Tag: world vision

Categories
News

Classic Repost: World Vision Goes Woke, Says All White Christians are ‘Racist’ who have ‘White Gaze’

Last year World Vision created an online course designed to equip churches and pastors to understand “racial justice.” In reality, it was a hotbed of Critical Race Theory and unbiblical syncretism, infecting the organization and resulting in the wokefication of World Vision and a denial of some core tenets of the Christian Faith. These articles expose the extent that CRT and pagan syncretism – the fusion of different systems of religious beliefs with Christianity – has compromised the mission of the famed NGO.

World Vision has been driving leftwards for a while now. Famously back in 2014, they changed their hiring practices to allow men and women in gay “marriage” to be hired and considered for employment, then quickly reversed course under the pressure and backlash, causing the late heretic Rachel Held Evans to weep in peevishly lament.

In the summer of 2020, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, World Vision announced they would be hosting a free one-year online course titled “May We Be One: Pastors pursuing Racial Justice” which is designed to educate on social justice and is put on in partnership with “leaders who represent a diverse group of churches and our friendships with experts and some of the pioneers of this work.”

The organization currently has over 115,000 pastors, priests, deacons, and Christian faith leaders trained through the Word Vision program, and they assert that because of their experience in equipping local churches, they believe that they are “positioned to act as a convener and host for this experience.”

Some of their stated goals are to have church leaders “be prepared to lead conversations about racism in America,” and to “engage with one another to dismantle racism and change the landscape of the church,” and comprise a series of sessions between guests and host.

Here are several articles we have done on them, demonstrating that World Vision has gone to a very, very dark place.

In Part 1 Randy Woodley advocated for pagan syncretism, explaining that Christian missionaries were wrong to tell the Native tribes to repent from their pagan spiritual and animistic ways, given that they were already loving God before the missionaries arrived.

In Part 2, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah explained the concept of “white gaze’ and how it is designed to frame black people as a threat, resulting in the propensity of white Christians to “act instinctively to preserve that narrative of white superiority” and “act naturally, instinctively, to preserve…the narrative of white superiority.”

In Part 3 Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal explained that white Christians instinctually view all view Asians as either pets or threats and as a result, need to learn “all the ways they have participated in the pain of the Asian American community and in being complicit…with the things that have happened to them.” She further explains that if we “aren’t willing to sit with the weight of guilt when it comes to the sins of racism, we will never understand that we are the problem. Unless we acknowledge the existence of white privilege, we can’t understand our own complicity in it.”

In Part 4 Dr. Soong-Chan Rah explained how by default and intrinsically, white people view black people and Asians as either “pets” or “threats” and view Asian women as invisible or sexual jezebels. He explains that when white people look at black people, “if you’re not the pet, you become the threat. You are the unidentified black male that commits every crime in our city. You are the individual that is seen as the unsafe person in our society. And even worse, if you are the pet that becomes the threat.”

In Part 5, Dr. Efrem Smith lauds Liberation Theology as “transformational” and “a gift to the church.” He explains how Black Liberation Theology is a great tool for having a proper understanding of justice and gospel evangelism, while fellow panelist Kat Armas explains that white people are colonizers. The desire to colonize is the dominant culture in America today, and that white people still continue to perpetuate the myth that persons of color are colonized and are viewed as chaotic, irrational, and evil, with a special desire to colonize Latinx people.

In Part 6, Dr. Efrem Smith explains that after he had a “second conversion” into the religion of “racial reconciliation,” he came to understand that the multiethnic church, in order to be a reconciling church, also must deal with disparities; chasms and gaps that existed by race, class, and place. He explains that the church must be “willing to stand in the gaps, to bridge the gaps, to address the disparities that exist’ and our example is Jesus, given “Jesus stepped into the disparities and the gaps that existed between Jew and Gentile. Jesus stepped into the gaps that existed in the gender structure.”

