Cairn University Drops Its Social Work Program: "Critical Theory" and "Intersectionality" the Culprits?

My tiny undergraduate alma mater, Cairn University, in the Bucks County Philadelphia suburbs, made the national news recently, and not for the best of reasons. On May 24, President Todd Williams announced that the university would drop its Social Work program, which has been an important part of the school's identity and mission for more than 50 years, back to when it was still located at 18th and Arch Streets in Center City and called Philadelphia College of Bible. News of this decision made its way to the august pages of The Washington Post, and from there to multiple Twitter feeds, such as those of Philadelphia-based Christian activist/author Shane Claiborne, Butler University New Testament scholar James McGrath, and University of Michigan Ph.D. candidate Garrett Pace (the thread here is particularly interesting). In response, the National Association of Social Workers and its Pennsylvania chapter urged the school to reconsider its decision, poignantly including pleas from past and current students of the highly-regarded program.

Now, I have no doubt the reasoning behind the decision to close the program was complex, including, as was later clarified, funding and enrollment concerns. Times have been rough for small, private colleges and universities, and the past year's COVID epidemic hasn't helped matters. But this can hardly have been the main reason, considering that just this spring the school's new MSW program achieved candidacy for accreditation by the Council of Social Work Education’s Commission on Accreditation. Indeed, my own 50+ years of experience with fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity suggests that Williams himself articulated the real reason. The issue concerned the most recent draft of the CSWE's required institutional criteria for accreditation (you can read the entire draft here). In Williams's words: 

The draft … embraces a social and cultural agenda that now includes the acceptance of a view of human sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression that is inconsistent with the University’s biblical position on human sexuality … if approved, institutions will be required to align with the values and purposes of the profession that are outlined in the document as being built upon a set of critical theory and intersectionality assumptions and values inconsistent with our biblical view of humanity, human nature, and the world.

Having read the document, I assume the "offending" passages are to found on pages 10-11, which detail educational policy and curriculum related to "Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI):"

Programs provide the context through which students learn about their positionality, power, privilege, and difference, and develop a commitment to dismantling systems of oppression, such as racism, that affect diverse populations. Programs recognize the pervasive impact of white supremacy/superiority (and its ensuing privilege) and prepare students to have the knowledge, awareness, and skills necessary to engage in anti-racist practice. The dimensions of diversity, equity and inclusion are understood as the intersectionality of multiple factors including but not limited to age, caste, class, color, culture, disability and ability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, generational status, immigration status, legal status, marital status, political ideology, race, nationality, religion/spirituality, sex, sexual orientation, and tribal sovereign status. Faculty and administrators model anti-racist practice and respect for diversity and difference.

A detailed response would take me too far afield. But permit me the following. First, "concerns" over LGBTQ+ issues are nothing new in the evangelical world. But this doesn't have a necessary connection to a Christian's role and duty as a social worker. The job of a social worker, especially in cases where family conflict, exclusion and, yes, oppression (more on this presently) is involved is NOT to be a prophet or preacher, proclaiming the sins of, and ultimate judgment of God on, the oppressed … or, what is worse, refusing to help such a person because of their perceived or actual sins. Indeed, no matter what the Christian social worker's theological view on such matters―wrong or right!―his or her job is to act towards them based on love, indeed to show Christ's love to that person, always keeping in mind one's own failures, foibles, and sins that, were it not for God's unconditioned, amazing grace, they would, as the Apostle Paul would say, still be "in" (1 Cor 15:17). Discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ people remains a serious matter, and it is one Christians must not avoid. These are people, after all, created to be in God's image; hence the fact that they are due "respect" in their difference (as the CSWE's draft says) is, or at least should be, a given. In larger terms, the typical evangelical attitude and stance toward LGBTQ+ people over the years, today no less than in the past, has been a manifestation of the selective moralism that judges those whose "sins" they themselves won't commit, while ignoring (or not even recognizing as sins) those they happily indulge in. A lesson I learned long ago is that, as the crowd chanted at the '68 Democratic Convention in Chicago, "the whole world is watching." And they notice the hypocrisy.

Much more concerning is Williams's undeveloped accusation of "values … built upon a set of critical theory and intersectionality assumptions … inconsistent with our biblical view of humanity, human nature, and the world." Leaving aside the common and prejudicial evangelical use of the adjective "biblical" to denote one's own, traditional view of what the Bible meant and means―any number of faulty schemes can, of course, be passed off as "biblical," such as another one dealing with gender relationships, i.e., "complementarianism;" what matters, of course, is exegesis and hermeneutics―the tossed-off way these words are used suggests, quite strongly, that pressure has been exerted by the most conservative elements of the school's base and/or donors. Indeed, "Critical Race Theory" (one aspect of what Williams describes as "critical theory"; for a helpful, concise summary of CRT from Purdue University, see here) has become the latest bugbear in conservative circles, political and theological alike (though the distinction between these seems to be hardly defensible any more). From Donald Trump's infamous September memo to the Office of Management and Budget, to Republican State Legislatures attempting to ban teaching of CRT in schools (Florida, the latest, did so yesterday), conservative politicians certainly view the concept as red meat to their base and kryptonite to their continued political hegemony. (As an aside, as often in politics, in many cases there seems to be an inverse relationship between understanding and condemning the issue).

