Thabiti Anyabwile is notorious for his racial divisiveness and inflammatory racialized rhetoric. In a previous article at Reformation Charlotte, Ed Dingess explains that Thabiti Anyabwile is guilty of heresy because he teaches a sub-Christian false gospel known as Liberation Theology.
Anyabwile is enslaved to secular postmodern thought and is given to such ideologies as intersectionality and Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged as an offshoot of Critical Theory, a neo-Marxist philosophy that has its roots in the Frankfurt School and its methods are drawn from Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. CRT teaches that institutional racism exists within every structure of society and that these structures are intrinsically designed in such a manner as to protect and preserve “white supremacy” in our culture. Further, CRT does not rely on factual statistics or objective evidence to support the theory, rather it relies on anecdotal evidence and personal experience.
Anyabwile and his cohorts place artificial blame on an entire ethnic group — “white people” — of which they claim isn’t exactly an ethnicity, but a mentality. They’ve labeled this sin “whiteness” — you can read about that here. Suffice it to say that Anyabwile has called on white people to repent of, well, being white. But now, he is using his platform as a pastor and a Gospel Coalition author to push for slave reparations from the government because, well apparently “the state derived inestimable benefit from those laws both economically and socially.”
In an article published today at The Gospel Coalition, Anyabwile argues for slave “reparations in principle” to be paid by the government to black people — and then argues that it is “biblical.” Anyabwile defines “reparations in principle” as “material and social repayment made as acknowledgement and restitution by an offending party to an aggrieved party for wrong(s) done in order to repair the injuries, losses and/or disadvantages caused by the wrong.”
Of course, this is not biblical. First of all, the state that existed 150 years ago is not made up of the same people today. People who may have sinned during the slave trade are dead now. And further, if people today do benefit from the slave trade — and people from every ethnicity do just like people from every ethnicity do not — there is not one biblical passage that can be pointed to that says that this supposed “inestimable benefit” is sinful. It’s a lie.
Secondly, while Scripture is full of references to slavery, it’s remarkably silent on this supposed inherent sinfulness of slavery and is also silent on the subject of reparations. Look at what Paul said in the book of Philemon when Paul writes to him, a slavemaster, requesting the freedom of one of their brothers, Onesimus. First, Paul acknowledges that Philemon is the rightful owner of the slave and interestingly, does not question his salvation over the issue. Secondly, when requesting the freedom, he asks that he release him not out of compulsion, but of his own accord.
Not once did Paul indicate that Philemon, the state, or any other entity owe some form of reparations for any form of slavery, ever.
The modern Evangelical push for reparations by these grace-denying apostates like Thabiti Anyabwile, Jemar Tisby, Kyle James Howard, Ekemini Uwan, and so forth is far out of sync with the Christian concept of justice and must be met with fierce opposition.
The sins — those that were actually committed — during the slave trade have either been paid for at the cross by those who believe in Jesus Christ, or are being paid for in eternity by those who rejected Christ. Today, descendants of slaves have freedom — that is reparation.
And the Christian response to the push for reparations should simply be that whites owe nothing.