Categories
Evangelical Stuff Featured News

The Wokeficaton of World Vision: Series Finale + Black Christians in Church Need to Form ‘Affinity Groups’ Based on Race

World’s Vision’s woke “May We Be One” seminar has ended. It concluded with Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal, and Dr. Efrem Smith offering their reflections on the past year and answering questions to what has been an absolute theological dumpster fire of a time.

The first half of their farewell concludes by addressing those who have been critical of their programming, slamming bloggers who have been less than thrilled at their progressive agenda. They concluded that anyone accusing them of smuggling in Critical Race Theory (CRT) doesn’t know what they are talking about, because CRT, “in its very specific application is a particular academic discipline. It’s actually a legal discipline that focuses on law schools and on legal precedents.” Because they view it as such a narrow concept, they say it’s impossible for CRT to be taught to children, much less from their mouths.

But of course, CRT reigned supreme, as can be seen in some of the sessions here, with their talk of white privilege and the white male gaze turning Asians as pets or threats and black women into sexual mammies.

To prove their point, how little Critical Race Theory has shaped their perspective, Dr. Efrem Smith explains the importance of “black folk” being in “affinity groups” with each other based on race and then gives some final words of advice while explaining what a racist place the church is.

Sometimes, especially if one group is not the dominant group, culturally, in a multi-ethnic setting, you may need affinity groups so that people can see themselves growing, thriving, and developing in a multi-ethnic context.

Sometimes in order to thrive and flourish and grow, you need some people, people that know your slang, they know your experience, they understand your background, they understand why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling about a certain circumstance, why you’re approaching it a certain way.

And we see in the Bible we see times where people are in affinity groups. And you know, sometimes we see a picture, we see a story of development. Amongst the Jews, we see a story of development amongst a particular Gentile group in the New Testament.

And there are other times when we see a very diverse story of flourishing and developing, and they’re both good, they’re both enriched. I mean, man, if I couldn’t be blessed by watching the affinity journey of Ruth and Naomi, and then at the same time, being blessed by the more multi-ethnic, multicultural story of Peter going to the house of Cornelius.

So whether it’s ethnic-specific, or it’s multi-ethnic, there is an opportunity for development. There are times, I love my multicultural, multi-ethnic church. I love it, I love it. And there are times when I need to be in an African American-specific experience. That’s right. And both are good. And in a multi-ethnic church, we should affirm the blessing of both.

Yeah, my closing word would be, do not go back to Egypt. Please do not go back to Egypt. There is a promised land experience for those that are committed to a church that looks like heaven. You know, ultimately it is eternity in the kingdom of God. But until such time as Jesus returns, there is this great, great opportunity to experience ministry more and more in the multi-ethnic, biblical-justice, transformative context.

And when I say don’t go back to Egypt, just so we’re clear, I’ll name what Egypt is. Egypt is the Christian Church in America, deeply rooted in the race structure, a sociological structure that says, based on the colour of your skin, your physical features, your slang, where you were born, we decide who’s fast, who’s slow, who’s smart, who’s dumb, who should be revered, who should be feared, who can clap on beat, and who shouldn’t bother.

And this is all based on the race structure. And whether we acknowledge it or not, the church in the United States was born in the soil of a structure that had already decided who was more human, and who was less human.

Categories
Evangelical Stuff Featured Heresies

The Wokefication of World Vision: Jesus Learned ‘Cultural Intelligence’ and ‘Intercultural Development’ From Samaritan Woman

Continuing our series in the ways that World Vision has gone woke, we bring you Session 12 of their May We Be One curriculum. Moderated by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah and Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal, this one features Dr. Efrem Smith, the co-lead “Pastor” of Bayside Church Midtown in Sacramento.

We previously covered Smith in Session 5, after he explained that “Jesus Stepped Into The Gaps That Existed In The Gender Structure” and also offered Praise for Black Liberation Theology + White Folk Continue To Colonize Latinx.

Now, in session 12, he explains how Christians need to develop the way we look and understand the world, and that even Jesus had to grow and develop his own cultural intelligence, and he did so by learning from the Samaritan woman.

We are in need of ongoing development, to grow in our cultural intelligence. To grow in our intercultural development.

