A Christian conservative reflection on the anti-woke rebellion

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Anti-woke rebels such as the comedian Ricky Gervais, the actor and musician Laurence Fox, and the writer Douglas Murray may be a breath of fresh air in a stultifying neo-Stalinist atmosphere but social conservatives inspired by Christianity surely ought to be clear in their minds that our enemy’s enemy is not necessarily our friend.

The new anti-wokeists object to the authoritarianism and hypocrisy of the socially Marxist establishment in Hollywood, in the BBC, and in Silicon Valley as we do and they are doing so with wit and eloquence. There is much that social conservatives can applaud in this mounting rebellion. Social conservatives should be opposing woke-ist thought policing, brain-washing and social engineering.

But we are not libertarians. Our outlook has been shaped by the Book of Common Prayer.  We want to belong to a nation that is being ‘godly and quietly governed’ under a Christian constitutional monarch. Led by the Prayer Book, we pray in the name of Christ that Almighty God would ‘grant unto her (the Queen’s) whole Council, and to all who are put in authority under her, that they may truly and indifferently (impartially) minister justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice and to the maintenance of thy true religion and virtue’.

Because their primary objection to woke-ism would seem to be its authoritarianism, we do not seem to hear much about law and order from the anti-wokeists. Their main objection to woke-ism would seem to be summed up in Laurence Fox’s song The Distance.

‘They have put something in the water/They seek a cure for the conversation/They stole a march on your indecision/And the first to fall is laughter/Just to quell the long offended/They seek to murder your opinion.’

I think I can say ‘Amen’ here even if I may not be inclined to sing along for musical reasons (in case my tuneless tones were overheard by the neighbours). But there would seem to be a verse missing in an anti-wokeist hymn like this. The practical reality is that fear-spreading lawlessness is a massive impediment to liberty. When knife-murderers strut the streets of London and other major British cities with their heads held high, surely such gangsters are in their own way dictators? Woke is surely not the only threat to liberty.

‘Conservative’ political leaders may now be waking up to the growing anti-woke public feeling and we may see them being bolder in speaking out against identity politics and the delusion that ‘racism’ is widespread in British society. But unless and until Her Majesty’s Government is prepared to pass legislation that would require a judge to pronounce the sentence of death on, for example, a young man who has been found being guilty by a jury of his peers of committing murder with a knife, even if he was only a day over 18 when he did it, her ministers show themselves to be moral relativists who do not really believe in the clear demarcation between right and wrong, which is required for true liberty to flourish.

So, even at the risk of being labelled ‘boring’ by the cool new anti-wokeists, Christian-based social conservatives should be clearly different from libertarians if we are to do any good for our country.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. I remember once hearing (I think it was on ‘Songs of Praise’ in the UK) a young lad enthusiastically declaring that, among people of his age-group, it was becoming ‘cool’ to say that you were a Christian. Even then I remember thinking that the measure of truth or efficacy of Christianity could never be reliant on the twists and turns of public opinion: today’s top trend will soon enough be ‘so last year.’

    But there is an upside to the need for Christians to take a rather detached view of how they are currently received by the public. Because exactly the same thing applies to purveyors of cultural Marxism: today’s invincibility will one day give way to disdain, and even fury, by a public that has had just about enough of the sheer mindless tyranny of it. Perhaps we are seeing a few signs of that reaction today.

    However, I agree with Julian Mann that such a reaction – cheering as it is – cannot be taken as anything like a new public endorsement of Christian values or even a new openness to the claims of Christianity. Instead I think it tells us that God designed the collective of human minds in such a way that they can never be fully and permanently owned by the forces of evil.

    There does seem to be some kind of God-designed self protection mechanism which makes human minds both restless and reluctant to yield full sovereignty to forces that try to take them over. And surely it is this characteristic of human beings that means there is always the possibility that God’s Holy Spirit can break through and meet the longing which is at the heart of that restlessness. Many (most) may indeed reject God’s call, but it would be a mistake to assume that culture and groupthink can ever claim full sovereignty over men’s minds: God’s voice will be heard whenever it is preached or passed on by other means.

    So the battle goes on, it may be exceedingly tough, but it’s God’s battle, and we should never assume it has been lost.

  5. “So, even at the risk of being labelled ‘boring’ by the cool new anti-wokeists, Christian-based social conservatives should be clearly different from libertarians if we are to do any good for our country..”

    I totally agree,and all we need to do now is to find some ‘Christian – based social conservatives’ willing to stick their heads above the parapet… Where are these Christians, and why aren’t they speaking up loud and clear for the Gospel in today’s society? Apart from Right Rev’d. Gavin Ashenden, bishop Michael Nazir- Ali there are very few in the UK who speak as conservative and evangelical Christians.
    There are non Christian men and a few women, who address social issues and trends directly, but where are the Christians?

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