Review: Untangling Critical Race Theory

Untangling Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know and Why it Matters

By Ed Uszynski (IVP)

If you can read only one book on critical race theory—if you will read only one book on critical race theory—this is the one.

Ed Uszynski approaches CRT from a conservative and evangelical perspective. He holds to the infallibility of Scripture and calls for being discipled by the Bible, not sociology or politics. He doesn’t mince words, and he doesn’t take sides … politically. He says if you don’t have time or aren’t going to read about CRT, then, please, read your Bible.

CRT is a lightning rod. That’s why we need to understand it, Uszynski contends. And our understanding needs to go deeper than caricatures.

He sees a more important reason to understand CRT, though. One of conservative evangelicalism’s foundational authorities, Carl F.H. Henry, believed the conservative Christian emphasis on spirit over body left evangelicals without adequate language to address things the Bible talks about, allowing secular systems such as Marxism and Critical Theory—ancestors of CRT—to fill the linguistic vacuum.

Uszynski is not ignorant of Marxism’s, Critical Theory’s and many critical race theorists’ atheism. Nor does he commend their proposed solutions to the problems each diagnose, but he does advocate listening.

Marxism and Critical Theory ask incisive questions that reveal inroads and effects of sin in a way Christians steeped in capitalism and conservatism may miss. These questions are worth a thoroughly biblical response. Christians, then, ought to lead with Scripture and theology, not with politics, in responding to Marxism, Critical Theory and CRT.

Uszynski believes their critiques are the reaction of people in pain. Instead of listening for the pain and bringing the gospel to it, however, he sees conservative Christians leaning into politicization, changing Christianity from a religion that cares into a religion that strikes back.

Christians, being citizens of a heavenly kingdom and free from the capitalism/Marxism dichotomy, can engage CRT’s critique of race from a Scripture-informed stance. They can provide productive and God-honoring responses even in the face of CRT’s excesses and weaponization by both the political left and right.

Untangling Critical Race Theory is a challenging book, not because it’s hard to understand, but because its message is clear. CRT isn’t nearly as big a problem as is our sin and our penchant to bless it.