We, whom the Lord has entrusted with the online ministry, Christ Over All, heartily and gratefully endorse David Schrock’s Dividing the Faithful: How a Little Book on Race Fractured a Movement Founded on Grace. It is the first thorough critical engagement and pastoral assessment of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. This book was authored by two sociologists, principally by Michael O. Emerson but aided by Christian Smith’s reputation (who published American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving two years earlier).
Why did David write a book-length critique of a small book published twenty-three years ago? Trent Hunter’s foreword provides insight into the recent events that prompted the writing of this work. Rather recent appeals to and promotions of Divided by Faith have inflicted division on a movement Collin Hansen dubbed “Young, Restless, Reformed” in Christianity Today (September 22, 2006). That “Movement Founded on Grace” orbited mainly around two centers of gravity with annual conferences founded by celebrated personalities: The Gospel Coalition (TGC), founded by D. A. Carson and Tim Keller (2005), and Together for the Gospel (T4G), established by Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C. J. Mahaney, and Albert Mohler (2006).
Trent correctly observes that relatively recently, the promotion and endorsement of Divided by Faith by leading evangelical voices and ministries have caused fractures among evangelicals. These evangelicals united around the gospel of grace have now become divided over disagreements concerning how Christians and ministers of the gospel, in particular, should address the racial issue ubiquitous throughout our culture. Those who have recently embraced the thesis of Divided by Faith fail to recognize that the book itself aids and abets the dividing of evangelicals into two diverse camps: the Woke, or those seduced by a deceptive worldview, and the Awake, awake to the alluring and destructive message of that book. Hence, David Schrock aptly titled his book-length critique Dividing the Faithful: How a Little Book on Race Fractured a Movement Founded on Grace.
David, Pastor of Preaching and Theology at Occoquan Bible Church (Woodbridge, VA), correctly identifies Divided by Faith as a destructive force.
Divided by Faith is not a harmless book that gives a helpful and different perspective; it is a book that espouses a view of humanity that does not match Scripture. Even worse, it scoffs at those who seek reconciliation by means of Scripture, and it invites Christians to pursue reconciliation of a kind not found in the Bible. Thus, for those who are committed to God’s holy, inspired, authoritative, and sufficient Word, you must recognize that Divided by Faith is not a cup of living water. It is a poison pill. (113)
He justifiably diagnoses the book as “a poison pill” that allures readers with its empty prescription for resolving racial division when it actually causes division. A “time-delay explosive” also aptly describes the book. This is because when Divided by Faith first landed, it had little discernible effect on Evangelicalism despite its significant promotion by Christianity Today (October 2, 2000). The magazine printed the whole of chapter 4 under the title “Color-Blinded.” The same issue gave the book a “CT Special Section: Divided by Faith?” with an off-putting lead: “A recent study argues that American evangelicals cannot foster genuine racial reconciliation. Is our theology to blame?”. The CT Special Section lead accurately captures the book’s thesis, which may be summarized:
Though it is commendable that White Evangelicals have voiced distress over racism and have even made some attempts toward racial harmony, certain doctrinal convictions they hold and social standards they practice not only nullify their concern, prolonging division and legitimating the racist attitudes and structures of which they are unaware. Emerson and Smith contend that evangelical Christians’ convictions are at cross-purposes with their expressed desires.
Emerson and Smith’s claim was harsher than most evangelicals were prepared to acknowledge with their call for repentance for sins few Christians could truthfully confess.
Several other factors also contributed to the delayed impact Divided by Faith would have on evangelicals. As was the custom, the publisher released the book as a hardback. The book’s price was disproportionate to the book’s size (224 pages). Oxford University Press, serving an academic market, published the book. A year later, Oxford published the paperback, which cost about the same as its discounted price in 2023, twenty-two years later.
Failure to receive reviews from scholars outside university sociology departments suppressed the book’s early reception outside the academy. That the book was largely based on a nationwide telephone survey, as touted on the back cover, slanted its appeal to few others than sociologists and their students. Emerson and Smith could have garnered a larger readership if they had adopted a less erudite approach. For example, they could have built off the popularity of Peggy McIntosh’s “Knapsack” imagery in her article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (1989). Her imagery had already been circulating for over a decade and was easily accessible online, causing quite a stir on Christian college campuses. Instead, they reached back further, to Ann Swidler’s 1986 essay, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” buried in the American Sociological Review, to build off her imagery of the “tool kit.” Emerson and Smith wrote,
Ann Swidler argues that the cultural tool kit limits possibilities or, put another way, in providing a set of tools, it withholds others. For those we interviewed, the tools of individualism and personal relationships limited their ability either to recognize institutional problems or to acknowledge them as important. (79–80)
Ironically, the book’s headiness, which conspired with other factors against its early reception, contributed to why Divided by Faith eventually appealed to educated pastors and theologians, with an albeit delayed impact. John Piper read the paperback book when it was published in 2001 to host a Racial Harmony Roundtable at Bethlehem Baptist Church to discuss the ideas promoted in Divided by Faith.
