Dismantle Unjust Systems
Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 available at American Reformer
In previous essays, I’ve argued that the notion of “woke” is a particularly weak concept, and is altogether invalid when applied to Christians on the political right. Using Neil Shenvi’s four part definition, I’ve illustrated the way that the concept of “woke” is misinterpreted, overgeneralized, or represents a misunderstanding of valid scientific principles. In this final essay, I intend to show that Shenvi’s misunderstanding of the concept of an unjust system undergirds his misapplication of the term in his essay.
The fourth point in Shenvi’s definition is framed as the conclusion to a series of arguments made in points 1-3. This is a reasonable way to interpret most political arguments because it is generally true that the conclusion should be derived from a set of valid assertions. Facts exist independently of any arguments, which are contingent arrangements of those facts with logical consequences. However, in the case of gnostic political religions, this is not the case. Shenvi’s definition fails because point 4 is in the wrong place. Point 4 is actually Point 1. Injustice is the unexamined prior assumption of “woke” ideology, not the conclusion of a rational investigation because the desire to transform society into a desired, utopian image precedes any particular set of facts. It is instead grounded in a spiritual dissatisfaction with the fallenness of existence and a lack of faith in the fundamental goodness of reality1. There is a humorous adage that “Marxism is a solution constantly in search for a problem.” The humor lies in the awareness that this is, in fact, true. Gnostic political religions do not ground themselves on phenomena of existence or on empirical social facts but on a felt sensibility of alienation from being.
What is “alienation from being”? This phrase is a way of expressing the feelings that all people have when the world seems “unheimlich” or uncanny. It is the feeling that things are not as they should be, that the individual doesn’t belong, and something profoundly wrong is happening. Unheimlichkeit is one of the most important themes in philosophical treatments of modernity because this alienation is becoming more fundamental to the spiritual character of modern mankind. The uncanniness of being can be expressed in a variety of behavioral modes, including loss of social trust, violence, and extreme introversion, and cannot be reduced to a mere psychological medical condition. Unheimlichkeit is a condition of the human soul as it exists in a fallen world. What makes it particularly salient today is the way in which modern societies both aggravate these feelings in individuals and make everyone particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of these feelings. Cosmopolitanism, technocracy, and managerialism all represent facets of the modern world which both exacerbate the effects and nullify our resistances to disorders which evolve out of poorly-managed feelings of alienation.
Of course, it should be clear to Christians that unheimlichkeit is a product of sin and these feelings are caused by our disconnection from the God who created us. When we separate ourselves from Him in our sins, we should feel like things are not as they should be, that we don’t belong, and that something profoundly wrong has occurred. The solution to these feelings is repentance and submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This solution, however, is painful because it involves a recognition of our own blame and responsibility for our condition. It involves a sacrifice of a part of our existence which is contrary to our own good, our “libido dominandi” or will to power. It is only when we admit that we are not God, and that reality belongs to him, that we can escape our unheimlichkeit and make peace with reality. Those who fail to accept this truth, and who insist that reality bend to their own will, will find themselves devoured by their alienation until they are enemies not just of some persons but of humanity and God himself. This is the meaning Voegelin finds behind what Nietzsche calls the “murder of God.”
Gnostic political religions prey on people who suffer from an inability to cope with this experience by providing a scapegoat for these feelings, which absolve the individual of any responsibility for their condition. The reason that a person suffers these feelings is the fault of society, one’s parents, or unfavored groups in society, and the feelings themselves are the evidence for injustice. It must be remembered, however, that the core experience of this alienation rests on a desire to become like God, and to define all reality by one’s own will and desires. The very definitions of justice and injustice are warped, until justice becomes “my will” and injustice becomes “against my will.” A political religion provides a means to organize a collective of such disordered souls by uniting them under a collective will, or a General Will. The clash of individuals, each seeking out their personal desires, is channeled and empowered by the higher Will which they serve. In this way, a movement emerges in which adherence to the movement is just, and anything against the movement is unjust. Just as there is no rational argument which can negate the feelings of the disordered individual, so too are collective movements of this type immune to logical persuasion. The injustices must be true because its members feel it so strongly, and because the movement establishes it so authoritatively.
