In just a couple of weeks we begin the journey through the ABC’s of (modified) Theology!
The schedule is below this intro video.
Mondays at 4 and Thursdays at 3 pm (PST)
Aug 24 & 27
Why modified theology and our contemporary situation
Aug 31 & Sept 3
A is for Atonement (also Adiaphora and Apophatic)
B is for Baptism (and the Body) more than a metaphor
Sept 10
C is for Christology (and Constructive Theology )
D is for Deconstruction (and Death of God)
Sept 17
E is for Empire (and Evangelical)
F is for Fideism (and Feminist)
Sept 24
G is for Genre (and Globalization)
H is for Hermeneutics (also Heaven and Hell)
Oct 1
I is for Infallible, Inerrant, & Inspired
J is for Justification (and Justice)
Oct 8
K is for Kenosis (and the Kingdom)
L is for Liberation (and Logos)
Oct 15
M is for Metaphor (and Metaphysics)
N is for Neoplatonism (and Narrative)
Oct 22
O is for Open & Relational (and Orthodox)
P is for Perichoresis (and Post-Colonial)
Oct 29
Q is for Quest for the Historical Jesus (and Queer Theology)
R is for Revelation (and words that begin with ‘Re’)
Nov 5
S is for Salvation (and Second Naivete)
T is for Theopoetics (and Technology)
Nov 12
U is for Universalism (and Ultimate Concern)
V is for Vatican II (and Voluntarism)
Nov 19
W is for the Word of God (and the Wesleyan Quad)
X is for X-ray (and Xenophobia)
Nov 26
Y is for Y2K (and Youth Ministry)
Z is for Zebra (and Zionism)
How To Get Involved: You can either email anEverydayTheology@gmail.com or let me know on the Public Theology FB page that you want to be a part of it and you are in.
Now – If you can give $13 dollars – $1 for each week or $26 – one for each letter of the alphabet or whatever you can do, that would be great. If not, don’t worry about it – I want everyone who is interested to be involved in this conversation.
I want to tell you about the beautiful side of critical theory– And specifically critical race theory (CRT) for me–as it relates to whiteness work and my religious faith.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) seeks to:
Examine
Explicate
Advocate
Another ways to say it might be that Critical Theory seeks to Interrogate, Expose, and Change – not just explain – culture and society.
Before I get into the beauty of all of that, some back ground. A couple of weeks ago I talked about Critical Theory being our salvation from bad religion, then why Evangelicals can’t do critical theory. I got so much feedback and am now getting some really interesting articles sent to me. It is a conversation that I love and am delighted to be a part of.
One pushback I got was about my calling Critical Theory a ‘toolbox’ and not a worldview. One insightful person pointed out that while I was technically correct, that Critical Theory does have an agenda and is not simply a set of tools.
So let’s be clear. Critical Theory – and Critical Race Theory – does have an agenda. I have summarized it in these three movements or motivations.
Examine or Interrogate
This ties into parables and prophets. Check out “Lessons from Luke”
Expose or Un-Mask
Both Walter Wink’s the Powers That Be and Girard’s Scapegoat theory of atonement tie in here. Ideology is another way of talking about the impulse.
Advocate or Change
It is significant to understand that critical theories are not just theories. Most are concerned with changing the phenomenon being examined not just writing it up as a case-study or deconstructing it. Deconstruction is fine (and essential)but not enough in the end.
The funny thing is that I know Critical Theory is not for everyone. I am not asking everyone to do it – but I am shocked and the number of religious people speaking against it! So I need to say be careful of anyone who wants to preserve or conserve a notion of the past rooted in the 3 C’s :
I have lots of new friends and followers recently so I want to let you know about a series I did 2 years ago about the moment that we live in and why it is only going to get worse.
My favorite philosopher (Zizek) says that the light at the end of the tunnel is probably another oncoming train and I agree.
I am a naturally optimistic person but the past 15 years have alerted me to the very real turmoil and fracturing in society. I want to assure you of two things:
You can go back and watch all 4 videos (or read all 4 posts) but I wanted to summarize it for those who are new what I am doing here.
The two basic things that you need to understand about our cultural moment is that
Everything you see – and all of the competing tribes, opinions, and agendas – are remnants of previous eras.
We have no agreed upon arena in which to settle these disagreements and disputes.
