In my entire adult life, I don’t think America’s dialogue

about race has been as toxic as it is today. Extremists

dominate, pushing us into ever-more-polarized ideological

corners. If you live in right-wing space and spend time

talking about contemporary racism or the ongoing,

persistent consequences of centuries of slavery, Jim Crow,

redlining, and segregation, extremists will quickly label

you “woke.” And no one should listen to anyone woke.

If you live in left-wing spaces and you push back against

emerging “anti-racist” ideologies that sometimes declare

the nation foundationally evil, engage in their own forms

of gross racial stereotyping (including unremitting hatred

for “whiteness”), and seek to defund and discredit policing

itself, extremists will quickly label you “racist.” And no one

should listen to anyone racist.

WHAT IS “CRITICAL RACE THEORY”?

CRT originated as a formal discipline in the 1980s with a group of activist-minded law scholars who’d grown discouraged at the ongoing presence of disparities between white and black folks across society, even a decade after civil rights legislation made overt discrimination illegal. Their work defied the prevailing narrative at the time, that post-civil-rights America was now an equitable democracy whose treasures were always equally available to anyone who lived responsibly enough to receive them. Instead, they exposed how the legal system had embedded enough racially significant policies and patterns that disproportionate outcomes were almost guaranteed without ever appearing racist on the surface. Their work showed how racism could be present without racists, and it shook legal scholarship at its core.

But today CRT gets credited or condemned for conflicts happening all over the place. You hear about school curriculums teaching white kids to hate themselves: CRT. One-sided diversity seminars in the workplace: CRT. People being “canceled” on campuses and online: CRT. Athletes wearing justice slogans on their jerseys: CRT. It’s not always clear what the three letters mean, but they seem to create problems between people wherever they show up.

In every lane of social life, a provocative lexicon confronts us with troubling ideas like “social justice,” “white privilege,” “white supremacy,” and “intersectionality,” disrupting concepts that sound vaguely familiar in some ways and radically new in others. We’re being thrown into academic currents whose streams most of us rarely wade in, talking about subjects most of us intentionally avoid, with words and phrases whose meaning seems to change depending on who uses them. It feels like you’re way behind in a complicated conversation with no obvious direction on how to catch up.3

Many in the evangelical Christian world have risen up to condemn CRT language and the ideas behind it, or at least what they perceive CRT to be based on social posts and media coverage. They warn that all of these concepts have roots in Marxism and Critical Theory—two other hastily condemned but little understood worlds—and are destructive to Christian faith. Disagreement about the relative danger of CRT has split churches, terminated pastors, and cost parachurch organizations staff and donors.

You hear the president of the United States condemn the use of Critical Race Theory in all government institutions, followed soon after by the presidents of major Southern Baptist universities doing the same on behalf of their own.4 Christians aligned with these decisions affirm rejecting CRT wholeheartedly, but if you ask them what they mean by the phrase, you’ll almost never hear the same definition twice.

But then you spend time with a Bible-believing, theologically robust, and culturally shrewd person who barely bats an eye at the language of CRT, who suggests that there’s greater evil in ignoring the conditions prompting the language in the first place. They see CRT concepts as pointing out evils that have been ignored for generations, particularly in the church. They believe conversations stemming from CRT ideas can unite the church and help lead people to Jesus, but when you ask them, they rarely know the origins of many of the concepts.

One friend says CRT is of the devil, while another suggests not paying attention to the social realities behind CRT is the true demon. The red-meat commentary on either side produces a hysteria like medieval churches accusing heretics. The ugliness is real.

As Christians, how do we sort through all the rhetoric?

GETTING HELP TO MAKE SENSE OF IT ALL

When it comes to the topic of race, I regularly talk with Christians who are trying to understand terms circulating on social media, the politics behind policies, the history being cited or ignored, and the proper Christian response. It’s not an overstatement to say that most...