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Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel - and the Way to Stop It
“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 Christ crucified for us.
“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 Christ crucified for us.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published July 20, 2021
207 people are currently reading
1505 people want to read
About the author
Owen Strachan
44 books139 followersDr. Owen Strachan is Provost and Research Professor of Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary (GBTS). Before coming to GBTS, he served as Associate Professor of Christian Theology and Director of the Residency PhD Program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS). He holds a PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, an MDiv from Southern Seminary, and an AB from Bowdoin College. Strachan has published fourteen books and writes regularly for the Christian Post, and Thoughtlife, his Patheos blog. Strachan hosts the
City of God
podcast. He is married and is the father of three children.
You can also connect with Strachan on Facebook.
You can also connect with Strachan on Facebook.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 164 reviews
July 16, 2021
absolutely not
September 15, 2021
Should be titled "Christianity and Straw Man Arguments" and be max 30 pages with how much he repeats the same points.
April 23, 2022
Short version: This book is trash and Strachan should feel bad that he wrote it.
Long version: Strachan is skilled at many things, none of which make a good book. He is excellent at repeating the same thing over and over to fill up space. He is quite good at using various logical fallacies, such as strawmans and red herrings. He is a pro at lying with and about data. But most importantly, he is truly gifted at sowing division and hatred within the Christian church.
He is excellent at repeating the same thing over and over to fill up space
You'd think that someone with a PhD in theology would be able to write a halfway interesting book, but no. Strachan is a terrible writer. Most of his book is just him repeating the same lies over and over again, rephrasing them in slightly different ways to try and deceive the reader into believing he actually has ideas. It reminded me of what I did in middle school to reach the word limit on an essay. If I was a teacher grading his book, I would give him an F for that alone.
He is quite good at using various logical fallacies, such as strawmans and red herrings
But wait, there's more! His book is thoroughly disorganized. He claims that "CRT and woke culture" are anti-Christian, but he never actually establishes any good arguments. Instead, he invents definitions for well-established words and concepts. Strachan could have just opened up a Merriam-Webster dictionary, but apparently facts don't agree with his worldview, so he has to resort to rubbing his two brain cells together in order to make up some pitiful excuse for definitions.
Of course, that hardly matters when all of his arguments eventually devolve into him insulting anyone who isn't as extreme as he is. He seems to love calling people Marxist, woke, liberal, leftist, anti-Christian, etc in various combinations to get his point across that anyone he disagrees with is bad, so we should be mean to them. It felt like Strachan was acting like the playground bully, throwing out all the "bad words" he heard from his parents in hopes that one of them would eventually hurt someone's ego.
He is a pro at lying with and about data
Strachan is a PhD theologist, which means that he's written countless essays, dissertations, and books, yet somehow he still can't use data and sources correctly. When he was arguing that racism doesn't exist, I started checking his sources. to my surprise not only did his sources disagree with him, many very explicitly said their data showed that racism is prevalent in today's society. Strachan had to read through all of the data proving racism exists, then cherry pick the one graph or number that he could twist to say the opposite. In short, he lied to his readers. He knew when researching that the facts contradicted him, so he lied about the facts. No PhD theologist or Christian should ever do that.
He is truly gifted at sowing division and hatred within the Christian church
Instead of thoughtful discussion, I found lies, crude insults, and poor writing heaped together like trash dumped in a landfill. He makes bad faith pleas for unity, then turns around and says that anyone who even talks about oppression is "woke" and should be considered anti-Christian. He doesn't want unity, or peace, or justice. He wants everyone to agree with his extremist views, or be persecuted. Don't read this book unless you want to see how far right-wing Christians have fallen.
Long version: Strachan is skilled at many things, none of which make a good book. He is excellent at repeating the same thing over and over to fill up space. He is quite good at using various logical fallacies, such as strawmans and red herrings. He is a pro at lying with and about data. But most importantly, he is truly gifted at sowing division and hatred within the Christian church.
He is excellent at repeating the same thing over and over to fill up space
You'd think that someone with a PhD in theology would be able to write a halfway interesting book, but no. Strachan is a terrible writer. Most of his book is just him repeating the same lies over and over again, rephrasing them in slightly different ways to try and deceive the reader into believing he actually has ideas. It reminded me of what I did in middle school to reach the word limit on an essay. If I was a teacher grading his book, I would give him an F for that alone.
He is quite good at using various logical fallacies, such as strawmans and red herrings
But wait, there's more! His book is thoroughly disorganized. He claims that "CRT and woke culture" are anti-Christian, but he never actually establishes any good arguments. Instead, he invents definitions for well-established words and concepts. Strachan could have just opened up a Merriam-Webster dictionary, but apparently facts don't agree with his worldview, so he has to resort to rubbing his two brain cells together in order to make up some pitiful excuse for definitions.
Of course, that hardly matters when all of his arguments eventually devolve into him insulting anyone who isn't as extreme as he is. He seems to love calling people Marxist, woke, liberal, leftist, anti-Christian, etc in various combinations to get his point across that anyone he disagrees with is bad, so we should be mean to them. It felt like Strachan was acting like the playground bully, throwing out all the "bad words" he heard from his parents in hopes that one of them would eventually hurt someone's ego.
He is a pro at lying with and about data
Strachan is a PhD theologist, which means that he's written countless essays, dissertations, and books, yet somehow he still can't use data and sources correctly. When he was arguing that racism doesn't exist, I started checking his sources. to my surprise not only did his sources disagree with him, many very explicitly said their data showed that racism is prevalent in today's society. Strachan had to read through all of the data proving racism exists, then cherry pick the one graph or number that he could twist to say the opposite. In short, he lied to his readers. He knew when researching that the facts contradicted him, so he lied about the facts. No PhD theologist or Christian should ever do that.
He is truly gifted at sowing division and hatred within the Christian church
Instead of thoughtful discussion, I found lies, crude insults, and poor writing heaped together like trash dumped in a landfill. He makes bad faith pleas for unity, then turns around and says that anyone who even talks about oppression is "woke" and should be considered anti-Christian. He doesn't want unity, or peace, or justice. He wants everyone to agree with his extremist views, or be persecuted. Don't read this book unless you want to see how far right-wing Christians have fallen.
June 26, 2021
I have been excited for this book for months. I was able to get on the prerelease team so I could read it before it came out. Between this and Voddie Baucham’s book Faultlines believers have no reason to be surprised by our current cultural thoughts on race nor should they not be thoroughly equipped to respond. I liked Dr. Strachen’s posture in this book. It is clear his love for the Bible and for his fellow man as he weaves a clear explanation of what “wokeness” is and how to think Biblically about it. Highly recommended
July 29, 2021
There's been something of an explosion of books on social justice and Critical Theory written from a Christian perspective over the last couple of years. This has been a welcome development, because what Owen Strachan calls "Wokeness" has rapidly infiltrated the church and the church has, for lack of a better phrase, been caught with its pants down. Many Christians have been overwhelmed by social justice ideology to the point that they have accepted it, and are now in a full endeavor to syncretize it with Christianity (an effort that must ultimately end in apostasy or a return to orthodoxy). Other Christians have hesitated to accept the new dogmata, but have found themselves unarmed for the battles that they have encountered. For these Christians, the proliferating literature against popular ideologies has been a godsend, literally.
But despite their many virtues, these books have tended to suffer from a common limitation, namely the lack of a sophisticated understanding of both the theological and the philosophical/empirical/cultural problems with woke ideology. This has not necessarily been due limitations of the authors, as each book has had its unique focus. But it has resulted in some question going unanswered, or receiving only partial treatment. For that reason, Christianity and Wokeness is a unique book, because Strachan combines a withering theological argument with a perceptive understanding of the broader social movement in support of and opposition to Wokeness.
What comes through most clearly in Strachan's writing is that Wokeness - by which he means primarily Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality - is at once an attempt to address a problem using completely ineffective means and an ideology bent on nothing less than the total reconstitution of society. To the extent that Wokeness is a sincere attempt to address a problem, it has shown no capacity for accurately understanding it. What it offers in the way of moral fervor and condescension is completely out of scale with its ability to answer empirical and theoretical challenges. The people who believe that in embracing Wokeness they are fighting against injustice may be sincere, but sincerity not infrequently leads to inaccuracy. As Thomas Sowell observed, "People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority," and this kind of hubris has a blinding effect that is all too clear today.
