The Sean McDowell Show - Wokeness Is Alive and Well—Here’s How Scripture Confronts It

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Is “wokeness” really dead? Apologist Neil Shenvi is here to talk about the growing influence of critical theory in culture, the church, and the next generation. They discuss why wokeness isn’t just a passing trend but a worldview rooted in a new kind of moral framework one that’s shaping how young people think about justice, identity, and truth. Rising LGBTQ+ identification rates and debates about gender, oppression, and compassion, mean that Christians need to respond with both truth and grace, holding fast to biblical conviction while engaging a culture that often redefines love and justice. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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I would say that is a very naive and short-sighted approach to wokeness. Wokeness or critical theory actually functions like a religion. You have the rituals that you practice and the rituals that you don't practice, maybe using preferred pronouns. Every generation that goes on, we're seeing higher and higher numbers of people that identify as L-GPTQ plus. 22.3% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBT. On and on and on, it functions like a religion. I do think when people are genuinely trying to amend their ways and make a course correction,

I think we should encourage them. A great phrase I like is, praise what you want to see more of. You've co-written a book called Post-Woke. Neil Shenvi, why are we still talking about wokeness today? Does it still even matter? It matters a great deal for lots of reasons. Number one, the book's called Post-Woke, because we're saying even if the culture has moved beyond Woke, which I doubt, we have to put forward a positive vision for race, gender, and sexuality. What does the Bible teach about these subjects?

And why is it not just true and good, but actually provides the answers to these questions that are being raised by the woke, who think that they can only solve society's problems? through progressive ideology. So we want to give them a positive vision showing the Bible teaches what it's true and good and will lead to human flourishing. But second, I dispute the idea that we are post-woke yet, not quite. This narrative in the sort of conservative spaces

that, you know, wokeness was around and regnant, you know, 2019, 2020, but then Donald Trump got reelected in 2024 and he killed the wokeness dead. Well, goodness is dead now. They're in charge. And I would say that is a very naive and short-sighted approach to

wokeness. There's just some numbers. In 2023, there's a poll taken of young people, all people. But they're asked, do you support or oppose an ideology that has white people are oppressors and the non-white people and people of certain groups are oppressed? And as a result, should be favored today at universities and for employment. So they asked people that question, 2,000 people. Among people that were 65 and older, 80% said they opposed that ideology.

They don't believe in oppressors and oppressed. For those 18 through 24, it was flipped. 20% opposed and 80% said they support it. Wow. So young people, so you're like, well, all the people that I know who are 40 plus are anti-whoop, the younger generation, 80-20 in favor of this oppressor-oppressed binary. One more data point. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 22.3% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ. 22%. And that's way more,

I mean, millennials are 10%, Gen X is 4.5%, maybe members are 2%. So every generation that goes on, we're seeing higher and higher numbers of people that identify as LGBTQ+. My point is this, even if you were sure that Wokeness was gone from everyone, age 40 and older in your church in society, which is not true at all. Among the younger generation, it's still going strong. And as they become an next crop of senators, judges, doctors, pastors, wokeness will move forward in society because of demographics alone. So that's another major thing we have to think about and not assume, oh, we're done. Parties over, go home, we won.

I asked a similar question to As Guinness, and he goes, no way is wokenness gone. It's too deeply entrenched in the culture and the university to go away with a single president or a couple cultural factors. So I think you're probably right about that. Now, maybe let's take a step back and ask the question, what is wokeness? Because this term is thrown around, woke left, woke right. it means different things, sometimes to different communities. So maybe give us a definition and maybe even some common ways that this is kind of misunderstood, maybe on the left and the right.

So technically, the term awoke was back to 1938. It's in a blues song by a singer called it named Lead Belly. So that's a long time ago. It's been around sort of black vernacular for decades. And it just meant being aware of injustice, being aware of what's really. really going on. In 2008, a singer named Erica Badu used the phrase stay woke. So that was 17 years ago, sort of more current today. And then one more data point. In 2017, you have a journal article from the International Journal of Multicultural Education, the peer-reviewed journal, written by three

women of color with WOMXN, women of color. And the title of the article is, We Are Woke. And in the abstract, they say this, quote, we define wokeness as critical consciousness to intersecting systems of oppression. They go on to explain how they define wokeness. So my only point here is that the word of woke is not something invented by conservatives to slam the left. And it was a phrase that originated in black slang and then was, I would argue, co-opted by progressives around from 2010 or so, 2020, and people would self-identify as woke. Their websites called woke homeschooling and woke history and things like that. So that was their term.

It feels like a contradiction to me, woke homeschooling, but keep going. Well, no. It's actually a website called woke homeschooling. But my point is people were using that to identify themselves. The four of the right said, hey, that stuff looks bad. So I think the left sometimes treats wokeness as a slur, as if there's nothing to see here. It's all just a mirage painted by the right. I'm arguing, no, you can find it in scholarly literature, explaining what it is.

And so I, and of course, people can use it as a slur. Like you see a movie, you don't like it. Oh, it's woke. Or why? I think there might have been an Asian actress in it. I was like, well, that's not woke, guys. But what is wokeness that I would argue descriptively, not as a pejorative or a slur, but what is it actually?

And I define it as the cultural expression. of critical theory. And critical theory is this ideology that goes back all the way back to Karl Marx, and it's evolved over the last century and a half to span whole disciplines like critical race theory, queer theory, critical pedagogy, post-colonial theory, fat studies, disability studies, all of those critical social theories follow into the umbrella of critical theory that's expressed in culture as this woke phenomena. So critical theory is the idea behind this, and wokeness is the cultural practice of it in the church, when it shows up in movies, et cetera. So that's a helpful way.

