Beware the Woke Church Heist

“The critical social justice movement is vast. Its influence is broad and deep within evangelical circles. And as that influence grows, it is causing some among us to make alliances we never would have forged in the past”. – Fault Lines

On January 7, 2026, anti-ICE activist Renee Good found herself on the wrong side of the law.  Parked sideways on a busy Minneapolis throughfare, Good hoped to stop ICE operations from moving forward.  By doing so, she not only impeded a law enforcement operation but also hindered workers from getting to and from their jobs.  When ICE agents arrived and tried to remove her from her car, she committed a third crime when she struck an agent with her vehicle.  Unfortunately, the agent, unable to read her mind, pulled his pistol and ended Good’s life. 

As an activist for several progressive causes, Good likely thought she was doing the Lord’s work.  But a closer look at the Marxist foundation of many progressive policies is anything but the Gospel. 

In Voddie T. Baucham, Jr.’s 2021 book, “Fault Lines”, Baucham reveals the many ways that the social justice movement, a secular crusade rooted in Marxist ideology, is a threat to biblical Christianity.  The woke ideology that has infested education, corporations, entertainment, and American culture has also found its way into the church. Written as an appeal to the church, Baucham fears that many evangelical pastors have forgotten the Gospel and are replacing it with a dangerous doctrine.

Critical social justice, the foundation of progressive politics, holds that all structural inequalities stem from discrimination, and white hegemony has created the inequalities that can only be overcome by tearing down and rebuilding the entire system.  Its remedy: to apply anti-racist racism toward all whites, a doctrine that is in direct opposition to biblical justice. 

Whether disparities are the result of fatherlessness, crime, gaps in education, or lack of autonomy, claims and statistics are misrepresented to conform to a particular pre-determined narrative.  Insisting that all inequality is discrimination, despite a plethora of evidence to the contrary, is bearing false witness.  It is an act of lying and providing false testimony, often covering up the patterns of behavior that created the imbalances in the first place. 

With capitalism and slavery as the progressives’ origin story, the facts don’t quite meet the accusation.  Unequal outcomes are not biblically problematic.  The Bible is clear about different talents receiving different wages.  Marxist ideology, the foundation of progressive politics, instead casts all disparities in an oppressor and oppressed model.  Group guilt replaces individual sin while the bible calls for personal salvation.  Also, slavery did not start with whites oppressing blacks.  Its genesis in Mesopotamia had serfs working for lords, the result of class wars, not race wars. 

The woke church first reestablished itself with a code of law based on woke terminology.  But the terms have been twisted.  Racism, once a sin of the heart, is now a collective problem of institutions.  Then, the church prioritized social justice issues, like racial equality, gender identity, and often advocating for lifestyles that the bible deems sinful.  A disproportionate focus on the scourge of whiteness misrepresents a color blind biblical message. 

In 2018, 16,000 prominent evangelical leaders released a warning called the Dallas Statement, asserting that values from secular culture were not only undermining biblical teachings, but the Bible itself is the final authority, not anti-racist racist propaganda from the likes of Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo.  Likewise, Resolution 9, which was adopted by the Southern Baptist Coalition in 2019, also denounces Critical Social Justice, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and the like, as secular ideologies that contradict Christian teaching. 

But the warning is not about a coming catastrophe.  The enemy is already in the building.  It is not just in the rainbow flags and BLM banners, but in its woke canons.  It has permeated the walls and stands at the altar of many churches.  These are spiritual adversaries that seek to undermine the Christian faith. 

God loved all his people and wanted his church to reflect that message.  But ignoring the scripture to advance a political ideology has perverted God’s truth.  We ignore Baucham’s warning at our own peril.