Is ‘Woke Church’ a Stepping Stone to Theological Compromise?

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Sean Demars
So allow me to begin by doing what I do best embarrassing myself. I mean completely serious when I say that I have no idea why I’m here. I have not written extensively on the subject of wokeness. I’m not part of any organization fighting on the frontlines of the woke wars. I’m not in any Twitter Spats or Facebook beefs over this stuff, because I’m not on Twitter or Facebook. Moreover, I’m not a subject matter expert in the field of critical theory, which I’m just going to be using synonymously with wokeness. I’m not a subject matter expert in any field related to any kind of critical studies. And to be honest with you, I’m not really any kind of expert at all. I don’t have a PhD. Among unlike my interlocutor here, who has a PhD from Cambridge, which is in England. I don’t have a seminary degree, I don’t have a Bible college degree, I don’t have a high school diploma.

Sean Demars
But I am a pastor, which means that I’ve had to reckon with this I’ve had to think through it, I’ve had to think about how the gospel applies to this stuff in my local church. And to be honest with you, I’m not even sure that I’m capable of giving a satisfactory definition of wokeness. To be sure the term woke does have specific historical and intellectual roots, elevating the critical consciousness and all that nevertheless, the term has become so politicized that different people mean so many different things when they use the word that it’s just hard to nail down a definition. So for the question of the hour is woke church a stepping stone to theological compromise? Well, friends, I think it just defines on how you define woke. So let me begin by giving a definition of openness but let me begin with a stuffy technical academic definition and then after that, we’ll go to a more boots on the ground definition.

Sean Demars
Stuffy academic definition here we go. wokeness is the product of a bunch of failed Marxist trying to bring the head Galleon dialectic back to life by fusing it with all kinds of bad stuff like Freudian psychology, Gramsci and philosophy, postmodern epistemology, Blackfin, feminism, and intersectionality. Now, if you’re sitting there thinking, Shawn, I have no idea what you just said, I don’t know what any of those words mean. Well, friend, don’t worry. I’m not sure that I know what those words mean, either. But let’s keep going. Let’s press in. The aim of wokeness is to tear down the Christian or the Western hegemony and a Jiminy just means power structure, is to tear down that hegemony and try to replace it with a perfectly diverse utopia. It seeks to do this through an ensconced presence. And that just means deeply rooted, often hidden. So Aneurin, Scott’s presence in every major cultural institution in the West, the media, government, education, religion, business, finance, and so on. Now, whether one chooses to use the metaphor of a virus or a parasite, or a quarter SEPs mushroom, which you should definitely Google later.

Sean Demars
The idea is the same critical theory wokeness. What it tries to do is it tries to glom on to various fields, take them over and then make them its own so that it can replicate itself. So what we see is race studies from a liberal tradition soon becomes critical race studies, we see Gay and Lesbian Rights Studies turns into queer theory, education turns into critical pedagogy. Now, that’s a lot of highfalutin. I’m from Alabama. We talk like that. That’s a lot of highfalutin mumbo jumbo from the backwaters of ivory tower academia. But here’s the deal.

Sean Demars
Those backwaters trickle down into our everyday lives. So for an you may never hear the term hegemonic power structure or standpoint epistemology, you may never sit in on a class where they teach gender bending, but if I had to guess I’d say you might see a tick tock video with a man dressed as a unicorn professing to be a pansexual dual gendered vampire, and that doesn’t come out of nowhere. The man making that tick tock has been influenced by a manifestation of wokeness known as queer theory, which As a any attempt to try to define norm in relation to sexuality in terms of binary, such as male or female, masculine or feminine, straight or gay, any kind of doing anything like that is an act of oppression.

Sean Demars
But let’s get some more boots on the ground examples of wokeness let’s try to define it by exploring a woke wokeness sounds like somebody saying My pronouns are Z’s Emser wokeness says that if you disagree with my opinion, you’re trying to erase my identity. wokeness says that silence equals violence. wokeness looks like self imposed black segregation on college campuses. wokeness says that data and statistics are nothing more than white western forms of discourse used to maintain elite power structures. wokeness says that landmark civil rights cases like Brown v Board of Education, are really just sophisticated acts of white supremacy because of the doctrine of interest convergence. wokeness looks like replacing Christian clergy functionally with psychiatrists, social workers, historians, sociologists, and activists woke this treats all black thought as a monolith in regard to any departure from anti racist ideology as obvious proof of the internalization of white depression.

Sean Demars
Welcome it says that colorblindness is bad but race essentialism is good. wokeness looks like the radicalization and that’s their word not mine is in their literature, not my speech, radicalization of the education system, from researchers to the administrators to the educators, all the way down until what was once a broadly liberal conception of education in America turns into critical pedagogy used to elevate the critical consciousness of our citizens. wokeness says that discrimination is always the cause of disparity. wokeness will lead us to replace one brand of revisionist history like an American history textbook from the South that downplays racism and slavery, replacing it with another version of revisionist history like the 1619 project, which says that all of American history is only an always about racism and slavery. wokeness says that Justice must stop being blind to color class and sex and must only and always focus on color class and sex. You may be thinking, Shawn, come on.

