Right-wing pastor Lucas Miles is the founder of the America Pastor Project, which seeks to get pastors to vow to "protect our nation from the deceptions of false teaching and anti-Christ agendas, including, Marxism, socialism, CRT (critical race theory), universalism, critical queer theory, the slaughter of children (both in and out of the womb), climate alarmist theory, and globalism."
Last month, Miles appeared on The Strang Report to promote his latest book, "Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity," and during the course of the discussion, he unveiled a unique criticism of critical race theory. The Strang Report is the flagship podcast of the powerful Charisma media empire, which is led by publisher, author, and political activist Steven Strang, who used his media platforms to help rally conservative Pentecostal Christians to support former President Donald Trump. Rolling Stone reported in February that CharismaNews is the top corporate sponsor of the ReAwaken America Tour, which promotes authoritarian Christian nationalism and far-right conspiracy theories to activists around the country.
CRT—an academic framework for examining the ways in which systemic racism shapes and influences national and social institutions—has been a high-profile target of right-wing ire and cynical political activism in recent years, but Miles' attack was something new: portraying CRT as a form of theft from God.
"When you look at critical race theory, one of the things it does I think from a Christian standpoint that we really have to understand is it robs the believer of the opportunity to suffer for Christ," Miles said. "If you are promoting critical race theory, what you're saying is that all suffering or all injustice in society, all persecution in society is as a result of skin color, socioeconomic status, country of origin, amount of melanin in your skin."
"What this does," Miles continued, "is it robs from the believer, especially the believer that is a person of color—if we're going to use these kind of arbitrary definitions which I don't really think have a whole lot of meaning anyway from a faith standpoint—[but] if we're going to take on this nomenclature, I think that it's very important to recognize that this robs of God of something that we're called to give him, and that is obedience in the face of suffering and persecution when we suffer for his namesake."
"The only thing that I can give the Lord that I can't give him in eternity is suffering for the sake of Christ, suffering for the gospel," he declared. "Critical race theory robs this because now the suffering is all about me; it's about my skin color, it's about my sexuality, my country of origin, my immigration status, my socioeconomic status. This takes from God the glory that can be given to him in the face of suffering for the name of Christ and the name of Christ alone."
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