“On the Goal of Writing: Communal Enrichment and Public Education”

I believe in making knowledge accessible to the public and the common people, and free of charge. When I am writing an academic article or a book, I usually post the first draft on here to get my friends’ opinion and perspective about it.

I am all for open-access journals, which underscores my basic philosophy about public education, communal writing and sharing, and civic engagement and participation. Writing is never a means for me to make a financial gain or to get public recognition. I purposely write to facilitate communal dialogues and choose my language and words carefully even a sixth grader could get to the essence of my argument.

I write to teach and learn.
I write to engage and persuade.

I write to change the order of things.
I write for conversation and community building.

I write for communal growth and healing, and human flourishing.
I write to wage war against forces of human oppression and systems of abuse and exploitation.

I write for consolation and transformation.
I write to protest and for solidarity.

I write for peace, justice, unity, and (re-) conciliation.
I write to give life and to sustain life.

“On the Fear of Knowledge and Evangelical Hermeneutics:
Who’s Afraid of Critical Theory (CT) and Critical Race Theory (CRT)”?

The exploration of knowledge from multiple sources and springs beyond the biblical text and tradition still remain for some Evangelicals an intellectual threat to the truth and reliability of the Christian Scripture. The intellectual tragedy lies in the inability for some evangelicals to reconcile the two forms of knowledge: “secular knowledge” and “sacred knowledge” or “revealed knowledge.” Generally, evangelicals differentiate these two spheres that represent two distinct worlds, two opposing and contrasting ways of life, and two dialectical modes of knowledge. They view secular knowledge with human suspicion and with a sense of intellectual fragility; by contrast, they construe sacred knowledge as an unfailing and dependable phenomenon. Thus, they often interpret sacred knowledge as the highest form of knowledge and therefore secular knowledge is subservient to it. Although they believe that both types of knowledge should be regarded as gifts, sacred knowledge, because it is originated from God as they claim, is a higher and more precious revelatory gift. By contrast, secular knowledge is a project of human wisdom and construct (i.e. social construct), which often contradicts what is from above and of God. By consequence, secular knowledge represents an inferior form of knowledge as compared to that which is revealed and awarded by God.

This understanding of the role knowledge plays in the created order and in the human experience has been a long complex intellectual battle in Christian theology and hermeneutics. It has been so since the publication of Saint Augustine’s influential book The City of God about 426 A.D., which contrasts and compares two systems of knowledge, two opposing worldviews undergirded by an epistemology of difference: the city of God and the city of man. This issue brings me to the relevant conversation about the contemporary debate about the deployment of Critical Theory (CT), a complex form of knowledge and epistemological links, in contemporary American Evangelicalism, especially among the SBC community and family.

For many individuals, the current debate surrounding the use and prohibition of Critical Theory, especially Critical Race Theory (CRT), in Evangelical scholarship and especially among the #SBC19 attenders is quite embarrassing and has become quite frankly an unreasonable and illogical intellectual intercourse. This debate has created an intellectual distance and alienation among (SBC) Evangelical Christians who believe in the divine authority of the Bible and confess the same God, the same Spirit, and the same Savior-Lord Jesus Christ. This debate has become so intricate and intellectually fragile to the degree that it reflects the closeness of the Evangelical mind, to borrow a phrase from Mark Noll and Allan Bloom.
To proceed with this conversation, I will share a personal experience. In the subsequent paragraphs below, I would like to direct your attention about my encounter with critical theory and my experience with literary criticism, correspondingly—both as a doctoral student at a secular public university and an M. Div. student at an Evangelical seminary.

My Personal Experience as a PhD Student

When I was working on my PhD in Intellectual History, which I eventually changed (after a year of coursework) to (English) Literary Studies, at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), I took two specific doctoral seminars on Hermeneutics: the first was on “Philosophical Hermeneutics,” in which we read Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutic by Jean Grondin; The Hermeneutics Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur edited by Gayle L. Ormiston and Allan D. Schrift; Truth and Method by Gadamer, and Introduction to the Reading of Hegel by Alexandre Kojere; and a bunch of seminal articles on the subject matter. Correspondingly, in the second class on “Critical Theory and Literary Criticism,” our main text was The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism edited by by Vincent B. Leitch, William E. Cain, et al., and the Professor also assigned numerous influential articles (some two dozen of them) on the subject matter.

