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Originally published in Classis, The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere \u201cunderstanding\u201d (137).<\/em> \u2013 C. S. Lewis,<\/em> The Screwtape Letters<\/p>\n The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. <\/em>\u2013 G.K. Chesterton, \u201cThe Suicide of Thought\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n Consider the following scene. A mother and father cross the threshold of the headmaster\u2019s office and take a seat in the chairs facing the desk. As part of the admissions process for this classical Christian school, the parents have been invited to the routine family interview with the administration. The parents communicate their love for the program\u2014for the attention to safety, the high standards, or how this kind of education addresses the \u201cwhole person.\u201d But somewhere in the middle of the hour-long conversation, the parents kindly ask about the reading list for upper school students. They express an innocent concern about the lack of racial diversity in literature and history classes. They ask why the school has not adjusted the reading to include more voices of color. At the very least, the parents ask how the school plans to answer the present call to change the corpus of studies in the Humanities and how to expand its cultural representation. Why is this happening?<\/p>\n For some heads of school, this scene is an opportunity, a consummation devoutly to be wished\u2014a chance to better explain to parents the raison d\u2019etre<\/em> of classical education by defending Christian civilization and Western culture in general. For other leaders, however, this moment may be rather painful and awkward, not unlike visiting the dentist to find you have not been brushing well and need to deal with a cavity.<\/p>\n The truth is that these moments have been happening for some time now and will continue to happen. It may come from without, or from within\u2014a teacher perhaps who raises this same question with other faculty members, or who feels morally obligated to work subversively toward constructing a more equitable vision of history for students. But whatever the scenario might be, the head of school, as well as the faculty, ought to be able to give a reasonable defense in response in the face of such pressing cultural questions. One of the distinguishing differences between classical learning and progressive education is that it is not utilitarian or servile. Education is not about in<\/em>formation but formation. A student will be more or less free to the degree that he or she can cultivate virtue in themselves, right habits and affections oriented to the transcendent Good. For classical Christian learning, this means the formation of Christ-like virtue, which is another way of saying that we enculturate our children in \u201cthe paideia<\/em> of the Lord.\u201d Because education is always about what it means to be human, this necessarily involves notions of virtue and vice on levels that are both individual and corporate, personal and social. Every education cultivates some vision of virtue or nobility; the question is how that vision corresponds to a more or less true picture of Reality.<\/p>\n Thus, when it comes to including more voices of color in the Western canon,2<\/a><\/sup> redefining our ideal of justice, or whether we learn good things from \u201ccritical race theory,\u201d we ought to consider the simple and essential meaning of such questions in the light of something that doesn\u2019t change with the times: Truth. Even in basic ordinary life, we cannot go far without encountering popular claims that essentially rest upon religious or moral premises, upon fundamental beliefs about the nature of the universe. These claims might be attended with great moral outrage, but they nevertheless are predicated on metaphysical assumptions about virtue and vice, norms and nobility. But as we shall see, herein lies the problem.<\/p>\n If the modern world is full of the \u201cold Christian virtues gone mad,\u201d as Chesterton remarks, then sanity may appear in the form of a newly-christened vice. One of the virtues gone most mad today is justice. We\u2019ve heard much of \u201csocial justice\u201d in the last decade, and even now with the expansion of \u201chuman rights,\u201d the social justice organism multiplies daily, mutating into new species of potential offense and resentment. We have the darkly euphemistic \u201creproductive justice<\/a>,\u201d for instance, or \u201cenvironmental justice<\/a>,\u201d as the White House calls it,3<\/a><\/sup> or, according to the Harvard Kennedy School, \u201cracial justice<\/a>.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> And so on. Whence comes this disintegration of justice into separate parts?<\/p>\n Much of it has to do with the collapse of the Christian metaphysics. Not long after Chesterton was inveighing against the medicalized sanction of vivisection in science,5<\/a><\/sup> Humanities departments in the West\u2014those last vestiges of a classical Christian curriculum\u2014were beginning to \u201cvivisect\u201d the united ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (as well as the virtue and meaning we derive from them). Take justice again. Once regarded as a \u201ccardinal virtue,\u201d justice was understood as the moral virtue that gives God and neighbor their due, perhaps best expressed in the Law: \u201cYou shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor\u201d (Lev. 19:15). C. S. Lewis says justice \u201cis the old name for everything we should now call \u2018fairness\u2019; it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life.\u201d Classically understood, it assumes a transcendent standard and is in accord with the common<\/em> good, and because of this, it can be applied to all men everywhere at all times. \u201c[I]f you leave out justice,\u201d argues Lewis, \u201cyou will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials \u2018for the sake of humanity,\u2019 and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.\u201d With the crumbling of the Christian sacred order, however, the Western social order has fragmented, resembling the antique chaos of polytheism. \u201cJustice,\u201d along with other ideals, has simply become a word to go out in the war against other words; the word justice is now only a vessel emptied of its essential representation of reality and filled back in with some new privatized claim on this or that aspect of life.