So last week we were looking at critical theory and we took some time to simply try and understand what it is and what it claims. And although many of you maybe haven't used that term or heard that term before, critical theory, This is something that you have heard about in one way or another because you've heard the expression woke or social justice or maybe microaggressions or intersectionality or even just people saying I'm oppressed or whatever. So it is in the bloodstream of our society and we're just kind of getting to the theory behind why that is, where it came from. Maybe I'll give you another opportunity if you have any questions about what that is to ask. But this week, we're going to move from just understanding what critical theory is to endeavor to critiquing it. We want to critique it. And once we finish with that, Lord willing, we're going to take the rest of our time today to examine feminism as it developed through time and the problems with it from a Christian perspective. So that's the agenda today. Let's pray before we begin. Our Father in heaven, we just thank you so much for your creation of us in the world. And we thank you, Lord, that when you created the male and female, you made no mistake and you did a wonderful thing, oh God. And we give you the glory for that. And we pray that we as a church could exemplify what the genders are to do and to look like. You know, we are all tainted with sin, but I pray that you would bring us further along in our understanding of these matters that our society is very confused about and even, frankly, rebellious about. And we pray that we as a church would not be deceived or taken in by some of these vain philosophies of this world. And so give us discernment, Lord. Give us compassion as we seek those who disagree with us on these matters. But Lord, please protect our church and grow us in your truth. For your name's sake, in Jesus' name, amen. So we spent a good deal of time on understanding critical theory. And we said, we want to try to understand it before we critique it. That's just being fair. So we considered the rise of critical theory. And it really begins with Marx, Karl Marx, who was a materialist. He reduced life to this economic struggle between the ruling and working classes, and then When Marx came and went away, he wasn't a phenomenon. He died. There's only a few people at his funeral. But his ideas would survive through Engels and eventually make their way to the founding of the Frankfurt School in Frankfurt, Germany. And this was the real Marxist think tank that pumped Marxism into the stream of culture, where people began imbibing Marxist ideas without even knowing that they were Marxist. And so the result was this eventual spawning of various contemporary critical theories. Remember, the term critical theory just means critical in the sense that these people said, we need to criticize everything in culture. We need to not just accept anything, but be critical, be skeptical. And as a Christian, we can see some validity to don't just go along with something, understand it, right? But these guys are seeking to subvert the culture because they want to radically overturn it. And we'll get into some of that stuff. So some of the theories that came out of this were feminist theory, and then critical race theory, and queer theory. And what critical theory says is there's an interlocking solidarity which all these causes share. So that if you're really going to be anti-racist, you have to be for the pro-LGBT community and all that. And if you're not, And you say, well, I'm for opposing racism in the country, but I'm not for redefining marriage as including same-sex unions or whatever. They say, oh, then you're not a real anti-racist. So they interlock all of this. Well, we considered four. I guess I should have been advancing these. I'm sorry. But you have them in your outline. We looked at, then, four basic elements of critical theory. The social binary is a grid for all people. Everybody is to be understood in terms of either oppressor or the oppressed. And there's the hegemonic power, number two, as the root problem behind all social norms. So this is where the dominant culture is imposing its norms on everyone else. And then there's this idea, number three, of the lived experience of oppressed persons as an infallible epistemology. And what that means is if you are oppressed, it is your experience that is the ultimate authority. Anyone who is the oppressor, they need to be quiet and must listen to you. And so it's a way of knowing things that you can't even challenge. Number four, lastly, we saw that social justice, this is the view of critical theory, social justice is the only acceptable solution for society. And the Bible talks about social justice. Social justice is a good thing. In the prophets, they rail against the injustice that was rampant in Israel. But the social justice here is something very different from what the Bible is saying. And we're going to weigh that out in our critique. So I don't know if anybody has a question about some of those things. John was just asking a question about hegemony before. Yes? A note about that Frankfurt school. I think they got chased out of Germany, and they ended up in New York City. Because of the rise of Nazism. Yeah. And they ended up at Columbia University. You're right. A lot from where I work. And so it welcomed to America. And a lot of people didn't realize all the implications of it. Hey, it sounds good. You're saying we should fight racial injustice. Who's going to say no to that? I mean, I hope you wouldn't say no to that. But it's the things they tag onto it. It's very parasitical. It latches onto these other legitimate causes and movements and tries to sneak itself through. So let me ask you this. Any positive insights that you could think