“White people should be less white.”
“Whiteness is white supremacy.”
“Silence is violence.”
“You can never overcome your racism.”
You’ve heard these baffling views—but do you know where they come from?
The “wokeness” that emerged from the social unrest of 2020 has swept through schools, businesses, and even sports. Driven by the radical ideologies of Critical Race Theory and intersectionality, it has destabilized public and private life—including the Church.
Many evangelicals have joined the crusade. Gripped by a desire for justice and rightly grieved by past evils like slavery, many pastors are preaching the woke gospel—identifying “whiteness” (an imaginary concept) with “white supremacy,” calling bewildered Christians to repent of their supposed guilt for the sins of past generations.
But as theologian Owen Strachan makes clear, this is not true justice, nor is it true Christianity. While wokeness employs biblical vocabulary and concepts, it is an alternative religion, far from Christianity in both its methods and its fruit. A potent blend of racism, paganism, and grievance, wokeness encourages “partiality” and undermines the unifying work of the Holy Spirit. It is not simply not the Gospel; it is anti-Gospel.
As Strachan traces the origins of wokeness, lays out its premises, and follows them to their logical conclusions, the contrast of that false faith with the Word of God stands out unmistakably. This succinct but groundbreaking work reveals that wokeness, like other heresies, is not really new. Nor is the antidote: Christ crucified for us.
About the Author
Dr. Owen Strachan is the director of the Center for Public Theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he daily equips Christians to think well about the Word and the world. The author of nineteen books and host of the City of God podcast, he is a prominent cultural commentator and in-demand speaker around the globe.
Biography
Owen Strachan is associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and serves as a senior fellow of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. In addition to being a contributing writer for the Gospel Coalition, he has written for The Atlantic, the Washington Post, OnFaith, First Things, Christianity Today, The Federalist, and the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology. Owen also regularly speaks to media outlets, including FOX News, the Hugh Hewitt Show, and the Eric Metaxas Show, and works as a research fellow of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is married and is the father of three children.
Connect with Owen on Facebook (@OwenDStrachan) and Twitter (@OwenStrachan).
