October 1, 2025 • 44 mins
The long-simmering crisis that grips our culture has exploded in recent years, leaving us divided and intransigent. Discourse seems futile when we are no longer a people with shared principles or even a shared understanding of reality. What seems obvious to one person is patently absurd to the next. This collapse of meaning is not accidental. It has been plotted and documented for decades and now presents in its current form as Woke ideology. Join Noelle Mering unmasks this ideology by examining its history, major players, premises, and tactics, showing us that “Wokeness” at its core is a war against Christianity.
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S1 (00:00):
Hi friends, thanks so much for downloading this podcast and
I certainly hope what you hear will encourage, edify, equip,
enlighten and then will gently but consistently push you out
there into the marketplace of ideas. Wait. But before you
start to listen, may I take one minute and tell
you about this month's truth tool? It's written by Doctor
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and Fasting. You know, prayer and fasting are something that
(00:21):
we're invited to do. In fact, the Bible talks about
it a lot. And Jesus put fasting on the same
level as prayer. But most people don't understand it and
aren't quite sure how it works. Well, in this wonderful
book that Doctor Floyd has written, he wants us to
fix our eyes upon Jesus and fill our lives with
his strength. He reminds us that through prayer and fasting,
we can experience a profound transformation. He wants us to
(00:43):
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(01:50):
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won't you? And now please enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (02:01):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:03):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:05):
Americans worshipping government over God.
S3 (02:07):
Extremely rare.
S1 (02:09):
Safety.
S3 (02:09):
Move by a.
S4 (02:10):
17 years. The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S3 (02:13):
It is not addictive.
S1 (02:29):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
I am so excited about the conversation we're going to
have this hour, and I'm thrilled that you're going to
join us. And here's what I'm going to guess. I'm
going to guess that so many of you will then
go to the website. You are going to download this podcast,
and you're going to share it with family and friends.
Why do I know? Because I know that you're hungry
to get some answers. Listen, on this program, we talk
(02:50):
about what's being bought and sold in the marketplace of
ideas on a regular basis. John Bunyan and his brilliance
and Pilgrim's Progress referred to it as Vanity Fair. But
that was his word, really, for the marketplace and Christian
and faithful, his companion at this part of his journey.
Walk into the the Vanity Fair. And they don't want
to be recognized because they're going to be ridiculed. Who
doesn't want to be marginalized? I mean, we we sometimes
(03:13):
are afraid to lovingly confront because we are afraid we're
going to be recognized as followers of Christ Jesus. And
so we pull our collars up, just like Christian and
Faithful did. But the merchants still shout at us whether
we want it or not. And they shout at us
today through government, through entertainment, through schoolbooks, through school board meetings.
Every time you turn around, someone's going to tell you
(03:34):
what is right versus what is wrong. And they're going
to say that you fall into one of two camps,
either the oppressed or the oppressor. And rather than repairing
the breach, as it says in the book of Isaiah,
you're going to see people who, wearing a masquerade of justice,
are really trying to divide and foment more animosity and hatred.
So here's what I know. As followers of Jesus Christ,
(03:55):
you're looking for answers. You want to know how when
you go into that marketplace? Because John 17 says that's
exactly where you're supposed to go. No detours. You must
needs pass through it, said Bunyan in his old English.
So you and I are going to go out into
that marketplace, and we're going to hear this stuff, and
we're wondering, how do we respond? How do we discern?
How do we separate truth from fiction? How do we
(04:16):
take that mandate from Ephesians and speak the truth in love?
Never designed to be easy, but obviously we have a
father who says, don't frustrate your children. So this Heavenly
Father of ours is not going to frustrate us. We
can do it because we can do all things through
Christ who strengthens us. But we also have to be prepared.
That's why we're told to study, to show ourselves approved.
God's big on prep. And so this is part of
(04:38):
that prep before you go out there. So what does
it mean to be woke? And why do I so
often quote Paul's gentle nudge to the ribs awake, O sleeper,
because it's easy for you to be put into sort
of a sleepy state where you can no longer discern.
You don't know what the times are all about. You
don't know how to redeem the nation. You don't know
(04:59):
how to seek the welfare of the city because you
either haven't prepared or you don't know where to go
for the information. So when I hit something that just
fires on all cylinders biblical truth, historical accuracy, application to
what's going on in the world around us, I get
pretty excited. And boy did I find that in the
book awake, Not Woke a Christian Response to the cult
(05:22):
of Progressive ideology that's right down the highway of what
we talk about on this program on a regular basis.
This is a superb book, and I can't determine whether
or not it's superb because I'm going to talk to somebody.
My kids would call a brainiac because she's a fellow
in Washington, D.C., at the Ethics and Public Policy Center,
and they don't let just anybody in. You got to
(05:43):
have something between your ears, or it's because she's a
mom of six. And so this is a mother's heart
looking well to the ways of her household. As it
says in Scripture. I want to tell you a little
more about Noelle marrying Noelle. As I noted before, is
at the center for Ethics and Public Policy, but she
writes regularly on topics of politics and culture and religion.
She has a background in philosophy as well as home design. Now,
(06:04):
how's that for being super prepared for the work that
God has called you for? She's a frequent contributor to
the National Catholic Register, The American Mind, The Federalist, among
other books and publications. And I'm telling you, this book
in my classroom would be required reading because it is
biblio centric, and it really speaks to what we need
to remember as we engage the culture. And that is
(06:25):
the centrality of the gospel and the importance of Christ
in the midst of all of this. So, Noelle, first
of all, kudos on an absolutely superb book. I hope
it rockets to the top of the best selling charts,
giving you encouragement that people are hungry to know how
to do exactly what we're commanded to do, which is
to speak that truth and love. But second of all,
I know how busy you are, so thank you for
(06:46):
the gift of your time. I can't give it back
and I've already been blessed just reading your book. So
now to get to spend an hour with you. Means
so much. So the warmest of welcomes. And I'm thrilled
you're here.
S5 (06:56):
Oh, thank you so much for your kind, kind words.
It's a true honor to be here with you.
S1 (07:00):
I have to ask you, because you've written on the
theology of the home. And I love that, by the way,
that really is looking well to the ways of our household.
How do you go from something like that to really
engaging what is the cultural the cultural Goliath right now,
which is this cultural critical thinking, by the way, this wokeness,
all of this, it's got a panoply of names, but
(07:20):
it's all the same stuff. We'll get into that in
a minute. In some respects that might be a paradigm shift,
but maybe I'm missing something here. What? Why did you
choose to engage on this?
S5 (07:29):
No, I think it's a great question. And my co-author
for Theology of Home, Carrie Grace, she and I talk
about this a lot that she has written, you know,
more polemical books about feminism than I've written this woke book. Um, but,
you know, truly Theology of Home was a flip side
of the same coin, whereas in one respect, the home,
you know, I'm taking on forthrightly how the home and
(07:50):
family life has been a target of this movement for decades,
and Theology of Home was sort of the other side
of that coin. Well, what is the positive, beautiful vision
that we can rediscover that the culture has made really
obscure for us? Um, so they seem really different in
a lot of ways they are, but they do they
do have come from the same place in that lens.
S1 (08:08):
Yeah. And I appreciate the answer so much. And that
answer does not surprise me at all. So what I
love about the book is that you take the time
to build the history on this, and I think that's
crucial that we take some time doing that as well. Noelle,
because this didn't appear Ex-nihilo this is an old idea
that's been entrenched in a myriad of ways and promoted
by a myriad of players for a long period of time.
(08:29):
And I think it's paramount that particularly moms and dads
listening all across the country right now understand that it
might be a new phenomenon that they're discovering, but it
is an old idea. In fact, I would like to
posit that it goes back to Genesis chapter three that
you shall be like gods. But I'm getting ahead of
our conversation if I say that. So talk to me
about really the beginnings. If I were to say to you,
(08:51):
this is the elevator speech, I'm going down the elevator.
You're going to tell me, and I say, hey. Critical
race theory or critical theory? Because race theory only happened
after critical theory, which went to critical legal theory, which
went to critical race theory, as that mom testified at
the Loudoun County School Board. It was critical class theory
in communist China before she fled. So the insertion of
(09:13):
a word in there just is another modifier of the
separation of the oppressed and the oppressor. When we come back, Noel,
take me back to what you think might be considered
the seminal beginnings of this and who some of the
key players were. I I'm excited. I'm already ruing the
fact that one segment is gone much more with Noel
marrying her brand new, very important, timely book called awake,
(09:35):
Not Woke a Christian Response to the cult of progressive
ideology back after this. God is love. But when tragedy strikes,
we sometimes question God's kindness and his mercy. That's why
(09:58):
I've chosen the Steadfast Love of the Lord by Doctor
Sam Storms as this month's truth tool. Learn how to
navigate circumstances that seem to contradict God's unconditional love for you.
As for your copy of The Steadfast Love of the Lord,
when you give a gift of any amount to in
the market, call 877 58. That's 877858 or go to
in the market with Janet Parshall. We're visiting with Noel Maring,
(10:22):
a fellow at Washington, D.C. based think tank the Ethics
and Public Policy Center. It's a fabulous, fabulous organization, by
the way, and she is also, by the way, the
co-director of the Theology of Home Project. She is an
editor for Theology at Home, co-author of the Theology of
Home book series. And she joins us today with her
brand new book, Awake, Not Woke A Christian Response to
(10:43):
the Cult of Progressive Christianity. You say so many brilliant
things in the book, Noel. One that I thought was
particularly important was you go back to that directive we're
given in Ephesians about speaking the truth in love, not
truth or love. Never multiple choice test the two in
equal application. But one of the things about wokeness, you say,
is that it pits love and truth against each other.
(11:04):
Talk to me about that.
