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 “understanding” (137).
— C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

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.

— G.K. Chesterton, “The Suicide of Thought”

When Ideas Have Consequences

Consider the following scene. A mother and father cross the threshold of the headmaster’s 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 — for the attention to safety, the high standards, or how this kind of education addresses the “whole person.” 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?

For some heads of school, this scene is an opportunity, a consummation devoutly to be wished – a chance to better explain to parents the raison d’etre 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.

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 — a 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 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 information 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 “the paideia of the Lord.” 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.

Thus, when it comes to including more voices of color in the Western canon,² redefining our ideal of justice, or whether we learn good things from “critical race theory,” we ought to consider the simple and essential meaning of such questions in the light of something that doesn’t 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.

The Riot of the Virtues

If the modern world is full of the “old Christian virtues gone mad,” 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’ve heard much of “social justice” in the last decade, and even now with the expansion of “human rights,” the social justice organism multiplies daily, mutating into new species of potential offense and resentment. We have the darkly euphemistic “reproductive justice,” for instance, or “environmental justice,” as the White House calls it,³ or, according to the Harvard Kennedy School, “racial justice.”⁴ And so on. Whence comes this disintegration of justice into separate parts?

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 Humanities departments in the West — those last vestiges of a classical Christian curriculum — were beginning to “vivisect” 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 “cardinal virtue,” justice was understood as the moral virtue that gives God and neighbor their due, perhaps best expressed in the Law: “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Lev. 19:15). C. S. Lewis says justice “is the old name for everything we should now call ‘fairness’; it includes honesty, give and take truthfulness, keeping promises, and all that side of life.” Classically understood, it assumes a transcendent standard and is in accord with the common good, and because of this, it can be applied to all men everywhere at all times. “[I]f you leave out justice,” argues Lewis, “you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials ‘for the sake of humanity,’ and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.” With the crumbling of the Christian sacred order, however, the Western social order has fragmented, resembling the antique chaos of polytheism. “Justice,” 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.

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

Let us overlook his backhanded insult of the Reformation and consider his main point, that virtues unteathered 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.

Certainly, humility is good. Socrates was considered to be the wisest man on earth precisely because he confessed, “I know nothing.” And this prejudice has in some form remained in the West and has been sanctified (and in some ways amplified) by Christian revelation. “But what we suffer from today,” argues Chesterton, “is humility in the wrong place.” Modesty is another name for it. But he writes, “Modesty 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.” 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.

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, “We can only have these discussions and debates about racism in the year 2024 precisely because we’re Westerners. No other culture does this.” Although slavery was at times alive and well in Western Civilization, it was also recognized as an evil in Western Christian Civilization alone.¹⁰ But in the last few decades, this historical narrative has been altered, and the academic framework of “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) has sought to restructure our understanding of race, as well as to reinterpret intellectually honest historical narratives. This is especially felt in America.

The answer to this question lies in a devil’s mouth. In The Screwtape Letters, 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, “[W]e make it fashionable to expose the dangers of enthusiasm at the very moment when they are all really becoming worldly and lukewarm.”¹⁴ It is diabolically simple:

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)

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 “fashionable outcry” against the vice of systemic racism, a vice which, if we are honest, is one we are now “least in danger” of committing? Conversely, “the virtue nearest to that vice which [the devils] are trying to make endemic” vaguely resembles something like self-loathing. At times of cultural decline, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether a virtue is true, 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)?

What is CRT and its Claims?

a post-Civil Rights social philosophy, legal theory, and strategy for addressing racism and our changing society. Its underlying framework — critical theory — 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

As the child of “Critical Theory,” 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 “frameworks,” each with its own complex epistemological assumptions, undergirded by a materialistic worldview. CT (and CRT by extension) is a story of human society, a meta-narrative that shows how all conflict is not a result of individual sin but of power struggles and inequalities.

In their statement on CRT, Colorado Christian University (CCU) defines Critical Theory as a “master narrative,” one

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, “heteronormativity,” Christianity, etc., as forms of oppression that keep oppressed groups in bondage. It aims to dismantle these norms in order to bring “true liberation.”

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

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.

How is CRT (and the Like) Advanced?
Or, Beware of HR Departments.

It is important to note how CRT enters into daily life. CCU notes that

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.

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 In his book, How to Be an Anti-Racist, Ibram X. Kendi points out what seems to be the ultimate goal of CRT: “The 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.” Again because the West is “uniquely self-critical” and morally conscientious, caring about virtue and vice, these ideas were not dismissed but taken seriously at a policy-making level.