As a theologian, I am of course more interested in how conservative theologians have taken this criticism up, knee-jerk style, at the very same time as the SBC kerfuffles over sexism (Beth Moore, Russell Moore) and racism (Moore) have exposed divides and massive moral failures within the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Christian parachurch organizations such as Cru and denominations such as the SBC―at least four black pastors resigned following the 30 November 2020 release of a statement from the six SBC seminary presidents condemning CRT―have been divided over the issue. Conservative critiques have come from, inter alia, the British church historian Carl Trueman (for a rebuttal, see Valerie Hobbs at Jesus Creed), Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer at the Gospel Coalition, and Voddie Baucham in his spanking new book, Fault Lines (for a devastating critique, see Bradly Mason at his blog here). For a much more nuanced approach, showing that CRT's concern for justice and condemnation of white supremacy and structural racism have orthodox precedent in the thought of the traditional Black church in America, see the article in the Anglican Compass by Wheaton New Testament scholar and ACNA Bishop Esau McCaulley (who earned his Ph.D. at St. Andrews under the direction of N. T. Wright).

I am not interested in defending everything propounded under the guise of CRT. I certainly do not deny sundry problematic elements in the way some of it is framed. But one would need to be blinded by presuppositions not to recognize the truth in its notions of white privilege, systemic racism, and the complications arising from intersectionality. Likewise, consider the argument of Shenvi and Sawyer that the following disjunction necessitates claiming the incompatibility of CRT with biblical orthodoxy:

Or consider the question of our fundamental problem as humans: Is our fundamental problem sin, in which case we all equally stand condemned before a holy God? Or is our fundamental problem oppression, in which case members of dominant groups are tainted by guilt in a way that members of subordinate groups are not?

This is a classic example of what even an introductory-level undergraduate could discern as a false dichotomy, encouraged by the unnecessary use of the adjective "fundamental." Of course, at one level, the "sin" because of which all stand condemned before the bar of God's justice is fundamental to Paul's doctrine of justification. At another level, however, "oppression" is a primary way in which what, in the same letter to the Romans, Paul refers to as "Sin" is manifested in the realm of human societies and relationships; and, as such, it must be acknowledged and fought by Christians who, at the very least, should see it as their mission to implement the priorities of God's kingdom in this already/not yet period of the outworking of God's salvific designs for his world. The issue, in a basic sense, concerns the nature of the gospel. Is it simply the pinched, soterian, individualistic, and often implicitly Platonic/dualistic gospel of 20th century American fundamentalism? Or is it the full-orbed gospel of the Kingdom of God and New Creation articulated on the pages of the New Testament? The latter surely includes the former, but it must not be placed in the former's straightjacket.

Likewise, the related, all-too-common attempt to define "racism" solely in terms of individual attitudes and acts of prejudice, without considering its demonstrable historic and social contours, including structures of oppression that remain hidden and unrecognized by the minds of so many in the privileged group(s), is simply unacceptable. The notion that human social dynamics can and have operated as power structures with both inner and outer aspects ("principalities and powers") was the major focus of the work of the late theologian Walter Wink.* And, I would argue, no greater system of oppression has operated on American soil more persistently than that of systemic racism. And yet all too many Christians―including, alas, those of a Reformed or Calvinist orientation―refuse to acknowledge this or, what is more important, take responsibility for it in any meaningful way.

Ed Blum was perhaps my biggest influence while I was studying for my Th.M. at Dallas Seminary. Ed had two earned doctorates, a Th.D. in New Testament from DTS, and a D.Theol. from Basel in Systematic Theology. He was a notoriously independent thinker, and so I took him for multiple classes: Exegesis of 1 Corinthians, Reformation and Post-Reformation Church History, and an elective on Augustine. He also was a Teaching Elder at the church we attended while living in Dallas. When he spoke, I listened. I can still remember a comment he made in one of his classes: "I see some good in [Karl] Barth. I see some good in [Rudolf] Bultmann." To someone reared and trained in the verities of dispensationalist fundamentalism, this was a shocking statement to hear. But Blum was right. The older I have gotten, I have recognized more and more good in Barth, though I still disagree with him in fundamental ways. The same goes for Bultmann, with whom I disagree even more fundamentally. Indeed, as I used to tell my students, I have learned far more from people with whom I disagree than from those with whom I agree. 

This is precisely the attitude Christians should take with regard to CRT. In an interview with Mitchell Atencio at Sojourners (accessed in the blog of Messiah University historian John Fea, another Cairn graduate), Wheaton College professor Nathan Cartagena discusses how he uses CRT in his classes. He speaks of "turning philosophical water into theological wine." By this he means:

That would mean that something like CRT, the movement, is going to be nourishing and life-giving in a way that water is. Then, I want to fit [CRT] in with certain ideas about being made in the image of God, common grace, and general revelation. As we talk about “theological wine,” we are seeing this nourishing “water” as now being in contact with Christ. It’s Christ, a member of the Trinity, that’s taking this up and helping us to see how we can view God’s creation better. CRT scholars are helping us to think through how to move in more decolonial ways and address the church’s egregious history.

That is the way to go, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater for convenience's sake.

The Cairn story is a personal one for me. Not only did I attend there, but my dad taught Bible, Theology, and Greek at the college from 1957 until his death in 1986. He, John Cawood, Mae Stewart, Lin Crowe, and other professors there made a lasting impression on my life. I count as friends some who still serve on the faculty and administration. So I mean it when I say that the news of the school's discontinuing their social work program grieves me. Social work, in my reckoning, is one of the most significant ways Christians can bring the good news of the kingdom to bear on the day-to-day realities of this fractured world, particularly in the city where I was raised and which I still love. So I respectfully ask that President Williams and the Board reconsider their decision.

 

*Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984); idem, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986); idem, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1992). The fact that these "powers" appear, in the New Testament, to be personal spiritual beings, played down by Wink, does not diminish the power of his insight into how they function.