Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology

by Noelle Mering

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.”—Ephesians 5:14 The long-simmering crisis that grips our culture has exploded in recent years, leaving us divided and intransigent. Discourse seems futile when we are no longer a people with shared principles or even a shared understanding of reality. What seems obvious to one person is patently absurd to the next. This collapse of meaning is not accidental. It has been plotted and documented for decades, and now presents in its current form as Woke ideology. Awake, Not Woke unmasks this ideology by examining its history, major players, premises, and tactics, showing us that “Wokeness” at its core is an ideology of rupture. Indeed, it is an ideology with fundamentalist and even cult-like characteristics that is on a collision course with Christianity. With a wit and clarity that both exposes the absurd and mourns the brokenness of our culture, Noelle Mering provides answers to such questions Why does tolerance seem to only go in one direction?How does the ideology create enemies, eroding friendship across the sexes and races?Why is violence the natural end of Woke ideology?Why are the Woke considered blameless?Why have politics become all-absorbing?Why is the corruption of children a logical outgrowth of Woke principles?How is the movement fundamentally a rejection of the Logos? This is a spiritual battle, and it is not accidental. The architects of revolution have long known that the transformation of the West had to come by way of destabilizing the social, familial, and religious pieties of a citizenry. But there is a road to restoration, and it begins with identifying and understanding the operating principles of the Woke movement. While the revolution is a counterfeit religion resulting in alienation and division, the One True Faith brings restoration. It is this restoration -- of the person, the family, and the Faith -- for which we all hunger and is the most fitting avenue toward a more harmonious and whole society

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Christian, Christianity, Faith, Religion, Catholic

218 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 25, 2021

About the author

Noelle Mering is a Fellow at Washington DC based think tank the Ethics and Public Policy Center where she co-directs the Theology of Home Project. She is also the editor of TheologyofHome.com

She studied philosophy and theatre at Westmont College in California and earned an MA in Philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Noelle and her husband live in Southern California with their six children.

Reviews

[Brenda Torres · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best and most important books I have ever read. My eyes were opened in so many ways. I was challenged and disgusted and afraid and hopeful and inspired. Noelle Mering makes it clear that we are not in a cultural war or a political war, we are in a spiritual war. And we do not need to lose hope. But we need to be informed so that we understand what we are fighting against, and the sneaky tactics being used to separate us from our Beloved.

[Alli Shoemaker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lots of cherry picking articles, uses many secondary sources instead of primary, not a single example of the right doing the exact same things (cancel culture, revisionist history). Just another book claiming to be the truth when really it’s fueling the same machine.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a very honest and in-depth overview of the woke movement in America. It is easy enough for the average reader and the citations were well researched. I thought the end was somewhat disjointed from the main body of the work. It was a little jarring but still contained very good insights. I think the limitations of these kinds of books is that many readers turn to these resources with the hope of gaining practicable applications but end up with generalizations. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily an error from the author but rather a sign of the complexity of interacting with individual humans who don’t always agree. Still worth the read!

[T. Frye · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Fascinating Read!

I have found this book to be truly fascinating and thoughtful. I was so captivated that my wife and I fought over the hard copy-which led me to buy the kindle.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This would be a helpful, basic introduction for those just beginning to learn about the effects of Marxism and critical theory on American culture today. A place to start. It considers these ideas through the lens of traditional/orthodox Christianity, and in that sense it's unique, as it assumes the reader is Christian and wants to live per traditional Christian values.

But it felt too abridged oversimplified to me--I think that's just because I've read more in-depth texts. If you want something deeper, see Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody and The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution.

Note, the book also feels very Roman Catholic--with lots of emphasis on having children and fatherhood and motherhood. While I agree with these underlying values, as a single person, I wish that Mering had done a better job of establishing what manhood and womanhood are without reference to having children.

