Woke Christianity is an attempt to reconcile Christianity with Black Lives Matter. It is a theology developed from Calvinism with an awareness for social justice. It makes liberation from perceived racial injustice a central message of the gospel. It suggests that a gospel that doesn’t address racial injustice is an unbalanced gospel. Woke Christianity is essentially a Calvinistic social gospel.
You probably don’t know its name, but you’re familiar with it. Barack Obama’s pastor preached about it. Chance The Rapper raps about it. Cornel West writes about it. And evangelicals are becoming sympathetic about it. You are familiar with Black Liberation Theology, and you didn’t know it.
Black Liberation Theology was developed by James Cone in the 1960s during the Black Power movement as a reaction to evangelical apathy on racial injustice. In his book, Black Theology and Black Power, James Cone explains how he formed his theology:
“For me, the burning theological question was, how can I reconcile Christianity and Black Power, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s idea of nonviolence and Malcom X’s by any means necessary philosophy? The writing of Black Theology and Black Power was the beginning of my search for a resolution of that dilemma.”
Anyone who makes a prophet out of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X is sure to teach another gospel, and that is what James Cone’s Black Liberation Theology is: another gospel. Black Liberation Theology is Martin Luther King Jr,’s social gospel and Malcolm X’s Black Nationalism in one. Black Liberation Theology exchanges the power of God for Black power. It exchanges the supremacy of Christ for Black supremacy. Black Liberation Theology is built on a foundation of bitterness and victimhood, with social justice as its chief cornerstone.
In James Cone’s theology, Black liberation from White oppression is the gospel. In his book, Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology, James Cone said:
“What else can the crucifixion mean except that God, the Holy One of Israel, became identified with the victims of oppression? What else can the resurrection mean except that God’s victory in Christ is the poor person’s victory over poverty? If theology does not take this seriously, how can it be worthy of the name Christian? If the church, the community out of which theology arises, does not make God’s liberation of the oppressed central in its mission and proclamation, how can it rest easy with a condemned criminal as the dominant symbol of its message?”
James Cone died last week, but his Black Liberation Theology is more alive than ever, more woke than ever in the reformed community.
You only need to read some reformed leaders’ words on James Cone’s death last week to recognize that many reformed Christians are adopting a form of Black Liberation Theology, a theology that borrows from James Cone and John Calvin, Martin Luther King Jr. and Martin Luther, a theology called woke Christianity.
Woke Christianity is an attempt to reconcile Christianity with Black Lives Matter. It is a theology developed from Calvinism with an awareness for social justice. It makes liberation from perceived racial injustice a central message of the gospel. It suggests that a gospel that doesn’t address racial injustice is an unbalanced gospel. Woke Christianity is essentially a Calvinistic social gospel.