…Never confuse relationships for development. Relationships can definitely play a role in our development, but it doesn’t mean that we’ve given ourselves to the journey of development. What am I saying here? What I’m saying is sometimes people think they’re already developed culturally, that they have high cultural intelligence, just because they have a diversity of friends.

…We don’t consider that some people might be assimilating into our culture. So we may have diverse relationships, but all of these diverse relationships are based on our cultural terms, based on our cultural privilege, on our cultural platform.

And so there is an opportunity for us to learn. Even Jesus, in the Gospel of John chapter 4, when he went to Samaria, even though He’s Lord and Savior, he’s truly God and truly human, without sin, he sits at the well and looks up as a learner. Like a servant to the Samaritan woman. [Editor’s note: No. He did not. It is not even implied in the text. That is made up hogwash to float an extra-biblical agenda.]

h/t to @wokepreachertv for the vid and transcript

For a list of all their other blasphemies and wokeness, click here.

Categories
News

World Vision Teacher Suggests Churches are White Supremacist by Default, Must ‘Name’ and ‘Balance’ Power Dynamics

Continuing the trend in the wikification of World Vision, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah interviews Dr. Korie Little Edwards, who joins Dr. Soong-Chan Rah for their “May We Be One” course.

Dr. Korie Little Edwards is perhaps the most radical progressive and given over to a racialized mindset as they come. While she teaches some relatively benign (for this crowd) bad advice about race and power, she is listed as a recommended resource, and her other works include some incredibly divisive and destructive teachings. One example is on her Elusive Dream podcast where it is asserted that if you’re on this side of the grave, no matter who you are, “you most assuredly have something to repent of as it relates to white supremacy in this society, and if you think you don’t, well, hmm hmm hmm.”

In this case, she explains how because “there are power dynamics outside the church, and those come into the church” the church can’t help but be a racial minefield where persons of color will in some way be subjugated.

Pastors of color have to really deal with people considering them being legitimate authorities. And that white pastors, that is not something they have to really navigate, they are perceived and understood as being legitimate authorities, people that they should be listened to, and followed. It’s not to say that white pastors don’t have a problem to they do [sic]. I mean, they still have to navigate white hegemony or white supremacy, they still have to navigate that in the church. But one thing they do have, is they’re perceived as legitimate authorities.

Unlike white pastors, black pastors have to deal with the emotional impacts of not being viewed as a legitimate authority, and this sort of reality “also extends to congregants. Even congregants of colour deal with similar kinds of pain, where what it means to be and how to express yourself in the worship context, is not considered Christian.”

So one of the key things that happens in multiracial churches is that white supremacy and what I broadly and more generally call ‘white hegemony’ begins to really dominate the space. And that is so powerful. It’s so powerful. And if pastors and leaders are aware of that, it will continue to manifest and really hinder the ministry of the church…what happens often in multiracial churches is you want to ignore the power dynamics that happen outside the church and pretend that it doesn’t matter for with what’s going on in the church. And then what happens is we (believe), everybody’s on equal, everybody’s on equal stand. And that’s just that’s just not true. Everybody’s not. Everybody’s not on equal standing in multiracial churches, white people have greater power outside the church, and they have it in the church.

In order to combat the white supremacy that infiltrates and permeates churches, especially ones that are considered multiracial, Edwards gives her solution:

And I would suggest that one of the key things that multiracial churches have to do is name that immediately and deal with it. Don’t pretend it’s not there, because it’s hurtful to people of color. I’ll tell you that’s number one. Because whenever you don’t name it, whenever you don’t speak the truth about a social fact, it will continue to have power in that space. So the first thing is to name it and to acknowledge it and to talk about how are we going to bring balance to the power imbalance. What are we going to do?



Categories
News

The Wokefication of World Vision: Famed NGO’s Training Course Teaches Why All White Christians are Racists

World Vision has created an online course designed to equip churches and pastors to understand “racial justice.” In reality, it is a hotbed of Critical Race Theory and unbiblical syncretism, infecting the organization and resulting in the wokefication of World Vision and a denial of some core tenets of the Christian Faith, and these articles expose the extent that CRT and pagan syncretism – the fusion of different systems of religious beliefs with Christianity – has compromised the mission of the famed NGO.