This book references these books:
--Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics
--Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters

[Tabby]

✅Long unironic Jordan Peterson quote 🫠
✅comparing the faith to a penis, erect or "flaccid" as it may be 🤣
✅ claims that "the woke" (😭) dont like community/family bonds and love because leftists aren't fans of selling women. No loving supportive homes allowed unless a woman is properly subjugated. OBVIOUSLY.
✅ women who dont breed ("scorn their fertility") are "deficient in womanliness"
✅level of holiness = level of increased manliness or womanliness (breeding, as mentioned above) that must match one's naughty bits in the "western-prescribed" way. (👀 at "western-prescribed" anything being "christian", but hokay)
✅ being colorblind is the one true way and if you acknowledge race at all like those awful "wokeness" folk then you're forcing people to be victims and erasing them, actually!

I wish i could tag yourpalaustin on here.

[Jenn Donner · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is so biased i had a lot of trouble getting through it. I am a conservative Christian woman and i still struggled to read this. There are credible aspects of the text, but they are overshadowed by the condescending writing of the author. Such a disappointing read.

[Tim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gross use of faith as a weapon.

[Laura McAninch · Rating 5 out of 5]

From our local Catholic hospital asking at registration what do we identify as, male or female, to our local convent supporting Pride in the Park, to middle school students sharing there are 7 genders, the world is spinning in the wrong direction. This book is needed!
ALL people have dignity. ALL people deserve respect. The Gospel teaches us to greet and love all people, but we are not to turn our eyes and accept grave, sinful living. We have a responsibility to our neighbor, to guide each other towards the good.
I was scared to read this book, because listening to the daily news can make anyone sick and understand the immorality and evil is rampant.
This book is a reminder to stand for the good and be awake to what's not.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly devoid of salient, objective criticism, and without meaningful responses. At times it seems to be speaking to common ground, but there's very little steel manning and little criticism that would convince someone who didn't already agree. Disappointing.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm finding it hard to review this one because there are some things that are great and other things that were weak. On the one hand, the author does identify many of the major problems with woke ideology. But while Christianity (and related concepts such as centrality of the family) are contrasted as a better basis for society, I felt like the arguments were not particularly convincingly supported. In this case, it's obvious (I think) that the audience for this book is those who are already very well versed in Christian beliefs and ethics, since the explanations are often not nearly as in depth as I think they could or should have been, given the importance of this topic.

The other disappointment was that the vast majority of references cited were blog posts and newspaper articles, with a small handful of books. I don't have a problem with citing blog posts when they are primary sources (for example, something like "here's the blog post that went viral and triggered XYZ reaction from ABC group"), but in this case they were often used when a more concrete source or even a primary source should have been used. For example, chapter 9 starts with a description of Hannah Arendt's reflection on the trial of Adolph Eichmann, including a direct quote of Arendt... but the footnote for that quote points to an online article from 2020 (whose URL had already changed by the time I tried to look it up, a year after publication), rather than to the original source of this quote, which is Arendt's paper "Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture." Another example is the very final quote of the book, which is by St. Augustine, but the footnote points to a biography of St. Augustine rather than the original source (which is likely somewhere in Augustine's 900-page City of God - this book is actually is referenced once, earlier in that chapter, but not here for some reason). Also, stronger sources for many of these ideas exist that were not mentioned once, such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a variety of Encyclicals, and JPII's Man and Woman He Created Them (Theology of the Body), to name a few.

So while I agree with the idea of this book, and did enjoy it and noted many important and interesting passages, I also found that the writing could have been stronger/more convincing, and that the footnoting/sources were unfortunately weaker than they could have been.

[Stephanie Conlon · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the hardest books I’ve ever read in my life and that’s not even talking about the message. It is as if the author didn’t want anyone without an elevated PhD in theology to understand what they were trying to say. Highly disappointed that I couldn’t even understand what they are trying to say and having to reread paragraphs. The language was way too heady. I wanted to read this and have a new understanding of this argument, clear information and this was terribly disappointing and honestly, aggravating to get through.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was gasping reading the reality of some of the beliefs and actions being imposed on the world today. Written with great resources and clarity, this book clearly shows how woke ideology is certainly not the answer to the utopia it wishes to instill

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD. It explains the current culture so well and shows how it relates to Christianity. Seeing how the culture still wants the Gospel, even though it’s so twisted, makes it easier to sympathize with people in the culture and see where they’re coming from while being more convicted of the truth of the Gospel and that literally every human is made for God!!

