Just joining us? Read my review of Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, by Duke Kwon and Greg Thompson, Baker 2021.
How does culture affect theology?
A few months after the publication of Reparations, Dr. Kevin DeYoung, Presbyterian pastor and professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, published a critical review of the book with The Gospel Coalition. While he quibbles with certain facts presented and demurs about history and economics, he stays in his swim lane, calling the book’s “key theological and ethical claim…ultimately ambiguous, unworkable, and unpersuasive.”[1]
Here is a sample of his concerns. While agreeing that restitution gives evidence of true repentance, DeYoung objects to applying this “simple” principle to “an evil as far off as slavery or a sin as nebulous as White supremacy.” He similarly objects to extending Zacchaeus’ actions to compensate those he wronged as pretext for impugning and dismantling the “extractive system” of taxation in which he was embedded.
“True, Zacchaeus generously gave away half of his possessions to the poor in addition to making restitution for those he sinned against. But did he really acknowledge complicity in an “extractive system designed to plunder the most vulnerable members of society”? If he felt complicit in the whole system of tax collecting, why do we have no record of him leaving the profession? Why did Jesus show kindness to tax collectors (even calling one to be his disciple) without ever commanding them to leave their “extractive system” behind?”[2]
As to the passage of time, DeYoung contends that the reason one is obligated to return stolen goods is because one is still in possession of them, hence the principle does not apply to White supremacy. Citing the ambiguities we are left with at the book’s end, DeYoung counters with concern about a never-ending debt that will never be extinguished:
“If we owe a debt of reparation, to whom should we make the payment and how will we know when the debt has been paid? Other than being implicated broadly in the “theft of White supremacy,” Whites are not told of what particular sin they should repent, nor to whom they should offer repentance, nor how they will receive word that they have fulfilled their reparative responsibilities.”
More broadly, DeYoung takes issue with the concept of White supremacy, even likening it to an “original sin,” whose only hope of redemption is reparations. What about other big sins, he asks. “Is it a workable ethic, for anyone, to insist that any connection to human sinfulness, past or present, renders us culpable for that sin?”
Reparations concludes with an example of restorative work underway in Memphis; a community endeavor to rehab the iconic Clayburn Temple, a former Presbyterian church that, following white flight, became a black space and eventual hub of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s. The transformation of the formally sacred space into a center for community empowerment is an easy target for DeYoung, and he ends on this disparaging note: “A stirring conclusion to be sure. Sermonic, eschatological, and essentially religious. But it is not a beatific vision that depends on Christian categories or the Christian story.”
In short, DeYoung’s final point calls into question the authors’ orthodoxy: Kwon and Thompson have fallen prey to secular culture’s false redemption story.
Swift Rejoinder
Reparations authors were quick to respond to DeYoung’s pointed review. They begin by acknowledging the difficulties and ambiguities of reparations: the questions of “what, how much, and how long.” But they object at DeYoung’s primary fixation on ascertaining “when and how will we know we’re forgiven?” By making the central issue alleviating white guilt, the authors respond, DeYoung recenters the moral grievance away from blacks who were systematically robbed of their personhoods to a concern for whites as victims of a never-ending guilt.
