Voddie Baucham Calls Critical Race Theory ‘Demonic’

In an interview with Faithwire in April, Dr. Voddie Baucham, a pastor, professor, and author, called “critical race theory” (CRT) a sinister worldview that has “all the trappings of a religion. It has its own cosmology. It has its own saints. It has its own liturgy. It has its own law.” These things make them “rather attractive to religious people.” Why is it sinister? Baucham said CRT gets to the heart of matters that concern Christians as well: justice, racism, and equality.

Baucham writes about this and more in his recently published book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe.

The Daily Wire recently interviewed Baucham, who lives in Zambia and serves as the dean of theology at African Christian University.

“I’ve come back three or four times a year for speaking tours and it’s always interesting to be an American expat looking back at the U.S.,” Baucham said. Each time he came back, he explained, he could “sense the temperature change” around flashpoint issues such as social justice, Critical Race Theory (CRT), Intersectionality, and antiracism.

“I think that’s one of the reasons that I just became so keenly aware and so passionate about writing this book, because it was really noticeable to me that things were shifting quickly and deteriorating quickly,” Baucham said. “And I’m watching families be divided, churches be divided, institutions and schools and denominations be divided over this thing. Being an expat coming back and seeing that, it was just alarming to me.”

Every Christian knows, or should know, that faith trumps race. God has reconciled us to Himself and to one another. We are one in Christ: male, female, black, white, Jew, and Greek. Baucham said he struggled with race and faith after he became a Christian.

“The question of the proper order of faith and ethnicity is critical to understanding the various positions people take in the broader social-justice debate — one with which all people must wrestle, regardless of their ethnicity. However, for black Christians, this concept has often been difficult to embrace for several reasons.”

Baucham went through a period where he was attracted to the Black Nationalist ideology. After he became saved, he had to move away from this anti-Christian ideology. Now he sees a similar conflict with Christianity and CRT.

“This talk of antiracism and this talk of critical social justice is very much religious in its overtones,” he said, explaining how it “borrows from the Judeo-Christian worldview in terms of the words that it uses.” With its emphasis on slavery and reparations, he pointed out, the so-called antiracism of Ibram X. Kendi, for example, is replete with notions of original sin and atonement.

“But more specifically, this religion has its own cosmology, its own understanding of the way the world came to be. This religion has its own theology and theological terminology. It has its own saints, its own priests, it has its own rituals. And it has a dogged commitment to its ideology and its theology and a punitive approach to those who step out of line,” he continued.

Read the full interview at the Daily Wire.