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 Reports emerged of a “creeping wokeness” 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’s mission, which led to an investigation. In response to claims of “mission-drift,” the special committee formed to look into these concerns found “some specific instances of misalignment,” that the mission of GCC “has not changed,” and that the college “ categorically rejects Critical Race Theory and similar ‘critical’ schools of thought as antithetical to GCC’s vision, mission, and values.”²⁰ This is good news, as some concerned parties have noted.

How Should CCE Schools Respond?

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, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, 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” (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.

Again, consider the following statement by Colorado Christian University as a succinct model for classical Christian schools and colleges:

     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’s central thesis and favor the rebuttal offered by Robert Woodson’s 1776 Unites Project. In saying this, we are not blind to America’s racial sins and the blind spots of our nation’s 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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     Building on this stance, CRT attacks the very foundation of the classical liberal legal order — which includes legal reasoning, equality theory, and supposed neutral principles of constitutional law. Furthermore, CRT is opposed to the dominant social order and proposes dismantling the oppressive structures of Western society to “liberate” and bring revolutionary change.

. . .

     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, micro-aggressions, and trigger warnings. In a strange twist of outcomes, since it absolutizes race, it actually fosters more racism and not less.

Epistemology and What Classical Christians Actually Believe

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:

There is a difference between a real moral advance and a mere innovation. From the Confucian ‘Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you’ to the Christian ‘Do as you would be done by’ is a real advance. The morality of Nietzsche is a mere innovation.²²

Thus, the purpose of criticism is to correct or improve the object of one’s 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 “the Tao.” The Tao is what “others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes” (43). This Tao is applied to all and is, Lewis explains, “not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments.”

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:

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

God has made all men of one blood. 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 universe.

Regarding CRT, however, we have a Standpoint Epistemology. “One’s social position,” Dr. Schlect argues, “determines his or her capacity to know and understand.” A few implications follow from this. “Members 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.” This is because CRT, along with critical theory and all its Marxist predecessors, is based on seeing reality Creation as raw “undesigned matter,” where people must “fashion reality as it suits them.” 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 “adversarial power differentials (i.e., oppressor and oppressed).”

In contrast to this, classical Christian metaphysics sees Creation as good, a gift, and an extension of God’s love, who created it and called it “very good,” imbued with order and meaning. As man bears God’s image, he stands as God’s vice-regent, “called to govern himself and the rest of creation according to divine law and order.” 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’s purpose and plan for the cosmos. In other words, the stories we tell must be true — be it the genesis of the world or the founding of the United States.

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 “true” or “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional” or “ruthless”. 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 — that it is the philosophy of the future. That’s the sort of thing he cares about.²⁵

For those purveyors of CRT, whether or not “whiteness studies” is true or is a discipline that even remotely reflects reality is beside the point. What matters is that it is “academic.” 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.

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 “critical” 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 “analyze” this book or that passage. But do we understand what this really signifies? To “analyze,” as the Greek suggests, means to loosen up and separate. This can be good, provided we don’t 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.

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’s own private system of value — indeed, that seems to be the whole aim of the modern secular world — but Lewis warns us in The Abolition of Man that such efforts are fruitless:

The effort to refute [the Tao] 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) ‘ideologies’, all consist of fragments from the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. (43-44)

Again, we have Chesterton’s riotous and rebellious virtues. In the case of CRT, it seems that racial justice and systemic racism have been “arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation.”

While it is our task to cast down imaginations or any other pretension that exalts itself against the knowledge of God — CRT or the like — we must not lose sight of the Good that is common to all who are made in God’s image. Aristotle and Boethius believed that virtue should not be divided, and “Plato,” as Lewis notes, “rightly taught that virtue is one. You cannot be kind unless you have all the other virtues.”27 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.

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 (2019). He was the Research Editor of Bibliotheca 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.

Footnotes

1. In the spring of 2022, Wade Ortego, Head of The Ambrose School invited a small group of classical Christian educators to discuss and debate how classical Christian schools ought to respond to rising cultural concerns, namely Critical Race Theory (CRT). The council was playfully dubbed the “Wokium Colloquium,” but the goal was serious: to equip school leaders and teachers with a coherent and practicable Christian response to CRT and Critical Theory in general. Those who attended represented thoughtful leadership within the broader CCE movement and the contributing guests included David Goodwin, author and president of ACCS; Dr. Chris Schlect, Senior Fellow of History and Head of Humanities at New Saint Andrews College; Andrew Kern, founder and president of the CiRCE Institute; Martin Cothran, Senior Policy Analyst for The Family Foundation and co-founder of Memoria Press and Highlands Latin School; Dr. Christopher Perrin, co-founder and CEO of Classical Academic Press, and myself. This paper was the result of the sincere conversations and formal dialogues that took place during the days of that gathering.

