21. Church of Woke: Next American Religion?
- Author:
- Michael Vlahos
- Publication Date:
- 02-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Humanitas
- Institution:
- The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, Catholic University
- Abstract:
- What does it mean to be woke? First and foremost, “woke” is a religious signal that you have heard the Good News and Seen the Light. Awakening means both witnessing revealed truth and experiencing spiritual transformation. Today this has taken the form of a collective enunciation: Of a new national church, reformed and transformed, to replace the original American sect, which is wicked and corrupted. In simple, practical terms, the Church of Woke is pledged to the destruction of Racism, Patriarchy, and Heteronormativity. The original national religion—often called American Exceptionalism—and the Church of Woke are locked in a victory-or-death struggle. To understand this, two points are essential. First: America is a religion. American life and politics function in a religious milieu.[1] That should not surprise. In 1967, American sociologist Robert Bellah declared a national “civil religion”[2]—yet “civil religion” is a pleonasm. Greek “politics” and Roman “civil” both refer to the city, the national community of Antiquity. Hence today, in our national city, all citizens are part of an American religious congregation. Second, the full faith conversion of an empire is a transformation. Our distant past records just such a shift. 1700 years ago an entire civilization—the sacred world of the Greco-Roman Mundus[3]—was overthrown and replaced by something new. This transformation was the work of three generations, from 313-380. The first generation converted a Roman emperor who declared tolerance toward Christians. The second marched steadily toward the persecution of “pagans.” In the third generation there was a counter-coup by the apostate emperor Julian. He failed. What followed was the total proscription of all pagans (or Hellénikos). Likewise, the Church of Woke has began its Long March to transform American life in the mid-1960s. Like Christianity, it has burrowed deeply into elite society and the institutions of state power. Now we are locked in a culminating phase. The third generation of Woke—true to Late Roman antecedents—must cast down the Pantheon of American Exceptionalism, of Founders and Heroes, establishing a new divine order that will wash away America’s sins[4] of Racism, Patriarchy, and Heteronormativity. What follows puts Late Antiquity and Today’s world side-by-side. The reason to do this is compelling. Simply, we are facing a potential civilizational discontinuity.
- Topic:
- Religion, Culture, Racism, Heteronormativity, and Patriarchy
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America