“America’s New Religion” of Antiracism

One of the several downsides of living in a time of mass insanity is that it can be disorienting.  Perhaps it’s the fear that comes with so much of society trying its worst to self-destruct that disorients. 

I note this because I have had trouble knowing what and how to write lately.  That is not for any lack of enormities that make tempting targets for my digital pen, nor for lack of God graciously showing me great and wonderful things through my reading.  I suspect disorientation is a factor.  Perhaps the difficulty of writing in a sane fashion in the midst of insanity is a cause for my writer’s block.

Anyway, being at a loss for words lately makes me all the more impressed by Peter Leithart’s post “America’s New Religion,” which religion is Antiracism.  He captures very well much of the zeitgeist of this current moment. 

My thoughts are no substitute for reading the whole article, which is not long, so please do so.  But I will venture to add a thought or two nonetheless with the obligatory disclaimer that I am not discussing opposition to the sin of racism which I and all decent people share, but the quasireligious ideology of Antiracism.

Leithart is right to note that Holy Antiracism’s aim and “hope that America will, somehow and someday, fix racism once and for all” is virtually “eschatological” and can hardly ever be satisfied.  Of course, Antiracism is not the first fervent cause that has been that way.  The Prohibitionists come to mind.  They, often motivated by rather un-Anglican religious fervor, just knew that society would be so much better if demon rum were banned.

Of course when the Prohibitionists actually got their way in the U. S., it created more societal problems than it solved, and booze was hardly eliminated anyway; instead organized crime and disrespect for the law was enabled.  Racism and other sins are like that too until Jesus comes back, and if one makes a utopian idol out of eliminating them, seven demons worse than the first may take their place. But tell the Antiracists that at your own risk.  Anyway, the failure of Prohibition was ended in 1933, thanks be to God.  

If one watches and listens carefully to the Antiracists as I often do, one will have cause to fear what will happen to society if the Antiracists get their way.  The rampant cancelling, ritual humiliations, and iconoclasm of historic statues are just a foretaste.  It will make Prohibition look like a cake walk.

But be aware that, of course, if one listens critically to the Antiracists as I do, that is not really “listening.”  “Listening” to them includes uncritical agreement, not unlike the “holy listening” Libchurchers have advocated concerning their apostasies.  You probably have already found this out the hard way, but I’m letting you know just in case.

Leithart also got my attention when he stated the following:

Though disguised in Christian colors, Antiracism is a rival faith. And not only a rival in a general sense, a competitor for hearts and minds. It's a rival in the sense that orthodox Christianity is one of Antiracism’s targets. If there’s one thing a newly established religion cannot tolerate, it’s the persistence of the old establishment.

I could not but be helped to be reminded of the oft anachronistic Antiracist attacks on Christian heroes such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield.  Or, while we’re at it, of the disdain towards traditional Anglican worship that the woke in ACNA sometimes let slip out. 

One can certainly dispute Leithart’s contention that Antiracism is “a rival faith” although I find it hard to disagree.  That Antiracism is a parasitic and demanding idolatry is even harder to deny.  Its infiltration into the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention and of the Anglican Church in North America, not the mention how American cultural elites are falling all over each other to bend the knee to it, gives reason for concern.