We're going to come back to more of what critical theory is, because if you want to understand whokeness and its critical theory applied, got to understand critical theory. But I'm wondering what you make of certain cultural indicators that people would use to say that wokenness is dead. So, for example, after Endgame, you know, before 2020, Marvel just shifts and makes these movies that have wokeness all over them. And they obviously didn't do as well at the box office and some of them failed. So there's a business aspect to this. But the most recent Marvel film Fantastic Four, I mean, unless I miss something, I didn't see anything woke in it. It was natural family values. There's certain biblical questions.

Like, can you sacrifice a child to save an entire world? Like, those seem to be indicators to me. Do you read those as like we're in the moment of teetering, whether we go into wokenness or away from it? Or is it just too early to tell kind of where we're headed? I think it's too early to tell. So when people say, well, it's just dead. It's done.

We've hit peak woke. Because that data I showed you, I'm skeptical. but let me give you some other cultural artifacts from the recent past. So those you say wokeness died, you know, President Trump outlawed wokeness. And he did sign several executive orders, you know, mandating, removing DEI from all government-funded agencies and even public institutions. He defined gender in terms of the male, female binary. So he did push back against wokeness.

That's true in culture. But even then, this June, for example, June 6th in USA Today, they ran an op-ed that said, quote, there is no scientific evidence that transgender women, that is biological men who identify as women, there's no evidence that they have a physical advantage over cisgender women athletes. That was in USA Today.

That's just nonsense. You have a 6-5 rugby player, yeah, has an advantage over a male rugby player, has an advantage over a 5-6, female rugby player, obviously. And then in August 8th, in Nature magazine, which is the number one science journal in the world. They wrote, and there was a piece entitled,

Decolonize Scientific Institutions, don't just diversify them, and it said things like this. Dominant science, sometimes referred to as Western science, is rooted in colonization, racism, and white supremacy. Universities must stop treating indigenous knowledge as supplementary to real knowledge. This perpetuates white supremacy in society. science. And if you know anything about critical theory and critical pedagogy, and you can see that these same, all these phrases and ideas come from this woke critical theory stream that's been

in our culture and in the sciences now for decades. So it's not going away. I applaud the fact that we're beginning to see some cultural pushback and recognition of the madness we've been embracing for years. But don't count it out. Don't let up, because I always say this too. We live in a democracy, and we are three years away from President Gavin Newsom or President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mandating DEI training in every public school in the nation. So who knows what will happen in three years? I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet. But we better get ourselves together.

We have a brief breathing room before the next onslaught may be of wokeness. Let's get our act together. Well, I'm not a prophet either. I work at a nonprofit organization just for the record. but your point being is if you have a president who outlaws, so to speak, DEI programs or wokeness or says I'll only recognize two sexes, then as soon as you have another president who has a different ideology, they could just flip it that quickly and culture could go back.

So I think... Go ahead. What can be mandated by Fiat can be overturned by Fiat, right? just wave it into existence, you wave it out of existence. So, yeah, it's a problem. Exactly, which is why I think your hesitancy to say, you know, because Donald Trump is president and he's been pushing back against this, it's dead. It's like, wait a minute, we got to get to the root of the issue here. That's what's at key. And for me, I read New York Times almost every morning, read it this morning, read USA Today somewhat consistently. And for there to be a

publication recently in USA Today questioning the biological differences between males and females and the advantage is asinine and insane and ridiculous and makes me question almost everything else USA Today puts out there. Now, maybe four or five years ago, like maybe in the most generous way conceivable. But the data is out there. I did an interview with a doctor who did his dissertation on specifically biological differences, males and females as it applies to track. And it's not even close. So to see that stuff keep cropping up just shows how ideology rather than the facts can drive so much of this. Now, before we lean into critical theory and some of this other stuff, we had an event.

It probably was four years ago. maybe, I don't know, 2020, 2021, it was outside. And everybody was talking about critical race theory. So some Biola students came to me and said, hey, would you usually be going to have a conversation with somebody else who sees it differently and help us understand critical race theory? I said, sure. So I invited a black pastor friend of mine from L.A., great apologist.

And I'll never forget something he said. I don't know. Maybe there were two, three dozen Biola students sitting outside. He said, you know, I'm happy to come. come and talk about critical race theory. He said, but why is it that it's this cultural debate that makes so many of you care about race rather than the injustice, the pain, the hurt in the black community, why aren't you motivated by that enough to have an event like this? And that really stuck with me and thought, is there a way to have real?

concerns with critical theory and critical race theory, and I do, but also not ignore the suffering that's taking place in so many communities. And so to him, talk about critical race theory was kind of a diversion from the real conversation we need to have. How would you respond to that, especially since you're writing a second book on whokeness now in critical theory called post-woke? So I wrote an article a few years ago called How to Preach Against CRT. And I said in the article I wrote this, pastors should consider preaching against CRT without mentioning CRT at all. What I mean by that? I had is I had a list of about eight saying statements you could make, like racism is a sin,

or a Christian's primary identity is in Christ, not in their demographic group. These statements were completely devoid of explicit reference. to CRT, there are biblical statements, but all those biblical statements would then tend to undermine the assumptions of CRT. But I think you said the thing the other way, you can have a conversation about race and should have conversations about race that simply affirm what's actually true about racism and about justice and about poverty and U.S. history. We can have that conversation without even referring to CRT.