World Vision has been driving leftwards for a while now. Famously back in 2014, they changed their hiring practices to allow men and women in gay “marriage” to be hired and considered for employment, then quickly reversed course under the pressure and backlash, causing the late heretic Rachel Held Evans to weep in peevishly lament.

In the summer of 2020, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, World Vision announced they would be hosting a free one-year online course titled “May We Be One: Pastors pursuing Racial Justice” which is designed to educate on social justice and is put on in partnership with “leaders who represent a diverse group of churches and our friendships with experts and some of the pioneers of this work.”

The organization currently has over 115,000 pastors, priests, deacons, and Christian faith leaders trained through the Word Vision program, and they assert that because of their experience in equipping local churches, they believe that they are “positioned to act as a convener and host for this experience.”

Some of their stated goals are to have church leaders “be prepared to lead conversations about racism in America,” and to “engage with one another to dismantle racism and change the landscape of the church,” and comprises a series of sessions between guests and host.

Here are several articles we have done on them, demonstrating that World Vision has gone to a very, very dark place.

In Part 1 Randy Woodley advocated for pagan syncretism, explaining that Christian missionaries were wrong to tell the Native tribes to repent from their pagan spiritual and animistic ways, given that they were already loving God before the missionaries arrived.

In Part 2, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah explained the concept of “white gaze’ and how it is designed to frame black people as a threat, resulting in the propensity of white Christians to “act instinctively to preserve that narrative of white superiority” and “act naturally, instinctively, to preserve…the narrative of white superiority.”

In Part 3 Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal explained that white Christians instinctually view all view Asians as either pets or threats, and as a result need to learn “all the ways they have participated in the pain of the Asian American community and in being complicit…with the things that have happened to them.” She further explains that if we “aren’t willing to sit with the weight of guilt when it comes to the sins of racism, we will never understand that we are the problem. Unless we acknowledge the existence of white privilege, we can’t understand our own complicity in it.”

In Part 4 Dr. Soong-Chan Rah explained how by default and intrinsically, white people view black people and Asians as either “pets” or “threats” and view Asian women as invisible or sexual jezebels. He explains that when white people look at black people “if you’re not the pet, you become the threat. You are the unidentified black male that commits every crime in our city. You are the individual that is seen as the unsafe person in our society. And even worse, if you are the pet that becomes the threat.”

In Part 5 Dr. Efrem Smith lauds Liberation Theology as “transformational” and “a gift to the church.” He explains how Black Liberation Theology is a great tool for having a proper understanding of justice and gospel evangelism, while fellow panelist Kat Armas explains that white people are colonizers. The desire to colonize is the dominant culture in America today, and that white people still continue to perpetuate the myth that persons of color are colonized and are viewed as chaotic, irrational, and evil, with a special desire to colonize Latinx people.

In Part 6, Dr. Efrem Smith explains that after he had a “second conversion” into the religion of “racial reconciliation” he came to understand that the multiethnic church, in order to be a reconciling church, also must deal with disparities; chasms and gaps that existed by race, class, and place. He explains that the church must be “willing to stand in the gaps, to bridge the gaps, to address the disparities that exist’ and our example is Jesus, given “Jesus stepped into the disparities and the gaps that existed between Jew and Gentile. Jesus stepped into the gaps that existed in the gender structure.”

This list will be updated accordingly.

Categories
News

The Wokefication of World Vision: “Jesus Stepped Into The Gaps That Existed In The Gender Structure”

Continuing our journey through the wokefication of World Vision, we have another clip from Dr. Efrem Smith, the Co-lead Pastor of Bayside Church Midtown in Sacramento, explaining that, after he had a “second conversion” into the religion of “racial reconciliation” he began to see things for how they are, and Jesus for who he is. It is for this reason that the gospel of Christ demands the elimination of “disparities.” Taken from Session 10 of the ‘May We Be One’ course which is being taught to thousands of pastors and tens of thousands of people:

I grew up in the African-American church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Still have high regard for the African-American church, deeply connected to the African-American church. Believe in the need for thriving, flourishing, missional, reproducing African-American churches. It’s needed.