S5 (11:06):
Sure. Well, I think this has been a fundamental tactic
of the movement. I mean, you see it in the
way that we have now the idea that to be
a loving, compassionate person, you have to accept fundamental lies
about our human nature, especially about our embodied reality. So,
you know, the sexual revolution, first and foremost, we were
told that what we do with our bodies is essentially
meaningless and depends on our desire and our consent. Um,
(11:30):
and that introduced such a fundamental lie that now it's
taken to its extreme, really, in transgenderism. But what you
see is that this always ends up in violence and
actually hatred, because there cannot be any peace when we
have such a fundamental lie introduced and to pin that
on love. That love can be built around a lie
itself is a lie. It's not loving love and truth
(11:52):
without love is you know, that's not fundamentally true. And
love without truth is not fundamentally love. So both virtues
require the other in order to truly be what they are.
But this has been a tactic that they've used for
a long time, is to really intimidate Christians in particular,
into abandoning any sort of adherence to a moral law
under the guise to do. To adhere to a moral
law is to embrace something that's bigoted.
S1 (12:13):
Yeah. Wow. So much there. Let me read one of
your quotes. You said woke ideology has crept and dripped
like a poison into the corners and cells of an
unsuspecting body of people. It corrupts Christianity by turning it
into a religion without justice, without mercy, and ultimately without Christ.
And that's why this conversation is crucial. So let me
go back to what you said before you write that, um, ultimately,
(12:37):
if one espouses what we know to be biblical truth
to a woke culture, that it isn't just the ideology
that's disdained, it's the person speaking it. Correct?
S5 (12:49):
That's right. Yeah. You know, I think part of the
goal is to, you know, the traditional Christian perspective would
be that we love the sinner and hate the sin.
They've really inverted that to now you you love the
sin and you hate the sinner. You know that we've
relocated our judgment onto the hearts of other people because
we don't no longer have any objectivity about action. Um,
(13:09):
and this has been really damaging. And one of the
reasons why I fundamentally wanted to write the book is because,
you know, I see I see a lot of Christians
being pulled into this movement. It really operates on deception
and confusion. And I think that confusion leads to a
whole host of errors that are really harmful to the
very people that they claim to want to help. Um,
and that's where I think the fundamental injustice lies.
S1 (13:30):
Exactly. I could not agree with you more. And I
think the Pied Piper plays a tune with words like
mercy and justice and victim. And that all plays well
in the heart of a human being who we are
told in the Word of God to seek justice, that
we are to be merciful people, that we are to
be lovers, and we're supposed to take care of the
least among us. So when you hear of a victim,
obviously immediately categorize that as the least among us. So
(13:53):
all of the words are there. But, Noel, part of
the deception, it seems to me, is and it's Orwellian,
and you talk about this in the book, is that
the words resonate with a pre conceived notion of what
they mean based on biblical truth, but they're not applied
in the same way.
S5 (14:11):
That's exactly right. So I think that's part of the
manipulation is that, you know, these are good Christian precepts
to walk with the marginalized, with the suffering, with a victim. Yes,
those are true premises, but then they introduce a whole
host of conclusions that are actually do the exact opposite
of what, you know, a sort of biblical understanding of
justice and a natural human understanding of justice would, would imply, um,
(14:33):
and so they take those words and those good precepts,
and then they enforce within them a method of critical
theory that really is, you know, contrary ultimately to, to the,
the nature of the person, but also to God himself.
It's a deeply destabilizing movement. It separates us from one another.
It separates us even from ourselves. We become bifurcated because
(14:53):
we are no longer even having clarity about our own
human nature. And then it ultimately separates us from the Lord.
And I think that's the goal ultimately, is to, to
to be parasitically operating off of a sort of waning
Christian sense in a lot of people until it has
replaced that Christianity ultimately.
S1 (15:11):
Oh, spot on. This is why I've said all along,
at its basis, it's spiritual warfare. I wouldn't say that
testifying before Congress, but I happen to believe in my
own heart that the subtext of this is very much
spiritual warfare. So go back, if you would, to some
of the origins. That was the question I posited just
before the break. And you can't talk about this. You're
an error if you don't talk about this without recognizing
(15:32):
the role that Karl Marx plays in this. Talk to
me about that.
S5 (15:36):
That's right. So he was really crucial. I mean, he
set up the whole framework of dividing all of the
populace into two categories the simple binary of oppressor versus oppressed.
And he developed what he called conflict theory, that the
point of society is to be continually critiquing and breaking
things apart until we get to a point of revolution,
(15:56):
and that the way the mechanism for achieving that revolution
is to be constantly reminding people and waking them up
to the way that they have miserable lives to make
them hate the concept of suffering. So he realized pretty
early on that the family and the faith are the
two biggest obstacles to to revolution, because the faith really
helps us to know how to suffer well, to put
(16:17):
things into internal perspective, to carry our cross. Um, and
the family is the first introduction into, you know, having
a happy, a happy home and also to, to sort
of communicating who God is through the role of the father.
And um, and the it creates a healthy society, that
simple cell. Um, and he knew that destabilizing the family
(16:38):
and destabilizing the faith would help people to become in
full of rage, also despair, and eventually, violence. So he
was right on. And but the thing that happened is
that when revolution he thought was inevitable, it didn't happen
in Germany. And so a group of men formed what
was what we call the Frankfurt School, to analyze why
(16:58):
the revolution had not occurred. They came to the United
States in 1935, welcomed by Columbia University. And this is
really where you see the origins of critical theory. Um,
and what they did, they were neo-Marxist, but they were
also neo-freudians. And they understood that you can broaden the
revolution beyond economics.
S1 (17:15):
Oh, and boy, do you talk about that in the book.
That was an eye opener, and I would love to
cover that when we get back. Noel, the book is
called awake, Not Woke a Christian Response to the Cult
of Progressive Ideology. And in case you haven't figured it
out yet, there is so much in this book that
even with the gift of one hour of Noel's time,
I'm not going to be able to go as far
and as deep and as wide as I'd love to. So,
(17:36):
you know what? If this conversation gets you curious enough
to get the book, then I will have done my
job well. Let me take a break. We'll be right back. Awake,
(18:04):
not Woke, the brand new book by Noelle Mering. She
is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
here in Washington, D.C., and she writes regularly on the
topics of politics and culture and religion with a background
in philosophy. And boy, does that come through loud and clear.
And her brand new essential in my classroom required reading. So, Noelle,
this fusion between Neo-marxism and Freudian beliefs, this goes. This
(18:27):
is why so often when moms and dads show up
at school board meetings, they're not just talking about critical
race theory, but the next thing you know, transgenderism pops up.
And for a whole lot of moms all across the
country and dads, they're going, whoa, whoa, I thought you
were talking race. How does transgender work into all of this?
If we look at the beginnings first principles, right, you
have to understand first principles that there is a profoundly, um,
historic and not by accident linkage between Marxist beliefs and
(18:51):
Freudian beliefs. So talk to me about this.
S5 (18:54):
Yeah. No, I think this is so important. And I
remember there was a lot of confusion when people started
realizing that Black Lives Matter had a on their statement
of beliefs that they wanted to queer the culture and
disrupt the traditional nuclear family. And a lot of people
rightly thought, well, what does that have to do with
racial justice? And this speaks to the point that you're making, um,
and they are intimately connected in the woke movement. So,
for example, the the woke will say that the and
(19:17):
the history of the Frankfurt School, excuse me, believed as
well that our oppression is not just from an oppressive
groups outside of ourselves, but actually through an internal repression
where we strive to conform to the moral law that is,
you know, has dominance in our minds and in the
culture and that that moral law itself oppresses us and
(19:39):
we repress ourselves by conforming to it. So part of
our political liberation is not just triumphing over groups that
oppress us, but also by freeing ourselves from the need
to be sexually have embrace a traditional sexual morality. We
have to actually become transgressive, identify the transgressive desires that
(20:00):
we have, sexual desires that are non-conforming, and we have
to live them out and express them in order to
truly be liberated.
S1 (20:07):
Wow. But when you think back on what you said,
that Marx understood that if you want to foment revolution
and create an unsettled environment in a culture, you go
after religion and you go after family. So we shouldn't
be surprised by the way that we're seeing it manifest
itself the way it is today. Should we?
S5 (20:24):
That's exactly right. You know, the father was a particular target.
Every revolutionary from Marx to Marx, understood that you have
to corrupt men in order to destabilize the society. Why?
I think because they knew once men become sexually licentious and,
you know, as they would say, tomcats, then women become
distrustful and hardened. They become calloused. And that enables a
(20:47):
woman to become sexually licentious because she's no longer, you know,
there's a tenderness that she's that she's, um, papered over
and that allows her to act to, you know, disregard
her own body in certain ways. And then children become
rebellious because the people most tasked for them to trust
their parents now no longer have moral authority at this point.
(21:09):
And so they introduced all these social pathologies and wounds
into the culture by destabilizing the family. And then they
look at those very wounds as further evidence that we
need more revolution. So so they point to the fact
that men are men are just, you know, unreliable or,
you know, toxic masculinity. And they say, oh, look, there's
further evidence that we need to defeat men, fight the patriarchy. Well,
(21:31):
they were the ones who who introduced these deep wounds
and created this whole society or encouraged this whole culture
of men behaving badly. Um, so so you see how
it's how infuriating. It's just such a frustrating phenomenon. Exactly.
But yeah, but it really is. It really is an
effective tool for revolution. It's this, this sense of of
(21:51):
destruction of the family. And that has been explicitly a
target in their literature for decades.
S1 (21:57):
And let me pause on this note, because I know
that we're throwing a lot of stuff at our listeners,
but I really want them to get so many of
the points that you're making. You use the word revolution.
That's what you have to understand, Mom and dad, that
this isn't just politics. This isn't just some headline of
the day. This is a well-orchestrated revolution. And your kids
are very much pawns in this game. That's why we're
(22:17):
having this conversation. You brought up Herbert Marcuse. Talk to
me about how he played into this, exactly what you
were just saying, and the linkage between him and Angela Davis.
Would you write about in the book?