Sean Demars
These are just fringe examples from we’re liberal arts colleges in Canada, even worse, Vermont. But friends know this kind of stuff is becoming more mainstream with each passing day. In the cinematic masterpiece The Devil Wears Prada. Meryl Streep reminded us that high fashion may look ridiculous at first. But what you see on the runways of Paris and Milan eventually trickles down all the way to the sales rack at the gap. In the same way the highbrow intellectual theories from the backwaters of academia will trickle down into our everyday lives, men and women being pumped full of high octane wokeness. In college classrooms, they don’t leave that behind the classrooms when they go out into the real world. They take it with them into the news rooms and into the boardrooms and into the situation rooms and into the classrooms and into the Sunday school rooms. So you may not identify with or accept the most explicit and egregious examples of wokeness. But that doesn’t mean that you haven’t perhaps already been influenced. unwittingly.

Sean Demars
It’s entirely possible that the way that you’ve come to think about race, for example, has already been influenced. For the worse by people. You’ve never heard of writing books and papers that you’ll probably never read talking about subjects and using words that you’re unfamiliar with. But their ideas have been simplified, distilled, popularized, repackaged, and distributed to the masses like you and me laymen. The same thing, of course, can be said of the way that you’ve come to think about gender, sexuality, identity, climate change, health, math, science, philosophy, education, communications, and even the gospel. So we’ll won’t church lead to theological compromise? Or friends, my fear is that it already has in ways that many of us can’t see and won’t see until the damage has already been done. My fear is that many in the church have already been taken captive by what Scripture calls philosophy, and empty deceit, according to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. My fear is that wokeness has not already corrupted our theology proper, but also our Hammadi ology Are soteriology sociology, anthropology and eschatology?

Sean Demars
Oh my wokeness properly defined friends is a totalizing worldview and another word for that is just religion, in any careful student of Scripture knows that Christians have constantly got to be on guard against syncretism with false religions. The walls of the church have always been porous, which means that God’s people have always been in danger of false ideologies and worldly false philosophies permeating the walls of the church through osmosis. From the worship of bail in the Old Testament to Gnosticism in the New Testament, from New Thought and the prosperity gospel to wokeness critical theory and social justice activism, God’s people are always susceptible to gospel compromise in one form or another. As I surveyed the changing landscape of American evangelicalism and see Christians saying things like, we must dive deeper into an intersectional exploration that examines both God’s blackness and femaleness on the cross.

Sean Demars
Or we need more womanist black liberation and queer theology, or as I talked to friends of the church who say that they can’t go to a white church where they sing white songs because it feels like a dangerous place. I just can’t help but conclude that significant compromise has already taken place. And the consequences of this compromise are being felt as we speak. I don’t have to prove that to you know it, you feel it, you’re experiencing it, your relationships are breaking down. race relations in American churches have been set back 50 years, there is a general atmosphere of suspicion, rather than loving charity, entire churches, denominations and parachurch organizations are crumbling around questions of sex and gender and identity. There is a breakdown in Gospel unity there is an uptick in anger, shame, confusion, enmities, strife, jealousy, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, factions and envy, and don’t even get me started on the way that some of my conservative brothers and sisters have failed to appropriately Christianly respond to this threat, and have only made it worse. In closing, Antonio Gramsci once remarked that socialism and by socialism he meant Cultural Marxism. He says that socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity.

Sean Demars
I think if Mr. Gramsci were to be here today, he would be pretty pleased with the progress that has been made in the West in general and in the American church in particular, and yet, in the end, friends, Gramsci will roll over in his grave, because he will see that the Church will not be overwhelmed Christianity will not suffocate under the blanket of Cultural Marxism. Not only will Mr. Gramsci roll over in his grave, but he will also rise up out of it where he will meet Jesus face to face and he will be judged. Just like you just like me, just like everyone. The Church of Jesus Christ will not be overwhelmed not by Marx, MACUSA or Mao, not by Derrida, Foucault or leotard, not by Crenshaw, Delgado or Matsuda, not by reactionaries, revolutionaries are rebels, because we know that the gates of hell will not prevail. We know how the story and Satan loses, death will die. And the church will reign victorious. Even over wokeness

Rebecca McLaughlin
Thank you. question today is, is wokeness a stepping stone to theological compromise? But before I address that question, I want to ask another one. Are drugs bad for you? I could spend the next 10 minutes presenting a very compelling case that drugs are killing people in America every day. They are breaking down families, they are ravaging mental health. Drugs are extremely bad for you. But at the end of that 10 minutes, my guess is that somebody would stand up and say, right now I’m taking drugs from my heart condition. And my doctors say that if I stopped taking them, I’ll be dead within a week. We cannot address this question. If we do not carefully define what we mean by the word woke. And in many of our conversations today, the definition of work is being as confused as that definition of drugs why we are not distinguishing between life saving medication and cocaine. I want to propose that we do three things. As we step into this conversation. First, we must define, Second, we must repent. And third, we must believe.