The problem becomes, it happens when you're trying to have a conversation about history or about the criminal justice system. And without knowing it, one or both of you are smuggling in these false unbiblical assumptions. You're framing the whole conversation in terms of CRT. For example, if you're talking to a person about how we should love others and love our neighbors as. ourselves and we should show compassion to the suffering. We'd all hopefully be saying amen, amen, amen. And then the person you're talking with saying amen with says, and that is why we have to affirm people's gender identity, because otherwise you're causing trauma. You're not being compassionate. You're not loving them. And at that point, I'd say, wait, time out. We suddenly,

suddenly, apparently, the whole conversation until that point was based on a false assumption that we were sharing vocabulary words. We both defined love in terms of wanting what's actually best for the person. Compassion was wanting, was feeling sorry for their state and wanting to actually help them. But apparently we haven't defined those things in the same way because what I think is love, you think is hatred and bigotry. What I think is compassion, you think is oppression. So my point there is that I am, and in our book, we have a whole chapter,

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Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play. and download it today. Our second chapter is on the history of race in the U.S. You do, yeah. There's a racism, why it's a sin, all that stuff. In our last book, we had a whole chapter on slavery. We want to have those conversations. At the same time, we have to be able to say,

but here's where these conversations can go wrong if you're assuming a framework that's not rooted in what the Bible says about these topics. That's fair. I help that. My answer to the question I posed is it's possible to, walk and chew gum at the same time. It's not one or the other. If somebody's only talking about CRT and they're never paying attention to pain injustice and hurt minority communities, I want to say time out. Are you helping and loving the people around you? On the other side,

if you're only engaging in what's often called social justice, but you're not aware of the worldview and unbiblical ideas behind it, that's also not helpful and arguably not biblical. We need to do both. So one reason I think people should read your book, and I can give other reasons, but I'll give one right now. It's just to have clarity on what wokeness is. For me, oftentimes, like listening to somebody, there's so many times I just try to listen and I try to understand.

Like, tell me where you're coming from. That's a way to love somebody. People will interpret that like, oh, that's wokeness because you're buying into lived experience. I'm like, slow down. People are throwing this term around and stopping real helpful conversations about race because they're so quick to identify things as wokeness that are not wokeness. So you guys really carefully define your terms and I think are trying to say, we got to move forward on real biblical justice and love people and listen to people and help people and serve people and not be taken in by faulty ideas that are dominating our culture and as you said

earlier are increasingly growing among gen zers it's not one or the other it's both now that takes oh go ahead were you going to say something i was going to say the example you gave a great example of this is how would you define injustice? So talk about don't you care about injustice in the black community? And I'd say, yes, there's actual injustice. For example, there are people who are on death row who are found to be innocent. That's that's injustice, right? One example that's actually a very important policy thing, I think, for us to think about, are payday loans, that are predatory loans in these poor communities, largely black and Hispanic, that charge exorbitant interest rates on to basically, prey on poor people. A lottery system, you know, state-run lotteries, you could argue are penalizing disproportionately poor communities, minority communities. You could argue, I'm not saying that's true, but those are genuinely serious policy discussions we can have. Like, should these

be legal? Should you be allowed to, basically, the Bible had laws against usury, right? Excessive interest. Should we think about that as society? Should that be legal? Or again, all these topics are legitimate. Is that criminal justice is really dispense impartial justice. That's a fair question. The problem is that the way critical theory defines justice is in terms of outcomes only. That's right. So if you even ask, if you even ask, are some of the pathologies we see in the black community due to personal choices, due to other class factors? Who knows what they are? Are there any other reasons we're seeing high rates of poverty and crime other than discrimination.

I'm not saying it's not discrimination also it could be, but can we take into account all the possible explanations? The answer will be no. To say that racial disparities are due to anything but discrimination is a form of racism according to Abram ex-Kendi. So see, they're foreclosing on an honest discussion of the topic by defining their terms improperly. So I even saying who's right. I'm saying whether I'm saying the definition is wrong, but I'm not asking what percentage of the disparities are due to one factor of the other.

I'm just, I'm pointing out, you can't assume ideologically the answer is only one thing and you're unwilling to even have a conversation about other factors. That's important. We can't close off that possibility. And you point out a couple things in your book, specifically when asked about systemic racism. And again, this is a whole other conversation. We have to define those terms. but like injustice in the in the black community even amongst Christians I forget the numbers but it was like it was a minority number but enough to get our pause that who are against interracial

marriage it's like it's around 20% of evangelicals of church going evangelicals are against a close relative marrying a black person right that's that's that's that's kind of shocking yeah I agree in 2025 23 was the latest data but it's recently right like that's That's not insignificant. We had to get to the root of what is driving that. Like, let's talk about that. The other one you give is like in the jobs where people are given a number of applications and those with perceived black or minority names less likely to get a callback.

Now, we talked about this on our weekly cultural update. And my co-host, Scott Ray, has been studying business ethics for years. And he's like, we are moving in the right direction. But there's still a problem here. let's talk about it. And the only point I want to make before we move on, which you make, is that if this is driven by race, then we need to identify it and call it and address it. But when we look at injustices, we can't assume necessarily that it's always driven by race or primarily driven by race. This is Thomas Sol's disparity does not equal discrimination.

That's where we would say pause to wokenness and say if it's not. not driven by this, you've already determined ahead of time that we're not going to discover the truth and actually fix the problem. So people can err by assuming it's race, but people can air by saying, no, it's not race. We don't have any racism today. Well, that's a mistake. Sure. And so, all right, point made. One of the things that I love that you do in your book, and I showed this chart to my students. I have a class that I teach undergrads at Bile. It's actually required for all students right now at Bilele. We have 30 Bible units. And they all, all get this class that Thaddeus Williams and I designed together on gospel kingdom culture,

apologetics, cultural issues, and evangelism. And I have a whole class where we talk about wokeness. So I pull out this chart from your earlier book Critical Dilemma, talking about how wokeness or critical theory actually functions like a religion. Explain it to us. So you think about, I say, a worldview. A worldview is a framework, a love. lens through which you view all evidence and all of reality, or it's a meta-narrative. It's a big story about reality that you fit your little story of your life into. So for Christianity, the meta-narrative of Christianity is creation, fall, redemption, restoration. We're created in God's image and likeness, but we rebelled against him in our first parents,

Adam and Eve. We've sinned, and therefore we deserve his wrath. But we couldn't save ourselves, so God sent his son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins and to rise from the dead. and then the end that we await the return of Christ when he will renew all things. That's a story of Christianity in a nutshell. Well, critical theory today functions as an alternate worldview or an alternate metanarrative. So there's no identity, given that to us from God. Rather, our identity comes from our position in society, whether we're a part of an oppressor or oppressed groups in terms of our race, class, gender. So your identity comes from basically what group you belong to.