<\/p>\n So this modern world of ours is \u201cfull of wild and wasted virtues,\u201d Chesterton explains.6<\/a><\/sup> We do well to remember this as a description of so many college English courses now, or as the confusing state of progressive education in general. Chesterton writes,<\/p>\n The modern world is not evil; in some ways, the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also, and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth, and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity, and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Let us overlook his backhanded insult of the Reformation and consider his main point, that virtues untethered to a coherent Christian metaphysics do more damage than the rampant vices. The reason is that a person, such as a doctor, might think they are doing good, when in reality they are doing evil, such as in the practice of abortion. Consider the virtue of humility.<\/p>\n Certainly, humility is good. Socrates was considered to be the wisest man on earth precisely because he confessed, \u201cI know nothing.\u201d And this prejudice has in some form remained in the West and has been sanctified (and in some ways amplified) by Christian revelation. \u201cBut what we suffer from today,\u201d argues Chesterton, \u201cis humility in the wrong place.\u201d Modesty is another name for it. But he writes, \u201cModesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.\u201d This in part explains the place in which we now find ourselves, a culture that has forgotten its heritage and has lost faith in its ideals and in the divine order that made sense of them.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason we can feel guilty for slavery,\u201d Martin Cothran has said, \u201cis that Western man is uniquely self-critical and conscientious.\u201d The Delphic Oracle who declared Socrates the wisest man that ever lived knew that he was aware of his ignorance, perhaps even a bit uncertain of his own epistemology. Add to this the Christian doctrine of \u201coriginal sin\u201d and the need for Christ, and presto, we have a Western self-consciousness that seems to naturally sympathize with the victim and a social imaginary that identifies more with Hector than with Achilles.8<\/a><\/sup> Hector was always the underdog in Homer\u2019s epic, and Chesterton quips, \u201cAll sorts of people thought it the most superb sort of heraldry to claim to be descended from Hector. Nobody seems to have wanted to be descended from Achilles.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> It was a nod to the virtue of humility that Western Man had even a slight care for the oppressed and the guest, the stranger and the refugee. But now this virtue of self-doubt has been relocated and has resettled upon the convictions about who we are and what we believe.<\/p>\n We identify this tendency in normal and obvious ways. Just as a man can feel compunction about his past sins, so a country can feel remorse over their corporate transgressions. Germany is haunted by the war guilt of the Third Reich. The U.S. is haunted by the guilt of slavery and its social fallout. This fact does not make the sin any less grievous, but that one feels any remorse at all is usually a sign of a somewhat healthy conscience. Thus, as Cothran observed, \u201cWe can only have these discussions and debates about racism in the year 2024 precisely because<\/em> we\u2019re Westerners. No other culture does this.\u201d Although slavery was at times alive and well in Western Civilization, it was also recognized as an evil in Western Christian Civilization alone.10<\/a><\/sup> But in the last few decades, this historical narrative has been altered, and the academic framework of \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d (CRT) has sought to restructure our understanding of race, as well as to reinterpret intellectually honest historical narratives. This is especially felt in America.<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/em> Magazine<\/em>\u2019s \u201c1619 Project,\u201d11<\/a><\/sup> created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, is one popular example of CRT and is what Brown professor emeritus and historian Gordon Wood has called \u201cwrong in so many ways.\u201d12<\/a><\/sup> The claim that CRT is only an abstract theoretical exercise and is not actually taught in schools today is another instance of the contradictions surrounding it. On the one hand, CRT has no practical effect on education; on the other hand, even if it is taught in schools, it\u2019s worth it to redress the wrongs of slavery in this country. However, according to Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufman at City Journal<\/em>, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that CRT is in fact being taught in schools today.13<\/a><\/sup> The effect is that teaching CRT looks more like a catechism than a simple lesson plan. The kind of catechism, however, is one steeped in \u201csecular religion.\u201d Goldberg and Kaufman write, \u201cPublicly funded schools that teach and pass off left-wing racial-ideological theories and concepts as if they are undisputed factual knowledge\u2014or that impart tendentiously curated readings of history\u2014are therefore engaging in indoctrination, not education.\u201d But why should this matter to classical Christian schools?<\/p>\n The answer to this question lies in a devil\u2019s mouth. In The Screwtape Letters<\/em>, C. S. Lewis reminds us that the devil’s job is to distract us from Truth, which transcends time and place, by having us attend to the prevailing winds of popular opinion. As the senior tempter explains, \u201c[W]e make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> It is diabolically simple:<\/p>\n The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. (137)<\/p>\n Here Lewis identifies the same problem about the modern (and post-modern) world that Chesterton makes plain: it is full of a riot of fashionable virtues, noble actions, and sentiments that have been dislocated from their proper place. What is CRT in our generation, but the latest \u201cfashionable outcry\u201d against the vice of systemic racism, a vice which, if we are honest, is one we are now \u201cleast in danger\u201d of committing? Conversely, \u201cthe virtue nearest to that vice which [the devils] are trying to make endemic\u201d vaguely resembles something like self-loathing. At times of cultural decline, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether a virtue is true<\/em>, rather than merely popular. But classical Christian teachers and leaders should take their cues from Chesterton and Lewis, identifying the confusion between real virtues and their timely counterfeits. But even if we can recognize the danger of real vices, not merely those of the maddening crowd, how can classical educators be equipped with a coherent and practicable Christian response to the claims of CRT (and its parent system of thought, Critical Theory)?