The OPC, GRACE, Diane Langberg, and Critical Theory, Part 1: Critical Theory

By Michael Grasso - Posted at Green Baggins:

Should the OPC hire GRACE to investigate potential instances of abuse in its churches? This question came before the 87th General Assembly (GA) in the form of a motion to add a docket item called “Ministering to victims of abuse”.[1] The motion needed a 2/3 majority to be added to the docket, and it failed to reach this threshold. This motion did not come in a vacuum. Aimee Byrd had called on the OPC to hire this organization on April 5, 2021.[2] Following the GA’s decision not to take up the question of hiring GRACE, Aimee Byrd publicly condemned the decision of the GA in two blog posts on July 21[3] and 26[4] respectively. A few months after GA, on October 8-9, the Presbytery of Philadelphia hosted a fall conference on the subject of spiritual abuse with Diane Langberg as the speaker. Diane Langberg is the author of Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the church and is a former board member of GRACE. The connection between the conference and the motion brought before the GA was made explicit by the bringer of the motion, Larry Westerveld, whose church hosted the fall conference.[5] It seems clear from these actions that one of the goals of the conference was to move the denomination in the direction of hiring GRACE at a future GA.

While abuse is something the church must always take seriously, the thesis of these articles is that hiring GRACE would be a mistake, that the ideology driving all of these actions is Critical Theory, and that embracing this ideology, exemplified in Langberg’s book Redeeming Power, would not help abuse victims but remove God-ordained protections for them as well as move the church towards a new form of liberalism. This will come in four parts. In the first part I will give an overview of Critical Theory. In the second and third parts I will review Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church to show the connection with Critical Theory. Then in the last part, I will try to draw some connections between this ideology and the move to hire GRACE.

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See also:

• Part 2: Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Power and Critical Theory, by Rev. Michael Grasso (Green Baggins)