President Trump fighting Critical Race Theory leaves churches without excuse

It is often said that politics is downstream from culture. As a corollary to that famous saying, culture is downstream from the church. Perhaps it is a great exception to this saying that President Trump has taken up purging the federal government of Critical Race Theory. On September 4th, the story broke that President Trump ordered such purge that was then touted in the tweet below.

In this tweet, it is apparent that President Trump recognizes the threat that this ideology not only poses to his politics, but America as a whole. The memo behind such decision reads this:

The President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions. Accordingly, to that end, the Office of Management and Budget will shortly issue more detailed guidance on implementing the President’s directive. In the meantime, all agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on critical race theory/9 “white privilege,” or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. In addition, all agencies should begin to identify all available avenues
within the law to cancel any such contracts and/or to divert Federal dollars away from these unAmerican propaganda training sessions.

This is a purge of an ideology from the federal government. This is an ambitious task and one that I am more tempted to judge the effort rather than the results given that the government is a behemoth. Still, this sends a strong message to the nation as a whole. The President is using his bully pulpit to combat the most threatening ideology to the church and the state. So the question is what is our response. Tom Ascol of Founders Ministries tweeted this

I initially wanted to write how shameful it is that President Trump is willing to do what seminaries are not, purge this pagan ideology. And I want to lament at how Al Mohler is asking how we can prevent the infiltration of Cultural Marxism after having hired Cultural Marxists and fired their opposition. However, I have a different take. I agree with what Tom Ascol said, that this can be an edifying experience for the church. But maybe it is also a victory of our grassroots movement. It is clear we hold little to no institutional power, so why should we expect adversaries to do as Christ would? Yet perhaps it is this grassroots movement of Christians fighting this false gospel that ultimately earned the favor of Trump, who is most willing to listen to evangelicals. This would be evident by the fact that Trump retweeted Tom Ascol.

Perhaps this is politics sending a shockwave upstream or perhaps it is the true church circumventing conventional means to impact culture. In any case, we should praise God for this event and edify our local assemblies to follow suit if they haven’t already.