The culture wars have been raging hard for the past ten years. They ramped up even more in 2020 as the Black Lives Matter protests and riots tore through America (and elsewhere), leading to much destroyed public and private property, as well as many lives lost. At the same time the transgender movement has become ever-more assertive, as its advocates establish new laws and corporate protocols making, for instance, the acknowledgement of people’s “preferred pronouns,” mandatory. Along with all of this, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officers seem to have taken over many HR departments, resulting in the introduction of racial sensitivity programs and pro-LGBTQ posters all over workplaces. Some have called our cultural moment “the Great Awokening.”

In light of these developments, many have asked why they are happening and where they have come from. The answer is partly ideological, in that the ideologies that have powerfully shaped universities for decades have now spilled out onto the streets and to society in general. These ideologies, though distinct, overlap and include Marxism, postmodernism, and varieties of critical theory (CT).

For some years now, prominent public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Douglas Murray have written books and given talks uncovering these theories. What has been missing, however, is a comprehensive and distinctively Christian explanation and appraisal of them, notwithstanding some very helpful contributions on particular themes; e.g., Peter Jones (Whose Rainbow: God’s Gift of Sexuality: A Divine Calling [Grimsby, ON: Ezra, 2020]), Carl Trueman (The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020]), and Thaddeus Williams (Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2020]), among others.

But in terms of exposing the ideas that lie at the heart of “Wokeness,” Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer’s Critical Dilemma is exactly what many in the church have been waiting for: an exhaustive, comprehensive discussion of where these ideologies have come from, what they teach, where they manifest, and to what extent they are (and are not) compatible with Christianity, and evangelical Protestantism in particular.

Shenvi and Sawyer are concerned with the broader phenomenon of critical theory (CT), an intellectual tradition stretching back as least as far as Karl Marx and branching off into various other intellectual traditions and forms of social theory—including the Frankfurt School, postmodernism, critical race theory, gender theory, and queer theory (p. 16). Early in the book the authors eschew the use of the term “cultural Marxism,” not so much because it has no analytical purchase—theirs and other such studies show that it clearly does—but because the controversy generated by the term is too much of a distraction (p. 22).

The first sections of the book offer an unsurpassed account of the origins of CT, contemporary manifestations of CT, the nature of critical race theory, and gender theory. The final sections show how these ideologies have crept into evangelical Protestant churches and offer a theological critique of the theories.

Shenvi and Sawyer summarize CT in four points:

1. The social binary: “Society is divided into dominant/privileged/oppressor groups and subordinate/marginalized/oppressed groups” (p. 92). This derives from the social thought of Karl Marx.
2. Hegemonic power: “Oppression and domination … include the ways in which dominant social groups impose their values, traditions, norms, and ways of being and doing on society…” All of this is “structural” or “systemic” and “applied via social institutions and systems” (p. 92).
3. Lived experience: “The lived experience of minoritized and oppressed groups rivals and at times is prioritized over objective evidence and reason when it comes to understanding the world” (p. 92).
4. Social justice: “Social justice is concerned with the transformation of society via the emancipation and empowerment of marginalized and disenfranchised groups.” This means we must “dismantle the systems, structures, and hegemonic norms that create and perpetuate the social binary” (pp. 92–93).

The authors bring the reader through an exploration of crucial concepts including systemic racism, intersectionality, queerness, and lived experience. For example, the four central tenets of critical race theory are:

1. Racism is endemic, normal, permanent, and pervasive;
2. Racism is concealed beneath ideas like color blindness, meritocracy, individualism, neutrality, and objectivity;
3. Lived experience is critical to understanding racism;
4. Racism is one of many interlocking systems of oppression, including sexism, classism, and heterosexism.

Similarly, the four central tenets of queer theory are:

1. Sex and gender are distinct;
2. Gender is a complex category that is socially constructed;
3. Sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, etc., are interlocking categories;
4. All sex and sexuality norms are oppressive and should be deconstructed.

Chapter by chapter, Shenvi and Sawyer explain the scholarly origins of the present-day woke phenomenon. Their research is exhaustive, easily rivaling any other similar study. They dive not merely into general treatments of the topics, but into the scholarly journal articles, often obscure, in order to show beyond a shadow of a doubt the origins and meaning of the theories and ideologies that shape and inform contemporary wokeness.

There is also a whole section that outlines those aspects of CT that contain significant truth and are actually helpful in terms of understanding the nature of modern injustice. In this respect Critical Dilemma is by far the fairest critical treatment of the themes available. At the same time, the authors are clear that CT and biblical thought are incompatible.

The final section of the book argues that the specter of CT must be exorcised from the church if it is to remain united in truth and love. In terms of direct contradictions of Scripture, CT harbors at least four huge incompatibilities with the Bible:

1. Christianity sees the universe as created by a good God and with a good, albeit now fallen, order. CT and postmodernism reject this understanding as a hegemonic metanarrative espoused solely to perpetuate oppression.
2. The Bible makes it clear that humankind’s fundamental problem is internal: sin. On the other hand, CT—ironically following the Enlightenment, which CT rarely has a good thing to say about—sees humankind’s fundamental problem as external: oppressive institutions that must be overthrown.
3. The Bible says that many prevailing social norms (e.g., the family, heterosexuality, and certain virtues) are expressions of God’s created good order—even if imperfectly so. In Marxist fashion, CT declares that all prevailing social norms are mere constructs of white, heterosexual, male oppressors for the purpose of maintaining domination.
4. CT says that all hierarchies necessarily oppress, whereas biblical Christianity teaches that certain ordered relationships (e.g., between humankind and the earth; governments and citizens; employers and employees; husbands and wives; parents and children; elders and congregants), while prone to sin’s corruption, are themselves very good.

Critical Dilemma is the best Christian analysis of wokeness and CT presently available. As someone who has regular interactions with tertiary-educated young people, I am constantly encountering the influence of these ideologies on Christian youth. Neil Shenvi and Pat Sawyer have given a marvelous gift to the church with this book. I strongly urge pastors and parents to put copies of it into the hands of their university-aged youths, not merely to expose the lies and half-truths in CT and wokeness, but also to train them to think biblically and constructively about the complex reality of injustice in our fallen world.