The old “distraction” slur against advocates for justice
This line of attack goes back to the White Christian opponents of the 19th-century abolition movement.
The recent Guidepost Solutions report on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention revealed that August Boto, a key leader on the SBC Executive Committee, labeled the work of advocates on behalf of survivors of sexual abuse as a “satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism,” in an internal email. “It is not the gospel. It is not even a part of the gospel. It is a misdirection play,” Boto wrote.
Boto’s branding of this advocacy work as a satanic scheme is horrific. Silencing and vilifying survivors and their advocates in the name of Christ does damage to the faith of survivors and the soul of the church. However, I want to zero in on something else he said: his hard distinction between the gospel and advocacy for justice. Why do evangelical leaders so often condemn the second as a distraction from the first?
Antiracism work has been criticized by Christians in similar ways. For example, in a public dialogue on “woke church” hosted by the Gospel Coalition, a pastor derided “wokeness, critical theory and social justice activism” as “gospel compromise.”