The problem in life comes from oppression that some groups have seized. power and control and they've imposed their values on culture. So we're all subordinated these systems and structures of whiteness and my supremacy and the patriarchy and cisgenderism and heterosexism. And the solution then is activism. We have to divest from our privilege. We have to dismantle these systems and structures. And the end goal is diversity, equity, inclusion. We tear down all of these oppressive structures and systems and build a totally utopian egalitarian, society. So you can see that has that same sort of arc. You know, there is that arc from there's a problem. There's a solution. There's the end goal. Also, critical theory answers questions about

epistemology. How do you know the truth? Identity. Who are you? What matters to how do I say who am I? It answers questions of what justice is, what your meaning and purpose are in life, where you find community. It's comprehensive. So that's why it's functioning. People even admit when they've out of the movement, they'll see, it was my religion. It told me who my people were. There's an essay called Sad Radicals by a guy who was a former woke anarchist. And he compares that they gave out tracks about anarchy and radicalism. It was like giving out Bibles.

And rather than having tracks, they didn't have posters about, you know, smash the patriarchy. But he compares it, kind of coming out of the movement as his religion. until he found it that it was not true. So it's absolutely functioning that way. And I think we'd be naive to treat it as just a mental error, like, oh, I accidentally forgot to carry the one in the sedition problem. I got the wrong answer. It's much deeper than that.

It really belongs to someone's sense of self. And because of that, it's very pernicious and it has its claws in people. It's hard to extricate people from out of the cult in the sense. So helpful to think about it this way, because religions have their sacred texts. and of course there's sacred texts within wokeness. You have your prophets, of course, people like Kendi and DeAngelo. You have the rituals that you practice and the rituals that you don't practice, maybe using preferred pronouns.

You have your means of salvation. I mean, on and on and on, it functions like a religion. And it's really important. You described this in the book as well that it's a strong. story about reality to use Greg Kogel's term, like a world views a story. It has three components, creation, fall, and redemption. So Christianity creation made in the image of God, Genesis 1 and 2. The fall, of course, is sin. And redemption is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We're brought back in relationship with Christ and with others. That's the Christian story. Now, won'tness

tells a certain story. At some point, if you pushed him enough, there'd have to be some evolutionary, naturalistic account to it, although I don't see people citing that explicitly. They don't care about that. Yeah, they care more, well, they care more about the narrative that have created you as a self in society. Gotcha. It goes back to Foucault, but basically the idea is that you were created at, you were raised as black or as white.

You were gendered. It happened to you by your doctors as male or female. You were classified as able, able body or disabled. So you're created not by God, a god. who's holy and loving, you're created by sort of society. It creates you into what it classifies you as. It labels you in a certain way. That's a really helpful way to put it, because this gets to identity, who I am, where I come from.

That's the first question, the origin story, the creation account. They don't have a cosmic creation account, but a societal creation account about what makes me, me, what makes you, you. Of course, the fall is, again, in Christianity, it's sin. in wokeness or critical theory, it's these power imbalances, and the solution is not by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. As DeAngela says in the back of the book, of her book, the solution to guilt is action. Go work, go be an activist, go do, which tells me it functions like a religion. Now, that gets to my next question I really wanted to ask you, is I want to

know what's beneath it. And sometimes when I ask this question, I just get criticism from people, and I think it's ridiculous. But Proverbs 25 says, the purposes in a man's heart are like deep water. And a person of wisdom draws it out. Whenever somebody believes something, maybe it's Islam, maybe it's atheism. I want to know what's beneath drawing you to that belief system, whether it's relationally or psychologically or personally. Now, one answer could be that it functions like a religion, and we all need to be a part of a religious cause if we don't find our purpose in Christianity, we're going to find it somewhere else.

So I suspect that's a piece of the answer, but what are some of the things? Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning, plus reading plans, devotions, and trusted podcasts. from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead? The Daily Bible app reads verses,

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and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. Beneath the service that just draw people to this. Yeah, it's a good question. I think there are a number of factors that make it attractive. Why choose wokenness over Islam or over Christianity or over paganism? And so one thing is the history of race in the U.S. I think a lot of wokeness entered the church the front door of race. We realize racism is a problem. We realize we have a really bad racial history.

I'm teaching U.S. history this semester this year in 11th graders. And, yeah, it's amazing how much our nation's history was shaped by slavery. from the way the Constitution, a portion of representation in Congress to the 1820, the conference of 1820, to the Friedger of Slave Acts, to the Civil War, to the Black, the Black Code, to Jim Crow laws. It, racism and race and slavery drove a ton of our nation's history. So that's true. It just, it's just true. But because of that, there are a lot of wounds, a lot of legacies of damage. And so then people are asking, how do we find?

fix this? How can we fix it? And critical racerry comes in with plausible answers. And I think to the extent that when we, when we silence or keep at arm's-length discussions of race, we open the door to people providing bad answers. Because they can't go to the church to hear discussions, honest discussions of race and racism. They'll go outside the church and find other people that give unbiblical answers. That's one. Number two, we mentioned it in this book, is the sexual abuse slash me too scandal or movement when a number this happened in 2018 or so when a ton of major celebrities and actresses came forward and accused people of abusing them, raping them, molesting them.

