The Woke Revolution and the Demise of Western Civilization

This article first appeared in the From the President Column of the Christian Research Journal, volume 46, number 1/2  (2023).

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Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.¹

—Karl Marx

This is adapted from the forthcoming last print issue of the Christian Research Journal (see From the Editor) — and certainly one of the most important.” Because America is in the midst of a woke worldview war. An uprising against the Judeo-Christian ethic. An insidious revolt that many Christians have a hard time wrapping their minds around. Thus, we purpose in this issue to provide you with a ready resource for understanding the woke worldview war being waged against you, your children, and the very soul of Western Civilization.

Worldview. Merriam-Webster defines woke as being “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”² In the denotative sense, this definition is proper and right. However, what Merriam-Webster and Neo-Marxist revolutionaries mean by being awake to issues of racial and social justice is far removed from the positive aspects of genuine great awakenings.

As Douglas Groothuis makes plain in the essay titled “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction and Critique,” according to woke orthodoxy, “America is systemically racist in principle and in practice.” Thus, justice demands that our national constitution “be replaced by an anti-racist socialist system”. A system in which diversity, inclusion, and equity is “mandated from the top down, without respect to individual ability, private property rights, or the positive possibilities of a genuinely free market”. Moreover, in accordance with woke ideology, “white people, particularly heterosexual white males, are the oppressors”. And a primary target of their alleged oppression is transgenderism.

In the illusory woke worldview, boys can transition into girls and vice versa. As such, the gods of wokeism attempt to take what the Almighty has made and remake it. They engage in top and bottom surgeries fully cognizant of the reality that there is much that their surgical savageries cannot extend to. The dirty little secret, veiled in woke speak, is that pseudo-deities are impotent to change biological sex on a cellular level; that “the human brain is a sex-typed organ”; and that there are inalterable biological differences in how male and female brains are wired.³

In “Gender Ideology’s Attack on Our Humanity,” Jay Richards points to the reality that our bodies are not only organized for physical reproduction, but that humans are, by nature, both physical and metaphysical. “Not merely material and not merely spiritual. Not half material and half spiritual. Both — at one and the same time.” “We are neither upright apes nor ghosts in meat suits. We are, by nature, embodied persons”. By design body/soul unities.

While philosophical naturalists flatly deny the existence of the immaterial soul, cultural narratives continue to pay lip service to its reality. In evidence, highly touted Olympian superstar Bruce Jenner told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that “he is, in his soul, a woman”. Consequently, he felt obliged to alter his male body to conform it to what he perceived to be his female soul. As Benjamin Cabe elucidates in “The Inner and Outer Man: How Historical Christian Anthropology Addresses Transgenderism,” “Bruce would change his name to Caitlyn, use she/her pronouns, begin publicly presenting as a woman (called social transition), start hormone therapy (estrogen), and eventually move on to full, cosmetic transition, which is shorthand for undergoing a series of serious surgeries: penectomy, orchiectomy [removal of testicles], breast augmentation, and vaginoplasty.” All this to “transform” his “original male body into an approximation of a female body to match his…female soul”.

In actuality, there is no such thing as a female soul. As Cabe elucidates, “the soul itself is sexless. The human being, as body and soul in unity, is made up of the sexed body and the sexless soul”. This has been the consensus patrum from the early stages of Christianity onward. “Historical Christian anthropology precludes the possibility that the internal, subjective, immaterial aspect of the human being is gendered at all — let alone capable of reflecting the opposite sex or gender of the body. Ontologically, in terms of nature or essence, it is not possible to be a man trapped in a female body, or vice versa”.

As you read — and hopefully reread — this issue of the Christian Research Journal, there are three salient facts to keep in mind. First, the woke worldview finds its roots in a contrived Marxist oppression dichotomy. Second, in concert with previous insurrections, kids are the key targets. Third, extremism is now the new normal.

Oppression. First, a few words about the oppressed/oppressor dichotomy. In the Marxist revolution, society was divided into two primary categories: bourgeoise oppressors and the proletariat oppressed. Bourgeoise oppressors, according to Karl Heinrich Marx, surreptitiously employed religion to trap the proletarian masses in an illusory prison of happiness. With venomous disdain, he dubbed religion “the sigh of the oppressed creature.” The “illusory happiness of the people.”⁴ And then maliciously demanded that religion be abolished. Neo-Marxism is bent on taking the Marxist maxim to unthinkable extremes.

As Noelle Mering explains in “Three Dogmas of Wokeness: The Path to Authoritarianism,” to be woke is to experience liberation from both external oppressions, such as cis-gender normativity, and from “the internalized repression of self, due to the taboos of an arbitrary moral law”. Belief in God is believed to be the apex of oppression and thus is “the ultimate target of the woke revolt”. Little wonder then that the pseudo gods of wokeism seek to remake society, as well as the persons that inhabit it, in the image and likeness of their own perverse proclivities.

