Is it Bad to be “Woke”?

Over the last few years, the word “woke” has been used, and praised, in some circles, largely misunderstood and/or ignored in others, and castigated in some. But what about it? Is it bad to be “woke” as some charge? 

Definition of “Woke”

Perhaps it is best to start with a good definition of “woke.” Here’s one: “Woke means being conscious of racial discrimination in society and other forms of oppression and injustice.” This is from Dictionary.com’s “slang dictionary,” which also summarizes the historical development of “woke.”

The above article also includes this explanation:

Woke was quickly appropriated by mainstream white culture in the mid-2010s, to the criticism of many black observers. In many instances, woke did spread in keeping with its activist spirit, referring to awareness of other forms of injustice, such as sexism, anti-gay sentiment, and white privilege.

Criticism of “Woke” in Religious Circles

In my May 30 blog post about the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), I made a brief reference to the new movement calling itself the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN). I first learned about it in “Conservative Baptist Network launched amid 'woke' trend in SBC,” a Feb. 15 Christian Post article

Being “woke” was linked to ideas CBN deems objectionable. On their website they state clearly, “The Network rejects various unbiblical ideologies currently affecting the Southern Baptist Convention such as Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, and social justice.”

Russell Moore and Al Mohler are two prominent SBC leaders whom CBN finds most problematic. Moore is a former professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS, where Mohler is president) and since 2013 has been the president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

It seems quite ironic to me that Mohler, whom in my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism I discuss as one of the four most influential fundamentalist leaders after 1980, is now being attacked by conservatives for being too “woke.”

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization was started by people who affirm Marxism. So perhaps partly in response to the criticism of him earlier this year for being “woke,” last month Mohler wrote an article titled “Black Lives Matter: Affirm the Sentence, Not the Movement.”

The BLM movement is criticized mainly because the founders are Marxists.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is supposedly being (or has been recently) taught at SBTS is seen by some as linked to Marxism, or Marxist ideas at least. (If you need a neutral description of CRT, check out this Encyclopedia Britannica article.)

Among Christian conservatives and others, it seems to be widely held that the concept of “systemic racism” is a Marxist idea. That is one main reason why they, as well as conservative (Republican) politicians, are prone to deny there is systemic racism in the USA.

Intersectionality basically means that “people are often disadvantaged by multiple sources of oppression: their race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and other identity markers.” This, too, gets linked to Marxism and thereby criticized.

So, SBTS is being criticized by CBN for being “woke,” that is, too much in favor of Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, and social justice, all linked, in one way or another to Marxism—and by extension, perhaps, to socialism, currently the big bugaboo to the Christian Right and DJT's base.

Criticism of “Woke” in Political Circles

DJT has made some attempt to reach out to Black citizens in the U.S. He wants and badly needs their votes if he is to have any chance of winning the Nov. 3 election.

A webpage on the DonaldJTrump.com reelection campaign website has a page advertising a Woke cap (for $35). The sales appeal says, “Proudly wear your official Woke hat and show your support for our great President.” 

But in reality, DJT seems to have been moving in the opposite direction in recent days. A July 2 article in the online Intelligencer is titled, “Trump Believes That He Is Losing Because He Hasn’t Been Racist Enough.”

That piece quotes DJT as saying that he wants “no more of Jared’s woke s[**]t.”

Enough said.

The Southern Baptist Convention: 175 Years of Turmoil

Christian Leopold (C.L.) Neiger, my only great-grandparent not born in the U.S., was born in Canton Bern, Switzerland, 180 years ago today, on May 30, 1840. Five years later, and sixteen years before C.L. immigrated to the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845.  

The International Mission Board of the SBC was formed
 on the same day as the new convention.

Turmoil at the Beginning

The Southern Baptist Convention was formed because of turmoil over slavery. There were some other issues that also led to the formation of the new convention, but the slavery issue was unquestionably the most decisive one.

Specifically, in response to the policy adopted in 1844 that slaveholders would not be appointed as missionaries, Baptist delegates in the South formed the SBC.

In May 1845, those delegates met in Augusta, Georgia, to form the new Convention. Beginning with a total membership of nearly 352,000 in over 4,100 local Baptist churches, it was geographically restricted to states that would eventually become the Confederacy.

Turmoil through the Years

Most of the turmoil in the SBC after its founding has been theological. One of the first such controversies centered around C.H. Toy, professor of Old Testament at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was forced to resign in 1879.

Fundamentalists, such as those led by J. Frank Norris, the fiery pastor of First Baptist Church of Fort Worth, caused turmoil in the SBC from the 1920s to the early 1950s.

Turmoil in the SBC again emerged after Ralph Elliott, professor of OT at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, published The Message of Genesis in 1961. He was fired the next year.

The “conservative resurgence” of the SBC (aka the “fundamentalist takeover”) began in 1979 and following years of turmoil, the convention made a massive move to the theological—and to the political—right.

And now this year a new movement has started. It is called the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN), and some are calling it a “second conservative resurgence.” It remains to be seen how much turmoil CBN will cause in the coming years.

An Embarrassed Southern Baptist

Not long after C.L. Neiger married my great-grandmother Margaret (Abplanalp) in Indiana, they moved to Worth County in northwest Missouri, the county where I was born about 70 years later.

C.L. and Margaret’s daughter Laura married George Seat, my grandfather. George’s great-grandfather, Littleton Seat, moved from Tennessee to Cooper County, Mo., about 1818. He moved to Worth County with his family in 1844—and died there the next year, the same year that the SBC was founded.

In the eighteenth century the Seat family lived in Virginia—and they owned slaves. According to family stories, two of Littleton’s older brothers were killed by a 13-year-old slave boy in 1786.

When the Seat family moved to near Nashville, Tennessee, about the turn of the century, they likely took some slaves with them, although the three Seat brothers who moved to Missouri before 1820 didn’t seem to have slaves—and it is quite certain that the Seats in Worth County never had any.

Near the beginning of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism, I wrote about being an embarrassed Southern Baptist—and  in June 2015 I wrote about being both a proud and ashamed Southern Baptist—but that was because of what the Southern Baptist Convention had become, theologically, after 1980.

My first embarrassment, though, was when I learned why the SBC was formed in the first place. As a boy, I always identified with the North/Union in thinking about the Civil War—and I wasn’t prejudiced against African Americans, for I never saw a Black person in my home county.

The SBC formally apologized to African Americans in 1995 (at the annual convention marking the 150^th anniversary of the SBC’s founding) for the denomination's pro-slavery past. Some charged that that was too little, too late. But I am on the side of those who say, Better late than never.

During all the years I was a Southern Baptist, I disliked the name, which embodies its racist beginnings—and I have been an advocate of a name change since my student days at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1960s.

After 175 years, surely the time has come for a name change—and after 40 years of turmoil caused by those on the theological right, surely the time has come for a move back toward the theological center.