Which leaves us, then, with Wokeness as an ideology, and while it is true that its ultimate goal is the replacement of one culture with another, Strachan correctly notes that it is also subversive to the Gospel and, ultimately, is a replacement religion. While making great show of taking racism and bigotry (what Strachan calls the "sin of partiality") away with one hand, Wokeness adds it back with the other, claiming that an inverted partiality is not partiality at all. It locates sinfulness not in the human heart, as proper Christian anthropology does, but in particular skin tones and ethnic backgrounds. It subverts the unity of humanity, created in the image of God, and of the Church, identified in the work of Christ. And while Strachan doesn't hit certain points of the "Wokeness as religion" argument as hard as Joshua Mitchell does in American Awakening, and Mark T. Mitchell does in Power and Purity, the point is sufficiently made: Christianity and Wokeness cannot coexist.
All this said, there are a few points that could have benefited from further exposition, and at a mere 210 pages of text, there was room to do it. But even so, Strachan has rendered a tremendous service to his fellow Christians. Wokeness is a poison in the body politic, and in the body of Christ, and the sooner both realize it, the more quickly we'll be able to address the actual problems facing our societies, and our churches.
But despite their many virtues, these books have tended to suffer from a common limitation, namely the lack of a sophisticated understanding of both the theological and the philosophical/empirical/cultural problems with woke ideology. This has not necessarily been due limitations of the authors, as each book has had its unique focus. But it has resulted in some question going unanswered, or receiving only partial treatment. For that reason, Christianity and Wokeness is a unique book, because Strachan combines a withering theological argument with a perceptive understanding of the broader social movement in support of and opposition to Wokeness.
What comes through most clearly in Strachan's writing is that Wokeness - by which he means primarily Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality - is at once an attempt to address a problem using completely ineffective means and an ideology bent on nothing less than the total reconstitution of society. To the extent that Wokeness is a sincere attempt to address a problem, it has shown no capacity for accurately understanding it. What it offers in the way of moral fervor and condescension is completely out of scale with its ability to answer empirical and theoretical challenges. The people who believe that in embracing Wokeness they are fighting against injustice may be sincere, but sincerity not infrequently leads to inaccuracy. As Thomas Sowell observed, "People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority," and this kind of hubris has a blinding effect that is all too clear today.
Which leaves us, then, with Wokeness as an ideology, and while it is true that its ultimate goal is the replacement of one culture with another, Strachan correctly notes that it is also subversive to the Gospel and, ultimately, is a replacement religion. While making great show of taking racism and bigotry (what Strachan calls the "sin of partiality") away with one hand, Wokeness adds it back with the other, claiming that an inverted partiality is not partiality at all. It locates sinfulness not in the human heart, as proper Christian anthropology does, but in particular skin tones and ethnic backgrounds. It subverts the unity of humanity, created in the image of God, and of the Church, identified in the work of Christ. And while Strachan doesn't hit certain points of the "Wokeness as religion" argument as hard as Joshua Mitchell does in American Awakening, and Mark T. Mitchell does in Power and Purity, the point is sufficiently made: Christianity and Wokeness cannot coexist.
All this said, there are a few points that could have benefited from further exposition, and at a mere 210 pages of text, there was room to do it. But even so, Strachan has rendered a tremendous service to his fellow Christians. Wokeness is a poison in the body politic, and in the body of Christ, and the sooner both realize it, the more quickly we'll be able to address the actual problems facing our societies, and our churches.
August 30, 2021
A cynical and transparent straw man. I'm sure that the author thinks he's harmlessly lining his pockets by squeezing a few dollars out of whipping naive, narrow-minded, zealous conservatives into hate-filled fervour. However, these books are actively dangerous. This book would fit nicely alongside a copy of Mein Kampf - like a complementary pairing.
April 23, 2022
I thought that Christians who didn’t believe (or take actions) that systemic racism existed were just ignorant and part of the silent majority, the “white moderate” as MLK wrote about in his letter from Birmingham Jail. However, this book revealed to me the terrifying reality that many fundamentalist Christians are not just apathetic towards the need for racial reconciliation, but aggressively antagonistic towards it. This man, theology professor and all, dares to say that not only is systemic racism not a problem Christians should concern themselves with (he goes so far as to argue repeatedly that it doesn't exist), but the real “evil” is the satanic influence of CRT based “wokeness” that is not even Christianity according to his fundamentalist worldview.
The entire book is filled with a condescending tone based in fear, white fragility, and demonizing the other side. The irony is that he consistently contradicts himself and tries to demonize that woke Christians are "causing the disunity" all while he himself is using hyper masculine war language to say that the fundamentalist Christians must go to war against woke Christians. Who is the one promoting disunity in the name of "unity"? And who is the one merely bringing up the reality that we are already disunited due to our segregated churches and we should instead strive to reconcile?
All in all, my husband and I read this book trying to understand what the other perspectives on this issue are. Unfortunately, we came away even more depressed that there are some people so unwilling to hear the truths and reality of our sinful selves and sinful systems that they double down on harmful perspectives that hurt the church and diminish our witness to a broken world. I am quite shocked at how extreme, unloving, lacking compassion, judgmental, and hypocritical this book is. This is not acceptable for a man who calls himself a Christian yet fails to love his neighbor.
This book is going on my shelf-of-shame bookshelf as a highly harmful book. 1 star.
Here are just a few highlights (I could have written a book filled with these) on some of the specifics:
- Logical fallacies of strawman, either/or, red herrings, and moving the goal posts are prevalent on just about every page.
- He claims that “Wokeness is frankly a very difficult issue—one of the toughest the Church has faced in the last three hundred years.” What about the prosperity gospel, slavery, desegregation of churches during the civil rights era, and gender roles? Surely the prosperity gospel is more of a threat since it outright rejects basic core tenets? But no, Stratchan is convinced that woke Christianity is not Christianity at all, a large burden of proof that he never manages to go about proving."As we make plain in the following chapters, wokeness is not a prism by which we discover truths we couldn’t see in a Christian worldview. Wokeness is a different system entirely than Christianity. It is, in fact, “a different gospel.” But it is not just that. In the final evaluation, wokeness is not just not the Gospel. Wokeness is anti-Gospel."
- He never accurately defines what CRT is, instead he makes up his own definition strawman arguments about how CRT is marxist and anti-gospel (insert a dozen other inflammatory terms). He uses the either/or fallacy by saying that because CRT didn’t originate in the Bible, it’s anti-gospel. He fails to acknowledge that the core components of CRT can be redeemed to fit comfortably in the gospel. Furthermore, a lot of the applications of CRT within the gospel worldview look a lot like Jesus. In the first two chapters he centers not on Jesus, but on evangelical culture and the "dangers of CRT and wokeness," without any true supporting arguments. He says “these things are anti gospel” but he has no arguments for why they aren’t, just that they came from “the secular world.” That’s not even an argument, let alone a convincing one. He gets into details in the third chapter, but that’s a lot of pages of just trying to rile up his audience to see CRT and wokeness as the enemy to everything they hold dear. It’s a heavy fear-mongering strategy.
- He implies that all “systems” outside Christianity are wrong and the only “true system” is Christianity. First of all, Christianity is not a system but a faith, a religion, a doctrine and worldview. Secondly, isn’t it the job of Christianity to critique outside systems with a Christian worldview and the potential exists for redeeming outside worldviews or systems of thought with our own? Does he think that’s not outside the realm of possibilities? He seems to think in a narrow, black and white focus of “secular” vs. “Christian.” But that’s so dangerous when the two get lumped together like how we see Christians worship their political party as if it were God’s direct will.
- He lumps all “woke” churches and people and views into one very large category and does not articulate the nuanced differences between different views or beliefs.
- He uses very few Bible passages to support his supposedly “biblical foundation.” And the few he uses are regularly cherry picked, out of context, and/or lacking context. It’s like he never took a single class on proper exegesis even though he’s a theology professor. That’s either very sad or very shameful (or both?) given his position of spiritual authority. He often uses his cherry picked bible verses to harshly condemn anyone without his viewpoints and treats those Christians as threats to the very gospel. He uses the Bible as a weapon to judge people who disagree with him.
- He never defines “the gospel.” He frequently says there is a difference between “social justice” and “biblical justice” but never articulates what those differences are.
- He uses “unity” as coded language for “stop speaking out against injustice. You’re destroying the unity of the church.”
- He is fundamentalist and extreme to the point of cult-like behavior. If you believe in CRT based views on social justice, he thinks the church should follow Matthew 18’s rules and saying if they person doesn’t “repent” they should be ex-communicated and kicked out of the church. This is misinterpreting Matthew 18, which is used for personal sin against another brother or sister, and misapplying it to the context of the church discipling and essentially shutting down any discussion or different viewpoints on minor doctrines by cult-like behavior. In other words, church members who believe CRT, wokeness, and intersectionality are important ideas to pursue as a believer, are worthy of exiling from the church entirely in an “effort to preserve unity and the gospel.”
