Two summers ago, I wrote here “Wokeness is Not Winsome.” I asserted that the notion that church focus on woke “justice” attracts people is a half-truth at best. Though wokeness attracts some, it drives off and repels core faithful Christians along with any number of people who are sick of being bombarded with DIE — or is it DEI? — and other woke stuff the rest of the week and are not going to put up with it being pushed on them Sunday mornings.
Well, although I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, wokeness is even more not winsome two years later. Anti-white racism was noxious enough as were constant attacks on Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion as last week’s excellent Supreme Court rulings and and the woke wails against them reminded us.
But now there’s more. In the past two years, woke indoctrination and grooming of children has become more obvious and outrageous. Drag Queen Story Hours have quickly morphed into sexually suggestive dancing and indent exposure to kids and Queer Theory Trans indoctrination of elementary school children.
So now many more people of common sense are saying, “Enough!” This abhorrence against queering children is even affecting acceptance of same-sex marriage which, although still high, has suddenly and noticeably dropped. There even seem to be less Pride Flags about this year compared to last. Many people did not have a problem with alphabet agendas and had a live and let live attitude until the woke became more obvious about “coming for your children.”
People have had two more years to see other rotten fruit of wokeness as well. There’s the massive increase in crime, both inflamed and enabled in the cities (while those who dare defend themselves and others risk prison more than the criminals) and pouring across our open borders. Yet woke churchers still insist, as ACNA’s Matthew 25 Initiative does, that we aren’t loving our neighbors if we don’t “welcome refugees,” those poor, poor fake refugees.
No, it’s precisely because we do love our neighbors that don’t want criminals and fentanyl mass murder and human trafficking and more flooding into our neighborhoods. Americans have long welcomed real refugees, but we are fed up with being gaslighted about what is flooding across our borders. Yet Matthew 25’s White Paper on Immigration joins the gaslighting and brushes off concerns about what is coming across as “misinformation and highly charged rhetoric about a crisis at the border.” Instead of gaslighting, Matthew 25 should apologize for vilifying those wanting to stop the flood during Lent 2022. Perhaps they are the ones who need to listen to “lived experiences” outside of Wheaton just a bit more.
Common sense people know now more than ever that wokeness is evil and harmful to all but criminals and grievance grifters. Many experience that harm personally. So will they want to go to a church that pushes woke ideologies? What I wrote two summers ago applies even more now:
. . . Imagine such a person coming into church for refuge and support only to find church leaders also pushing CRT and other wokeness. Such a normal person is likely to walk out, and for good reason, never to return. I have been told stories by such people who thankfully have not given up on the church as a whole, but refuse to endure a woke church. And why should they? Church should be a place where the pure Gospel is preached not mixed with false secular ideological gospels. Church should be a place where people are refreshed and strengthened to live in a society assailed by false and oppressive gospels, not be another promoter of those false and oppressive gospels.
Again, CT woke ideologies are not winsome; they repel. Adding to the danger, it can be difficult to see just how many they repel. Church statistics usually do not detect that well as I noted in a slightly controversial article once. More importantly, woke ideologies are flat wrong and harmful. Those who opine the most about “abuse” in the church seem oddly oblivious to that.
At the same time, these ideologies do attract some. The issue is whom do they attract?
I freely admit that our Lord uses even errant churches to bring people into his kingdom. One of the strengths of Anglicanism is that if the Book of Common Prayer is even approximately followed, the Gospel is preached even if the minister is not only a little woke, but even utterly apostate. And the beauty of BCP worship draws in many. So if some woke churches draw in people and actually manage to preach the real Gospel to them somehow, then praise God. But that God may so use a woke church in spite of its errors does not justify the errors.
However such churches also attract and even welcome false teachers, whom scripture explicitly states churches should not even greet. (2nd John) In the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO) and clergy have platformed any number of false and even slanderous teachers, including Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Are they creating false teachers also? There is a C4SO church that has drawn in a young man I know. I think he has a good heart, but he is already well deceived into woke ideologies, even writing that it’s fine for Christians to identify as Queer. (I do not want to identify him. So I will not give a link nor title to the post. Pray for him.) Well, this man is now early in the stages of discernment for Holy Orders in ACNA. He is just one case. No telling how many woke clergy other churches and even Provincial Initiatives are creating in ACNA.
Thus church inaction against proliferating wokeness allows the problem to grow and to repel even more faithful. In ACNA, the problem is compounded by two or more of our woke clergy being well platformed. (Looking at you, New York Times.) I will leave details of what ACNA should do for another day, but some good words here and there and wishing the woke away will not do.
For even orthodox churches that keep kicking the can down the road, that do not deal firmly with infiltrating woke ideologies, will eventually find out something the hard way — disobeying scripture and doing little to nothing about toxic and divisive false teaching will invite more false teaching and false teachers “that spread like gangrene” (2 Timothy 2:17) and drive away the faithful and faithfulness. Timid churches may find that out too late.
They will find out the hard way that not only wokeness but also cowardice is not winsome at all.