Ours is a fractured and fragmented society in which incompatible agendas and projects compete for thinner slices of the collective pie. They cannot be reconciled to one another because they all house (are embedded with) different programs (to use a computer analogy) and sometimes entirely different operating systems.
It is not just that they have different goals, agendas, and methods … they are different to each other not just in degree but often in type.
This is why there is cultural chaos. We are both fractured and fragmented but each of those competing camps speaks an internal language game that makes in nearly impossible to translate between them.
It is not just Chess & Checkers but (to use a sports analogy) it is like asking a Baseball player how many touchdowns he scored. It is just not how it works. This is not like the difference between Ford and Chevy in NASCAR or the difference between quilting, knitting, and crochet. This is like trying to feed a banana to cell phone. They are two entirely different things.
So whether it is Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative and libertarian, creation and evolution, traditional and progressive, religious and secular – we talk past each other and often can’t even hear what the other ‘side’ is saying.
Then you take that confusion and you turn up the volume to 11 (as they say) and our self-selected echo chambers start to distort and become feedback loops that are unintelligible.
So how can I say that this is a good thing? Because we are being given the opportunity to finally deal with remnants and remainders of our historical legacy and the roots of our various programs. If we are willing to look at the genealogy of how we got here and do some discourse analysis (this is why I love critical theory) then we do an autopsy on our failing and faltering institutions and organizations.
People like to say, “the more things change the more the stay the same” but I would like to submit to you that has never been less true than it is right now. I say that they more things change they more they will continue to change at faster and faster rates.
The words for our time is history are agitated and accelerated. Changes is constant and happens not incrementally anymore but exponentially and perpetually. This is why going back to the past will not save us. Our moment is begging for better answer but is asking us completely different kinds of questions.
This is why I do what I do. This is not a blip on the radar. What you are seeing in the news is not a fever that will pass. This is the world we live in now. It is not a season and ‘this too shall pass’. No, this our new reality. Covid, police protests, political dysfunction are not glitches or bugs in the system – they are now features of the system that need to be considered on their own merit.
So I will say it again: Everything you are seeing is a remnant of a previous project or program and we have no arena in which to settle the disputes. So there is no to think that things will naturally get better or that we will somehow find a middle-ground. That is the good news of this moment if you have ears to hear and eyes to see. Our public, political, economic, medical, and environmental crisis are not a sad side effect of an otherwise healthy system. They are the remnants and remainders of a pre-existing condition. They are the logical conclusion of a long history and now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Like it or not, this is our new reality and sooner we wake up and realize that this is no nightmare the better we can do at dealing with the fractured and fragmented nature of our society and world.
I woke up to this 15 years ago And lots of people have said, “it’s only a matter of time before this all settles down can we get back to business as usual”. But there is no going back and whoever we elect this fall won’t fix it. They can’t fix it because it is embedded in the system – it is baked in the bread. So until we wake up and take a sober look at how we got here there is no reason to think things are going to get any better on their own.
In the past several months, with the George Floyd protest and Black Lives Matter movement, many people have recently discovered Robin DiAngelo’s book ‘White Fragility’ and propelled it to the top of the both the New York Times and Amazon best seller’s list.
This is a wonderful first step for many white people to begin the journey of their whiteness education and to address the centering of white normalcy.
Now, it is inevitable that initial adrenaline rush doesn’t last and that some serious criticism of her work has come to the surface in past couple of months.
Some are concerned that her experience and her expertise are in a corporate context where people are paid (and maybe required) to attend her workshops (where she is paid) and while she may be an expert in this one highly-regulated environment, that is not how race-relations look out in the real world or on the street.
This is the ‘meta’ of the moment: we no longer want to center white people’s perspectives and white ways of thinking or we recreate the very thing that we are hoping to work against.
Others point out that the phrase ‘white fragility’ was already in use before she claims to have ‘coined’ it. This is a real problem for a white person to both profit off of the work of a person of color and to not give credit is to ‘erase’ the individual or community and make them invisible.
Still others are concern that white people are attracted to her white way of framing and presenting the work and by reading her book (or attending her class) they will think that have done their work … but they have not done anything anti-racist yet that benefits communities of color.