Rebecca McLaughlin
So first we must define. Now Sean offered us one definition of weakness, or perhaps various definitions of weakness that exist on on one side of a conversation. I want to start with a more original definition of weakness is that word was originally used that word woke was originally used to me being awake, aware of a life to the history of racial injustice in this country. And I want to say when it comes to that definition, God have mercy on us if we are not woke, God have mercy on us if we are not aware of alive to the history of racial oppression in this country. When I was in seminary, one of my professors said that as we look back over the last 2000 years of Christian history, and as we look at every potential heresy that has come to the church, what we’ll notice is that theologians have had to carefully distinguish between two things that look quite similar, or are spoken of in similar ways. And as we enter these conversations, we must define what we mean and almost more importantly, we must ask other people what they mean, we must stop using our definitions of work or definitions of work that we have imported from other places, to define what our brothers and sisters in Christ might be meaning when they use that language, or might be meaning when they themselves are talking about the history of racial injustice in this country.

Rebecca McLaughlin
Instead, we must give each other the courtesy of allowing a brothers and sisters to define what they mean. And not to swing a club at them. Sadly, often the club of critical race theory to silence or discredit any legitimate critique that we might be hearing says that’s my first point we must define. My second point is that we must repent. I when I say we hear, I’m speaking as a white Evangelical, the very premise of our question is woke church, a stepping stone to theological compromise, presumes that we are not already theologically compromised, Shawn and I both agree that we are. But I believe that if we look at the history of our forebears in the church, we will find a history of profound theological compromise. When it comes to questions of race, we will find a history of slavery, the history of segregation, a history of explicit racial prejudice and discrimination built into our legal systems. And most tragically, we will find a history of white Christians who look and sound like me, being deeply complicit in this. Now, you might say, Well, I wasn’t there.

Rebecca McLaughlin
I wasn’t there. When people from my country, the United Kingdom, were transporting millions of enslaved people from Africa to America, I wasn’t there. You might say I wasn’t there. During the period of Jim Crow laws and segregation. You might say I wasn’t there when 1000s of black Americans were being lynched. Well, white folk who may have been in church that morning, were bringing their kids to watch black people being strung up on Korean trees and tortured and mutilated. I wasn’t there. You might say I wasn’t there, when a six year old black girl named Ruby Bridges walked into an all white Elementary School, while hundreds of white parents shouted racial slurs at her, issued death threats against her. And while she got bless her heart prayed for their forgiveness because that’s what she’d been raised by her Christian parents to do. You might say I wasn’t there. But you know what? Our parents were. Our grandparents, our great grandparents were, if you like me, are a white Evangelical, this is our tribe. And God have mercy on us if we do not repent. Third, we must believe.

Rebecca McLaughlin
Now, Shawn very helpfully pointed out to us that for many people today, this idea of wokeness is not just a conversation about racial justice, but it’s a conversation in which questions of same sex sexuality and gender identity have been all mixed together. And when it comes to these conversations, one of the most powerful arguments that our progressive friends might make, run something like this. Just like new white Christians used your bibles to defend segregation schools in the 60s. So now you’ll use your Bibles to oppose gay marriage and transgender identities for believers. Until we realize that the first part of that claim is correct. We’re going to have no moral legs to stand on as we address the second. But the problem with the white 60s, segregationists was not that they were too Christian. It was that they weren’t half Christian enough. It was not that they were reading their Bibles too carefully. It was that they were utterly failing to read their Bibles. When we look at the scriptures, we find that as clearly and firmly as the Bible calls us toward racial justice, integration and equality. So it calls us away from same sex, sexuality and transgender identity. This conclusion is not one I’ve come to easily, I’ve been a Christian for as long as I can remember. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve been attracted to other women. They’ve been times in my life where I would have been more than happy to look in the Bible to find that the Bible affirms same sex relationships, and marriage for Christians.

Rebecca McLaughlin
But you have to do the same level of exegetical hermeneutics. To conclude that same sex marriage is a valid option for Christians, as you have to do to conclude that racial segregation is a valid option for Christians. So in our cultural moment, today, we must believe what the Bible says. That will lead us to define what we mean carefully. That will lead us to repent of the history of injustice, of which we are feeling the effects today. And it will lead us to believe what the Bible says it will not fit us into any neat political categories, it will not lead us to feel comfortable around folks who have traditionally defined themselves as conservative or as progressive. But it will bring us into a place where we can actually learn from what the Scriptures are telling us. And when we can in the right ways repent. It should be second nature to us as Christians, to repent and to believe. That is how we come to Jesus in the first place. And yet we find it so hard to do.

Rebecca McLaughlin
When it comes to the history of our tribe. When it comes to our heroes, when it comes to our forebears, we find it so hard to repent. And at the same time we we find it so hard to believe and our cultural moment today. What the Bible says about Christian sexual ethics. But if we are followers of Jesus today, we must do those two things. As I look back at the history of Christian complicity and racism in America. I’m reminded of of Jesus’s words the church and Laodicea. You say, I’m rich, I’ve acquired wealth and do not need a thing. But you do not realize that your wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. And what is the prescription that Jesus the great physician gives to those people and Lodis here and gives to us today to be earnest and repent.

Rebecca McLaughlin
For the message of the gospel to go out today, we don’t need to defend our record. We need to hold out the beauty of our Savior. And if we don’t define work carefully, if we close down conversations about race, if we act like there was a once upon a time, when this was a Christian country living according to Christian ethics, and everything has gone horribly wrong since then, we’re going to be making the same level of life threatening mistakes, as if we fail to distinguish between heart medication and cocaine.

