Certain politicians in the U.S. and Canada have surged in popularity in part by decrying “wokeness” in our society, “woke ideology” in our universities, and the “woke agenda” of non-conservative governments. What exactly they mean by “wokeness,” though, can be hard to pin down.
The language of “woke” grew out of the Black experience in the U.S., all the way back in the 1930s. Originally it had the idea of being aware of—and on guard against—the violence and systemic injustice experienced by Black people in American society.
More recently “woke” language has been used to mean being aware of systemic injustice generally, as experienced by any historically marginalized or disempowered group—Black people, Indigenous people, women, impoverished people, LGBTQ+ people—and the ways these different dimensions of the human experience of marginalization or disempowerment intersect with each other.
Still more recently, picked up and nourished by those savvy conservative politicians, this language of “woke” has taken on other connotations. It now evokes for many people, including many Christians, ideas of a nefarious agenda by powerful but out-of-touch “progressives” or “leftists” or “elites”—those people who live in coastal cities or teach in liberal universities, or who work for global organizations like the United Nations—to weaken the fabric of our society, take away our freedoms, and destroy free-market capitalism.
“Woke” is now equivalent to tried-and-true scarewords of the past like “socialist” and “communist” and “Marxist.” For these “anti-woke” politicians, “wokeness” is the opposite of the down-to-earth “common sense” of “average Americans and Canadians”—who happen to be mostly white, straight, and middle-class.
The problem with “wokeness,” it seems to me, is twofold.
The first problem with “wokeness” is that there is no problem with “wokeness”—that is, with the essential ideas that originated in the Black community and have found purchase in the experience of other groups.
There are groups of people that historically, genuinely, have been pushed to the margins of society and stripped of the power to determine their own future on their own terms. It is true that various dimensions of human experience intersect in this injustice, so that an Indigenous person in Canada is at a higher risk of poverty and violence than a white person, but that an Indigenous woman is at even higher risk of these things.
It’s also true that, for Christians who look to our Scriptures and ultimately to Jesus for our moral compass, these essential ideas of “wokeness” do not run counter to our faith. In fact, they are very much with the grain of our faith. The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Gospel stories of Jesus are filled with much that highlights the need for what we today call “social justice,” including economic justice, racial justice, gender justice, and more.
This first problem with “wokeness,” then, is that the use of “woke” as a pejorative scareword has no substance. It’s based on misunderstandings at best, and baseless conspiracy theories at worst.
But there is a second problem with “wokeness,” a genuine problem, as I’ve experienced while moving in some of those “woke” circles. These circles have largely dropped the term as a self-designation, in large part because of the way it has been co-opted as a scareword by more conservative people and politicians. But this problem remains, regardless of whether the term is used: people who recognize the reality of systemic injustice in our society and with the intersectional nature of that injustice, can sometimes, as we speak against this injustice and work for greater justice, perpetuate injustice ourselves.
We can operate with prejudices, even cruelty, against those who don’t agree with us. We can divide humanity into “us” and “them” along the lines of those aware of systemic injustice and those who aren’t, and then denigrate and even vilify those who we feel are not sufficiently aware (even “cancelling” a progressive ally if they don’t meet our expectations). We can use coercive power, even institutional violence, to correct the injustices we have identified, and so perpetuate the very injustice we deplore.
In other words, while the use of “woke” as a pejorative scareword is without substance, some of those conservative critiques of “wokeness” do have some truth to them. Socially, politically, and religiously progressive folks can be elitist. We can be hypocritical. We can be cruel, even causing injustice or committing violence.
For Christians who look to our Scriptures and ultimately to Jesus for our moral compass, then, while the essential ideas of “wokeness” do not run counter to our faith, some of the by-products of “wokeness” in our society (or whatever term we use) do run counter to our faith. They run counter to love.
May we as Christians keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, and in so doing walk in his ways of love and justice and peace, without hypocrisy, without prejudice, and without violence toward all our neighbours, each of whom is created in God’s image and deeply loved by God.
Michael Pahl 