It led to the downfall of a number of powerful men and entertainment and business. The big example of this was Harvey Weinstein who's convicted of several. I said, yeah, keep going. Yeah, yeah. So he was, I think it ended up. convicted of several accounts, or different accounts of rape. But he sort of typifies this big, powerful

mogul who used his power and influence to abuse women who then felt they couldn't come out and get justice. And for a long time, it was denied them. So that fueled questions about, well, why is this happening? And also, how do these powerful men get away with it for so long?

They were at the height of their profession No one blue whistles. Why not? And the answers because they use their power and influence to shield themselves from justice. So then people begin asking, well, shouldn't we start thinking about how power imbalances actually affect things like criminal justice and gender relationships, et cetera? And again, I'm not, so some of that was actually healthy because the Bible talks about how the bribe blinds the eye of the judge and how powerful do use their power to escape. justice. Think of that Ahab and Nabath's Vineyard, right? So these things are biblical themes too, but of course, Me Too movement went really wrong in some ways too. But it contributed this idea that, yeah, race and gender are a problem. There are social problems around those topics that need to be solved and people were looking around for a solution and often stumbled upon critical theory. Two more things, compassion. Critical theory appeals to your compassion, which is a God-given impulse. We know that God's law commands us to care for the vulnerable, to help those who can't

help themselves to be a voice to the voiceless. And critical theory is, loves that idea, but it misdefines what compassion is. There's a lot of things wrong, but the impulse is a positive one. We should encourage people to be compassionate, but the compassion has to be rooted in truth. And then finally, as you alluded to, the secularization of our culture, as we've moved from a sort of Christian culture to a post-Christian culture, we've left to vacuum in people's spiritual lives. They don't go to church anymore. They don't really don't really the Bible anymore. But, you know, we're religious animals. We are spiritual beings. When you take out Christianity out of our daily lives, what rushes into fillet are things like New Age religion or atheism,

but also wokeness. And I'd argue wokenness actually is much more powerful than atheism. which is kind of a dry, philosophical belief, whereas critical theory, wokeness provides you with the story of good versus evil. You can feel like I'm on the right side of history, I'm helping people on compassion, not like those bigots over there. So for all those reasons combined,

I think we had a perfect storm of society around 2017-2018, when all these things came together and we saw this explosion of woken in our society. I think you're right to say it appeals to, compassion, but misunderstand it. And it appeals to justice, which we have a God-given desire for and misapplies it. I also think one of the one I'd maybe throw in there is I think many people feel empowered through wholeness who in their lives lack power or agency. I've read so many books, and you've obviously read more on like queer theory. And I just read these stories of people

who feel like I didn't fit the stereotypes. I was a Tom girl growing up. And then I really realize it's all social construction and I could write my own ticket. It's like it feels empowering to these people. Even preferred pronouns. I mean, you could say it kind of is a power play to tell somebody they have to talk to you in a certain way. I mean, it is a power move. But on the other hand, it's driven by many people who feel powerless and are drawn to this because it makes me feel powerful. So my encouragement to Christians is, yes, we've got to critique the ideas, but let's understand the underlying motivations, just the relational and the personal fulfillment people get out of this and show them that, no, you can actually desire for compassion is good. You can have

real compassion in Christianity. The desire for empowerment is not bad. You can have real empowerment in the body of Christ and with the Holy Spirit. Desire for justice is not bad, but here's what real justice is and how you find it. So amidst criticizing critical theory, it's important we just understand the motivations that draw many people into it. So I think we can communicate in a way that's more humanizing and more attractive, of course, without losing the truth. Oh, let me ask you this, Neil. If if the ideas of critical theory and wokeness are so contrary to Christianity. And I know, by the way, that there are some Christians who differ with you.

You know, I had a discussion on this channel with Edwzynski, a friend of mine, and he approaches this differently. And if folks go back and watch that, I actually show that to my students at Bio. I'm like, here's an argument for, here's against, let's talk about it. And it helps us really get into the weeds. but I agree with you that the heart of critical theory are just non-Christian ideas. How did it get such a foothold in the church? I think, again, it was mainly through racial discussions because people, well, interestingly,

people were just trying to talk about race, and they cast around for the right language to use. And lo and behold, critical race theory has this whole vocabulary of white privilege and white fragility. and the social binary intersectionality. There were these very fancy-sounding terms. So, you know, I've heard Christian pastors use these terms, not knowing where they came from or what they meant, often misunderstanding them. But once you start drinking in,

guzzling down all of this, quote, Kool-Aid, it starts poisoning you. You start losing your bearings and realizing, wait a minute, that's not how we should think about race. So I think oftentimes it was well-intentioned Christians, who wanted to genuinely love other Christians across lines of race and yet found themselves getting pulled into these deeply wrong thoughts about how race is, how significant it should be.

So I think that's the number one thing. And also, again, I think Christians are rightly compassionate. Christians do care about loving their neighbor and want to obey Jesus' command. But because of that, if you just tweak the definition of love from willing the good of the other to willing what the other wants from you or wants of you, you know, doing what they say is loving, that's, that's wrong, right? Because people can be not know what's actually good. They can be demanding things of you that are actually not good for them. The example I always use is, you know, if a girl is anorexic, she weighs. 80 pounds. She's starving to death, but she says to you, I need you to call me fatty. If you don't call me fatty, it's my preferred adjective. You're a bigot and you hate me. You don't say, oh, well, because I love you and I'm so compassionate, I'm going to call you fatty. In fact, you say,

because I love you and because I have a compassion on you, I will not call you fatty. What you need to hear in love is that you are starving yourself and I want to help and heal you if I can. But that you have to have a little bit, I mean, not just awareness of what's going on, but also some courage because it's hard to tell people, I won't cooperate. I'm going to make you anger with me, but I do it, not enough hatred, but out of love. I mean, if you had kids, you know, you have kids, right? Sometimes your kids are angry at you, but it's because you're doing something that crosses their well, even though you know it's what's best for them. So I think obviously, you know, we should be humble. We don't know everything, but we also have to say, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm,

on the hook to God, ultimately, right? I'm accountable to him. And if he said, this is actually bad for the person, then I have to go with what he says because he's our creator. I think that's really what it boils down to is authority. Who and what is the authority about who we are? What is true? Is there a truth outside of us built into our bodies?

