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That may very well but I wasn't claiming that the Christian Bible is woke. Rather, my position is that (1) modern wokeness is a manifestation of a more general phenomenon; and (2) that phenomenon has been around for a long time as evidenced by ideas contained in early Christianity.
As far as the question of whether the Christian Bible is woke or not goes, the answer turns on (1) how to define wokeness; and (2) how many woke elements must be included in a work before it should be considered woke overall.
If you define "be kind to those less fortunate" as woke, sure, Christianity is woke. But I think that's a very dubious definition of woke. I'm not aware of any successful real-world culture that has the smoothbrained barbaric machismo that the dissident right seems to think is the essence of real civilization.
The same culture that brought you the Nanjing Massacre has this guy as a legendary ninja hero.
Christianity goes a lot further than "be kind to the less fortunate," though. The last shall be first, the meek will inherit the Earth, God chose the weak things to shame the strong, etc. That does seem like a radical change from, well, the history of the universe, and it doesn't seem crazy to see a connection between that and Wokeness.
I mean, this is basically "them darn thespians and homo sapiens." The word "meek" is is πραΰς, which as you can see on the Wiki, is more like gentle, related to the root for likeable/well-disposed. Heck, the example usage there is from the Victory Odes: "the king who rules Syracuse, gentle to his citizens"
As for the first being last and the last being first, well... I present to you the word gentleman.
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FWIW "be kind to the less fortunate" seems like a motte to me. In the same way that a modern day wokie would claim that they are just trying to help disadvantaged people a bit, but they would never ever hire an unqualified person and they are absolutely not trying to replace white people.
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Are you familiar with Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals? He criticizes Christianity for being a morality for slaves, of sour grapes insisting that being poor, meek, weak and passive was actually good, and that being strong, rich, mighty and proud was bad. The notion certainly rhymes with how woke oppressed/oppressor dynamics and the oppression Olympics plays out.
I'm familiar with his thesis. I'm just saying Christianity only fits his narrative when you pick and choose certain aspects of it. Which, to be fair, is what Christians typically do lol
But to be even more fair: the parts they selectively choose to ignore are often the parts most aligned with Nietzsche's thesis. Paul says don't rebel against the government (and he's under the Roman government! Not a fairly reasonable government like Britain's!)? Can't hear you over my #1776, baby! Christians, if anything, are the most celebratory of the colonial rebellion of all America's demographics.
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I imagine that wokies themselves would define wokeness along these lines.
Well, I think that "being kind to the unfortunate" is often present, but it's a kind of camouflage for attacks on the perceived elite / outgroup. Implying that it's essentially impossible for wealthy people to be good people -- that's something I would say is pretty woke by any reasonable definition.
By the way, I'm not claiming that Christianity is woke, just that it has woke elements, if "woke" is broadly defined.
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