We Should Let Jesus Save Us

So, it seems Woke 1 is not aging particularly well. In the past few weeks, every tour of the mainstream publications that I frequent yields some new article pondering what seems like the passing of a hyper-progressive ideological moment (see here and here, for example). Often these pieces refer to recent comments made by American politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who recently suggested to ABC News, with a laugh and a smile, that “Woke 1 was crazy.” Indeed. 

According the latest iteration of these post-mortems by Carlos Lozado in today’s New York Times, when Ocasio-Cortez made these comments, 

she became the most prominent progressive figure distancing herself, whether subtly or overtly, from what is known as wokeism—from the stringent positions on race, policing, gender, identity, social justice and language that constituted progressive orthodoxy over the past decade or so. Ideas once upheld in doctrinaire terms, with dissenters dismissed as lazy (do the work) or inhumane (you literally don’t want me to exist), are now treated as an embarrassing phase, the gawky formative years of cultural and political progressivism.

So, now what? Many are (rightly, I think) balking at Ocasio-Cortez’s attempt to just laugh off some of the excesses of the movement as “crazy.” We kind of got a little carried away, didn’t we? Well, yes, okay. But perhaps you might say a bit more about what you got wrong? And what changed your mind? Or if, in fact your mind has changed as opposed to this just being about political expediency? Lozado puts it bluntly but well, in my view:

If you can dismiss it so casually now—all the defunding and abolishing, the BIPOCing and Latinxing, the canceling and decentering and my truthing—how much of it did you truly believe at the time? How much was conviction, how much was a pose, how much was groupthink, how much was fear?…

Would Ocasio-Cortez not use the same rhetoric today because she no longer buys it—or because she can no longer sell it? 

Important questions, these. But I’m not optimistic they will ever be addressed satisfactorily. The ideological winds will continue to blow this way and that and this reaction to Woke 1 will have its predictable counter-reactions which will produce further reactions and reactions to the reactions forever and ever amen. Patient, rational, charitable analysis (of Woke 1 or any other issue or movement) doesn’t play well in the digital age. The algorithms don’t reward it. Outrage and purity tests and tribalism are far easier to monetize.

But enough about politics. What about the church? One of the things that has long grieved and frustrated me is that the church too easily slides into cultural grooves when it comes to these matters. Whether it’s Woke 1 on the left or MAGA on the right, the church far too often takes its cues from the culture wars and from political ideologies rather than from Jesus. And as someone who ministers in a more “progressive” (gosh, I dislike this word) denominational context, I often found (and find) myself feeling uncomfortable with how uncritically an embrace of Woke 1 seemed to be assumed in denominational settings. 

One of the things that troubled me from the very beginning of what is now being referred to as Woke 1 was not this or that protest movement or policy recommendation or abuse of language, it was the implicit theological anthropology it seemed to assume. There were good people (progressive people) and bad people (conservative people). Any reservations or questions or blurring of the issues that divided these two groups was suspicious. Social discourse was a sorting exercise. Are you clean or unclean? Do you embrace the right package of beliefs about the right issues or not?

(I pause here to add that conservatives have been [and are] equally adept and enthusiastic in their purity tests. The issues differ, the impulse does not.)

All of this seemed (and seems) crazy to me if only for the simple reason that one of my basic theological assumptions about human nature is that we are all prone to seeing and thinking in deeply self-interested ways. We all interpret reality in ways that are convenient for us, and we are profoundly social creatures who say and do things that will facilitate acceptance and belonging in larger groups. Thus has it been since Genesis 3, in the biblical narrative. We are all sinners in need of grace. Woke 1 (inside and outside the church) seemed (and seems) to forget this with alarming regularity. 

If I could pick two teachings of Jesus to chasten the last decade or so, they would both be from the Sermon on the Mount. First, I would pick Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus’ famous teaching on love of enemies. I would pick it mainly for these words:

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

In many ways, the last several decades of online life have pushed us into moralistic tribes where we love those who love us and stoke the flames of disdain for those who don’t. Jesus pushes against this tendency. Hard. Our love, as Christians, must reach beyond those who think like us and reinforce all of our own views.

The second would be a chapter later, Matthew 6:1:

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

Woke 1, inside and outside of the church, often seemed to be an exercise in practicing righteousness to be seen. We love to be seen as righteous. Again, Jesus pushes us in a different direction. Hard. He has little use for our purity tests and performances. Indeed, I suspect he sees them as toxic and corrosive to our souls.

I don’t know what comes next in the broader culture. Again, I suspect this course-correction will be temporary and we’ll soon be on to the next thing. The algorithms are too powerful and human nature is too predictable. We love to be outraged, we love to be part of a team, and we love to be (seen as) righteous. All the digital incentives push toward the polarized purity games that have defined the last decade.

I also don’t know what comes next in the church. As I have said, we are immune from neither algorithmic incentives nor human nature. I do desperately hope that in the church we can at least attempt to keep Jesus’ theological anthropology front and centre in the days ahead. I suspect it can be one of the many ways in which Jesus saves us.