Or is that truth our feelings and our desires? really a lot of this debate is everybody has a kind of authority. There's no question about that, but which authority is most is true. I think the other reason it's got such a foothold in the church is just a lack of real worldview biblical training. In some ways when I see this, and by the way, I mean, even early on, certain language that I would use about LGBTQ, it took me a while to kind of realize, you know what, this language is actually. actually not really biblical. And it's borrowing more from Freudianism and other cultural ideas and critical theory. And I'm not going to do that anymore. And I have like a PhD and two masters.

So I'm not like judging the church. I'm just saying in many ways what this reveals is how vital we take seriously biblical teaching about loving God with our minds, about discerning the times, about avoiding false doctrines. In some ways, this is a wake-up call for the church to realize, if we've adopted this and fallen into it, what else could we fall into and adopt? Like Romans 12, too, we've been conformed to this world. We need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Maybe help us with this, Neil.

One of the questions I get asked a lot to speak on now, I wasn't in the past, and I think it's a timeless issue, but I get asked to speak a lot about, identity, especially with young people. And honestly, in the 90s, when I'm growing up in the 80s, identity was an issue. But it seems like critical theory in some ways gets to the root of identity. And a debate about a lot of this is anthropology. So what is the difference about identity in, say, critical theory slash wholeness and a biblical view? So the number one problem is that it has no vertical component of our identity. at all. So in biblical terms, our primary identity is as God's creatures. He's our creator,

we're as creatures. Like the number one thing you can say about someone, they're human being. They're made in God's image, yes, but they're also created by God with a purpose in mind to bring him glory. So that's where identity comes from. And what's more, all human beings, young or old, rich or poor, black or white, male or female, all of us bear God's image. And so that doctrine of human identity tends to, you know, supersede these social differences that are so critical to critical theory. Critical theory has to divide us into oppressors and oppressed along lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, and so forth, whereas the doctrine of creation unites us. We are all made in God's image. And then second, the doctrine of sin says that actually also we have to identify

as sinners. We deserve God's wrath because we've broken his law. And again, I can't look at anybody else and be like, you know, the problem with the world, it's that guy. He's an oppressor. You know, I'm a bisexual, lesbian, disabled person. It's not, I am not, that's not my problem. And they have hurt me. I'm the victim. You say, no, actually, in, in the reality,

you're a sinner like they are. The very privileged guy over there is a sinner like you. And then third, you both need the same savior. You know, there's a great example of this in Acts where, you know, Philip meets the. Ethiopian eunuch. You know, thinking about eunuchs. He's been castrated, right? So he have a Jewish man and an Ethiopian eunuch clasping each other as brothers, right? Because he accepts Christ. And now the United States must be something stronger than biological kinship,

the united by the blood of Christ. Amen. So the big difference in this conception of identity is that critical theory divides people up into these social categories and says you're at war with each other, whereas Christianity says fundamentally you're all the same. You're made in God's image, your sinners against God, and you need one savior, Jesus Christ, then unites us across those lines to be brothers in Christ and part of God's family. So I think that's a huge paradigm shift for kids who've been reared on grievance and anger and fear of the people oppressing them. You say, hey, actually, I have a better story to tell you about who you actually are. I love that. And you know, Galatians 328 talks about we are all one in Christ Jesus,

neither rich nor poor, male or female, Jew or Gentile. And I've heard some people interpret this and say, oh, just as Jew and Gentile categories have broken down, male and female categories have broken down, which is completely bad exegesis. But the point being we are all equally have access to the father and those barriers have been broken and we are brothers and sisters in Christ. That's a powerful truth that we can't miss. All right, you are a, I haven't told our audience this yet. I assume they need a daily spark of hope and direction. Let the daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning, plus reading plans, devotions and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer,

and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead? The Daily Bible app reads verses, reading plans, and chapters allowed, handy for the headphones moment of your day. Choose from versions like ESV, NIV, NIV, KJV, and more, and bookmark favorites to revisit later.

Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. Feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. You have a PhD in studies at places like Brinston, Berkeley and Princeton, I combined the two. You've been writing on critical theory for a long time.

You've really been my go-to voice in someone I've trusted and I've followed. So now that you've been writing on this for years, give us a scorecard. What has the church done well and what maybe did it not get right working through this kind of great awokening, as you call it in the book? I think I'd say overall we got a D right because we I think for a long time we were not I know but it would be honest like I think we didn't recognize the problem took a long time the one thing that we did try to do was we tried to take the we tried to eat the meat and spit out the bones we tried we shouldn't do that but I think people a lot like I said repeatedly a lot of people are motivated by good intentions they weren't They hated racism. They wanted to see ethnic unity in the church. They wanted people, male, women and men to feel loved and validated. They wanted those good things, right?

But then it's a D because they then latched onto these terrible ideas without thinking very hard about them. Now, some people got it right. They were evangelicals like Body Baccham and Owen Stray and who wrote books, you know, warning people about these ideas rightly. And I mean, the good news is I think in the last few years, evangelicals have woken up to these ideas and realizing, wow, this is toxic. And unfortunately, I think many of them saw the fallout in their churches, in their families, and their friend groups. When people went woke, there was just discord and enmity. Of course there was because critical theories rooted in creating this. Or they would say revealing, but I would say creating attention and animosity between groups.

