How Should ACNA Deal With Critical Race Theory? II – It’s Not Simple

For reasons spelled out yesterday (And, again, I am more or less thinking out loud.  To go through this whole subject in detail would torment both this blogger and readers.  Apologies if thinking out loud annoys.), I think it is time for the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and ACNA dioceses to lay down boundaries opposing Critical Race Theory through synod resolutions and bishops’ statements among other means.  

But so opposing Critical Race Theory (CRT) head on and by name is not a simple matter.  Let’s say you want to pass a resolution at a synod.  Much of the room, perhaps most of it, will not have a good idea what CRT is.  And that makes passing a good resolution problematic.  One factor behind this year’s Southern Baptist Convention passing a not good resolution on CRT, Resolution 9, is that much/most of the delegates did not know what CRT was.

Even writing a good effective resolution on something as complex as CRT is far from simple.  It would be too easy to end up with a convoluted, wordy, attention span busting resolution that people would forget or regret or both.

But let’s say you manage to write a good resolution, and you do education about CRT beforehand and assume enough people listen.  There are still problems.  Assuming enough people will listen is indeed an assumption.  Is it reasonable to expect your average active church member or even your average synod delegate to be interested enough in CRT to sit, really listen, and comprehend?  And educating/learning about something as complex as CRT is going to take more than twenty minutes as I’ve discovered personally.  Is that the best use of church time? 

But let’s assume you successfully do the education somehow.  Another problem is once people know what CRT is, it could morph into something about the same under another name. Remember “global warming”? Once a few unusually cold winters and increased polar ice made that less credible, it suddenly became “climate change.”  We cannot trust our opponents to be honest although I will say the academics of CRT are new and evolving (or devolving); so terms and concepts can change without deception or dishonesty being involved.  Nonetheless, with CRT new and evolving, it is something of a moving target.

And we are not as concerned about labels, which can change, as about the concepts behind them, which can and do recur in different forms under different names. A good resolution that stands the test of time addresses said concepts more than labels that may become as passé as “Emergent” in a few years. 

Accordingly, I may have a better idea than a church resolution or statement confronting Critical Race Theory head on and by name.  Stay tuned.