Exposing the false religion of the Great Awokening
Twisting the path of Christian revelation, most all false religions follow the same five steps.
It starts with (1) a false prophet who then writes or uses, (2) a false authority to then proclaim, (3) a false god, (4) a false savior and, (5) a false salvation.
For example, Mormonism has (1) Joseph Smith who delivers (2) the book of Mormon, which proclaims that (3) the god of our world used to be a man and (4) “another Jesus” (2 Cor. 11:4) who “attained godhood” which others can accomplish and finally (5) a plan of salvation that says “One of the most fallacious doctrines originated by Satan and propounded by man is that man is saved alone by the grace of God, that belief in Jesus Christ alone is all that is needed for salvation.”
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Pick your poison, i.e., your false religion, and you will see the same pattern.[1] This includes the religion being broadcast today through what many are calling “the Great Awokening”.
Another head of the same hydra
The Great Awakening was a period of profound Christian religious interest that began in the early to mid-1700’s in New England and spread throughout the American colonies. Jonathan Edwards is typically recognized as the most prominent theologian of the Awakening, while George Whitefield is seen as its greatest evangelist.
To understand the Great Awokening of today, we have to go back much further than the 1700’s to understand its anti-God roots and how it got to where it is now. In short, it is simply another head of the false religious hydra, humanism.
Humanism’s prophets can be traced back to the Greek philosopher Protagoras (c. 481 – 411 B.C.) who is credited with coining humanism’s mantra: “Man is the measure of all things, of those that are, of those that are not that they are not.” About this statement, agnostic and skeptic Bertrand Russell forebodingly says, “This is interpreted as meaning that each man is the measure of all things, and that, when men differ, there is no objective truth in virtue of which one is right and the other wrong.”
If that statement doesn’t start your hazard lights flashing, I don’t know what will.
Protagoras laid the foundation that other atheists gradually built on during the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods (14th-19th centuries) by more firmly elevating humankind to the center of reality. Because humanism has no Creator, no creation, and thus no God-given absolutes, it naturally depends on ever-changing human political machines to carry out its gospel. This, of course, has disaster written all over it.
Why? Because humanism pushes for “freedom” but, as Russell points out, it has no consensus or means to contain it. The natural result is chaos and lawlessness because people exercise their freedom in an excessive manner, and so the conclusion always ends in authoritarianism and slavery under state / political rule.
There is no better example of this than the French Revolution of 1789, which gave formal birth to the Leftist movement and was influenced by the humanist prophets Voltaire and Rousseau. The freedom it chased was one characterized by the pursuit of absolute power and secularism. It included a mob-driven and forceful de-Christianization campaign that grounded its ethics in pragmatism and ever-changing right and wrong. Its natural outworking was something that made the worst of modern-day slasher films look tame.
The humanist French Revolution thinking was then carried to the shores of America and popularized by other false secular prophets like John Dewey (1859-1952). His marching orders for the contemporary humanist movement can be found in his book A Common Faith, where he says: “Let’s take it [humanism] and make it the militant religion of the public schools…Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class, or race. Such a faith has always been implicitly the common faith of mankind. It remains to make it explicit and militant.”
Note that Dewey correctly labels humanism a “religion faith”, one even recognized by the IRS.
The church of the woke
The Great Awokening in America is simply another attempt by humanism[2] to unseat God, His established human authorities (e.g., the “defund the police” movements) and carry out its false gospel, which is marketed deceptively well in the Humanist Manifesto II: “we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.”
What differs in the Great Awokening’s approach to this illusory end goal vs. past attempts is the focus used to garner sympathy and gain disciples. Never forget that sympathy is a powerful weapon in the devil's arsenal.
Niall Ferguson, a Scottish author and historian from the Hoover Institution, describes how that sympathy is produced and used to spread humanism’s gospel in the Great Awokening: “People on the Left didn’t really want to have a conversation about economics, because they had lost their arguments in the 1980s; they really hadn’t been able to make the case for socialism successfully. The conclusion was that there was more money to be made, or more power to be gained by exploiting identity politics and emphasizing cultural, racial, gender differences.”
He then goes on to declare: “Wokeism, is in fact, a religion…We are dealing not just with the decay of traditional religion, but far worse, the rise of new fake religions, political religions, and one thing that’s very clear from the 20th century is that when people take their religious feelings, and they apply them to political ideologies, terrible things can happen.”
Funny, isn’t it, that the same people crying the loudest for separation of traditional Church and State are the same ones melding their Church and State together in the Great Awokening to rule over the supposedly less enlightened (i.e., “woke”)?
Calling it “a religion without grace”, Pastor Voddie Baucham depicts the false faith of wokeism as being “replete with notions of original sin and atonement” and having “its own theology and theological terminology. It has its own saints, its own priests, it has its own rituals.” But, as Baucham says, it’s a faith that is bankrupt with respect to true salvation: “So it’s a religion, but as a religion, it offers no hope. There is no ultimate redemption in antiracism. You just have to do the work of antiracism for the rest of your life and hope you never step out of line, because if you do, then you go back to zero.”
Ask how true a statement that is to any who have sinned against the woke church and tried to apologize. They are met with the same reaction Judas got from the Pharisees when he tried to return his 30 pieces of silver as repentance: “What is that to us?” (Matt. 27:4).
Candace Owens highlights the reason for this attitude when she writes, “The idea is to keep us eternally angry. The idea, of course, is perpetual revolution.”
So, we see that the Great Awokening has (1) its many false prophets who, (2) have their works collectivized into various manifestos, which (3) declare humankind a god; a god who also doubles as (4) a false savior that (5) works out a never-completed salvation that is devoid of any forgiveness or ultimate redemption.
How different is the true gospel of God that offers real change for the sinful human condition and a “seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22) grace for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.
And how stark is the difference between the two produced fruits of humanism vs. Christianity. From the former come the terrible acts showcased every day on social media, which are also listed in Gal. 5:19-21 – “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these”.
But the fruit of Christianity? “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Gal. 5:22-23).
Sadly the 20th century, filled with its humanist practices and devoid of the Spirit, instead produced the worst atrocities recorded in human history. Unfortunately, it seems the disciples of the Great Awokening aren’t learning from their humanist predecessor’s mistakes.
[1] For those asserting that Christianity follows the same 5-step pattern, see my refutation here.
[2] Some have pointed out there are occult aspects to the woke religion; see one example here.
Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master's in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.