In this particular course, we began our intellectual journey in classical theory and criticism and ended it with the development of postmodern theory and criticism. For example, we studied some selected texts by Georgias of Leontinit (ca. 483-376 B.C.E), which initiated classical (Greco-Roman) critical theory and literary criticism, and our last sets of selected readings were written by Stuart Moulthrop (b.1957). Further, we read about various schools of thought and theories, including Cultural Studies, Deconstruction and Postructuralism, Feminist Theory and Criticism, Formalism, Gay and Lesbian Criticism and Queer Theory, Marxism, New Historicism, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, Postcolonial Theory and Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Race and Ethnicity Studies, Reader-Response Theory, Structuralism and Semiotics, etc. We engaged those ideas embedded in those schools of thought by giving oral presentations in class, writing short papers (2 to 3 page precis every meeting), and eventually writing a very detailed and exegetical 25-30 page publishable research paper.

In addition, the Professor also strongly recommended The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System by Jürgen Habermas, Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and The Political Unconscious by Frederic Jameson. In addition to the two general classes on Hermeneutics and Critical Theory mentioned above, I took two specialized doctoral seminars on Gender and Critical Race Theory, and Art History and Critical Theory. My Professors at UT Dallas encouraged us to engage those texts with a critical eye and he made sure we understood the thrust of the author’s argument and the major premises of each critical school. This phenomenon was inevitable and integral in our own intellectual formation and training as some of use aspired to become future professors, writers, and researchers. In summary, we were learning academically about various forms of knowledge and types of epistemologies, as well as their origins and how each one has become part of the intellectual discourse in the academic world.

In the subsequent paragraphs, I would like to direct your attention to a complementary experience of mine, just two years prior to my beginning of the doctoral studies at UTD. As a word of preface, I was already exposed to some of these theories as an M.A. student at the University of Louisville, but at the doctoral level, the study was more rigorous, analytical, and exhaustive.

My Personal Experience as a Seminary Student

Before I became a doctoral student, I was pursuing an Advanced Master of Divinity (Biblical and Theological Studies) degree at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. At the seminary, I took the required class on “Biblical Hermeneutics” with the eminent New Testament scholar Robert H. Stein. We read his popular book on Hermeneutics, Playing by the Rule: Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible, and An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus also by Stein, along with two other additional texts: Validity in Interpretation by E.D. Hirsch, and Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by William W. Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard, Jr. He also strongly recommended three other influential texts, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by Grant R. Osborne, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading, and The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description by Anthony C. Thiselton.

In this particular class, I was introduced to various methods of interpretation and principles of hermeneutics, including Jewish interpretation, Protestant interpretation, and various modern approaches and literary models, ranging from literary criticism to social-scientific approaches to Scripture. All of these hermeneutical models had to be studied within the canon and translations of the Bible, some suggested general rules of hermeneutics and the understanding that the Bible is composed of different genres (i.e. narrative, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, apocalyptic, parable, epistle). In a more specialized class on Pauline Hermeneutics and Early Christian Hermeneutics, this time I was working on a Th.M. in New Testament, the Professor, E. Earle Ellis, assigned three of his books on the subject matter: Prophecy & Hermeneutic in Early Christianity, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament, and The Old Testament in Early Christianity: Canon and Interpretation in the Light of Modern Research. We studied various hermeneutical perspectives and textual theories such Midrash pesher, prophecy, targum, form criticism, as well as various presuppositions (textual and ideological) including eschatology, typology, corporate personality, charismatic exegesis, etc.

Other courses on Hermeneutics I have taken in seminary included theological (i.e. Christological) hermeneutics and various approaches and theories concerning the scholarship on the Historical Jesus. All of these courses dealt with various fields of knowledge and the epistemological condition.
In sum, just like my experience at the University, the Seminary experience provided me with various tools of analysis and interpretive models to make sense of the world of the (Biblical) text and my world, as well as the relationship between the (biblical) author, the reader, and the intended authorial message. At the conservative Evangelical seminary, the preferred interpretive paradigm was the historical-grammatical method, and this model is analogous to what is commonly called “Formalist Criticism” in Literary Criticism. While we were introduced in passing to other biblical and theological hermeneutical models, the grammatical-historical hermeneutic was prized in every course and students were expected to utilize it in their personal study and exegetical papers. Yet one must remember that this is not the only existing model in biblical exegesis or theological interpretation; in Judaism, both before and during the time of Jesus, Jewish theologians and the Rabbis have developed various sophisticated Jewish interpretative traditions and exegetical methods.