A white person coming to terms with their own whiteness is a great first step but it does nothing for communities of color. That is where the anti-racist work begins so that the end is in trans- forming economically, politically, legally, regionally, socially, religiously, psychologically, and emotionally.
Some white people have gotten defensive or discouraged about this critiques of ‘white fragility’ but I want to submit to you that it is a good thing! This is productive direction to go. After DiAngelo it is time to read an author-of-color who may not say things in ways that you like to hear them or may frame the whole subject in a completely different light and it may be really uncomfortable.
This is the natural progression of becoming a white-ally. Fist, address your own white awareness and fragility, next listen to and learn from a thinker of color, third might be to then be in dialogue and activism (partner) with people of color, and then continue the anti-racist journey by advocating for and participating in organized actions.
White fragility can be a wonderful first step in move beyond it and leave it behind.
This is just the nature of this work. Let me give you two examples – one recent and one a little dated.
In 1988 Peggy McIntosh wrote a paper that has become so influential and so frequently referenced that its success is becoming a problem. McIntosh’s “Invisible Knapsack” of White Privilege is so wide-spread and so elementary that you almost have to reference it in any address of whiteness just to show that you know what you are talking about. A recent academic review said it this way:
In her review of the broader field of whiteness studies, McWhorter (2005) observes that “no thorough over- view of Whiteness Studies ever omits reference to Peggy McIntosh’s article” (p. 545). [1]
Don’t get me wrong – McIntosh’s list of 46 assumed privileges was (and is) an amazingly helpful lens through which to see issues of assumed white normalcy and to come to terms with their implications. It’s just, as the article points out, not enough to come to terms with one’s own whiteness … one must then utilize that new platform to begin to address issues of systemic racism, class privilege, and discrimination of every kind.
It’s not that McIntosh is bad (she was and is great), but it cannot be the be-all and end-all of that conversation. SO much more is needed. If you have read the ‘Invisible Knapsack’ article in the past 32 years, then well done! Keep going – there is so much more to be learned and to be done.
In the same vein, there is a famous quote from the 1960’s that originated in the boxing world but has been applied in so many other areas of life: the reporter Jimmy Cannon famously said of Joe Louis that “heis acredit to his race, the human race“.
This compliment, at the time, would have resonance because it brought similarity and identification but would soon be out of date because it is based in erasure of difference. Soon people would ask, ‘oh you can only see the virtue in him because is like you? Why not acknowledge his blackness and difference?’
This is how whiteness work goes. There are initial steps that then have to transcended and even transgressed in order to move on to real anti-racist work. It is a scaffolding that begins a project but then must be dis-assembled to create a structure that we can live in.
It is the natural and good progression. Myself, for instance, I want to be a gateway drug. I hope these videos and even the Whiteness Workshop to be starting point that you soon leave behind. In my podcast and book with Randy Woodley I hope to model constructive discourse but ultimately be a stepping-stool that helps you along the way.
[1]McIntosh as Synecdoche: How Teacher Education’s Focus on White Privilege Undermines Antiracism – Midwest Critical Whiteness Collective
The Gospel of Luke was a great read. Lessons from Luke: Recap
Read Slowly
Luke is a Quilter
Parables Are Tricky
Jesus Winks
Bread Is Central
Read Slowly: there is a temptation to read the Bible quickly when you Believe that you already know the story. When you already have the plot figured out you tend to skip over some important details that actually significantly change the trajectory of the narrative.
Luke is a Quilter: the use over parallel layout of the Gospels was really helpful to see both material that Luke included that was not found in either Mark or Matthew, and was equally eye-opening to see how Luke stitched familiar stories together rearranging them and pairing them in the ways that contrasted or juxtaposed the different elements of the story.
Parables Are Tricky: parables are stories told in code in order to come in under the radar of the listener in order to ask them to question the assumptions they came in with. Parables interrogate the established order and the expectations of the listener. In the Gospel of Luke this often has to results:
It makes the hero of the story somebody that the listener may not have thought very highly of. This can be foreigners, servants, and women.
It calls into question the power and the wealth of the upper-class in the assumption talk to God’s favor is with and who God is working for.
Take Luke 16 for instance. In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in the afterlife it is noteworthy that Jesus gives the name to this beggar who would have been I nobody but Jesus does not given name to the rich man who everyone in town would’ve known his name. Jesus is not giving us a map of the afterlife he is using that as a stage to talk about god’s involvement in the drama of human life now. Jesus is telling us what God values in this life.
