Intersectionality in the Church: A False Religion Exposed

🔇Marching Under Strange Banners, article, article 9C The Age of Counterfeit Kingdom Series

Intersectionality, Woke Religion, and the Hijacking of Christian Compassion

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The Banner of a Counterfeit Creed

“When compassion becomes a counterfeit creed, the church finds herself kneeling before strange banners.”

It always begins with noble-sounding words: justice, reconciliation, empathy, compassion. But behind the slogans lies a foreign gospel. In the 20th century, Rauschenbusch traded Christ’s atonement for social reform. In the 21st century, the same heresy marches into sanctuaries under rainbow pins and DEI slogans, teaching believers to kneel before the altar of intersectionality.

What Marx once called revolution, the church now baptizes as “reconciliation.” What Christ once accomplished at the cross, churches now attempt with “affinity groups” and “equity audits.” The result is a church fractured, not by persecution from without, but by false philosophy from within.

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The Neo-Marxist Roots of Woke Religion

Intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), teaches that a person’s identity is defined by overlapping categories of oppression: race, sex, class, sexuality. The more “oppressions” you bear, the more authority you hold. The fewer, the more guilty you are.

This is not justice. It is simply Marxism rebranded:

Marx divided humanity into oppressor and oppressed, determined by economics.

Critical Race Theory divided humanity into oppressor and oppressed, determined by race.

Intersectionality layered every possible category of identity into an infinite hierarchy of grievance.

Instead of sin against God, we are told the problem is privilege. Instead of Christ crucified, the solution is dismantling systems. Instead of justification by faith, righteousness comes by victimhood.

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The Religion of Intersectionality

This ideology is no mere theory. It has taken the form of a rival religion, complete with sacraments, priests, and penance:

Original Sin: Privilege (especially whiteness, heterosexuality, cisgender identity).

Law: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion codes.

Priesthood: Diversity trainers, DEI pastors, seminary professors, denominational directors.

Sacraments: Public apologies, social media confessions, “lament services.”

Hell: Being cancelled, exiled from the intersectional community.

Heaven: A utopia of equity, where all hierarchies are erased (except the new woke priesthood).

But unlike the gospel, there is no forgiveness here. There is only endless penance, constant suspicion, and perpetual division.

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Scripture Exposes the Counterfeit

Colossians 2:8 — “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition… and not according to Christ.” Intersectionality is empty deceit, rooted in tradition of men, not Christ.

James 2:1 — “My brothers, show no partiality.” Yet woke religion institutionalizes partiality, ranking believers by grievance.

Galatians 3:28 — “There is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Intersectionality fractures the unity that the gospel secures.

It is nothing less than a denial of justification by faith. Identity becomes righteousness. Christ becomes optional.

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The Fruit: Division in the Church

The effects are not theoretical—they are already visible:

In Seminaries: Even conservative institutions like Southern Baptist seminaries debated CRT as a “useful tool” (2019). Other schools openly integrate it into hermeneutics.

In Pulpits: Congregants are told to repent not of sin, but of skin. “Decenter whiteness” has become a sermon refrain.

In Denominations: “Racial reconciliation” curricula are imported wholesale from secular activist authors.

In Pastoral Practice: Churches replace altar calls with virtue-signaling sessions, teaching members to kneel before slogans rather than Christ.

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Inside the PCA: Strange Banners in Reformed Pulpits

Even the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)—a body birthed in 1973 to resist liberalism—has now opened the door to intersectionality through its own agencies.

Irwyn Ince, Director of Mission to North America (MNA), has championed racial “affinity groups” and “identity-based fellowships” within the PCA as gospel tools. In his book The Beautiful Community (IVP, 2020), he writes:

> “Our differences, when honored and centered, become the means of true community in Christ.”

And elsewhere:

> “The goal is not color-blindness but to fully embrace racial identity as a God-given gift.”

But this is not how Paul speaks of identity. Paul does not “center” Jewishness or Gentileness in the church. He proclaims: “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” (Col. 3:11).

Affinity groups built on racial identity are not the fruit of the gospel. They are the fruit of intersectionality, smuggled in through denominational leadership. The result is division sanctified, grievance baptized, and unity shattered.

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The Hijacking of Compassion

Intersectionality thrives by hijacking biblical compassion. It tells Christians: “If you care about the marginalized, you will adopt this framework.” But compassion severed from Christ is corruption.

True justice defends life (Prov. 24:11). Intersectionality promotes abortion as “reproductive justice.”

True compassion strengthens families (Eph. 6:1–4). Woke religion declares the nuclear family oppressive.

True love builds unity (Eph. 2:14). Intersectionality enshrines division.

The slogans are Christian. The creed is Marxist. The fruit is apostasy.

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The Trajectory to the Identity Gospel

This arc is undeniable:

Marx: class is salvation.

Rauschenbusch: social reform is salvation.

King: activism is salvation.

BLM: protest is salvation.

Intersectionality: identity is salvation.

This trajectory has one inevitable endpoint: the Identity Gospel—where race, sexuality, or gender become the way of righteousness. In short: self as savior. That will be Article 9D.

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A Pastoral Plea

Beloved, we must not kneel at strange banners.

Do not confuse compassion with capitulation.

Do not exchange justification by faith for justification by identity.

Do not let pulpits thunder with “decenter whiteness” when they should thunder with “repent and believe.”

Do not let PCA agencies, DEI programs, or parachurch ministries redefine the gospel with affinity-group righteousness.

Pastors, preach Christ crucified—not CRT sanctified. Shepherds, feed sheep, don’t fracture them into camps. Christians, love your neighbor—but never under Marxist categories

Closing Vision

Intersectionality promises healing but delivers only hierarchy. It preaches compassion but breeds division. It offers sacraments of apology without forgiveness, activism without atonement, identity without Christ.

The church cannot march under strange banners without losing the cross. To kneel at the altar of wokeness is to trade justification by faith for justification by grievance. But to kneel at Christ’s cross is to find true justice, true unity, and true compassion.

“The banners of men will fray and fall—but the banner of Christ still flies, and His Kingdom is the only one that endures.”

✒️ The Pilgrim’s Post