Suella Braverman QC, the Attorney General and the government’s chief legal officer sees the woke culture distorting so much of the West as a danger fracturing and manipulating society. She has directed officials in her department to scrap programmes promoting ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’. Such training “does nothing to create solidarity and encourage support but rather keeps emphasising difference, creates a sense of ‘otherness’ and pits different groups against each other.” She believes the “trans rights culture” is “out of control”, and says “People fear they will lose their job if they point out the basic facts of biology”.
A new religion
With insight rare for a government official Braverman states that, “We really must get serious about taking on this divisive mindset and call it out for what it is: a new religion with a new priestly caste”.
The progressivist ideology controlling public discourse in the West is reshaping society around us and can quite accurately be termed the religion of Fundamentalist Progressivism. Although it has no belief in God, the progressive worldview has all the trappings of a religion. And, aggressively promulgated by the elites in politics, media, education and business, Fundamentalist Progressivism is proliferating throughout the West like a cancer.
The shrieks of horror at supposed micro-aggressions betray an almost primeval fear of anything outside their approved doctrines.
A religion is often judged by its adherents and, as pointed out by Kathryn Price in an earlier article, this has much in common with a cult. The diligence with which offence is sought, and the violent reaction when it is found, exhibit the determination of the heresy hunters of the Middle Ages. The shrieks of horror at supposed micro-aggressions betray an almost primeval fear of anything outside their approved doctrines. Crowds of youngsters at Glastonbury chanting ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ exhibit the herd mentality usually associated with the more extreme cults at worship.
Prophets of the new faith
The major prophets of Fundamentalist Progressivism are found amongst the executive class: University vice-chancellors who use their power to shape their institutions and appoint professors and lecturers who readily promulgate the orthodox progressive view; Business leaders who, out for ever more profit, proudly support LGBTQ organisations and aim their advertising in a relentlessly progressive direction; Media executives who push progressive values in their programming. They all glorify the progressive agenda.
Disney corporation, provider of family-oriented entertainment for decades, has gone aggressively woke. A recently released video of a conference call amongst Disney executives shows them admitting that their goal is to implement a pronounced LGBTIA agenda in children’s films and television. One executive can be seen saying that Disney even encouraged her ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’ when she became an employee.
They loudly denounce the sins of the past and point the way ahead to goodness and purity, their way.
The minor prophets are the activist visionaries leading organisations such as Stonewall, Mermaids, BLM and Extinction Rebellion. They loudly denounce the sins of the past and point the way ahead to goodness and purity, their way. These minor prophets whip up a zealous following of fundamentalist adherents, particularly in universities. The activity of their avid and easily led followers often focuses on the seemingly trivial yet it has serious consequences. Students at Edinburgh University agitated to have the name of the David Hume Tower removed because of Scotland’s greatest philosopher’s tangential link to slavery, and an ultra woke vice-chancellor eagerly complied. This helped create a climate where Dr Neil Thin, a much respected senior lecturer in social anthropology, was hounded and suspended over unfounded accusations of racism before being finally cleared after months of struggle.
The progressive priesthood
Religions also have priests and, in fundamentalist progressivism, some ‘experts’ who have both prestige and power form part of the priesthood. The public still tends to trust ‘experts’, especially when it comes to science. All it takes to shut down the economy of an entire nation and scare everyone into wearing masks and avoiding weddings and funerals is for ‘experts’ to speak of the ‘settled science’. Whether we agree with them or not is beside the point; the point is that their prestige is such that – from Covid to climate change – they can and do wield significant power.
When it comes to shaping the thinking of future leaders few amongst the priestly caste have such influence as the preachers of the new religion: university lecturers. Many lecturers have ‘congregations’ with whom they meet regularly in order to preach to them. One student at Sussex University reported, “I had a professor who informed the class that the Iraq war happened because white people wanted to kill brown people, and no one was able to challenge him… I felt that I had to play the game to get good marks.” These lecturers make decisions regarding course content and confer or withhold degrees on students who then go out to impact the real world. The influence of lecturers in shaping the course of the social culture cannot be overestimated.
When the government is unable to meet its obligations, the progressive priesthood has only one solution, more government.
Filling the role of king is the government. It is no surprise that, for the progressive fundamentalist, the answer to our problems is for the government to take action to enforce their demands for reparations, censorship, climate control; whatever the problem ‘the government must do something’. When the government is unable to meet its obligations, the progressive priesthood has only one solution, more government.
A religious conflict
Religions need a clearly defined opposition to their message. In progressivism the role of Satan is filled by orthodox biblical Christianity, which they see as the fount of all the isms and phobias they hate. We should not be surprised as Christianity is the bedrock of the Western civilisation they wish to dismantle and remake in their own image. Christians should wake up to the fact that we are in the midst of a religious conflict. When we encounter the ‘woke’ excesses of the prevalent cancel culture we are meeting the inevitable outworkings of a rival faith which is bitterly opposed to Christianity.