[Magui · Rating 2 out of 5]

I struggled with this one, and I had to constantly remind myself it was written through the eyes of a devout Catholic, which I am not. I found the arguments superficial and cherry-picked. Having said that, the book opens a political and social discussion that needs to be further explored and understood. I find that the path lays not in the extremes, but in the acceptance we tolerate for that we do not ascribe to.

[Rick Stuckwisch · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent little book. Insightful, succinct, thought-provoking, and well written. Best of all, while sobering in its frank assessment of the serious problems confronting the church, the family, and the world, the author beautifully and cogently commends the answer found in Christ.

[Jarrod Dillon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Enjoyable read

I found the book to be very easy to read and completely understandable. I thought that it was well written and her examples were perfectly chosen. I did find that she made some very exaggerated claims where she tended to paint with a very broad brush. But I think that this was the purpose of this book. In a few passages she uses the spirit of benignity well, but for the most part everyone she disagrees with is an enemy who is purposefully destroying our society for sport. In this regard, it reads more like an outstanding 11th grade term paper that forcefully argues her side without ever really treating her opponent as human. But on the whole, I enjoyed reading it. It would be nice to have a book that explores her many and varied theses in other works.

[Emily Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing!! It's exactly the kind of book I love, one that goes through the history and origin of ideologies. Every insane thing we are experiencing in our world today was conceived elsewhere in history, it is simply rebranded in a more seductive/subversive package now. The destruction of the family is at the core of almost every one of these work ideologies, whether its supporters admit it or not. . Today's ideologues are deeply rooted in Marxism, and they all maintain an anthropology that insists mankind lives in a constant state of war and oppression rather than communion and solidarity.

We do indeed need to wake up, Christ is the only real solution, without him we will be lost to a world of darkness, division, and death.

[Hector J. Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing....best book I ever read!!!

I listen to Scott Heinz interview with the author and I was totally moved and within a couple of minutes I downloaded the book on kindle I thought maybe I should have read the last part for us but the best part is to read the book in its entirety and then just save her the word that she uses at the end of the end of the book it gives you much hope. Be the light.

[Jeanie Kenkel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I stopped reading this at about halfway when she said "...by any standard of justice, one person's uncorroborated accusation unaccompanied by evidence ought to be insufficient to destroy or derail another person of any color, sex, or background."

[Michael Cates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Read

A great book that explained well the problems with woke ideology. The author did an excellent job in also including solutions to wokeism.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author seems to be basically correct, but the condescension and occasional unfairness soured this for me. I found those aspects hypocritical. Last section was awesome, though.

[Mendo Ataíde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good way to have a mental scheme of the main ideas that circulate nowadays, the traps they put us into and the basis to get out of those. Well enriched with quotes that give us a better sense of the way the author puts it and the origins of some terms used. I like that all falls under the umbrella term of “progressive ideology”.

[Kells Next Read · Rating 3 out of 5]

ACTUAL RATINGS: 3.5 STARS

[Ruben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a bad book, a little simple. Some parts were a bit disorganized and a few examples a bit infantile. A couple of really good chapters in there as well. I wanted to give it a 2.5 rating instead.

[Rose James · Rating 2 out of 5]

A frustratingly weak book. Moments of brilliance (the chapter on the family is a high point) are let down by the author's tendency towards strawman arguments and cherrypicking. I hoped for a manifesto for traditional Christian social structures in the modern world, and instead found a shallow, unchallenging work, primarily created to affirm those who gleefully flaunt their own "anti-wokeness" as if that itself is virtue. The search for an intellectually rigorous critique of modern culture, sadly, continues.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the problem with the world?

I am.

-G.K. Chesterton

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well. This was a ride. A necessary, clarifying, sanity-restoring ride.