Jim Davis
Well, I want to thank both of you for two very heartfelt arguments. And I really want to thank you both for the ways that you’ve defined your terms. You use your terms, we’re gonna come back to the definition of terms in a little bit, because both of you it seemed to be the heart of both of your arguments, and I think it is so for a really good reason. I want to start though, by asking you, Shawn, Rebecca makes the case that before we can use our Bibles to oppose what I think you called liberal agendas, she referenced, you know, transgender identity, same sex marriages, before we can address any of those things we have to as a church, repent of the way that we used our Bibles when it came to race relations, the United States. So my question is a little twofold. Do you agree with that statement? And what does it look like if you do to do that without up Ain’t called woke.

Sean Demars
Yeah. So the first of all, can I just start by not answering your question, okay. I just want to start Rebecca by saying, I’m so thankful for you. I’m so thankful for your ministry for your writing. I agree so much with what you said up there. And I know that that’s the heart of this whole dialogue is to show that we’re really on the same team. And there’s just a variation of difference. But I felt that as I was listening to you, so I just love you, and I’m so thankful for you. Now, to my disagreement. I am nervous about the language of corporate confession as applied to identity groups. I’m nervous about identity politics in general, I’m nervous about corporate confession language as applied to identity groups, like white evangelicals, I believe in corporate confession. But anytime you kind of extrapolate out from Old Testament Israel, which was a see on me, right, you know, so they were an ethnic people, a legal people and a spiritual people. extrapolate out of that I get a little nervous, but I can even see it in the context of a local church, which is why I very much appreciate your example from Laodicea.

Sean Demars
Right? Like, I think a local church could have some corporate guilt that they need to come together and confess, which is why in my church every other Sunday, sometimes more often, we have prayers to confession, we just assume that our people are sending in various and sundry ways. And so we come together, and we’re honest with God, and we’re honest with each other. And we believe in corporate confession, but corporate confession about what white evangelicals have been complicit in. It’s just, it’s all kind of hazy, you start getting into intersectional things and the lines are blurred. And on top of that, when when I read the Bible, I don’t see a lot of language, especially in the New Testament, which maybe this is a biblical theological question that we can come back to the discontinuity between the Old Covenant, the New Covenant, but I don’t, I don’t see that same kind of language there. And I don’t think we see it there for a reason. So all that to say, I think there’s a sense in which I could agree with Rebecca. And then there’s a sense in which I would very much want to push back and disagree with Rebecca.

Jim Davis
Well, let me I’m gonna allow you to react to that. And I hear I think it’s Daniel nine, we’re Daniel’s repenting the the sin of his forefathers, I’m not sure. I think that’s the chapter that you’re trying to dis continuities a couple of places. Yeah. And so he talks about the DIS continuity, and how that plays out in the New Testament Church in the 21st century West, how do you react?

Rebecca McLaughlin
I grew up in the UK, and we frequently celebrate our victory over the Nazis in World War Two. And what I’ve learned since moving to America is that you guys sort of see it as your victory. And there’s a lot of celebration that goes on here, yet appropriately. So praise God for the victory of the allies over the Nazis in World War Two. But at the same time, as I think we’re all actually quite happy to say, you know, those were our people, like, this is our glory that was identifying with that we then get very, we have a very different reaction, when it comes to saying, Do you know what? The sin of segregation, that’s our sin? So I guess what I would want to say, a couple of thoughts.

Rebecca McLaughlin
One is, if we’re not going to go the route of corporate repentance, then let’s also not go the route of corporate celebration of our past glories. And number two, I think what I would have loved to have heard more of what you said, Shawn, connects up to this. At minimum lament, and we can argue all day long about whether, you know, I as an individual can repent for the sins of my tribe writ large. Minimally, I can lament and and, as I’ve got to know more about history, and this has been a progression for me. And as I have talked with more brothers and sisters, black brothers and sisters in this country, the more I felt their grief, about the refusal to either repent all amount naturally, that they see in in many believers who, who looked like me. And so I think we’re missing an awful lot. If we if our first move is to say, here’s how these conversations about racial justice are happening poorly in the sort of secular world, rather than rather than modeling something better here now.

Jim Davis
So what is what is she mentioned lamenting, you agreed with that? What does lamenting and repent? Lamenting as opposed to repenting look like today for church leaders?

Sean Demars
Yeah, So I appreciate her point because not saying that I found the perfect middle, right. But the position that I often find myself in a pasture and Alabama, student of history, victim of racism in various ways, like on, I feel like I’m having conversations with some Christians to the left of me where I’m like, That’s not helpful. Don’t say that you don’t know where that comes from. And then I’m having conversations with people who are conservative to the right of me, who they’re just entirely ignorant of so many different things. And they’re kind of cold and callous, and they just kind of repeat the Fox News by lines. And I’m, I’m like, why you should actually read this book. And like, you should be really sad about these bad things that happened in our backyard. And yeah, I want our people to limit where we pray prayers of the men in our church, I highly recommend Mark ver gops book on the mint, particularly as it’s related to racial injustice is so yeah, I’m on the same page. Yeah.

Jim Davis
So Rebecca Shan made the case that the backwaters, the ivory towers, they are is trickling down into the local church, the way Milan Fashion into the gap. I want to ask kind of twofold again, do you agree with that statement? Is that a thing that happens? And do you agree that it’s happening specifically in the areas of the things that he seems to be most concerned about in areas of gender identities? Same Sex Marriage seems like that?