of from critical theory? And I'm not asking you to all out endorse it. I'm just saying I think it's important for Christians to recognize truth wherever it's found. All truth is God's truth. And if you're going to talk to these people and meet them, you'll realize they're very human. So any positive insights you could recognize? They are trying to be empathetic with those that are. Correct. OK. There's some sensitivity there. Yes. So when you talk about a critical race issue, it is true that African-American men and people are not treated the same way in the health system. They die younger. They come to diseases later. They don't access the system as well. And part of you is not there. You're not educated well enough. And also the fact that people are really Thank you, brother. This requires a measure of Christian maturity because one of the reasons we're even dealing with this is, as we said at the outset, critical theory has done a lot to divide churches. Because this is a very sensitive issue. But like my brother said, there are realities that we all need to acknowledge. And there are some systemic injustices that are done. They've done studies. These aren't politically oriented studies, but just studies that found people that were white candidates applying to a job and black candidates applying to the job that had the same credentials and they found that the whites had more callbacks. And there's some discrimination and things like that. So those are things, and I could tell you stories. If you think I'm overreacting, I could tell you stories that are absolutely heartbreaking. So there's realities there. If anything, like our brother was saying, what the system does, now we don't agree with critical theory, but what it does do is it does force us to think about, oh yes, there are injustices being done, and some people that aren't on that receiving end of that injustice or that discrimination have no idea. Anything else anybody else just want to add? Yeah, go ahead, Glenn. What happens is they end up not really being able to do each other as well because they were picked for the wrong reason. Yeah. Like picking a black female for vice president. Is that correct? Correct. The solution isn't just to pick people based on their ethnic properties. That's not right either. But there are things that should be addressed more at a fundamental level, like at some of these urban areas where kids, some of that goes back to their the redlining that happened earlier in the 20th century, where they were forcing people that weren't white or whatever into these areas. And they were forced out of opportunities where they could have good schooling. So there are some of those things that our government created, injustices they created. And the solution isn't just to put somebody into a position that's unqualified. You're right. But some of those things should be addressed. And I know a pastor. I shared this one time with one of our servants as an illustration. But I know a pastor who moved to, like, very inner city area in Minnesota. And his burden was to start a school for those inner city kids, a lot of which were black children who just frankly don't have a chance. And he's helping them by giving them a great education. And they started a school, and it's doing well, and it's changing lives. So there's a right way to approach the problem, and there's a wrong way to approach it, make things worse. I just want you to see that even though this is a wrong idea, critical theory as a whole, It's not that everything they're saying is false. That's just the way the devil is. Not everything the devil's going to tell you is going to be false. So this is why it can actually be misleading to Christians, because they're like, but I realize critical theory isn't so bad. They just want to help people with these disparities or inequities. And you say, well, OK, they do mean well in some cases. But I want to take some time to critique this matter of critical theory. All right, so let's go to critiquing critical theory. And I'm not pretending this is comprehensive as a critique, but here's seven critiques that any Christian should consider concerning critical theory. First of all, it is an anti-Christian worldview of its own. The word worldview is key there, too. This is not just an idea that you can add to your Christianity. And there are Christians I've heard of pastors, know some pastors, that want to just say, no, it's not all bad. But the problem is in saying, I'm just going to imbibe part of it, even if you know what you're doing and you're going to try to chew the meat, spit out the bones, you're going to mislead a lot of people. And a lot of evangelicals have been very misled over this because this is a worldview of its own. I have a chart here from the text, Shemvi and Sawyer's text that I mentioned last week. And you can see that for each major question Christianity answers here, critical theory offers an alternative explanation. It's a worldview of its own. And once we unpack it, we unpack the answers of critical theory, we see that it's not compatible with Christianity. Just one example of critical theory being a religion of its own. It has a different authority. It doesn't acknowledge the word of God as divinely inspired, infallible, the authority that can't be challenged. They'll say, no, that was created by These male patriarchy oppressors, and then you'll hear a lot of people say that's a white man's religion. So a lot of that thinking is fueled by critical theorists and Marxists. And the ultimate aim is to undermine Christianity. So I could say a lot more there. But even if you just take some time to look at what critical theory is doing and see how it's moving people with the emotion it does, and with all the rituals, and it has all the the characteristics of a religion, and it literally