<\/p>\n Before we consider a response, it\u2019s important to define terms. In April 2022, Colorado Christian University put together a statement on Critical Race Theory, providing a reliable template for forming a faithful response to this topic. They define CRT as<\/p>\n a post-Civil Rights social philosophy, legal theory, and strategy for addressing racism and our changing society. Its underlying framework \u2014 critical theory \u2014 was formed as an attempt to understand human brokenness and oppression and to point a way toward liberation. It was formulated upon a neo-Marxist philosophy and worldview as developed by the Frankfurt School in Germany in the 1930s.15<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n As the child of \u201cCritical Theory,\u201d CRT bears all the genetic traits of its Marxist parent. Critical Theory (CT) was an interpretative framework formed in 1918 as an alternative to the classical curricula and epistemology of Western culture, which was shaped and undergirded by Christian thought and teaching. If CT was the titan progenitor, then it produced a pantheon of other \u201cframeworks,\u201d each with its own complex epistemological assumptions, undergirded by a materialistic worldview. CT (and CRT by extension) is a story<\/em> of human society, a meta-narrative that shows how all conflict is not a result of individual sin but of power struggles and inequalities.<\/p>\n In their statement on CRT, Colorado Christian University (CCU) defines Critical Theory as a \u201cmaster narrative,\u201d one<\/p>\n that reduces human associations to relations of power. Adopting a neo-Marxist framework, one is either oppressed or an oppressor. Critical theorists go on to classify capitalism, \u201cheteronormativity,\u201d Christianity, etc., as forms of oppression that keep oppressed groups in bondage. It aims to dismantle these norms in order to bring \u201ctrue liberation.\u201d<\/p>\n What begins in the lab often spills out into the streets. This is why education matters, for it is the primary means by which the recent proliferation of identity groups has fueled the emancipatory politics of our current age. CCU states further that<\/p>\n Critical race theory (one outworking of critical theory) critiques society through the lens of racial oppression. It denies a biblical view of human nature and sees everything through racial categories. One is either a racist or a victim of racism. Selectively, it makes whiteness the foundation of evil. Being white and non-racist is impossible.<\/p>\n Some secular critics of CRT have pointed out the ludicrous contradictions here, noting the maddening result of being told, on the one hand, \u201cYou can never understand my lived experience, because you are not me and are not oppressed as I am,\u201d while simultaneously being told, \u201cYou must<\/em> understand my lived experience and submit to my demands, precisely because you are not me and not oppressed.\u201d16<\/a><\/sup> Pastors such as Voddie Baucham have called this phenomenon \u201cEthnic Gnosticism,\u201d the re-emergent ghost of an old heresy that once haunted the church in its childhood.17<\/a><\/sup> And there is no shortage of other Christian critiques of CRT<\/a> and its contradictions in thought and dangers in practice.<\/p>\n It is important to note how CRT enters into daily life. CCU notes that<\/p>\n CRT is often advanced through DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives where those seemingly benign words take on new meaning. Stripped from any biblical foundation, diversity becomes an absolute, the dominant concern of every agenda or discipline. Equity becomes, not equal dignity and equal opportunity, but equal outcomes promoting the redistribution of wealth. And inclusion is reframed by agendas that are at odds with biblical truth.<\/p>\n And to those who believed this only existed as academic theory, Christopher Rufo reported in 2020 detailed reports that government employees were in fact being subjected to CRT-based training programs.18<\/a><\/sup> In his book, How to Be an Anti-Racist<\/em>, Ibram X. Kendi points out what seems to be the ultimate goal of CRT: \u201cThe only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.\u201d Again because the West is \u201cuniquely self-critical\u201d and morally conscientious, caring about virtue and vice, these ideas were not dismissed but taken seriously at a policy-making level.<\/p>\n Classical Christian educators must understand that a kind of secular morality has come to occupy the place of classical Christian moral philosophy, and this has been deeply shaped by Marxist doctrines regarding power conflicts and inequalities. The debate has been seen in some of the more established Christian liberal arts colleges. The 2021 Grove City College controversy is yet another example of why this matters.19<\/a><\/sup> Reports emerged of a \u201ccreeping wokeness\u201d at GCC, largely due to some new course offerings that studied proponents of CRT but gave no evaluation of their arguments. This seemed at odds with GCC\u2019s mission, which led to an investigation. In response to claims of \u201cmission-drift,\u201d the special committee formed to look into these concerns found \u201csome specific instances of misalignment,\u201d that the mission of GCC \u201chas not changed,\u201d and that the college \u201c\u200b\u200bcategorically rejects Critical Race Theory and similar \u2018critical\u2019 schools of thought as antithetical to GCC\u2019s vision, mission, and values.\u201d20<\/a><\/sup> This is good news, as some concerned parties have noted.