Not until ten years later, however, Piper cited the book with no critical assessment or caution in Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian (76). He made it safe for others to accept and endorse the book uncritically several years later. These included but were not limited to Mark Dever, Jarvis Williams, and Jemar Tisby, who endorsed Divided by Faith on the T4G and TGC websites. In April 2018, the book received even more powerful endorsements from the platforms at MLK50 in Memphis, co-sponsored by TGC and Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (of the Southern Baptist Convention), and at the T4G conference in Louisville. It formed the basis of a lamentable sermon David Platt delivered at T4G. Is there any wonder that theological students and pastors, young and seasoned, would be intimidated by these spoken and published endorsements by their evangelical champions? Again, is there any wonder that within recent years, evangelicals who cherish the doctrines of grace have become divided, if not fractured, over “race,” even accusing those who challenge the fashionable but seriously flawed worldview with necessary questions of contributing to racism? How do the many who preach the doctrines of grace not comprehend that to embrace this worldview subverts their proclaiming the good news as it is in Jesus in so many seductive ways?
Michael Emerson completed much of his work on the book while teaching at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN, which may explain why the book seemed to receive discernible local interest in the Twin Cities. Divided by Faith caught my attention in a book display at Bethel Seminary, where I was a Faculty Associate. Because I had been critically assessing “multiculturalism and diversity” as dangerous, destructive, and divisive for over a decade, I promptly purchased, read, and highlighted the newly released paperback copy of Divided by Faith in 2001. So, when our church scheduled a Racial Harmony Roundtable with Emerson’s book as our featured dialog partner, I attended in good faith. I hoped to contribute to the shaping of the church’s response to the escalating cultural issue that was already entering the church, where pastors and elders were uncritically open to the worldview antithetical to the gospel they believed and preached. The Round Table’s initial meeting was innocuous. We simply introduced ourselves and explained our interest in the issues addressed in the book.
During the next meeting, when participants were invited to speak, I spoke from extensive reading, research, and frequent speaking on the issues I had done throughout the previous decade. I reasonably pointed out that wherever “diversity as the goal,” which is what Emerson and Smith advocate, is implemented, enmity and division always follow. This invariably occurs because the worldview they push is intolerant toward anyone who raises questions. I identified the worldview’s roots in Marxism and that those who embrace it treat people not as individuals but as members of a class, impose racial guilt because of light skin coloring, demand all Euro-Americans repent even if they are not aware of any attitudinal or overt acts of racism, and interminably perpetuate the demand for penance if not reparations. An abrupt rebuke silenced me, revealing that no pushback against the book’s thesis was permitted, ironically acting out the very point I had just made. The rebuke signaled that the book’s argument is indisputable. For expressing a well-informed and refined critique of the “diversity worldview,” I had already received harsher rebukes and accusations at my own institution, but this was a first at our church. I then realized that my commentary on the issues was unwelcome not only at the Christian college where I taught but also at my church.
Given the disharmonious reaction that silenced thoughtful disagreement with the book, I deemed it best no longer to be a participant at the Racial Harmony Roundtable. Nevertheless, I continued to critique the “diversity as the goal” worldview in classroom conversations, in panel discussions, as a guest speaker, and on blogs (see especially “Evangelicals and the Encroachment of Cultural Marxism”). I remain resolutely convinced that the agenda Emerson and Smith advocate is rooted in a theology alien to the Scriptures and seductively subversive to God’s Kingdom by hijacking and repurposing gospel terminology and concepts. Unyielding conviction has had a high cost, but I resolved long ago not to allow “diversity bullies” to intimidate me into silence.
Divided by Faith remains in print, and because its terminology is dated, ingenuous promoters and readers fail to realize that the source of its thesis is the same as that of Critical Race Theory, something Emerson and Smith are likely to deny, a frequent mantra heard in the larger culture. Since 2000, the Newspeak jargon exploited to advance the worldview Emerson and Smith advocate in their book has been fluid and evolving. Thus, their book cleverly conceals the fact that Critical Race Theory shapes their worldview, though readers will look in vain to find any explicit mention of the phrase. Therein is the authors’ genius not to retrofit their book to the contemporary vocabulary. David Schrock observes this when he states,
As I will demonstrate, Divided by Faith has seeded ideas from Critical Race Theory into the evangelical soil. As a result, many who have repudiated CRT as a system have ironically turned around to employ the language, ideas, and analytic tools formed in the minds of CRT scholars. Some will go so far as to defend the use of CRT, but most do not need to do that. They can simply point to Divided by Faith, cite its statistics, parrot its logic, and—unbeknownst to themselves—they become mouthpieces for CRT. (9)
David Schrock correctly attributes the resurgence of Divided by Faith, now twenty-three years old, to endorsements by preachers in powerful positions. Long ago, my ministerial internship taught me always to be wary of ministerial celebrity, which generates a culture of intimidation, even if unintentional, where devotees follow. Consequently, I have stood aloof from what Carl Trueman aptly calls Big Eva, a network of big evangelical organizations with vast conferences where large personalities dominate, all for the purpose of shaping both the strategy and thinking of evangelical churches. My wariness has proved right. As some wisely feared, celebrity voices often pose challenges to the church’s role as “the pillar and buttress of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). This was and remains a proper concern, as David skillfully establishes in his critical assessment of Dividing the Faith. He demonstrates that evangelical leaders who promote the book fail to comprehend its “unbiblical assumptions, Cultural Marxist commitments, and the misdirected guidance for the church,” inducing others to be as naïve as they are. Succinctly stated, the book’s agenda concerning race is antithetical to the gospel of grace. Hence Divided by Faith is Dividing the Faithful.
If you cherish God’s redeeming grace in Christ Jesus and desire the redemption of all peoples regardless of ethnicity, join David Schrock and the rest of us at Christ Over All to work toward “maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). Get a copy of this new book, Dividing the Faithful: How a Little Book on Race Fractured a Movement Founded on Grace. Read it, consider its message, and spread it abroad.