Rebecca McLaughlin
Yes, I do think it’s happening. But I think it is happening. While we are failing to do what we should have already been doing. Let me explain a little bit what I mean that because that was the least history. So when I think about the Black Lives Matter movement, for example, that slogan, and that in that specific organization, is mixing together all sorts of things. And, you know, one, one of the claims of the organization is that if you if you want to have and the Black Lives Matter, you must also affirm same sex marriage and transgender identities, this is all grouped up together. And you’ll see that coming from a number of different sort of academic angles. What breaks my heart, is that that should have been our core. We should have been the people saying the Black Lives Matter. And what I fear in majority white churches today is that, you know, we hear people talking about racial justice. And we think, Oh, that that’s what liberal progressive folks say.

Rebecca McLaughlin
And I’m thinking, yeah, and and then that’s a that’s a tragedy, actually, we should have been shouting that the loudest. And instead, it’s our sin. And I’m sorry to go back to well, I’m not sorry to go back to this because I think it’s true. It’s actually the history of of the churches sin that has got us here in the first place. Now, we all we all look at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, in fact, you know, what an amazing guy. We all want to, you know, some of it on his side, we all want to celebrate what he was saying. And I think as Christians, we want to recognize that the Civil Rights Bill was at heart like a Christian movement. He was no secular, Critical Race theorist.

Rebecca McLaughlin
He was a pastor in a church before they marched, right, caught calling America to believe what the Scriptures teach. And yet, if majority, white churches had believed what Scripture is taught in the first place, there would have been no need for a civil rights movement. And this is so I think, I think there are helpful and unhelpful ways in which ivory tower conversations can trickle down, for sure. And I think we see some particularly unhelpful ways in which they’re trickling down when it comes to transgender identities right now. But what what I fear is that our knee jerk reaction, our first response is to say, we’re going to keep all of this out of the church, when in fact, we should have been leading these conversations within the church. And I think instead, we’re often ending up using our critiques of what’s happening outside the church instead of maybe trickling into the church to sort of justify not having those conversations in a proper way within the church.

Jim Davis
So she brings up in Brooklyn, black lives matter. I mean, in the past couple years that has been the whole topic has been a polarizing issue in many local churches. Those who embrace the term Black Lives Matter often had the term woke attached to them. So I’m curious in your local context, how does what she is saying land on you in terms of both what the term means differentiating its it from the organization, but also that the church should have been the first one to do that.

Sean Demars
Yeah. So you kind of asked like three questions I kind of did, I’m sorry, the moderator. Let me try my best to kind of pick them apart. First is, as far as Christians, using the phrase Black Lives Matter, and then being called woke, I was actually living in DC when all of that kind of exploded. And we’re having conversations around dinner tables and in small groups and after church. And what I realized is that everyone was kind of trying to figure out what was happening in real time, which is really dangerous, because everyone has social media. So they’re external processing on the internet, and you external process one way and somebody throws this label on you and external process other way. And it’s just all bad. Less Facebook, Twitter, Instagram conversations, more private conversations would probably go a long way. So I remember sitting at my dinner table on the hill with an African American sister, who said something like, yeah, black lives matter.

Sean Demars
It’s great. And I just that day, looked on their website and the destruction of the nuclear family and gay and lesbian, I think it was right around the same time where they came out and said, like, yeah, we’re training Marxist. And I told her this, and she was like, what, what are you talking about? No, this is just about black life. And so she didn’t know that I just by God’s providence happened to look at it. And so we had a little back and forth there. And I’m just really glad that that happened in my living room, and not on Twitter, because on Twitter, she would have called me a white supremacist, I would have called her woke, we would have gotten nowhere.

Sean Demars
But by the end of the night, I think we were actually better informed. So now, having said that, I think we’re kind of down the line a place now where we should, we should be able to recognize what’s happening. And we should be able to say, I believe that black lives matter. And then in the very same breath, say, but I do not in any way support this organization or what it stands for, in large part, what it stands for, I can support a sliver of what it stands for, if you define it in a very particular way. And then what was the other part of the question?

Jim Davis
Should the church have been the white evangelical church have been at the forefront? Oh, yes, yes. The Civil Rights Movement? And then more recently,

Sean Demars
yeah, yes. Yes. So yes, comma, I think we were actually making a lot of progress. I know, that’s like not a very cool thing to say. And metrics are hard to come by on this, I wrote an article which you should definitely not look up on the internet, because it was probably really poorly written. But I tried to use some metrics and list out like 10, or 15, this is like 10 years ago, try to list out 10 or 10, or 15 different ways that white evangelicals were actually trying really hard to make progress from giving out scholarships to as many African American students who wanted them to, like every church, I know was like, Yeah, we need more diversity on the leadership. And we want to be in solidarity. And I was seeing churches integrate across several different lines of diversity, not just you know, black, Asian, white quota thing.