takes the place of a religion for people in our society. All right, well, first critique is it's an anti-Christian worldview of its own. Secondly, critical theory is a hate-based ideology born out of loss. Now, that may sound very strong, but again, I'm just critiquing the theory on its own merits when you look at what it is itself. I'm not saying everybody who would imbibe this series is like just a nasty person necessarily, but I'm saying this ideology is fueled by a kind of identity politics that appeals to angry people. It feeds off of discontent, social discontent with life, looking for someone to blame, scapegoating people. Whether that's males or Christians or whites or whoever, when you listen to these mobs, they're angry. They're very often angry and sometimes violent, sometimes out of control riotous. Just look at the hate toward someone like Charlie Kirk, right? It's no coincidence. There's a direct relationship between hate-based social justice movements and violent revolutions. They are perfectly utilitarian. You talk to some of these people. It's scary. But the thinking is, well, you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. You heard of Lenin's omelet? This is that revolutionary mentality. Whether it's the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution or a few people getting robbed or raped or murdered on the street, there's a justification for the evil in the name of social justice. So beware. and this is not characteristic of Christianity. We're not to be characterized by hate, we're to be characterized by love. So more we could say there, but thirdly, a third critique is that critical theory divides humanity into adversarial factions and this is part of why there's that hate-based ideology, because everybody is to be looked at in terms of oppressed or oppressor. You're either my ally or my enemy. And we understand Christianity understands there's a binary, too, right? You either have the sun or you don't have the sun. But we aren't looking at people that don't have the sun of God as though they're literally our enemy and we've got to oppose them. No, Paul said that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers of darkness. So we're not actually looking at nonbelievers as though they're the real enemy. You may be doing that this morning, but that's not Christian. It is those unseen spiritual powers of darkness that's our real adversary. That is the adversary. And everyone who follows him is just being manipulated and deceived and used by him. As Christians, we also should recognize, while it's right to acknowledge our ethnic identities and the things that make us diverse and unique that's beautiful, that's not the most important thing about you, is it? The most important thing about your identity should not be your skin tone, or your gender, or whatever. It should be the fact you're a Christian. You're sold out to Jesus Christ. That's what I see in the Gospels. That's what Paul gets at in Galatians 3.28, right? We're all one in Christ, regardless of gender, or ethnic distinction, or social, economical class. All right. Another critique, a fourth critique, is that critical theory assumes all disparities display social injustice. So wherever you find that most people in society are this skin color, and you have this people on the margins, there must be some kind of injustice accounting for that disparity in statistics. But social disparities are not always social injustices. I mean, let's be fair. For instance, not all racial disparities are evidence of racial injustice. Imagine a white or black person going to China, visiting China, and looking around at all the advertisements and everything, and saying, I must be oppressed. Everything is written in Chinese. And all the people in the advertisements are Asian-looking people. I feel so excluded. Now, what would be silly about that? Is anybody crying for the injustice in the Chinese advertisements of excluding white or black or Indian people? No. That's silly. There's a reason that the West is the center of the target here, specifically America, but also European nations. And it's because of the Marxist-fueled ideology again. You see, it doesn't work. Marxism doesn't work. A lot of these people, the critical theorists, won't even do public debates because their arguments wouldn't stand up to reason. But the power of this thinking is that people swallow it without knowing all of its implications. So I'm just saying, this is one of the ways it gets in there. It appeals to social disparities without really justifying, is this a social injustice? There are social injustices. We kind of alluded to some of those things. But blacks in the NBA or whites in the NHL That's the way people are naturally built, and those are realities. Medically, biologically, when they ask you your ethnicity on forums, there's medical reasons for that, because you will be inclined to certain things. But yeah, very interesting. So we're not looking to dismantle all disparities. In fact, I did mention this to John too, but one One evidence of a hegemony in our culture is people wear clothes. Have you noticed that? Everybody wears clothes. But well, there are some people who don't like that. They say we shouldn't wear clothes. So are they the ultimately oppressed people? Because they're in such a margin of society. And of course, you see, that's absurd. We've all said, no, we don't want to acknowledge that margin of society. What about people that are pedophiles? How do we know that our distaste of that, we would call it a perversion, how do we know that's just not a part of our oppressive hegemony or bestiality? You see, we reject those things. At some point, this breaks down to absurdity. Obviously, there's going to be some kind of norm. And as a Christian, you recognize there are objective truths, realities, again, that