S5 (22:28):
Yeah. So he was sort of a celebrity intellectual in
the 1960s. He was extremely influential. And people really, he
was sort of this, you know, intellectual superstar. Um, and he,
he wrote prolifically and mentored a lot of very influential people,
including people in the Weather Underground. And also, as you said,
Angela Davis. And he really understood and hit on the
(22:48):
idea that the revolution, you can take advantage of all
sorts of different groups of people in order to broaden
the fault lines throughout society. So he saw, well, black
people have suffered. So what we can do is turn
them their suffering into agents of revolution by radicalizing them. Um,
and then he saw women, you know, the feminist movement,
that this was a real, um, effective agent for revolution
(23:13):
as well. Um, and then, you know, eventually became the
homosexuality and, and now transgenderism, obviously. But he wasn't doing
that then. Um, but so he, he mentored Angela Davis
and what it means to be, uh, to work for
the sake of revolution. Even that that to justify violence
for that end. Um, and so she was very active
(23:33):
in the communist, you know, Communist Party, um, and so
many people, even in the Weather Underground, they went on
to become, um, teach at the teachers colleges and train
generations of teachers how to, how to and superintendents and
these types of things on how to be agents for change. Um,
this was a really effective way of getting activism into
(23:54):
the educational system from K through 12 and of course,
through the colleges.
S1 (24:00):
Um, let me take a break at this point. Let
me just say to my friends, listening, Noel, that there
is so much more to the history here. It was.
It was nauseatingly important to me. If I can couple
those two words together to read this. The linkage, by
the way, between this, uh, licentiousness, sexuality sexually and the
Marxist ideas I had never seen or read about the
(24:21):
linkage with such clarity as I have in Noel's book.
So it's not by accident that you're seeing the advancement
of transgenderism. But I also want you to understand, if
you go back to Marx's idea that if you can
get rid of religion, the opiate of the people, and
if you can tear down the family, particularly displace the
role of the father, which is a direct assault, by
the way, at Christ, then you begin to understand this
(24:41):
revolution has some very well laid out plans. So how
is it manifesting itself today so that you, mom and dad,
can recognize it more with Noel marrying right after this?
(25:04):
There are dozens of talk shows that address politics, culture
and technology, but in the market is committed to bringing
biblical truths to every facet of life. When you financially
support in the market as a partial partner, you're helping
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daily lives. Become a partial partner today and receive exclusive
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(25:26):
online to in the market with Janet Parshall. And I
do want to thank you for financially supporting in the
market with Janet Parshall. That's why we can have conversations
like the one we're having with Noel Maring. And I
have to tell you, in a woke culture, woke entertainment,
woke government, woke corporations, this is markedly politically incorrect, even
if it's biblically and factually spot on. The book that
(25:48):
Noel has written is called awake, Not Woke. And for
those of us who read God's Word, we hear over
and over again that admonition from Paul that tells us
to awake O sleeper. Right. That's we've been called for
such a time as this. You need to know what's
going on in the world out there. And this is
a war for what ideas will take up residency in
the human heart. And it's a very intense war. First,
(26:09):
you have to recognize exactly what these ideas are so
that you can, in fact, look well to the ways
of your household. Noel wrote this book as a Christian
response to the cult of progressive ideology. So I want
to go back to help us recognize this, because I
get so many emails and notes from listeners as well
that say, how do I know if it's in my school?
I mean, the NEA passes a resolution that says, make
(26:31):
sure you fight anybody who comes and talks about it.
You've got a lawsuit in Rhode Island from a mom
who under FOIA says, I want information on CRT in
the school and the and the NEA turns around and
sues the mom. And then you have an openly in
the NEA resolutions, the fact that they're going to push
this stuff in the public schools. So it's not if
it's coming to your school, it's there already. But Mom
(26:54):
and dad just are looking for the evidence of its manifestation.
You say that there are three key elements to foster
this idea of oppressor and oppressor, as you call it
victim mob mentality. The three elements are the group over
the person. Human will over reason, human power over true authority.
Break that down a little bit for us.
S5 (27:13):
Sure. Well, the first one group over person, you know,
human beings are meant to be in groups. You know,
the families, the first, first introduction into being in some
sort of community. But the good you can tell a
healthy group by the fact that the good of the
individual is the good of the group. They're not pitted
against each other. Mhm. And what the woke do is
(27:34):
they invert that. So the good of the individual is
subordinated to the good of the group, to the point
where it becomes destructive to the individual. So what do
I mean by that. So for example as Christians we
would define an individual as being defined by the love
of God. And that implies a gospel message to go
out and give people the good news that they are loved.
(27:55):
The woke define the human person not by the love
of God, but by the hatred of society and giving
them sort of an anti-gospel where they're to spread the
bad news to people that they are hated or that
they are haters. Um, and so what that does is
it puts their oppression first and foremost in front of them.
In other words, it makes the most important part of
them there, that they are a part of a group
(28:17):
that is aggrieved. And so this is why you'll see,
you know, there's a switch from saying, I am a
person who is black or I'm a person who's white.
Now you put your you have to center your, your,
your identitarian, the piece of you, because that is the
most central or you'll have in. New York Times writer
recently said that we all know there's a difference between
being racially black or being politically black. In other words,
(28:40):
the implication is it's really not about defending a person
who is black or uplifting him or empowering him. It's
only if he has the right political voice, the right ideology.
So it's about the ideology more and to the detriment
of the flourishing of the human person. You see this
with pro-life women as well. To be pro-life as a woman,
your voice is going to be quieted, silenced. You're not
(29:01):
going to be celebrated the way you are if you're
pro-choice because you're not embracing the key act that fights
your oppression in their mind, which is the ability to
kill your own children. Right. Um, so it's really destructive
of the human person. Um, and, and it creates this incentive,
perverse incentive to, look for ways in which you're victimized. So,
(29:22):
you know, you start to scan your environment because you
find your moral stature based on how you are aggrieved
or how you're hurt. And as society becomes more just
in some ways, you know, you know, far less racist.
I have a mixed I come from mixed race parents.
Their marriage 50 years ago is very different than what
they're how they're accepted now, blessedly. And so what happens
(29:44):
is that as injustice becomes harder to find, but our
demand for injustice increases, we start to find microaggressions. We
have to find invisible layers of oppression, because we have
to find our victimhood somewhere in order to have value
according to the system. So that's really the first what
I call the dogma. The second one is the elevation
of human will over reason. We talked about this a
(30:04):
little bit with the idea that our part of our
liberation is to identify the transgressive sexual desires inside of us,
and then to really fly our freak flag, you know,
as a children's musical, actually had a song called Fly
Your Freak Flag. But but that that that is how
you free yourself is by emphasizing will over recent and
(30:25):
over human nature. Every communist regime has always operated based
on trying to dismantle the our concept of our human nature. Um,
they did this in Maoist China, obviously in communist Germany. Um, so,
so and you see this very acutely in the transgender movement.
So basically what the movement is saying is that our,
your you can speak into reality, something that is in
(30:47):
defiance of your body, your bodily reality, which basically means
your body means nothing. And if our if our bodies
mean nothing, ultimately we mean nothing. So while the transgender
movement poses as a movement of compassion to include people
who are suffering on the fringe, it actually is eradicating
for all of society our stable sense of what a
person is. Um, and that carries all sorts of, um,
(31:10):
very violent implications ultimately, um, that we can instrumentalize our
own bodies, but also eventually justify the instrumental instrumentalization of
the other person's body. Um, and that's what we call
popularly expressive individualism. The idea that I can decide what
I am. Yes, the third dogma. The third dogma is
power over authority. The authority truly is the target of this.
(31:32):
You know, ultimately it's, you know, the the patriarchy, patriarchy,
ultimately all these the patria, the fatherland, um, the idea
of fatherhood, the idea of God himself, that these all
three of these distortions are targeted at the logos because
they're diminishing the person, reason and authority. And the Jesus
Christ is the logos. Is the mind the reason of
(31:53):
God manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, who is
the author and authority of all. And it really is
ultimately targeting the logos in that way.
S1 (32:00):
Wow. Wow. Again, I want our friends to understand how
deep this is. It's more than just an argument at
a local school board meeting. It is a very dangerous ideology.
You point out that in order for what the oppressors want,
and this is the part, I think, where so many
people get frustrated, Noel, is that the oppressors want people
to repent, repent, express sorrow and shame at their immutable
(32:21):
characteristic your whiteness. But then you point out that they
never want the oppressor, quote unquote, to be forgiven. Well,
so this is never about healing the breaches I noted
earlier in our conversation. It isn't about bringing people together.
It is about going out of your way in every
way possible to make sure that there is division among people.
In fact, if you look that up in the dictionary,
(32:43):
that's the definition of a revolution, isn't it?
S5 (32:46):
It is. And, you know, it is also the the
machinations of a cult. You know, the idea that I
have to continually repent, repent, but there's never going to
actually be true forgiveness, there's never actually going to be mercy.
And and furthermore, that my sin is an immutable characteristic
of myself rather than something that I actually choose out
of my free will to do, um, which is the
(33:07):
traditional understanding of sin. And so what it does is
it abstracts in where it's not truly about you growing
in virtue. Rather, it's just about recognizing that whether or
not you're in the correct group, you're in the group
that has power. And this is, you know, by elevating
the sense that white people are always going to be racist,
inevitably racist. What it does is it conceals the fact
(33:28):
that they have actually achieved power politically. Um, you know
that because the woke have to always posture that they
are the victim or that they are the advocates of
the victim once it becomes clear that they have achieved power,
which I think when we have our US embassies all
over the world flying the pride flag, and every corporate
corporation practically in America has to send me an email
every June telling me to to celebrate pride. I think
(33:50):
they've got a lot of power. And if if they're
the victims at this point, then I'll take some of
that victimhood, because that's pretty powerful. Um, but but, you know,
as long as, as there's a continually a continual perpetrator,
you know, whiteness, maleness, you know, all these, all these groups,
then they it conceals the fact that they've actually are
becoming tyrannical themselves.
