The Religion of Woke

What do they believe?

The data presented here seems contradictory. On the one hand, this survey by MissionInsite indicates that nearly 64% of the residents of Gary, IN believe that “God is love and invites the world into a loving relationship.” On the other hand, Dr. Tony Evans, pastor of Oakcliffe Bible Fellowship in Dallas TX and noted Bible teacher wrote in his book, One ness Embraced, “On one side, I was being told that I was created in the image of God and therefore had value. On a pragmatic basis, however, it appeared to me that the benefits of possessing that divine image were reserved for white people because it seemed that they were the real benefactors of God’s kingdom on earth.”

Mason, Eric. Urban Apologetics (p. 12). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Lewis Brogdon, author of Hope on the Brink: Understanding the Emergence of Nihilism in Black America, argues that the historical loyalty of the American Descendants of Slavery population to the Christian faith is being attacked by Nietzschean nihilism. He writes, “I began to see how the inability of some religious institutions and beliefs to address existing existential and social conditions is an important factor in the frustration, despair, apathy, resentment, and anger that some blacks struggle with today. And the root of these feelings is a gnawing fear that God and religious devotion may not be able to change the dire social conditions that they face, or address the crisis of meaninglessness and hopelessness eating away at the black spirits.”

Lewis Brogdon, Hope on the Brink: Understanding the Emergence of Nihilism in Black America (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2013).

Tah-Nehisi Coates is considered to be an almost prophetic voice for wokeness, according to essayist James Wood of Theopolis, Coates’ book, Between the World and Me is part of an unofficcial canon that includes books like White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. Writing to his 15-year-old-son, Coates opens this book on a theological note, saying, “Americans deify democracy in a way that allows for a dim awareness that they have, from time to time, stood in defiance of their God. But democracy is a forgiving God and America’s heresies—torture, theft, enslavement—are so common among individuals and nations that none can declare themselves immune. In fact, Americans, in a real sense, have never betrayed their God.... The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people” but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term “people” to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me.”

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me: 150 (p. 6). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

To what are residents of places like Gary turning? Looking back at the first chart, it would appear that a form of “Naturalism” is gaining ground. While only 15% report being either atheistic or agnostic, 24% have embraced a form of pantheism, 37% view God as “a higher state of consciousness that people can achieve,” 41% stated that they “believe in Nature and/or spirits in nature,” and 50% think that “God is the full realization of human potential.”

Altogether, this sounds like people who are ripe for being enticed into Religious Humanism if you can package it in familiar religious garb. Enter the religion of Wokeness. Working from within and without, Wokeness offers an alternative Soteriology and Eschatology, based on a revisionist reading of Western history and a co-opting of hermeneutic of Law and Gospel How did this happen, and what does it mean?

What is Wokeness?

Wokeness, also known as Anti-Racism, has five core “statements of faith.”

1. All demographic groups are roughly biologically the same (which we have termed cosmic egalitarianism elsewhere).

2. Bigotry is pervasive.

3. Almost all disparities among demographic groups are caused by bigotry.

4. If we all work really hard, we can create a more just, multicultural society.

5. Diversity is almost always a good thing.

What is unstated, but seems to apply consistently to those who are the “prophetic voices” of Wokeness, is that God, if He exists, is, at best, an absentee father, since we are having to make society more equitable and end racism.

The person who identifies as “woke” must believe, teach, and confess these dogmas. To disagree is to be guilty.

How it Developed

According to Rev. Voddie T. Bauchan, author of Fault Lines: the Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, an approximate birth year for Wokeness, the religious stream of the Social Justice Movement, would be 1989. It was in that year that “Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell and some colleagues held a conference in Wisconsin, where Critical Race Theory was officially born. Bell’s protege, Kimberlé Crenshaw, introduced the idea of Intersectionality in her paper “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” Peggy McIntosh published “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” And two other Harvard professors, Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, published their little-known but monumentally influential book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear & Hatred of Gays in the 90s.”

Baucham Jr., Voddie. Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe (pp. XI-XII). Salem Books. Kindle Edition.

Because Wokeness developed in America, and it addresses, in particular, the concerns of the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS), Wokeness has adopted the religious imagery of Christianity, the dominant religious expression of the ADOS population and the cultural basis of American “civic religion.” It is able to infiltrate religious discourse by using its terms, such as “original sin” in its description of racism, slavery, or privilege.

At the same time, Wokeness owes its existence to the rise and cultural influence of “Naturalism.” Having rejected God as He has revealed Himself in the Christian Scriptures and in the person of Jesus Christ, Wokeness elevates the values of Humanism, saying that we an do good without the convicting words of God to spur us on, simply because we recognize the value of all living things, both human and non-human.

I use the term “birth” because the concepts that now incarnate Wokeness existed several decades before 1989. According to the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, Critical Legal Studies “was officially started in 1977 at the conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but its roots extend earlier to when many of its founding members participated in social activism surrounding the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War.” Critical Legal Studies developed out of the work of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany which was established in 1923 “as a site for critical social theory. It moved to Columbia University in New York City in 1933 after the Nazi policies made Germany an unsafe place for its leading scholars.

How it impacts Cultural/ Religious Ideas

By parasitically adopting the concepts of sin, salvation, and repentance to address the issues of racism and social justice, while simultaneously rejecting any claims that God’s already revealed standards regarding justice address each of their concerns and more, those who are the recognized prophets of wokeness claim all the ground devoted to the pursuit of justice while leaving no space for true repentance and reconciliation.

Final Thoughts