Because compromise is critical to a tolerant society, I have reservations about declaring an “awakening” of spirituality at this point in the 21st Century.  I have to admit being “woke,” because  I am compelled by inclusion and free literacy.  Yet even woke-ness can lead to excess. If I fail to respect the humanity of those who worry about the dangers of excess, then I fail to learn from and with them. If a parent declares, “I don’t want my twelve-year old reading Fun Home (the graphic narrative),” then I should respect her concerns about graphic images of sexuality.  Libraries are good places for respectful compromise, like, say creating a “PG-13” shelf.

When I contemplate “Awakening,” I wonder if maybe the romantics have the same infatuation with the future that the dogmatics have with the past.  We are either marching to Zion, or we are bringing back the good old days. Then we forget to live in the present.

Diana Butler Bass’s prescient book Christianity After Religion begins to anticipate Awakening for the present century. It is a fraught awakening, because it is challenged by “counter-Awakening” such as we see currently in the “nativism” of politicians and pastors.

She seems to understand this tension in the conclusion of Chapter Eight, when she says, “Most of all, awakening calls for a change of heart.” I assume she means we all must change, because she invokes the call of Jesus on every follower:

Jesus invited those who dared to follow on an adventure, a life-giving spiritual work to craft “health and wisdom and indwelling light” in this world. (251)

If we follow Jesus by examining ourselves, as well as our opponents, then we may be headed for Awakening, but it is hard to avoid the impulse to challenge “the other” and not ourselves.  Politicians tend to focus more on changing others, rather than challenging themselves. It can be a very self-righteous calling unless the politician takes a modest, reflective approach to change. We need a spiritual, more than a political focus in an Awakening, though some of us have to do the fraught work of politics.

You can take what happened with the Christian Coalition in the 1990’s as a cautionary tale for Christians. Evangelical Christians were not always a politicized people. Their leaders got lazy and decided to let politicians do the heavy lifting. As fervent as the Coalition and the “Moral Majority” might have been, they were too much devoted to changing others, even a little intoxicated with power.  Politics can make us lazy, because it wields the hammer, rather than looking into the mirror.

Diana Butler Bass got an in-person view of the Coalition at the 1996 Republican Convention. She prophetically observed  what she wrote fifteen years later in her Christianity After Religion,

They were too powerful, too political, too slick and prideful, and they had lost touch with hearts and prayers of the good people who worshipped in small Baptist churches and at Pentecostal prayer meetings. (235)

And that is the path every social reform movement will take unless people keep challenging themselves as they challenge others to change. It is not safe to get out in front of your skis.

We see this pattern repeated over and over in the Gospels. Most dramatically, Peter testifies that, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God” at a pivotal moment in the Gospel of Matthew.  Jesus pays him the highest compliment by saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”  (Matt 16:15). That was not intended to boost Peter’s ego, but then Jesus speaks of founding  a church on the shoulders of Peter, and his ego gets a lift.

Jesus predicts his trial, crucifixion and resurrection, and church-founder Peter tries to take command of the movement by saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Then what does Jesus say to the founder of his church? “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (16:23).

Wow, from Founder to Satan in just a few verses of Matthew’s narrative! Those incidents are purposefully juxtaposed, I think.  As soon as Peter caught the reformer-bug, he was ready to tell Jesus what to do. And so are we.  We go from leading by example to preaching to the unwashed. I speak for myself, as  much as for others.

This is what counter-awakening looks like. We get ahead of Jesus, and suddenly all that matters is that our movement flourishes. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson may have been prey to ego inflation, but they were also ordained ministers at some point seeking God’s pathway.  They took the broad way to salvation when they began to hang out with the power brokers in Congress. It was an easy transition, because it exchanged the burden of self-examination with the media spotlight. It was all for the kingdom of God, until it wasn’t.

It is too early to declare the Fourth Awakening or the founding of a new church-outside-the-walls.  Maybe today we are woke and the Awakening is coming, but the path to self-delusion and power is before us every day.

We may be on the cutting edge of the Kingdom, yet we can as easily cut the wrong people out or cut ourselves from the Vine that keeps us living and tolerant. Every day, the same dilemma, the same challenge. Every day, taking up the cross.

For another Awakening, check back in fifty years.