S1 (34:13):
That is so perfectly said. Let me go back to
this idea of authority, because I think this is why
you say, ultimately this is an attack against Christianity, and
it harkens back you titled it one of the chapters
in the book. This this goes back to that very
first lie, Genesis chapter three, that you shall be like gods.
There is no submitting to an authority that's transcendent, it's absolute,
(34:35):
it's protective. It is divine in its authorship. It is
the self-generated idea of what constitutes authority and rule. And
that also, it seems to me, is a prescription for mayhem.
Talk to me about that.
S5 (34:48):
Yeah. You know, I mean, I think authority is so
at the core of this, um, that that the idea
and authority truly, etymologically, I talk about this in the book.
It's connected to springing from an author that, in other words,
in order to have any sort of authority, there has
to be something you reverence. It has to. It's bestowed
on you from from above. And by eliminating the concept
of authority, all you're left with is human power, which
(35:10):
becomes quickly about control. Right. But what they do, you
even see that it's not only just that we don't
reverence authority or in a hierarchical way, but however, we
don't reverence any sort of measure at all. This is
why they're trying to disrupt math, right? By saying that
there's a way in which two plus two can equal five,
and that to object to that is to, you know,
(35:30):
perpetuate the oppression of a dominant white culture. Um, and
what they're saying is that basically, there's no measure outside
of ourselves, there's no objective truth, which means that any
injustice in this life has to be attributed to systemic
forces outside of myself. Totally. I have no moral agency.
I cannot improve my life. And what this does is
it means that all injustice has to be controlled externally
(35:53):
by an overwhelming or overpowered, overly powerful state. Um, because
we don't have the ability to improve, we don't have
the ability to struggle, to strive to change our circumstances
in life. We don't have moral agencies, so our successes
and failures have to be attributed to something outside of ourselves.
S1 (36:10):
Wow. So well said and so reflective of the way
in which you write in your new book. I was
thinking when you were talking, ultimately, and I'll put it
in very pedantic terms, but ultimately this is a war
against God, and it also makes the declarative lie. The
truth is not knowable, it isn't obtainable and it isn't applicable.
And that's really the root of so much of this.
So when we come back, mom to mom, I want
(36:32):
to ask you how kids are really the pawns in
this game. And most important of all, I know there
are a lot of parents right now going, okay, there
are giants in the land. I'm just a grasshopper. What
in the world can I do? So I want to
get it charged from you. And how we can look
well to the ways of our household in the midst
of all of this awake, not woke. A Christian response
to the cult of progressive ideology. Noel Manning is the author. Beck.
(36:54):
After this. If I were going to describe Nicole Manning's
brand new book, awake, Not Woke, I would call it
brilliant and I would call it necessary. Extremely necessary. The
subtitle is Why we're having This Conversation A Christian Response
(37:14):
to the Cult of Progressive Ideology. And again, as rich
as this conversation has been up to this point, and boy,
has it been. There is even so much more in
the book. You can tell by the way that Noel speaks.
And remember, Scripture says, out of the overflow of the heart,
the mouth speaks. She is as sharp as can be
and really has learned to discern these issues. And it's important.
We need a tutorial for someone just like that. Here's
(37:35):
our kids. I'm a mom of four. You're a mom
of six. Our kids are the pawns in this game.
It's starting as low as kindergarten. Tell me how they're
being used again. It's a wake up call for moms
and dads listening all across the country.
S5 (37:49):
Yeah. No. I think it's so important to to know,
understand and talk about this. And it really gets to
the heart of the way that this is a spiritual battle.
So one of the things I dive into in the
book is that it ultimately is a desire to to
deify ourselves, to make gods of ourselves. And the way
they do that is look at who like, think if you, um,
(38:09):
Christ is the perfect innocent victim. And what they want
to do is they want to become the perfect innocent victim.
So this is why victimhood becomes so crucial to their identity.
But it's also they also want to claim Christ's innocence
for themselves. They cannot, obviously, but what they can do,
the next best thing, you know, according to that, this
sort of sinister way of thinking, which is you have
(38:30):
to corrupt innocence in this world because innocence is a
signpost pointing us towards God, pointing us to a good
to an objective measure. Um, so innocence in the world
of critical theory is dominance. Um, and, you know, there, there,
the innocence of children is a threat to woke ideology,
protecting children, their innocence usually, you know, that means that
we keep them from adult sexuality, from, you know, perversions
(38:52):
from violence. But shielding them from these things has two
negative ramifications. According to the woke. It allows that children
and society itself to maintain the idea that traditional sexual
behavior between one man and one woman. A marriage is
the norm and therefore preferred way of being um, and
that sexuality that veers from these norms is then marginalised.
(39:13):
And so that that that's not okay for the woke. Secondly,
it shuts the door for many children who maybe would
be open to exploring certain types of perversions. Um, so
this is why you have things like transgender story hours
and libraries. It's such a bizarre phenomenon, but according to
their inner logic, it really makes sense. You have to
disabuse children of the uncomfortability of men becoming women or
(39:35):
dressing as women or, you know, whatever. Um, in order
to disrupt the the dominant norm of sexual, of traditional
sexuality in society in general. So it really has to
corrupt children by the logic of the movement.
S1 (39:49):
Wow, wow. That's so much to take in and for
parents to process. So let me say something else that
you wrote in the book that I think is important.
For centuries, Christians were told to refrain from judging our
neighbor's heart. By the way, judge not most tortuous verse
taken out of context ever in Scripture. Even if that person,
by the way, had clearly done wrong. But this is
what you write, Noel, and it's so good. But somewhere
along the road of thinning theology and increasingly demagogic secularism,
(40:14):
modern Christianity absorbed and internalized the measure that do not
judge in particular synonymous with do not acknowledge that acts
can be right or wrong in general. So successful has
been the effort to brand morally normative statements as judgmental,
that many shepherds have become cowardly and their flock apathetic.
Talk to me more about that, because boy, is that
(40:35):
spot on.
S5 (40:37):
Yeah, I think that that was such an effective tactic. And,
you know, and it goes back to what we were
talking about earlier, the Christians really, you know, most people
don't want to be said understood to be a bigot
or to be full of hate or to be, you know, a,
you know, the it's been ingrained in us in so
much media. For example, think about the Church lady and
Saturday Night Live, the Church Lady skit where she would
wag her finger and shame, shame, shame. And in movie
(40:58):
after movie, you know, the traditional person is always is
always portrayed, almost always portrayed as being a hypocrite, as
being hateful, as being really uptight, all these things. And
what it's done is that, you know, it was under
the guise tolerance was under the guise that we're just
going to, you know, your neighbor doing such and such
xyz is not going to affect you. So why not
just live and let live? However, I think people are
(41:19):
really waking up to the fact that it was never
meant to to remain there. It was always meant to
eradicate and, um, oppressively force Christians to accept this new ideology.
And you see this even in the fact that there's
a there was a religious, um, exemption, you know, where
Christian colleges could hire permission and, you know, say that
homosexuality is not allowed on campus or in their faculty. Um,
(41:41):
that that had to be an exemption, as in other words,
what became the norm is the embrace of woke, this
woke ideology. It's not a neutral, um, perspective. It is.
It's it's an ideology that has its own understanding of
what ought to be. And I think Christians have been
so duped in thinking that, you know, this is a
live and let live movement. It's not. It's meant to
(42:02):
to eradicate the idea that Christians can have a voice
in the public square at all, or have any sort
of weigh in on moral and moral law, or moral
understanding and moral formation of the future in our schools
and in our in our corporations and all these things.
It was always meant to to to silence that voice.
S1 (42:20):
Yeah. One of the many reasons why I'm having the
conversation with Noel right now, that's something we talk about
so much here. So at this point, I know that
there are moms and dads who are going, I'm overwhelmed. Uh,
I'm at the deep end of the pool. I'm drowning.
I love my child. I want to protect my child.
I don't have a clue how I do this. What
advice do you give them?
S5 (42:39):
Yeah, I think that that's a very understandable perspective. Well,
first of all, we should never despair. Despair is a
waste of time. And it's also not from God, right?
But I think that we have to we need clarity.
And so that's really why I wrote the wrote the
book is to help people to shine a light on this.
And I think that's the first step in really fighting it.
But secondly, once we have that clarity, we really need
the courage and to find a place in our life
where we can resist this and fight against it, and
(43:00):
also not be complacent about what is. You know who
is raising our children? What's happening in their schools? What's
happening in the movies that they watch, the television shows?
You know, that's such a pervasive movement. And I think
we really need to be aware and on alert of that,
because we are in charge of the formation of our students. Finally,
it's a spiritual battle. Everything we do has to be
an outgrowth overflowing of our prayer life, our interior life,
(43:22):
growing closer to God in order to reflect a modern society.
S1 (43:25):
Yeah. Could not have said that better, Noel. One last question.
In an hour that's gone far too quickly. The part
of this that breaks my heart, and there are so
many reasons why my heart gets heavy on this topic,
is there really are some injustices when we talk about
race in this country, some horrible wrongs that need to
be right. And I think what's happening is this oppressor,
oppressed revolution, Marxist in its origin, furthered by Freudian ideas,
(43:48):
is that those real ills are not being taken care of.
30s what do you think about that?
S5 (43:54):
I think that's exactly right. Not only is it masking
the true Your instances of injustice that need to be addressed,
because there certainly are injustices with regard to race and
all of these things. However, it's actually deploying racism in
order to fight them. It's telling black people that they
are less capable than white people, that being on time
is a white virtue. That objective reasoning is a white virtue.
(44:14):
These are things that the woke movement says, and they're
deeply racist. So you will never resolve racism by employing racism.
And it's it's just deeply disempowering to the very people
they claim to help.
S1 (44:25):
Floyd, did you answer that beautifully? Thank you, Noel, so much.
Let me tell you the name of the book again.
Let me. I know that time is short. I know
sometimes it's hard to turn all your devices off and
to just concentrate and read a book. But read this one.