ground you one way or another there. All right. Critiquing critical theory number five, it proposes one system of competition for another. This is very ironic, but think about it. Critical theory, really, it's just a perverted form of capitalism, where people are all just seeking gain in another area. They're not competing for dollars and cents. They're competing for victimhood. And whoever's, according to intersectionality, got the most levels of being oppressed rises to the top. And very ironic there, but yeah. Number six. A sixth critique is it confuses victimhood as the ultimate virtue. According to critical theory, marginalization is virtue. Whatever is marginalized, whoever is marginalized, that's like Holiness on your account. Holiness to your account. But that's not true. I mean, just think in history. Can't you just think back to the French Revolution? Whether it's King Louis XVI, who's a sinner. And sure, you could call him an oppressor or whatever. But then look at somebody like a Madame Defrage, this literary character that epitomizes a lot of the corruption and perversion on the part of the proletariat, those being oppressed. When you put people in power that are oppressed, it doesn't make everything heaven on earth. It just puts sinners of one economic status. in the place of another. It just flips the tables. The problem is sin in the heart. It's not somebody's just got a lot of power, and that's what makes them evil. The reason that people in power do so much evil is because it's just their power enabling their evil heart. So we need to be very aware that just being a victim doesn't make you virtuous. So I'm not saying we don't have empathy for victims or compassion or whatever. We should, but we need to realize all have sinned. including victims, including a set of press classes. All right. Number seven, a critique of critical theory is that it disallows any challenge to a victim's interpretation or a victim's perceptions of reality. Sure, if you're a victim and you're experiencing some crime, you've been wronged, you're going to have unique insight. And I'm not denying that. Obviously, personal experience has a place. But your experience doesn't divinely inspire you to speak infallibly. The idea that you are unquestionably, uncritically right just because you've been wronged or you've been oppressed, and so nobody else can challenge your opinion, what you're saying, that's not a very Christian idea. Because the Bible would teach us that all of our hearts are deceitful. And again, it just kind of ties into point number six there, critique number six. So our authority is God's word, not your truth, my truth, and Christians have an objective standard of truth that transcends lived experience, period. God's revelation is our only infallible authority. An eighth critique of critical theory is, and this is a big one, it demands extraordinary faith in a godless, dictatorial state. This is like the elephant in the room that people don't think enough about. So remember social justice, these boxes, this picture? How can we achieve social justice? Well, you look at that and you say, yeah, it makes sense. We should right the inequities. And when you look at what happened in Acts 2, and we're going to see at the end of Acts chapter 4, we see the church sharing all things in common and bringing people to a place of equity and such. But that was not coerced. And what Marxism wants to do is it wants to make this happen. And the question is, how is that going to happen? Who's going to move the boxes around? Do you think the guy on top of all the boxes is going to want to just surrender his boxes to the guy on the ground? No. Ain't going to happen. And so the Marxist solution is revolution. And there's been a lot of blood involved. Who's going to right this inequity? Well, that's what this big giant here called Big Brother is all about. You know who Big Brother is? It's the government. This is the state. Oh, don't worry. It's just temporary. The dictatorship of the proletariat is only a temporary solution. Because eventually, it's just going to give way. Yeah, you think that giant is going to give up everything? No. When he's the guy on all the boxes, he's not going to give up his spot either. You just made a bigger monster. That's what history shows us. That's what the Bible shows us about human nature. And so this is a very naive system. And as the church, we're obligated to help people see the solution is not a coerced sharing, but it's a benevolent sharing, free will. That's what a church should endeavor to do. So just be careful. Don't be naive about this. This is no joke. They say in communist countries, everyone's equal. But then again, some are always more equal than others. And so when somebody gets power to redistribute all wealth, they always do a terrible job. And somehow, they never want to give it up. And somehow, millions of people always end up dead. This is very, very, very troubling, not just as a Christian, but as a human being. I say, when we look at natural law, something should tell us this is a very messed up way of approaching economics and just people, plainly. History shows us how this story ends. A ninth and final critique of critical theory is that it presumes we can achieve cosmic equity For all. And I'm using a term from the economist Thomas Sowell there. Cosmic equity, interesting term. Let's think about this. So if we're honest, it's impossible to write every inequity, to balance the scales for everybody in all of nature. You can't do that. Some people are born without limbs. You aren't going to make life completely You aren't going to give them all the same advantages for somebody who was born with limbs. There are people born with certain disabilities. I'm saying, unless you're God, you are not going to make things, balance the