Americans were once well aware of the various “Great Awakenings” in their history, and not a few have hoped that the nation might experience another renewal of faith. Yet what if we were to experience a religious awakening which was very bad for the nation? In a recent incisive essay, Professor Darel Paul of Williams College thinks we are in the midst of what he calls “The Great Awokening”, which has gripped higher education, and with it the nation itself. This new religious sensibility — “wokeness” — is frequently associated with political correctness because it works like a religion, with an oral tradition developing around a certain “orthodox” creed. On campuses across the nation, one learns what to say, and what not to say. There is a price tag — a sacrifice which must be paid — with student activists requiring small armies of college therapists who can deal with every racial and sexual sensitivity. Their constructed, conspiratorial accounts of emotional harm have no basis in reality. The rhetoric of critical race theory and gender theory demands that abuse is everywhere, like the “red scare” of old, even where it is not seen. Even “silence” is counted as abuse. What Paul calls the “Great Awokening” is as powerful as any previous religious awakening in America. It has been, however, far more pernicious and divisive than any of the previous great awakenings. In fact, one might say this religious revival is predicated on division. While religio is traditionally understood to be that which binds together the whole, in the Great Awokening each race has its own distinct, separate way of knowing what is real:
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The Great Awokening is the new religion in America
americans were once well aware of the various “great awakenings” in their history, and not a few have hoped that the nation might experience...
C C Pecknold

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