And at the same time, I was gripped as a teenager when I rode my bike past a Methodist church in my neighborhood. It was having an outreach event called the Soul Liberation Festival…I heard a message by a guy named John Perkins preaching on reconciliation…I found myself at the altar. I was already a Christian. I’d been baptized. But I had a second conversion in that moment, a calling to racial reconciliation and righteousness. That’s where my journey began. This passion that the church, whenever possible, would look as much like heaven as it can.

In response to that, commenter Matthew Shepherd points out in the combox: “The moment you need to hit the brakes and reevaluate your beliefs is when you begin a sentence, “I had a second conversion to…fill in the blank.” If you’re elevating your calling to the status of conversion your view of calling isn’t biblical.”

…The multiethnic church can’t simply just be about diversity. The multiethnic church, in order to be a reconciling church, also must deal with disparities. As I became a youth pastor in Minneapolis and eventually a church planter of a multiethnic church, our church was diverse, but I realized that in the city where I was pastoring, there were disparities. Chasms. Gaps that existed by race, class, and place.

In areas of home ownership, in areas of economic net worth, in areas of education, of high school graduation, of going on to college and graduating, when it came to issues of incarceration, there were these disparities that existed. These gaps that existed by race.

But sometimes it was not just about race. It was about place. Where you lived, your zip code. And it was about class. Where you were in the economic categories, statuses, in our nation.

And so the multiethnic church, it can’t just be about, ‘Oh, look how diverse we are. ♫Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in his sight♫’ It also has to be: is the church willing to stand in the gaps, to bridge the gaps, to address the disparities that exist? So my life journey went from this passion and heart for diversity to also a church that is missional enough to deal with disparities. That’s what Jesus did.

Jesus stepped into the disparities and the gaps that existed between Jew and Gentile. Jesus stepped into the gaps that existed in the gender structure. That’s why he would stand between stones and a woman caught in adultery, getting ready to receive the death penalty but yet the guy was nowhere to be found. People that didn’t want to be touched by a woman with a disease.

And so Jesus steps into the disparities. Jesus doesn’t just develop diversity, Jesus stepped into the disparities, the gaps between the slave and the free, the incarcerated and the empowered, male and female, Jew and Gentile.

Editor’s Note. This article was written by Pastor Ed Litton and published at Protestia.com.
h/t to WokePreacherTV for the clip and transcript.

Categories
Critical Race Theory Evangelical Stuff Heresies Social Issues Social Justice Wars

The Wokefication of World Vision: Praise for Black Liberation Theology+ White Folk Continue To Colonize Latinx

Continuing our series in the ways that World Vision has gone woke, we bring you Session Eight of their May We Be One social justice curriculum, which is taught to tens of thousands of people and pastors and moderated by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah and Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal.

In this segment, Dr. Efrem Smith, the Co-lead Pastor of Bayside Church Midtown in Sacramento, lauds Liberation Theology as being highly transformation in his own life. This is no surprise, as last year he tweeted out that this damnable heresy is a gift to the entire church.

For those who have been doing discernment and polemic work for a long time, you may also remember Dr. Efrem Smith attacking Voddie Baucham, saying that he was a racist and that his internalized racism is black-on-black violence when he addressed the Ferguson riots in 2014.

During his World Vision segment, he shares how Black Liberation Theology is a great tool for having a proper understanding of justice and gospel evangelism:

That’s why I’m so glad that today we are exploring the Latinx, the Hispanic, the brown story and experience. As an African American Christian who grew up in the black church, and who also in seminary was invaded in a transformative way by Black Liberation Theology, I soon learned that the liberation theology, the reconciliation and justice theology within the black church, has intersections with the church of Latin America. Slave ships didn’t just hit what we know as the United States.