Sean Demars
And I really believe that, the backwaters, academia, critical theory, the way that it has trickled down, has actually reverse that. So in my, in my presentation, where I talked about kind of losing 50 grounds of progress along racial lines in the church, I really do think that we were moving forward, were we moving forward fast enough? That’s a judgment call. Was everyone repenting as much as they should have or lamenting as much as they could have? Probably not. But it felt like we were going in a good direction. I have brothers who are sitting here in this room, who would tell me that, like in their church, they were like, man, we’re like, man, God is moving, I can feel reconciliation is happening. And then boom, this stuff kind of exploded on the scene, and everything got way, way worse. So that’s kind of my perspective on

Jim Davis
it. Well, let me take it from maybe an older buzzword to a newer buzzword, CRT, intersectionality. These are terms that you referenced in your argument. When you look at those when you hear those terms used, is that something the church should throw out altogether? Or are their ceremonies in use or throw away throw away the whole? Everything encompassed in CRT and intersectionality? Or, or do you find helpful things in CRT in the, the the academic study and application of CRT or intersectionality?

Sean Demars
Yeah, so first, let me just make a quick point of clarification. I find it very common that when we talk about wokeness, or critical theory, which I sort of used synonymously that we call it we always end up talking about CRT and intersectionality but CRT is just one manifestation of wokeness critical theory is a totalizing worldview. And it’s fundamentally cynical, it wants to look at all power structures, and it can do that. And so what it tries to do is it tries to do it through the lens of every point on the intersectional spectrum. So you have various manifestations, you have critical race theory, you take out the race, it’s just critical theory, you have critical education theory, that’s critical pedagogy of critical queer studies, you can just kind of apply it to all all various and sundry things. Okay. So the question is, do I find any point of critical theory useful for the church? And I think the answer that is kind of, don’t all heresies and bad ideas have a germ of truth in them, you know, mine comm which you can’t read, because it’s banned. Hitler says one or two true things in there, you know, I’m not going to drink a bucket of water, just because it only has a few drops of bleach in it. My main thing that I say to people, when they say, well, doesn’t CRT makes a good point, I would just say, I can make those same points without all the destructive stuff that comes along with CRT or with this or that other aspect of critical theory. I don’t think I need intersectionality to be able to recognize that oppression can happen along identity lines. Yeah.

Jim Davis
Okay. That’s well said. So one of the I’m, I was already wanting to talk about this, but hearing you to argue, coming back to defining terms, because you both have flanks where people on your flanks aren’t necessarily defining terms. They’re weaponizing terms. And you both define terms. Interestingly, to me, it kind of highlights the challenge because you define the terms different. You both did. I remember I probably first became aware of the term woke maybe five or six years ago when it was I would have defined it the way that you defined it. I was talking about becoming awake to social injustices Shawn’s definition of the term, if I can find it is a bunch of academics is what was your different? Yeah, it a bunch of failed Marxists trying to bring a galleon dialectic back to life by fusing it with 14 Psychology, Gramsci and philosophy, postmodern epistemology, black feminism and intersectionality. How do you interact with that definition? And how do we as a church move forward? When, again, but credit to both you you’re trying? You’re defining terms, which a lot of people aren’t doing? How do we move forward from here? And what do you do with that definition?

Rebecca McLaughlin
Yeah, I think what I what I was trying to say was, there are different definitions of this term. And in order to talk meaningfully, we need to know which one we’re using in any given conversation. And I gave us an example, what I understand to be the sort of origin of that term, which seems to me to be broadly speaking, an extremely valid lament, and mark of awareness of what’s been going on. And likewise, and I’m no expert on on critical race theory. But likewise, I think if we’re to look at what is the the germ of truth, that from from which a lot of this has grown? It’s the realization that changing the laws doesn’t necessarily change people’s hearts and behavior. We shouldn’t be surprised by that, as Christians, actually, we should think, yeah, we expected that. When schools were desegregated, we saw a sudden up springing of many Christian schools. Now, schools were the name Christian or church in their title, which were private schools where you could take your white children so that they didn’t have to go to school with little black boys and girls. This is this is recent. And, frankly, we’re looking at about observe that I’ve got, you know, we changed a law here. But actually, we didn’t suddenly magic away.

Rebecca McLaughlin
The horrific racial prejudice that people have been raised on over generations. I mean, if if your grandparents took your parents to watch lynchings as like Sunday afternoon fun, you’re not suddenly going to wake up one day and say, well, the laws change so so now I see black brothers and sisters, as you know, just like me. And so I think we need to reckon with that, that history. And again, that history, which is our history, and we need to reckon with the fact that yes, there have been things that have been sort of built on that that have taken that have gone in very different directions than any of us who believe the scriptures would want to go. But actually, we need to be talking about out those things, we need to be acknowledged that those things like if we if we’re critiquing critical race theory as an academic discipline, we need to have some sort of understanding that we’re actually using within our churches that isn’t just pretending like it didn’t happen. And sadly, I think all too often that’s what we’re doing.

Jim Davis
So where do you think, let’s say, between six years ago, and now where did the terms definition change? Like, when is there something that you can pinpoint was like this? This is the season this is the thing. The time wait, the term woke?

Rebecca McLaughlin
I mean, I honestly, I’m not sure I would even presume to do that. I think there are many people today who would use that term and its original meaning, and frankly, think that somebody like me didn’t have any right to tell them, they should or shouldn’t be using it in that way. I do think that it has been used by by some wittingly or unwittingly, to silence our black brothers and sisters on these questions. So that’s where I always want to sort of look, think carefully about what definition isn’t being used, and how we will how are we wielding that term? Oh, are we using in a ways that open up conversation or in ways that that close it down when maybe we should be opening

Jim Davis
it up? Well, let me ask you the same question. When we use the term in the church, what what rules should we abide by what norms should we have set? The terms? The terms is the way we use it are helpful and not weaponized?