- He subscribes to a very ignorant “color blind” viewpoint, where race is just a construct, therefore let’s not talk about it ever. The problem with that viewpoint is it not only denies opportunities to celebrate unique diversity, but it also inherently assumes that because “race isn’t real,” racism also isn’t real. He is using this way of thinking to deny that systemic racism exists and minimize very real oppression. The irony is he uses the imago Dei doctrine to try to say that we should be color blind.
- He regularly oversimplifies wokeness. He thinks that wokeness believes that “all white people are wicked and racist because they are white.” He then concludes by tearing down his straw man argument by saying and I quote, “There is no biblical word that indicates that ‘whiteness’ is wicked.” That’s his deeply extreme fundamentalism coming out, ignoring the racism of the Egyptians against the Jews, the constant struggle throughout the Old Testament between nations and races and oppressors and the oppressed. Has he not read the book of Isaiah? Does he really think that he can misrepresent liberal Christians by saying that they believe that whites are especially wicked, and then says it’s wrong because it’s not spelled out in the Bible for him when the concept of whiteness didn’t even exist in the biblical world? This guy just doesn’t seem to have the brain power or will to talk about complex issues in nuanced terms.
- His arguments on why white people aren’t racist is filled with red herring logical fallacies. He first says that whiteness is not wicked and it doesn’t exist. Then he starts ranting about how different white peoples are. They have different heritages, they have different political positions, they have different religions. He uses these red herrings to try and distract the reader from the possibility that even though whites are a diverse group of people, they still benefit from the majority culture and white privileges. Being a white democrat or an Irish Catholic doesn’t disqualify you from benefiting from systemic racism. But that’s right, Owen repeatedly denies that systemic racism exists. 🤦🏻♀️
- One of his arguments in the book is like a toddler’s response to conflict: shifting the blame in an easy “no you are!” sort of way. He literally says that in trying to be antiracist we are showing discrimination. In a word: reverse racism. By caring about the oppressed he thinks we show partiality to the oppressed and thus become racist (even though he repeatedly insists race and racism doesn’t exist). “Showing favoritism, even to a suffering group, is repeatedly denounced throughout Scripture (Exodus 23:3; Leviticus 19:15; James 2:1, 9) because it contradicts the very character of God (Romans 2:11).”
- His argument for why we shouldn’t group people into the oppressors and the oppressed is that the only two categories are saved and unsaved. I have deep problems with this approach because it denies any other identities and qualities about us as humans, and because it’s used as a weapon to delegitimize suffering, oppressed groups of people. And it’s just plain unbiblical. No where in scripture do we hear that we should view people solely based on these two categories and plenty of scripture groups people according to being outcasts in society, who were oppressed by their corrupt governments.
- He frequently minimizes the destruction that the racial caste system in the US caused, such that he entirely denies that any remnants of our racial hierarchy still exists. This is utterly wrong from every sociologist, anthropologist, and historian. He says, “various people with “white” skin did create and benefit from a “racial” hierarchy in the American past.” He can’t bring himself to deny that lynching and terrorism against blacks and racist structures were in place, but he can say that they are in the past and we are beyond that now. What a sneaky way to perpetuate racism. Also based on an original sin worldview, it’s just contradictory to not acknowledge that humanity can never move beyond our sinful governments on this side of heaven.
- Owen’s incredibly individualistic view denies all existence of collective power. He says that a group of individuals cannot be considered oppressors because they have individual sin. But what about sinful people building corrupt systems that are rigged? What about the collective power of majority culture? He says that’s unbiblical because each person is an individual and is either fallen in Adam or redeemed in Christ. That argument doesn’t even address collective power, how convenient for him. He routinely sidesteps these nuances because they don’t contribute to his strawman arguments.
- One of his strawman arguments goes like this: CRT came from Marxism, not the Bible. Therefore it’s not Christian; therefore people who hold to these viewpoints are likely not Christians. It’s incredibly judgmental of him to assume this. He literally writes, “Yet you cannot embrace an un-Christian worldview and end up a Christian disciple.”
- As someone who believes what he is calling “unbiblical and unchristian” it’s incredibly offensive to me how often he misrepresents the viewpoints with outright lies. Maybe only a third of what he says about the other side is an accurate representation but the other two-thirds is straight up garbage. In one section in chapter 3 he says that wokeness needs white people to help black people and then goes on to say how problematic this is by breeding dependence but that’s the opposite of what we believe. We believe in white allies, yes, but we believe that white savior complex is another form of racism.
- He rarely if ever directly quotes from the Old Testament and never introduces or even hints at the cultural contexts of the Bible.
- He never once uses the word sanctification. Instead he assumes that because woke Christians focus on social justice that they are somehow adding and subtracting to the gospel. He thinks we think the gospel isn’t enough until we repent of our “whiteness.” When in reality, racial reconciliation is an expression of the gospel and part of our sanctification journey as a Christian; we continually look to Jesus to become more like Him. I think it’s telling that he only focuses on salvation, as if social justice somehow is incompatible with the gospel. He ignores literally all of the book of James which says our faith without works is dead.
- He consistently minimizes sin. He speaks of sin in such generic terms and he disparages true lament that I wonder if he has ever truly been broken over his own sin or the sin of the world. The only sin that he does emphasize is the sin of homosexuality which shows his homophobia and his wrongful interpretation of Romans chapter 1 that homosexuality is somehow “worse” than other sins. So when you have an author only talking about “all those sinners” without admitting his own deep failing to measure up to God, he just ends up sounding highly judgmental and hypocritical. He pays lip service to “justice” without naming one specific injustice that the Christian should care about. And the injustice that woke Christians care about he claims don’t exist. So yeah, it’s kind of hard to believe that he actually believes that love and compassion should be an expression of the gospel he so aggressively tries to defend.
- Our conversion through Christ’s grace guaranteed our salvation but it did not perfect our sanctification. He seems to conflate these two as one and the same in trying to deconstruct work theology. He says that wokeness attributes guilt to those who are complicit in systemic racism and then sees that as antithetical to the gospel because Jesus paid the price for our guilt. Does he disagree then with the book of Romans? Does he not think that Christians are still capable of deeply rooted sin even after our conversion? I have big problems with his “only the gospel rhetoric” that leaves out sanctification entirely.
- Lastly, Strachan straight out lies when he mentions the "facts" of racism in America. He quotes from an article that is actually saying that there are severe inequality in pay and quality of work between minority and majority groups of people, but instead of reading the article he literally cherry picked a single chart in the article (halfway through the article) that taken out of context supported his view. Those types of data based egregious research lies are unaccepted in any academic circle, so why are they being accepted and passed through to publication with a so-called theology professor who is considered an "academic"?
More Quotes:
- “We want unity, after all—unity in the truth of Jesus Christ and His apostles. In terms of personal friends and church members, we must follow the steps of discipline per Matthew 18:15–20 on these matters, even as we publicly confront those teaching unbiblical ideas in a broader sense. While we pray this action will not end in formal separation—we hope for repentance early on in the Matthew 18 process—church discipline is indeed the outcome faced by those who cling to divisive and ungodly ideology. Though it will pain us greatly, excommunication must be enacted for those who, after going through the Matthew 18 steps, do not repent of teaching CRT, wokeness, and intersectionality.“
- “the fundamentalists didn’t fight nearly enough. They lost, and lost, and lost some more. They lost their churches, they lost their seminaries, they lost their missions agencies, they lost their parachurch organizations, and they kept on losing until there was very nearly nothing else left to lose. They lost to one group in aggregate: liberals (modernists).“
- “No, we are one human race, our identity grounded in being made in God’s image, but beautifully diverse from this essential starting point. Wokeness denies all this. It fundamentally emphasizes not human oneness, but human diversity—and diversity without any meaningful hope of unity.“
- “This means that though “race” is a fiction, woke leaders act as if it is real. Their strategy is cynical and unfounded. We should reject it. Instead of denying human oneness and amplifying human diversity so that we have no meaningful unity, Christians need to amplify human oneness and celebrate Godgiven diversity. We are not many “races,” but we are all made by God.”
The entire book is filled with a condescending tone based in fear, white fragility, and demonizing the other side. The irony is that he consistently contradicts himself and tries to demonize that woke Christians are "causing the disunity" all while he himself is using hyper masculine war language to say that the fundamentalist Christians must go to war against woke Christians. Who is the one promoting disunity in the name of "unity"? And who is the one merely bringing up the reality that we are already disunited due to our segregated churches and we should instead strive to reconcile?
All in all, my husband and I read this book trying to understand what the other perspectives on this issue are. Unfortunately, we came away even more depressed that there are some people so unwilling to hear the truths and reality of our sinful selves and sinful systems that they double down on harmful perspectives that hurt the church and diminish our witness to a broken world. I am quite shocked at how extreme, unloving, lacking compassion, judgmental, and hypocritical this book is. This is not acceptable for a man who calls himself a Christian yet fails to love his neighbor.