2. For a more indepth scholarly exchange on this particular topic, see the upcoming panel discussion, “The Canon of Great Books,” at this year’s Repairing the Ruins Conference (2024), featuring Dr. Christopher Schlect, Dr. Grant Horner, and Dr. David Diener.

3. The White House, “News and Updates: Environmental Justice.” Accessed 5 Jan. 2024: https://www.whitehouse.gov/environmentaljustice/news-and-updates/.

4. Harvard Kennedy School, “Racial Justice, Racial Equity, and Anti-Racism Reading List.” Accessed 5 Jan. 2024: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/library-research-services/collections/diversity-inclusion-belonging/anti-racist.

5. A good working definition is in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, where he describes the practice of vivisection as an evil group of scientists who cut up “thousands of pounds’ worth of living animality…like paper on the mere chance of some interesting discovery.” That Hideous Strength (New York: MacMillan Company, 1946) 111.

6. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995) 35-36.

7. Ibid, 37.

8. I’m borrowing from Charles Taylor here. Carl Truman notes, that Taylor “introduces the idea of the social imaginary to address the question of how theories developed by social elites might be related to the way ordinary people think and act, even when such people have never read these elites or spent any time self-consciously reflecting on the implications of their theories.” The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020) 36-37.

9. The Everlasting Man (New York: Dover, 2007) 152. Chesterton goes on: “The very fact that the Trojan name has become a Christian name, and been scattered to the last limits of Christendom, to Ireland or the Gaelic Highlands, while the Greek name has remained relatively rare and pedantic, is a tribute to the same truth.”

10. The abolitionists who ended slavery were Christians. William Wilburforce is an obvious example of one whose Christian faith was the reason for his fight to end the British slavetrade.

11. The 1619-Project “conceived by Nikole Hannah-Jones.” Accessed 5 June 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=038A2ED812B1DFCB776C1E50CC01D24D&gwt=pay&assetType=PAYWAL

12. Wood is one of the leading scholars on the American Revolution and has authored numerous books on the subject. Tom Mackaman, “An interview with historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times’ 1619 Project.” Accessed 5 June 2022: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html. There is no shortage of historical and academic criticism of the 1619 Project, from those on the Left and the Right. See also the Politico article, “I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me.” Accessed 5 June 2022: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/0 /06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248. In addition, see the letter to the New York Times, where “Twelve Scholars Critique the 1619 Project.” Accessed 8 Jan. 2024: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174140.

13. Zach Goldberg, Eric Kaufman, “Yes, Critical Race Theory Is Being Taught in Schools” City Journal, Oct. 20, 2022. Accessed 8 Jan 2024: https://www.city-journal.org/article/yes-critical-race-theory-is-being-taught-in-schools.

14. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (San Francisco: Harper, 2001) 137-138.

15. Accessed May 4, 2022: https://www.ccu.edu/about/position-statements/statement-on-critical-race-theory/

16. See Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019).

17. Voddie T. Baucham Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Washington, D.C.: Salem Books, 2021) 91.

18. Christopher Rufo, “The Truth About Critical Race Theory,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 4, 2020. Accessed 8 May 2022: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-critical-race-theory-11601841968?mod=article_inline.

19. See Josh Abbotoy’s “Wide Awoke at Grove City College,” American Reformer, Nov. 29, 2021. Accessed 15 May 2022: https://americanreformer.org/2021/11/wide-awoke-at-grove-city-college/.

20. See GCC’s April 2022 “Report and Recommendation of the Special Committee.” Accessed 15 May 2022: https://www.gcc.edu/Portals/0/Special-Committee-Report-and-Recommendation_0422.pdf.

21. See Dr. Chris Schlect’s “Critical Theory and Christian Affirmations: A Dashboard Summary” (Appendix A). Here Dr. Schlect provides a helpful schema to map the differences between the tenets and claims of Critical Theory and those of historic Christian doctrine (including those norms and dogmas of traditional metaphysics)

22. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (San Francisco: Harper, 2001) 46.

23. “The Daily Office,” The Book of Common Prayer, according to the Anglican Church in North America. Anglican Liturgy Press, 2019.

24. See also Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay’s Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody (Pitchstone Publishing, 2020).

25. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, 1.

26. John 12:32.

27. C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (London: MacMillan Company, 1955) 53.

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