Kids. Make no mistake. Kids are the primary target of leftist woke revolutionaries — a chilling reminder of what happened in Cambodia a scant fifty years ago. In concert with the tactics of the Khmer Rouge, kids are being taught to deny God and to disdain their heritage. In “Christian Parenting and the Peril of Public School Education,” Matthew Kennedy underscores the sad reality. “Public school systems across the United States are adopting curricula and communicating ideas intrinsically antithetical to Christianity”. Examples include “school sponsored drag shows,” “sexually explicit library books,” and “the racialized reframing of American history”. And that’s just the tip of a catastrophic iceberg. In the words of Richards, “Children are being taught they can be born in the wrong body. And doctors are ‘treating’ this condition with sterilizing drugs and surgeries — on minors. This so-called ‘gender affirming care’ reveals this ideology for what it is: the greatest assault on human nature — on our maleness and femaleness — that has ever been devised or imagined”.

Adding insult to injury, woke authorities seem bent on stoking the inferno. As Bethany Mandel and Karol Markowicz hauntingly put it in their must-read book, Stolen Youth, “Adults in positions of power in schools, medical and psychiatric settings, and the media are throwing kindling on the fire. It’s like handing a knife to a girl who is cutting and telling her it’s a healthy way to express her feelings, or telling a girl struggling with an eating disorder that she does, indeed, look fat in those jeans and should purge to try to lose a few pounds.”⁵ For all intents and purposes, the so-called experts are turning our kids into experimental rodents in a medical bonanza that guarantees they’ll be patients for life. “It’s like a horror movie with mad scientists experimenting on hapless victims, only those victims are our children.”⁶ Our kids! Kids emblematic of the bleak future of an increasingly woke West.

Extremism. If woke revolutionaries revel in anything, it is in their extremism. Early in the educational process children are introduced to the Gender Unicorn — a seemingly endearing character that cleverly undermines basic biology as it guides impressionable kids through a subjective process of sex selection. Taking such extremist tactics to an even more alarming level, the National Education Association has overwhelmed constituents with demonstratively false narratives on tropes ranging from white supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy, to Critical Race Theory, and The 1619 Project.⁷Adding to the extremism, the American Library Association offers “workshops with an ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion’ theme,” including “‘Creating Queer-Inclusive Elementary School Library Programming,’ ’Developing an Online Face for a Lesbian Pulp Fiction Collection,’ and ‘Telling Stories, Expanding Boundaries: Drag Queen Storytimes in Libraries.’”⁸ Meanwhile publishers have gotten in on the zealotry by peddling the pornographic. Lion Forge, for example, now markets such disturbing drivel as Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe (the perverse content of which is far too graphic to describe in this article).⁹ And it is not just that smut is being peddled. Educational extremists are bent on banning classics ranging from Dr. Suess’s Cat in the Hat to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.¹⁰

Adding to the extremism in education are expressions of extremism in the environmental industry. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, queen of queer, has taken environmental extremism to a whole new level. On January 21, 2019, she predicted “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”¹¹ Al Gore, a former U.S. Vice President turned global warming guru, is equally extreme. So extreme that he designated “global warming” the single greatest threat facing our planet. While promoting his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, he falsified facts and figures to bolster the palpably convenient untruth that planet Earth would reach “a point of no return” by the year 2016.¹² Nevertheless, Ellen Goodman of The Boston Globe puts those skeptical of such extremist propaganda on par with Holocaust deniers.¹³ And prominent Baptist pastor Oliver “Buzz” Thomas goes so far as to castigate spiritual leaders for failing to urge followers to have smaller families in view of extremist environmental expectations. Says Thomas, “We must stop having so many children. Clergy should consider voicing the difficult truth that having more than two children during such a time is selfish.”¹⁴

As significant as all these voices are, none of them has been able to conjure up the emotional traction of teenage eco-extremist Greta Thunberg. And that by design. Woke warriors have mastered the art of enlisting kids into their extremist agenda, knowing full well that in our politically correct culture few are brave enough to take an intellectual shot at a kid.¹⁵ Especially a kid given a platform at the United Nations, designated Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” (2019) and nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize (multiple times). Thus, when Greta made the extremist declaration that “entire ecosystems are collapsing, we are in the beginning of a mass extinction,” and punctuated her remarks with the excoriation “How dare you!,”¹⁶ debate was effectively disarmed.

