I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year or more studying Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory. These are the most helpful resources I’ve found for understanding and evaluating these ideologies. The books fill in some of the gaps I did not cover in my webinar.

Thaddeus J. Williams, Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians should Ask about Social Justice (Zondervan, 2020). The best analysis I’ve seen of the strengths and weaknesses of Critical Race Theory from a biblical perspective.

Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Salem Books, 2021). Covers the Neo-Marxist roots of CT/CRT and warns that Evangelicalism is going to split between those who compromise with CRT and those who maintain biblical faithfulness.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity–and Why This Harms Everybody (Pitchstone, 2020). Explains the postmodern thinkers who shaped the movement that are ignored by other authors. Also explores a broader range of areas shaped by CT than other books on the subject.

Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution (Crossway, 2020). Traces the roots of the modern psychological conception of the self and its ultimate expression in the Sexual Revolution and LGBTQ+ ideology. Though Trueman doesn’t spend much time on CT/CRT directly, what he lays out is a core element of popular expressions of CRT such as BLM.

Honorable Mention

These are books that I found worthwhile, but I’d read the above books first.

Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left (Bloomsbury, 2015). Connects the New Left with Postmodern Thinkers. Especially helpful for his discussion of the postmodern “nonsense machine.”

Michael Walsh. The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West (Encounter Books, 2017). Surveys the destructive impact of the Frankfurt School and the New Left on huge swaths of American culture.