skills in nature, so that they achieve the same outcome as everybody else. You could try that. But once you do that, you create other problems, inequities. You can't do it. And that's why we say. Life is unfair. You came into this world, and you didn't choose who you would be born to, and how you would be born, and where you would be born, and what your IQ level would be, and all of your skill sets. That's okay. You know, that part of givenness of life is something that the Bible teaches, is part of our acknowledging our place in this universe, this cosmos, that we are the created, and we're not the creator. Well, the economist Thomas Sowell, who grew up in Harlem, has been very outspoken, written much about exposing the problems of critical theory. And he tells how, in his own lived experience, life is not fair. He tells how everything was against him, so to speak, in seeking to gain an education. But he had this teacher that was like General Patton, who was very strict and would not give him the same outcome as every other child, would not just pass him, but would make him spell every word precisely correct. She was incredibly strict. And Sowell says it was people like her pushing him and lots of hard work that got him to where he eventually graduated from Harvard. Very successful man, very intelligent man. And it's just the reality that we can't look to man to balance every disparity or said inequity in life. Man cannot bring about cosmic equity. And so all we can do is take what God has given us and make the most of it. And that's the parable of the talents, right? God is not expecting the same of everyone. according to the parable of the talents. So you don't have to be like, wow, I can't put out what Albert Einstein did. That's OK. God didn't give you what Albert Einstein had. But you will be accountable for what you do with what you have. That's very Christian. All right? Oh, man. There's so much there, so much there. And just briefly, we won't have time to look at all this. We've been taking time to understand critical theory and critique it. And for a minute, I'll just mention engaging critical theory. We need to be sure that people qualify what they mean by critical theory or critical race theory. If they say, oh, yeah, or Marxism or communism, do ask them questions. Find out what they're about. What do you mean by that? But here's a couple of things you can do to engage them. Acknowledge the appeal of this way of thinking, this ideology. There are five appeals that are acknowledged by Shenvey and Sawyer in their text, Critical Dilemma. They say sociologically, these are all in your outline, this thinking champions the victim. So that sociologically, it's very attractive to people. Psychologically, it validates people's sense of oppression. Morally, it fits perfectly into a progressive moral framework. Take that word perfectly with tongue in cheek, right? But in their estimation, it does. Fourthly, Experientially, it acknowledges people's pains. That's very powerful, very attractive. And fifthly, spiritually, it answers the deep need for human righteousness. And again, take that tongue in cheek. But what they're saying, this is a religious system. It assumes the role of a religion in people's lives. And there are people so empty, so guilty. And what can they do to deal with their guilt? critical theory, is assign their blame to someone else. Or in the case of somebody who's said the oppressor, oh, I did my penance by marching in an activist march. And I put bumper stickers on my car. And all over my social media, I put flags and flags in my yard. And I dyed my hair or whatever. And raised my voice and my fist in solidarity. And people feel I'm a good person now. and they have all the moral problems of anyone else. It's actually a very hypocritical movement. We could talk more about it, but it's their fig leaves, I'm saying. It's their attempt to cover their guilt and shame. It appeals to people. And we can acknowledge why that is, but we also need to undermine this appeal. That's the next thing. And I have three ways we can do this. First, dialogue charitably and patiently, because critical theory isn't something people really talk about. They just do it. They do it uncritically, ironically. Yes? and everything else, does that play a role? If the country is doing bad, is it more susceptible to prolific? Yes. Oh, you're absolutely right. Because it appeals. It's that hate-based ideology born out of loss. So when people experience a sense of loss, even if that's economic, and they're discontent, and somebody comes along and says, I'll tell you who's to blame for that and how that can be righted, yeah, people are very attracted to that. Absolutely. Yeah? Yeah, that's why they switched it more to race here in this country because everybody was, the bottom was doing so well. You're right. We don't want to go against anybody. They couldn't. Absolutely right. That was a genius stroke on the part of the Frankfurt School. They realized, we can't sell what we sell in Europe here. People are economically happy. I mean, well, through the Depression, you know, America went through the Depression. But it was capitalism that got us out of that. So they couldn't overturn the system based on it, but they appealed to race. And look at people like Martin Luther King. Some people say, oh, he was a communist. I really don't believe he was. But you could see how communists, parasitically, were trying to attach themselves to the civil rights movement to say, oh, yeah, let's throw out the baby with the bathwater. Everything in Western society has got to go. So yeah, you're right. But we need to dialogue with these people is all I'm saying. We need to dialogue with them and try to get them to talk and even just see their ideas. And then the other two things are display justice in the church