These definitions are excerpted from an article titled “Social Justice Ideologies on Trial: Understanding and Responding to Resolution 9 at the Southern Baptist Convention.” You can access the complete article here.
- The term woke refers to a component within the social justice movement that stresses the importance being keenly aware of and sensitive to what is believed to be society’s systemic oppression of blacks and other minorities. Who, or what, is responsible for this oppression? Whites, whiteness, and/or white supremacy, of course!2 Whites are “woke” if they are mindful of this oppression and if they’re willing to take responsibility for it, including engaging in efforts to correct it in society and in the church. Whites must repent of the sins of slavery, lynchings, and other similar actions, whether or not they themselves were the actual, hands-on perpetrators. The “remedies” that are demanded typically include government redistribution of wealth—from groups who have been “privileged” to groups who have been “oppressed.” Similarly, blacks are woke when they are wise to the “fact” that they and their people have been held back, and when they’re willing to push hard for corrective measures in society and in the church. Finally, churches are woke when they put the themes of white supremacy and its oppression of minorities front and center. Often the woke narrative is introduced in a predominantly white church with the question, Why are our churches so white? The woke answer is that whites are guilty of racism and oppression, not just as individuals, but as a group. Local demographics and the freedom people of all races have to attend the churches of their choice usually are not even considered. Significantly, wokeness has been called “the religion of progressivism.”
Related to the woke movement are the two ideologies Resolution 9 focuses on, critical race theory and intersectionality. Critical race theory is rooted in Cultural Marxism. Karl Marx viewed society as the working class pitted against the elites. He said that eventually and inevitably, working classes would overthrow elites everywhere. When observers waiting for this to happen widely didn’t see it happen, they began to ask why. Leftist European intellectuals reasoned that Marxism doesn’t have just an economic application, but a cultural application as well, one they needed to utilize. Their movement, which took place mainly between the two World Wars, was known as the Frankfurt School. It “sought (among many other things) to apply the ideas of Marx in a social context. What developed from this school was Critical Theory [CT], which is ultimately a re-envisioning of the way the world is seen.” Critical Race Theory [CRT], an ideology that emphasizes various ways racial groups pit themselves against one another, emerged from CT. Both CT and CRT stress the importance of groups rather than individuals in the social structure.- Critical race theory, along with wokeness and intersectionality—all three of these—strongly push the narrative that society is infused with white supremacy, white privilege, and systemic oppression against minorities, especially blacks. The oppression and the oppressors, adherents to these movements say, need to be overthrown by empowering those who have been held back. Who, pray tell, are the people who’ve been held back? Minorities, women, homosexuals, and other groups with members who don’t fit the stereotype of those who’ve enjoyed the greatest privilege—straight, white males. Enter intersectionality, which declares that if you’re a woman you’re oppressed; that if you’re a black woman you’re really oppressed; and that if you’re a black lesbian woman you are really, really oppressed! The more of these marginalized groups you’re part of, the more abused and mistreated you are, and the more empowered you need to become to throw off the shackles that have kept you trapped and imprisoned.
These ideologies represent ways members of the social justice movement really view society around them and the world at large—and many of them act and live according to the principles we’ve just cited. In other words, social justice, which includes the ideologies of wokeness, critical race theory, and intersectionality, is a religion; and it’s a religion that is antithetical1 to Christianity and biblical teaching.2
Copyright © 2019 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
Notes:
1Also go here.
2Take, for example, the concept of forgiveness. Christianity teaches that individuals who repent of their sins and receive Christ as their Savior are forgiven and given eternal life and a new nature that seeks to please and honor God through good works (see Eph. 2:8-10). By contrast, the religion of social justice teaches that members of oppressive groups must repent of a host of sins, some of which they themselves may not even be guilty. When repentance occurs, social justice warriors withhold forgiveness and demand retribution. Can unity occur under such a scenario? Can any semblance of racial reconciliation? No, despite the fact social justice warriors claim reconciliation is their goal. What occurs instead? Division, envy, bitterness, resentment, hatred, and victimhood. This is light years away from biblical Christianity!