This book is going on my shelf-of-shame bookshelf as a highly harmful book. 1 star.
Here are just a few highlights (I could have written a book filled with these) on some of the specifics:
- Logical fallacies of strawman, either/or, red herrings, and moving the goal posts are prevalent on just about every page.
- He claims that “Wokeness is frankly a very difficult issue—one of the toughest the Church has faced in the last three hundred years.” What about the prosperity gospel, slavery, desegregation of churches during the civil rights era, and gender roles? Surely the prosperity gospel is more of a threat since it outright rejects basic core tenets? But no, Stratchan is convinced that woke Christianity is not Christianity at all, a large burden of proof that he never manages to go about proving."As we make plain in the following chapters, wokeness is not a prism by which we discover truths we couldn’t see in a Christian worldview. Wokeness is a different system entirely than Christianity. It is, in fact, “a different gospel.” But it is not just that. In the final evaluation, wokeness is not just not the Gospel. Wokeness is anti-Gospel."
- He never accurately defines what CRT is, instead he makes up his own definition strawman arguments about how CRT is marxist and anti-gospel (insert a dozen other inflammatory terms). He uses the either/or fallacy by saying that because CRT didn’t originate in the Bible, it’s anti-gospel. He fails to acknowledge that the core components of CRT can be redeemed to fit comfortably in the gospel. Furthermore, a lot of the applications of CRT within the gospel worldview look a lot like Jesus. In the first two chapters he centers not on Jesus, but on evangelical culture and the "dangers of CRT and wokeness," without any true supporting arguments. He says “these things are anti gospel” but he has no arguments for why they aren’t, just that they came from “the secular world.” That’s not even an argument, let alone a convincing one. He gets into details in the third chapter, but that’s a lot of pages of just trying to rile up his audience to see CRT and wokeness as the enemy to everything they hold dear. It’s a heavy fear-mongering strategy.
- He implies that all “systems” outside Christianity are wrong and the only “true system” is Christianity. First of all, Christianity is not a system but a faith, a religion, a doctrine and worldview. Secondly, isn’t it the job of Christianity to critique outside systems with a Christian worldview and the potential exists for redeeming outside worldviews or systems of thought with our own? Does he think that’s not outside the realm of possibilities? He seems to think in a narrow, black and white focus of “secular” vs. “Christian.” But that’s so dangerous when the two get lumped together like how we see Christians worship their political party as if it were God’s direct will.
- He lumps all “woke” churches and people and views into one very large category and does not articulate the nuanced differences between different views or beliefs.
- He uses very few Bible passages to support his supposedly “biblical foundation.” And the few he uses are regularly cherry picked, out of context, and/or lacking context. It’s like he never took a single class on proper exegesis even though he’s a theology professor. That’s either very sad or very shameful (or both?) given his position of spiritual authority. He often uses his cherry picked bible verses to harshly condemn anyone without his viewpoints and treats those Christians as threats to the very gospel. He uses the Bible as a weapon to judge people who disagree with him.
- He never defines “the gospel.” He frequently says there is a difference between “social justice” and “biblical justice” but never articulates what those differences are.
- He uses “unity” as coded language for “stop speaking out against injustice. You’re destroying the unity of the church.”
- He is fundamentalist and extreme to the point of cult-like behavior. If you believe in CRT based views on social justice, he thinks the church should follow Matthew 18’s rules and saying if they person doesn’t “repent” they should be ex-communicated and kicked out of the church. This is misinterpreting Matthew 18, which is used for personal sin against another brother or sister, and misapplying it to the context of the church discipling and essentially shutting down any discussion or different viewpoints on minor doctrines by cult-like behavior. In other words, church members who believe CRT, wokeness, and intersectionality are important ideas to pursue as a believer, are worthy of exiling from the church entirely in an “effort to preserve unity and the gospel.”
- He subscribes to a very ignorant “color blind” viewpoint, where race is just a construct, therefore let’s not talk about it ever. The problem with that viewpoint is it not only denies opportunities to celebrate unique diversity, but it also inherently assumes that because “race isn’t real,” racism also isn’t real. He is using this way of thinking to deny that systemic racism exists and minimize very real oppression. The irony is he uses the imago Dei doctrine to try to say that we should be color blind.
- He regularly oversimplifies wokeness. He thinks that wokeness believes that “all white people are wicked and racist because they are white.” He then concludes by tearing down his straw man argument by saying and I quote, “There is no biblical word that indicates that ‘whiteness’ is wicked.” That’s his deeply extreme fundamentalism coming out, ignoring the racism of the Egyptians against the Jews, the constant struggle throughout the Old Testament between nations and races and oppressors and the oppressed. Has he not read the book of Isaiah? Does he really think that he can misrepresent liberal Christians by saying that they believe that whites are especially wicked, and then says it’s wrong because it’s not spelled out in the Bible for him when the concept of whiteness didn’t even exist in the biblical world? This guy just doesn’t seem to have the brain power or will to talk about complex issues in nuanced terms.
- His arguments on why white people aren’t racist is filled with red herring logical fallacies. He first says that whiteness is not wicked and it doesn’t exist. Then he starts ranting about how different white peoples are. They have different heritages, they have different political positions, they have different religions. He uses these red herrings to try and distract the reader from the possibility that even though whites are a diverse group of people, they still benefit from the majority culture and white privileges. Being a white democrat or an Irish Catholic doesn’t disqualify you from benefiting from systemic racism. But that’s right, Owen repeatedly denies that systemic racism exists. 🤦🏻♀️
- One of his arguments in the book is like a toddler’s response to conflict: shifting the blame in an easy “no you are!” sort of way. He literally says that in trying to be antiracist we are showing discrimination. In a word: reverse racism. By caring about the oppressed he thinks we show partiality to the oppressed and thus become racist (even though he repeatedly insists race and racism doesn’t exist). “Showing favoritism, even to a suffering group, is repeatedly denounced throughout Scripture (Exodus 23:3; Leviticus 19:15; James 2:1, 9) because it contradicts the very character of God (Romans 2:11).”
- His argument for why we shouldn’t group people into the oppressors and the oppressed is that the only two categories are saved and unsaved. I have deep problems with this approach because it denies any other identities and qualities about us as humans, and because it’s used as a weapon to delegitimize suffering, oppressed groups of people. And it’s just plain unbiblical. No where in scripture do we hear that we should view people solely based on these two categories and plenty of scripture groups people according to being outcasts in society, who were oppressed by their corrupt governments.
- He frequently minimizes the destruction that the racial caste system in the US caused, such that he entirely denies that any remnants of our racial hierarchy still exists. This is utterly wrong from every sociologist, anthropologist, and historian. He says, “various people with “white” skin did create and benefit from a “racial” hierarchy in the American past.” He can’t bring himself to deny that lynching and terrorism against blacks and racist structures were in place, but he can say that they are in the past and we are beyond that now. What a sneaky way to perpetuate racism. Also based on an original sin worldview, it’s just contradictory to not acknowledge that humanity can never move beyond our sinful governments on this side of heaven.
- Owen’s incredibly individualistic view denies all existence of collective power. He says that a group of individuals cannot be considered oppressors because they have individual sin. But what about sinful people building corrupt systems that are rigged? What about the collective power of majority culture? He says that’s unbiblical because each person is an individual and is either fallen in Adam or redeemed in Christ. That argument doesn’t even address collective power, how convenient for him. He routinely sidesteps these nuances because they don’t contribute to his strawman arguments.
- One of his strawman arguments goes like this: CRT came from Marxism, not the Bible. Therefore it’s not Christian; therefore people who hold to these viewpoints are likely not Christians. It’s incredibly judgmental of him to assume this. He literally writes, “Yet you cannot embrace an un-Christian worldview and end up a Christian disciple.”
- As someone who believes what he is calling “unbiblical and unchristian” it’s incredibly offensive to me how often he misrepresents the viewpoints with outright lies. Maybe only a third of what he says about the other side is an accurate representation but the other two-thirds is straight up garbage. In one section in chapter 3 he says that wokeness needs white people to help black people and then goes on to say how problematic this is by breeding dependence but that’s the opposite of what we believe. We believe in white allies, yes, but we believe that white savior complex is another form of racism.
- He rarely if ever directly quotes from the Old Testament and never introduces or even hints at the cultural contexts of the Bible.
- He never once uses the word sanctification. Instead he assumes that because woke Christians focus on social justice that they are somehow adding and subtracting to the gospel. He thinks we think the gospel isn’t enough until we repent of our “whiteness.” When in reality, racial reconciliation is an expression of the gospel and part of our sanctification journey as a Christian; we continually look to Jesus to become more like Him. I think it’s telling that he only focuses on salvation, as if social justice somehow is incompatible with the gospel. He ignores literally all of the book of James which says our faith without works is dead.