Parables are not allegory. When you read parables as allegory assigning each character in the story a corresponding person in real life, you often get the point of the parable 100% incorrect. If each time Jesus talks about someone with Power and status, like a landowner, you assume that is the god character in the story then the Gospel of Luke really makes God into a monstrous, violent, and conflicted character. If however, you read the story that God is with the servants instead of the landowner, who is probably Rome in coded language, then Jesus is parable read in entirely inverted from the way most of us have been taught to interpret them.
Which brings up the next point.
Jesus Winks: In Luke 12: 38-40 we begin to see that Jesus’ teaching reads very differently if you are riding high on the hog then if you are on the underside of the beast (in this case Empire). If you have possessions like many of us in America do, the idea of a thief coming in the night causes worry and anxiety. In the context of the first century Jewish occupation by the Romans the thief coming in the night was the in breaking of the kingdom of God.
Earlier in Luke chapter 11 Jesus had talked about the need to bind a strong man if you’re going to ransack his house. And this was probably and allusion to Roman rule and Cesar would be the strong man.
Take Luke 12
4 “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more. 5 But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority[a] to cast into hell.[b] Yes, I tell you, fear him! 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. 7 But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
When Jesus talks about the one it can be tempting to think he’s talking about God. But it is not God who after he is killed you has the authority to cast you into hell! That is Caesar. Jesus is speaking in code and this should probably be understood as part of the literature of the oppressed. You speak in code when you are not safe just say what you really think. We know that the One in verse 5 (who throws people in hell) is not God because in verse six Jesus name’s God as the one who care about every sparrow.
Jesus often had to speak in code, almost with a wink to his listener, and it’s easy to imagine a Roman century and standing just offscreen keeping an eye on the group that was listening to Jesus. There is so much more that could be said on this topic but I think it would benefit you greatly when you read a parable to ask if the person in power–whether that is a land owner, strongman, the one, etc. – is more likely Cesar character or God. If you make every powerful person in a parable a god character you end up creating a monstrous, even demonic, two-faced and violent character.
Bread Is Important: Luke uses more stories about meals and food, specifically bread, then the rest of the Gospels. It comes up all the time. It can be used as an object lesson. It often involves Women being central to the story. Food plays an important part in the Gospel of Luke.
In fact, if you were to ask me what is the big point, the takeaway, from the Gospel of Luke I would say that it is found at the end of gospel in chapter 24.
35 And they told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread.
It may surprise you, it’s certainly surprised me, that the major point of Luke’s Gospel maybe that Christ is known in the breaking of bread. I Been thinking about this a lot in the past month. It was ironic to me that we were not able to celebrate our normal tradition of having a meal together after we wrap up Reading a book of the Bible. In the absence of eating meals together because of social distancing and quarantine, it has become clear to me how often Christ is reveled in the breaking of Bread.
Imagine that one group of people wanted to look at the layered and overlapping nature of racism in our country with issues of policing and economic realities, and another group of people used their platforms to warn their followers against this examination because of an obscure ancestor who’s nearly 200 year old political and economic theories were horribly misapplied a century ago to devastating consequences that enveloped the globe.
That is an actual scenario that is happening right now. There is a reckoning going on N. America about the legacy of racism and the ways that institutions and structures of power have been employed like overlapping gears in a machine to systemically (re)create and (re)enforce the layered injustice and inequality that has resulted from the legacy of settler colonialism and slavery. One node of this societal web is called Critical Race Theory (CRT) which examines interrelated issues, exposes hidden mechanisms of power, and advocates for change.[1]
Many evangelical leaders, however, are warning their people against CRT for the most obscure reason: Marxism.
I want to be clear that cynical slur is being used as a dog-whistle. It is being employed to scare people because of the guilty by association nature of fear: communism, Soviet Russia, enemy during the cold war, Lenin & Stalin, secret police & the gulag = millions dead.
But you can read lots and lots of CRT (and Critical Whiteness Study) without ever encountering any Marx. It is such an odd objection and if it were sincere, and being brought up in good faith, I would want to be generous and irenic in addressing why it is such a big concern right now. It is, however, not sincere or being employed in good faith and I will not be addressing it as a legitimate concern.