As Herbert Marcuse explains in his essay, “Repressive Tolerance,” society’s injustice is a priori, and must be acknowledged before any kind of intellectual work or activism begins. There is no evidence that can prove or disprove that society is unjust, and the very question is off limits. Permitting people to question the premise that society is unjust or the identities of the oppressed and oppressors is to materially contribute to the forces of oppression. Shenvi wrongly attaches the fact of limited human perspective to this principle because he doesn’t grasp Lenin and Marcuse’s point about the nature of pseudo-injustice. The fact that all people are blind to certain aspects of the world has nothing to do with the diagnosis of injustice. When they say that you “can’t” question it, they are not saying that you lack the ability to question it. They are saying that you are not permitted to question it, and if you do question, you will be destroyed. The diagnosis of injustice against society is imposed by the political needs of the movement, independent and prior to any observations or facts in reality; the very act of marshalling objective evidence for or against the cause is itself an act of treason. The ideal follower “feels” the truth by a kind of faith, made perverse by the claim that evidence itself is proof of faithlessness. The solution is predetermined by the leadership and goes forth seeking to marshal problems it can “solve.”
The key element here in distinguishing “woke” movements from ordinary justice-seeking movements is whether injustice is pre-predicated of social order or a deviation from the norm. Saying that the current crop of social elites are evil and should be replaced is not “woke.” Saying that the legal-political system is broken and should be replaced is not “woke.” Saying that a society’s culture is trash and should be replaced is not “woke.” None of these imply that injustice is inherent to society or pre-predicated of social order. All of these are arguments that can be judged on the basis of their factual merit and whose prudence (or lack thereof) is determinable by reason. Shenvi fails to comprehend what is meant by “system” in radical Critical Theory. “System” is not a legal-constitutional order, an economic system, or a cultural dominance. The “system” is nothing less than the Hegelian World-System, or the fundamental order of reality itself, which incites the feelings of alienation from being. As Voegelin describes, the key characteristic of gnostic political religions is the immanentized eschaton: an intramundane horizon across which the fundamental characteristics of human order are altered or abolished. “Woke” transformation involves a new world where fundamental conditions of existence such as human differentiation, economic scarcity, social and political disunity, ignorance, poverty, and the embodied characteristics of the human organism cease to exist. It is the creation of Heaven on Earth. The more impossible the change, the more empowering it feels to members of a political religion. Just as Christ’s authority is proven by his miracles, so does it seem that the rightness and authority of a political religion is proven in its claims to fundamentally change that which cannot be changed. There is no power high so great as the claim that one can change existence with one’s mind. What is a woman, after all?
I should hope that it’s obvious that few, if any, of the people Shenvi smears as “woke right” have anything to do with this kind of ideology. None are trying to perfect reality, or change its fundamental characteristics through intramundane, human means. In fact, all the people he attacks are opposing these kinds of immanentized, utopian, cult ideologies, albeit in flawed ways. I believe that all of these men would acknowledge that the Hegelian World-System is fixed until the return of Christ in the End Times, and that any attempt by human beings to alter the fundamental conditions of reality would end in a Babel-like tragedy. In fact, I would strongly predict that all three of them would make this very point themselves: that our society is sprinting as fast as it can to a destructive New Babel future, and all they want is to avert that tragedy for themselves and their communities. Is this woke? I think not.
Conclusion
Shenvi’s overbroad generalizations fail to narrow in on the discrete type of phenomenon he’s criticizing, which is why he ends up lumping genuine justice-seeking movements with “woke” political religions. As Voegelin details in his studies of totalitarianism, political religions are inherently violent due to their key characteristics: the Oppressor-Oppressed Dichotomy, a membership made up of pathological individuals who instrumentalize truth on behalf of their intentional desires, and the goal of a transformation of the World-System of reality itself. We should expect such movements to begin with personal attacks, and move on to petty violence, property damage and vandalism, escalating to rioting, and finally murder. This is the logical progression of a quasi-gnostic political movement, and the evidences of its wicked nature. Movements that systemically use extralegal violence deserve our contempt, regardless of what phony pseudo-injustice they use to rhetorically justify their evil. The key word here is systematic: one march gone wrong or a fringe lunatic here and there is not representative of the whole. Nobody blames the Pro-Life movement for the occasional violent lunatic, at least in good faith, because everyone knows that violence is not inherent to that position and is not justified by its members. It is when we see violent act after violent act in succession that we’re forced, at least if we’re thinking in good faith, to begin digging into the reality of a movement that masquerades as a justice movement.