You'll understand that ultimately this is very much of an
aggressive spiritual warfare. And as Noel says so beautifully over
and over again in a myriad of ways in her book,
ultimately it's an assault on Christianity. Again, the book is
(44:47):
called awake, Not Woke. You can learn more by going
to my website, and I have a link to Noel's
website as well. Blessings to you friends. See you next time.
Hi friends, thanks so much for downloading this podcast and
I certainly hope what you hear will encourage, edify, equip,
enlighten and then will gently but consistently push you out
there into the marketplace of ideas. Wait. But before you
start to listen, may I take one minute and tell
you about this month's truth tool? It's written by Doctor
Ronnie Floyd and it's called The Supernatural Power of Prayer
and Fasting. You know, prayer and fasting are something that
(00:21):
we're invited to do. In fact, the Bible talks about
it a lot. And Jesus put fasting on the same
level as prayer. But most people don't understand it and
aren't quite sure how it works. Well, in this wonderful
book that Doctor Floyd has written, he wants us to
fix our eyes upon Jesus and fill our lives with
his strength. He reminds us that through prayer and fasting,
we can experience a profound transformation. He wants us to
(00:43):
learn how to listen to God's voice, to transform pride
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(01:25):
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won't you? And now please enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (02:01):
Here are some of the news headlines we're watching.
S3 (02:03):
The conference was over. The president won a pledge.
S4 (02:05):
Americans worshipping government over God.
S3 (02:07):
Extremely rare.
S1 (02:09):
Safety.
S3 (02:09):
Move by a.
S4 (02:10):
17 years. The Palestinians and Israelis negotiated.
S3 (02:13):
It is not addictive.
S1 (02:29):
Hi friends. Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall.
I am so excited about the conversation we're going to
have this hour, and I'm thrilled that you're going to
join us. And here's what I'm going to guess. I'm
going to guess that so many of you will then
go to the website. You are going to download this podcast,
and you're going to share it with family and friends.
Why do I know? Because I know that you're hungry
to get some answers. Listen, on this program, we talk
(02:50):
about what's being bought and sold in the marketplace of
ideas on a regular basis. John Bunyan and his brilliance
and Pilgrim's Progress referred to it as Vanity Fair. But
that was his word, really, for the marketplace and Christian
and faithful, his companion at this part of his journey.
Walk into the the Vanity Fair. And they don't want
to be recognized because they're going to be ridiculed. Who
doesn't want to be marginalized? I mean, we we sometimes
(03:13):
are afraid to lovingly confront because we are afraid we're
going to be recognized as followers of Christ Jesus. And
so we pull our collars up, just like Christian and
Faithful did. But the merchants still shout at us whether
we want it or not. And they shout at us
today through government, through entertainment, through schoolbooks, through school board meetings.
Every time you turn around, someone's going to tell you
(03:34):
what is right versus what is wrong. And they're going
to say that you fall into one of two camps,
either the oppressed or the oppressor. And rather than repairing
the breach, as it says in the book of Isaiah,
you're going to see people who, wearing a masquerade of justice,
are really trying to divide and foment more animosity and hatred.
So here's what I know. As followers of Jesus Christ,
(03:55):
you're looking for answers. You want to know how when
you go into that marketplace? Because John 17 says that's
exactly where you're supposed to go. No detours. You must
needs pass through it, said Bunyan in his old English.
So you and I are going to go out into
that marketplace, and we're going to hear this stuff, and
we're wondering, how do we respond? How do we discern?
How do we separate truth from fiction? How do we
(04:16):
take that mandate from Ephesians and speak the truth in love?
Never designed to be easy, but obviously we have a
father who says, don't frustrate your children. So this Heavenly
Father of ours is not going to frustrate us. We
can do it because we can do all things through
Christ who strengthens us. But we also have to be prepared.
That's why we're told to study, to show ourselves approved.
God's big on prep. And so this is part of
(04:38):
that prep before you go out there. So what does
it mean to be woke? And why do I so
often quote Paul's gentle nudge to the ribs awake, O sleeper,
because it's easy for you to be put into sort
of a sleepy state where you can no longer discern.
You don't know what the times are all about. You
don't know how to redeem the nation. You don't know
(04:59):
how to seek the welfare of the city because you
either haven't prepared or you don't know where to go
for the information. So when I hit something that just
fires on all cylinders biblical truth, historical accuracy, application to
what's going on in the world around us, I get
pretty excited. And boy did I find that in the
book awake, Not Woke a Christian Response to the cult
(05:22):
of Progressive ideology that's right down the highway of what
we talk about on this program on a regular basis.
This is a superb book, and I can't determine whether
or not it's superb because I'm going to talk to somebody.
My kids would call a brainiac because she's a fellow
in Washington, D.C., at the Ethics and Public Policy Center,
and they don't let just anybody in. You got to
(05:43):
have something between your ears, or it's because she's a
mom of six. And so this is a mother's heart
looking well to the ways of her household. As it
says in Scripture. I want to tell you a little
more about Noelle marrying Noelle. As I noted before, is
at the center for Ethics and Public Policy, but she
writes regularly on topics of politics and culture and religion.
She has a background in philosophy as well as home design. Now,
(06:04):
how's that for being super prepared for the work that
God has called you for? She's a frequent contributor to
the National Catholic Register, The American Mind, The Federalist, among
other books and publications. And I'm telling you, this book
in my classroom would be required reading because it is
biblio centric, and it really speaks to what we need
to remember as we engage the culture. And that is
(06:25):
the centrality of the gospel and the importance of Christ
in the midst of all of this. So, Noelle, first
of all, kudos on an absolutely superb book. I hope
it rockets to the top of the best selling charts,
giving you encouragement that people are hungry to know how
to do exactly what we're commanded to do, which is
to speak that truth and love. But second of all,
I know how busy you are, so thank you for
(06:46):
the gift of your time. I can't give it back
and I've already been blessed just reading your book. So
now to get to spend an hour with you. Means
so much. So the warmest of welcomes. And I'm thrilled
you're here.
S5 (06:56):
Oh, thank you so much for your kind, kind words.
It's a true honor to be here with you.
S1 (07:00):
I have to ask you, because you've written on the
theology of the home. And I love that, by the way,
that really is looking well to the ways of our household.
How do you go from something like that to really
engaging what is the cultural the cultural Goliath right now,
which is this cultural critical thinking, by the way, this wokeness,
all of this, it's got a panoply of names, but
(07:20):
it's all the same stuff. We'll get into that in
a minute. In some respects that might be a paradigm shift,
but maybe I'm missing something here. What? Why did you
choose to engage on this?
S5 (07:29):
No, I think it's a great question. And my co-author
for Theology of Home, Carrie Grace, she and I talk
about this a lot that she has written, you know,
more polemical books about feminism than I've written this woke book. Um, but,
you know, truly Theology of Home was a flip side
of the same coin, whereas in one respect, the home,
you know, I'm taking on forthrightly how the home and
(07:50):
family life has been a target of this movement for decades,
and Theology of Home was sort of the other side
of that coin. Well, what is the positive, beautiful vision
that we can rediscover that the culture has made really
obscure for us? Um, so they seem really different in
a lot of ways they are, but they do they
do have come from the same place in that lens.
S1 (08:08):
Yeah. And I appreciate the answer so much. And that
answer does not surprise me at all. So what I
love about the book is that you take the time
to build the history on this, and I think that's
crucial that we take some time doing that as well. Noelle,
because this didn't appear Ex-nihilo this is an old idea
that's been entrenched in a myriad of ways and promoted
by a myriad of players for a long period of time.
(08:29):
And I think it's paramount that particularly moms and dads
listening all across the country right now understand that it
might be a new phenomenon that they're discovering, but it
is an old idea. In fact, I would like to
posit that it goes back to Genesis chapter three that
you shall be like gods. But I'm getting ahead of
our conversation if I say that. So talk to me
about really the beginnings. If I were to say to you,
(08:51):
this is the elevator speech, I'm going down the elevator.
You're going to tell me, and I say, hey. Critical
race theory or critical theory? Because race theory only happened
after critical theory, which went to critical legal theory, which
went to critical race theory, as that mom testified at
the Loudoun County School Board. It was critical class theory
in communist China before she fled. So the insertion of
(09:13):
a word in there just is another modifier of the
separation of the oppressed and the oppressor. When we come back, Noel,
take me back to what you think might be considered
the seminal beginnings of this and who some of the
key players were. I I'm excited. I'm already ruing the
fact that one segment is gone much more with Noel
marrying her brand new, very important, timely book called awake,
(09:35):
Not Woke a Christian Response to the cult of progressive
ideology back after this. God is love. But when tragedy strikes,
we sometimes question God's kindness and his mercy. That's why
(09:58):
I've chosen the Steadfast Love of the Lord by Doctor
Sam Storms as this month's truth tool. Learn how to
navigate circumstances that seem to contradict God's unconditional love for you.
As for your copy of The Steadfast Love of the Lord,
when you give a gift of any amount to in
the market, call 877 58. That's 877858 or go to
in the market with Janet Parshall. We're visiting with Noel Maring,
(10:22):
a fellow at Washington, D.C. based think tank the Ethics
and Public Policy Center. It's a fabulous, fabulous organization, by
the way, and she is also, by the way, the
co-director of the Theology of Home Project. She is an
editor for Theology at Home, co-author of the Theology of
Home book series. And she joins us today with her
brand new book, Awake, Not Woke A Christian Response to
(10:43):
the Cult of Progressive Christianity. You say so many brilliant
things in the book, Noel. One that I thought was
particularly important was you go back to that directive we're
given in Ephesians about speaking the truth in love, not
truth or love. Never multiple choice test the two in
equal application. But one of the things about wokeness, you say,
is that it pits love and truth against each other.
(11:04):
Talk to me about that.
