Imagine that someone was going around talking trash about you, claiming that you’d said all sorts of repellent things, and that you were part of a despicable group with villainous goals. Imagine that they persuaded people you were awful by claiming you’d said things you’d never said, rarely quoting you directly (and if they did, it was completely misrepresenting what you’d said, out of context or worse), and generally making a set of accusations people could know were wrong if they just talked to you, and listened to what you had to say. But they persuaded people, who were now going around repeating all those things without ever talking to you directly. And they were persuading people who weren’t bothering to listen to you.
You’d be furious at being treated that way. Everyone would.
Here’s the important point. If you’re a Christian, and you’d be furious if you were treated that way, then you’d feel obligated not to do that to others. Jesus said, very clearly, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Wanting people to listen to you directly before condemning you means Christians should listen to others directly before condemning them. To do otherwise is to reject what Jesus very clearly said.
Thus, if people who claimed to be Christian treated the “CRT” controversy the way they want to be treated, they wouldn’t repeat the anti-CRT rhetoric without first reading CRT, the material people are quoting that is supposedly CRT, arguments that the anti-CRT rhetoric is wrong and misleading. They wouldn’t rely on second- or third-hand versions of the what K-12 teachers are doing, what anti-racist pedagogy is, or even what CRT is.
When I point this out to people who say they’re Christian, I tend to get one of four reactions. I’ll talk about two.
Sometimes people never reply. I hope that means they’re thinking about it, and maybe will either look into the critiques of anti-CRT rhetoric, including from a white conservative Christian perspective, or they’ll stop repeating the rhetoric.
Sometimes people say that they don’t need to read CRT, or its defenses—they know it’s bad because they read descriptions of it that make it clear that it’s terrible. They know it’s bad because trusted sources (i.e., “in-group”) tell them it is. Is that how they’d want to be treated—do they think it’s fine if people believed terrible things about them just because “trusted” sources say they’re terrible? Of course not.
Do Christians think it’s fine if critics of Christianity mis-quote Christians, misrepresent Christianity, nut-pick, cherry-pick, lump all Christians into one group as represented by the most marginal versions, engage in argument by association? If we think it’s wrong for others to do that to us, then it’s wrong for us to do that to others.
Do we think it’s fine if people repeat the arguments in articles, books, videos, speeches, and so on that engage in all those dodgy and fallacious attacks on Christianity? In other words, are we fine with what Richard Dawkins and his loyal repeaters do? They’re relying on “trusted” (i.e. “in-group”) sources. If that’s wrong when it’s done to us, then it’s wrong when we do it to others.
Jesus didn’t mumble.