In addition, in the history of Christian interpretive traditions and exegesis, there emerged differing models of Scriptural interpretation, especially in the Patristic era (Patristic exegesis), which included the following four perspectives: The Literal Level, the Tropological Level, the Allegorical Level, and the Anagogical Level. Not only these illustrative interpretations share many literary connections and parallels with those found in literary criticism, the grammatical-historical hermeneutic and various schools in critical theory also share many echoes, allusions, concerns, and literary traditions. For example, the development of modern biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation could be construed as a reaction to the German Higher Criticism of the late eighteenth century.

German Higher Criticism eventually made its entrance in the English-speaking academia in the nineteenth century and progressively declined in the early twentieth century. What interesting about the growth of intellectual ideas and schools of thought associating with the enterprise of biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation and compatibly with the enterprise of critical theory and literary criticism is arguably the blossoming of the Enlightenment philosophy and the German source of Higher Criticism that have both influenced and shaped knowledge formation in the secular world of the academic scholarship and in the sacred world of biblical and theological scholarship, respectively.

Furthermore, in the paragraphs below, I provide ten propositions about the nature and interplays between, as well as the dynamics and intersections of critical theory and biblical hermeneutics, literary criticism and theological exegesis.

Parallels and Connections:Critical Theory and Literary Criticism, and Biblical Hermeneutics and Theological Interpterion

1. Generally, critical theory and literary criticism, and biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation expose students to various schools of thought, ideologies, and perspectives, sometimes conflicting one another.
2. Critical theory and literary criticism, and biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation introduce students to various forms of knowledge, worldviews, and value systems.
3. Critical theory and literary criticism, and biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation are all products of human imagination and creation. None of them was revealed by God or claims divine origin.
4. Therefore, biblical hermeneutics or theological exegesis per se should not claim any type of intellectual dominance over the field of critical theory or literary criticism.
5. Any product or interpretive model of the human mind is subject to scrutiny, revision, and even aberration, and that includes different perspectives under the broad categories of critical theory and biblical hermeneutics.
6. A theological model of interpretation, for example, is an attempt to explain some particular dynamics and phenomena; similarly, an interpretive perspective from critical theory is an effort to establish relationships and connections, or differences and variations.
7. The biblical hermeneutics is a “model” among other hermeneutical models to study Scripture and its environment, and there are competing models and voices within the broad category of biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation.
8. It is because of these competing voices and sometimes irreconcilable intellectual ideologies and presuppositions there arose different theological systems and schools of thought such as Western-European theology, Postcolonial theology, Queer theology, Feminist theology, Liberation theology, Black liberation theology, Minjung theology, etc. For example, within the history of Jewish interpretation, there emerged various branches such as Rabbinic Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism, and the interpretive school from the Qumran Community that often articulate both shared ideological viewpoints about the Hebrew Bible and contradicting point of views about the Torah, the Writings, and the Prophets. Each one of the noted interpretive grids is sometimes a reaction to the previous one. In the same line of thought, within the historical trajectories of critical theory, one may discover intersections between feminist critical theory and critical race theory, and convergences between biographical criticism and psychological criticism. Yet there are sharp differences between the reader-response criticism and formalist criticism, for example.
9. While both the biblical hermeneutics and critical theory models exhibit a certain worldview or certain intellectual traditions, it does not mean that all worldviews are necessarily equal and unhelpful nor should the non-biblically informed literary criticism or critical theory be regarded as anti-Christian flourishing and intellectually counterproductive to Christian theological traditions and biblical hermeneutics.
10. Finally, all interpretive models and criticisms: biblical, theological, literary, and critical should be evaluated with care and responsibility based on their own merit and the intellectual contribution they add to disciplinary fields of study and interdisciplinary intersections, and human knowledge and understanding.

