Farewell, Jemar Tisby: Illiberal Progressivism Must Be Rejected

I’ll get right to the point: Charlie Kirk was not a white supremacist. I will leave you to believe that he deserves to be called a colorful name for a donkey. I leave you free to believe he was a good man, who ultimately died for his Christian faith.

But no Christian has the right to lie. Among the normal, “white supremacy” is a belief that white people are superior to those of other ethnicities or races. It often includes violence; indeed, the worst examples of it in our history demonstrate a viciousness that shocks the conscience even today.

Either Tisby is so infected with Marxist ideology that he thinks he has a right to say any words about anyone, as long as they accomplish his political ends, or he’s so traumatized by this history of actual violence and terror that he can’t think straight. Either way, he doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously as a public intellectual. Are various Reformed ministers and intellectuals lacking a basic awareness of political ideology? It seems not; Tisby and others seem all-to-ready to notice when rightist ideology compromises the proclamation of the gospel.

And I do not intend to say that Charlie Kirk never made me uncomfortable, or that I never had occasion to disagree. I’ll just be honest: I’m so worried about the Right in our country that I haven’t voted GOP for any office in 13 years. But you can’t equate a guy debating college kids at universities — places where robust debate should be taking place all the time — with racist murderers. And I say that as a person who thinks Donald Trump himself is a threat to our republic. The first thing I would ask Charlie if I could is why he could so enthusiastically support such a man. I could say it more strongly, but I would want to know the answer. Kirk would have to do far worse than he had ever done in life for me to ignore him. And isn’t it tragic that his killer was so full of hatred that he couldn’t just ignore Kirk?

Why are people so comfortable with even implying that Kirk was so bad that he deserved to die? Why did people on the Left rush to talk about how much they strongly condemned everything he believed? It makes sense in life; it’s distasteful at a minimum, when a young husband and father’s life-blood has barely stopped pouring on the ground.

As I argued about Tisby, his defenders pointed out that he’s a PhD, and I am not. He’s an expert on the intersection of race, church, and culture, and I am not. Let’s talk about it. What if he’s simply an expert in his own grievances, and the ideology that gives them energy? If he can properly change the meaning of “white supremacy” into a technical term inaccessible to common, non-expert usage, then maybe he’s no expert at all. Maybe his entire science is just ideologues talking to each other. I hope not. But isn’t a public intellectual supposed to bridge the gap between himself and the rest of us? Isn’t a Christian bound to the truth always? Jesus is the Truth.

And there’s something in the background here we need to address: Tisby would have us believe that his interpretation of Trump, of Michael Brown and police brutality, and his view of what ails the American evangelical church broadly is the Black view of everything. I don’t identify with the Right, at least not all the time, but I know some brethren in Christ who would tell Tisby that he definitely doesn’t represent their experience.

Tisby has been reckless and foolish for years, and we’re equally reckless and foolish, if we allow this racial determinism to infect us any longer. Original sin’s effects are still with us, but original sin—like nearly all sin but one—can be forgiven. If America’s original sin of white supremacy cannot be forgiven, we can believe that, but it’s not Christianity.

And the thing is, if I don’t call out this Black progressive determinism of grievance, if I accept my “guilt” and allow Tisby’s reckless lies to stand, I reinforce a patronizing racial bigotry against him and others! I don’t argue for a simplistic “colorblindness,” but neither will I subjugate my perspective — and reason itself — to another ideology.

Jason Kettinger is Associate Editor of Open for Business. He writes on politics, sports, faith and more.