honestly<\/u><\/em> thought at first being called woke was a complement and even embraced it for a hot minute, since the Bible tells us we are people of the day (1 Thessalonians 5:5) and it also calls us to \u201cwake up from our slumber\u201d (Romans 13:11). I quickly learned my lesson, and don\u2019t use that term about myself anymore.<\/p>\nOne person stopped tithing to the church because she claimed that in my sermon, I said we were using church money to support a Marxist organization (BLM) and one of our staff members had to watch the sermon with her\u2014twice\u2014to help her see that I never said or intended that. More people just stopped coming to church without saying anything and found another less \u201cwoke\u201d church to attend.<\/p>\n
I had no idea that I had stepped into the pit of what many call identity politics until I was up to my neck in quicksand.<\/p>\n
Sorry, maybe that\u2019s too much information (I don’t want to cross the line into toxic vulnerability).<\/p>\n
The point is there is real pain on one side, and real fear on the other side.<\/p>\n
Real pain because people who are part of marginalized groups that have been historically (and currently) abused often find a safe place with others who have a background with the same abuse for the same reasons.<\/p>\n
Real fear because people who are not part of those groups may see not just a call for equality, but a real possibility of revenge; there are many who are concerned that social justice will lead to retributive justice.<\/p>\n
These are the waters in which professor and political scientist Yascha Mounk is swimming in his latest book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. <\/em>In it he attempts to address the issue of \u201cidentity synthesis\u201d which is the way he describes what many call identity politics, but without the negative and dismissive connotations.<\/p>\nThat said, Mounk believes while the ideology of Identity synthesis has real roots and should not be dismissed, it also leads to a trap that can cause people to so over identify with one group that they miss a larger realty that any one aspect of our identity or collective experience does not reflect the whole of who we are.<\/p>\n
His goal for writing the book he says is \u201cto explain the nature of the identity trap, to set out why it is so urgent for us to make that escape, and to show how we can do so\u201d (19). He does this by first pointing to the foundations and academic history of identity synthesis that has its roots in postmodernism, after which he unpacks how this philosophy quickly jumped from academia to the cultural consciousness. He then turns his attention to arguments: That identity synthesis will prove counterproductive, and why philosophical liberalism with its universal values and neutral rules provides a better answer than identity synthesis (19-21). Finally, he suggests solid, non-anxious non-aggressive, virtuous responses to the identity trap.<\/p>\n
I appreciate Mounk\u2019s approach; I have had little exposure to those who try to tackle this issue intellectually from a noncombative middle ground. And I agree with my cohort peer Todd Henley\u2019s take on the agreeable disagreement tone of this book, and with classmate Jennifer Vernam\u2019s observation of Mounk\u2019s modeling of neutral language.<\/p>\n
And while the nuances of identity synthesis are vital for me as I deal with race, gender and sexual and gender orientation questions in my church, it\u2019s the modeling of tone and language that I will most take away from this book. Because as I found in 2020, I can have the right theology and the right heart, but if I don\u2019t communicate it with the right tone and language, I risk being just another match that ignites the powder keg.<\/p>\n
[1]<\/a> https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jumping_the_shark<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States faced a political and cultural powder keg in 2020. One match that lit a national fuse was the viral video that showed the brutal arrest and death of George Floyd. In many places, racial tension that had been simmering for years instantly boiled over. Los Angeles was one of those places. John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,2957],"class_list":["post-34694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-mounk","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34694"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34764,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34694\/revisions\/34764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}