Finally, I would like to close this post with another experience, this time as an instructor, not as a student. I have taught both theological exegesis and biblical hermeneutics in seminary (i.e. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary). Currently, I serve as a professor of English literature and composition. Overall, I teach my students how to read critically and exegetically. I introduce them to various critical theories and methodologies about the world of the text, how textual meaning is constructed, and how systems and structures work in society. I also expose them to different literary techniques, approaches, and methodologies so they could make sense of cultural dynamics and interplays between humans and the systems and networks they created. I do not prioritize one school or theory above another; yet I encourage my students to think critically about each intellectual tradition and perspective.

Since in literature courses, we encourage students to value the text and its meaning and implications, my point of departure in studying critical theory and literary criticism with students is their place in the world in relation to the text. I emphasize the most fundamental of all theories: formalist criticism, which lead students to perform close readings in an exegetical way. After they have gained comfortability with this practice, then we can marry both exegesis and eisegesis; both strategies are helpful in unearthing the meaning of the text and how we make sense of the text in our respective circumstance and Sitz im Leben.

Moreover, as a teaching strategy, for example, I divide my students in groups of four or five, and each group is responsible to research and study one of the critical theories (i.e. Marxism, feminism, critical race theory) or literary criticisms (i.e. formalism, reader-response, historicism, biographical) and present its research findings to the class.
The critical student of the culture and of the Bible should always remember that each critical theory is different and represents a way of seeing the world. In the same manner, each literary approach is distinct and articulates a viewpoint and perspective. Just like the theories and approaches associating with biblical hermeneutics and theological interpretation (i.e. womanism), critical theory and literary criticism should be construed as tools of analysis and not necessarily symbolic representations of worldviews and ideologies. While some do; other do not.

Hence, Evangelicals, especially Evangelical Christians connecting with the SBC family and community, should not be afraid of using critical theory and critical race theory, in particular. The knowledge gained from any critical theory and biblical interpretive method is not something to be feared and run away from; knowledge should be construed as a tool to be used constructively to contribute to human progress; to advance human understanding in the cosmos; to heighten our acquaintances with the world and people around us; to improve human relationships and interactions; and to be used actively for the common good and human liberation and flourishing in the world.

“Stop the Camps and Ban Detention Centers for Children”!

Evangelical Christians are the most powerful and influential (religious) groups in the American society. Not only the evangelical community has political and cultural influence in this society; it has economic and rhetorical power. The evangelical voice in various spheres and sectors in the American society is far-reaching and border-crossing.

If willing, the evangelical community can use its resources and voice to stop the detention, abuse, and exploitation of innocent children in the American detention camps and prisons.

If Evangelicals can march zealously for the life of the unborn by a million and consistently call for a national day of prayer by immeasurable number every year, and energetically they went to the voting booth and collectively elected the current President by 81%, why can’t the Evangelical community be consistent in displaying in public the same passion, rage, and applying these same ethical principles and moral values for the welfare of those
niños and niñas encaged in detention camps and prisons?

American Evangelicals should energetically march in Washington streets and in front of those detention camps and cause a “justice traffic” so this current administration could take appropriate and immediate political action and act justly, liberatively, and humanly toward the plot of the innocent incarcerated niños and niñas.

The justice-driven evangelicals and christians should pressure this government for accountability, political asylum, and freedom on behalf of this vulnerable and disenfranchised population, and ask the Government to stop camp detentions for children. The mistreatment of these poor children has been going on for two years now. Where’s the application and extension of the biblical cry for justice, hospitality, and freedom on behalf of the orphan and the fatherless, the needy and the marginalized?

***I have two little blacks girls (ages: 6 and 4) it would break my heart to see one of them experience this toxic living and various types of harassment (i.e sexual, psychological, verbal) as the brown children are currently facing in those U.S. detention camps.

Some questions to think about:

1. Do children have (unalienable) rights to exist & live in dignity as bearers of God’s image & glory?

2. Do all children have the same & equal rights, including brown, black, mixed, & white children?

3. If they do, are those rights local, regional, international, or border-crossing?

#StopTheCamps
#BANCHILDRENSDETENTIONS

“On Theology and Human Concerns and Realities”

Christian theology, as a social construct that is shaped by human experience and perception about God, humanity, and the created order, does not have the final say in determining the nature of human dignity, justice, peace, violence, and evil in the world. For example,
theological consciousness is not good enough to sustain the project of Christian unity and interracial (re-) conciliation & ethnic diversity in Christian circles and churches. People are shaped by their cultural frameworks and habits, and ideologies and worldviews that orient their faith.