- He consistently minimizes sin. He speaks of sin in such generic terms and he disparages true lament that I wonder if he has ever truly been broken over his own sin or the sin of the world. The only sin that he does emphasize is the sin of homosexuality which shows his homophobia and his wrongful interpretation of Romans chapter 1 that homosexuality is somehow “worse” than other sins. So when you have an author only talking about “all those sinners” without admitting his own deep failing to measure up to God, he just ends up sounding highly judgmental and hypocritical. He pays lip service to “justice” without naming one specific injustice that the Christian should care about. And the injustice that woke Christians care about he claims don’t exist. So yeah, it’s kind of hard to believe that he actually believes that love and compassion should be an expression of the gospel he so aggressively tries to defend.
- Our conversion through Christ’s grace guaranteed our salvation but it did not perfect our sanctification. He seems to conflate these two as one and the same in trying to deconstruct work theology. He says that wokeness attributes guilt to those who are complicit in systemic racism and then sees that as antithetical to the gospel because Jesus paid the price for our guilt. Does he disagree then with the book of Romans? Does he not think that Christians are still capable of deeply rooted sin even after our conversion? I have big problems with his “only the gospel rhetoric” that leaves out sanctification entirely.
- Lastly, Strachan straight out lies when he mentions the "facts" of racism in America. He quotes from an article that is actually saying that there are severe inequality in pay and quality of work between minority and majority groups of people, but instead of reading the article he literally cherry picked a single chart in the article (halfway through the article) that taken out of context supported his view. Those types of data based egregious research lies are unaccepted in any academic circle, so why are they being accepted and passed through to publication with a so-called theology professor who is considered an "academic"?
More Quotes:
- “We want unity, after all—unity in the truth of Jesus Christ and His apostles. In terms of personal friends and church members, we must follow the steps of discipline per Matthew 18:15–20 on these matters, even as we publicly confront those teaching unbiblical ideas in a broader sense. While we pray this action will not end in formal separation—we hope for repentance early on in the Matthew 18 process—church discipline is indeed the outcome faced by those who cling to divisive and ungodly ideology. Though it will pain us greatly, excommunication must be enacted for those who, after going through the Matthew 18 steps, do not repent of teaching CRT, wokeness, and intersectionality.“
- “the fundamentalists didn’t fight nearly enough. They lost, and lost, and lost some more. They lost their churches, they lost their seminaries, they lost their missions agencies, they lost their parachurch organizations, and they kept on losing until there was very nearly nothing else left to lose. They lost to one group in aggregate: liberals (modernists).“
- “No, we are one human race, our identity grounded in being made in God’s image, but beautifully diverse from this essential starting point. Wokeness denies all this. It fundamentally emphasizes not human oneness, but human diversity—and diversity without any meaningful hope of unity.“
- “This means that though “race” is a fiction, woke leaders act as if it is real. Their strategy is cynical and unfounded. We should reject it. Instead of denying human oneness and amplifying human diversity so that we have no meaningful unity, Christians need to amplify human oneness and celebrate Godgiven diversity. We are not many “races,” but we are all made by God.”
August 27, 2021
There is an undercurrent of individualism and capitalism that undergirds this book. The main thesis appears to be, "Don't you dare try to make me feel guilty for something I didn't do." There is so much to this conversation that was left out. And I have many swirling thoughts as I stop and reflect. For now, I'll focus on this:
I came away from this book feeling very sad. I was angry and frustrated for most of it. But by the end I was just sad. In the last chapter, Owen Strachan addresses the question, "Say I Believe That CRT and Wokeness Aren't Sound. What Exactly Do You Suggest I Do Practically to Work for Unity in the Church and Broader Society?" These are his suggestions:
- First, be a happy and unitive member of a local church.
- Second, be salt and light
- Third, stand up against woke utopianism
- Fourth, if needed, make the necessary hard decision to leave a compromised church
- Fifth, protect and help your children
- Sixth, pray for good to come in the Church and beyond.
At first, I was looking forward to some practical advice. That was missing throughout this book, and from similar books and resources I've come across lately. And I was tracking with him for the first two, but it went downhill fast for me. from there. (Yes, he suggests we pray, which I can't agree with more. I think it should have been Step 1.) What made me most sad was his suggestion to leave what he would call a compromised church. Now, I understand there are reasons to leave a local congregation. And if God calls you to another congregation, you should follow and go. But I immediately thought of the current #LeaveLoud movement. Some black Christians are leaving predominantly white churches and denominations, and they are being encouraged to do so. And again, I'm not judging those specific decisions and the struggles that have brought many of my brothers and sisters to that point. What makes me sad is to observe that this is where we are as a Church in America- talking over each other, talking at each other, talking about each other, and then leaving local congregations, so now we aren't talking at all.
In John 17, Jesus prayed that we would be one, as He and the Father are one, so that the world would know that the Father sent Jesus and that the Father loves us. I really want to read a book about that.
O, Father, make us one, so that the world may know You sent Jesus and that You love us.
I came away from this book feeling very sad. I was angry and frustrated for most of it. But by the end I was just sad. In the last chapter, Owen Strachan addresses the question, "Say I Believe That CRT and Wokeness Aren't Sound. What Exactly Do You Suggest I Do Practically to Work for Unity in the Church and Broader Society?" These are his suggestions:
- First, be a happy and unitive member of a local church.
- Second, be salt and light
- Third, stand up against woke utopianism
- Fourth, if needed, make the necessary hard decision to leave a compromised church
- Fifth, protect and help your children
- Sixth, pray for good to come in the Church and beyond.
At first, I was looking forward to some practical advice. That was missing throughout this book, and from similar books and resources I've come across lately. And I was tracking with him for the first two, but it went downhill fast for me. from there. (Yes, he suggests we pray, which I can't agree with more. I think it should have been Step 1.) What made me most sad was his suggestion to leave what he would call a compromised church. Now, I understand there are reasons to leave a local congregation. And if God calls you to another congregation, you should follow and go. But I immediately thought of the current #LeaveLoud movement. Some black Christians are leaving predominantly white churches and denominations, and they are being encouraged to do so. And again, I'm not judging those specific decisions and the struggles that have brought many of my brothers and sisters to that point. What makes me sad is to observe that this is where we are as a Church in America- talking over each other, talking at each other, talking about each other, and then leaving local congregations, so now we aren't talking at all.
In John 17, Jesus prayed that we would be one, as He and the Father are one, so that the world would know that the Father sent Jesus and that the Father loves us. I really want to read a book about that.
O, Father, make us one, so that the world may know You sent Jesus and that You love us.
June 1, 2021
Excellent book. Strachan covers some of the same ground that can be found in Baucham's Faultlines or David Scott Allen's Why Social Justice is not Biblical Justice, however, Strachan deals more extensively with Biblical response. Rather than just defining the issues, he explains the issues and then provides several thoughtful chapters addressing these topics from the Scriptures. I am grateful for Strachan's approach and highly recommend this book.
August 5, 2021
Strachan self-consciously named this book after Gresham Machen's book "Christianity and Liberalism." Machen, of course, regarded "liberalism" as another religion, and Strachan argues the same for "Wokeness."
There are seven chapters to the book, each with descriptive titles showing the thesis of the book. First is "How Wokeness is Entering the Culture." He first defines what "wokeness" is not. This is helpful, because it is too easy to dismiss certain ideas or beliefs as "woke". He then defines "wokeness" as:
being "awake to the true nature of the world when so many are asleep. In the most specific terms, this means one sees the comprehensive inequity of our social order and strives to highlight power structures in society that stem from racial privilege." p. 8
Strachan then goes on to argue that "wokeness" is entering the culture through Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, anti-racism, and all the attendant ideologies.
The next chapter is "How Wokeness is Entering the Church." He highlights Michelle Higgins' speech at Urbana 2015 as a pivotal moment, when a major Christian organization platformed wokeness. But it didn't start there. Strachan lists "Five Influential Woke Christian Books" that have been influential within the church, largely because they were given voice by many well-known teachers. He summarizes the ideas and influence of each of the books, and then gives a brief mention of James Cone, who has been very influential as well, despite being outside of orthodoxy.
After outlining the history of wokeness within the church, he articulates "Four Different Responses among Evangelicals to Wokeness." First are the "non-woke", followed by the "confused and undecided", "the engaged yet cautious pro-woke", and finally "the convinced and commited pro-woke." p. 47 This is a particularly instructive pastoral portion of the book. He argues that Christians should not be "woke" but shows a desire to bring each of the other three groups into the "non-woke" group.
