The Social Justice Delusions of Ed Litton, the Newly Elected President of the SBC

By Mark W. Christy, PhD

Note: This article is delving into the thoughts that undergird a couple of questionable remarks from Ed Litton. For his part, Litton publicly disavowed critical race theory (CRT) and claimed to stand firmly for “gospel reconciliation” in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.[i] In the same interview however, he affirmed systemic racism, a concept that arises from the same neo-Marxist foundation as CRT and intersectionality. One should note that the Bible never speaks against hate (which includes racism) at the institutional level. Rather, it focuses its teaching on the personal level (that is, the individuals involved in the systems of the world. The fact that evil institutions are in existence should hardly be surprising to those who understand the doctrine of the original sin. Given this truth (and unlike the social justice warriors hailing from the neo-Marxist perspective), the Bible instructs God’s people toward personal holiness and never pushes people to a sort of outward-only holiness that seems to be a primary goal of those associated with the social justice movement.

At the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), Ed Litton, the current president of the SBC, made this reference to a 1963 incident in Birmingham, AL: “Our resolutions at this Southern Baptist Convention are not the same as repentance. Our resolutions on race led nobody to weep over four girls who were bombed and killed at 16th Street Baptist Church blocks away from here. It has led nobody to weep over the 3,446 African-Americans lynched since 1886.” Sadly, this statement reflects a prevailing trend among Southern Baptists and the broader evangelical community which has allowed social justice theories, such as critical race theory (CRT) and intersectionality, to infiltrate the Church.

According to Litton, one is wrong for failing to weep over the deaths of some random people from some random place that one has perhaps never even been regardless, it seems, of whether or not one has even heard of the tragedy or was even alive at the time of its occurrence. This wrongness of any such event and Litton’s call for weeping, however, is somehow only attached to those involving black victims (and perhaps by connection members of other minority classes which according CRT could be those who identify with alternative lifestyles). His call for tears is also, it appears, meant for the white membership of the SBC. Although he neglects to make this clear, his statement appears to affirm white people are somehow comprising the dominant class or power group which, according to CRT and intersectionality, underlie the hegemonic power structures that support the supposedly rampant social injustice, a term that has yet to be clearly defined. Unlike the white people who are by default presumed to be guilty, those who comprise non-white categories, based upon these social justice theories, have no need for weeping. Rather, these theories call upon them to rise up as victims to air their grievances, tear down the power structures that undergird society (because of their presumed inherent racism), demand compensation for their suffering from those who happen to possess the skin color of those whose primary fault lies in their being supposedly in sole possession of the racist, hegemonic powers of oppression that inhibit all minorities (who are assigned this distinction based skin color, gender, and sexual preference).

In his statement, Litton is essentially criticizing the organization for failing to lead people to mourn over the deaths of a particular group of people from a particular historical event who happened to share a particular skin color. While Litton is a pastor of a fairly large congregation, one should know that such a criticism should not have as its source one who claims to know the Bible. At no point throughout the entirety of God’s Word is an organization ever blamed for a failure. If the resolutions of the SBC did indeed fail in the eyes of God, then that failure can only be attributed to those involved in their formation along with whoever supported that resolution. This tendency, as displayed by Litton, to blame organizations for the wrongdoing of persons is directly associated with the moorings of the social justice theories (and neo-Marxism).

Black Lives Matter (BLM), for example, repeatedly calls on people to identify systemic injustice whereby injustice is inherent to the system. From them and those who adhere to their ideology, such extremes as the call to defund the police have arisen. Members of the public have even come forward with stories of how one of their operatives deliberately tried to stifle stories of black-on-black and black-on-white crime because such events do not fit their narrative which charges the system of being at fault due to the white oppression built into its tenets. Many emotionally-charged accusations of such systemic oppression are made, but one struggles to find an example of such a thing in the laws that exist. Failing to find such, BLM supporters simply seek after the failures of persons involved in the system (even if they have to contrive their guilt without due process) and then assign the personal guilt (if it exists in a given situation) to the system itself, as if any system can be held directly responsible for the freewill choices of people.

Given the failure, as Litton would have it, of SBC resolutions to lead Southern Baptists in a sort of mutual mourning over the deaths of many African Americans, one wonders if Litton is making the charge that Southern Baptists possess some amount of collective guilt wrought on by their lack of repentance. Weeping by itself, of course, is merely an emotional endeavor that all people can perform when the situation calls for it. Such weeping, however, can be wholly disconnected from a person’s sadness for having committed some act of sinful disobedience. From the context of Litton’s words, it appears that Litton is using weeping to refer to biblical repentance. If this is so, then he desperately needs a refresher course on this core tenet of the gospel.