Would that skepticism, as Richards once quipped, could rise as rapidly as “sea levels on Planet Algore.”¹⁷ Would that people wake up to the reality that woke warriors have mastered that art of “mining the subjunctive.” Have become adept at “cultivating the seed of threat buried inside each unrealized instance.”¹⁸ Would that we develop a healthy skepticism toward shop-worn monikers such as “scientific consensus.” As Harvard PhD Darío Fernández-Morera wisely advised, we must be ever wary of “stakeholder interests and incentives.” Interests and incentives that “affect the research of academics in the humanities no less and perhaps even more than those in the sciences. Perhaps it has to do with what psychologists call ‘motivated blindness,’ which inhibits an individual’s ability to perceive inconvenient data. Perhaps it has to do with the ‘innocence of intellectuals.’ Perhaps it is simply the result of shoddy research by a number of university professors repeated by many journalists.”¹⁹ Whatever the motivation, it is imperative that we master discernment skills in the face of environmental extremism.

As with educational and environmental extremism, entertainment venues now revel in extremism. Outlets such as Disney, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon have collectively taken woke narratives to unimaginable extremes. “The Disney Junior series Muppet Babies for children four years old and up featured one of its characters, Gonzo, dressing up in a ballgown and transforming into ‘Gonzo-rella.’”²⁰ For its part, Cartoon Network is bent on providing programming unapologetically “aimed at redefining traditional gender roles for children.”²¹ And Nickelodeon brazenly “featured an animated Pride parade led by American drag queen and activist Nina West.”²² In their chapter titled When Mickey and Scholastic Went Woke, Mandel and Markowicz ask the operative question, “How does the most wholesome, family-friendly entertainment company [Disney], beloved for multiple generations, go completely off the rails?”²³ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, commenting on the Marxist revolution provides the unforgettable response. “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”²⁴ —Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1. Karl Marx, introduction to Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 171.
2. “Woke,” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, accessed April 20, 2023, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke.
3. Bruce Goldman, “Two Minds: The Cognitive Differences Between Men and Women,” Neurobiology, May 22, 2017, https://stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/.
4. Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 171.
5. Bethany Mandel and Karol Markowicz, Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation (Nashville: DW Books, 2023), 167, emphasis added.
6. Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 181.
7. See “New Business Item 39,” National Education Association, July 5, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20210705234008/https://ra.nea.org/business-item/2021-nbi-039; thanks to Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 85, for this reference.
8. Joy Pullmann, “21,400 Attend Library Conference Featuring Workshops on Drag Queens and Queering Elementary Schools,” The Federalist, July 10, 2019, https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/10/21460-librarians-attend-major-conference-featuring-workshops-drag-queens-queering-elementary-schools/; thanks to Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 109, for this reference.
9. See Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 119.
10. See Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 113–14.
11. William Cummings, “‘The World Is Going to End in 12 Years If We Don’t Address Climate Change,’ Ocasio-Cortez Says,” USA Today, January 22, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/22/ocasio-cortez-climate-change-alarm/2642481002/.
12. David Germain, “2006: Al Gore Does Sundance,” CBS News, January 26, 2006, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019/01/22/ocasio-cortez-climate-change-alarm/2642481002/.
13. Ellen Goodman, “No Change in Political Climate,” Boston Globe, February 9, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/20070211191129/www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/.
14. Oliver “Buzz” Thomas, “Might Our Religion Be Killing Us?” USA Today, April 21, 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20080502110139/http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/04/might-our-relig.html#more.
15. See “Child Soldiers,” in Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth.
16. PBS NewsHour, “WATCH: Greta Thunberg’s Full Speech to World Leaders at UN Climate Action Summit,” YouTube, September 23, 2019, video, 5:19, https://youtu.be/KAJsdgTPJpU.
17. Jay Richards, “When to Doubt a Scientific ‘Consensus,’” American Enterprise Institute, March 16, 2010, https://www.aei.org/articles/when-to-doubt-a-scientific-consensus/.
18. In the previous two sentences, I’m adapting and applying these delicious turns of phrase in quotation marks from a different context. Tom Junod, “365 Days to the Apocalypse and We Still Don’t Know Where to Hide the Jews…and Other Notes from Pat Robertson’s Y2K Conference,” Esquire, January 1999, 96–8.
19. Darío Fernández-Morera, The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise: Muslims, Christians, and Jews under Islamic Rule in Medieval Spain (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2016), 4.
20. Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 128. See Scottie Andrew, “Nonbinary Characters Like ‘Gonzo-Rella’ Are Lighting Up Children’s TV and Encouraging Self-Acceptance,” CNN, September 25, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/25/entertainment/gonzorella-nonbinary-childrens-tv-cec/index.html.
21.  Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 128.
22.  Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 127.
23. Mandel and Markowicz, Stolen Youth, 106.
24. “Acceptance Address by Mr. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,” Templeton Prize, May 10, 1983, https://www.templetonprize.org/laureate-sub/solzhenitsyn-acceptance-speech/.