This is exactly what White supremacy is, they say. It’s the power to change the conversation, to shift the problem back onto black shoulders. It’s not just a learned cultural impulse — it’s also a theological one. DeYoung writes as if the white Reformed theological view is the only perspective out there: the views of black Reformed evangelicals are not considered in his critique. According to Thompson:
“Like the culture of white supremacy itself, the theological work that shelters it begins with the centering of white theological voices and the marginalizing of others. Indeed, a careful study of the American Reformed tradition, especially in its evangelical manifestations, shows this to be a core methodological impulse.”[3]
The authors’ strongly-worded rebuttal to DeYoung identifies other methodical problems with white America’s theologizing. The first is a tendency to spiritualize social issues, allowing one to minimize or ignore human need (1 John 3:17-18). A second tendency is to reduce the gospel to the forensic concern of penal substitution — Christ’s payment for individual sin, which is received by faith. While absolutely central to Christianity, the doctrine remains supreme in its own right and, rightly understood, is not in conflict with social action. The overly defensive fencing off of “Sola fide” dams up what should be a resulting outflow of gratitude into the world that God so dearly loves. Third is an individualizing tendency, to focus on private concerns, “leaving little to no room for corporate or public considerations that are also manifestly present in scripture.” These culturally induced tendencies are interrelated, say the authors:
“Both the spiritualizing and forensic tendencies turn one’s gaze inward, away from social conditions (no matter how antichrist they may be) and exclusively toward the benefits of personal salvation. This individualizing tendency is readily seen across the evangelical tradition, which at times appears to uncritically prize and parrot the tenets of American individualism as inalienable Christian values. Tragically, churches embedded in the Reformed tradition—which historically has emphasized the essentially covenantal (and thus, corporate) character of Christian faith and practice—often fare no better. Indeed, this contradiction appears to be troubling evidence of the cultural captivity of these communities, as radical individualism regularly trumps covenantal community.”[4]
Taken together, the authors allege that “the cultural impulses of White supremacy exert methodological control over the theological life of the church.” In a subsequent podcast, Thompson calls for greater awareness of the way American evangelicalism has been enculturated with white norms – that there are other views that remain solidly in the orthodox tradition.[5] Esau McCaulley makes a similar point in his 2020 book, Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope:
“Yes, the question of our standing before God is important, vitally important (I laud the great emphases of the Reformation.) But I wondered what the Bible had to say about how we might live as Christians and citizens of God’s kingdom. I was told that the Bible says we must defend the sanctity of life, the authority of the government (including military and police) and religious freedom. But what about the exploitation of my people? What about our suffering, our struggle? Where does the Bible address the hopes of Black folks, and why is this question no pressing in a community that has historically been alienated from Black Christians?”[6] [Emphasis added.]
Both Thompson and McCaulley are saying that white theological reasoning is infected by cultural impulses, that white and black theologians “see” different things in the pages of Scripture. To deny that white culture could be seeping into our exegesis is to deny history. According to McCaulley, white “slaveholder” religion sheltered slavery by falsely construing Pauline passages while downplaying the liberating themes of the Exodus and the excoriations of the prophets against injustice. A hundred and fifty years removed, it is false comfort to think that southern churchmen intentionally distorted Scripture to justify black oppression. According to the authors, most church-going white slaveholders believed themselves virtuous and true to Scripture.
This history lesson is deeply humbling and should prompt Christians to scour our eyes for myopic logs. Surely, it can be conceded that present white evangelical reasoning about systemic racism and reparations runs the risk of being similarly culturally jaded, even if it is not deliberate. The simple point is that culture seeps in, and both theologians and everyday believers need to be able to sift truth from cultural dross. DeYoung knows this full well, as far as sex culture is concerned. In a recent blog, he vociferously rouses the church to the dangers of the sexualized culture that is “catechizing” our children.[7] If the culture’s views on sex can permeate church walls, then how much more should we be on our guard for impulses that seem so natural they can’t possibly be wrong?
Karen Swallow Prior, research professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, makes a similar point in her response to DeYoung’s critique of Reparations.
“Just like the sexual revolution, systemic racism developed a society that advanced certain values and beliefs through laws, language, imagery, ideas, cultural artifacts, values and beliefs, all of which have been passed along through the generations in ways both implicit and explicit.
It’s perplexing to me that the same conservative Christian community of which I am a part — the one that decries the deleterious and nearly inescapable effects of a sexual revolution built into our national laws, culture and institutions — can deny that the racist systems upon which our nation was founded and built cannot be equally pervasive and damaging. Even if the most egregious racist laws have been overturned, that doesn’t mean their effects are erased.
Ideas that take root in a culture — whether intentional or inadvertent, conscious or unconscious, incidental or systemic — have an influence that is uncontainable. This is, in fact, the very premise of the culture wars that have been fought by evangelicals for decades, which show no signs of letting up.
These are not just individual sins but are entrenched and engrained in our culture. They are systemic. If sexual sin can reshape a culture in our attitudes, laws, policies, values and beliefs in ways we can’t always see or recognize, so can the sin of racism. And I’m begging my brothers and sisters in my conservative evangelical camp to stop pretending otherwise.”[8]
Let the Convo Continue
The evangelical conversation about race and reparations is painful, exceedingly so, but at least it is getting underway. While much of the heat and flame appears to be theological, the rarified debate about sin and grace does not occur in a hermetically sealed container. It never has. Theological protestations against the issue of reparations – or even engaging the issue sympathetically – belie the iceberg of 400 years of slavery and struggle and the church’s trained response. Like relegating slaves to the back staircase, most of us would prefer to keep the iceberg submerged.
