‘This Is About Power’: Black Theologian Voddie T. Baucham Exposes ‘Demonic Ideology’ Behind CRT, BLM

“A Religion Without Grace”

Baucham dissects over several chapters how CRT and the social justice movement twist traditional religious categories into a means by which to assert power. Characterizing the battles facing the U.S. as fundamentally spiritual, he deftly traces such philosophies to their origin in what he describes as the “demonic ideology” of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, and their neo-Marxist successors in the Frankfurt School.

“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.

In a recent op-ed for the New York Post, he put it another way: “a religion without grace.”

As someone who traces his ancestry to slaves in North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, and Texas, Baucham himself had to personally come to terms with what he believes is the only answer to historic injustice. “The most powerful weapon in our arsenal is not calling for reparations: it is forgiveness,” he writes. “Antiracism knows nothing of forgiveness because it knows nothing of the Gospel. Instead, antiracism offers endless penance, judgment, and fear.”

Because it has the trappings of Christianity, Baucham believes many Christians have “fallen prey” to the social justice movement. “What Christian does not want to be for justice, right? What Christian does not want to empathize with people if they are oppressed? What Christian doesn’t want unity and reconciliation and everything else? So I think there’s a sinister aspect to the religious nature of this movement in that it’s those religious terms and that religious ideology that it tapped into that has really led people astray.”

‘This Is About Power’: Black Theologian Voddie T. Baucham Exposes ‘Demonic Ideology’ Behind CRT, BLM, Antiracism