The body of work about the so-called “woke right” represents a lazy tendency in modern political speech. It is far easier to slap a negative label on one’s opponents rather than to do the difficult work of investigating their claims and answering them with facts. Part of this is not the fault of the authors. They are simply unqualified to deal with these kinds of questions and should not have waded into this in the first place. We have a culture problem in the Evangelical Movement that we expect theologians to be our public intellectuals, despite the fact that theology is not sociology, psychology, political theory, philosophy, or ethics2. Part of the answer involves a need for Evangelical scientists to step up and contribute, but a larger part involves the Seminary-educated leadership knowing when to step aside and share the stage with those who the Lord has gifted with a different, more appropriate expertise to the situation. I hope that nobody has taken this as a personal attack, and I do not impute any bad faith on Shenvi in his work. As I’ve mentioned a number of times, most of his errors are shared in common with all Evangelical leaders and a flawed intellectual culture described by Noll. His errors, however, are dangerous in that they divert attention from a real threat to the Church today: the New Civic Religion. Wolfe, Isker, and Engel are loyal to the Church of Jesus Christ, even if they err at times, and should be corrected through brotherly dialogue. I’m happy to participate in that conversation, as needed. They are not, however, “woke.”
To move forward requires an informed, accurate understanding of the essential problem that the Church faces today. “Wokeness” is not the problem, but a convenient label that distracts us. The lunacy and absurdity of the extremes that we see on social media should not consume our attention. Crazy people holding crazy ideas should be expected. What should concern us is when normal, decent people begin holding ideas that are the logical roots of the insanities of the so-called “woke.” Pneumopathologies, or what Blaise Pascal called les désordres du coeur, are contagious and spread through the mainstream adoption of diseased belief systems. Christian thinkers need to come to terms with the fact that the real threat is a competing faith, the New Civic Religion, which is defined by a “retreat from spiritual insight,” corrupting and perverting the souls of its adherents. We can see the effect of the most advanced cases, but fail to apply any remedy when we perceive an initial infection. This is what “woke” is actually about, and why Christians must give up the petty bickering amongst ourselves and rededicate ourselves to confront the crisis of these times.
Image Credit: Unsplash
Mabry illustrates why Woke has something to say to conservatives. He illustrates this in his statement about Marxism:
‘Marxism is a solution constantly in search for a problem.‘
The strength of what Marx wrote is found in his analysis of the Capitalism of his day, which largely applies to today’s shareholder economy. Today’s shareholder economy makes shareholders, especially the ones who have controlling interests, comparable to absentee landlords. The weakness of Marx is in his solutions and his black-white worldview, not in his ability to find problems.
Under our current economic system, which includes the neoliberal Capitalism that already has replaced the Bretton-Woods System that followed WW II and was the form of Capitalism in which Baby Boomers were raised, we have a permanent underclass. In addition, for decades we have seen growing income and wealth disparities between the economic classes and between the races. Not only that, we have statistical evidence pointing to racism in the justice system, law enforcement, voting rights, the job market, and in caring for the environment. We have man-caused climate change issues as well. And if Woke has nothing to say to or about conservatives, then why are conservatives are not just in denial of these problems, but become very defensive when these problems continue to be discussed.
What is Mabry’s solution? Isn’t it the Gospel? But look at those who have accepted the Gospel? They can’t even admit that many of the above mentioned problems exist let alone to address them. Again, Woke has nothing to say to or about the Right, especially the Christian Right?
We could also look at just the history of this nation. In the name of Christ, a very disturbing percentage of American Christians supported slavery, the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land, Jim Crow, Redlining, and harsh segregation that existed in the North. Prominent conservative Christian theologians promoted white supremacy in various ways. Those theologians who were Reformed included Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, and J. Gresham Machen. Btw, not all Reformed theologians promoted white supremacy.
And so when we look at the past and present, it seems that conservatives have a lot to learn from Woke. They also have things to contribute to solving the problems that Woke has identified. But those contributions will never be made for as long as we religiously conservative Christians believe that we have everything to teach those who are woke as well as those who are marginalized.
One more point should be made. Forgiveness and mercy are not owed to us by either God or people. When we look at the injustices that we whites have forced on people of color, we should do so with the assumption that we are not owed forgiveness and mercy. And that is regardless of how much we need that forgiveness and mercy. And so when Mabry says the following:
‘ the Oppressor-Oppressed Dichotomy, a membership made up of pathological individuals who instrumentalize truth on behalf of their intentional desires, and the goal of a transformation of the World-System of reality itself.‘
he is in denial of the forgiveness and mercy that whites are in need of. His defensiveness is seen in his lashing out at those who are woke and his attempts to put an intellectual façade on Christian right-wing political thought.
