CHRISTIANITY AND WOKE CULTURE

The British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb do a sketch of two German SS officers in the closing days of World War 2.  Mitchell has a moment of awakening, when he notices (as if for the first time) that they have human skulls adorning their uniforms.  He turns to Webb and asks: “Are we the bad guys?”

For many years in our society Christians were seen as the good guys – the good Samaritans.  However, that is all changing in the western world today.  Christians are now seen as the bad guys – our beliefs are no longer dismissed as deluded but seen as dangerous.  Biblical Christianity is accused of being misogynistic against women, homophobic against sexual minorities, transphobic against those who don’t identify as gender binary, complicit in the history of racism, oppression and slavery.

The reason that these specific objections have come to the forefront is because they some of the main tenets of what some call “Woke Culture”.

(1) UNDERSTANDING WOKE CULTURE

To be “woke” is to be “awakened to the nature of social injustice”.  The word was first added to the Oxford English dictionary in 2017 and is defined as: “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice”.

For centuries Christians have cared about social injustice and been at the forefront of fighting for the cause of social justice – so what’s happened that we’ve been recast as the bad guys all of a sudden?  In their lengthy study “Cynical Theories”, academics Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, argue that in Woke culture the concept of Social Justice has been given a new meaning because it has been taken-over by the philosophy of postmodernism and transformed into a new religion:

“[Applied postmodernism seeks] to deconstruct what we might agree to call ‘the old religions’ of human thought …. And replaced them with a new religion of its own, called ‘Social Justice’… The faith that emerged is thoroughly postmodern, which means that rather than interpreting the world in terms of subtle spiritual forces like sin and magic, it focuses instead on subtle material forces, such as systemic bigotry, and diffuse but omnipresent systems of power and privilege”.

It’s like someone has bought a box of chocolates, taken out the sweet contents, refilled it with some healthy snacks, and sealed the box again before gifting it to someone else.  Whereas Christians pursued social change through truth, grace and love – postmodern is sceptical about truth and cynical seeing everything as being about power.

Another academic who has studied Woke culture is Jonathan Haidt.  His most recent book challenges the “three great untruths” being promoted by Woke culture which he warns are “setting up a generation for failure”.  One of those untruths says: “life is a battle between good people and evil people”.  Woke ideology sees our society not as composed of individuals, but of historic dominant and minority, privileged and marginalised, oppressor and oppressed groups.  People are explicitly defined and judged by the group they identify with – whether that is their race, sexuality, gender, etc.  This leads to critical theorist Robin DiAngelo to allege in her best selling book “White Fragility” that all white people are consciously or unconsciously complicit in a racist system.  This is the photo negative of Martin Luther King’s vision of a better world in which his children would be judged “not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.

Woke academics and activists want to reconstruct a new better society by turning the tables, redistributing power, platforms and benefits to historically oppressed groups.  And many see Christianity as a historically privileged group that has played a big part in causing our problems and is a big obstacle to their vision of progress. 

(2) CONCERNS ABOUT WOKE CULTURE

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to realise that it’s not only Christians who are concerned about the goals of the Woke movement.  Secular thinkers on all sides of the political spectrum have spoken up about their concerns.

Perhaps it would be helpful to highlight just two of the problems in Woke culture.  The problem with seeing the world as divided into groups of good and evil people is that it ignores the reality that the oppressed can themselves be oppressors – because we are all sinners.  Even a figure like former President and social justice activist Barack Obama has spoken out to young Woke activists:

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you.”

The fact we all possess the capacity for oppressing others is evidence of something wrong much deeper in the human condition – the Bible calls it sin.  Woke culture cannot change the human heart!

Another problem is that there is no place for mercy or forgiveness in Woke Culture.  Although they believe in sin (defined as social injustice), they no longer believe in a source of divine forgiveness.  Listen to Douglas Murray:

“As one of the consequences of the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out.  Specifically that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion offered.  Today we do seem to live in a world where actions can have consequences that we could never have imagined, where guilt and shame are more at hand than ever, and where we have no means whatsoever of redemption.  We do not know who could offer it”

This why we see people cancelled for historic mistakes, no platformed for voicing unpopular opinions and ideas, and hear the normalisation of demands for reparations, retribution and revenge in public discourse. 

(3) ENGAGING WITH WOKE CULTURE

As Christians it is important for us to understand Woke culture.  But not so that we can fight it politically and try to win the Culture War against it – but rather because this is the new religion that influences people in the world that the Lord Jesus has sent us out into on mission to share the good news of His kingdom.  The question is how can we engage winsomely and effectively with Woke culture for the gospel?

Well it helps for us to remember that we are not the baddies!!!  Many of the objections that Woke culture raises against Christianity are in fact objections informed by the Bible and Christian values!  Someone who is especially helpful in recognising this fact is the secular historian: Tom Holland, in his book “Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind”.

As a historian, Holland knows full well that the history of Christianity is a mixed one – populated by both saints and bullies.  However, he makes this important observation:

“Many Christians, over the course of two thousand years, have themselves become agents of terror.   They have put the weak in their shadow; they have brought suffering, and persecution, and slavery in their wake.  Yet the standards by which they stand condemned for this are themselves Christian”.