<\/p>\n As the tenets of CRT have filtered down into popular consciousness (by either coercive or natural means), it is an issue with which educators in the classical Christian world must contend. We cannot afford to be ignorant or unequipped in dealing with it. As Paul notes, \u201cThe weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds\u200b, Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ\u201d (2 Cor. 10:4-5). Thus, whether it is a student or a parent, persons within or without the organization, we must respond in wisdom and truth, as much as with grace and love.<\/p>\n Again, consider the following statement by Colorado Christian University as a succinct model for classical Christian schools and colleges:<\/p>\n We at CCU do not believe that racism is the defining feature of Western society. Nor do we believe it is the defining feature of the American founding or that a free market economy is racist. We also take issue with the 1619 Project\u2019s central thesis and favor the rebuttal offered by Robert Woodson\u2019s 1776 Unites <\/a>Project.<\/p>\n In saying this, we are not blind to America’s racial sins and the blind spots of our nation\u2019s founders. We are very much aware of the sad legacy of chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, debt servitude, black codes, lynchings, forced relocations, and various race-based laws, urban policies, and local codes. We are aware of the effect of this history on the black family. We do not believe this history should be ignored.<\/p>\n We believe that America is not essentially nor uniquely racist. Racism afflicts all nations and people groups. We are thankful for the amazing progress made in overturning racially unjust laws to the point of African Americans rising to the highest ranks in government, business, and law. While America is certainly not the New Jerusalem or the Kingdom of God, we are grateful for the way the prosperity and freedom of this great republic have impacted so many people, including people of color.<\/p>\n In making its extreme claims, CRT asserts that members of oppressed groups have special access to truth due to their lived experience of oppression. Whereas, everyone else, i.e. the oppressors, are thoroughly blinded by their privilege.<\/p>\n Arguments to the contrary and appeals to reason or objective evidence are actually, so it is claimed, white supremacist bids for power. Hence any disagreement with CRT is said to be racist. In other words, CRT denies the legitimacy of evidence to refute it. It is unfalsifiable and hence anti-intellectual. This alone is reason to deny it a prominent place in the academy.<\/p>\n Building on this stance, CRT attacks the very foundation of the classical liberal legal order \u2014 which includes legal reasoning, equality theory, and supposed neutral principles of constitutional law.<\/p>\n Furthermore, CRT is opposed to the dominant social order and proposes dismantling the oppressive structures of Western society to “liberate” and bring revolutionary change.<\/p>\n . . .<\/p>\n Sadly, the all too common outcome of CRT is that it reduces personal responsibility and fosters a victimhood culture, i.e. instilling into youth a victim mentality. It also creates a culture of non-resilience on university campuses, replete with safe spaces, microaggressions, and trigger warnings. In a strange twist of outcomes, since it absolutizes race, it actually fosters more racism and not less.<\/p>\n Critical Theory (and CRT) obviously operates from a worldview antithetical to the revelation of Holy Scripture and the Christian account of Reality. But this is not simply one worldview against another, both competing for dominance in the arena of secular space. Rather, it is a contest of rival epistemologies, not unlike the early church\u2019s struggle with rival religions. In \u201cCritical Theory and Christian Affirmations: A Dashboard Summary,\u201d Dr. Christopher Schlect has assembled a matrix that allows us to compare these differences, as well as note the divergent points of cosmology, identity, language, and freedom.21<\/a><\/sup> In what Dr. Schlect has called \u201cStandpoint Epistemology,\u201d a person critiques the world from a position outside the human world in which he finds himself. This leads to the ironic and impossible problem of trying to build something with a wrecking ball.<\/p>\n There is a difference between building up and tearing down, between making improvements and making innovations. C. S. Lewis notes this difference in The Abolition of Man<\/em>:<\/p>\n There is a difference between a real moral advance and a mere innovation. From the Confucian \u2018Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you\u2019 to the Christian \u2018Do as you would be done by\u2019 is a real advance. The morality of Nietzsche is a mere innovation.22<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Thus, the purpose of criticism is to correct or improve the object of one\u2019s critique, not simply to deconstruct it and leave it meaningless. If, for instance, the structures of society need critique, it cannot be done standing outside of the common human experience. Profitable criticism can only be done from within the tradition of human value, what C. S. Lewis calls \u201cthe Tao<\/em>.\u201d The Tao<\/em> is what \u201cothers may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes\u201d (43). This Tao<\/em> is applied to all and is, Lewis explains, \u201cnot one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments.\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to our individual identity, we as Christians hold it as a first principle that we are made in the image of God, and that because of this, all men share a fundamental identity as sons of Adam. Because of sin, however, Christians must reckon their identity by membership in the second Adam, the perfect man, Jesus Christ. A beautiful prayer in the Book of Common Prayer expresses this sentiment well:<\/p>\n O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (24)23<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n God has made all men of one blood. The human condition is common to all mankind. All this, of course, rests on an epistemology that receives Creation in good faith and is grounded in both common grace (or natural revelation) and in special revelation (i.e. Holy Scripture). This demonstrates an acknowledgment of the transcendent and Divine Logic of the uni<\/em>verse.<\/p>\n Regarding CRT, however, we have a Standpoint Epistemology. \u201cOne\u2019s social position,\u201d Dr. Schlect argues, \u201cdetermines his or her capacity to know and understand.