S5 (11:06):
Sure. Well, I think this has been a fundamental tactic
of the movement. I mean, you see it in the
way that we have now the idea that to be
a loving, compassionate person, you have to accept fundamental lies
about our human nature, especially about our embodied reality. So,
you know, the sexual revolution, first and foremost, we were
told that what we do with our bodies is essentially
meaningless and depends on our desire and our consent. Um,
(11:30):
and that introduced such a fundamental lie that now it's
taken to its extreme, really, in transgenderism. But what you
see is that this always ends up in violence and
actually hatred, because there cannot be any peace when we
have such a fundamental lie introduced and to pin that
on love. That love can be built around a lie
itself is a lie. It's not loving love and truth
(11:52):
without love is you know, that's not fundamentally true. And
love without truth is not fundamentally love. So both virtues
require the other in order to truly be what they are.
But this has been a tactic that they've used for
a long time, is to really intimidate Christians in particular,
into abandoning any sort of adherence to a moral law
under the guise to do. To adhere to a moral
law is to embrace something that's bigoted.
S1 (12:13):
Yeah. Wow. So much there. Let me read one of
your quotes. You said woke ideology has crept and dripped
like a poison into the corners and cells of an
unsuspecting body of people. It corrupts Christianity by turning it
into a religion without justice, without mercy, and ultimately without Christ.
And that's why this conversation is crucial. So let me
go back to what you said before you write that, um, ultimately,
(12:37):
if one espouses what we know to be biblical truth
to a woke culture, that it isn't just the ideology
that's disdained, it's the person speaking it. Correct?
S5 (12:49):
That's right. Yeah. You know, I think part of the
goal is to, you know, the traditional Christian perspective would
be that we love the sinner and hate the sin.
They've really inverted that to now you you love the
sin and you hate the sinner. You know that we've
relocated our judgment onto the hearts of other people because
we don't no longer have any objectivity about action. Um,
(13:09):
and this has been really damaging. And one of the
reasons why I fundamentally wanted to write the book is because,
you know, I see I see a lot of Christians
being pulled into this movement. It really operates on deception
and confusion. And I think that confusion leads to a
whole host of errors that are really harmful to the
very people that they claim to want to help. Um,
and that's where I think the fundamental injustice lies.
S1 (13:30):
Exactly. I could not agree with you more. And I
think the Pied Piper plays a tune with words like
mercy and justice and victim. And that all plays well
in the heart of a human being who we are
told in the Word of God to seek justice, that
we are to be merciful people, that we are to
be lovers, and we're supposed to take care of the
least among us. So when you hear of a victim,
obviously immediately categorize that as the least among us. So
(13:53):
all of the words are there. But, Noel, part of
the deception, it seems to me, is and it's Orwellian,
and you talk about this in the book, is that
the words resonate with a pre conceived notion of what
they mean based on biblical truth, but they're not applied
in the same way.
S5 (14:11):
That's exactly right. So I think that's part of the
manipulation is that, you know, these are good Christian precepts
to walk with the marginalized, with the suffering, with a victim. Yes,
those are true premises, but then they introduce a whole
host of conclusions that are actually do the exact opposite
of what, you know, a sort of biblical understanding of
justice and a natural human understanding of justice would, would imply, um,
(14:33):
and so they take those words and those good precepts,
and then they enforce within them a method of critical
theory that really is, you know, contrary ultimately to, to the,
the nature of the person, but also to God himself.
It's a deeply destabilizing movement. It separates us from one another.
It separates us even from ourselves. We become bifurcated because
(14:53):
we are no longer even having clarity about our own
human nature. And then it ultimately separates us from the Lord.
And I think that's the goal ultimately, is to, to
to be parasitically operating off of a sort of waning
Christian sense in a lot of people until it has
replaced that Christianity ultimately.
S1 (15:11):
Oh, spot on. This is why I've said all along,
at its basis, it's spiritual warfare. I wouldn't say that
testifying before Congress, but I happen to believe in my
own heart that the subtext of this is very much
spiritual warfare. So go back, if you would, to some
of the origins. That was the question I posited just
before the break. And you can't talk about this. You're
an error if you don't talk about this without recognizing
(15:32):
the role that Karl Marx plays in this. Talk to
me about that.
S5 (15:36):
That's right. So he was really crucial. I mean, he
set up the whole framework of dividing all of the
populace into two categories the simple binary of oppressor versus oppressed.
And he developed what he called conflict theory, that the
point of society is to be continually critiquing and breaking
things apart until we get to a point of revolution,
(15:56):
and that the way the mechanism for achieving that revolution
is to be constantly reminding people and waking them up
to the way that they have miserable lives to make
them hate the concept of suffering. So he realized pretty
early on that the family and the faith are the
two biggest obstacles to to revolution, because the faith really
helps us to know how to suffer well, to put
(16:17):
things into internal perspective, to carry our cross. Um, and
the family is the first introduction into, you know, having
a happy, a happy home and also to, to sort
of communicating who God is through the role of the father.
And um, and the it creates a healthy society, that
simple cell. Um, and he knew that destabilizing the family
(16:38):
and destabilizing the faith would help people to become in
full of rage, also despair, and eventually, violence. So he
was right on. And but the thing that happened is
that when revolution he thought was inevitable, it didn't happen
in Germany. And so a group of men formed what
was what we call the Frankfurt School, to analyze why
(16:58):
the revolution had not occurred. They came to the United
States in 1935, welcomed by Columbia University. And this is
really where you see the origins of critical theory. Um,
and what they did, they were neo-Marxist, but they were
also neo-freudians. And they understood that you can broaden the
revolution beyond economics.
S1 (17:15):
Oh, and boy, do you talk about that in the book.
That was an eye opener, and I would love to
cover that when we get back. Noel, the book is
called awake, Not Woke a Christian Response to the Cult
of Progressive Ideology. And in case you haven't figured it
out yet, there is so much in this book that
even with the gift of one hour of Noel's time,
I'm not going to be able to go as far
and as deep and as wide as I'd love to. So,
(17:36):
you know what? If this conversation gets you curious enough
to get the book, then I will have done my
job well. Let me take a break. We'll be right back. Awake,
(18:04):
not Woke, the brand new book by Noelle Mering. She
is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
here in Washington, D.C., and she writes regularly on the
topics of politics and culture and religion with a background
in philosophy. And boy, does that come through loud and clear.
And her brand new essential in my classroom required reading. So, Noelle,
this fusion between Neo-marxism and Freudian beliefs, this goes. This
(18:27):
is why so often when moms and dads show up
at school board meetings, they're not just talking about critical
race theory, but the next thing you know, transgenderism pops up.
And for a whole lot of moms all across the
country and dads, they're going, whoa, whoa, I thought you
were talking race. How does transgender work into all of this?
If we look at the beginnings first principles, right, you
have to understand first principles that there is a profoundly, um,
historic and not by accident linkage between Marxist beliefs and
(18:51):
Freudian beliefs. So talk to me about this.
S5 (18:54):
Yeah. No, I think this is so important. And I
remember there was a lot of confusion when people started
realizing that Black Lives Matter had a on their statement
of beliefs that they wanted to queer the culture and
disrupt the traditional nuclear family. And a lot of people
rightly thought, well, what does that have to do with
racial justice? And this speaks to the point that you're making, um,
and they are intimately connected in the woke movement. So,
for example, the the woke will say that the and
(19:17):
the history of the Frankfurt School, excuse me, believed as
well that our oppression is not just from an oppressive
groups outside of ourselves, but actually through an internal repression
where we strive to conform to the moral law that is,
you know, has dominance in our minds and in the
culture and that that moral law itself oppresses us and
(19:39):
we repress ourselves by conforming to it. So part of
our political liberation is not just triumphing over groups that
oppress us, but also by freeing ourselves from the need
to be sexually have embrace a traditional sexual morality. We
have to actually become transgressive, identify the transgressive desires that
(20:00):
we have, sexual desires that are non-conforming, and we have
to live them out and express them in order to
truly be liberated.
S1 (20:07):
Wow. But when you think back on what you said,
that Marx understood that if you want to foment revolution
and create an unsettled environment in a culture, you go
after religion and you go after family. So we shouldn't
be surprised by the way that we're seeing it manifest
itself the way it is today. Should we?
S5 (20:24):
That's exactly right. You know, the father was a particular target.
Every revolutionary from Marx to Marx, understood that you have
to corrupt men in order to destabilize the society. Why?
I think because they knew once men become sexually licentious and,
you know, as they would say, tomcats, then women become
distrustful and hardened. They become calloused. And that enables a
(20:47):
woman to become sexually licentious because she's no longer, you know,
there's a tenderness that she's that she's, um, papered over
and that allows her to act to, you know, disregard
her own body in certain ways. And then children become
rebellious because the people most tasked for them to trust
their parents now no longer have moral authority at this point.
(21:09):
And so they introduced all these social pathologies and wounds
into the culture by destabilizing the family. And then they
look at those very wounds as further evidence that we
need more revolution. So so they point to the fact
that men are men are just, you know, unreliable or,
you know, toxic masculinity. And they say, oh, look, there's
further evidence that we need to defeat men, fight the patriarchy. Well,
(21:31):
they were the ones who who introduced these deep wounds
and created this whole society or encouraged this whole culture
of men behaving badly. Um, so so you see how
it's how infuriating. It's just such a frustrating phenomenon. Exactly.
But yeah, but it really is. It really is an
effective tool for revolution. It's this, this sense of of
(21:51):
destruction of the family. And that has been explicitly a
target in their literature for decades.
S1 (21:57):
And let me pause on this note, because I know
that we're throwing a lot of stuff at our listeners,
but I really want them to get so many of
the points that you're making. You use the word revolution.
That's what you have to understand, Mom and dad, that
this isn't just politics. This isn't just some headline of
the day. This is a well-orchestrated revolution. And your kids
are very much pawns in this game. That's why we're
(22:17):
having this conversation. You brought up Herbert Marcuse. Talk to
me about how he played into this, exactly what you
were just saying, and the linkage between him and Angela Davis.
Would you write about in the book?