All forms of human knowledge are part of that social construct project, even the revealed divine knowledge unless God sovereignly secured its original intent and meaning, falls under that category–since theological knowledge, like other forms of constructed knowledge, is subservient to the art of human interpretation and the diversity in constructing “meaning” makes theological discourse an imaginative end and explorative endeavor.

Hence, theological orthodoxy in the Christian tradition is also representative of the perceptions and ideas of a community of interpreters that interpreted and constructed a body of beliefs and confessions to sustain faith and promote its understanding of biblical religion.

While certain theological confessions such as the first order of theology must be energetically safeguarded and defended, each generation of Christian community must interpret and reintepret creatively in light of cultural trends and currents as well as within the complex trajectories of (the) human experience and existential concerns (i.e. war, poverty, hunger, sex trafficking, sexuality, gender idenity, racism, immigration, white supremacy, abortion, education, capitalism, globalization, systems & structures, environmental issues) what Scripture means to the people of God and for their time. Consequently, it’s not enough to be theologically awake; it’s equally valid to be socially and politically conscious.

Thus, the idea that there’s a particular theological system that could be called a “model theology” (Western theology) to evaluate all other theological systems and discourses, and the underlying and hidden premise that that “standard theology” does not need any intellectual revision or improvement is insensitive to both cultural evolution and movements and human evolution and needs.

The goal of a or any theological system (i.e. Feminist theology, postcolonial theology, liberation theology, black liberation, minjung theology, Asian theology, Caribbean theology, African theology, indigeneous theology) or method is to provide a people, a group, or a communtiy with a blueprint, and this blueprint articulates a worldview and intellectual tradition, and embodies a system of moral values and certain ethical principles, correspondingly, to help both men and women navigate through life and to assist the community of faith to think critically, reflexively, and responsibly in light of the life-worlds and life-experiences that shape human attitude toward life and freedom, and individual actions and collective interactions toward commitment and decision.

The highest form of praise to God Almighty is not preaching about God, nor writing about God, nor talking about God, nor singing about God, but the memory of Christ in you and the embodiment of God’s moral life and ethical attributes in your life.

Christ in you is the highest expression of worship to God.

“SBC, Resolutions, and the Future of Christianity in America”

The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Christian denomination in the United States, and its influence in the world (i.e. the Caribbean, Latin America, Asia, Africa) is outreaching, substantial, and historic. I pastor a small and new church (a church plant) that is affiliated with the SBC. Sometimes, I express mixed feelings about our affiliation; other times, I’m glad we cooperate with the SBC to be a truly an incarnational community that is committed to sharing the love and grace of Christ with a broken world and a fragmented people in our culture and in the world. I believe in the power of christian cooperation and fellowship, which is/could be an astounding witness (and the manifestation) of the Gospel in public and in both civil and political societies.

Further, the SBC has one of the most active rescue reliefs (i.e. to attend to natural disasters, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes) teams among other Christian denominations in the United States. SBC also boasts about its international mission agencies and projects in the world and its sustaining campaign in ending modern slave trafficking and rescuing orphans in our society. Yet I’m always puzzled about the SBC’s hunger for political power and cultural influence in society.

I’m appalled by SBC Christians’s support of public policies that hurt the poor and the immigrant, and the marginalized black and brown populations. I’m also puzzled by the denomination’s symbols and artifacts of racism, white supremacy, and anti-black racism. These unchristian issues and practices break my heart and awful witness to Christianity and the Gospel.

One of the reasons I write so much about racial justice and social justice issues in American Christianity and the SBC in particular is because I love the church (the people of God) and would like to see followers of Jesus in this nation and in the SBC become a peacemaking community as well as a faith community that practices ethnic diversity and racial inclusion, and reconciliation and racial unity.

Followers of Jesus in the SBC should be actively and energetically engage in the project of ending racism and white supremacy in the contemporary American society and in Christian circles and institutions as well as helping to reform the prison system and rehabilitate former convicts and felons back to society and to the church.

One of the chapters of my forthcoming book, “Evangelical Paradoxes,” is called “SBC 1845 and Resolutions on Race and Social Justice.” It chronicles the SBC’s paradoxes concerning these connected matters. The ambiguity lies in the rhetoric and the SBC praxis.

