Intended Audience: Anyone affected by identity politics, American evangelicalism, and neoconservatism in the United States; anyone interested in the intersection between theology, economics, and politics.
As the world inevitably continues to change, there has been a remarkable resurgence of fascism, racism, nationalism, and misogyny in the last decade. With it come an endless supply of scapegoats that are (allegedly) “the greatest threats to our civilization,” such as:
- “Anti-racism”
- “Wokism”
- “Woke-capitalism”
- “Critical Race Theory”
- “Secularism”
- “Deconstruction”
- “Socialism”
- “Cultural Marxism”
- “Marxism”
- “Cancel culture”‘
All of these words are lumped together in everyday discourse so that they are hardly distinguishable, systematized even as a “Woke Religion.” The problems of such superficial models are, of course, endless and need not concern us here.
Evangelical leaders and professors in particular, have taken up the task of decrying the menace of this religion, and of “cancel culture” and “woke capitalism” in particular. In other words, God and the Bible are used to shore up arguments that ultimately end up perpetuating the profoundly unjust and broken world that we’re living in. This bothers me. So although it is extremely difficult, I took it upon myself to examine this particular subject and offer an alternative perspective that is not only economically, sociologically and historically informed, but theologically as well.
The article, however, was too large and (according to an editor) too critical of capitalism to be accepted into a special entrepreneurship edition of the journal Religions. Knowing that it would get rejected elsewhere, and instead of wasting a massive, 60-page fully cited scholarly paper I spent a year writing and researching, I decided to publish it as an unpublished manuscript to my academia page, where you can read it. The abstract to the article is:
“Canceling” and “woke-capitalism” are contemporary terms used to describe group activity, often in the business and economic world, designed to demote or promote particular social, ethical, and/or political priorities. Many in the Christian community have condemned this movement, seeing it primarily as the reinforcement of unchristian values. When evaluating the arguments against woke-capitalism, however, the picture is more complex, and reasons for criticism tend to consist of a reactionary anti-progressive political disposition and commitment to conservative religious and political ideologies—all of which are conflated with a generic Christian identity. This article reviews such arguments and provides a tempered, positive case for strategic cancelling and woke-capitalism—which ultimately question central values of neoliberal, modern capitalism.