From Erick Erickson on substack:  

Critical Race Theory

In his History of the Church, Eusebius noted that the early church’s writings and apologetics changed in AD 100. In that year, the Apostle John died. With him, the last living friend of Jesus faded to history. It provoked the rise of the gnostics and the immediate successors to the apostles turned from defenses of what the faith was to defenses of what the faith was not.

The gnostics peddled the idea that there was a secret knowledge and to gain the secret knowledge of the truth of Christ, one must join them and get the knowledge that was not to be shared and could only be known by a few. That knowledge would open eyes and reveal the true path to salvation, but that path was actually damnation.

Critical theory is a twenty-first century version of gnosticism. Those who do not believe it are considered unable to articulate it. Only the adherents can accurately describe it.

Like the gnosticism of the first century, this gnosticism brings damnation not salvation. It posits that justice and reality are shaped by power. Whoever controls words, controls reality. Critical theory believes all the world is about power and the map of that power flows through intersections of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, “ableism,” etc. Doubt is elevated over truth and exceptions become the rule while the rule becomes the exception.

Critical theory also assigns us to classes and our individuality does not matter. It is why racial reconciliation is actually impossible through critical theory — oppressors just become oppressed and the oppressed become the oppresses with each person wedded to a class, not an individuality. Critical theory fosters neo-racism where the races are and always will be separated and we must see and acknowledge race. We cannot judge people by the content of their character but must judge by the color of one’s skin.

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