For this particular research, I read some 25 SBC Convention Resolutions on race, racism, and social justice issues, from its founding year in 1845 to the most recent SBC convention in 2019. In these historic Convention Resolutions, the language on race dominates the SBC’s 174 years of existence. Correspondingly, the rhetoric on social justice and racism is strong, clear, and eloquently defined.

In sum, I’m thankful to belong to a denomination that was founded on slavery (I’m not proud of that!) not on mission and evangelism as traditionally interpreted by some SBC theologians and leaders, but refuses to carry on its racist narrative in the twenty-first century SBC culture. There’s hope in Christ for the SBC community and family. May God give us more grace and a repentant heart toward justice and love, reconciliation and unity!

#SBC19
#SBC1845

“On Social Justice and Early Christianity”

The word “justice” ticks Evangelical Christians off to the core, as if the concept is a threat to the Gospel. Put the word “social” in front of it, that would help advocates of social justice (as an intrinsic element of biblical justice) earn a new label: liberal or Marxist.

The problem lies in an unhelpful view of (Evangelical) eschatology that looks forward to a new world and renewed culture; thus, Evangelicals are not concerned about systems and structures that create patterns & structures of injustice in society. Their home is not in this world.

Evangelical Theology is too theoretical to be incarnational in the manner that God of the universe became a mere flesh & (table-) fellowshipped with those whose collective lives were characterized by extreme poverty, dehumanization, humiliation, alienation, colonization, & exclusion.

Jesus, the God-Man, related to the real experiences & living conditions of those who suffered in First-century Roman Empire. Until Evangelicals come to grip with the practical meaning & existential consequences of the incarnation, they will always oppose the social justice model.

Evangelical Theology must reckon with the reality of the incarnation of the Son of God and explores what it means for those who live on the margins in society. This is the Great Commission of American Evangelicalism of the Great God-Man in the twenty-first century America.

It is terrifying that social justice a way of thinking about & applying the Gospel in life is now becoming the “great omission” of the gospel in contemporary American Evangelicalism. By contrast, social justice is a heritage of Christianity; this legacy began with the early Christians of the First century Rome who devoted themselves not only to the spreading of the Gospel of grace and salvation to non-followers of Jesus the Christ in their pluralistic (Greco-Roman and Hellenistic) and secular culture and beyond. They seamlessly integrated a Gospel-based grace in their social outreach programs and ministry of reconciliation, resulting in their radical collective action to care for the poor, provide spiritual equality to the enslaved, bury the dead with dignity, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, and attend to the existential needs and living conditions of the widow and the elderly in society. The early Christians adopted abandoned orphans and unwanted children in the Roman society and advocated for the dignity and rights of women and the marginalized, comparatively.

Early Christianity was a social movement within its Greco-Roman context and world, one that radically transformed its culture toward human flourishing and provided a more promising path in Christ Jesus to the spiritual destiny of men and women. Yet there were contemporary social and philosophical movements that were campaigning for better living conditions for the poor and the marginalized; it was, however, the early Christians who were proactive in changing the face of their society by giving the poor and the vulnerable an existential hope and promise that was grounded on the generous and self-giving character of God. They were also persuaded that they were fulfilling the great commission of their Savior-Messiah Jesus Christ—through both social activism and announcing spiritual salvation. These early urban Christians did not theorize the Gospel; they were pragmatists.

Early Christians knew the Gospel graciously delivered to them entailed both the spiritual salvation and the social salvation of men and women in contemporary Greco-Roman society. It is safe to infer that Early Christianity was not just a spiritual movement, but also a social movement that championed social justice as a heritage of the Christian faith. The Gospel is God’s liberating message to all people and social justice as part of that Christocentric-good news is a Christian heritage for all people, regardless of their economic status, race, gender, sexuality, culture, geographic location, and linguistic preference.

What does this all mean for contemporary Evangelicals & Christians in this culture?

