Why is the idea of “wokeness” such a problem for some? I thought it might be helpful to unpack some of these buzzwords and catchphrases all in one place, to provide a kind of handy lexicon of “wokeness.”

Instead of making us more insular, what if our enforced time of separation opens our eyes and ears to a world we were conveniently able to avoid when going about our daily lives as we chose was something we took for granted?

What if we used this as an opportunity not to isolate ourselves from threats, but to embrace other humans?

All of which is to say, there can never be any state of affairs in which it is acceptable for those who wear the name of Jesus to ignore politics. For us to ignore politics, to “check out” because it’s too loud and doesn’t really affect us anyway, is to say to those whose lives are being trampled that, Jesus to the contrary notwithstanding, you’re just not someone we have to care about … and so we won’t.

WLEX 18—link to article

"If you're going to talk about somebody else's faith - that seems to me to be a higher standard that one ought to hold one[self] to and the governor has failed at that," said Pastor Derek Penwell.

Penwell openly supports women's reproductive rights, and tells LEX 18 that he is not Baptist, but as a Christian, he said he doesn't believe it is fair to judge Beshear's faith based on his political stance on abortion.

"It's one thing to say 'we disagree with the Attorney General on this issue.' It's an entirely different thing to say 'because he does not agree with us and this point of our theological understanding, he is therefore not one of us - he's not a Christian,'" said Penwell.

It is now possible in large sections of Christianity to feel oppressed by powerful satanic forces vying to rain down imagined persecution on a perpetually aggrieved faithful, while simultaneously offering servile obeisance to the powers and principalities who rain down actual persecution on people of color, feminists, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, refugees, children, and the impoverished. It is a damning indictment of Christianity that according to white evangelicals, one can now unashamedly serve Caesar … as long as Caesar covers himself with the thinnest patina of patriotic Jesus-y-ness, wearing the belt of anti-Christian conspiracy, the breastplate of anti-abortion politics, the shield of patriarchy, the helmet of barely disguised white nationalism, and the sword of anti-LGBTQ+ policies.

What’s especially infuriating about white evangelicals rolling over and showing their bellies to the Republican party’s clown car full of fascist-wannabes isn’t just the street magic soul-contortions they must fool themselves into believing they’re not performing, but their remarkable lack of empathy and compassion.

How can people who claim to follow Jesus hear the cries of the wounded, who’re forced to live in fear and squalor, adjusting themselves to our view of a safe and just world . . . how can we hear those cries and think only about the most effective way to drown them out—just because we find those cries inconveniently challenge the world we’ve built for ourselves, cries that plead with us to adjust ourselves to a different world than the one we’re comfortable with—to see things through someone else’s eyes?

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to follow Jesus after hearing of the recent decision from our friends in the United Methodist Church. Specifically, I’m thinking about what hearing Christians who’ve dismissed the dignity and faith of LGBTQ people must sound like to LGBTQ people when those Christians talk about the “love of Jesus.”

But this investment in correct belief over faithful embodiment of Jesus’ teachings has begun to wear thin—at least among those people who’ve read the Gospels, but who fail to see Jesus’ most publicly pious followers as authentic examples of Jesus’ teachings.

Because, you see, the baby who got the authorities worked into such a murderous lather is the same outlandish Jesus whom those same authorities eventually executed as a political revolutionary. The manger and the cross are linked as symbols of God’s cosmic upheaval of the present world and its systems of domination.

Viewing giving as an act of justice to which the giver is obliged, it seems to me, helps correct the imbalances of power by enjoining those who are first to be last, so that those who are last may be first.