because, this is an opportunity we have to show you can be here diverse, different ethnic backgrounds, economic class, whatever. and we can love each other. And that's what happened in the first century, right? Behold how they love one another. And Jesus said by this, men will recognize that you are my disciples if you have love one to another. And then thirdly, the thing is, dialogue charitably and patiently, display justice in the church, and then lastly, demonstrate the gospel subversively fulfills critical theory. And we're actually going to discuss how to do that more in our final course, which we're willing to begin in February. Question? Yeah, so that's correct. This is one positive insight that I believe critical theory offers to us, or more specifically, critical race theory, is that if you look at history, the idea of classifying people by race is a social construct that came out of the 16th, 17th centuries in Europe. And the people who came up with the social construct were white Europeans who were basically saying, we need to classify people like we classify animals. as different species within the genus and we're ranking them from greatest to least. And that's not biblical because Acts 17, Paul even says, we all come from one man. No, we're one race. It's one human race. So that's absolutely Christian and biblical. And that's an example of something we can agree on with even a critical race theorist and say, yeah, race is a social construct. I even tell people, like in those forums, we felt those forums, what race are you? Black, white, whatever. That's not race. That's a function of your ethnicity. Yeah, so there are reasons for filling out a form like that medically, because we are genetically, we have some genetic differences that predispose us to certain things medically. But to look at people that way, like you're a different race, that's entirely wrong. By what is meant by the term race? No, we're not. We're one race. Yes? That sounds to me, Solidarity Sunday, sounds to me kind of a way to tie Christians in, tie anybody into their agenda. I wouldn't. I would say I can stand against bigotry and hate and racism without joining your parade. And I'm not going to say there's never a time where it wouldn't be right for you to go down to a local protest. It would depend on what that protest is about. Take it case by case. The thing I'm concerned about is that people like Christians are guilted into that. If you don't do that, you're a bad person. no, that's not a measure of anybody's moral status, but you could see the way the culture is trying to attempt to coerce people to go along and I mean the Marxists had a term for this, the useful idiots, the communists of the people that maybe they don't agree with Marxism but they're going to go along with it and we just have to act on our own convictions. Be careful. Like the interlocking thing too. You say I'm against racism but they say you're not against racism if you're not for LGBT plus community and it's like whoa. So yeah. More we could say please If you have more questions or comments, please don't forget those. But I want to conclude our time by pivoting and turning to feminism here. So this is not completely unrelated to what we have just talked about. I want to have Romans 16, 17, and 18 there, by the way, which is great. I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. Paul says, avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. And by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive." I couldn't think of a better text to just describe critical theory and its appeal to the church in one form or another. So beware. Beware, church. Now, we spent a good deal of time wrapping up critical theory. That's OK. I think it's time well spent. Please, like I said, don't hesitate to ask me questions later today or through the week about that. But Christians need to also understand about feminism. What is feminism? Well, feminism generally means advocacy for women's rights, but in reality the movement has parasitically attached itself to all sorts of other ideologies. And Christians need to understand that ultimately feminism has not been good for either the world or the church. I mean, I would die on that. That's very clear. I'm not going to have much time to argue that here, but if you want to talk about that at any length of time, I would love to talk with you about this. And we're going to look at this. Don't take my word for it, okay? So let's try to understand how and why this is so. First, let's consider briefly the rise of feminism. Where did feminism come from? Well, again, if you said it came from hell, that's hardly helping you in understanding this movement. Some have traced the feminist movement back to four distinct waves. The first wave, feminism, began in the late 19th century and it continued to the early 20th century. And this initial movement focused on the woman's right to vote. And I think that there was so much legitimacy in this. It was a reaction to just the way that men have treated women like property through a lot of history and a lot of the Victorian way, the Victorian era way of looking at men and women. And you could see some of the incredible abuses there. So this was not, though, an attempt to overthrow the system of male and female, two genders, whatever. This initial attempt here of feminism was to gain representation within the system. That's important. Feminism would then lose center stage, though, with the coming of the World Wars. And women would really be forced, in a sense, to go to work as the men were going off to war. And it was virtually impossible to roll back the curtain on women in the workforce. Remember Rosie the Riveter? Yeah. Yes, you're right. Yes, that's going to be second wave. So hold on to that. You're right, Elena. But in this first wave, you've got