But I think people are realizing that people are looking for a solution, a way out. And I want to applaud them. But it does just take work. You have to one understand where you went wrong, really deeply understand it, why these ideas are bad. And you had to explicitly teach against these ideas. Again, you don't have to name critical race theory in your sermon, but you have to explain to people why ethnicity has to be subordinated to your identity in Christ, that Christ comes first over your whiteness or your blackness,

Asianness. You have to explain that, you know, all cultures are under the authority of God's word in scripture and some things are neutral and other things are bad, but none of us gets to say that my culture is best and take our cultural preferences and say those are the right ones. We all have these, and we, or nor can we say because I am a minority, my opinions are always right because I have that lived experience that gives me insight into oppression. All of us have to humbly listen to each other, then humbly submit our opinions. to the authority of scripture. So, but that'll take time.

That'll take time. And I'm hoping that people just are motivated to learn more about these theories and why they go wrong. And then, as we said, my book's all about how we can, or our book, Pat and I wrote this book, about how we can rebuild a biblical understanding of these topics. So, you know, I teach in a master's apologetics program. And I'm known for being at least what people told me, a decently tough grader, like with our term papers in our core classes on the resurrection and problem of evil like i go through each paper and give helpful feedback but man a d i rarely give a d that's a passing grade but that's a tough

grade so if you ever come and join us at biola man you will be above me in terms of your tough love john tough love no i love okay with that said a couple more questions I'm curious how forgiving you think we should be for people who embraced wokeness. So a couple weeks ago it came out that people like Malcolm Gladwell, who I don't think would say he's a Christian that I've ever heard. If he does, I apologize. But he was admitted that he was bullied into supporting biological males in female sports. Now, I have so many thoughts about this, but he's got a huge. platform seems like a pretty bold guy and it's telling that he was bullied into it so we kind of owned it

and wants to move on and I realize he's not a Christian he's in journalism that might be different than a Christian in the different platforms so there's a lot of factors here but what's your sense of those who have bought into wokeness and how much grace we should give to them now that more and more people are calling it out. I understand people who say if I don't see repentance, not just course correction, but repentance, I'm not going to forgive you. I know, especially for Christian leaders, you have to openly say, I was wrong. I repent in sackcloth and ashes. And personally, I think that is ideal. I do think ideally, not out of pressure from people yelling at you, just because you want to be honest with God and with

other people that are following you, you'd say, hey, I messed up. And I also, if that happens, then I mean, this is not me. This is Jesus. If your brother sins and says, I repent, you forgive him. That's it. That's it. So people that come and say, hey, I didn't lead you well. I did, I messed up. I'm sorry. That's it. Just forgive them, right? I think that's ideal. Sometimes it's trickier. Sometimes, you know, people, you know, were woke, but how did they come out? They weren't out there saying, I think men can be well, women, which is totally false. They're just saying things like, I think there needs to be a racial reckoning in the United States. Like, well, what do you mean by that, right?

That does sound woke, but is that a matter of like groveling repentance? I don't know. What I would just say is this. Treat other people as you want to be treated. Right? This is the golden rule. Be as forgiving to others as you would want them to be forgiving to you. So I think that when leaders have messed up, ideally they're just come clean, say, yeah, I messed up, or even anybody.

I mean, regular Christians. But also, I do think when people are genuinely trying to amend their ways and make a course correction, I think we should encourage them. A great phrase I like is, praise what you want to see more of. I want to see more people saying what's true and right and affirming what the Bible says about these topics. And I think I don't want to be throwing, I don't want to throw cold. water on that and demand they grovel before me. So I think that's what I want to say. The big thing for me is that treat them because we all mess up.

We all get things wrong. And Jesus talks about that with the measure you use, it would measure to you. So give people generosity of spirit and charity, just like you don't want to receive it. And then the final thing I'd say is that, yeah, when that happens, when people are saying things like, oh, I made a mistake or even they're just changing their views. We'll teach them, right? Rather than rubbing their noses in it, just say, hey, that's great. It's great you're coming this direction. Like, let's explore this more. Let's talk about what other things you might still be missing. And that's just, you know, I could be wrong here, but that's just my general tendency

is to, if I'm going to air, err on the side of grace as one who's received grace. So I think, but I do think I'm hopeful. I think the church is heading in the right direction with regard to this topic, and I want to see more of it. I love it. So last question for you is there's issues in your book, of course, critical theory. There's issues like DEI. There's issues like preferred pronouns.

And then there's the fallout question. If somebody sees these issues differently, do we divide over these issues? issues. And it's like the church right now, we're dividing over everything. And we can err on the side of dividing over too much, but also err on the side of not dividing when we should. So you have pretty firm convictions. I mean, you lay out your concern with, again, critical theory, with DEI programs. You have a very clear position on preferred pronouns, which I agree with in that. And that's something I've shifted in over time. But then the fault question is, what about Christians who've thought about this and see it

differently and have their biblical or thoughtful reasons for doing so? Would you say, nope, we divide over these issues. You're out. Yeah, so number one, you got to define your terms. When you say they have different views of CRT or DEI, I'm like, well, what do you mean by CRT? They might mean by CRT talking about race. Well, okay. I'm not opposed to that.

So ask them, or when a pastor uses a word like white privilege, or social justice, don't jump down their throat and say you're a Marxist. Ask them, what do you mean by that term? Explain it to me, how are you using it? They might be even not using it properly. So number two, listen and dialogue. So invite them to have a conversation, go out to lunch with them and say, what did you mean when you said X, Y, is he?

Have their actual words there and let them explain themselves. Number three, I'd say, take leaving the church. very seriously. This church hopping stuff that goes on is really totally unbiblical. We're a family, right? So you have to really not decide, well, I don't like this church's seats. And in this sense, it's bigger because it's teaching. But why I often say is that churches should have a statement of faith. What they are gathered around. They're gathered around the gospel.

