Southern Baptist Battle Goes Full MAGA: Far Right Seeks to Purge CRT and “Race Marxism”
“The substance of these charges dates back two years, to a complicated 2019 debate about the question of CRT — a debate which, notably, predated the broader Republican panic about the academic theory by more than a year. As Thiel College religious studies professor Daniel Eppley explains at Political Research Associates, in 2019 an SBC pastor in California proposed a resolution for that year’s denominational gathering to condemn CRT. The pastor said he was motivated by concerns that too many SBC parents were sending their children off to college — even to Bible college — only to have them return talking about “white privilege.” After lengthy debate, including intense pushback from some Black pastors concerned about racism in the denomination, the original resolution was revised into a compromise that pleased hardly anyone: CRT could be an acceptable tool for Christian scholars, the new text maintained, while warning that it could also be misused.”