I was reading Samuel James’ substack – linked to on Tim Challies a la carte feature – yesterday. You can read it here. I think some of the questions raised in the article are legitimate and warrant an answer. But I wanted to offer an alternative view.

The article begins by posting a section of a review, by Nell Minnow, of the new Snow White film. The review suggests that ‘even those who do not consider themselves especially “woke” might be troubled’ by some of the storyline. James’ post simply, and perfectly reasonably, asks ‘why? Why would those who do not consider themselves especially woke be troubled?’ I appreciate – as he notes – the article never provides an answer; it simply assumes one. However, James makes an assumption of his own: he insists the vast majority of those who would agree with the review ‘are, in fact, woke’. He further says ‘wokeness… entails approaching society with an expectation that it mirror your scruples. And, perhaps most importantly, wokeness keeps its strength by refusing to explain itself.’

Just from the quoted section that James highlights I think his assumption may well be misplaced. Two points are key. First, Minnow does not state that those who do not consider themselves woke will necessarily agree with her disquiet. She is clear enough they might be troubled by it. It feels there is enough leeway here to give her the benefit of any doubt. She is not assuming all will agree but that some who are not woke may well agree. It is also apparent enough that those who DO agree with her disquiet will indeed pick up her meaning BECAUSE they happen to share her concerns despite not being especially woke. That means, in essence, the claim doesn’t call for an explanation. It is not suggesting those who are not woke must agree, or will agree, but simply that some of them might agree with the specific concerns raised.

Nevertheless, second, it is demonstrably true that some, who are not especially woke, do find these things a tad troubling. You don’t have to go very far to find Christians – indeed, my fellow elder preached almost exactly this the other week – arguing the disneyfied (and more broadly worldly) belief that romance and sex is what will ultimately fulfil us is a lie. Most Christians recognise our highest goal is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The view that sex and romantic relationship is the summum bonum of human existence – a view propagated by Disney and not a little under the surface of the Snow White story, evidenced specifically in the ‘some day my prince will come’ saviour narrative – directly contradicts Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 7, not to mention other gospel principles and biblical teaching. Whatever one might think of me (though I don’t particular consider myself such), you’d be hard pressed to consider my fellow elder as particularly “woke” even as he preached that sermon.

As for the view of “a non-consensual kiss”, again two things seem worth saying. First, it is impossible to deny that statement on face value. Objectively, no consent was given and a kiss was delivered. A non-consensual kiss is prima facie what it is. But, second, it seems incredible to me that Christians – some of whom have fairly strong things to say about dating and acceptable activities outside of marriage – would not recognise that some of their own number might have concerns about presenting romantic relationships as finding their fulfilment in (what some might argue is) such sexually charged behaviour as kissing before marriage. You don’t have to agree with that stance to be painfully aware that some Christians stand on it. Nor do you have to hold that particular stance yourself to recognise, on Christian grounds, the underlying subtext such a kiss embodies in the story itself. All of that is to say, disquiet at the Snow White subtext might be driven amongst those who do not consider themselves especially “woke” by particularly Christian concerns.

This is where I often find critiques of what gets called “woke” troubling from Christian circles. I am still not entirely sure what the term “woke” is supposed to mean exactly, but all the evidence I have suggests it is whatever those of a more conservative bent happen to get irritated and upset by for reasons that are (ironically in this case) often assumed and not well explained. It feels more like a reactionary term thrown at anything one immediately doesn’t like if they perceive (whether ultimately true or not) feminism, critical theory, social justice or some such hiding underneath the complaint. It doesn’t seem to me to be a well-defined term. But more to the point, Christians can quickly jump upon it, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, denouncing anything they deem “woke” without doing the harder analytical work of asking, even if I find it annoying and it emanating from a stable I find objectionable in principle, does it nevertheless raise a valid point with which Christians might agree?