Sean Demars
Yeah, so two things. One, I would be perfectly contented. We just stopped using it. It’s become politicized. weaponized, yeah. You use the word, everyone in the room kind of gets a little tense, you know, especially you’re at a new church, new small group, you say the word woke everyone’s like, where do you stand on this, I would be happy if we used a different word. Having said that, just a small point of pushback for Rebecca. I don’t think that the original usage of that word is amongst black people having a more of an awareness of the history of racial injustice. It was certainly appropriated by black people in the civil rights struggle. And I’m not saying that that’s inappropriate. But its roots are much deeper than that originally with Marx, and then later with other Marxists, and then post modernists, and then black feminists.

Sean Demars
And so and by the way, when I say black feminist, that’s the technical term I’m not referring to there. And then later was appropriated it most recently, after the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, and it kind of came back to life, particularly as it was popularized by a black lives matter. So I just want to be clear that if someone says like, um, I would like to hear Rebecca, say, we shouldn’t try to silence our black brothers and sisters, and tell them they shouldn’t use that word. Well, I don’t want to silence them. But I do want to make sure that if you use this word that you understand that it actually doesn’t come from where you may necessarily think it comes from. And you may be using a word that’s loaded with meaning that you just may not understand and I don’t mean to be paternalistic, or haughty, as I say that it’s just a fact.

Jim Davis
So in your argument, you talk about your conservative brothers and sisters who are making things worse. And and it’s important because because here we are members of the Body of Christ, we are on the same page about the large things we are a part of the same kind of coalition. I would like you to speak to the people to your right that you references are more conservative as us because what we hear are some some common statements we’ve seen in the media, things like Southern Seminary has gone liberal and woke, reformed Theological Seminary has CRT syllabi, Tim Keller and the gospel coalition are the greatest threat to the gospel in our lifetime. There’s a there’s a there’s a things that are said by those people that you reference, how do you interact with that?

Sean Demars
Well, I interact with it primarily as a pastor, I’ve had these conversations with people who are upset at me for going woke. Believe it or not in my church leaving the church you’re going woke, you’re part of big Eva, with my church with less than 100 people. And I just I don’t know, I just I’m always trying to walk the tightrope. I’m trying to have careful thought nuance I’m, most often I’m saying, hey, some of these guys that you’re saying are woke I know them. They’re my friends. That guy discipled me I had lunch with him last week, I heard him say this about that person, trust me. He’s not going woke at all. We did an episode on this and my podcast, maybe it’ll end up as the gospel coalition article. But I do want to make sure that the Kevin D young 1234 scale on the three, I do want to make sure that the threes are correcting the fours because what the fours are doing is very dangerous.

Sean Demars
They’re assuming that anyone who’s just one or two clicks left of them, anyone who’s even slightly sympathetic to questions of racial justice, that they are woke liberals. And it’s nonsense. It’s not careful thinking it’s not Christian charity. It’s the exact kind of cynicism that we abhor. In our opponents. There’s a I was recently reading Nick Needham, 2000 years of Christ power, phenomenal volume on church history, volume three on the Reformation. He has a section on John Calvin and his relationship with Martin Luther, in the first section, and I’m gonna butcher this quote, he says something to the effect of like it were Luther to call me a devil, I would still praise Him and bless him as a man of God who’s done all these amazing things. And then a little later, writing to one of his guys, he says, I’m ashamed of Luther. His vanity, his haughtiness, his desire to win every argument. And if I may kind of interject what I think is happening there, the way that he’s treating org Zwingli and the Reformation, treating him like an enemy, when in fact, he’s on the same team. He says, I’m ashamed of Luther. And that’s how I feel about some of my conservative brothers and sisters in the way that they’re handling this conversation. I am not happy about wokeness in the church, and you better believe I’m trying to fight it tooth and nail, but that also means that I have to kind of keep my own people in check and say like, if it’s not woke, it’s not what Tim, Tim Keller is not woke. I don’t agree with everything that Tim Keller says and does. But Tim Keller is not woke. So let’s stop being ridiculous. Alright,

Jim Davis
so let’s go from one flank to the other. So there’s an extreme that if we don’t agree with we’re labeled, woke and liberal, there’s another extreme that if we don’t agree with we might be labeled racist. So what some people on the other side of this have just given up on white evangelicalism, they’re walking away, they do not think that the institution is helpful in its current form. And they’re not hopeful enough for change. So they’re leaving what keeps you in the white Evangelical Church and what makes you hopeful for the future?

Rebecca McLaughlin
I mean, I’m not in a white Evangelical Church, okay. I was yesterday at church between a Chinese woman who was here doing her PhD at Harvard, and Korean woman who’s who was in Boston studying law, and I afterwards embraced a Ukrainian friend and a Chinese American. I mean, well,

Jim Davis
let me clarify real quick when I should say, the white American invigilators, as opposed to the historic African American Church?