If I needed an example on which to demonstrate the validity of my science, I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Curt Day proved himself to be an archetypical member of what I’ve described as the New Civic Religion, a gnostic political religion that seeks world-transformation by hijacking the religious symbolisms of Christianity and imposing new meanings upon them through the sheer will-to-power of a pathological soul.
Curt’s objections begin with his claims that “history” proves me wrong, but he just illustrates the point I make about preferences preceding beliefs. Marx taught that history is not made up of the contingent set of events that actually occurred, but that the real “history” is those things which necessarily must have occurred according to the invincible logic of dialectical materialism. In this, Marx is following in the footsteps of Hegel, as well. This approach to history is called historiosophy, in which the writer pre-supposes a narrative that they’ve already committed themselves to, and then selectively cherry-pick actual events to fit that narrative as a justification for their political agenda. Since facts are products of historiosophy and not the source, what is the source of the narrative? The source is the pre-existing preferences and desires of the ideologue, and he chooses a belief-system that best fulfill his lusts or help him achieve his goal.
Some historiosophies are harmless; national histories that begin with the Founding and explain history and the narrative of the national people are necessary to the existence of a nation. So long as a people acknowledge this narrative as merely “our history” and not “the history,” historiosophies can be useful. “Our History” is a source of social bonding when it gives meaning and purpose to a community’s self-interpretation in time. On the other hand, when a group of people begin to demand that their historiosophy is the only history and that all other people must submit to this narrative, it reveals itself as a manifestation of the Will to Power and the desire of the disordered soul to make reality fit one’s desires. As Augustine of Hippo describes in the Civitas Dei, there is no ultimate meaning to history other than the Lordship of Jesus Christ. No other narrative can fully encompass the whole of history in a single paradigm. Every other attempt to establish a meaning for history arbitrarily emphasizes some facts while ignoring others which contradict the agenda of the ideologue. Every other attempt is ultimately a lie.
Curt has adopted a constructed narrative of history largely out of the dramatized founding mythos of the New Civic Religion, in which his allies are innocent and pure, while his enemies are guilty and impure. Like all historiosophies, it relies on a studied ignorance of what actually happened, along with a strident demand that the real meaning of history is found only in the ideological narrative. The one thing that the gnostic ideologue cannot bear is the complications of actual history, which cannot be assimilated to a single linear dimension of innocent-guilty, pure-impure, or righteous-unrighteous in this world. This is what Voegelin calls the “retreat from insight.” Upon dealing with actual-reality, the ideologue finds it too complicated, too disorganized, too varied, and retreats back to simplistic modes of assigning meaning to reality through reducing the multiplicity of agents and acts to a basic dichotomy. Just as Isaiah and Ezekiel were condemned by retrograde members of their society who wanted to rest on the assumption of the purity of the Hebrew people apart from covenant obedience, so too do the political religions wish to reduce the complex reality of hundreds of years of interactions, conflicts, and politics with a simple formula of “my people good, not-my-people bad.” Guilt and innocence can never be reduced to superficial categories of this kind, and any self-interpretation of one’s group in these terms is a falsification of reality.
The pathological soul seeks out these simple dualisms of guilt and innocence because it satisfies the deep horror that the spiritually immature feel at the notion of personal judgment. Belonging to the Oppressed is a kind of insurance against the notion that a person is personally responsible for their sins, as well as satisfying a lust for vengeance against out-group members by imagining them subject to horrific punishment. The demands that the self-declared Oppressed make on out-group members emerge from a stymied will-to-vengeance on the basis of envy and resentment. By imagining oneself personally wronged by those one envies, it helps rationalize acts of immorality and cruelty while maintaining the self-lie that the ideologue is a moral person. Even, or especially, when the ideologue is too cowardly to enact their vengeance personally, the ideology rationalizes indirect attacks, especially through politics. The raging of the libido dominandi, the lust for power, control, and revenge becomes sublimated in a political movement that dresses itself up in the language of justice, peace, or humanity.
Finally, at the end of his fourth comment, Curt’s raging pneumopathology breaks through the membrane of sanity in full view of us all. The reality of all his nonsense babble comes forth: Curt demands that he, not God, has the right to define all meanings. He, not God, has the right to declare who is guilty and innocent. He, not God, can determine who is in need of repentance and who is not. The pathological soul bursts out in full rebellion against God, declaring that reality is not a theophany but an egophany. It is Curt’s will that defines truth. The content of that will is little more than the boiling, raging mass of emotions screaming “My enemies must pay! My enemies are God’s enemies, because I am God!” Justice for Curt means nothing more than that he gets his way and injustice is nothing more than that which resists his will. In these comments, Curt exemplifies many key symptoms typical of pneumopathological cults and their rage against God and reality. He is the best example I could have asked for to demonstrate the reality of the New Civic Religion, its gnostic roots, and the threat it poses to Christianity today.
