And hath made of one blood all nations of men (Acts 17:26).
Tensions were high one Saturday in April 2021 when Democrat representative Maxine Waters spoke in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man, was shot and killed by police. Waters said, “We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.”
Waters, a highly confrontational figure, sometimes known as “Kerosene Maxine,” was notorious for telling her constituents to follow and hound Trump supporters and make life miserable for them: “Wherever you find them, at the gas station, in restaurants, go right on and harass them.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a different approach for the civil rights movement. Bishop Jim Lowe, senior pastor of the Guiding Light Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and distinguished fellow at the Alabama Policy Institute—where the emphasis is on free markets, limited government, and strong families—believes that the current-day civil rights movement, marked by violent protests, is very different than the civil rights movement of the 1960s under Dr. King’s leadership. Lowe pointed out that King, in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” believed that in any non-violent campaign there are four basic steps to be followed: (1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist, (2) negotiation, (3) self-purification, and (4) direct action (Lowe’s comments can be found at southeastsun.com).
Unfortunately, says Lowe, these steps are lacking in many of today’s protests, many of which turn violent and lead to the destruction of property and businesses in the black community. “In some cases,” says Lowe, “injustice may seem apparent but in reality, it is non-existent. Thus righteousness is not on the side of the protester.”
The second step that Dr. King followed was negotiation. King felt that was extremely important. Lowe points out, however, that today, negotiation does not get very far. Try to negotiate and you are shouted down. Reasonable and helpful discourse is impossible. “Disrespect,” says Lowe “is shown to those who are made in the image of God.”
The third step followed by Dr. King that is completely bypassed today is self-purification. This was a time of personal and intensive self-examination for the leader of the protest. The person needs to be honest with himself and check his motives, his manners, and see if confession to God needs to be made. Does this sound like something the BLM people would do today?
The fourth step recommended by Dr. King is direct action. If the previous three steps have been followed and there is no progress, a peaceful protest is necessary. Dr. King believed in justice and he did not believe in capitulation. He took direct action that was non-violent. Lowe believes that protests should hold a special place for Americans who realize that we have a Bill of Rights to protect the people from the government. Protests have been catalysts for progress for centuries and are essential to the American experiment. Lowe believes that when legislation “with the potential to affect protesting comes up for debate …our representatives should be extremely careful. Any effort, even good intentions to prevent violence, that limits the right to protest or gives law enforcement undue power to restrain or jail citizens exercising their first amendment rights, should be carefully examined.” However, non-violent protests are unacceptable today in the modern civil rights movement. Why is that? Because the issue is never the issue. The revolution is.
Critical Race Theory and Marxism
Critical race theory (CRT) is quickly becoming America’s new institutional orthodoxy. What is it and where did it come from? Patrisse Khan-Cullors, BLM co-founder, has said she is a “trained Marxist.” What are the connections between Marxism, CRT, and BLM?
Marxism was initially built on the theory of class conflict. Marx believed that the primary characteristics of industrial societies was an imbalance of power between capitalists (property owners) and workers, an imbalance between the oppressors and the oppressed. Marx said the only answer to this problem is revolution. Workers must rise to power, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class, and usher in a new socialist utopia. In other words Marx believed in a Millennium without God.
During the twentieth century a number of governments underwent Marxist-led revolutions that left up to 100 million people dead. The Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and others violently destroyed the existing capitalist structures through mass murder, purges, and gulags. By the mid-1960s, Marxist thinkers in America realized they had no hope of success in a country where the people were happy and successful. A growing and prosperous middle class was enjoying the “American dream.” Fortunately, the civil rights movement of the 1960s led by Dr. King did bring change and justice through peaceful means. It brought the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But the Marxists are historically resilient, a social cancer that destroys the host and thereby, ultimately, destroys itself leaving death. Rather than abandon their plans for societal change, Marxist thinkers in America simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1990s. Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the oppressed based on racial and ethnic categories. For them, the new imbalance of power is between the whites and the non-whites. While Dr. King was looking for a society where people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” BLM makes skin color everything. Tell a BLM supporter that white lives matter too, and you will be in big trouble, maybe even violence.
For some CR theorists, even “white” science is suspect. James Lindsay writes, “Since modern science was predominantly produce by white, Western men, Critical Race Theory views science as a white and Western way of knowing. Critical Race Theory maintains that science encodes and perpetuates ‘white dominance’ and thus isn’t really fitting for black people who inhabit a culture of Blackness” (newdiscourses.com).
CRT is not a unifying movement but thrives on division and social anarchy. It is based on fanning the flames of racial unrest. Several states—Oklahoma, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Tennessee, and others—have drafted bills that ban the teaching of CRT. It is a national tragedy that Democrat lawmakers favor its teaching.
Believe it or not, CRT is not an idea that promotes liberty. It is against the idea of liberty and sees a free society as a way to structure and maintain inequities by convincing racial minorities not to agitate for radical racial identity politics. It is very different than the civil rights movement it incorrectly claims to continue.
Racism is wrong, as is the notion of racial superiority. The idea that whites are superior because they are white is to forget that Hitler and Stalin (as are most American mass murderers) were also white. The whites who made America great did so not because they were white but because of the Judeo-Christian values they held. These are values that are available to anyone and have nothing to do with skin color.
Why then is America so hated by the radical left? It is not really hated for its slavery. Yes, slavery was a dark and ugly blot on American history but, in the words of social commentator Dennis Prager, “If it were, given the ubiquity of slavery throughout world history, every country and ethnic group on earth would be hated. America is hated for its values and its successes” (WND, 4/19/21).
There is an internationalist conspiracy to remove America as a sovereign nation because America is the single most potent opposer to globalism. In his 1991 Bilderberger speech, David Rockefeller made it clear that he and his family are part of a “secret cabal” to overthrow America. And “I am proud of it,” he said. CRT is an effective way to tear down the American Republic and make way for the one-world government of the Antichrist (see Revelation 13). Fortunately many Americans, including notable black Americans, understand.
On April 28, 2021, Senator Tim Scott delivered the Republican response to President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress. Among other things, Scott who is a black American said, “America is not a racist country.”
Senator Scott said he was blessed “with a praying momma.” He bemoaned the closing of churches during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Becoming a Chrisian transformed my life, but for months too many churches were shut down.” Senator Scott said: “Black, Hispanic, white, and Asian, Republican and Democrat … we are not adversaries. We are family. We are all in this together, and we get to live in the greatest country on earth. … So I am more than hopeful. I am confident that our finest hour has yet to come.”
The world is in desperate straits but, “God is still on the throne and prayer changes things.” Jesus Christ is still saving souls and He hasn’t changed His mind about saving more—“red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.”