Noelle Mering - Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology

Awake, Not Woke

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Awake, Not Woke

Noelle Mering pierces the dark heart of wokery, and, with her characteristically engaging and often funny prose, sheds bright light on matters notorious for their heat. This is the field manual of bad ideas we have been waiting for. Highly recommended.

Patrick Coffin, Author and Co-founder, CoffinNation.com

Noelle Merings Awake, Not Woke is essential reading to understand the dominant views of social justice today. It is an engaging and serious book that distills the animating principles of the woke movement, and explains the intellectual history behind it. But Mering doesnt stop at critical analysis. She takes seriously the claims and grievances of racism, injustice, and abuse and offers a response rooted not in power and conflict, but in deep interpersonal relationships and the human need to live in truth and to be known and loved.

Michael Miller, Senior Research Fellow at the Acton Institute and Director and Producer of Poverty Inc.

Awake, Not Woke presents a clear and crushing critique of an ideology that is at this very moment poisoning our culture. With tremendous skill, wit, understanding, and compassion, Noelle Mering traces the historical roots of wokism, its dogmas and methods of indoctrination, and its heart-breaking fruits. She also identifies the path to restoration. How I wish every American could read this book!

Kenneth Hensley, co-author of The Godless Delusion and host of On the Journey show and podcast

A powerful pseudo-religious movement now threatens the very survival of Christianity in the west. Christians and their leaders not only refuse to confront this dangerous political and cultural revolution, but increasingly embrace its destructive heresies. Others realize they are under attack but are confused about why and what to do about it. Noelle Mering is the brave, insightful, and vital prophetic voice they desperately need to understand what is happening, and how to counter it. She elegantly exposes this movement for what it is. All Christiansand anyone seeking to understand what is now happening in Americaneed to read it.

Matthew J. Peterson, Founding Editor of The American Mind and Vice President of Education at The Claremont Institute

Awake, Not Woke is an invaluable resource for todays cultural confusion. Mering deftly sifts through the jargon to understand, explain, and refute, the current state of the Progressive movement. Though analyzed in a Christian context, much of the weight of the argument is grounded in universal principles of human nature. Its a book driven less by politics and more for the care for people and concern for the wide and lasting harm of a dehumanizing ideology.

Carrie Gress, Author of The Anti-Mary Exposed and Theology of Home

AWAKE,
NOT WOKE

A Christian Response to the
Cult of Progressive Ideology

Noelle Mering

TAN Books
Gastonia, North Carolina

Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology 2021 Noelle Mering

All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the BibleSecond Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Wesley Bancroft

Cover image: Painting of Jesus Christ in the Sacred Sacristy Museum in St Katherine Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, bimages / Alamy Stock Photo

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021931591

ISBN: 978-1-5051-1842-1
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-5051-1843-8
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-5051-1844-5

Published in the United States by
TAN Books
PO Box 269
Gastonia, NC 28053
www.TANBooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

To Fr. Paul Donlan, who has been a gentle but truly
powerful instrument of the Holy Spirit in my life

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall give you light.

Ephesians 5:14

Contents

I am grateful to so many wonderful friends and family members who have offered support for this book along the way. Some generous souls provided invaluable assistance, including Carrie Gress, Alex Lessard, Jon Kirwan, and Nancy Mering.

Family members Nicole and Ray Tittmann and Irene and Phillip Cronin were wonderful sounding boards and support throughout.

Special thanks to the team at TAN Books, especially Brian Kennelly and Conor Gallagher, for their encouragement, professionalism, and talent. And to Wesley Marc Bancroft for an inspired cover design.

I am grateful to those who have published my articles, some of which ended up in partial form here: Kevin Knight at National Catholic Register, Joy Pullmann at The Federalist, and Matthew Peterson at The American Mind.

Most especially, my familymy heroic husband, Adam, and our dear children Abby, Jack, Campion, Caroline, Vivienne, and Verawho have sacrificed for and supported this effort with an immense amount of love and accommodation.

T he battle for word and meaning that grips our nation is dramatically played out every spring in a wealthy suburb west of Boston. In an account relayed by the New York Times, at the end of the school year, Wellesley College holds a commencement service during which students, faculty, and guests come together to sing America the Beautiful. Recently, as the crowd came to the line, And crown thy good with parents and guests proceeded to sing brotherhood, the word that was originally intended to include women too. Wellesley women, however, had adopted the custom in past decades of abruptly belting out sisterhood, drowning out the word that they felt oppressively excluded them and replacing it with a demand for recognition. Journalist Ruth Padawer writes, Its one of the most powerful moments of commencement, followed every year by cheers, applause and tears, evoked by the rush of solidarity with women throughout time, and the thrill of claiming in one of the nations most famous songs that women mattereven if the world theyre about to enter doesnt always agree.

Padawer goes on to say that over the last few years, some graduates have taken it upon themselves to change that word once again, determining that sisterhood, while a well-intended change, is still exclusionary. Instead, they sing siblinghood. Padawer continues, A few trans men find even that insufficient, and in that instant, they roar the word that represents them best: brotherhood, not as a sexist stand-in for all humankind, but as an appeal from a tiny minority struggling to be acknowledged.

In perhaps the most revealing description of the event, Padawer writes, In truth, its difficult to distinguish in the cacophony each of the words shouted atop one another. What is clear is that whatever word each person is hollering is immensely significant as a proclamation of existence, even if its hard to make out what anyone else is saying.

Hardly just ceremonial end-of-year activism, this sort of drama at Wellesley is commonplace on the historically all-female campus. On a recent fall day, a new student began to request she be referred to by male pronouns despite the fact that she had applied as a woman and that she was indeed a woman. She now identified as masculine-of-center gender-queer. This was not particularly shocking to her peers, as there were other transgender students on campus. Timothy (as she asked to be called) was accommodated and affirmed easily by the far-left school culture. The problem arose when Timothy decided to run for a student leadership role as coordinator of multicultural affairs. The job was to promote a culture of diversity on campus. Students, though generally friendly with Timothy, began to object that she, as a white man, was not representative of the diversity such a role required. Students coordinated an online campaign to reject Timothy based on the understanding that a white man in leadership would perpetuate the patriarchy. When asked how she felt, Timothy confessed to feeling conflicted. She believed herself to be a minority as a trans student but also knew that the patriarchy was alive and well and did not want to be part of the perpetuation of oppression.