Chapters three and four are the heart of the book, "Why is Wokeness an Ungodly System" in two parts. He unmasks the godless principles underlying the ideology. The first problem is that wokeness "tweaks the doctrine of humanity". Essentially, rather than understanding all men as being made in the image of God, wokeness views men through the human construct of race. Second, it goes beyond even that, by creating the construct of "whiteness" and then leveraging these divisions which "foments the very sin it presumes to critique." p. 66 All are then treated "as 'oppressors' and 'oppressed' due to skin color and power dynamics." This then "traps us in a cycle of anger and victimhood." Wokeness also "gives approval to evil--both in the public square and in rejecting God's design for the sexes." And finally, "wokeness overturns the Gospel's 'no condemnation in Christ' promise." These are simply the headings of each section, but the argumentation is biblical and persuasive.
Chapters three and four are the heart of the book, and make the book a must-read. Chapters five and six are reminders of what the Bible teaches in regards to "identity and ethnicity". There is little new here, but in an age when we've abandoned what God's Word says about these topics, in favor of what the world teaches, it is necessary to restate it.
The final chapter, seven, is "Hard Questions on American History and Other Hot Topics." This was a helpful section refuting some of the questions and arguments that have led some astray.
Overall "Christianity and Wokeness" is an outstanding, biblical critique of the false religion of Wokeness. Strachan is very clear that it is a false gospel that must be destroyed.
"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ..." 2 Corinthians 10:5
There are seven chapters to the book, each with descriptive titles showing the thesis of the book. First is "How Wokeness is Entering the Culture." He first defines what "wokeness" is not. This is helpful, because it is too easy to dismiss certain ideas or beliefs as "woke". He then defines "wokeness" as:
being "awake to the true nature of the world when so many are asleep. In the most specific terms, this means one sees the comprehensive inequity of our social order and strives to highlight power structures in society that stem from racial privilege." p. 8
Strachan then goes on to argue that "wokeness" is entering the culture through Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, anti-racism, and all the attendant ideologies.
The next chapter is "How Wokeness is Entering the Church." He highlights Michelle Higgins' speech at Urbana 2015 as a pivotal moment, when a major Christian organization platformed wokeness. But it didn't start there. Strachan lists "Five Influential Woke Christian Books" that have been influential within the church, largely because they were given voice by many well-known teachers. He summarizes the ideas and influence of each of the books, and then gives a brief mention of James Cone, who has been very influential as well, despite being outside of orthodoxy.
After outlining the history of wokeness within the church, he articulates "Four Different Responses among Evangelicals to Wokeness." First are the "non-woke", followed by the "confused and undecided", "the engaged yet cautious pro-woke", and finally "the convinced and commited pro-woke." p. 47 This is a particularly instructive pastoral portion of the book. He argues that Christians should not be "woke" but shows a desire to bring each of the other three groups into the "non-woke" group.
Chapters three and four are the heart of the book, "Why is Wokeness an Ungodly System" in two parts. He unmasks the godless principles underlying the ideology. The first problem is that wokeness "tweaks the doctrine of humanity". Essentially, rather than understanding all men as being made in the image of God, wokeness views men through the human construct of race. Second, it goes beyond even that, by creating the construct of "whiteness" and then leveraging these divisions which "foments the very sin it presumes to critique." p. 66 All are then treated "as 'oppressors' and 'oppressed' due to skin color and power dynamics." This then "traps us in a cycle of anger and victimhood." Wokeness also "gives approval to evil--both in the public square and in rejecting God's design for the sexes." And finally, "wokeness overturns the Gospel's 'no condemnation in Christ' promise." These are simply the headings of each section, but the argumentation is biblical and persuasive.
Chapters three and four are the heart of the book, and make the book a must-read. Chapters five and six are reminders of what the Bible teaches in regards to "identity and ethnicity". There is little new here, but in an age when we've abandoned what God's Word says about these topics, in favor of what the world teaches, it is necessary to restate it.
The final chapter, seven, is "Hard Questions on American History and Other Hot Topics." This was a helpful section refuting some of the questions and arguments that have led some astray.
Overall "Christianity and Wokeness" is an outstanding, biblical critique of the false religion of Wokeness. Strachan is very clear that it is a false gospel that must be destroyed.
"We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ..." 2 Corinthians 10:5
July 17, 2021
In “Christianity and Wokeness,” Owen Strachan provides the church with a much-needed resource. Christians are being challenged daily to take up the mantle of “wokeness” and “social justice” as a mandatory requirement of preaching the gospel, but should they be doing so? Owen Strachan pulls back the curtain to help Christians see exactly what “wokeness” is and why it is antithetical to biblical truth.
Strachan spends two chapters explaining what wokeness is and how it has infiltrated society at large and the church specifically. He then takes the time to break down the tenets of wokeness, drawing from the primary sources themselves. Contrasting these teachings with Scripture, he demonstrates that wokeness is an ungodly ideology that is wholly incompatible with the teachings of Scripture.
Strachan then takes his readers through a biblical analysis of identity and ethnicity as it is revealed in God’s Word. He provides the church with biblical answers as to who and what man truly is, the nature of sin (including partiality and ethnic hatred), and points to the only possible solution between God and men, the gospel.
“Christianity and Wokeness” is a great resource for Christians and the church. In a time when so many are trying to use the world’s definitions to explain equality, fairness, justice and love, Christians need to be reminded that God has already defined them in the Scriptures. “Christianity and Wokeness” will equip Christians to not only understand the issues at hand but to respond biblically when the world demands they acquiesce to their demands. I highly recommend this text to Christians and churches everywhere.
Strachan spends two chapters explaining what wokeness is and how it has infiltrated society at large and the church specifically. He then takes the time to break down the tenets of wokeness, drawing from the primary sources themselves. Contrasting these teachings with Scripture, he demonstrates that wokeness is an ungodly ideology that is wholly incompatible with the teachings of Scripture.
Strachan then takes his readers through a biblical analysis of identity and ethnicity as it is revealed in God’s Word. He provides the church with biblical answers as to who and what man truly is, the nature of sin (including partiality and ethnic hatred), and points to the only possible solution between God and men, the gospel.
“Christianity and Wokeness” is a great resource for Christians and the church. In a time when so many are trying to use the world’s definitions to explain equality, fairness, justice and love, Christians need to be reminded that God has already defined them in the Scriptures. “Christianity and Wokeness” will equip Christians to not only understand the issues at hand but to respond biblically when the world demands they acquiesce to their demands. I highly recommend this text to Christians and churches everywhere.
July 27, 2021
Little Red Riding Hood may have been a bit slow on the uptake, but even she knew that thing wearing Grandma’s clothes wasn’t Grandma.
Today’s wolves wear clothes they call ‘justice,’
but underneath is the Marxist-fueled divisiveness of
Critical Race Theory. “My, what big oppressors you have!”
For those rightly interested in keeping wolves out of the house, Strachan has given us an honest, unflinching look at the deceptions and discrepancies that Critical Race Theory is founded on, and how they are completely incompatible with Christianity. A well-written, much-needed resource for recognizing and resisting the predatory ideology of our day.
Today’s wolves wear clothes they call ‘justice,’
but underneath is the Marxist-fueled divisiveness of
Critical Race Theory. “My, what big oppressors you have!”
For those rightly interested in keeping wolves out of the house, Strachan has given us an honest, unflinching look at the deceptions and discrepancies that Critical Race Theory is founded on, and how they are completely incompatible with Christianity. A well-written, much-needed resource for recognizing and resisting the predatory ideology of our day.
April 21, 2022
I've read several books on the topic of "wokeness" and so far this is at the top. The strength of this book is its clarity and fidelity to the Biblical text. Strachan's book examines the ideology of wokeness from a Christian perspective and raises strong objections that must be dealt with by seminaries, churches, and leaders who are both sympathetic and advocates of wokeism.
A helpful primer on wokeness (the ideology where one is awakened to the invisible race-based injustices that pervade American culture) and a strong biblical response to this divisive ideology.
A helpful primer on wokeness (the ideology where one is awakened to the invisible race-based injustices that pervade American culture) and a strong biblical response to this divisive ideology.
January 23, 2022
Hands down, this is the best book I’ve read yet, handling this subject. It is clear, well thought, and deeply biblical. For some reason, in my own opinion of course, the title suggest a bit harsher treatment than the book actually is. In fact, it’s actually the total opposite. The book is well reasoned, calm, and, again, it’s just clear. Which is more than most people can say about nearly any controversial topic these days. Whether you’re a Christian or not, I highly, highly recommend this book.
May 28, 2022
Really fun to read this while also reading Miller’s Racism in the United States and Sue’s Counseling the Culturally Diverse for my grad program (both written from the perspective Owen is claiming to critique). It seems like he purposefully misrepresents and willfully misunderstands anti-racism, CRT, and intersectionality—especially as these relate to Christianity. Which is unfortunate, considering the title.