And so there is a deep historic connection between the black story and the brown story. And so I learned from the liberation theology of Central and South America, more about the biblical journey, that the gospel is encompassing of evangelism, discipleship, of course, and justice. Empowerment to the most vulnerable among us. Resisting, not just sin housed in the soul, but systemic sin. And so I’m so blessed as a black Christian male to have the insights, the theology, the liberation of my brown brothers and sisters impacting me, even to this day.

Another one of the panelists is Kat Armas, who has taught extensively on “the brown church” through her podcast and books. She writes for progressive publications like Sojourners and Relevant Magazine and tells the audience that the colonizers, which is the dominant culture in America today, still continue to perpetuate the myth that persons of color are colonized and are viewed as chaotic, irrational, and evil.

So why do we even need an ‘Abuelita (affectionate name for grandmother) theology?’ What gifts does it offer the Latina church? Well, the dominating culture has othered many of our Abuelitas because of the language or the dialect they speak, their accent, the pigmentation of their skin, their cultural customs, their lack of Western education, as I mentioned, their socio-economic status and/ or their gender, right?

And so while the self, the colonizer is ordered and rational and masculine and good, the other, the colonized is chaotic and irrational and feminine and evil. And we see this in how indigenous and native folks were regarded as “savage” or inherently evil and carnal compared to the white European colonizers when they first arrived to the so-called New World.

And the current dominating culture may not say this with its words or it may not be, you know, “the intention,” but what is presented as normal or common in our current culture oftentimes perpetuates this myth.

You know, for example, we see that theology done by black and brown or Asian or indigenous folks is often relegated to a lecture in a theology course, right? Contextual theology in many ways. But throughout history, the colonizer has been the one to know or theorize while the colonized can only be known or theorized about.

Therefore, when we talk about a decolonizing or decolonial or post-colonial look, we are advocating thinking with the marginalized, a thinking with our Abuelitas, rather than a thinking about them.

Bonus. Another of the panelists for this session, Robert Chao Romero, founded an organization that teaches “Jesus died not only for our personal sins, but also for the structural and systemic sins of our society which perpetuate poverty, racism, sexism, classism, and injustice of every kind (Romans 13: 8-10).”

Categories
Church Critical Race Theory Featured Heresies News Social Justice Wars

The Wokefication of World Vision: Whites View Black People as Either ‘Pets’ or ‘Threats’

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, Professor, North Park Theological Seminary, is leading the way in demonstrating the extent that Critical Race Theory is spreading throughout World Vision. Parks is the moderator and one of the leaders of the May We Be One: Pastors pursuing Racial Justice course, whose stated goals are to have church leaders “be prepared to lead conversations about racism in America,” and to “engage with one another to dismantle racism and change the landscape of the church.”

From remarks he made at a Black & Asian Christians United Against Racism conference on April 5th 2021 at the Apostolic Faith Church, and also reiterated in Session 9 of the course, Soong-Chan Rah explains that by default and intrinsically, white people view black people and Asians as either “pets” or “threats” and view Asian women as invisible or sexual jezebels.

For African-American communities, I’ve often described how the spiritual demonic power of white supremacy, the gaze of the dominant culture defines the black community, so that the rest of us have to play along.

So that when the white male looks at the black male, the black male is either a pet or a threat. The black male is a pet because the white community wants you to entertain them, wants you to be their comedians that make them laugh, the musicians that make them dance, and the sports athletes that make them jump up and clap.

But they also see you, if you’re not the pet, you become the threat. You are the unidentified black male that commits every crime in our city. You are the individual that is seen as the unsafe person in our society. And even worse, if you are the pet that becomes the threat.

Hypothetically, it could be an athlete who takes a knee. That pet has become a threat. Hypothetically, it could be pastors who decide we’re not going to play the game anymore – we’re going to stand against injustice. You’ve gone from a pet to a threat.

And it is the same scenario that Asian-Americans often find ourselves in. The gaze of the white dominant culture looks at the Asian male and says: you are a pet or a threat.