women in the workforce, and they're saying, we can do everything a man can do. And this is going to spark, inevitably, a second wave of feminism. It doesn't happen immediately after the war, but it's, you know, it is precipitating the second wave feminism. Second wave feminism really erupted in the 60s, and when it does, we can see the fingerprints of critical theory, Marxism, communism, all over it. They're attempting to manipulate marginalized groups and use them to gain power over everyone else, over the masses. And I should mention a couple forerunners here to second wave feminism. Margaret Sanger, that's one in your outline. She was a good Darwinian and outspoken advocate of eugenics. She opened the first birth control clinic in the US, and she was the founder of Planned Parenthood. And they're quite embarrassed about her exact role in all that and the things she said, but it's there. It's in the record. Oh, and yes, to her resume, her ideas also inspired Adolf Hitler. In her paper, Morality and Birth Control, Singer said that birth control must lead to a higher individuality and ultimately to a cleaner race, and that all of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class. So what Singer did was she effectively scapegoated the female body by basically blaming female childbearing for all the evils in the world, and she will reshape the public's conception of birth control. And it will have an impact upon how women view even childbearing. Simone de Beauvoir, she was a French philosopher. She had her relationship with Sartre. She wrote The Second Sex, this book, profoundly impacted second wave feminism. She writes in this book in a way that basically degrades femaleness and glorifies masculinity by basically saying women must aspire to be men. And Bevoroff's solution was a Marxist one. She was a Marxist. She was not ashamed about that. And she preached for a radical upheaval of the status quo. And somebody she really inspired was Betty Friedan. Betty Friedan was a closet Marxist who, because she operated in the US, didn't want to be very public about that. But she was completely Marxist, and she She wrote in 1963, The Feminine Mystique, in which she claims that all these women in suburban America were household slaves to their men. She said they were chained at home. They were being deprived of a good life, which was to have a career like men. And there's so much we could say here, but despite Fernand's poorly researched work and remarkable exaggeration of the household wife's situation, her book struck a chord with many female discontents. because there were many females. What do you know? Like, yeah, life could be better for me. And so she did what Friedan did, what all Marxists do, is they appeal to social unrest and discontent. and they gave a wrong solution. It's like, man, you got a headache? Let me chop off your head. The cure is worse than the disease kind of thing here. And this second wave would go on to focus on civil rights and sexuality and women's so-called reproductive rights. And during this time, feminism would advocate for equal pay, equal opportunities. I'm not saying that all these things and everything women were doing here was wrong. Please understand me. it's going somewhere and it's clearly taking women away from looking at the authority of God's word. Second wave feminism continued until the 1980s when it devolved into the sex wars. This was an internal conflict waged between feminists who opposed prostitution and pornography as tools of male oppression. And it was a war between them and the so-called sex-positive feminists, who celebrated pornography and prostitution as liberating. How ironic, right? Well, eventually, a third wave emerged in the 1990s, which championed the sex-positive agenda. Third wave feminism began in the 90s, and it emphasizes individual choice and freedom. Judith Butler is a name there that you should know, because she was just a champion of third wave feminism, who really pushes the idea that sex and gender are different, and that gender is performative, to use her term. So gender is something you do. It's not something you are. It's not something God gave to you, just something you act out. And this set the stage for what some scholars recognize as a fourth wave of feminism. Fourth wave feminism 2012 to the present marks a strict approach to policing language and also feminism's subjugation to transgenderism. So just like any good Marxist move, the head eats the tail. Once we've used you to get whatever we can out of you, now we throw you under the bus and we step on your neck. And that's exactly what This whole movement of critical theory has done with feminism. It's used the movement, and now it's selling out women to transgendered, what do I call them? They're males, all right, that are pretending to be females. And they're like wolves in sheep's clothing kind of thing. And they're taking advantage of women. And this is a tragic reality. So that is, in a nutshell, the rise of feminism for you. Not going to get far. But what I'm going to try to do is briefly just go through these critiques. And we can react next week with question, comments, or even afterwards, you can ask questions or comments about this, make comments about this. We're also going to try to look at the, ethics of sexuality next week. So that'll be a lot, too. Kind of piggybacking on critical theory and feminism. So let's just go through these briefly. A critique of feminism. We need to love feminists. We need to listen to the stories of how they've been abused. Maybe they were taken advantage of by some male. But again, the cure can sometimes be worse than the disease. And if anything should be said about it, it's that it's never offered a solution that the Bible hasn't already offered. There's nothing feminism is offering women that's good