January 12, 2022
When Strachan is not busy hating women so much he adopts a christological heresy, he writes a misinformed book on critical race theory that is indistinguishable from something you’d find on Infowars.
November 11, 2021
A good and important book.
November 7, 2021
"See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ." - The Apostle Paul
Nice introduction from Owen Strachan on the relationship between Christianity and the themes around CRT that have been dominating the news headlines and culture wars quite noticeably for the last ten years or so (though its roots are obviously older). The book pretty much sums up where I'm at on this at the moment, which is to say there wasn't a single bit in the book that I disagreed with or that I hadn't considered. I found myself the whole way going, "Yea, pretty much."
However, I'm not content to park the issue there, and will get to reading the five books he makes particular note of, especially Mason's and Tisby's. I want to understand where the other side is coming from a little more, because at the moment I simply just do not get it. It currently seems that all of the hysteria around buzzwords like 'whiteness,' 'white privilege,' 'oppression,' 'systematic racism,' 'microagression,' 'antiracism,' 'white fragility,' etc. from people in support of the woke stuff make major category errors and are ignoring a lot of data that blatantly contradicts their points. But surely it's coming from somewhere reasonable? I don't know, but I genuinely do want to understand better.
So yea, a good book: it sums up where I'm at, but would be keen to dig deeper.
"Man talks much about justice, but he knows not of what he speaks."
- Owen Strachan
Nice introduction from Owen Strachan on the relationship between Christianity and the themes around CRT that have been dominating the news headlines and culture wars quite noticeably for the last ten years or so (though its roots are obviously older). The book pretty much sums up where I'm at on this at the moment, which is to say there wasn't a single bit in the book that I disagreed with or that I hadn't considered. I found myself the whole way going, "Yea, pretty much."
However, I'm not content to park the issue there, and will get to reading the five books he makes particular note of, especially Mason's and Tisby's. I want to understand where the other side is coming from a little more, because at the moment I simply just do not get it. It currently seems that all of the hysteria around buzzwords like 'whiteness,' 'white privilege,' 'oppression,' 'systematic racism,' 'microagression,' 'antiracism,' 'white fragility,' etc. from people in support of the woke stuff make major category errors and are ignoring a lot of data that blatantly contradicts their points. But surely it's coming from somewhere reasonable? I don't know, but I genuinely do want to understand better.
So yea, a good book: it sums up where I'm at, but would be keen to dig deeper.
"Man talks much about justice, but he knows not of what he speaks."
- Owen Strachan
October 21, 2021
Although, for me, this book didn't fully answer the question of HOW the social justice movement is hijacking the gospel, it did help me think through some of the theological and cultural issues of the movement. I read this piece after reading Carl Truman's, Histories and Fallacies, so I was overly skeptical of HOW Strauchan was making his case vs. the content. I'm sure a second read-through would help me see some things I missed in my first reading.
I valued Chapter 4 and the reminder that "...believers are not a people of fuzzy generalities and sloppy thinking. We are a people of truth. The truth is so strong that it sets us free (John 8:32)." (p. 114). The wokeness seeping into the church today is just the tip of the iceberg in our culture of pervasive pragmatism that twists truth into something vague and subjective.
I valued Chapter 4 and the reminder that "...believers are not a people of fuzzy generalities and sloppy thinking. We are a people of truth. The truth is so strong that it sets us free (John 8:32)." (p. 114). The wokeness seeping into the church today is just the tip of the iceberg in our culture of pervasive pragmatism that twists truth into something vague and subjective.
August 9, 2021
Check out the highlights and notes for more information.
March 28, 2022
I read this twice back to back so I didn’t miss anything. I guess the book is well written but the content is beyond dangerous.
I read this as a counterpoint to Subversive Witness and was surprised to see that some of the same Biblical examples were used to make the opposite points. This author used the Hellenistic Widows story in Acts to basically say that the Church has a model to deal with inequality. Yet he wrote a book saying there is no problem to deal with because the Church has it all figured it out. Maybe if we spent time listening to the feelings of our modern Hellenistic Widows we might conclude the way the early church did and adjust their policies. Instead we have a book written to tell us ABSOLUTELY NOT to follow the early church’s example because it will ruin the modern church. 🤦♂️
Let’s play a version of Pascal’s wager here….
Which view does the least damage to Christianity and to humanity in general?
1. Judgement of anything new, dismissal of grievances, name calling and generally a classist, western view of Christianity.
Or
2. An inclusive view of ideas and grievances that we humbly receive and reflect upon and then upon reflection corporally seek forgiveness and make restitution in order to openly love our brothers and sisters.
I’m picking option 2 each time because that is the Church I’d want to belong to and that Jesus modeled for us.
This book is damaging heresy and should be read to understand so we know the half truths, poorly researched, and obtuse cultural biases that many people believe.
Please don’t judge Christians based on this book. We love more than this shows and we want you to visit our churches and show you we can be better than this book.
I read this as a counterpoint to Subversive Witness and was surprised to see that some of the same Biblical examples were used to make the opposite points. This author used the Hellenistic Widows story in Acts to basically say that the Church has a model to deal with inequality. Yet he wrote a book saying there is no problem to deal with because the Church has it all figured it out. Maybe if we spent time listening to the feelings of our modern Hellenistic Widows we might conclude the way the early church did and adjust their policies. Instead we have a book written to tell us ABSOLUTELY NOT to follow the early church’s example because it will ruin the modern church. 🤦♂️
Let’s play a version of Pascal’s wager here….
Which view does the least damage to Christianity and to humanity in general?
1. Judgement of anything new, dismissal of grievances, name calling and generally a classist, western view of Christianity.
Or
2. An inclusive view of ideas and grievances that we humbly receive and reflect upon and then upon reflection corporally seek forgiveness and make restitution in order to openly love our brothers and sisters.
I’m picking option 2 each time because that is the Church I’d want to belong to and that Jesus modeled for us.
This book is damaging heresy and should be read to understand so we know the half truths, poorly researched, and obtuse cultural biases that many people believe.
Please don’t judge Christians based on this book. We love more than this shows and we want you to visit our churches and show you we can be better than this book.
August 26, 2021
This book, coupled with Voddie Baucham's book, make a solid foundation for any Christian, especially for pastors. Please read both!
November 17, 2021
Having read a fair amount about CT, CSJ, CLS, CRT, etc., over past few years, much of the background explanation was not necessarily new. However, Strachan does approach the issue from a distinct perspective by noting how "wokeness" is an emerging "neo-pagan" religion. As such, he spends most of his time on the soteriological heresies that arise from wakens. If you want a more straightforward explanation of the CRT or refutations of it, Strachan recommends a fair amount of resources. The third quarter of the book is more or less a summary of the Biblical anthropology from his book "Reenchanting Humanity".
Unlike most of the material being put out to address woke-ism, Strachan does not simply put forward an intellectual critique but proposes practical measures for pushing back. He suggests applying the Matthew 18 process of church discipline to vocal proponent of wokeness, whom he (rightly) describes as "false teachers" in the hopes that God will restore them. He also admonishes believers to, in the word of Jude's epistle, "have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh." Engage with them so as so rescue them, not destroy them.
Would highly recommend for someone new to the subject.
Unlike most of the material being put out to address woke-ism, Strachan does not simply put forward an intellectual critique but proposes practical measures for pushing back. He suggests applying the Matthew 18 process of church discipline to vocal proponent of wokeness, whom he (rightly) describes as "false teachers" in the hopes that God will restore them. He also admonishes believers to, in the word of Jude's epistle, "have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh." Engage with them so as so rescue them, not destroy them.
Would highly recommend for someone new to the subject.
August 23, 2022
Let's talk power tools:
I take Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self to be Milwaukee on this issue. Professional grade. The best.
Voddie Baucham's Fault Lines is something like the DeWalt version. It was the first favorite. It still deals with the topic seriously from its academic roots, yet, the common man can take it up and see where these things impact the common man.
Strachan's book is the Craftsman of the bunch. Accessible. Dealing foremost with the popular level manifestations in a popular way. Worth your time no matter how many better tools you may own. Very good, save for that one place that EFS reared its head, but hey, no tool is perfect.
All good tools for breaking down that which is not simply an analytical tool.
I take Trueman's The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self to be Milwaukee on this issue. Professional grade. The best.
Voddie Baucham's Fault Lines is something like the DeWalt version. It was the first favorite. It still deals with the topic seriously from its academic roots, yet, the common man can take it up and see where these things impact the common man.
Strachan's book is the Craftsman of the bunch. Accessible. Dealing foremost with the popular level manifestations in a popular way. Worth your time no matter how many better tools you may own. Very good, save for that one place that EFS reared its head, but hey, no tool is perfect.