Let me make five recommendations:

A. to stand against systemic structures that racialize & dehumanize people who are created in God’s image;

B. to campaign against forces & powers that unjustly & illegally incarcerate black and brown people;

C. to be a voice on racial justice issues;

D. to become an ally to the poor, racialized minorities, the economically-disadvantaged class, & the marginalized in our society; and

E. to challenge public policies that disfranchise the group & races mentioned in part D.

“Why I support the #SBC19 Resolution 9”

In these series of threads, I offer ten reasons why I support the #SBC19

Resolution 9 on “Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality.” As a matter of preface, allow me to make some preliminary remarks before I articulate my ten propositions in favor of Resolution 9. Resolution 9 does not exhibit a worldview and ideology, as many have wrongly interpreted it, but should be construed as a theoretical tool of analysis not a system of thought; as such, it provides a starting point to think conceptually and categorically about the interplay between Christianity and race, the message of the Gospel and the message of the American culture, and the liberating teachings of Christ for the disinherited, the poor, and the vulnerable in our society. Resolution 9 is a much needed instrumental framework to help foster within the SBC community more constructive Gospel-centered conversations on racial (in-) justice concerns and socioeconomic (in-) justice issues that have plagued this nation and the SBC (and to a larger degree American Christianity) for too long—since its birth in May 1845 in Augusta, GA and its eventual split from the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society over the issue of slavery.

Further, Resolution 9 could help the SBC to be a more constructive denomination as well as more mindful and sensitive as a multi-service Christian institution about the economic and health disparities between racial groups, toxic living conditions of the poor, environmental justice issues, the mass incarceration of Black males, the mass abortion in the Black community, the educational underperformance of Black students in public schools, intentional geographic segregation in residential zones, and designed systemic and social segregation that are terribly affecting the Christian experience in America, the American cultural and political fabric, and the intricate experience of both Black and Brown population, both Christians and non-Christians. Some of these problematic issues have deep roots in racial-based economic wealth and distribution, white privilege, white supremacy, racial prejudice and discrimination, the legacy of the segregation system, and the consequences of the racist narrative of this nation supported both by American Christianity and American Evangelicalism.

These problematic matters have produced disastrous impact on the life of contemporary SBC and Evangelical churches and they continue to change the nature of Christian fellowship and interracial relations in Evangelical circles. Finally, the #SBC19 Resolution 9 could help the SBC community to venture optimistically and Christianly toward the project of Christian reconciliation and the possibility of racial unity and reconciliation in its various circles, institutions, and churches.

At this point in our conversation, let us now explore the additional ten reasons that substantiate my underlying claim in supporting the #SBC19 Resolution 9 (I borrow the language and rhetorical expressions from Robert P. Jones’ influential and well-researched book, “The End of White Christian America” (Simon & Schuster, 2016)):

1. “No segment of White Christian American has been more complicit in the nation’s fraught racial history than white evangelical Protestants.

2. And no one group of white evangelical Protestants bears more responsibility than Southern Baptists, who comprise the overwhelming majority of white evangelicals, particularly in the states of the former Confederacy.

3. As the largest Protestant denomination in the country, and the white Christian denomination most concentrated in the South, the SBC is an important bellwether for White Christian America’s progress on race relations.

4. The SBC was, after all, created in the years before the Civil War as a haven for pro-slavery Southern Christians. Baptist churches in the South seceded and formed the Southern Baptist Convention so that members would not have to choose between their slaves and their calling to be missionaries.

5. Following the Civil War, Southern Baptists stood by southern status quo of segregation…Typical white Baptists in the South viewed civil rights as at best irrelevant to the Christian faith and at worst a threat to their culture.

6. The Southern Baptist Convention—known for passing resolutions on even minor matters of concern—largely ignored the early civil rights movement. Their only official race relations resolution during the entire decade of the 1950s was a resolution issued in 1950 recommending the denomination officially invite “Negro churches” to participate in simultaneous (but separate) revival meetings.

7. [W.A.] Criswell’s speech to the South Carolina General Assembly was a potent example of the overtly segregationist faction within the Southern Baptist Convention during the civil rights era.

8. In his popular Separating people of different races through law was not portrayed as a moral evil—in fact, some argued that it was necessary to maintain peace in the South.

9. The individualist flavor of Baptist theology, with its tendency to reduce racial problems to individual sin rather than systematic social discrimination, remained, ensuring that most responses to the race problem by groups like the Southern Baptist Convention were fairly shallow.

10. Early resolutions [i.e.1995] had gone out of their way to minimize Baptists’ complicity in white racism and often simultaneously denounced civil disobedience or destruction of property as legitimate ways to enact social change… The sins of the fathers continue to haunt the SBC’s attempts to deal with race today as they attempt to move from apology to reconciliation” (pp. 147-195).