S5 (22:28):
Yeah. So he was sort of a celebrity intellectual in
the 1960s. He was extremely influential. And people really, he
was sort of this, you know, intellectual superstar. Um, and he,
he wrote prolifically and mentored a lot of very influential people,
including people in the Weather Underground. And also, as you said,
Angela Davis. And he really understood and hit on the
(22:48):
idea that the revolution, you can take advantage of all
sorts of different groups of people in order to broaden
the fault lines throughout society. So he saw, well, black
people have suffered. So what we can do is turn
them their suffering into agents of revolution by radicalizing them. Um,
and then he saw women, you know, the feminist movement,
that this was a real, um, effective agent for revolution
(23:13):
as well. Um, and then, you know, eventually became the
homosexuality and, and now transgenderism, obviously. But he wasn't doing
that then. Um, but so he, he mentored Angela Davis
and what it means to be, uh, to work for
the sake of revolution. Even that that to justify violence
for that end. Um, and so she was very active
(23:33):
in the communist, you know, Communist Party, um, and so
many people, even in the Weather Underground, they went on
to become, um, teach at the teachers colleges and train
generations of teachers how to, how to and superintendents and
these types of things on how to be agents for change. Um,
this was a really effective way of getting activism into
(23:54):
the educational system from K through 12 and of course,
through the colleges.
S1 (24:00):
Um, let me take a break at this point. Let
me just say to my friends, listening, Noel, that there
is so much more to the history here. It was.
It was nauseatingly important to me. If I can couple
those two words together to read this. The linkage, by
the way, between this, uh, licentiousness, sexuality sexually and the
Marxist ideas I had never seen or read about the
(24:21):
linkage with such clarity as I have in Noel's book.
So it's not by accident that you're seeing the advancement
of transgenderism. But I also want you to understand, if
you go back to Marx's idea that if you can
get rid of religion, the opiate of the people, and
if you can tear down the family, particularly displace the
role of the father, which is a direct assault, by
the way, at Christ, then you begin to understand this
(24:41):
revolution has some very well laid out plans. So how
is it manifesting itself today so that you, mom and dad,
can recognize it more with Noel marrying right after this?
(25:04):
There are dozens of talk shows that address politics, culture
and technology, but in the market is committed to bringing
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(25:26):
online to in the market with Janet Parshall. And I
do want to thank you for financially supporting in the
market with Janet Parshall. That's why we can have conversations
like the one we're having with Noel Maring. And I
have to tell you, in a woke culture, woke entertainment,
woke government, woke corporations, this is markedly politically incorrect, even
if it's biblically and factually spot on. The book that
(25:48):
Noel has written is called awake, Not Woke. And for
those of us who read God's Word, we hear over
and over again that admonition from Paul that tells us
to awake O sleeper. Right. That's we've been called for
such a time as this. You need to know what's
going on in the world out there. And this is
a war for what ideas will take up residency in
the human heart. And it's a very intense war. First,
(26:09):
you have to recognize exactly what these ideas are so
that you can, in fact, look well to the ways
of your household. Noel wrote this book as a Christian
response to the cult of progressive ideology. So I want
to go back to help us recognize this, because I
get so many emails and notes from listeners as well
that say, how do I know if it's in my school?
I mean, the NEA passes a resolution that says, make
(26:31):
sure you fight anybody who comes and talks about it.
You've got a lawsuit in Rhode Island from a mom
who under FOIA says, I want information on CRT in
the school and the and the NEA turns around and
sues the mom. And then you have an openly in
the NEA resolutions, the fact that they're going to push
this stuff in the public schools. So it's not if
it's coming to your school, it's there already. But Mom
(26:54):
and dad just are looking for the evidence of its manifestation.
You say that there are three key elements to foster
this idea of oppressor and oppressor, as you call it
victim mob mentality. The three elements are the group over
the person. Human will over reason, human power over true authority.
Break that down a little bit for us.
S5 (27:13):
Sure. Well, the first one group over person, you know,
human beings are meant to be in groups. You know,
the families, the first, first introduction into being in some
sort of community. But the good you can tell a
healthy group by the fact that the good of the
individual is the good of the group. They're not pitted
against each other. Mhm. And what the woke do is
(27:34):
they invert that. So the good of the individual is
subordinated to the good of the group, to the point
where it becomes destructive to the individual. So what do
I mean by that. So for example as Christians we
would define an individual as being defined by the love
of God. And that implies a gospel message to go
out and give people the good news that they are loved.
(27:55):
The woke define the human person not by the love
of God, but by the hatred of society and giving
them sort of an anti-gospel where they're to spread the
bad news to people that they are hated or that
they are haters. Um, and so what that does is
it puts their oppression first and foremost in front of them.
In other words, it makes the most important part of
them there, that they are a part of a group
(28:17):
that is aggrieved. And so this is why you'll see,
you know, there's a switch from saying, I am a
person who is black or I'm a person who's white.
Now you put your you have to center your, your,
your identitarian, the piece of you, because that is the
most central or you'll have in. New York Times writer
recently said that we all know there's a difference between
being racially black or being politically black. In other words,
(28:40):
the implication is it's really not about defending a person
who is black or uplifting him or empowering him. It's
only if he has the right political voice, the right ideology.
So it's about the ideology more and to the detriment
of the flourishing of the human person. You see this
with pro-life women as well. To be pro-life as a woman,
your voice is going to be quieted, silenced. You're not
(29:01):
going to be celebrated the way you are if you're
pro-choice because you're not embracing the key act that fights
your oppression in their mind, which is the ability to
kill your own children. Right. Um, so it's really destructive
of the human person. Um, and, and it creates this incentive,
perverse incentive to, look for ways in which you're victimized. So,
(29:22):
you know, you start to scan your environment because you
find your moral stature based on how you are aggrieved
or how you're hurt. And as society becomes more just
in some ways, you know, you know, far less racist.
I have a mixed I come from mixed race parents.
Their marriage 50 years ago is very different than what
they're how they're accepted now, blessedly. And so what happens
(29:44):
is that as injustice becomes harder to find, but our
demand for injustice increases, we start to find microaggressions. We
have to find invisible layers of oppression, because we have
to find our victimhood somewhere in order to have value
according to the system. So that's really the first what
I call the dogma. The second one is the elevation
of human will over reason. We talked about this a
(30:04):
little bit with the idea that our part of our
liberation is to identify the transgressive sexual desires inside of us,
and then to really fly our freak flag, you know,
as a children's musical, actually had a song called Fly
Your Freak Flag. But but that that that is how
you free yourself is by emphasizing will over recent and
(30:25):
over human nature. Every communist regime has always operated based
on trying to dismantle the our concept of our human nature. Um,
they did this in Maoist China, obviously in communist Germany. Um, so,
so and you see this very acutely in the transgender movement.
So basically what the movement is saying is that our,
your you can speak into reality, something that is in
(30:47):
defiance of your body, your bodily reality, which basically means
your body means nothing. And if our if our bodies
mean nothing, ultimately we mean nothing. So while the transgender
movement poses as a movement of compassion to include people
who are suffering on the fringe, it actually is eradicating
for all of society our stable sense of what a
person is. Um, and that carries all sorts of, um,
(31:10):
very violent implications ultimately, um, that we can instrumentalize our
own bodies, but also eventually justify the instrumental instrumentalization of
the other person's body. Um, and that's what we call
popularly expressive individualism. The idea that I can decide what
I am. Yes, the third dogma. The third dogma is
power over authority. The authority truly is the target of this.
(31:32):
You know, ultimately it's, you know, the the patriarchy, patriarchy,
ultimately all these the patria, the fatherland, um, the idea
of fatherhood, the idea of God himself, that these all
three of these distortions are targeted at the logos because
they're diminishing the person, reason and authority. And the Jesus
Christ is the logos. Is the mind the reason of
(31:53):
God manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, who is
the author and authority of all. And it really is
ultimately targeting the logos in that way.
S1 (32:00):
Wow. Wow. Again, I want our friends to understand how
deep this is. It's more than just an argument at
a local school board meeting. It is a very dangerous ideology.
You point out that in order for what the oppressors want,
and this is the part, I think, where so many
people get frustrated, Noel, is that the oppressors want people
to repent, repent, express sorrow and shame at their immutable
(32:21):
characteristic your whiteness. But then you point out that they
never want the oppressor, quote unquote, to be forgiven. Well,
so this is never about healing the breaches I noted
earlier in our conversation. It isn't about bringing people together.
It is about going out of your way in every
way possible to make sure that there is division among people.
In fact, if you look that up in the dictionary,
(32:43):
that's the definition of a revolution, isn't it?
S5 (32:46):
It is. And, you know, it is also the the
machinations of a cult. You know, the idea that I
have to continually repent, repent, but there's never going to
actually be true forgiveness, there's never actually going to be mercy.
And and furthermore, that my sin is an immutable characteristic
of myself rather than something that I actually choose out
of my free will to do, um, which is the
(33:07):
traditional understanding of sin. And so what it does is
it abstracts in where it's not truly about you growing
in virtue. Rather, it's just about recognizing that whether or
not you're in the correct group, you're in the group
that has power. And this is, you know, by elevating
the sense that white people are always going to be racist,
inevitably racist. What it does is it conceals the fact
(33:28):
that they have actually achieved power politically. Um, you know
that because the woke have to always posture that they
are the victim or that they are the advocates of
the victim once it becomes clear that they have achieved power,
which I think when we have our US embassies all
over the world flying the pride flag, and every corporate
corporation practically in America has to send me an email
every June telling me to to celebrate pride. I think
(33:50):
they've got a lot of power. And if if they're
the victims at this point, then I'll take some of
that victimhood, because that's pretty powerful. Um, but but, you know,
as long as, as there's a continually a continual perpetrator,
you know, whiteness, maleness, you know, all these, all these groups,
then they it conceals the fact that they've actually are
becoming tyrannical themselves.
S1 (34:13):
That is so perfectly said. Let me go back to
this idea of authority, because I think this is why
you say, ultimately this is an attack against Christianity, and
it harkens back you titled it one of the chapters
in the book. This this goes back to that very
first lie, Genesis chapter three, that you shall be like gods.
