Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology

Written by Noelle Mering

Narrated by Melissa Elson

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. 

Awake, Not Woke unmasks this ideology by examining its history, major players, premises, and tactics, showing us that “Wokeness” at its core is an ideology of rupture. Indeed, it is an ideology with fundamentalist and even cult-like characteristics that is on a collision course with Christianity.

With a wit and clarity, Noelle Mering provides answers to such questions as: 

• Why does tolerance seem to only go in one direction?
• How does the ideology create enemies, eroding friendship across the sexes and races?
• Why is violence the natural end of Woke ideology?
• Why have politics become all-absorbing?
• Why is the corruption of children a logical outgrowth of Woke principles?
• How is the movement fundamentally a rejection of the Logos?

The architects of revolution have long known that the transformation of the West had to come by way of destabilizing the social, familial, and religious pieties of a citizenry.

But there is a road to restoration, and it begins with identifying and understanding the operating principles of the Woke movement. While the revolution is a counterfeit religion resulting in alienation and division, the One True Faith brings restoration. It is this restoration -- of the person, the family, and the Faith -- for which we all hunger and is the most fitting avenue toward a more harmonious and whole society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TAN Books
• Release date: Sep 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781505123609

Reviews for Awake, Not Woke

[Bob Calleja · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Compelling and important book in our very confused and chaotic times!

[photovergne · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent in-depth analysis and unmasking of the present woke culture/cult.

[Joey Kolasinsky · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent! Thanks so much for offering books like this on Scribd!

[Laura Lang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What an insightful read and it truly is spot on with how the secular culture is today.
Virgin Most Powerful, pray for us!

[Alicea Folio · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Utter Tripe.

This isn't a book, it's a dishonest cataloguing of grievances. Curious that the author asserts that "violence is the natural end of left wing ideology" when almost without exception political violence in the US for the last 20+ years has been at the hands of the right - not the left.

[Rodrigo Maués · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A radiant mind map of our modernity and it's deconstructions Ill intentions. Inflaming, precise, but above all Christian.

[Alex W · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So much good information for anyone and excellent reflections for Christians and those not hostile to the faith. I found the beginning a bit heavy on the "big words" and didn't have much flow, which is disappointing for an introduction, but the first few chapters on the history were much more readable, so don't let it discourage you.

[G A McKee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book I found to be a worthwhile read. Particularly for those among us who are trying to understand whether or not we, in the West, are in the middle of a cultural revolution: of the kind that happened in China before it met with defeat in about 1977.

From the bio, Noelle Mering (@noellem on Twitter) is a US wife and mother of 6, who studied philosophy and theatre at Westmont College in California and then did graduate work in philosophy at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
In her book Awake, not Woke she asks how so many revolutionary ideas and terms get cloaked in academic ligitimacy? She writes (in Chapter 10, Education Activism):

"To explain this phenonon, biologist and evolutionary theorist Brett Weeinstein, coined the term ideas laundering. This is like money laundering, only rather than baptising the corruptly obtained money through a shell business, ideas laundering baptises corruptly pre-ordained conclusions through universities. In this climate, an academic ideologue with the right critical theory agenda can confirm almost anything as knowledge if he begins with the preferred political conclusion."

She continues:

"Along with ideas laundering, comes an explosion of new vocabulary to reframe the way we think. New terms cisgender; intersectionality; rape culture; white priviledge, gain academic gravitas, then cultural, seeming out of nowhere. They've been laundered through peer-reviewed literature by activist scholars then widely taught for years before being bought into the world".

". . . words such as privilege and social justice skyrocketed on LexisNexis data tracking, from 2012 to 2015 and continued to rise thereafter. Micro agression, systemic racism and oppression also rose at that time, with similarly dramatic results."

"Decades of ideas laundering have resulted in a canon of scholarshop too big to fail. Eventually we all begin to nod along to the terms and conditions of the sophisticated set. We furrow our brow over heteronormativity. We shake our heads disapprovingly about the problem of the patriarchy. This all leads to controlled thought through a corruption of words and the soft coercion of group-think tied with the bow of elite expert approval".

I take my hat off for the author, Noelle Mering. She must be an amazing woman to be able to combine her role as writer and author of books such as this, and being a mother of 6 children in presumably a traditional marriage - the antithesis of the modern same-sex marriage that is not about children. This book on woke theory and culture is useful as the frame of reference is through the lens of Christian apologetics. The other gold standard book on this subject in my opinion is "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. That book however is written through a secular lens based on the values of a liberal democracy, contrastring those supported values with the illiberalism of woke activists brainwashed by their courses in the humanities departments of many universities. 5-stars.