“On Evangelical Paradoxes” (Part 2)

Two years ago, I signed a book contract with @wipfandstock to publish a text tentatively called “Evangelical Paradoxes: American Evangelicalism and the Destruction of American Christianity.” The book is a critique on “the evangelical worldview” and to engage some of the socio-political ills and cultural malaise in contemporary American Evangelicalism. (Yet these issues and “evangelical practices” have deep theological foundations and associations.) It is also a very personal book, as I attempt to chronicle my own struggles to understand how Evangelicals have responded and continue to react to some of the most urgent issues of our time and in our culture, such as political party’s affiliation and advocacy, immigration, police brutality, mass incarceration, abortion, white supremacy, race, gender and sexuality issues, social justice issues, etc.

I also attempt to write about my personal journey in Evangelical schools and circles such as @BCF, @SBTS, & @SWBTS and express my discontent about the theological curriculum and religious education in my own affiliated denomination, which are very inclusive, white, male, ideological, homogeneous, and monolithic. The book is also a critique on the problem of diversity, Christian fellowship, and interracial relations in Evangelical circles and Christian churches in America.

In addition, I explain my experience with race and of racism and “cultural prejudice” in the schools cited above, as well as the humiliation and isolation that I have endured in Evangelical places. “Evangelical Paradoxes” is intended for pastors, seminarians, and lay people. My ultimate goal for writing this book is threefold: (1) to disturb the evangelical conscience; (2) to foster candid conversations among Christians around these pivotal and problematic issues; and (3) to redirect the Evangelical conscience from its crave for political power and cultural influence to embrace a Christ-centered politics and ethics, and a Biblical-centered anthropological relationality that give primacy to hospitality, self-sacrifice, servant leadership, mutual reciprocity, justice, and compassion, as well as to attend to the existential needs (and be concerned about the living conditions) of the poor, the vulnerable, and the economically-disadvantaged populations in this country. As I am wrapping up this manuscript, I begin to think seriously about how this book will be received among friends whom I dearly love and the schools that I have trained me and informed me theologically, but not socially. (The latter I received from my secular education at the University.)

On the other hand, and in the course of time, I have written two manuscripts to engage the notion I call “Evangelical Paradoxes.” Two weeks ago, I submitted the second volume (about 400 pages) to the publisher even before I was through with the first volume (about 400 pages also). The second volume, “Theologizing in Black,” is intended for scholars and Christian thinkers, while the first one is directed toward the people in the pew and the thinking christian. The second volume attempts to provide some possible solutions to the Evangelical paradoxes. It seems to me that the second volume will be first published, as I intend to submit volume one to the publisher by the beginning of August this year. Yet the first volume is a very personal book. It reveals mon cri de coeur for shalom, renewal, transformation, and a kind of radically Gospel-centered rebirth in contemporary American Christianity.

The more I study American Christianity and American Evangelicalism, the more I am realizing that contemporary American Evangelicals have destroyed Biblical Christianity and have become perhaps the greatest enemy of the Gospel and perhaps the greatest opponents of social justice and racial issues in this culture.

May God give us enough grace and radically transform the Christian conscience in this nation to turn away from its obsession with cultural practices, religious habitus, and political idols that have taken captive the liberative message and teachings of Christ to become a dangerous community of faith that champions human flourishing, the common good, and a great people who embodies God’s grace compassion, humility, and love in public!

“On Christian Miracles and “Religious Myths”

It is interesting to imagine that the things that are called “myths” and “legends” in various religious traditions and in the field of (secular) anthropology are called “miracles” in Christianity. Two examples of the latter are the incarnation of God in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth and his bodily resurrection substantiated by eyewitness testimony—the two cardinal truths of Christianity concerning the (divine) identity and (soteriological) function of Jesus Christ. If one wants to truly embrace the Christian message, one has to believe in the supposedly “christian myths and legends.” Hence, one can infer that the essence of Christianity is embedded in its myths.

By contrast, Orthodox Christianity uses the language of myth and legend to label what might be considered supernatural phenomena and events in other religious traditions. In this way, Orthodox Christianity establishes its distinctive religious identity and truth-claims from other religious faiths and its bold claim of divine origin or authorship.