TGC Discusses Wokeness

This kind of debate sponsored by the Gospel Coalition, is why that organization is dying or dead.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/video/good-faith-debate-woke-church/

0-13.50 opening statement by DeMars is pretty good, especially the end.

13.50-24.00 - McLaughlin's opening statement

McLaughlin's response is an aggressive advocacy of wokeness.

Platforms like the Gospel Coalition should be critiquing wokeness, not giving it a platform.  I don't mean we should set up a straw man or be unfair to the woke position in any way.  

But she defines woke as being aware of the history of racial injustice.  This is false.  Wokeness also entails a specific response to that history, primarily one of reverse discrimination and of identity politics.

She redefines theological compromise to mean racism, instead of what wokeness truly is: wrongly imputing guilt to whites simply for being white descendants of an oppressing class.  She seems very comfortable with imputing such guilt.  This is a core disagreement.

She calls us to repent and believe.  But repent of what, and believe in what?

Inherent to progressive wokeness is gaslighting.  "We aren't advocating what you think we're advocating."  Even as they obviously do so.  I don't know if McLaughlin is doing this.  She is probably just too dismissive of what the progressive movement advocates, when she distinguishes an awareness of the sin of racism from a biblical affirmation forbidding homosexual behavior.  I appreciated that distinction.  But it's unhelpful to dismiss the actual theological compromise happening in the church, advocating sexual perversion in the name of non-discrimination.

One highlight at 49:30-50:00 is the valid criticism of conservatives that they write off anyone as woke who even mentions race.

Another is at 20:45-21:30 where McLaughlin says she herself is same sex attracted, but accepts the Bible's prohibition of homosexual behavior.

But in general, this debate continues the unhelpful dynamic of talking past each other:

 - Woke liberals blame conservatives for denying or dismissing the past sin of racism.

 - Conservatives blame anyone in the church who brings up racism for advocating the whole progressive, BLM, Marxist agenda.

Why can't we simply say

 - yes, racism is a fact of history, which we should repudiate

 - we don't have to beat ourselves up today for what our ancestors did

 - racial discrimination is not the same as upholding biblical sexual ethics

The reason we cannot simply say these things, is because there is an agenda at work to deny biblical sexual ethics in the church, using the history of racial discrimination to do so.

The Gospel Coalition gives this agenda credibility in how they treat this fraught topic.