for women that you can't find in the Bible. So any good that it's offering, I'm saying, we'll just stop with that. You can find in the Bible. Here's four critiques. First of all, feminism is an anti-Christian worldview. Consider its anti-Christian worldview implications. Feminism is fundamentally at odds with the Christian worldview. You say, how is that? Well, there's so much I could say. Consider the Lord's Prayer. Our Father who is in heaven. You can't say our mother. You said our father. The Apostles' Creed. One of the earliest Christian confessions of the faith begins, I believe in God, the Father Almighty. That is not a patriarchal invention or some invention of some kind of oppressive system. That's God that we're talking about, the God of the Bible, who's revealed himself this way. And what feminism does is it misdiagnoses the problem. And because it gets the problem wrong, that the problem is all just like Marxists and critical theorists said, this system of just oppressive people. Everybody is inherently good. The oppressed people are good. Oh, it's only those oppressors that are bad. Because feminism gets the problem wrong, it gets the solution wrong. So very tragic, and more we could say. But a second line of critique would be its problem of definition. Feminism's got a serious problem with defining what a woman is. How can you help woman if you can't even define what a woman is? Well, you can't. What are you helping? You can watch, what's his name? Walsh. Matt Walsh, he's a conservative Roman Catholic commentator who put out this documentary, What is a Woman? And if you watch that, it's comical. It's also tragic. It's just very sad that people advocating women's rights can't even say what a woman is. And they can't say that because they don't want to upset the transgenderism and all the other people that are supporting them. So yeah, very interesting. During her Supreme Court confirmation hearing in March 2022, Kentagi Brown Jackson was asked, what is a woman? Senator Marsha Blackburn asked her to provide a definition for the word woman. And Jackson responded, I can't. She said, I'm not a biologist. I can't comment on that. You know what this has done for women? If you can't even tell us what a woman is, you're going to pass laws that help women, and you can't even tell us what a woman is. You think a man that's dressing up like a woman is a woman, and he can go to a woman's bathroom. If you have that kind of a problem of definition, you are not going to help women. You are going to perpetuate the abuse of women. And it's happening, and there are tragic stories about this. I'm very upset about this, so I make no apology. But thirdly, a third line of critique for feminism is its disregard of differences between men and women. Very sad, because nature itself shows men and women are different. And if you ignore these differences, it's women that will suffer. Men and women are different from the beginning of creation. The sun and the moon are different. Look, the sun and the moon are both beautiful in their own way, right? God created them with their own glory, their own place. And it's the same with male and female. Society is better if men do what men are supposed to do, and women do what women are supposed to do. And I know people are going to tell you, I'm part of the oppressive patriarchy. I don't care what they say. I'm just going to tell you what the Bible says. Because again, number one, We're critiquing an anti-Christian worldview. It's a religion of its own. A fourth critique, and maybe we can just finish talking about this next week, is it's bad fruits. Feminism's bad fruits. Feminism did not fix things for women. Ironically, it made them worse. And just to mention these, and I'm going to let us go here. There's seven bad fruits of feminism. First, it's celebration of the murder of millions through elective abortion. Tragic, including many females. And not to mention how that's affected the women who've had an abortion. Secondly, it's destruction of marriage and the family. devastating, absolutely devastating for society. Thirdly, it's depreciation of motherhood and womanhood. And we might say, with this, the disparaging of all fulfilled mothers and wives, as if they're some kind of second-rate human. And whoa, this is very demeaning. Fourthly, the prioritization of vain materialist pursuits. That is the prioritization of careers and independence and making money and being looked at something in this world's economical system versus raising children and all things you see in the Bible that are honored and praised. And this has led to increased loneliness, anxiety, and regret among many women. There are a lot of studies here. A secular study published in the UK Daily Mail confirmed this fact as well, that women are less happy nowadays despite 40 years of feminism. despite having more opportunities than ever before, they have a lower sense of well-being and life satisfaction. And I could talk about more women taking antidepressants and how the things Betty Friedan talked about back in the 60s, it's like, wow. If you just look at it now, it's incredible. It's far worse. So she didn't fix the problem. Women working outside the home was not the solution. Fifthly, the objectification of women as sex objects through the porn industry. Terrible again. Sixthly, the elimination of safeguards that protect women, like emasculating men. Not good. Women lose when good men cannot legitimately protect them. It's evil men that take advantage of women in these cases. And seventh, finally, the liquidation of what it means to be a woman. Selling out women to the transgender movement. This is a bad fruit of more recent feminism. All right, with that we're just going to conclude. I have in your outline you can look at a Christian view of womanhood, but let's just close in prayer.