There is no submitting to an authority that's transcendent, it's absolute,
(34:35):
it's protective. It is divine in its authorship. It is
the self-generated idea of what constitutes authority and rule. And
that also, it seems to me, is a prescription for mayhem.
Talk to me about that.
S5 (34:48):
Yeah. You know, I mean, I think authority is so
at the core of this, um, that that the idea
and authority truly, etymologically, I talk about this in the book.
It's connected to springing from an author that, in other words,
in order to have any sort of authority, there has
to be something you reverence. It has to. It's bestowed
on you from from above. And by eliminating the concept
of authority, all you're left with is human power, which
(35:10):
becomes quickly about control. Right. But what they do, you
even see that it's not only just that we don't
reverence authority or in a hierarchical way, but however, we
don't reverence any sort of measure at all. This is
why they're trying to disrupt math, right? By saying that
there's a way in which two plus two can equal five,
and that to object to that is to, you know,
(35:30):
perpetuate the oppression of a dominant white culture. Um, and
what they're saying is that basically, there's no measure outside
of ourselves, there's no objective truth, which means that any
injustice in this life has to be attributed to systemic
forces outside of myself. Totally. I have no moral agency.
I cannot improve my life. And what this does is
it means that all injustice has to be controlled externally
(35:53):
by an overwhelming or overpowered, overly powerful state. Um, because
we don't have the ability to improve, we don't have
the ability to struggle, to strive to change our circumstances
in life. We don't have moral agencies, so our successes
and failures have to be attributed to something outside of ourselves.
S1 (36:10):
Wow. So well said and so reflective of the way
in which you write in your new book. I was
thinking when you were talking, ultimately, and I'll put it
in very pedantic terms, but ultimately this is a war
against God, and it also makes the declarative lie. The
truth is not knowable, it isn't obtainable and it isn't applicable.
And that's really the root of so much of this.
So when we come back, mom to mom, I want
(36:32):
to ask you how kids are really the pawns in
this game. And most important of all, I know there
are a lot of parents right now going, okay, there
are giants in the land. I'm just a grasshopper. What
in the world can I do? So I want to
get it charged from you. And how we can look
well to the ways of our household in the midst
of all of this awake, not woke. A Christian response
to the cult of progressive ideology. Noel Manning is the author. Beck.
(36:54):
After this. If I were going to describe Nicole Manning's
brand new book, awake, Not Woke, I would call it
brilliant and I would call it necessary. Extremely necessary. The
subtitle is Why we're having This Conversation A Christian Response
(37:14):
to the Cult of Progressive Ideology. And again, as rich
as this conversation has been up to this point, and boy,
has it been. There is even so much more in
the book. You can tell by the way that Noel speaks.
And remember, Scripture says, out of the overflow of the heart,
the mouth speaks. She is as sharp as can be
and really has learned to discern these issues. And it's important.
We need a tutorial for someone just like that. Here's
(37:35):
our kids. I'm a mom of four. You're a mom
of six. Our kids are the pawns in this game.
It's starting as low as kindergarten. Tell me how they're
being used again. It's a wake up call for moms
and dads listening all across the country.
S5 (37:49):
Yeah. No. I think it's so important to to know,
understand and talk about this. And it really gets to
the heart of the way that this is a spiritual battle.
So one of the things I dive into in the
book is that it ultimately is a desire to to
deify ourselves, to make gods of ourselves. And the way
they do that is look at who like, think if you, um,
(38:09):
Christ is the perfect innocent victim. And what they want
to do is they want to become the perfect innocent victim.
So this is why victimhood becomes so crucial to their identity.
But it's also they also want to claim Christ's innocence
for themselves. They cannot, obviously, but what they can do,
the next best thing, you know, according to that, this
sort of sinister way of thinking, which is you have
(38:30):
to corrupt innocence in this world because innocence is a
signpost pointing us towards God, pointing us to a good
to an objective measure. Um, so innocence in the world
of critical theory is dominance. Um, and, you know, there, there,
the innocence of children is a threat to woke ideology,
protecting children, their innocence usually, you know, that means that
we keep them from adult sexuality, from, you know, perversions
(38:52):
from violence. But shielding them from these things has two
negative ramifications. According to the woke. It allows that children
and society itself to maintain the idea that traditional sexual
behavior between one man and one woman. A marriage is
the norm and therefore preferred way of being um, and
that sexuality that veers from these norms is then marginalised.
(39:13):
And so that that that's not okay for the woke. Secondly,
it shuts the door for many children who maybe would
be open to exploring certain types of perversions. Um, so
this is why you have things like transgender story hours
and libraries. It's such a bizarre phenomenon, but according to
their inner logic, it really makes sense. You have to
disabuse children of the uncomfortability of men becoming women or
(39:35):
dressing as women or, you know, whatever. Um, in order
to disrupt the the dominant norm of sexual, of traditional
sexuality in society in general. So it really has to
corrupt children by the logic of the movement.
S1 (39:49):
Wow, wow. That's so much to take in and for
parents to process. So let me say something else that
you wrote in the book that I think is important.
For centuries, Christians were told to refrain from judging our
neighbor's heart. By the way, judge not most tortuous verse
taken out of context ever in Scripture. Even if that person,
by the way, had clearly done wrong. But this is
what you write, Noel, and it's so good. But somewhere
along the road of thinning theology and increasingly demagogic secularism,
(40:14):
modern Christianity absorbed and internalized the measure that do not
judge in particular synonymous with do not acknowledge that acts
can be right or wrong in general. So successful has
been the effort to brand morally normative statements as judgmental,
that many shepherds have become cowardly and their flock apathetic.
Talk to me more about that, because boy, is that
(40:35):
spot on.
S5 (40:37):
Yeah, I think that that was such an effective tactic. And,
you know, and it goes back to what we were
talking about earlier, the Christians really, you know, most people
don't want to be said understood to be a bigot
or to be full of hate or to be, you know, a,
you know, the it's been ingrained in us in so
much media. For example, think about the Church lady and
Saturday Night Live, the Church Lady skit where she would
wag her finger and shame, shame, shame. And in movie
(40:58):
after movie, you know, the traditional person is always is
always portrayed, almost always portrayed as being a hypocrite, as
being hateful, as being really uptight, all these things. And
what it's done is that, you know, it was under
the guise tolerance was under the guise that we're just
going to, you know, your neighbor doing such and such
xyz is not going to affect you. So why not
just live and let live? However, I think people are
(41:19):
really waking up to the fact that it was never
meant to to remain there. It was always meant to
eradicate and, um, oppressively force Christians to accept this new ideology.
And you see this even in the fact that there's
a there was a religious, um, exemption, you know, where
Christian colleges could hire permission and, you know, say that
homosexuality is not allowed on campus or in their faculty. Um,
(41:41):
that that had to be an exemption, as in other words,
what became the norm is the embrace of woke, this
woke ideology. It's not a neutral, um, perspective. It is.
It's it's an ideology that has its own understanding of
what ought to be. And I think Christians have been
so duped in thinking that, you know, this is a
live and let live movement. It's not. It's meant to
(42:02):
to eradicate the idea that Christians can have a voice
in the public square at all, or have any sort
of weigh in on moral and moral law, or moral
understanding and moral formation of the future in our schools
and in our in our corporations and all these things.
It was always meant to to to silence that voice.
S1 (42:20):
Yeah. One of the many reasons why I'm having the
conversation with Noel right now, that's something we talk about
so much here. So at this point, I know that
there are moms and dads who are going, I'm overwhelmed. Uh,
I'm at the deep end of the pool. I'm drowning.
I love my child. I want to protect my child.
I don't have a clue how I do this. What
advice do you give them?
S5 (42:39):
Yeah, I think that that's a very understandable perspective. Well,
first of all, we should never despair. Despair is a
waste of time. And it's also not from God, right?
But I think that we have to we need clarity.
And so that's really why I wrote the wrote the
book is to help people to shine a light on this.
And I think that's the first step in really fighting it.
But secondly, once we have that clarity, we really need
the courage and to find a place in our life
where we can resist this and fight against it, and
(43:00):
also not be complacent about what is. You know who
is raising our children? What's happening in their schools? What's
happening in the movies that they watch, the television shows?
You know, that's such a pervasive movement. And I think
we really need to be aware and on alert of that,
because we are in charge of the formation of our students. Finally,
it's a spiritual battle. Everything we do has to be
an outgrowth overflowing of our prayer life, our interior life,
(43:22):
growing closer to God in order to reflect a modern society.
S1 (43:25):
Yeah. Could not have said that better, Noel. One last question.
In an hour that's gone far too quickly. The part
of this that breaks my heart, and there are so
many reasons why my heart gets heavy on this topic,
is there really are some injustices when we talk about
race in this country, some horrible wrongs that need to
be right. And I think what's happening is this oppressor,
oppressed revolution, Marxist in its origin, furthered by Freudian ideas,
(43:48):
is that those real ills are not being taken care of.
30s what do you think about that?
S5 (43:54):
I think that's exactly right. Not only is it masking
the true Your instances of injustice that need to be addressed,
because there certainly are injustices with regard to race and
all of these things. However, it's actually deploying racism in
order to fight them. It's telling black people that they
are less capable than white people, that being on time
is a white virtue. That objective reasoning is a white virtue.
(44:14):
These are things that the woke movement says, and they're
deeply racist. So you will never resolve racism by employing racism.
And it's it's just deeply disempowering to the very people
they claim to help.
S1 (44:25):
Floyd, did you answer that beautifully? Thank you, Noel, so much.
Let me tell you the name of the book again.
Let me. I know that time is short. I know
sometimes it's hard to turn all your devices off and
to just concentrate and read a book. But read this one.
You'll understand that ultimately this is very much of an
aggressive spiritual warfare. And as Noel says so beautifully over
and over again in a myriad of ways in her book,
ultimately it's an assault on Christianity. Again, the book is
(44:47):
called awake, Not Woke. You can learn more by going
to my website, and I have a link to Noel's
website as well. Blessings to you friends. See you next time.
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