So what is this claim of ‘Cultural Marxism’ why does it work?
First I want to tell you why it is ridiculous and then I want to tell you why there might be some utility in it.
Why it is silly to keep bringing up Marxism: an analogy
It is the equivalent of me wanting to use a cell phones and you constantly referencing Alexander Bell. First, a lot has changed since the early days of telephones. Secondly, I don’t care about Bell, I want to USE a cell phone.
You keep taking it back to history and want to focus on the early design of the rotary phone with its receiver, and land line, and how the cord used to tangle about itself, and the operator … Now all of that might be really interesting but I am not wanting to talk about the history of the phone – I want to use a cell phone.
It would be like if wanted to get a burger at McDonald’s and you got upset because in 1954 Ray Kroc started a hamburger stand in San Bernadino California and ‘you know about California!’ I could say:
A lot has happened since then and McDonald’s is global now. Why do you keep bringing up California in the 50’s ?
There are a lot of concerns about McDonald’s like how they get their beef and how they treat their workers … why do you keep bringing up Ray Kroc?
I just want to eat a hamburger, I don’t have to know the history of hamburgers or the founder of the restaurant.
That is the equivalent of what is happening right now where those who want to employ (utilize) Critical Theory and specifically CRT and the evangelicals who are talking about Marxism and the Cold War. One group want to use a toolkit called CRT to address a real live situation presently happening in our moment and other group want to talk about origins and historic side effects of a remote influence on the field.
Like I have said before, this charge of Marxism is a cynical distraction technique that is not being employed in good faith. It is a scare tactic and a boogeyman.
Now having said that, “Is there any merit to addressing this?” and I think that there is.
So Marx influenced the Frankfurt School who popularized Critical Theory in the wake of WWII and this migrated and evolved over the next 40 years into Critical Race Theory which has in turn adapted and evolved greatly over the last 40 years including the integration of Foucault in the 80’s & 90’s and then eventually the insights related to intersectionality the multiple layers of overlapping and inter-acting levels of oppression and prejudice.
Here we have two important points to consider:
On one hand you have massive lineage of an entire field that has evolved and adapted over the past 80 years and so one might say ‘who cares about a guy who’s writing was influential on a bunch of guys who were influential in getting the ball rolling for a concept that eventually became this entirely different thing we are doing today?
BUT on the other hand – that language of oppression and alienation has a genealogy and legacy so maybe the origin is important because the DNA carries through the generations and influences and historical transformations, mutations, adjustments and counter-corrections. Maybe it is important how something gets started because your ancestors’ legacy lives through you today. Like it or not, you are product and a result of those who came before you. You have inherited their legacy and are a result of their actions and ideas, beliefs and decisions.
Let’s give this a little merit and see what aspects of Marx’s thoughts continue to influence or bear fruit in today’s Critical Race Theory.
If we can decouple the boogeyman of Marxism then we can see something that is really important. Cultural Marxism is a growing influence in N. America. (I would point you to several popular podcasts in Canada and the US) And
So I will openly say that Marx’s solutions were wrong. Their application was disastrous in totalitarian states. But that doesn’t mean that his diagnosis with the problems of industrialized capitalism were faulty. His critique still has teeth.
But that is, again, not the point. Because that is not the part of Marx that CRT is utilizing. Critical Race Theory employs the legacy of his concern about alienation, oppression, and disparity. It continues his concern for emancipation and liberation for working class people but has broadened that scope of concern advocate for the marginalized by exposing the mechanism and structures within the system that keep them the levers of power.
This, for me, is why it is so important to decouple CRT from the dog-whistle of Marxism because those who want to examine the structurated nature of race-relations in N. America and the intersectional aspects of race, gender, class, sexuality (and religion) are not utilizing the same part of Marx that led to communism, Soviet Russia, enemy during the cold war, Lenin & Stalin, secret police & the gulag = millions dead.
Now, admittedly, there are those who are currently employing Marx politically. No doubt. But that is why it is so important not let the specter of Marx be used as a scare tactic, dog-whistle, and boogeyman by evangelical leaders to scare people away from examining very real concerns about the structurated nature of race in this country.
