Responding to Racism in the Church, Part 2
This is part two of a series of articles responding to the arguments of those who claim to be Christians and appeal to scripture to support racist views. In part 1 I highlighted how Kinists twist scripture and apply foreign interpretive lenses in order to reach the conclusions they want to see in scripture. In this article I will address common argumentation found in Kinist writings. One matter that Kinists repeatedly reference is something orthodox Christians need to face: There have been many Christians over the centuries who either held to racist views or who at some point said and/or wrote prejudicial remarks. We need to come to terms with this.
Reading Kinist literature, it quickly becomes apparent that appealing to authority is one of the primary arguments used to support their views. The other pillar found in Kinist literature is an appeal to selectively picked modern test scores and crime rates. As Mark Twain once famously said, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” These two pillars of Kinist “theology” are intertwined. It is notable at this point that Kinists prefer to call themselves “Christian Race Realists.” This title is significant because from the 17th to early 20th centuries there was a popular belief in academic circles in what was known as “scientific race realism,” a now debunked pseudo-science that was anything but scientific. Advocates of scientific race realism engaged in everything from measuring nose-widths to “craniology,” where the slopes of foreheads were compared in order to determine that there were distinct races and then establish a racial hierarchy. It is fitting that Kinists prefer to call themselves Christian Race Realists because their own selective “research” mirrors that of this long debunked pseudo-science.
What does “scientific race realism” have to do with our theological forebears? Very simply, this was the academic environment in which theologians from the 17th to early 20th centuries also lived. Ketcham and others are quick to employ as many quotes as they can find from historic figures to bolster their beliefs. Some of these can be demonstrated to be a twisting of authorial intent, but this cannot be said for every reference. It is argued that Thornwell/Hodge/Machen/other held to this view, so if you reject Kinists as heretical, then you have to reject them as well. This appeal to authority is the Kinist’s primary argument.
This argument also fails first an appeal to authority is not a logical argument. Scripture is the only rule for our faith and practice, not the traditions, writings, or sinful sayings of church fathers, nor modern fallible attempts to measure man. As a pastor, I must warn anyone reading this that it is never wise nor spiritually honest to attempt to justify oneself by appealing to the actions or views of others. How many an adulterer has sought to justify himself or diminish his own infidelity by appealing to the sin of King David? “If he committed adultery and was a man after God’s own heart, then I can be too! How dare you condemn me!” Seeking to compare one’s own sins or righteousness to those of others around us for self-justification is the very heart of a Pharisee (Luke 18:9-11). It should never be forgotten that judgment is not on a curve. Every man or woman will stand before God on his own and like children we cannot claim, “But he did it!”
Nevertheless, we still must reckon with the fact that some of our fathers in the faith did embrace sinful views. Whenever we read of the sins of men who go before us, it’s always a good reminder that only Christ can be our true hero. Everyone else in life will inevitably disappoint us. When we read of historic men of faith, this always has to be done with an understanding of the context of history. Ironically, Kinists make the very same mistake woke cultural activists do when it comes to understanding historical figures: divorcing them from their context. Every man is a man of his times, influenced by the culture around him and that much more susceptible to the sins of his household and generation. We too are men of our times no doubt with glaring blind spots. Benjamin Morgan Palmer, for instance, said some horrible things, infamously in his Thanksgiving Day sermon that tragically served as a catalyst for the Civil War. But Rev. Palmer was also a man of his times, born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1818. He would have been exceptionally unique to be raised in this place and at this time and not have racist views. That doesn’t excuse his sin, but it does make it understandable. During this time, it was illegal in eight Southern states (including Palmer’s South Carolina) to teach slaves how to read and write, so we shouldn’t be surprised that the vast-majority of black men and women he encountered would have been uneducated and ignorant. If he’s going to take his views of humanity from observing what he saw around him, what other conclusion could he reach? This was also a time when “scientific race realism” was considered credible and the standard view of anthropology in academia. Palmer was sinfully wrong, yet also a man of his times. Understanding historical figures within their proper context helps us reckon with the fact that some of our heroes in the faith also followed the cultural sins around them, which is why I can still appeal to men Thornwell, Palmer, and Machen, but cannot have fellowship with modern Kinists. It is also notable that none of these historic men of faith were ever challenged in those views by the courts of the church to whom they were accountable. The same cannot be said of modern Kinists. Kinists eschew accountability, one of the very instruments God uses to discipline, correct, and sanctify his children, including in our thinking.
