Fault Lines by Voddie Baucham Review
I don't often deal with contemporary issues on the channel, because I mostly review old books. But when I review a new book that deals with a new problem, I'll get into those issues. Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe by Voddie T. Baucham Jr. came out in 2021, so I'm a couple of years late, but I think its content is still very important today.
The book and the author
It's 233 pages, 251 with three appendices. Take the dust cover off and it's just a normal hardcover. Nothing special as a physical object; the value is within.
The first couple of chapters are basically autobiography, so I took the author information from his website. Dr. Baucham holds degrees from Houston Baptist University (BA in Christianity, BA in sociology), Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv) and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin), with additional study at Oxford. He and his wife Bridget have been married since 1989 and have nine children and three grandchildren. The Bauchams are committed home educators, which is fantastic, and they've lived and served in Lusaka, Zambia, since 2015, where he was the founding dean of the School of Divinity at African Christian University. He's a husband, father, grandfather, former pastor, church planter, bestselling author, professor and preacher. A very busy man doing lots of work for the Lord. (I've also reviewed his Expository Apologetics.)
What it's like to read
Baucham has dealt with controversial issues before, such as marriage, children and education, and he's been very strong on race and racism. He never shies away from the truth, or from saying it as bluntly as possible. I've described this book to people as walking on gravel barefoot: a painful, jarring experience. He uses stronger language than I'd use in a review, and there are some graphic moments, but it's language meant to capture your attention and say, "I'm not joking around."
He addresses people and organizations, including T4G, 9Marks, Mark Dever, David Platt, Tim Keller and John Piper, who embraced the social justice message, and he gives the quotations to show it, even though these are his peers and friends. He's extremely well read on both sides of the issue, with hundreds of quotations from primary sources: books, articles, even Twitter.
What's in it
The Fault Line; Introduction; A Black Man; A Black Christian; Seeking True Justice; A New Religion; A New Priesthood; A New Canon; The Ground Is Moving; The Damage; The Aftershock; Restoration and Mitigation; and Solid Ground. The appendices include the Dallas Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel, the original resolution on critical race theory and intersectionality, and the SBC's Resolution 9.
Are there better books on this topic?
No. I think this is the definitive book on critical race theory from a conservative, evangelical, Reformed perspective. It's extremely biblical and extremely well written.
Would I buy it?
Absolutely. I'm reviewing it so that if you haven't heard of it, you can get it yourself.
A few things I marked
- Growing ethnic tension is a problem, Baucham says, but it isn't the main problem, and it's no match for the truth of the gospel and the unity it creates (p. 3). If you have the gospel, the gospel is the cure.
- Our pursuit of justice must also be a pursuit of truth (p. 44). People are ignoring these principles because their standard of justice doesn't come from the God of Scripture (p. 45).
- A new religion. Baucham argues that the anti-racist movement has the hallmarks of a cult: staying close enough to the Bible to avoid detection while filling familiar words with new meaning (p. 67). It comes with its own body of divinity: its own original sin (racism), law (anti-racism), gospel, martyrs, saints, priests, means of atonement (reparations), new birth (wokeness), liturgy (lament), canon and catechism. Everything Christianity has, it has its own version of. Very strange and very cult-like.
- In this framework, the only acceptable response to an accusation of racism is to admit it and repent; anything else is "white fragility" (p. 79). And racism is no longer understood as an individual sin, but as structural (p. 84). So it isn't about what you've done anymore; it's about what you look like. It's ridiculous.
- A new canon. The section on David Platt is heartbreaking (p. 123). Platt was a solid Reformed preacher. Baucham writes that he knows and loves him, and that Platt loves Jesus and people, but began reading and being influenced by the "woke canon," and so reached beyond the Bible to find God's truth on race, in part through a book recommended by Mark Dever. Very sad. I hope the Lord will call them back in the very near future.
- Baucham, a debater, says debate is becoming a lost art, partly from the decline of logic and rhetoric, but mostly from the feminization of the culture (p. 132). We dealt with feminization in Disciplines of a Godly Man, and it fascinates me how intertwined these issues are. (Carl Trueman's Strange New World, which I'm reading now, deals with this too.)
- He calls the book a plea to the church: we're being duped by an ideology that uses our guilt over America's past, our love for the brethren and our godly desire for reconciliation to introduce destructive heresies. We can't embrace, modify, baptize or Christianize these ideologies. We must identify, resist and repudiate them (p. 204). I reviewed Machen's Christianity and Liberalism on the channel, and it's the same issue: teachings we cannot let into our churches, though in some way we all have, which is the scary part.
- And the answer, from the final chapter: people say there can be no reconciliation without justice. Baucham's response: yes, and the death of Jesus Christ is that justice. All other justice is insufficient. Because of the cross we can heed Ephesians 4:31–32 and forgive one another as God in Christ forgave us. Christ has atoned for sin, and to that I say amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