Why are the evangelical leaders so concerned. Well I think that there is a lot of confusion within evangelicalism right now. There is a generational crisis with the loss of people like Billy Graham and the new attrition of their adult children.[2] There is a political crisis with white evangelicals supporting Trump at oddly disproportionate rates. There is a economic crisis with many of their colleges and seminaries unable to sustain financial viability. There is a cultural crisis where their century old created sub-cultured has siloed so profoundly that it has become insular and fearful. There is an eschatological crisis where the much anticipated 2nd Coming of Christ appears to be waning in popularity and is compounded by the rapid loss of that generation that saw the founding of the nation of Israel as a major cornerstone in Biblical prophecy.
With all of that going on: generational, political, economic, cultural, and doctrinal – you don’t also want to be dealing with issues of race and racial disparity. Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theologies are an unwelcomed intrusion into your already unstable house.
That is my theory anyway. I could be wrong – maybe they are genuinely intimidated and a little naïve about CRT and are thus justified in their concern and sincerely confused.
[1] I often call Critical Race Theory a ‘toolkit’ that does 3 things: examines (or interrogates), exposes, and advocates. Admittedly, it is not neutral – it has an agenda: emancipation, liberation, and empowerment.
[2] It used to be a mark of pride that evangelical youth groups held onto a higher percentage of its kids, as compared to Liberal or Mainline congregations) as the teens graduated into their college & career phases. In the past 15 years however, the same attrition rate has plagued the evangelicals as their Mainline counterparts so that over 80% of young people either leave the faith or just stop participating in church.
Conclusions & Convictions: if ‘believing’ the right things is a prerequisite for belonging, then you are not free to ‘ask the question behind the question’ and follow the path wherever the inquiry takes you. You must arrive at the predetermined conclusions or you are not evangelical. This is because the nature of evangelicalism, whatever it has been in the past, has become a set of conclusions (homosexuality, the Bible, Jesus, salvation, hell, end times, etc,)
Individualism: Evangelicalism was born in the Enlightenment and thus the individual is primary when it comes to piety, salvation, and holiness. It is part of why Evangelicalism is so deeply wed to consumer capitalism which was born at the same time. One odd manifestation of this personal holiness (individualism) is called “double insulation”.
Scholarship: The previous two obstacles limit the type of scholarship that Evangelicals can participate in – which is why they have go to other fields (chemistry, Russian poetry) to find people to speak against Critical Race Theory. The problem with this is that if you are not a practitioner who employs CRT then you are only on the platform to speak against something that you have a limited understanding of.
Marxism: The specter of the Cold War looms large in Evangelicalism still. Russia was the enemy so any reference to Marx brings up ‘guilty by association’ thoughts of communism, dictatorship, atheism, Stalin and Lenin, and the slaughter of millions. Marx’s solutions proved to be faulty (wrong) but his analysis (diagnosis) of the problems of industrialized capitalism have valid critiques that have been integrated into different types of Christian theology around the globe.
The categorical dismissal of the ‘Masters of Suspicion’ – Freud, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Marx – is a cynical scare tactic that still really works. It is the simply (one line) dismissal of each of them by evangelicals that concerns me.
Freud: I don’t want to have sex with my mother.
Darwin: I didn’t evolve from a monkey.
Nietzsche: God is not dead.
And scaring people off from CRT by associating it with cultural Marxism is a false-flag type of dog whistle that unfortunately still works.
Watch the 10 min video and let me know what you think.
Below is short video detailing some of the problems with that article. I compare it to asking,
“Is an auto mechanic’s toolbox incompatible with a broken car?”
The answer is no. Unless you didn’t know that car was broken so you think that the mechanic’s diagnostic tools broke the car. Or you only think in cars so your imagine that all of the mechanic’s tools, when put together, is a car that competes with your car.
What I am saying is: this is a confusion of categories.
Since this article is on the Gospel Coalition website I can’t guarantee that it is a sincere attempt to address the issue in good faith – apologetics has a notorious reputation for masking its real agenda behind a facade of inquiry. It is willing to consider something new by scratching the surface in order to expose that the new perspective contradicts and is therefore incompatible with ‘classic’ Christianity (a modern imaginary).
As an ‘apologist’ you are only interested in something to the degree that it proves your predetermined conclusions. So that it is opposite of critical theory.
Please watch the video and let me know your thoughts.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 