College football player turned pastor urges clergy to speak out against critical race theory, BLM
Pastor John Amanchukwu urged Christians to speak out against critical race theory and Black Lives Matter, and encouraged pastors to be more courageous in denouncing unbiblical ideas.
Amanchukwu, a former football player for North Carolina University who is now a preacher and activist, spoke at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia, Wednesday about the importance of Christians taking a stand against the “racist ideologies of abortion, critical race theory and [the organization] Black Lives Matter.”
He warned that America is enduring a “famine” because there are too many preachers today who “are afraid to preach the unadulterated Word of God.”
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“We have preachers who are less of watchmen and more like wimps. We have wimps mounting our sacred pulpits all around this country. And they're preaching a steady diet of easy believism, cheap grace and lies to congregations to keep rear ends in the pew,” Amanchukwu said.
“But I want to tell you today, what we need more than ever is preachers who are not afraid to stand on the Word of God.”
Amanchukwu, the author of the forthcoming book Eraced: Uncovering the Lies of Critical Race Theory and Abortion, said many pastors struggle with acknowledging that "critical race theory has no place in the Church." He insisted that BLM has not helped the African American community.
“Racism is not a color or a skin tone. Racism is a sin. … They say through critical race theory that ‘whites are inherently racist.’ That's not true. What if a person gets born again? [And if] you ask a critical race theorist, they still believe that you're inherently racist because of the color of your skin. Well, here's the reality with that. Racism is a choice,” Amanchukwu said.
“You choose to look at your brother or sister in Christ through a prejudiced or biased lens. This is a choice. And we don't need worldly terms to help us deal with biblical racial reconciliation. We have the Word of God. And the Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves.”
CRT, he added, "causes you to find racism in every action and encounter that you might see in society."
"According to a critical race theorist, they may say that the only reason why I'm on this stage tonight is because of 'tokenism' — not because I'm learned, not because I'm well educated, not because I'm articulate. But because 'they need a black man to fight against critical race theory,'" Amanchukwu said.
"People have passed out victimization to blacks as a crown, but only fools put it on. Many wear the garland of victimization as an ornament or trophy. I am not a victim."
Values are more important than racial classification, Amanchukwu stressed, adding that "as Christians, we must vote our values and we must put our values over color."
Amanchukwu told those gathered that he's "glad" God made him black and warned against making someone else feel guilty because they are white.
"God chose a wonderful tapestry of colors. He gave us that pigmentation for His glory. But the problem comes in when we use our blackness or our whiteness as a tool to condemn. ... But at the end of the day, we all bleed red," Amanchukwu declared.
Other topics Amanchukwu discussed included the importance of voting in alignment with one's values. For him, that includes acknowledging that abortion is the "shedding of innocent blood," opposing same-sex marriage, and declaring that “there are only two genders.”
“When you go to social media, you find out that there's 72 different pronouns and 72 different genders. That's not true. And doctors do not assign gender to children. God does that. All you have to do is use two eyes … and you will be able to see what that child is,” Amanchukwu declared.
“For a woman to have to go through so much pain and agony in that moment to deliver a child [and then] to have a man now claim that he can do the same thing; we need men to stand up and be a voice and fight against that ungodly lie because it's not true.”
CRT traces its origins to the 1970s, when law professors and others began to question why the 1960s civil rights movement appeared to lose strength and why ongoing racial disparities existed.
According to Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic in their 2001 book, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, the CRT movement is comprised of “activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power.”
“The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies discourses take up, but places them in a broader perspective that includes economics, history, context, group- and self-interest, and even feelings and the unconscious,” wrote Delgado and Stefancic.
“Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”
CRT proponents have drawn from left-wing movements like Marxism, feminism and postmodernism, but have also been known to critique these frameworks as well.
While proponents believe CRT is necessary to fight systemic racism, conservatives and other critics have argued that CRT wrongfully vilifies the United States and is in itself racially polarizing.
In 2020, the Council of Seminary Presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention released a statement condemning both CRT and racism as contrary to the Baptist Faith & Message.