\u201d A few implications follow from this. \u201cMembers of oppressed classes experience structures of oppression that hem them in. Because members of privileged classes lack this experience, they are blind to these structures of oppression.\u201d This is because CRT, along with critical theory and all its Marxist predecessors, is based on seeing reality Creation as raw, \u201cundesigned matter,\u201d where people must \u201cfashion reality as it suits them.\u201d This leads to a fundamentally violent social vision, where men and women engage in competing acts of self-fashioning, producing, in the end, a host of \u201cadversarial power differentials (i.e., oppressor and oppressed).\u201d<\/p>\n In contrast to this, classical Christian metaphysics sees Creation as good, a gift, and an extension of God\u2019s love, who created it and called it \u201cvery good,\u201d imbued with order and meaning. As man bears God\u2019s image, he stands as God\u2019s vice-regent, \u201ccalled to govern himself and the rest of creation according to divine law and order.\u201d If there is a master story or meta-narrative that explains the problems of society, then it must be in accord with Reality; and if society does indeed require some critical indictment, then it must conform to the logic of God\u2019s purpose and plan for the cosmos. In other words, the stories we tell must be true\u2014be it the genesis of the world or the founding of the United States.<\/p>\n The same goes for the critiques of our age. Although the world is a broken place, Truth remains, and criticism must be accountable for what is true. The devils, C.S. Lewis warns, want us to believe a thing \u201cnot because it is true, but for some other reason.\u201d But anything good or true has substance in reality. Critical theory, however, is without substance in this sense. It exists only as an instrumental good, if at all. James Lindsay, author of numerous books on the fake scholarship and harmful effects of Marxist critical theories, describes critical theory as a kind of intellectual parasite.24<\/a><\/sup> Using infected language, the parasite latches onto a host (often an academic discipline) and begins to feed on the life of that host until the philosophy or discipline has been completely broken down and disintegrated. Just as a vice acts as a parasite of a virtue, so critical theory acts as a parasite of true scholastic substance. This is one of the reasons why critical theory in general has enjoyed such an honored place in academia. It preys on the unique genetic code of guilt and self-suspicion in Western Man, in the end operating almost like an autoimmune disease that attacks the body. The concept of \u201cwhite privilege\u201d is an example of the way this works in the domain of Critical Race Theory. This is a fake scholarship. For some, it may be amusing to analyze a novel or historical event and to imagine how all \u201cwhite people\u201d\u2014a ludicrously ambiguous category\u2014are the collective source of evil. But this would be false, not to mention boring. Lewis explains how the devils might think:<\/p>\n Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily \u201ctrue\u201d or \u201cfalse\u201d, but as \u201cacademic\u201d or \u201cpractical\u201d, \u201coutworn\u201d or \u201ccontemporary\u201d, \u201cconventional\u201d or \u201cruthless\u201d. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous \u2014 that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.25<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n For those purveyors of CRT, whether or not \u201cwhiteness studies\u201d is true<\/em> or is a discipline that even remotely reflects reality is beside the point. What matters is that it is \u201cacademic.\u201d Alas. Even a donkey clothed in the rhetorical garb of a lion might convince some Narnians that Aslan has returned, but it is only a sham.<\/p>\n This leads to a final thought on the importance of language and why true words and true speech are so vital to classical learning. Whether a word or an idea corresponds to Truth, and not mere collective fancy, is one of the best means to inoculate an academic discipline against the parasitic \u201ccritical\u201d theories. In a real sense, we should be cautious of totally critical approaches to learning, not merely because of their inherent skepticism but also because of their inherent scientific Standpoint Epistemology. Think of the way this can be reflected in the words we commonly use to study something. We tell our students to \u201canalyze\u201d this book or that passage. But do we understand what this really signifies? To \u201canalyze,\u201d as the Greek suggests, means to loosen up and separate. This can be good, provided we don\u2019t forget that we are still part of the world we are studying. We must guard our analysis of history, for instance, against the notion that we are outside of it, and not, as reality would have it, mixed up in the middle of that human history.<\/p>\n While we can gain knowledge from that critical approach, we may not always gain wisdom. This again is reminiscent of that old vivisection against which G. K. Chesterton railed in his day. If we assume that we are outside the created order, then we are inclined to employ our studies only for power over nature or neighbor. It should not surprise us, then, that Screwtape knew well how to exploit the efforts of those in the quest for knowledge. There will always be attempts to create one\u2019s own private system of value\u2014indeed, that seems to be the whole aim of the modern secular world\u2014but Lewis warns us in The Abolition of Man<\/em> that such efforts are fruitless:<\/p>\n The effort to refute [the Tao<\/em>] and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. There has never been and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) \u2018ideologies\u2019, all consist of fragments from the Tao<\/em> itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao<\/em> and to it alone such validity as they possess. (43-44)<\/p>\n Again, we have Chesterton\u2019s riotous and rebellious virtues. In the case of CRT, it seems that racial justice and systemic racism have been \u201carbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n It seems Standpoint Epistemology fosters an unnatural kind of separation and division that is quite literally \u201cdiabolical,\u201d a Greek word that testifies to the work of the devil because it means \u201cto throw