Holland is on an interesting journey away from atheism towards Christianity.  A few years ago he reflected in a controversial article in the New Statesman:

“The longer I spent immersed in the study of classical antiquity, the more alien and unsettling I came to find it… Their values were nothing that I recognised as my own… It was not just the extremes of callousness that I came to find shocking, but the lack of a sense that the poor or the weak might have any intrinsic value…Today, even as belief in God fades across the West, the countries that were once collectively known as Christendom continue to bear the stamp of the two-millennia-old revolution that Christianity represents. It is the principal reason why, by and large, most of us who live in post-Christian societies still take for granted that it is nobler to suffer than to inflict suffering. It is why we generally assume that every human life is of equal value. In my morals and ethics, I have learned to accept that I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian.”

Therefore, when we dig under the surface of Woke culture, then you will find that they are borrowing values from Christianity.  Holland writes:

“The retreat of Christian belief did not seem to imply any necessary retreat of Christian values.  Quite the contrary… Had it been otherwise, then no one would ever have got woke”.

He gives various examples throughout the book to prove this point.

For example, he comments on the Woke belief in the importance of racial justice, equality and diversity:

“That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely self-evident a truth.  A Roman would have laughed at it.  To campaign against discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth.  The origins of this principle lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible”

He reflects on the feminist and #MeToo movements:

“Protestors who marched in the red cloaks of handmaids were summoning men to exercise control over their lists just as the Christian Puritans had done… The human body was not an object, not a commodity to be used by the rich and powerful as and when they pleased. 2000 years of Christian sexual morality had resulted in men as well as women widely taking this for granted.  Had it not, then #MeToo would have had no force”

He comments on various campaigns led by LGBT movement:

“Supporters of gay marriage were quite as influenced by the Church’s enthusiasm for monogamous fidelity as those against it were by biblical condemnations of men who slept with men.  To install transgender toilets might indeed seem an affront to the Lord God, who had created male and female; but to refuse kindness to the persecuted was to offend against the most fundamental teachings of Christ”

All this explains why there are many things in Woke Culture that Christians can agree with (even while there are things it espouses that we cannot support because it violate God’s good design for life in this world).

The warning that Holland (and others) sound is that our society has embarked on a grand experiment.  It has jettisoned Christian beliefs but still wants to retain Christian values.  The question is can you keep the fruit if you’ve pulled up the roots?  Tom Holland doesn’t sound hopeful – nor do others who have styled themselves as “Christian Atheists”.

(4) EVANGELISING WOKE CULTURE

Woke culture is driven by a postmodern philosophy that believes that God is dead and the only hope for the world is our activism.  According to this atheistic, materialistic worldview: “human beings are blobs of carbon floating from one meaningless existence to another”.  Our lives are a blink of an eye in cosmic time – the whole history of human is achievements is destined for the abyss of nothingness.  Ultimately “No Lives Matter”!  This godless worldview does not possess the resources to support our convictions about the dignity and equality of all humans.  That's what secular Douglas Murray concludes in his article "Would human life be sacred in an atheistic world?"

However, the biblical worldview tells the better story that Woke activists are looking for.  On the first page of the Bible, God tells us that human beings are not cosmic accidents, rather everyone one of us has a Maker, who has lovingly made us “in His image” (Genesis 1:28).  The gospel of Jesus Christ turns Woke postmodernism on its head: the God who possessed supreme POWER emptied himself in LOVE to liberate the human race from its captivity to sin and death.  Jesus has suffered at the hands of unjust human beings, exposed our sin and evil, and brought it into judgement and down to death.  Jesus has also arisen from the dead, a living preview of a new world freed from evil and injustice that God is preparing for all who trust and follow Him.  The resurrection of Jesus in history means that Christianity isn’t just a better story, but it’s a true story!

Helpfully Rebecca McLaughlin in her recent book “The Secular Creed” walks through why the gospel Jesus is good news for Woke activists:

"We believe that 'black lives matter' because they matter to Jesus.

We don't believe 'love is love' but that God is love, and that He gives us glimpses of His love through different kinds of relationship.

We believe 'women's rights are human rights,' because God made us - male and female - in His image; and for that same reason we believe that babies in the womb have rights as well.

And we believe that diversity does indeed make us stronger, because Jesus calls people from every tribe and tongue and nation to worship Him as one body together"

CONCLUSION

All that we’ve considered tonight shows why we do not have to despair in face of the attacks and objections of Woke culture against Christianity.  Instead, the gospel is still good news!  It’s important that we continue to believe it, live it and share it – courageously and unashamedly.

However, I appreciate that it’s not going to be easy.  None of us likes being made to feel like we’re the bad guys!  But this isn't the first time Christians have appeared the baddies - that's why the apostle Peter writes to depised Christians: "Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us" (1 Peter 2:12).  So let me finish with a word from evangelist Stephen McAlpine and recommend his little book to help you navigate the challenges of being a faithful Christian on campus:

“Increasing Christianity is viewed as the bad guy.  Christianity is no longer an option; it’s a problem…. We’re on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of so many issues and conversations…. Being on the wrong side is tiring and demoralising.  It makes us feel defeated or angry.  But I’m not going to tell you how to stop being one of the bad guys, because the only way to stop being a bad guy in the eyes of the world is to become what the world says is a good guy.  And right now that means compromising in all kinds of areas where the world beckons one way and the Bible points another.  So this book isn’t about how to be the bad guys.  It’s about how to be the best bad guy you can be"