To R. Sott Clark and Mary Harrington on Clark’s blogpost that extensively quotes Harrington’s article the she claims that Wokeness is a religion that is competing with Christianity for the minds and souls of the people. This appeared in Heidelblog
Unfortunately, what was cited above as well as the article it was cited from is nothing more than an ad hominem attack against wokeness. It speaks of wokeness as a monolith. It calls wokeness a religion without knowing what it means to each person what it means to be woke. The article seems to imply that wokeness is a significant awareness of leftist or liberal issues and concerns. And by calling it a religion, it is suppose to be a conversation stopper for religiously conservative Christians.
Thus religiously conservative Christians need not ask about the concerns of and observations made by those who are woke. And that is done on an a priori basis. Such implies an adequate level of innocence in the outgoing status quo. Thus, issues like climate change, systemic racism, ever increasing wealth disparity and the problems that come with it, as well as American Imperialism are dismissed with a wave of the hand by the same people who want unbelievers to listen seriously to the Gospel.
The concern of both Clark and Harrington, who is the author of the article from which Clark is quoting, is to reframe the culture war battle between religiously conservative Christianity with its conservative political and ideological commitments and liberal and leftists political and ideological tenets especially as it comes to currently addressed social justice issues. For what some might have thought as a battle between faith narratives of some pre-modernists vs the rational world view of modernists is in reality a faith vs faith king of the hill battle according to Clark and Harrington. And by portraying wokeness as a faith, it is meant to portray wokeness as one religious faith contending against the other. Thus, religiously conservative Christians would automatically turn a deaf ear to what would be considered to be a competitor to the Christian faith.
That begs the question of it being impossible to be both Christian and woke. Such associates Christianity with the outgoing status quo with all of its social injustice warts. And so the above serves as a sheepdog article to keep religiously conservative Christians in the conservative political and ideological fold. But why is it impossible to be both a faithful Christian and be woke? That is a question whose answer is assumed but while the question is never asked by Clark and Harrington.
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Aug 4
To Josh Buice and his blogpost on when it is necessary to not submit to the government. His article was primarily about when the Church should not submit because its activities are being infringed on. Josh speaks from a Reformed Theological perspective. This appeared in the Delivered By Grace blog.
The above article seems to indicate a self-absorption by some Christians when it comes to resisting the government. It starts with the 2nd paragraph:
However, it is quite possible for the government to become a burden for the church of Jesus—and at whatever point the ruling authorities demand something from God’s people that would cause us to actively or passively disobey God—we must obey God rather than man.
Basically, the article talks about when it is ok to not submit to the government. And most of the time, that occurs when the Church is infringed on. But how should the Church react when the government unjustly persecutes citizens in ways that does not require Church participation? Is it to not submit to the government then, as Martin Luther King Jr. and the part of the Civil Rights Movement that followed him did in part. They participated in peaceful civil disobedience.
Or should King have told his fellow black citizens that since the Church is not participating in the discrimination against blacks in society, the Church should just submit to the government and tell its black members to be spiritual Spartans for Christ?
See, this article's only indicator that social injustice is a reason to not obey the government is found in the example of the Hebrew midwives not killing male newborns. But everything else points to how the Church and its members are infringed on by the government.
The above seems to have justified rebellions here based in the pursuit of religious liberty. But didn't the Puritans persecute the Quakers with physical abuse and even martyring some of them? Did the Quakers have the right to resist them? Or was that something not worth mentioning?
And what about the right of slaves to rebel against their owners and our government back then? Wasn't their treatment far more horrendous than how the British treated the colonies?
And, btw, the militia wasn't formed to rebel against the government. Rather, the militia was formed to put down insurrections and invasions. Dependence on the militia, rather than a standing army, was thought to have a preventive effect on government tyranny. But that doesn't erase the fact that the militia was under the command of the President and was there to put down insurrections.
The above article seems reveal a certain self-absorption in that it justifies when one's own group rebels because its special concerns are infringed on, but there seems to be little interest in resisting the government for social justice issues affecting others. If the above article had a wider scope of concern for not submitting to the government, then why didn't speak to today's protests that oppose the systemic racism in our nation? Is the silence due to the fact that the Church is not required to participate in that injustice and thus the injustice is not an important enough issue?
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To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost that quotes a James Lindsay article claiming that promoters of Critical Social Justice Theory do not want to debate for a number of reasons. This appeared in Heidelblog.
What all the above points to is a fear of what neo-Marxism is saying. And, as often occurs, fear leads to all-or-nothing thinking. That kind of thinking says that one must accept or reject everything that neo-Marxism is saying. Such thinking is part and parcel to authoritarianism.
That we have oppressors and the oppressed is simply a confirmation of both depth of sin and the observation of man's inhumanity to man. We could easily add to that that groups could serve as both oppressors for it is not hard for those in oppressed groups to learn from their oppressors than from the experiences of being oppressed--to borrow the wording of a friend and fellow activist.
In America, it is not difficult to understand that Blacks have been oppressed throughout the history of their presence in the U.S. Native Americans have also been sorely oppressed as have others. Labor history in our nation points to past state oppression against workers who protested and went on strike for better conditions and pay. With the demise of unions since Reagan's attack on them, workers are becoming more and more subject to exploitation. Women in this nation did not have the right to vote until around 1920 and their status as 2nd class citizens went unchallenged until the late 1960s and early 1970s. And none of that includes the plight of the LGBT community in America. For homosexuality had been criminalized for most of the history of the US.
So while Lindsay presses an ad hominem attack a theory that attempts, however imperfectly, to show the continuity between those groups that have been oppressed for most of the history of the US, neither Lindsay nor Clark can find anything positive to say about Critical Social Justice Theory? Do Clark and Lindsay assume that there is no connection that different oppressed groups in America have?
Again, here, and in the article cited, we have the all-or-nothing thinking that exists in authoritarianism nothing here that no group has a monopoly on authoritarianism.
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