Is there a lot of discussion online about left-wing and “woke” Christianity lately? What is this?
Definitions have changed. For most of my adult life, since the 1980s, I have followed and criticized the religious left. This is what it was: Protestants and Catholics who did not think agreement on historic Christian beliefs, including the divinity of Christ, was necessary, who prioritized politics over the traditional work of Church, who loved Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega while often supporting Marxist guerrilla movements, who did not. criticize the former Soviet Union or any other communist government, which claimed that America was imperialist, which praised the right to abortion in the name of the Church and advocated for liberalized sexuality, which sanctified the welfare state and denounced any doubt about its growth as unchristian, and which equated big government, with higher taxes and more regulation, with the Kingdom of God.
The old religious left was primarily concentrated in agencies, schools, and advocacy groups derived from mainline Protestantism, with some renegade activist Catholic orders. This world has largely died or become culturally irrelevant. This week I learned that the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, founded by mainline Protestants in 1973 to advocate Roe v. Wade, housed for years in the Methodist building on Capitol Hill and funded generously by secular foundations like the Ford Foundation, is now a shadow of its former self, with only a few employees and little or no foundation support . Maybe Union Theological Seminary in New York would count as one of the left’s last old, robust, and overtly religious outposts.
There was also an evangelical left that remained largely theologically and ethically orthodox while advocating progressive policy goals, for welfare state expansion, reduced military spending, and racial justice. He was largely pacifist and hostile to American commitments abroad. But unlike the religious left, it sometimes cares about international religious freedom. These were people like Ron Sider, Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis, now deceased or retired.
The IRD, founded in 1981 to refute the support of the religious left for overseas Marxist regimes and movements under the aegis of Liberation theology, has always criticized the old religious left for its failure to affirm democracy, human rights and religious freedom for all. The religious left has prioritized economic equality over freedom, admiring Cuba’s health care system but silent on Cuba’s political prisoners. The IRD has criticized, among other things, the evangelical left for its pacifism and geopolitical anti-Americanism, but has sometimes collaborated with international religious freedom. The evangelical left as an organized institutional force has essentially disappeared, replaced by “post-evangelical” voices on social media who loudly denounce conservative evangelicalism, often without offering alternatives.
Voices from dinosaur left churches, almost always mainline Protestants, will appear mockingly in “Woke Preacher Clips” on social media, for wearing masks four years into the pandemic or for taking outlandish positions on racial issues. But watching these clips is more like visiting a circus than looking out the window at a serious religious demographic. They provide easy targets for ridicule but do not represent a serious force within Christianity. These “woke preachers” are more sad than infuriating.
Interestingly, a recent expose of left-wing philanthropic funding of progressive evangelical projects provided information from a decade ago, citing the Evangelical Immigration Table and the Evangelical Environmental Network. I wrote reviews on last 25 years ago and ancient ten years ago. Neither deserves much attention today.
Most church controversies today are battles between conservative Christians, and often the disputes are more tonal and rhetorical than deeply theological. The talk mentioned above cites secular funding of a Bible study resource by Curtis Chang, David French, and Russell Moore that aims to alleviate political polarization. French and Moore are frequently criticized by some conservatives for their strongly anti-Trump stance and their critiques of the current political state of Christian conservatism. All three belong to conservative evangelical churches. Moore is editor-in-chief of Christianity today review. Chang is affiliated with Fuller Theological Seminary and Duke Divinity School. Chang is the closest to political progressivism among the three. The French often have a libertarian tendency. Moore remained a theological and social conservative.
None of the three can be described as the “religious left” as I have known it. Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, whom I have often criticized, wrote books and gave sermons suggesting, among other disbeliefs, that the Virgin Mary had been a prostitute. He castigated traditional Christianity as irrelevant in modern times. He was once a media star. Today, almost no one remembers Bishop Spong. In the 1990s, mainline Protestant denominations welcomed a reimagining movement for radical feminist theology seeking to overthrow “patriarchal” Christianity in favor of ancient pagan deities like Astarte, Isis, and Ashara. It was annoying but it’s now forgotten. Religious groups once regularly traveled to Havana, Pyongyang, Hanoi and former Soviet Moscow to collaborate with totalitarian communists who imprisoned Christians and other people of conscience. These delegations, often organized by the once influential National Council of Churches, are forgotten and have no successors. The Jesus Seminar of left-wing academics, at its height in the 1980s and 1990s, gained popularity in the media for denying anything supernatural in the Bible. Jesus was not resurrected, his corpse was simply dragged into pieces by wild dogs, etc. This group barely exists anymore and no one cares about it anymore. A rare activist of the religious left, like the Reverend. William Barbier “Moral Mondays” in North Carolina, attracts media attention. Its mainline Protestant congregation is of course small.
Meanwhile, a new right-hander band has emerged to “reinvigorate” the Southern Baptist Convention, which it fears is slipping into wokeness. Its executive director identifies as a “Christian nationalist.” I am skeptical that many Southern Baptists are succumbing to progressivism. I am also skeptical that the Southern Baptist Convention, which has been in decline for almost 20 years, will exist as a strong denomination in ten years. Its churches and seminaries will likely align with nondenominationalism, whose philosophy is primarily Baptist.
The decline and even collapse of denominations in America means that Christians, even if they remain in denominations, are no longer influenced by centralized structures but are primarily influenced by their own chosen social media. Decades ago, progressives took control of Mainline denominations whose members were still mostly traditional. In post-denominational America, this strategy is no longer relevant. Unadulterated religious progressivism can be found in media outlets like Stayers, which has long tried to remain friendly toward orthodox Protestants and Catholics but now touts transgenderism and a phalanx of other progressive causes. Fifteen or twenty years ago, the National Association of Evangelicals, as I said note nearly a decade ago, he moved from conservative to centrist. But groups like the NAE, like the National Council of Churches, no longer matter much in post-denominational America.
Today, what remains of the religious left, besides the vestiges of mainline Protestantism, is a handful of post-evangelical podcasters and bloggers whose audiences are self-selecting. Loyalty to institutional churches having long since faded, the rare evangelical church which lurches to the left usually shrinks or dies fairly quickly. The “woke” obsessions of some otherwise conservative mainstream churches on race and other social issues that surfaced in 2020 appear to have mostly receded. The collapse of progressive institutional Christianity may have forced leftists to find employment in the secular world.
There will always be waves of heresy, apostasy and, more generally, spiritual indifference among all Churches. In this sense, there will always be a religious left. And there are many on the right who fabricate their own extremism and false teachings. A current fad is self-identified Christian nationalism, whose adherents fantasize about a Protestant denominational state that punishes apostasy and blasphemy while legally restricting non-Christians. Fortunately, such a proposal will go nowhere, but the idea will turn away some well-meaning Christians. All Christians must avoid political utopianism and perfectionism. Today’s Christian nationalism is yesterday’s liberation theology.
The challenge in every era is to maintain a dynamic and faithful historical orthodoxy, both in doctrine and ethics, that is evangelical and redemptive for society. For idealists, the Church, composed of mere mortals, is always a disappointment. But in God’s eyes, and hopefully in ours, the Church, in the midst of her failures, remains his instrument for redeeming the world, made perfect by his sacrifice. Appreciating this view of the Church requires faith and hope, what is sometimes called Christian realism.