…They are the Chinese virus. They are the Kung flu. And how easily and quickly it became for that pet to become a threat. And we’ve seen this on the gendered side, as well. Bell Hooks says that when the white male gazes upon the black female, he categorizes the black female in two ways: the Jezebel or the Mammy.

The Jezebel, that is, the sexualized fantasy of the dominant culture, and the mammy that takes care of you and gives you what you need. You see that same paradigm now play itself out in the Asian community, as well.

…because you are seeing the Asian women as disposable and invisible. The ones that pick up the towels after you. The ones that feed you. The ones that take care of you. That’s what you’ve seen, the Asian women. You have sexualized or you have made invisible the Asian-American woman. This is the reality of white supremacy.

This is what world vision is teaching thousands of pastors and tens of thousands of people each week. It is not an unknown program.

To give one example, Willow Creek, the multi-campus 20,000 member church founded by Bill Hybels, announced months ago that they were participating in World Vision’s May We Be One year-long conference “in an effort to help equip all our staff to better engage justice and racism from a biblical perspective.”

Sadly, we have only scratched the surface of how deep this all goes.

h/t to @wokepreachertv for the find.

Categories
Church Critical Race Theory Evangelical Stuff Featured

The Wokefication of World Vision: Jesus and Paul were ‘Code-Switching’ to fit into 1st Century ‘White Spaces’

Continuing our series in the ways that World Vision has gone woke, we bring you Session Nine of their May We Be One curriculum. Moderated by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah and Rev. Sandra Maria Van Opstal on May 20, 2021, it featured Dr. Michelle Ami Reyes speaking on the Asian American Pacific Islander Experience and why Jesus was “code-switching.”

In this session, Van Opstal introduces her guest by explaining that she can teach us all the ways “in which we have participated and or not known how our country has participated in the pain of the Asian American community and in being complicit…with the things that have happened to them.”

This is after Dr. Soong-Chan Rah explained that white folk use their “white gaze” to view Asian people as either “threats” or “pets” and gave us the helpful diagram below:

She then introduces us to guest Dr. Michelle Reyes. She’s a speaker, author, activist, and the Vice President of the Asian American Christian Collaborative who has written for TGC and the ERLC. She’s all in on Critical Race Theory, writing in a blog post on her website:

White privilege relies on racialization, a system of values that says one group of people is superior to all others because of the color of their skin. This system has been weaponized to justify the cruel treatment of and discrimination toward non-white people throughout American history

….White privilege is both a cause and legacy of racism. It is a conscious act rooted in historic inequities, and it continues to reinforce systemic racism today. When it comes to racial trauma, displacement, the cruel treatment and discrimination of people of color, or the country’s history of slavery, we have to acknowledge the role of white privilege.

….But if we aren’t willing to sit with the weight of guilt when it comes to the sins of racism, we will never understand that we are the problem. Unless we acknowledge the existence of white privilege, we can’t understand our own complicity in it.

Each of us needs to do the hard work of examining our own biases and actions. We cannot separate the past from our present. They are interconnected. Repenting for the sins of historic slavery and its current iterations in our society is a necessary step in beginning to work toward a more equitable and just future, both inside and outside the church. 

It is on this note that she tells thousands of pastors and tens of thousands of laymen listening in all about “code-switching,” explaining that Jesus and Paul did their own version of this in the first century.

All of us code-switch in different ways at different times. Sometimes it’s just about putting our best foot forward, like that the first time we go on a date with somebody, or we have a job interview or something like that. We’re trying to present ourselves in the best possible light. So the other person will like us, want to hang out with us, hire us, fill in the blank.

When it comes to minorities, when we talk about code-switching, this is that thought that pops into our brain, like ‘you’ve got this, just act white.’ It’s this way of saying, ‘I’m going to hide my own ethnicity, or my ethnic heritage, my cultural expressions. I’m gonna hide the way that I perhaps act at home so I can fit in within this majority of whitespace.’