If you want a case in point, I present exhibit A: the MeToo movement. I understand that for some, privileged actors – particularly liberal ones – are just inherently annoying. But I was quite surprised to hear Christians denouncing the whole thing as “woke” and arguing in favour of *checks notes* Harvey Weinstein and others doing incredibly sexually inappropriate things. Apparently, it being “woke” (for which read as annoying) Christian men appeared to abandon all manner of fairly basic biblical sexual ethics. It was deemed liberal, feminist, woke and the rest and that, therefore, legitimised ignoring what, in almost any other Christian arena, would be considered sexually problematic. “Woke” was just the label that appeared to justify feeling irritated by the whole thing.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things that get labelled “woke” that are quite irritating. There are, no doubt, things that get labelled “woke” that, from a Christian perspective, are problematic. But far more commonly, I see Christians – particularly those of a right-wing political persuasion – getting irritated at certain ideas, often even the assumed stable from which they emanate, and rejecting them in totality on that basis alone. Rather than analysing the idea and asking the more legitimate question ‘does this person have a point?’, they simply label it “woke”, “feminist”, “culturally marxist” or some other bogey-phrase that means the whole thing can be rejected without much more thought.

And it is this with which I have concerns when it comes to the labelling and denouncing of that which is “woke”. For some of it, if we just thought about it a little bit, may have a point. Sure, maybe not all of it. No doubt much of it from stables that we may reject or not fully endorse for a whole host of reasons. We may even reject some of the solutions offered by the proponent because of their faulty underlying assumptions (as we judge it). But in light of our biblical and gospel commitments, can’t we recognise the people and issues that get labelled “woke” might still have a point nevertheless?

Which brings us back to Samuel James’ view of the stuff surrounding Snow White. He notes:

Wokeness, in its most visible expressions, asks people to apologize for their humanity. It asks women to be ashamed of loving Snow White’s love story, or of daydreaming about being the princess in the castle. It asks women to live in defiance of the realities of aging or the loneliness of middle-aged life without a spouse or children. It asks men to repent of their competitiveness and physicality. It demands that they enjoy an all-female reboot of Ghostbusters or the angsty tokenism of Disney’s Star Wars universe. Wokeness insists that parents not parent, that teachers not teach, that leaders not lead… It cuts against “the givenness of things” in a way that grieves the spirit. People, especially nonwhite people, do not enjoy being spiritually taxed for their natures as men, women, parents, and workers.

My issue here is not really anything to do with “wokeness” per se. Rather, it is to do with that very “givenness of things”. For the Disneyfication of the world – which many Christians railed against for quite some time – seems to here be presented as good seemingly because it is one in the eye to the “Woke Left”. But this rather illustrates my concern above and, indeed, undercuts James’ opening questions to Nell Minnow.

One does not have to be a fully paid up, self-confessed, dyed-in-the-wool “woke” person to see that perhaps there are biblical reasons to have some disquiet. Reasons that even anti-woke conservatives once troubled themselves with. It was not, even in recent memory, deemed unchristian to believe that the disneyfication of the world – and even some of the inherent storyline of Snow White – whilst evidently of concern to third-wave feminists, might also be of some concern to Christians for at least adjacent and potentially overlapping biblical reasons. You don’t have to subscribe to the principles and assumptions of third-wave feminism (I make no comment on them here) to recognise that they might just have a point.

James – rightly and reasonably – argues:

My foremost motivation as a Christian writer, for many years, has been to help evangelicals get out from under the tyranny of bad thinking, especially bad thinking in the service of tribal alignment. Doubtless I fail at this often. But if I go down, I want to go down at least insisting that a Christian can believe 1 + 1 = 2, no matter how many ridiculous or even dangerous people happen to agree with that.

I am encouraged he has said this. But I fear his article has done exactly the opposite of what he is setting out to do. For if one wants to view the “woke”, “third-wave feminists”, “leftists” or whatever other Conservative pejorative one wishes to label others with as ‘ridiculous or even dangerous people’, we must accept that sometimes they will simply be pointing out that 1 + 1 does, in fact, equal 2. But it seems to me (though I am ready to stand corrected), James has labelled the whole thing “woke” and then gone hard on the ‘what’s wrong with Snow White?’ line. A view one might be able to defend, but – much as he was irritated with Nell Minnow for it – simply assumes it. Whereas, whether “woke” or otherwise, I think Minnow’s original statement is both demonstrably true and, from a Christian perspective, entirely understandable: ‘Even those who do not consider themselves especially “woke” might be troubled‘.