Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 07:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: Critical Race Theory, Toxic In The Home
Author: Mark T. Coppenger

Eikon 7.1 (Spring 2025) p. 84

Critical Race Theory, Toxic In The Home

Mark Coppenger

Mark Coppenger is Retired Professor of Christian Philosophy and Ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Last year, I took a closer look at Critical Race Theory (CRT), and it struck me that CRT is more accurately construed as VRS — Vandalizing, Racialist, Stipulation — stipulation instead of theory since it simply imposes an arbitrary, cranky grid, indeed a vicious mindset, over the social world; racialist, or more nearly racist, since it obsesses over genetics and pigment, valorizing persons of color and demonizing whites; and vandalizing, since it traffics not in thoughtful criticizing, but rather in defacing and gutting Judeo-Christian, Western culture.

It despises the civilizing work of the traditional, nuclear family, and the civilization it produces and nourishes. When bloody, revolutionary Marxism took hold of Russia but faltered in Germany and Italy, Antonio Gramsci retooled, promoting “cultural Marxism,” whereby class resentment could be insinuated into the various sectors of society to accomplish what Herbert Marcuse called “the long march through the institutions.” And what better institution to infect than the very first one, the family, which predates academia, the military, the arts, commerce, and human government.

Eikon 7.1 (Spring 2025) p. 85

Critical theory is an anti-biblical fraud, which seeks to dignify what the Scripture condemns — covetousness, resentment, slander, bitterness, and pride, marshalling them to bring down much that is innocent. Instead of following Paul’s instruction in Philippians 4 to dwell on things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, and of good report (such as a healthy Christian family), it schemes to exalt the bogus and noxious. It’s an ideology that divides the world into underserving haves and abused have-nots, the former ensconced as tyrants through systemic treacheries which must be exposed and smashed.

It lacks what Karl Popper called “falsifiability.” In the end, nothing can count against it. As with Darwinian evolution, proponents will always find ways to adjust their conceit, adding another gazillion years to the story, hatching another “just-so story,” insulting the skeptics as knuckle-draggers, claiming that they themselves are the fountainhead of pure science, and so on. Of course, they’re desperate to do so. Like the old fellow with the worn out, backfiring jalopy, they stick with it since it’s their only ride.

To be sure, there are great wrongs in this world, evils that cry out for redress. Read Amos and see how a prophet announces God’s judgment on all sorts of co...