly desire God’s presence with them, and therefore they ought not to neglect private worship in these peculiar settings. With Christian wisdom, they will determine who should best lead the ‘family’ worship in these times in such a way as to avoid corrupting speech but rather promote speech that edifies.

The concluding paragraph turns to the two main purposes of the Directory.

The drift and scope of all these Directions is no other, but that, upon the one part, the power and practice of godliness, amongst all the ministers and members of this kirk, according to their several places and vocations, may be cherished and advanced, and all impiety and mocking of religious exercises suppressed: and, upon the other part, that, under the name and pretext of religious exercises, no such meetings or practices be allowed, as are apt to breed error, scandal, schism, contempt, or misregard of the publick ordinances and ministers, or neglect of the duties of particular callings, or such other evils as are the works, not of the Spirit, but of the flesh, and are contrary to truth and peace.

Firstly, the aim of the Directions is to encourage godliness amongst the members of the church while suppressing impiety and godlessness. Secondly, the Directions seek to prevent meetings that are liable to lead to error or schism and a disregard of the church authorities. This is an interesting aim that clashes with modern sensibilities. We do not think that the church authorities ought to determine who we meet with and share the Scriptures with. It’s something I haven’t had to think too deeply about. While I wholeheartedly agree that every Christian ought to be a member of a local church and be under the authority and pastoral care of church leaders there, I wonder if it is too high-handed for such a controlled approach to Christians meeting together. Do church leaders have the legitimate (by which I mean God-given) authority to control which Christians meet with others to share Scripture and talk about their faith? While I can see a biblical mandate for elders rooting out heresy and contending with those who are attempting to create schisms, it seems that this would be better done by shepherds knowing the flock well rather than trying to prevent ‘unauthorised’ meetings. Perhaps I’m wrong here. I’d be interested to know if there is a biblical warrant for such a heavy-handed approach.

Incompetence and Waste

Those who are regular readers will know that we at The Sojournal are opponents of statism. We believe the state has a legitimate role. It is indeed a minister of God, but it has rebelled against God’s role for it and has arrogated more and more power. We have theological reasons for opposing much of its spending and regarding it as theft. However, we understand that not all Christians are yet theologically convinced of our position. After all, most of us have grown up in an environment of statism. It is only natural for us to assume it is normal and right. It’s an unquestioned assumption in our lives. It’s hard to see our cultural blind spots.

However, let me appeal to the pragmatists among you. State control of things outside what we at The Sojournal consider to be their God-given realm tends to be inept and incompetent. You know this. Accountability matters. And when you can’t take your business elsewhere, there is no accountability, and therefore there is always wastage. Today let’s consider the much-vaunted Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches Programme.

On the Ministry of Education website, we are informed that school lunches will be provided at a maximum per child, per day cost of $5 per Year 1-8 student and $7 for high school students. Now any parent with a few kids living on a budget knows that you can feed your children a healthy lunch for under $5 easy. But even this amount seems mild compared to the actual cost to the taxpayer.

A screen capture from the MOE website on 28 August 2021. Highlighting is mine.

According to the Treasury budget at a glance document for 2021, we are allocating $527,000,000 toward the school lunches programme. According to the document which is dated 20 May 2021, there are currently 144,000 students receiving these ‘free’ lunches. Now let’s do a little basic arithmetic. $527 million, divided by 144,000 students should give us the amount it costs to feed one child lunches per year. Then let’s divide that number by the number of school days in a year (190 in 2021). This gives us a figure of $19.26 per child. Now let’s be generous and assume that there is going to be an increase in the number of children being fed. Let’s #be kind and assume that they managed to get this up to 200,000 students. That would reduce the cost to $13.87 per child.

What does it actually cost to feed a child? I feed my children 2-4 slices of bread for lunch, with their favourite spread and provide them with a piece of fruit as well. Sometimes they’ll get a homemade biscuit. How much does that cost? Around $1. I am almost 14 times more efficient than the government at feeding my children. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I am a grumpy old scrooge-like curmudgeon who is half-starving my children, and I ought to spend double what I do on their lunches. That still makes what the government offers nearly 7 times less efficient than me. Furthermore, because I know what my children like, they will actually eat the lunches I provide while “thousands of taxpayer-funded school lunches are being left uneaten by students each week.” Imagine for a moment the good that all this wasted money, confiscated from citizens through taxes, could be used for if its owners were able to choose how to spend it themselves.

Having thus appealed to the pragmatists, I urge you to consider why this is so. Why is it that the government seems to be so incompetent at as simple a task as providing a child with lunch? Why are its attempts at providing welfare, housing and education so bungling? Is it possible that God has so ordered the world that blessing tends to follow cutting along the grain, and cursing and difficulty follow cutting against it. God has ordained the world with different spheres of authority that are charged with different roles. It is not the role of the government to provide food for children. It is the role of parents. God has ordained that the family is to provide food for itself. The father is the God-ordained protector and provider of the family. He is to provide for his children (Genesis 2:15, 3:19). When the family is functioning as it should, it is going to be far better placed to provide food for children.

A Metaphor For Our Situation

If you ever needed a graphic metaphor for our current situation in New Zealand, this is it. Bearded police officers are being asked to remove their facial hair so their masks can ‘work more effectively’ against COVID-19.

This whole virus scenario has shown what an emasculated population we have become. Here we all are, commanded to remain indoors like cowering women and children in a siege to escape from a particularly nasty flu. And we accept it because we are afraid.

Should We Seek a Secular Public Sphere?

What most modern Western people (including many Christians) are asking for in the name of ‘freedom’ is in fact a new slavery, when they attempt to secularize the public sphere and pursue freedom without the Lordship of Christ. To object to this by saying that non-believers are not accountable to God’s covenant law (moral law) is finally to say that we have no basis for presenting the gospel to the unbeliever – since Scripture defines sin as lawlessness and only lawbreakers need the gospel!

The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society by Joseph Boot)