They're gathered on around the authority of scripture. They're gathered around the historic confessions. of a Christian church, there's some statement like that. And you really should make those the defining feature of what it means to be a member of that church. Now, that's not the only thing to think about, but it should be that defines church membership. Oftentimes, they're church constitutions. You send a membership covenant. That should include these things that are kind of core to not just a theology, but to cultural issues, like it's the abortion. So that should be You should be able to point, hopefully, that that document saying this is not being taught properly.

But again, don't just leave because you feel unhappy or because you're not, you know, totally on board with everything they say. Fourth, be patient. If you have concerns, raise them and then listen and then push. If you think they're wrong, push for change. Don't just say the instant I get the wrong answer. I'm gone. I'm bouncing. Stick around.

Maybe God will use you to affect the church positively. Two more things. Distinguished between the elders or leaders of the church and the congregation. I think there's room for disagreements within the congregation that should not be there in the eldership. So there could be woke members in the church. And if the elders are like, well, this is bad, I'd feel much more comfortable there because it's the teaching body that is God's shepherds are unified. And even if the members, other members are not in that spot, well, at least the official teaching of the church is, is it right?

And then the final thing is I would say you have to do some triage because there are bigger issues and the smaller issues. So for example, I think the church's stance on homosexuality, and it's a sin, gender binary, there are two genders, abortions of sin, marriages between a man and a woman. those kind of things are sort of top-tier ethical issues, right? Those are really pressing issues, and if we let go of them, we're in a seriously bad place. But then there are lesser issues like affirmative action, good or bad, right or wrong, social justice. What does that mean? What extent should we be implementing it?

Things like that. These are lower-tier issues. So try to prioritize what you're focusing on. Like, I can have fellowship with someone in my church who thinks that white privilege is a, you know, evasive phenomenon. I think they're wrong for reasons I go into in the book, depending how you define that term, but it's not as important as abortions of sin. That's much more important than does white privilege exist and what is it. And so I think what it's it is tough. I think that for me, I think, and oftentimes I would say things like take the preferred pronoun issue. Pat and I are

very emphatic that you should not be using people's preferred pronouns, use their pronouns corresponding with their biological sex. That said, if someone emphatically agrees, there are two genders and that people that choose to live in a gender that's not their birth gender are wrong. They're denying how God made them. But then they're like, but I think I should just call them their preferred pronouns, not because I'm at all waffling on whether that's a sin or it's wrong, but just the ways of building to bridge to them.

I'm still thinking they're wrong, but do you see how that's a, now? now it becomes a less tier issue than it would have been if they were like, no, I think they are actually women. So I think I'm not sure how to evaluate that particular question other than to say I would continue trying to convince them that they're wrong, but I don't necessarily think. If they were in leadership, that might be an issue. If they were not, though, I think I would just try to convince them that, no, no, you should think about this carefully because I think you're wrong. Well, here's an example. I'll see you why it's complicated. Robert Gagnon is a very conservative theologian. Yeah.

Who changed my mind on this issue. He was one who convinced me through his arguments that, yeah, you shouldn't use personal pronouns. But I believe he also thinks you shouldn't use their chosen name either. That's right. Like if they change their name. I'm like, but most Christians, I don't think, wouldn't go that far. Like, for example, what if they choose a unisex name like Chris? So, but what would you cut someone off if they're like, I'm not going to use their, I'll use their name. What if you, people, say, I know I've said that you can use the unisex pronoun they. If they say, call me, she'll say, well, I'll just say, well, I'll just say they in third person because they actually,

in dictionaries used as a gender neutral pronoun for everybody. I went to the bank. They told me, the teller told me this. They said, it's gender and neutral. So that's one possibility for how you can not use the perfect pronouns. But what if Christian said, you can't do that either. You have to refer to them by their old name and by, I don't know what I would say. I don't think I'd leave the church over that issue. But, yeah, so the answer is I'm not sure. I would just definitely recommend not demanding the church lines up with every single thing that you've come to. It's got to be some room for disagreement.

This again, in the unity's, unity, in what is it, in essentials, in essential unity and non-essentials diversity and all things charity. Yes, sir. And I lost track of the number. Maybe we're on seven. and seven, don't gossip about people when you differ with them and stir up dissension within a church, making assessments based on one or two things a pastor said or one or two social media posts without doing your homework, giving the benefit out, leaning into it and finding out first. So often dissension happens when people find one or two things, draw broad conclusions from.

And even if the person is in the wrong from that, and that really doesn't help. So I'd ask people to say, if you differ with somebody on an issue that matters, ask yourself this question, how do I love that person and how do I really help? I think if we asked that question and our pastor said something that was suspect, rather than blowing up and gossiping, attacking people, we'd say, you know what, I'm going to go to my pastor respectfully. And if it leads to a point where I need to leave or confront him, fine.

But I'm going to give the benefit of it out first and approach this graciously. And that's going to be a last resort leaving and maybe warning other people. So on top of your excellent list, love people, don't gossip, do your homework and find out what's really going on. But Neil, you nuanced that like a good academic. I appreciate that. Very thoughtful. Folks, our guest today, Neil Shenvi has co-written a book with Pat Sourke. I think it's excellent. It's called Post Woke. And we probably talked about, I don't know, 15% of

what's in that book, maybe not even that amount. And it's one of the top books I would recommend up there with Thaddeus Williams, one of my colleague at Biola, his book, Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth, which is more of a theological look at social justice issues. Folks, before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe and click that notification button. We have a ton of people who watch this program and are not even subscribed and don't hit notification. So you don't miss an episode. We've got a lot of topics that are coming up. We'd love to have you study apologetics with us.

We have it in person. We have a distance program. There's information below. You can take it a class at a time or you could pour in full time. And we are just updating our certificate program. Wait for information to come out. If you're not ready for a master's, we would love to give you some of the best lectures and content. that's out there. Neil, as always, I enjoyed it. We'll do it again soon.

Great. Thanks, Sean. Hey, friends. If you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet. And it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend

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