Google defines woke thusly:
“Woke” generally means being aware of and actively attentive to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination. It’s often used to describe individuals who are conscious of systemic inequalities and advocate for change. The term has gained popularity in recent years and is frequently used in discussions about social justice movements and activism.
Merriam-Webster defines woke this way:
Woke is now defined in this dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English in the first half of the 20th century and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that decade it was also being applied by some as a general insult for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning.
Woke is a slang term that has made its way into the mainstream from some varieties of African American English. In AAE, awake is often rendered as woke, as in, “I was sleeping, but now I’m woke.”
Like many other terms from Black culture that have been adopted into the mainstream, woke has gained broader uses. Woke soon became associated with performative activism, with people often using the term mockingly or sarcastically to suggest insincerity about one’s expressed beliefs about social issues.
The disapproving sense of woke is today quite common, often used by politically conservative individuals to criticize people who are considered too politically liberal, especially in relation to issues of race and social justice.
Additional broader uses of woke include woke-washing and woke capitalism, with the former referring to the use of social movements by companies to increase sales while failing to actively contribute to social change or address these issues within their companies and the latter similarly being used to describe a company’s public support of and investment in social issues.
Woke-washing creates the appearance of intention without the substance of action. —Vern Howard, Forbes, 15 June 2021
Based on the aforementioned definitions, yes, I am woke. I am “actively attentive to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination.” My question then is this: why isn’t everyone woke? Shouldn’t all of us be “actively attentive to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination”?
President Donald Trump, his MAGA administration, and a MAGA congress are anti-woke. Of course, they are anti-woke concerning the woke strawman they have concocted in their minds. Most voting Evangelical Christians voted three times for Donald Trump. It is clear that most Evangelicals approve of Trump’s racist, bigoted, misogynistic, anti-children, anti-worker, anti-family, anti-LGBTQ, anti-environment, anti-global climate change, anti-vaccines, anti-science, Christian nationalist agenda. It’s impossible to square the MAGA agenda with the teachings of the Bible. Trump claims to be Christian, yet he shows no knowledge or understanding of the Bible. His actions reveal an opposition to the teachings of the Bible. The only thing Trump and most congressional Republicans care about is making the rich richer and making it easier for corporations to poison, maim, and kill us.
Go ahead and wear your red hat with a tee shirt that proudly says, 100% Anti-Woke. We will know that you are indifferent or hostile to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination. It is good for us to know who it is who doesn’t give a shit about his fellow human beings. But, don’t try to tell us you are followers of Jesus. The Bible condemns your behavior, as does Jesus himself.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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