apart,\u201d to divide things that ought to be united. This is a good way to measure the substance of truth in fashionable ideas. Opposed to the diabolical, Christians have traditionally found wisdom and truth in that which is \u201csymbolic,\u201d a Greek word, meaning to bring together in an image or sign. As Christ is the Image of God, we believe all humans have value and dignity, regardless of class, wealth, or race, and we look to the Cross\u2014the historic symbol<\/em> that continues to \u201cdraw all men to himself\u201d\u2014as the true and lasting atonement for sin.26<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n While it is our task to cast down imaginations or any other pretension that exalts itself against the knowledge of God\u2014CRT or the like\u2014we must not lose sight of the Good that is common to all who are made in God\u2019s image. Aristotle and Boethius believed that virtue should not be divided, and \u201cPlato,\u201d as Lewis notes, \u201crightly taught that virtue is one. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues.\u201d27<\/a><\/sup> This is how we take thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ, not simply by complaining about the rampant vices but by putting the isolated virtues back in their proper place, restoring order not merely to the city but also to the cosmos.<\/p>\n ______________<\/p>\n Devin O’Donnell is the Vice President of Membership and Publishing at the Association of Classical Christian Schools. He is the author of The Age of Martha: A Call to Contemplative Learning in Frenzied Culture<\/em> (2019). He was the Research Editor of Bibliotheca<\/em> in 2015 and has worked in classical Christian education for 20 years. He and his family live in the Northwest, where he writes, fly fishes, and remains a classical hack.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Originally published in Classis,Volume XXXI, No. 2 The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1122,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"By Devin O'Donnell\r\n\r\nThe use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under. Thus we make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm; a century later, when we are really making them all Byronic and drunk with emotion, the fashionable outcry is directed against the dangers of the mere \u201cunderstanding\u201d (137).<\/em> \u2013 C. S. Lewis,<\/em> The Screwtape Letters\r\n\r\nThe modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. <\/em>\u2013 G.K. Chesterton, \u201cThe Suicide of Thought\u201d <\/em>\r\n
<\/em>Volume XXXI, No. 2<\/em><\/em><\/p>\nWhen Ideas Have Consequences<\/h3>\n
The Riot of the Virtues<\/h3>\n
What is CRT and its Claims?<\/h3>\n
How is CRT (and the Like) Advanced? Or, Beware of HR Departments<\/h3>\n
How Should CCE Schools Respond?<\/h3>\n
Epistemology and What Classical Christians Actually Believe<\/h3>\n
Notes<\/h2>\n
\n\n
When Ideas Have Consequences<\/h3>\r\nConsider the following scene. A mother and father cross the threshold of the headmaster\u2019s office and take a seat in the chairs facing the desk. As part of the admissions process for this classical Christian school, the parents have been invited to the routine family interview with the administration. The parents communicate their love for the program\u2014for the attention to safety, the high standards, or how this kind of education addresses the \u201cwhole person.\u201d But somewhere in the middle of the hour-long conversation, the parents kindly ask about the reading list for upper school students. They express an innocent concern about the lack of racial diversity in literature and history classes. They ask why the school has not adjusted the reading to include more voices of color. At the very least, the parents ask how the school plans to answer the present call to change the corpus of studies in the Humanities and how to expand its cultural representation. Why is this happening?\r\n\r\nFor some heads of school, this scene is an opportunity, a consummation devoutly to be wished\u2014a chance to better explain to parents the raison d\u2019etre<\/em> of classical education by defending Christian civilization and Western culture in general. For other leaders, however, this moment may be rather painful and awkward, not unlike visiting the dentist to find you have not been brushing well and need to deal with a cavity.\r\n\r\nThe truth is that these moments have been happening for some time now and will continue to happen. It may come from without, or from within\u2014a teacher perhaps who raises this same question with other faculty members, or who feels morally obligated to work subversively toward constructing a more equitable vision of history for students. But whatever the scenario might be, the head of school, as well as the faculty, ought to be able to give a reasonable defense in response in the face of such pressing cultural questions. One of the distinguishing differences between classical learning and progressive education is that it is not utilitarian or servile. Education is not about in<\/em>formation but formation. A student will be more or less free to the degree that he or she can cultivate virtue in themselves, right habits and affections oriented to the transcendent Good. For classical Christian learning, this means the formation of Christ-like virtue, which is another way of saying that we enculturate our children in \u201cthe paideia<\/em> of the Lord.\u201d Because education is always about what it means to be human, this necessarily involves notions of virtue and vice on levels that are both individual and corporate, personal and social. Every education cultivates some vision of virtue or nobility; the question is how that vision corresponds to a more or less true picture of Reality.\r\n\r\nThus, when it comes to including more voices of color in the Western canon,2<\/a><\/sup> redefining our ideal of justice, or whether we learn good things from \u201ccritical race theory,\u201d we ought to consider the simple and essential meaning of such questions in the light of something that doesn\u2019t change with the times: Truth. Even in basic ordinary life, we cannot go far without encountering popular claims that essentially rest upon religious or moral premises, upon fundamental beliefs about the nature of the universe. These claims might be attended with great moral outrage, but they nevertheless are predicated on metaphysical assumptions about virtue and vice, norms and nobility. But as we shall see, herein lies the problem.\r\n
