Background Information:
Full Name: Matthew J. Hall
Undergraduate: Grove City College, 2002
M.A. in American History: University of Kentucky, 2006
Th.M.: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2007
Master of Divinity: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010
Ph.D. in American History: University of Kentucky, 2014
Dean of Boyce College, 2016-2019
Senior V. P. of Academic Strategy, 2016- 2022
Associate Professor of Church History, 2016
Provost, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary 2019 – 2022
Provost & Sr. V.P. Biola University 2022- Present
Overview:
Matthew Hall is formerly the provost of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and currently serves as the provost and sr. vice president of Biola University. In recent years, Hall has made statements that are consistent with Critical Race Theory, going so far as to say “I am a racist,” and that he will struggle with that until the day he dies and/or receives a glorified body. After being confronted about this by Tom Ascol, Hall made public statements denouncing CRT. However, he has never repented for his previous CRT-inspired statements, and his criticism of CRT has been weak and vague enough to please some without being strong and clear enough to constitute a true repudiation of CRT.
“I Am A Racist”
Matthew Hall has claimed not only to fight racism, but to be a racist himself. While this seems counterintuitive to the rational mind– after all, what sort of person would want to identify himself as a racist, and yet uphold CRT talking points?– it is in fact consistent with Critical Race Theory’s core doctrine that all white people are inherently racist, privileged, and fragile. By proclaiming this about himself, Hall expresses his Woke “anti-racist” zeal in perfect harmony with the doctrines of CRT. According to CRT, every white person should acknowledge their inherent racism and continually strive against it. There is no room for a “non-racist” person in that worldview. Those white people who claim to be “non-racist” are just racists in denial. Thus, Hall is putting himself in the ideal position for a white person, according to the doctrines of CRT, and this cannot be accidental. If he did not espouse CRT, as he claims to reject it, then he would never have considered calling himself a racist. CRT is the only worldview framework that can consistently explain his assertion.
Matt Hall’s Systemic Racism Claims:
Matt Hall has made a number of other claims that derive from CRT, although his “I’m a racist” is the most obvious at first blush. According to Dr. Russell Fuller, “[Matt Hall] takes Critical Race Theory and tries to combine it with Scripture. Anytime you take secular views and combine it with Scripture you’re corrupting and perverting the gospel. I said, this is completely unacceptable for us as a who claim to hold to orthodox Christianity.” Hall has claimed that “racism is actually the whole system built upon allocating privileges, power, opportunities in equitable ways on the basis of race.” From that perspective, racism is pervasive all throughout every Western institution, and it is “systemic.” According to CRT, the “system” (the legal and social structure of the United States or Western Civilization generally) is inherently racist regardless of whether there are any individuals with racial prejudice in it. This is evidenced by another statement that Matt Hall made, in which he said “I am immersed in a culture where I benefit from racism all the time.”
Supposed Repudiation of CRT:
In November of 2019, Hall wrote an article entitled “For He is Our Peace: The Centrality of the Gospel of Christ in Racial Reconciliation.” In that article, Hall wrote that “Christian witness must reject CRT and the ideological foundations that shape it, along with the proposals it offers for change… CRT assumes a basic materialism, ignoring spiritual realities and, in particular, the truth that human beings are made in the image of God.” What he is getting at here is that on its own, CRT rejects spiritual realities because it is derived from Marxism, which is atheistic in its ontological foundations. He goes on to say that “It also seems to me to have a deficient teleology, one that sees history most basically as a contest between oppressors and the oppressed. Because of its deficiencies, CRT can never adequately diagnose the fundamental problems inherent in racism, nor can it adequately prescribe a true solution.” The observant reader should note carefully, however, that Hall’s rejection of CRT is based on the idea that it is inadequate in its diagnosis– that is, it doesn’t have the wrong diagnosis, but it is merely incomplete. Likewise, he rejects CRT because it is inadequate in its prescribed solution. On his view, CRT is incomplete rather than completely wrong. Thus, while claiming to reject CRT, Hall leaves open the door for something even worse: a religious Critical Race Theory, using the guise of Christian language to promote its ideological positions.