Thankfully, there are avenues to keep the conversation inching forward:
- Cultural intelligence. Deeper appreciation for how culture shapes one’s reading of Scripture is paramount. Getting more perspectives on such a sensitive matter is necessary to tease apart biblical and cultural norms; other members of the Body approach the questions differently, enabling us to see what we cannot (or will not). McCaulley draws our eyes to see the covenant-keeping Africans of Scripture, and to hear the just protests and accusatory laments of the enslaved and later exiled Hebrew community. The points are rich and help to put flesh on the Gospel story. Thompson likewise intones, his voice rising, “As evangelicals, we need to be more culturally aware. Our tradition knows that it is possible for people to live out of a framework of which they are not aware. That’s why they spend so much time unpacking worldview, especially CRT. We need to see the log in our own eyes. They know what it means for a culture to shape us without knowing it.”[9] Doubtless the black church is engaging in its own conversations about reparations. Perhaps a multi-ethnic theological pow wow would shed more light?
- “Don’t take this personally, but…” Books such as Reparations and Reading While Black shed light on a history most white Christians don’t recognize or admire. While the insights will take time to digest, and some will never be convinced, nevertheless, seeds are being planted, hearts are convicted, eyes opened. That said, lowering the decibels of debate will be critical to sustaining a posture of listening and learning. Right or wrong, the authors’ constant use of the term “White supremacy” is a guaranteed mind-closer for the very ones Kwon and Thompson want to convince. Perhaps they could invent less-burdened language? By the same token, DeYoung’s questioning of an opponent’s Reformed bonafides does not help move things forward.
- Guard against loopholes and casuistry. White fixation on “how much” and “when do I know I’m forgiven” belie a culturally induced casuistry, a self-focus protected by a flattened view of the Gospel. Seeking to justify himself, a lawyer asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” He got more than he bargained for in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Reflecting on the passage, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. extolled the Samaritan’s “dangerous unselfishness.” Rather than fixating on would happen to him if he dared help the wounded man, his focused shifted to the needs of the other: ‘What will happen to the man if I don’t help him?’”[10]
As the white evangelical church battles CRT and secular wokeness, it runs the risk of being “asleep in the light,” to quote Keith Green. When will it awaken to its moral responsibility – and glorious opportunity to bear witness to its sacrificial, debt-paying Savior?
- When black Christians are invited into the family conversation about reparations.
- When the spotlight shifts from ‘me to thee’, and the (literal) penny drops from mind to heart.
- When the view that “my good is somehow wrapped up in yours” tempers individualistic tendencies.
- When the Body allows itself to see and feel the suffering of its members and hastens to stem the bleeding (1 Cor. 12:21-26), for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7).
When white Christians begin to ask, “What will happen to our black brothers and sisters if we don’t respond to black injustice and theft?” the rusty wheels of change will begin to turn.
How long will it take? “Who knows?” says Thompson. Jesus tends to round things up, like 70×7.
[1] Kevin DeYoung, “Reparations: A Critical Theological Review,” The Gospel Coalition, April 22, 2021. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/reparations-a-critical-theological-review/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gregory Thompson, “Sanctifying the Status Quo: A response to Reverend Kevin DeYoung.” https://thefrontporch.org/2021/07/sanctifying-the-status-quo-a-response-to-reverend-kevin-deyoung/
[4] Ibid.
[5] Episode 467: “Reparations:” The Review & The Response with Gregory Thompson. The Holy Post, https://www.holypost.com/post/episode-467-reparations-the-review-the-response-with-gregory-thompson
[6] Esay McCaulley, Reading While Black, Intervarsity Press, 2020, 12.
[7] Kevin DeYoung, “The World Is Catechizing Us Whether We Realize It or Not,” The Gospel Coalition, August 24, 2021. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/the-world-is-catechizing-us-whether-we-realize-it-or-not/
[8] Karen Swallow Prior, “Don’t believe in systemic racism? Let’s talk about the sexual revolution,” Religion News, July 12, 2021. https://religionnews.com/2021/07/12/dont-believe-in-systemic-racism-lets-talk-about-the-sexual-revolution-charlottesville-robert-e-lee/
[9] Episode 467: “Reparations:” The Review & The Response with Gregory Thompson. The Holy Post, https://www.holypost.com/post/episode-467-reparations-the-review-the-response-with-gregory-thompson
[10] Reparations, 166.