The New Woke Religion

Folks I’ve been writing about social justice for months now. I know some of you are probably sick of it. But I want you to listen to me one more time. What we are watching is not just the polarization of a nation into two nations with little to nothing in common besides a language. It’s more than that. It is the formation of a new religion: the religion of woke and it is winning converts from Christianity.

Let me document what I mean. Some of you may pay attention to a formerly popular sports league known as the NFL. You might have noticed it has gone very hard core woke in the last few weeks, to the point of writing names of “victims of police brutality” (mainly hardened felons who either killed themselves, or attacked police and got shot) on their uniforms. However, it has not gone woke enough for the man who started it all, Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick came out the day that the NFL played the “Black National Anthem” and plastered the names of felons on their uniforms, claiming the league had not gone nearly far enough. Remember this is the same league that fines you for supporting police with your cleats or having a Bible reference in your eye black and has given millions to support the evil domestic terrorist organization, Black Lives Matter. (If you doubt they are a domestic terrorist organization, read this.) However, the NFL is not the point. The point is, even all their ovetures to the woke have not been enough. There must be more.

This is how the woke religion operates. It is a works-based religion. The sin you carry is the sin of “whiteness”. “Whiteness” manifests in many forms, from overt racism, to simply using proper grammar (yes really). This sin must be atoned for by doing “anti-racism work”. However, while that sounds noble, in their minds “anti-racism work” requires destroying the nuclear family and supporting the LGBTQIA+ mafia. Further, particularly for people with light skin in particular, but really for everyone, the “anti-racism work” is never done. There is always more that must be done to eradicate “systematic racism” and if you aren’t doing it, you’re exercising your “privilege” and are exhibiting “whiteness”. This system offers no ultimate hope.

Like all other religions, it also contains a canon of Scripture. To the woke, Robin di Angelo’s White Fragility is a must-read, as is Eric Mason’s Woke Church and Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise. There are other books as well that are required reading for those seeking to obtain absolution from their “whiteness”, but those are the big three. There is even a “conversion experience” of sorts, described as “getting woke”.

How does this woke religion get transmitted to Christians? A couple of ways. The first is from their pulpits. Some pastors, particularly in mainline denominations are teaching this. These pastors are the product of cemeteries…err seminaries that are supposed to train deep men of God to train their churches but often produce social justice warriors intent on splitting the body of Christ. If you have not yet, please check out the Founders cinedoc “By What Standard” for a primer on how this is happening in the Southern Baptist Convention.

However, I think the primary way the woke infects new Christian victims is their own desire to help. They are presented a bad or misleading argument on social media and they begin to believe that “black people or minorities are being oppressed. They want to stop that because they know the Bible teaches all should be treated equally. However, because they have bought into a false premise, they start walking down a false path to the point where they embrace the woke religion and never turn back.

Christians buy into the false premise for a number of reasons. One is, many Christians are ignorant of very basic theology. This is both their fault and the fault of the church for not teaching them. Ligonier did a survey that we will be discussing in a separate article that showed the church has all manner of heretical beliefs among self-described “Evangelicals”. There is a desperate need for apologetics in the church so that the church knows what it believes and why. You cannot defend what you yourself are unsure of, and we are seeing the fruits of that manifested in this new religion.

Responding to the cult of woke will not be easy. First we need to educate the church on what Biblical justice is. Second, we need to recognize that the media narrative is almost always false and we need to wait for facts to come out before rushing to judgment. Third, we need to learn and teach the use of logic to evaluate claims. Fourth, and most important, we need to evaluate every claim in light of what Scripture teaches and see if it matches up. If it doesn’t, no matter who makes the claim, no matter how popular it is, it needs to be rejected. We need to incorporate these principles into our teaching, particularly with young people. I don’t know if we can come back from the precipice we are on, but this is our best shot.

Do you know what’s going to happen when you die? Are you completely sure? If you aren’t, please read this or listen to this. You can know where you will spend eternity. If you have questions, please feel free to contact us, we’d love to talk to you.