Rebecca McLaughlin
What keeps me is the truth. And when I say that, I don’t mean the truth that our churches have always acted according to Christian ethics we haven’t, what I mean is the truth as revealed in the Scriptures about our Lord Jesus Christ. And that is a truth, which are my brothers and sisters, that African American churches would 100%. Affirm. And its meaning just go personal for a second, I moved to America 14 years ago. And when I first heard that white evangelicals in America, were associated with racism, I thought that can’t be true. Or that that has to be slander against the people of God, because it just, I couldn’t believe it. And in the past, sort of decade or so as I’ve learned more, both from reading and from talking with black brothers and sisters, in particular, tomorrow, I’ve realized how much truth there has been in that.

Rebecca McLaughlin
Now, again, that’s not to say that every person who identifies as a white evangelical would, would participate in that, but that actually, and you know, talking to my husband from Oklahoma, and one of his best friends from college, whose white girl, married a black guy, lovely, godly man. And they were advised that they should probably move to another state because it was just going to be really hard for them, you know, where they were. It’s it’s deeply heartbreaking to me that this is that has been our reality. But what keeps me hopeful? Is that the truth? I define evangelicals sort of theologically rather than politically. And I know again, that’s an important to have another debate on another debate on that. Where else are we to go? You know, Jesus is the one who has the words of eternal life and churches that might speak more loudly about racial justice, but also be massively compromised when it comes to same sex, sexuality and transgender identity and not going to give us any of us what we what we ultimately need.

Rebecca McLaughlin
But what I longed for is the day when rather than sort of harking back to a frankly imaginary past, where we were upholding christian ethics across the board, that instead we would work towards a much better future, where our brothers and sisters have a variety of racial and cultural backgrounds are trying holistically to read the scriptures together and to practice what they teach. And to where we will be living out what Jesus is calling us to it across all these areas, we won’t be falling into the mistake of I think it’s a profound mistake of grouping together. racial difference and love across racial difference with a thriving same sex marriage and transgender identity.

Jim Davis
So we have about three minutes left, and I want to ask both of you the same question. And hopefully we can do it in three minutes. So obviously, guarding the church is something that we are called to do. Paul tells Galatians to do it he he exhorts Timothy, guard the flock, watch what’s going on, protect ourselves. But then in our culture, you also hear it’s slippery slope, slippery, which is in itself a logical fallacy I know. But how do we thread this needle of really guarding ourselves or our churches, as church leaders, but not giving in to this fearful, slippery slope mentality? Shawn, I’ll start with you.

Sean Demars
I’m really glad you did. The same way we’ve been doing it for 2000 years, you know, I know it feels like one of my favorite. Men and black. You guys know what I’m talking about classic cinema. Agent J and Agent K are talking and Will Smith. He’s one of them. I don’t remember if he’s j or k, and he is freaking out because you know, the ship is coming and he’s gonna destroy it. It’s gonna destroy everyone. And we gotta go and Tommy Lee Jones Jones. He’s the old you know, grizzled veteran, and he just sort of slowly walking towards the car gonna get his gun. It’s not a big deal. And Will Smith just goes what do you what are you doing? The end is and he just goes, the end is always coming. There’s always a new threat. There’s always the Boogeyman. There’s, there’s always, you know, the worship of Baal and Gnosticism and Arianism, and Roman Catholicism and woke ism. And there’s always something there. And the answer to that is the same as it always been, and just preach Christ and Christ crucified and do it well in the context of a local church where we take evangelism and discipleship seriously where we gather around the word and we make the gospel central in all things, and we pray to God for wisdom, to not just understand the theology of the gospel, but to be able to apply it in a very confusing world corrupted by sin.

Jim Davis
Rebecca, how would you mention that?

Rebecca McLaughlin
I agree with much of what Sean said, I think preaching the scriptures and proclaiming the gospel is at the heart of this. And I think I would go back to that, that twofold that we Christians should be really good at of repenting and believing. And I think that will help, especially the rising generation. But my sense is that there are a lot of younger folks today who’ve been raised in the church, and have been profoundly disappointed by the what they see and I don’t disagree, what they see as the failure of repentance and lamentation, when it comes to the elders in the church around race. And so that’s precipitating them that I’m leaving, and I can kind of understand where that that impetus comes from.

Rebecca McLaughlin
So I think we need to get into a place where we are humbly and with love and our hearts preaching and teaching truth when it comes to race, and preaching and teaching truth when it comes to sexuality and gender, recognizing actually the ways in which we Christians have also sinned in our treatment of gay and lesbian people outside the church and in our failure to love same sex attracted brothers and sisters within the church. I think we can and should do that, while also being very clear about what the Bible calls us to when it comes to Christian sexual ethics. but spoiler alert, it doesn’t call us to hateful treatment. If anybody you know, Jesus calls us to love even our enemies. So I think love it having a humble, loving, repentant, personally repented approach to all of these things, while we make much of Jesus and little little of ourselves is going to be the best way to guard the church.

Jim Davis
Well, I’m thankful for both of you. I really am the ways that you have modeled gospel centrality and shared ability over something that is dividing the church all over the United States right now. So my prayer is that this will be helpful for people watching that conversations inside local churches and families would look more like this and less like some of the stuff that we see on Twitter. So thank you, for your time and your devotion to the things that are most important.