In this episode, I speak with Noelle Mering about her new book, Awake Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology.
Noelle analyzes the concept of "woke" and identifies four characteristics of the contemporary social justice movement and how they influence the way we think about justice and society:
Group over Person
Will over Reason
Power over Authority
The Crowd and the Victim
We discuss the intellectual history of the social justice movement from Hegel and Marx, Frankfurt School thinkers like Adorno and Marcuse, and contemporary proponents. We discuss how the sexual revolution connects to progressive social justice, which leads to deep incoherence and more injustice against women and children. Noelle has a chapter on victims and contagion and the work of Rene Girard, so we discuss that as well.
Mering does not deny that there exist real injustices in the world that need to be addressed, but she argues that the contemporary social justice movement is the wrong way to address the problems of injustice and has often made them worse. She instead offers a personalist approach that stresses the importance of being known and in relationship with others as an alternative of how to think about and address justice and injustice.
Biography
Noelle Mering is the author of Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology, the coauthor of the Theology of Home book series, an editor for the website TheologyofHome.com.
She is a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center where she co-directs EPPC’s Theology of Home Project.
Noelle writes on culture, politics, and religion and has published in National Review, The Federalist, The American Mind, Catholic World Report, and National Catholic Register. Her writing has been featured on on numerous radio and television outlets. Noelle lives in Southern California with her husband and their six children.
Resources
See Book Links below.
PRE-ORDER Awake Not Woke
Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology
By Mering, Noelle
By Girard, René
The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis
By Kass, Leon R.
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
By Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
By Kimball, Roger
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