I went in with low expectations after The Anti-Mary Exposed (which, let’s be honest, had the subtlety of a sledgehammer), and instead found something thoughtful, measured, almost startlingly tender in tone. Awake, Not Woke is the rare cultural critique that doesn’t foam at the mouth. It sits you down, looks you in the eye, and says: you’re not crazy, this is happening… and here’s why.

What impressed me most is how Mering refuses to treat “the woke” as villains. She sees them as people caught in an ideology that cannibalises its own - victims of a worldview that promises liberation while hollowing out meaning. That alone sets her apart from 99% of culture-war commentary. No shrillness. No joy in dunking on the other side. Just a patient, reasoned dissection of ideas that have uprooted family, identity, and any shared sense of truth.

And as a sociologist-anthropologist hybrid?
My academic heart was thrilled. Truly.

The sections on family, community, and the human longing for belonging were masterful. Mering understands - on a level most writers simply don’t - that when you dismantle the family, you dismantle the primary site of formation, protection, love, and interdependence. She treats this not as a conservative talking point, but as a foundational anthropological reality. And she writes it beautifully.

This is a book written with conviction but not contempt. With clarity but not cruelty. With love for the human person even when she fiercely critiques the ideology shaping them.

Balanced. Intelligent. Spiritually sobering.
The exact opposite of the hysterical noise we get in the news cycle every day.

One small critique - and it really is minor - is that the book is undeniably US-centric. You can feel the gravitational pull of American politics in certain chapters, the cultural flashpoints, the framing, the examples. As a non-American reader you occasionally want to tug the narrative slightly sideways and say, yes, but the rest of the world looks a bit different. Still, it doesn’t take away from the substance. The arguments are broad enough, the anthropology solid enough, that the insights travel well. It’s a passing irritation, not a structural flaw.

I finished it feeling steadier, not angrier - and that alone tells you everything you need to know.

4.5 out of 5 and genuinely recommended to anyone trying to understand the cultural fog we’re living in without losing their charity, their reason, or their peace.

[Sarah Stegeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rate books on a five star scale with three being an average, enjoyable book. Five stars is outstanding.

Awake, Not Woke was very helpful to me in understanding progressive ideology. Philosophy has never been a strong suit of mine, and trying to discern the complex web of thought origins of cultural Marxism, critical theory and the like was a daunting task. Noelle Mering did a great job simplifying the roots of these beliefs and showing how they have evolved to create the secular belief systems of today. She also does a good job of looking at how these beliefs contrast with the biblical worldview and pointing out inconsistencies in the logic behind them.

I found this book to be immensely helpful to me and I plan to reread it in the future.

The only negative aspect is the narration on the audiobook, which is how I initially read this book. (I have purchased a paper copy for future readings.) The person who read for the audiobook had several mispronunciations, awkward breaks in sentence structure, and restarts throughout the book. It was sometimes difficult to follow the flow of thought when I had to translate words to the proper pronunciation or make sense of what the sentence was trying to say. I hope that in the future there will be a better recording of this book. It says a lot about how good the content was that I liked this book as much as I did despite the problems with the audiobook.

[Toby Brennen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what I would find when I opened "Awake, Not Woke : A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology" but I did get more than I expected. Relatively short, somewhat easy read, occasionally bereft of depth, Noelle Mering lays bare the foundation of 'woke' - from its historical evolution from its Marxist roots to current public agenda and underpinnings of BLM.
If you have ever been exasperated at the state of world, or wondered how did we ever get here - decay of the family structure; forced education of unsupported ideologies; gender confusion; suicide increases; anti-racist racism, and much more, Mering lays out directly and succinctly the woke agenda and its deliberate, intentional attempt to alter our society. She clearly articulates why 'structured reason and logic' is lacking and ineffectual in dealing the 'woke' movement and the entire philosophical approach is designed to increase chaos, discord, and disharmony between our fellow humans as opposed to increasing harmonious relationships. She explains how the objectives of peace, family and Christian moral teaching in general are seen as a 'white' vision. Peace cannot abound where every glance, or lack thereof, is a microagression, an act of racism.
Mering presents a good historical synopis. I would have preferred more 'data' and less opinion regarding more contemporary topics - but that's just a white mans opinion[4/5].