Being Woke (November 2022)
Dear Friends
One of the things that I’ve been mulling over is the idea of being “woke.” The ever-present insights of Wikipedia tell me that this often-thrown-about term is: “an English adjective meaning ‘alert to racial prejudice and discrimination’ that originated in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism…”
Recently, a group of young British Christian theologians published Young, Woke and Christian: Words from a Missing Generation (SCM Press, 2022). The editor, Victoria Turner, is a URC member and PhD student in Edinburgh. One of the contributors, Alex Clare Young, is a URC minister in Cambridge and trained with us whilst I was at Westminster College. Their work has gained, already, quite a response. They have deliberately chosen to align themselves with this alertness to issues of social justice as they play out across multiple arguments around race, sexuality, identity, class, gender, immigration, disability and more.
The bit I’ve been thinking about is the way in which “being woke” seems to be used as a way of decrying and denying. Saying someone is woke is sometimes used as a way to insult and dismiss them; their beliefs are irrelevant because they are being unreasonable or they are seeking public attention without good cause. I remember similar things being said about “political correctness” when that was a term bandied about. Like anything, taken to extremes, I’m sure the attitudes that political correctness and being woke can become almost an idol; every word and action is scrutinised so intensely that normal communication and community falls apart out of fear of offence or perceived offence.
But surely it is a fundamental to common decency that we stay alert to prejudice and discrimination and seek to counter them? And it is certainly deeply woven into Christian thought that we should do so, as our young theologians powerfully demonstrate.
Rather than being an insult, being woke seems to me in many ways simply to describe what should be deeply normal; a goodness towards everyone that starts with accepting the inherent dignity and worth of every human being. If God has created all of us in God’s image, then our worth and dignity is never a human invention but a divine gift. Keeping a close eye upon when, where and how these divine gifts get trampled or endangered is never a silly nuisance but a fundamental act of faith it seems to me.
I think, for example, of how much I take for granted my right to walk down the street without someone laughing at me or shouting abuse at me. When I lived for two years in Taiwan I was regularly laughed at and shouted at in public as a tall foreigner, especially in the less westernised places I visited. At the South Western Synod meeting on 15th October we watched a challenging and haunting video created by black and minority ethnic members of the URC describing their regular experiences of racism on our streets and, sometimes, within our churches. Given the reality of such denials of dignity, how can we not respond? The URC is keen to be not just a denomination in which racism, sexism and all the other ways of shoving some people aside or holding them back are officially denounced. Through multiple resolutions and working parties, we show we wish to actively counter these forces by diligently working for a better world and a more inclusive community and church. We declare ourselves to be actively anti-racist, for example.
I can’t pretend any longer to be young. I know that. But I pray I will always be a Christian. And I pray that I will always be woke.
Every prayer and blessing as we head towards the Advent and Christmas season together; a season in which God chooses to join in with our hurting world to save it, a woke God saving a wounded world.
Yours in Christ,
Neil