The Riot of the Virtues<\/h3>\r\nIf the modern world is full of the \u201cold Christian virtues gone mad,\u201d as Chesterton remarks, then sanity may appear in the form of a newly-christened vice. One of the virtues gone most mad today is justice. We\u2019ve heard much of \u201csocial justice\u201d in the last decade, and even now with the expansion of \u201chuman rights,\u201d the social justice organism multiplies daily, mutating into new species of potential offense and resentment. We have the darkly euphemistic \u201creproductive justice<\/a>,\u201d for instance, or \u201cenvironmental justice<\/a>,\u201d as the White House calls it,3<\/a><\/sup> or, according to the Harvard Kennedy School, \u201cracial justice<\/a>.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> And so on. Whence comes this disintegration of justice into separate parts?\r\n\r\nMuch of it has to do with the collapse of the Christian metaphysics. Not long after Chesterton was inveighing against the medicalized sanction of vivisection in science,5<\/a><\/sup> Humanities departments in the West\u2014those last vestiges of a classical Christian curriculum\u2014were beginning to \u201cvivisect\u201d the united ideals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (as well as the virtue and meaning we derive from them). Take justice again. Once regarded as a \u201ccardinal virtue,\u201d justice was understood as the moral virtue that gives God and neighbor their due, perhaps best expressed in the Law: \u201cYou shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor\u201d (Lev. 19:15). C. S. Lewis says justice \u201cis the old name for everything we should now call \u2018fairness\u2019; it includes honesty, give and take, truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life.\u201d Classically understood, it assumes a transcendent standard and is in accord with the common<\/em> good, and because of this, it can be applied to all men everywhere at all times. \u201c[I]f you leave out justice,\u201d argues Lewis, \u201cyou will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials \u2018for the sake of humanity,\u2019 and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.\u201d With the crumbling of the Christian sacred order, however, the Western social order has fragmented, resembling the antique chaos of polytheism. \u201cJustice,\u201d along with other ideals, has simply become a word to go out in the war against other words; the word justice is now only a vessel emptied of its essential representation of reality and filled back in with some new privatized claim on this or that aspect of life.\r\n\r\nSo this modern world of ours is \u201cfull of wild and wasted virtues,\u201d Chesterton explains.6<\/a><\/sup> We do well to remember this as a description of so many college English courses now, or as the confusing state of progressive education in general. Chesterton writes,\r\n\r\nThe modern world is not evil; in some ways, the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also, and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth, and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity, and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.7<\/a><\/sup>\r\n\r\nLet us overlook his backhanded insult of the Reformation and consider his main point, that virtues untethered to a coherent Christian metaphysics do more damage than the rampant vices. The reason is that a person, such as a doctor, might think they are doing good, when in reality they are doing evil, such as in the practice of abortion. Consider the virtue of humility.\r\n\r\nCertainly, humility is good. Socrates was considered to be the wisest man on earth precisely because he confessed, \u201cI know nothing.\u201d And this prejudice has in some form remained in the West and has been sanctified (and in some ways amplified) by Christian revelation. \u201cBut what we suffer from today,\u201d argues Chesterton, \u201cis humility in the wrong place.\u201d Modesty is another name for it. But he writes, \u201cModesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.\u201d This in part explains the place in which we now find ourselves, a culture that has forgotten its heritage and has lost faith in its ideals and in the divine order that made sense of them.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe reason we can feel guilty for slavery,\u201d Martin Cothran has said, \u201cis that Western man is uniquely self-critical and conscientious.\u201d The Delphic Oracle who declared Socrates the wisest man that ever lived knew that he was aware of his ignorance, perhaps even a bit uncertain of his own epistemology. Add to this the Christian doctrine of \u201coriginal sin\u201d and the need for Christ, and presto, we have a Western self-consciousness that seems to naturally sympathize with the victim and a social imaginary that identifies more with Hector than with Achilles.8<\/a><\/sup> Hector was always the underdog in Homer\u2019s epic, and Chesterton quips, \u201cAll sorts of people thought it the most superb sort of heraldry to claim to be descended from Hector. Nobody seems to have wanted to be descended from Achilles.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> It was a nod to the virtue of humility that Western Man had even a slight care for the oppressed and the guest, the stranger and the refugee. But now this virtue of self-doubt has been relocated and has resettled upon the convictions about who we are and what we believe.\r\n\r\nWe identify this tendency in normal and obvious ways. Just as a man can feel compunction about his past sins, so a country can feel remorse over their corporate transgressions. Germany is haunted by the war guilt of the Third Reich. The U.S. is haunted by the guilt of slavery and its social fallout. This fact does not make the sin any less grievous, but that one feels any remorse at all is usually a sign of a somewhat healthy conscience. Thus, as Cothran observed, \u201cWe can only have these discussions and debates about racism in the year 2024 precisely because<\/em> we\u2019re Westerners. No other culture does this.\u201d Although slavery was at times alive and well in Western Civilization, it was also recognized as an evil in Western Christian Civilization alone.10<\/a><\/sup> But in the last few decades, this historical narrative has been altered, and the academic framework of \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d (CRT) has sought to restructure our understanding of race, as well as to reinterpret intellectually honest historical narratives. This is especially felt in America.