In the Bible, repentance is shown to be a turning from sin leading to a change in behavior (cf. Luke 3:8). To repent of one’s sin, one must move beyond mere sorrow even though such sorrow is part of the process of repenting (cf. 2 Cor 7:10). Judas, for instance, was desperately grieved over his treacherous act, and yet failed to truly repent (Matthew 27:3-5). Unlike him, Peter exhibited his repentance for having denied Christ three times not just by weeping bitterly, but by returning to Christ and exhibiting his renewed commitment by a lifetime of devotion (Matt 26:75; Luke 24:12; John 21:15-23).

Like the BLM and its supporters, Litton ends up assigning guilt to a collective whole; whereas, the Bible assigns guilt directly to persons based not upon their skin color, gender, or sexual preference as those who affirm CRT and intersectionality would have it, but upon personal acts committed in direct violation of His Word. For this reason, the Bible teaches that individuals will stand before God alone and give an account for their lives at the final judgement (that is the Great White Throne Judgement which is only for the unsaved). At this eschatological event, not a single organization, business, government, or any other inanimate and impersonal system (all of which are created by people endowed with freewill choice) will be put on trial for systemic injustice. Furthermore, God will not group people by the man-made classifications offered by CRT and intersectionality when it comes time to apportion blame.

Instead of offering his social justice diatribe, Litton should have just resigned himself to call upon the SBC to make resolutions that are in keeping with the Word of God. If, perhaps, he had in his mind any particular theories that violated Scripture due to racism or some other sort of issue, then he could have just spoke at length about these before offering a call for correction. Unfortunately, his aforementioned statement moved far beyond any biblically reasonable call for reform.

In keeping with his statement undermining the SBC system, Litton also moved even further in his expression of his collusion with the social justice proponents by saying the following, “You say, preacher, I am not a racist, Are you indifferent? The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. And there is a sin of being indifferent about what our Africa-American brothers and sisters are experiencing in this country—what they have, and there is an opportunity for us.”

Within his claim, Litton takes the hard (and frankly impossible) road of completely redefining hatred by limiting its meaning to indifference (at least in this present comment). While it is true that apathy can arise from hatred, it can also be associated a lack of care or concern due to a lack of personal knowledge. The Bible never teaches that God merely remains indifferent to sin; rather, it repeatedly makes it clear that God personally hates those who sin: “You hate all who do iniquity” (Ps 5:5). God’s intense wrath against sinners could only be satiated by God Himself through the death of His Son (cf. Rom 1:18; 5:8). Through Christ, believers, such as those to whom Litton addresses his comments, are called to exemplify from their hearts these words of the Psalmist: “I hate and despise falsehood, But I love Your law” (119:163).

With the Psalmist’s words in view, Litton certainly has grounds to expect all of God’s people to despise all forms of hatred including racism. His failure to take such a bold stance and instead submit a collective charge of indifference serves only to minimize the sinfulness of sin. If he truly believes that SBC members rightly deserve to be charged as racists, it is his duty as a pastor and now President of the SBC to “preach the word,” “reprove,” “rebuke,” and “exhort, with great patience and instruction.” (2 Tim 4:2). If the indifference that he speaks of truly exists, he should make whatever efforts are necessary to determine whether or not such indifference is rooted in sin (such as racist hate). If he finds the necessary evidence, then he once again has the duty to confront the brethren.

Instead of following this pattern of clearing determining the guilt of individuals, Litton proceeds with the same sort of baseless, collective assertions of guilt made by social justice warriors. Like them, he wishes to assign guilty to those who remain unclear of their crime because they lack knowledge of any personal connection to a particular matter or how they should bear any personal responsibility.  While such things are vital in a court of law (whether here in America or in heaven itself), those who affirm CRT and intersectionality, like Litton apparently, can move beyond these traditional and biblical means of assigning guilt and simply mar a whole society, any of its structures, and any of its predetermined grouping of people (a job left to social justice theories and of course the irrational mob).

Returning to the quote, Litton wants his audience, it seems, to be more concerned about what these African-Americans are experiencing than about their sin. While it is perfectly understandable for non-Christians to be more concerned about their experience given their denial of the existence of Holy God, the sinfulness of humanity, and His judgement awaiting those who fail to repent and believe in Christ, it seems rather odd that a pastor would assign a higher primacy to one’s experience over and against one’s need for repentance and restoration unto God via Christ. 

In conclusion, all SBC churches must become more familiar with the many weapons formed within pop culture which are now being used to infiltrate the Church and subvert its messages. Unlike Litton, they must carefully study Scripture and sharpen their minds so as to recognize non-biblical teaching. Instead of joining the neo-Marxists social justice warriors and ceding their minds to their man-made theories, they should stand firmly upon gospel which teaches individual accountability of all people before God.

[i]https://churchleaders.com/news/399727-ed-litton-systemic-racism-crt-sbc.html.