Identity politics is when people of a particular race, ethnicity, gender, or other social grouping demand or are granted special recognition or privileges on the basis of the group's interests.
Identity Politics is unbiblical
Prevalent as it is in society, we should not underestimate the dangers of identity politics for the Church. It is more than a misguided but sincere attempt to right the wrongs of the past. The concept of identity politics which is making serious inroads in the Church is in truth a denial of God’s sovereignty.
In the USA the response to Black Lives Matter has seen even evangelical groupings such as the Southern Baptist Convention being riven by controversy over quotas for clergy and leadership positions. In the UK the pursuit of quotas ended in the ludicrous scenario of the Church of England announcing last year that it was striving for 30% ethnic minority clergy leadership at a time when the population is only 14% ethnic minority, a significant proportion of whom are Muslim.
No matter how we search the Bible we cannot come up with a concept of identity politics whereby individuals are placed in categories and treated as either oppressed or oppressors due to their skin colour, sex or other physical attributes. God sees the heart (Jer 17:10); and here above all things is the one dividing line within humanity - one’s relationship to the Creator and Saviour.
The concept of identity politics which is making serious inroads in the Church is in truth a denial of God’s sovereignty.
Although he lived in a world dominated by profoundly patriarchal Rome, we do not find the apostle Paul applying the categories of identity politics or railing against ‘Roman privilege’ as the woke rail against supposed ‘white privilege’. Employing identity politics in the early church would have resulted in its splintering apart into antagonistic groups. In the one case where identity politics does occur, the attempts cited in Galatians and Philippians by the Judaisers to make the requirements of their identity mandatory for the whole church, Paul stamps on it with vehemence. We are urged to forget 'what is behind', and 'press on to the goal' (Phil 3:13).
God is a craftsman
The categories prioritised by the advocates of identity politics are real; they do exist, but they are neither ultimate nor formational. God is not an industrialist mass-producing items according to market demands. Car manufacturers produce quotas of one model followed by a quota of another model; all items within a model range being basically the same with minor differences of trim.
Instead God is a craftsman, working on individual creations who all have varying gifts and abilities precisely suited to his sovereign purposes (Isa 49:5). The attempt to shoehorn us into strict categories based upon surface attributes denies the created individuality of those whose ultimate category is that they are made in God’s image and for God.
Christians who employ the concept of identity politics never begin from the point of the sovereignty of God.
A social construct
Woke Christians who employ the concept of identity politics never begin from the point of the sovereignty of God. Instead they begin with a human construct and attempt to baptise it with biblical language in order to make it appear genuinely Christian. Biblical Christians begin from the biblical standpoint that God has established all things, is working out his purposes within creation and has revealed his intent in Scripture.
In the New Testament we find a clear distinction between those who know Christ and those who reject him, the distinction between the perishing and the saved is the only one which matters. Those who were perishing were not condemned because they were Romans, Greek, Scythians or Ethiopians; they were condemned because of their stance against Christ. It is when they turn to Christ that they are saved and become new creatures and put aside their old identities (Col 3:9-11).
How can we take seriously the radical nature of regeneration if we try to resurrect the old identity and create special quotas for people of different backgrounds?
Regeneration's radical intervention in the life of the individual, an act of God's sovereign power, utterly supersedes all previous human relationships, including race, sex, social standing and cultural background. The redeemed of each and every background are 'all one in Christ Jesus' (Gal 3:28). How can we take seriously the radical nature of regeneration if we try to resurrect the old identity and create special quotas for people of different backgrounds? To do so is to deny the power of God and to turn the Church, the assembly of God's people, into a mere social construct.
The one identity that matters
The visible Church is by no means perfect, but to attempt to cure its weaknesses by importing concepts which deny the power of God's sovereign action in creation and redemption is to weaken it further. We cannot proclaim the radical nature of the new life in Christ if we then attempt to create spaces for specific groups based on ethnicity, social standing or sex. To do so is to ignore the fundamental power of the Gospel we proclaim (Rom 1:16).
When we are born again in Christ, that is precisely what we become - new creatures in whom the old has passed away. In sanctification God is working within us to bring us into conformity with the image of Christ, the only identity that truly matters.