Ben,
Perhaps you should review your review of my comments especially since I approach the comments from a Christian Fundamentalist point of view first, then from a hybrid political view that leans toward Marx second.
In America, history is a social bond. But when we consider both our history and our demographics, we should not be surprised that not all feel the kind of same bond from that history. Consider again what I wrote in my first comment:
‘We could also look at just the history of this nation. In the name of Christ, a very disturbing percentage of American Christians supported slavery, the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land, Jim Crow, Redlining, and harsh segregation that existed in the North. Prominent conservative Christian theologians promoted white supremacy in various ways. Those theologians who were Reformed included Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, and J. Gresham Machen. Btw, not all Reformed theologians promoted white supremacy.
And so when we look at the past and present, it seems that conservatives have a lot to learn from Woke. They also have things to contribute to solving the problems that Woke has identified. But those contributions will never be made for as long as we religiously conservative Christians believe that we have everything to teach those who are woke as well as those who are marginalized.‘
Is it true of false that a disturbing percentage of Christians once supported slavery, ethnic cleansing, Jim Crow, and harsh segregation?
If it is true, how is it that history supports your views? If you think it is false, can you provide evidence to counter that claim? If the statement is true, what does Marx and Hegel really have to do with it? And if the statement is true, how is it that Christianity has nothing to learn from Woke? And if we religiously conservative Christians have had such failures in the past, how can we argue to unbelievers the only solution to today’s problems is to become Christians?
Or let’s take climate change. At least a significant percentage of my religiously conservative Christians are not convinced by the evidence for man-caused climate change. A vast majority of scientists disagree including both climate scientists and others. And being woke does include making responsible choice in our way of life to combat climate change, how is it that Christians have nothing to learn from Woke? We could also add our, which is all of us religiously conservative Christians, reluctance to see the significant vestiges of systemic racism in society, our resistance to what health experts said about the pandemic, and our contribution to the Jan 6 Insurrection, how can we with a straight face tell unbelievers that only Christianity has all of the answers? That neither our past nor our present lends credibility when we tell unbelievers that we alone have the answers for the world’s problems.
One of my favorite Martin Luther King Jr quotes address the basic question I am raising here:
‘The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.‘
If we replace the word ‘Western’ with a fill-in-the-blank, then we can test the spirituality and credibility of all groups including our own. All we need to do is to insert ‘religiously conservative Christians‘ into the fill-in-the-blank and see where we stand. Then, replace ‘religiously conservative Christians‘ with ‘Woke’ to see where it stands. Do both groups believe that they have everything to teach the other group and nothing to learn from them? Is that what both our history and the present shows?
See, when modern religiously conservative Christian scholars believe that their religious views have everything to teach Marx and nothing to learn from him, not only do they show that they have inserted themselves into that fill-in-the-blank, they have followed Marx in doing the same thing. Marx’s black-white worldview caused him to embrace the same arrogance that King mentioned. If you want a good Christian review of Marx, then you should read King’s Stride Toward Freedom. For as much as King called Marxism ‘evil,’ and he did so because he unfortunately conflated Soviet Union Communism with Marxism, he follow William Temple, who was a former Archbishop of Canterbury, who described Marxism as a ‘Christian heresy.’ They believed that because both saw that Marx held to some essential Christian views, they also recognized that Marx combined those views with beliefs no Christian could afford to have.
Or I could relay a story a friend of mine told me. He was sitting in history class listening to a professor putting down Christianity and its concept of man’s sinfulness. My friend asked the professor what he thought the basic theme of history was. The professor responded by saying that it was man’s inhumanity to man. And my friend pointed out that that confirms what Christianity said about man’s sinfulness. And then how wrong was Marx when he presented his oppressor v oppressed model of history?
Aren’t we displaying blindness to our past and present errors when we religiously conservative Christians tell the world that because we have all of the answers, we do not need to listen to them?
Thanks for this Ben. Good stuff.
Gordon,
I will ask you the question that I asked Ben:
‘Is it true of false that a disturbing percentage of Christians once supported slavery, ethnic cleansing, Jim Crow, and harsh segregation?‘