All good tools for breaking down that which is not simply an analytical tool.
February 18, 2022
I’m currently working on a lengthy review.
For now I’ll say that there is much truth in this book but ultimately Dr. Owen Strachan’s 200+ pages aren’t helpful for Christians seeking to hold fast to the truth once for all delivered to the saints as we deal with how to live a life of humble repentance amidst a society which celebrated racism and white supremacy for 400 years. As my own pastor so eloquently reminds us, “We are not in a culture war; we are on a rescue mission.” This book contributes more to a culture war mentality than to a missionary one, even as the author appears to be attempting the opposite.
A much more extensive review is in the works…
For now I’ll say that there is much truth in this book but ultimately Dr. Owen Strachan’s 200+ pages aren’t helpful for Christians seeking to hold fast to the truth once for all delivered to the saints as we deal with how to live a life of humble repentance amidst a society which celebrated racism and white supremacy for 400 years. As my own pastor so eloquently reminds us, “We are not in a culture war; we are on a rescue mission.” This book contributes more to a culture war mentality than to a missionary one, even as the author appears to be attempting the opposite.
A much more extensive review is in the works…
September 25, 2023
Very informative! I thought the book was easy to follow and the author was thorough in his research. The concept of wokeness was clearly defined and the Christian response was unashamedly defended.
March 5, 2022
Too simplistic and contradictory. I agree with a lot of what he says but portions where I don't / he's too simplistic makes it hard. Also I get the sense that he sets up strawman arguments.
April 22, 2022
3 stars [Humanism]
(W: 2.24, U: 3.07, T: 3.17)
Exact rating: 2.83
Strachan attempts, 98 years after J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, to write a parallel book about a parallel corruption of Christianity. Positive and negative elements mix together to rate a low 3 stars.
The narrative voice is humble, not mindless dismissal of an opposing side. It is also thorough—not merely tearing down the opponent's case, but finely crafting the Christian framework as the positive case.
Other good elements were his defense of race being unreal, a social construct (his one point of agreement with CRT; he also rightly puts quotation marks around all instantiations of "race"), and an unbiblical category (while nevertheless defending ethnicity, diversity, and cultural riches); some historical context of the 1920s; poetry and quotations; and the fact that Strachan preaches the gospel. He also helpfully names names of those who contributed philosophically to Wokeness. This would have raised the Use score much higher if the book had not gotten so bogged down in details and repetition.
A minor, recurring, negative element was his plugging of personal, secondary theologies where they seemed awkward, such as Calvinism, Complementarianism, and expository preaching. Of more gravity was his seeming anathematization of anyone preaching CRT, intersectionality, or wokeness. Even though he went so far as to describe several levels of indoctrination into this ideology, he did not seem to leave room for the possibility that someone in Level 3 or maybe 4 could be saved. It is far less likely, but it is still possible.
For that axiomatic reason, the genre of the book is Polemics (Humanism), not Ecclesiology. Whereas Voddie Baucham approached Marxist theory in an Ecclesiological vector, Strachan mirrors J. Gresham Machen's vector of treating it as inherently outside. Despite all Strachan's welcome nuance, this seemed the overarching frame of it.
Takeaway
Therefore, one should read Strachan's book if one is focused or invested in the newest counterfeit gospel (in contrast to a "false gospel"). If one is a more casual reader, Baucham's Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe is a better choice. If one does wish to engage recent polemic against Humanism, Alisa Childers did a better job with her Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity.
_______
//W lexical 3 (3.5 minus 1/4 for some thesaurus-listing and minus 1/4 for being a bit wooden), syntactic 2.25 (3 for turns of phrase, 1.5 for very frequent caveating), semantic 3.5, linearity and organization 2.25, pacing 2.5 (2.25 to 2.75), dynamism 2.67 (2.5 to 2.83), register 3
//T 3.17 (3 to 3.5 = 3.25, with bits of 2)
(W: 2.24, U: 3.07, T: 3.17)
Exact rating: 2.83
Strachan attempts, 98 years after J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, to write a parallel book about a parallel corruption of Christianity. Positive and negative elements mix together to rate a low 3 stars.
The narrative voice is humble, not mindless dismissal of an opposing side. It is also thorough—not merely tearing down the opponent's case, but finely crafting the Christian framework as the positive case.
Other good elements were his defense of race being unreal, a social construct (his one point of agreement with CRT; he also rightly puts quotation marks around all instantiations of "race"), and an unbiblical category (while nevertheless defending ethnicity, diversity, and cultural riches); some historical context of the 1920s; poetry and quotations; and the fact that Strachan preaches the gospel. He also helpfully names names of those who contributed philosophically to Wokeness. This would have raised the Use score much higher if the book had not gotten so bogged down in details and repetition.
A minor, recurring, negative element was his plugging of personal, secondary theologies where they seemed awkward, such as Calvinism, Complementarianism, and expository preaching. Of more gravity was his seeming anathematization of anyone preaching CRT, intersectionality, or wokeness. Even though he went so far as to describe several levels of indoctrination into this ideology, he did not seem to leave room for the possibility that someone in Level 3 or maybe 4 could be saved. It is far less likely, but it is still possible.
For that axiomatic reason, the genre of the book is Polemics (Humanism), not Ecclesiology. Whereas Voddie Baucham approached Marxist theory in an Ecclesiological vector, Strachan mirrors J. Gresham Machen's vector of treating it as inherently outside. Despite all Strachan's welcome nuance, this seemed the overarching frame of it.
Takeaway
Therefore, one should read Strachan's book if one is focused or invested in the newest counterfeit gospel (in contrast to a "false gospel"). If one is a more casual reader, Baucham's Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe is a better choice. If one does wish to engage recent polemic against Humanism, Alisa Childers did a better job with her Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity.
_______
//W lexical 3 (3.5 minus 1/4 for some thesaurus-listing and minus 1/4 for being a bit wooden), syntactic 2.25 (3 for turns of phrase, 1.5 for very frequent caveating), semantic 3.5, linearity and organization 2.25, pacing 2.5 (2.25 to 2.75), dynamism 2.67 (2.5 to 2.83), register 3
//T 3.17 (3 to 3.5 = 3.25, with bits of 2)
February 24, 2022
Christianity and Wokeness by Owen Strachan and Fault Lines by Voddie Baucham are important books for evangelical Christians grappling with the social justice movement. Beyond the topic, they share many similarities, including the impact of Critical Social Justice (Baucham’s term)/Wokeness (Strachan’s term) on the evangelical church; how it compares and contrasts with Biblical justice; the concerns they identify; and the bold but well-supported conclusions they draw.
Other than their shared faith, the authors approach the topic from two very different, diverse backgrounds and life experiences, and they address it in unique ways as well (Baucham from boots-on-the-ground life as a black man in the U.S. and Zambia, along with pastoral experience; Strachan from a more academically rigorous university perspective).
I appreciated that both authors took pains to deal with the social justice movement on its own terms — that is, to avoid creating and challenging a straw man, but instead researching and citing extensive material from the proponents of its views (both historical roots and contemporary manifestations) in order to understand how the movement and its various advocates characterize themselves.
I highly recommend these books for the faithful Christian who believes and desires to live by the whole counsel of scripture, who is uncomfortable with both the existence of sin of racism as well as the way the world defines and addresses that sin, and who seeks to make sense of the resulting sea-change in our culture by beginning with the scriptures as our guide for all of life, including issues of justice.
Other than their shared faith, the authors approach the topic from two very different, diverse backgrounds and life experiences, and they address it in unique ways as well (Baucham from boots-on-the-ground life as a black man in the U.S. and Zambia, along with pastoral experience; Strachan from a more academically rigorous university perspective).
I appreciated that both authors took pains to deal with the social justice movement on its own terms — that is, to avoid creating and challenging a straw man, but instead researching and citing extensive material from the proponents of its views (both historical roots and contemporary manifestations) in order to understand how the movement and its various advocates characterize themselves.
I highly recommend these books for the faithful Christian who believes and desires to live by the whole counsel of scripture, who is uncomfortable with both the existence of sin of racism as well as the way the world defines and addresses that sin, and who seeks to make sense of the resulting sea-change in our culture by beginning with the scriptures as our guide for all of life, including issues of justice.
April 12, 2022
Excellent, clear, biblical. Meets the modern woke religion head on, but with an irenic spirit. Strachan does an excellent job of exposing the spurious religious nature of woke culture. He also very clearly points out that adopting wokeness means one has traded clear biblical mandates regarding how we are to treat our neighbor for those of an essentially secular culture.
In essence, if you adopt the woke theology, you must also abandon the Gospel. Highly recommended.
In essence, if you adopt the woke theology, you must also abandon the Gospel. Highly recommended.
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