Although traditional Christian publishers turned their back on his latest book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, denouncing critical race theory and the social justice movement, prominent Southern Baptist preacher Voddie Baucham Jr. found a home for it at Salem Books, and it is now one of the most talked-about works in evangelicalism.

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It is currently the No. 1 book in several Christian categories on Amazon and is listed among the top 100 bestselling books on the e-commerce website, where 95% of those who have reviewed it gave it a five-star rating. . . .

Data from Salem Books show that since its official release on April 6, nearly 50,000 hard copies of the book and just under 10,000 ebooks have been sold.

“This author has given us the definitive handbook for responding biblically to the critical theories assaulting evangelicalism. This is confessional polemics at its best. The author has carefully defined the terminology crafted, the truth compromised, and the trajectory considered — in the enemy’s battle against the sufficiency of the Scriptures,” gushed David Pitman, one of the many verified purchasers who gave Fault Lines a five-star review on Amazon. . . .

Critical race theory, as explained by Purdue University, “is a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression. In adopting this approach, CRT scholars attempt to understand how victims of systemic racism are affected by cultural perceptions of race and how they are able to represent themselves to counter prejudice.”

In the summer of 2019, the Southern Baptist Convention passed Resolution 9 “On Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality,” in which they defined CRT as “a set of analytical tools that explain how race has and continues to function in society. Intersectionality is the study of how different personal characteristics overlap to inform one’s experience.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, the law professor at Columbia and UCLA who coined the term intersectionality more than three decades ago, said, according to Time magazine: “It’s basically a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts.” . . .

Many prominent Southern Baptists like Baucham decried the SBC for adopting the resolution, and he believes it should be scrapped at the SBC’s annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, next month. . . .

Baucham offers a primer of social justice terms in Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, and makes a case for why the cult of antiracism should be rejected. He doesn’t see anything redemptive in critical race theory and believes faithful Christians should not even consider it a useful analytical tool. . . .

“The four main premises of critical race theory are things that we have to completely reject. The idea that racism is normal and unavoidable and ubiquitous in the United States and its history; the idea that white people are incapable of righteous actions on race unless their interests converge. You can’t get more anti-biblical than that,” Baucham explained. “…They reject objectivity and meritocracy, and their main idea is that we ascertain truth through narratives. Now, what part of that is a useful tool for Christians trying to understand racism? Absolutely none of it. So I think these people are completely wrong when they make this statement and they never get to specifics. . . .

White privilege

In her groundbreaking essay, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh describes the controversial concept as “an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day.” . . .

Baucham says he doesn’t believe in white privilege. . . .

When asked if he would agree that there is racial inequality, he said it would depend on how race is defined and noted that there is nowhere in the world where equality exists. . . .

And Baucham boldly tackles this issue in his book. In addressing the argument of disparity in policing, Baucham takes high-profile cases highlighted in mainstream media of black people killed by police such as Tamir Rice, Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Philando Castile, and compares them to similar cases where the victims are white but didn’t get much media attention.

“Have you heard of Tony Timpa? Like Floyd, ‘Timpa wailed and pleaded for help more than 30 times as officers pinned his shoulders, knees and neck to the ground,’ reported The Dallas Morning News in August 2016. Timpa, a 32-year-old schizophrenic, called the police himself, saying he was off his meds and needed help. When police arrived, Timpa had already been handcuffed by a security guard. Three Dallas Police Department officers restrained Timpa for nearly 14 minutes as he pleaded, ‘You’re gonna kill me! You’re gonna kill me! You’re gonna kill me!’ Eventually, Timpa went limp, at which time the officers mocked him and made jokes. In the end, when the paramedics finally came and put Timpa’s flaccid body on a stretcher, one officer said, ‘I hope we didn’t kill him.’ But they had,” Baucham noted. . . .

When asked if his target audience for the book was an echo chamber of sorts based on his arguments, Baucham said he considered the question an “insult.”

“I didn’t sit down and try to figure out how to write a book for an echo chamber. My goal in writing the book is my love for the bride of Christ and my belief that there is a threat to her.  That threat to her is this modern ideology of social justice, critical race theory, intersectionality, critical theory. These ideologies — that I’ve been watching and speaking on and writing about since the early 2000s, by the way — these ideologies come straight out of classical Marxism,” he insisted.

“And cultural Marxism, these ideologies that have taken root in academia and that now are being talked about in popular culture by people who have no idea where they come from and no idea what these things mean and no idea how antithetical they are to biblical Christianity. So this is a threat. This is a wolf. And my job as a shepherd is to fight off wolves. This has nothing to do with echo chambers or want to please certain kinds of people. If anything, this book is the opposite of that,” he said.

He further pointed out that despite being evangelical, his positions have made him an outsider in the evangelical community. . . .

Baucham, who was some six weeks into his recovery from coronary bypass surgery when he spoke with CP, said he believes his book is resonating with evangelicals because many people are still grappling with the social justice movement. . . .

For black Christians who don’t agree with the narrative of the social justice movement, Baucham, who recently penned an op-ed for the New York Post titled, Why antiracism zealots are trying to silence black voices like mine, his voice on the issue has been a blessing. . . .

Like many evangelicals, Baucham sees the use of critical race theory by Christians as a threat to the Gospel, and he wasn’t afraid to highlight names of prominent evangelicals in his book, who he sees on both sides of the divide to which he currently sees no real solution. . . .

The divide is so strong, Baucham argues, that America is on the verge of a “race war.” . . .

Early this year, another prominent black Southern Baptist leader, Pastor Dwight McKissic, who founded and leads Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and where Baucham previously worked, according to his book, cut ties with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention over its “strongly worded, anti-CRT policy that denounces all aspects of critical race theory” and warned that if leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention rescind Resolution 9 on critical race theory at their convention next month, he would cut ties with them too.

That announcement came amid an exodus of prominent black SBC pastors, such as Ralph West and Charlie Dates, over a decision by the denomination’s Council of Seminary Presidents to denounce critical race theory and intersectionality as incompatible with their beliefs at their 2020 annual session. The Council of Seminary Presidents, which is comprised of six seminaries, voted to reject CRT as incompatible with their faith while condemning “racism in any form.”

When asked what advice he had for the black pastors that left the denomination, Baucham said many of the ones who have left the nation’s largest Protestant denomination weren’t really that committed to the SBC. . . .

When pressed further for what advice he would give them, he suggested they follow their conscience. . . .

For Christians who read his book, Baucham, who plans on heading back to Lusaka in mid-to-late June, wants them to get from his message that “the Gospel is under attack.” . . .

“There are legislators now writing the law dealing with CRT because they see that it’s poison. And yet, Christians are still sitting around saying, well, useful analytical tool or third-way nuance … That’s why I chose the fault lines metaphor. That idea of an earthquake that’s coming that’s going to divide even more than it already has. On the one hand, I don’t want to see brothers and sisters divided. But on the other hand, I absolutely want to see a clear divide between the truth of the Gospel and the lie of CRT and anti-racism.” . . .

What do you think about Baucham’s comments? Share band discuss below!

(Excerpt from The Christian Post. Article by Leonardo Blair. Photo Credit: Getty images.)