\r\n\r\nThe New York Times<\/em> Magazine<\/em>\u2019s \u201c1619 Project,\u201d11<\/a><\/sup> created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, is one popular example of CRT and is what Brown professor emeritus and historian Gordon Wood has called \u201cwrong in so many ways.\u201d12<\/a><\/sup> The claim that CRT is only an abstract theoretical exercise and is not actually taught in schools today is another instance of the contradictions surrounding it. On the one hand, CRT has no practical effect on education; on the other hand, even if it is taught in schools, it\u2019s worth it to redress the wrongs of slavery in this country. However, according to Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufman at City Journal<\/em>, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that CRT is in fact being taught in schools today.13<\/a><\/sup> The effect is that teaching CRT looks more like a catechism than a simple lesson plan. The kind of catechism, however, is one steeped in \u201csecular religion.\u201d Goldberg and Kaufman write, \u201cPublicly funded schools that teach and pass off left-wing racial-ideological theories and concepts as if they are undisputed factual knowledge\u2014or that impart tendentiously curated readings of history\u2014are therefore engaging in indoctrination, not education.\u201d But why should this matter to classical Christian schools?\r\n\r\nThe answer to this question lies in a devil\u2019s mouth. In The Screwtape Letters<\/em>, C. S. Lewis reminds us that the devil's job is to distract us from Truth, which transcends time and place, by having us attend to the prevailing winds of popular opinion. As the senior tempter explains, \u201c[W]e make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> It is diabolically simple:\r\n\r\nThe use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. (137)\r\n\r\nHere Lewis identifies the same problem about the modern (and post-modern) world that Chesterton makes plain: it is full of a riot of fashionable virtues, noble actions, and sentiments that have been dislocated from their proper place. What is CRT in our generation, but the latest \u201cfashionable outcry\u201d against the vice of systemic racism, a vice which, if we are honest, is one we are now \u201cleast in danger\u201d of committing? Conversely, \u201cthe virtue nearest to that vice which [the devils] are trying to make endemic\u201d vaguely resembles something like self-loathing. At times of cultural decline, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether a virtue is true<\/em>, rather than merely popular. But classical Christian teachers and leaders should take their cues from Chesterton and Lewis, identifying the confusion between real virtues and their timely counterfeits. But even if we can recognize the danger of real vices, not merely those of the maddening crowd, how can classical educators be equipped with a coherent and practicable Christian response to the claims of CRT (and its parent system of thought, Critical Theory)?\r\n
What is CRT and its Claims?<\/h3>\r\nBefore we consider a response, it\u2019s important to define terms. In April 2022, Colorado Christian University put together a statement on Critical Race Theory, providing a reliable template for forming a faithful response to this topic. They define CRT as\r\n\r\na post-Civil Rights social philosophy, legal theory, and strategy for addressing racism and our changing society. Its underlying framework \u2014 critical theory \u2014 was formed as an attempt to understand human brokenness and oppression and to point a way toward liberation. It was formulated upon a neo-Marxist philosophy and worldview as developed by the Frankfurt School in Germany in the 1930s.15<\/a><\/sup>\r\n\r\nAs the child of \u201cCritical Theory,\u201d CRT bears all the genetic traits of its Marxist parent. Critical Theory (CT) was an interpretative framework formed in 1918 as an alternative to the classical curricula and epistemology of Western culture, which was shaped and undergirded by Christian thought and teaching. If CT was the titan progenitor, then it produced a pantheon of other \u201cframeworks,\u201d each with its own complex epistemological assumptions, undergirded by a materialistic worldview. CT (and CRT by extension) is a story<\/em> of human society, a meta-narrative that shows how all conflict is not a result of individual sin but of power struggles and inequalities.\r\n\r\nIn their statement on CRT, Colorado Christian University (CCU) defines Critical Theory as a \u201cmaster narrative,\u201d one\r\n\r\nthat reduces human associations to relations of power. Adopting a neo-Marxist framework, one is either oppressed or an oppressor. Critical theorists go on to classify capitalism, \u201cheteronormativity,\u201d Christianity, etc., as forms of oppression that keep oppressed groups in bondage. It aims to dismantle these norms in order to bring \u201ctrue liberation.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhat begins in the lab often spills out into the streets. This is why education matters, for it is the primary means by which the recent proliferation of identity groups has fueled the emancipatory politics of our current age. CCU states further that\r\n\r\nCritical race theory (one outworking of critical theory) critiques society through the lens of racial oppression. It denies a biblical view of human nature and sees everything through racial categories. One is either a racist or a victim of racism. Selectively, it makes whiteness the foundation of evil. Being white and non-racist is impossible.\r\n\r\nSome secular critics of CRT have pointed out the ludicrous contradictions here, noting the maddening result of being told, on the one hand, \u201cYou can never understand my lived experience, because you are not me and are not oppressed as I am,\u201d while simultaneously being told, \u201cYou must<\/em> understand my lived experience and submit to my demands, precisely because you are not me and not oppressed.\u201d16<\/a><\/sup> Pastors such as Voddie Baucham have called this phenomenon \u201cEthnic Gnosticism,\u201d the re-emergent ghost of an old heresy that once haunted the church in its childhood.