And usually it’s not just about fitting in, it’s about trying to survive. It’s trying to not be made fun of, to not be shamed, to not be bullied verbally or physically. So there’s a lot of fear, and trauma that goes into code-switching, as well.

And so, as a caveat, and what I argue in that chapter of my book is that it’s important for historically disempowered minorities to understand that the Bible is not calling us to hide who we are, to be ashamed of who we are, to code-switch merely as a means for survival, and to sort of give in to the status quo.

She concludes by explaining that Jesus would code-switch in order to ensure that he doesn’t come across as “offensive” or so that people will be able to fully hear and receive his message.

But rather, I think we see in the life of Jesus, we see in the life of Paul, that they are able to code-switch. And by that, as I mentioned, they know that they are studiers of people.

They understand how people think, how people tick, theological difference, world differences, a worldview, even just sort of social norms, what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate. When they step into a room or they step into a new town, they have those ideas at their forefront and say, ‘Okay, if I’m going to connect with this person, I need to shift in this way, or I need to adapt myself in this way so I don’t come across as offensive or that my message will be heard.‘

The original video can be seen here.

Categories
Critical Race Theory Evangelical Stuff Featured Heresies

The Wokefication of World Vision: ‘White Male Gaze’ and Why White Christians Desire White Primacy

World Vision’s online course designed to equip churches and pastors to understand “racial justice” is a hotbed of Critical Race Theory, unbiblical syncretism, and radical progressivism, infecting the organization and resulting in the wokefication of World Vision and a denial of some core tenets of the Christian Faith.

Discovered through their monthly “May We Be One: Pastors pursuing Racial Justice” course, this is part two in a five-part series exposing the extent that CRT has compromised the mission of the famed NGO (See Part one for more information on these courses).

In this case, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, Professor at North Park Theological Seminary and one of the primary moderators for World Vision, explains the CRT concept of “white male gaze” and the ways it is designed to frame black people as a threat, resulting in the propensity of White Christians to “act instinctively to preserve that narrative of white superiority” and “act naturally, instinctively, to preserve…the narrative of white superiority.”

Whose perspective determines the perspective of society? Willie Jennings [of Yale Divinity School] talks about the four quadrants of relationships, a four-part relationship, between the white male, the black male, the white female, and the black female. And that interrelationship between these four oftentimes is determined by the gaze or perspective of the white male.

In other words, how the white male views the others determines how the rest of society views the other. So, for example, when the white male gazes upon the black male, how is that black male perceived? The black male is perceived in such a way that the rest of society views the black male in the same way. So, when the white male sees the black male, that black male is a threat.

In fact, if you think about the six o’clock news and what leads every single news report on the six o’clock local news, what is the most scary, threatening person in our society according to the six o’clock news? It is the unidentified black male…

…Now that threat of the black male is translated in a lot of different ways, and one of the ways is translated is the gaze issue again, the perspective, when the black male looks at the white female, that is oftentimes conceived as a very real threat.

Narratives are like a good actor in a good TV show or in a movie. So there are good actors who use something called method acting. In method acting, what they do is they embody the character so deeply that they reflexively and improvisationally, impulsively act out of that character. So, for example, if Robert De Niro is playing a mobster in a movie shoot, and you run into him at a Starbucks, don’t talk to him, because he’s so into that character, he’ll respond to you like he’s an actual mobster.

So that embodied character, getting so deeply into that character that your instinct, your reflex, what you improvise, comes out of that character, that’s what narratives do. And so these narratives have been played out over and over again. The unidentified black male. The superiority of white culture over other culture. The demeaning of other cultures and the elevating of this culture.

When that narrative gets played out over and over again, we end up embedding that character into our imagination, our value system, our worldview, and we act improvisationally, instinctively, reflectively, reflexively, out of that character.

One of the questions we want to grapple with as we go through this material is what are the ways that we act instinctively to preserve that narrative of white superiority, white primacy? What are the ways we act naturally, instinctively, to preserve or act into that narrative of white superiority?”

h/t to @wokepreachertv for the clip and most of the transcript. Everyone should follow him on Twitter, Gab, and YouTube.