CRT and Creation

Sound Christian theology of creation and new creation requires critical race theory because sin impacts creation and is undone in new creation. New creation reveals divine affirmations of ethnicity. So, Robert Chao Romero (Asian-Latino) and Jeff Liou in their new book Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation.

Again, we note their definition:

Critical race theory examines the intersection of race, racism, and US law and policy. In other words, it looks at how US laws and public policy have been manipulated and constructed over the years to preserve privilege for those considered white at the expense of those who are people of color.

Romero points us to the “whiteness” of American culture and that legal and social requirement to be white in order to be fully embraced. Creation is undone when one observes underfunding, resegregation, tracking, anti-immigrant laws, and the school-to-prison pipeline – for Latino/a Americans. The value, as I see it, for CRT has been the expose of racism permeating our entire culture. CRT scholars “center the experiences of People of Color and reveal the ways racism and other forms of subordination mediate our educational trajectories.”

A major theme in this book is “community culture wealth” which rejects

a ‘deficit’ view of communities of color as sites of cultural poverty and disadvantage; instead, it emphasizes and learns from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts that socially marginalized groups bring to the education process and that often go overlooked and unrecognized.

Traditional education in the USA assumes and articulates this poverty of culture theme in terms like “lazy” and “welfare” and “drug dealers” and not “valuing education” or that “dads abandon” their families. Education that assimilates and only lightly accommodates works toward the erasure of one form of “community culture wealth.” A scholar named Yasso points to these features of Latino/a culture and social capital: aspiration, navigation, social, linguistic, familial, resistance, and spiritual capital.

Romero, in conversation with Justo Gonzalez mostly, expounds the ethnicity theme of the Book of Revelation, and this is really good. Here are some crucial verses, and please read them from the angle of CRT if you can:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb” (Rev 7:9-10).

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. … The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life (21:22, 26-27).

The crucial observation of Romero is that reads the italicized words as emphasing community culture capital and ethnicity being affirmed as eternally affirmed by God in New Jerusalem. Christianity, unlike Rome and the history of American culture, does not seek the domination of one culture over others but affirms cultures and ethnic wealth. The imperial cult dominated other cultures; the Book of Revelation does not do that. Rome found Romanizers; the gospel seeks cultural expressions distinct to other cultures.

Romero finds these two themes as inherent to community cultural wealth: First, “tangible aspects of ethnic culture, such as food, music, dance, literature, and architecture.” Second, “the distinct lenses and perspectives that every ethnic group brings to the world and the body of Christ.” Our cultures will be purified as they enter into the New Jerusalem.

But… creation has been corrupted, leading to this:

the social and legal classification of ethnic groups to create privilege for some and the disempowerment of others is a deeply embedded practice springing out reflexively from sinful human nature. Contrary to loud public clamors, especially among many white Christians, the United States is no exception.

Evidence for our failures are found in history, in law, education, public health, and social work. He sketches – and maps – redlining in LA. “Stated another way, segregated housing gave birth to inequitable socioeconomic, legal, and political structures.” Quoting Justo Gonzalez again near the end of the chapter, we read:

This [New Jerusalem] is the vision from which, out of which, the church must live. The church lives not only out of its past, but also out of its future; not only out of its efficient cause [creation], but also out of its final cause [kingdom of God].