The Big Smear From The Woke Church and Christianity Today

It is almost a creed with the Woke Church crowd that the founding of America was profoundly racist and that America continues profoundly racist to this day.  The Woke Church smears the church in America as well.  

From the Woke Church, Jemar Tisby being perhaps the most prominent example today, you hear a litany of sins committed against Black people by America and the church, some concocted (particularly in that much they call “racism” is hardly that) or exaggerated, but much of which are indeed awful and to be regretted.   We certainly should not ignore the history of racism in this country nor pretend that we and our forebears are without sin. 

The problem is the following baggage is attached to said accusatory confession:

The blithe ignoring of the almost universal nature of racism in the past.  

Go back 200 years or more.  Will you find any society that was not racist or at least tribal?  Why then is America singled out as peculiarly racist?  And are we to then reject everything good from American and British past and be good totalitarian Taliban and Jacobins and topple it all?

Chronological Hubris. 

As C. S. Lewis well pointed out, we have a tendency to look down on the past and think ourselves so superior to it.  That certainly includes confessing their sins – a species of that favorite LibChurch activity of confessing other people’s sins – while overlooking or downplaying our own.  Those with unenlightened views of race in the past were in the wrong.  But they would be appalled by the prevalent sins of society today and would be right to be appalled.  Every age and society has its prevalent sins, and that includes us.  (No I do not consider white-on-black racism a prevalent sin today, but a dying one.  Anti-white racism on the other hand….)  Should we then smear and reject the good that our forebears have passed down to us because we are so arrogant as to consider their sins worse than ours?  Again, that’s what totalitarians do.

Downplaying progress. 

There has been astounding progress in the area of race in America even in my lifetime and marked by the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008. . . .   Oh, I hope I didn’t make you faint there.  Yes, I did and do see good in the election of Obama; it made clear that skin color is no longer much of a barrier in America.  At the time, I actually hoped it ushered in a post-racial America.  Sadly, Obama and now the woke crowd decided to pick and tear at old wounds of racial division and make them bleed afresh.  Yes, I think wokeness is a much bigger factor behind today’s divisions than “whiteness.”  If the woke crowd is really that concerned about racism and division in America, they need to take a good long look in the mirror.  We were making very good progress until they came along.

Trust that I could say more.

Oft times, the Woke Church is more Satanic than Christian.  Like Satan, they twist and weaponize history to accuse the brethren while practically ignoring the brethren’s repentance, forgiveness and ongoing sanctification. 

(And, no, I do not think Americans are a whole are being sanctified as American Christians hopefully are.  I certainly do not conflate being an American and being a faithful Christian. But the accusatory pattern of smearing one of the greatest nations the world has ever seen goes hand in hand with smearing the church.)

As many of you perceptive readers have already noticed, Christianity Today has joined the Woke Chorus of accusation.  Like much of the rest of The Evangelical Church of What’s Happening Now, they practically jump up and down and squeak, “Me, too! Me, too!  I’m woke, too!”   An op-ed by CT’s president and CEO Thomas Dalrymple is the latest example.  It is certainly in the Woke Big Smear genre, using very selective and regrettable history (And, again, what country or church does not have regrettable history?) and a warped interpretation of it to smear country and church. I found this passage especially slanderous and vile:

The name of Phalaris is not much remembered in the 21st century, but in classical antiquity it was infamous. The tyrant of Agrigentum on the island of Sicily, Phalaris is known for a gruesome instrument of torture: a hulking bronze bull, hollowed on the inside, set over a fire. As victims were forced into the bull and roasted alive, the nostrils of the bull rendered the screams of the dying into a sonorous groaning that filled the palace with music. You might be a guest at the feast, unaware that your entertainment came through the agony of others.

Today’s generations may say we did not invent the bull of racial injustice. But we have benefited from it. The resiliency, creativity, industry, and indomitable faith of African Americans in spite of all they have suffered is nothing short of miraculous. We have all benefited not only from their labor but also from their innovations and entrepreneurialism, their art and music, their films and poetry and books, their hymns and preaching. The transformation of black suffering into economic abundance for America, as well as art and passion and brilliance, has enriched our feast in the palace. Perhaps we can honestly say we did not know what our brothers and sisters were suffering. Now we do. So there’s only one thing to do: put down our forks and get our brothers and sisters out of the belly of the bull.

It disgusts me to see a once excellent Christian publication be the accuser of the brethren like that. 

Yes, for those concerned about how wokeness has infiltrated the Anglican Church in North America, there are any number of clergy that approve of the Big Smear and at least one diocesan Canon who publicly approves of this article.  I am not mentioning her by name because I do not want to single her out when it is a much wider problem in ACNA and other church bodies.   

The Woke Big Smear must be rejected by both Christians and non-Christians before it further poisons and divides our churches and our country.