Woke Christianity flows into GOP politics

A candidate in the GOP Virginia gubernatorial primary attends a Woke church.

Glenn Youngkin wants to be governor of Virginia. He has impressive credentials including serving as a CEO of a big investment firm. Even that has come under scrutiny—last month, reports surfaced that Youngkin signed a corporate memo urging employees to donate to the anti-Christian hate group the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and pledging to match donations.

According to Emily Jashinksy in the Federalist, “Social conservatives know the SPLC as an organization that powerfully influences discrimination against Christians. Even left-of-center journalists have reported on the nonprofit’s scams. Not long ago, my colleague Joy Pullmann detailed the SPLC’s decades-long history of labeling mainstream conservative and Christian organizations as hate groups and extremists, which has led to intense discrimination against them.”

Youngkin’s campaign vigorously denied that he supports the SPLC or its mission.

From the Federalist, “Glenn has never given a dime to the SPLC and is totally opposed to their agenda. Other people at Carlyle supported it but Glenn never did. Glenn is a Christian and a conservative who served in his church for years,” Porter continued, “and he has donated millions of dollars to Christian charities and organizations.”

Jashinksy raises an important point in her column about the pressure corporate executives face from their employees and the culture to fund Leftist organizations. This is a good and important point.

But there is more.

Youngkin attends what can only be called a Woke church. Holy Trinity Church describes itself as “an independent non-denominational church rooted in the teachings and traditions of the Church of England.”

Youngkin’s church like so many other evangelical churches dedicated itself to racial reconciliation or racial unity. This fad reflects the culture’s obsession with racial identity politics. It is how typically conservative churches are pulled into the milieu of Social Justice. Dr. Voddie Baucham described this as a new Fault Line (the title of his newest book) within Christianity.

Glenn Youngkin’s church promotes Racial Identity Politics and Ethnic Gnosticism

In reaction to the racial turmoil of 2020, Holy Trinity Church through its Vestry released a statement, “the HTC Vestry’s Statement on Racial Unity.” Glenn Youngkin signed the statement that was published on October 13, 2020, according to the site data and revised December 8, 2020. The statement declares racism in all its forms to be sin and provides biblical reasoning for it. It also created a committee to lead a focus on Racial Unity.

According to the report, “The Racial Unity Committee will become a Vestry-level committee and will provide advice and counsel to HTC leadership on issues of racial unity. We have asked Derek and the other church leaders, working with the Vestry and the Racial Unity Committee, to develop a comprehensive ministry approach to racial unity.As a congregation-wide action, the Racial Unity Committee encouraged the HTC family to read Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation, by Latasha Morrison. We ask each of you to commit your heart, join a small group, and read and study Be the Bridge with others, and join the Vestry as we all learn together.”

There are several things of concern. “Learn together” combined with Be the Bridge are elements of what can only be described as Ethnic Gnosticism. This is a term coined by Dr. Baucham that “is the idea that people have special knowledge based solely on their ethnicity.”[1]

There is an extended analysis of Be the Bridge and its associated Facebook group by Dr. Baucham. This is helpful and confirms the growing development of Standpoint Epistemology as a dangerous postmodern approach to knowledge within evangelical churches–churches that should be committed to objective truth.

“If black people know racism, and white people cannot know racism (and are racist by default as a result of their white privilege), then the only acceptable response is for white people to sit down, shut up, and listen to what black people have to say on the matter. That is exactly what the Be the Bridge curriculum and Facebook group—one of the most recommended resources on race among contemporary evangelicals—is about,” according to Dr. Baucham.[2]

This is all Ethnic Gnosticism—a system that prizes the lived experiences of the oppressed based on their ethnicity. Dr. Baucham then includes some of the “racial unity” taught in the Be the Bridge Facebook group:

“’Don’t ‘whitesplain.’ Do not explain racism to a POC. Do not explain how the microaggression they just experienced was actually just someone being nice. Do not explain how a particular injustice is more about class than race. It’s an easy trap to fall into, but you can avoid it by maintaining a posture of active listening.”[3]

Also, “Don’t demand proof of a POC’s lived experience or try to counter their narrative with the experience of another POC. The experiences and opinions of POC are as diverse as its people. We can believe their stories. But keep in mind: just because one POC doesn’t feel oppressed, that doesn’t mean systemic, institutional racism isn’t real.”[4]

There are many other rules; however, this gives you an excellent sample of the “racial unity” that comes out of these “Evangelical” sources.

Youngkin’s church is promoting other books and resources on racial unity including the Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby and Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley.

These are highly problematic writers. McCaulley tweeted that Bible translations are somehow imperfect unless they contain a certain number of non-white translators.

 Tisby tweeted a message celebrating how the “uprisings” influenced the Derek Chauvin jury verdict.

Tisby said, “Look at all the work it takes—video evidence, eyewitness testimony, historic uprisings—just to get a single conviction. Look at all the work it takes just to get folks to believe us. #DerekChauvinTrial #GeorgeFloyd #BlackLivesMatter.”

Also, Dr. Voddie Baucham in his new book Fault Lines, calls out Tisby and Morrison for lying about the US Constitution and its three-fifths compromise. He pulls their quotes claiming as Morrison does, “We were called three-fifths human in the Constitution of the United States,” however, Baucham counters this is a myth quotes the actual text of the Constitution and asks if anyone bothered to read it.[5]

Racial unity programs like this are nothing more than catechism classes for the new religion of Social Justice. Christians attending such churches are prone to being misled about how to attain true racial reconciliation. It is not via Social Justice but through Jesus Christ.

Does the focus on racial identity politics within our churches help heal racial divisions or does it create more divisions by exploiting guilt? (This theme of guilt exploitation is something we’ll return to in a later column.)

This type of racial unity training is indoctrination. It is happening in our churches. It is happening in our seminaries (we’ve written about this extensively in the last few months and years) and it is happening now in our K-12 Christian schools as an evangelical Christian School accreditor, the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) has partnered with Liberation Theology promoter Dr. Walter Strickland to provide diversity training for ACSI member schools.

Churches, ministries and schools teaching Social Justice lower the ability of their members and students to withstand pressure from Woke secular groups. Given the Woke teachings at Youngkin’s church, is it any wonder he signed a memo urging his employees to give to the anti-Christian hate group SPLC?

And with the expansion of racial unity and diversity trainings among Christian churches and schools, it will mean voters must dig deeper to find out what influences our candidates for office.

For more analysis on Youngkin and his church’s embrace of social justice, you can check out this podcast that dives deep into the issue.

[1] Voddie Baucham Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, p 92.

[2] Ibid, p. 103.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., p 202.