What’s the big problem with Kinism? It isn’t a denial of justification by faith alone or the deity of Christ, so is this really a matter to fight over and discipline those who persist in embracing it? Yes. As Westminster Confession of Faith XV.4 states, “As there is no sin so small, but it deserves damnation; so there is no sin so great, that it can bring damnation upon those who truly repent.” These views are sin and we cannot have fellowship with any who claim to profess Christ, yet refuse to repent of sin, especially when those sins have been highlighted and brought before the church to which we are accountable.
It will be objected that our standards never mention the word “racism,” yet neither do they include the expression “internet pornography” because neither were 17th century concepts. Nevertheless, they’re both bound up within our standards, just as the word ‘Trinity,’ while not found in the Bible, is Biblical.
I will simply highlight one of the embraced sins of Kinism, though there are others. Kinists explicitly violate the 5th commandment. Westminster Larger Catechism questions 131 & 132 state,
“What are the duties of equals? The duties of equals are, to regard the dignity and worth of each other, in giving honor to go one before another; and to rejoice in each others’ gifts and advancement, as their own.
What are the sins of equals? The sins of equals are, besides the neglect of the duties required, the undervaluing of the worth, envying the gifts, grieving at the advancement or prosperity one of another; and usurping preeminence one over another.”
Simply put, Kinists undervalue the worth and gifts of people of other races and usurp preeminence in their claims of superiority. At this point it will be objected by Kinists that they aren’t equal, except this is not a declaration one may simply make because one wants to think of himself as superior. God, not man, is the one who establishes the authority structures to which we must submit (e.g. governments over citizens, parents over children, church members submit to elders, wives submit to husbands). It is a sinful and proud grasping for self-exaltation that seeks out establishing new authority structures to which others must now submit and that happen to place me and others who look like me over others. Claims in this regard are then almost always rooted in yet more sin, lies about our neighbors and a readiness to receive lies about our neighbors.
Tangentially, it cannot but be noticed that a growing number of those who espouse such views are guilty of moral hypocrisy. Many of these men were at one-point either members or ordained officers in NAPARC denominations, and accordingly vowed to submit themselves to the government and discipline of the church. These men all voluntarily took these vows, invoking the name of the LORD. The typical kinist pattern is that after such a man’s views are exposed, he refuses to repent, is deposed from office and excommunicated, then he turns around to denounce his former denomination as apostate.
This is moral hypocrisy because these men had already acknowledged that their denominations were indeed true and legitimate churches when they voluntarily vowed to submit themselves to the government of these bodies, including their discipline. One cannot in integrity decry these same churches as apostate after falling under censure from these bodies whose legitimacy they already acknowledged.
No doubt these Kinists would love to see themselves as akin to J. Gresham Machen or Ebenezer Erskine. But in the cases of such stalwarts of the faith, it was the church that left these men. In Machen’s case, hundreds of officers in the Northern Presbyterian Church were denying doctrines such as the virgin birth of Christ, penal substitutionary atonement, and Christ’s resurrection. Machen was suspended from office because he founded an independent mission board that insisted missionaries believe in and proclaim the Gospel. In Erskine’s case, he was first censured for insisting on the free offer of the Gospel in the Marrow Controversy, contrary to neo-nomians who were teaching that a man must “prepare himself” for the gospel with outward repentance. Each of these men were censured for insisting upon preaching the Gospel by churches that had turned away from it.
But what about the case of censured kinists? They aren’t being censured for standing for the free offer of the Gospel or for upholding doctrines central to the Gospel like penal substitutionary atonement, but for insisting upon their own intellectual superiority over people with more melanin. Comparing their own cases to others who have actually been persecuted for the faith is little more than delusional self-aggrandizement. The Apostle Peter appropriately asks, “For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure?”
A common thread can then be seen in both the methodology of Kinists and in their responses to correction from their former churches: pride. The heart-call of the gospel is to humility, yet it is not without notice that although these men claim to be Christians, the call of white supremacists is to “white pride” and not “white humility.” Pride is the obvious root sin because pride is all about seeking and pursuing self-exaltation.. Pride is what keeps these men from having a teachable and corrigible spirit, denouncing as apostate the very denominations to whose discipline they once vowed submission. Proud is that spirit that screams that all of their teachers are wrong, that any place that does not agree is egalitarian[1], and that they alone are the true and only faithful left of the LORD. Yet those who are tempted by such views must be warned that it is the proud heart that God promises to tear down (Prov. 15:25) because nothing is more antithetical to submission to God than pride. It is the proud heart that refuses to value our neighbors as Christ commands us, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself” (Phil. 2:3).
[1] Kinists call everyone who reject their views of white supremacy and racial inequality racial egalitarians, which they say leads to atheism.
