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This isn't true, though. Wokeism has a lot of similar principles, but it also attaches to it its own set of faith-based claims about reality. That's what makes so many people call it a religion (including myself, as far back as 2015 back when it was just called "social justice" - though, quite honestly, this should have been obvious even as far back as the late 00s, by my estimation), rather than merely an ideology. Its core tenets rely irreducibly on faith to support claims about how certain individuals are oppressed by other individuals in society.
I probably should rephrase that Wokeism isn't the same thing as Christianity. Wokeism is a genealogical descendant of Western Christianity. It's core theological morality is very Christian in nature. In a way that cannot be said of other religions even other Abrahamic religions. The concept of Original Sin, The Confession, Repentance, The emphasis of the sanctity of the meek, it's universalism, etc. Christian slave morality is a direct ancestor of identity-based oppression morality. There is a distinct status inversion to Christianity vs the older European Pagan religions, and the Eastern religions. Core Christian symbolism is literally God suffering on the cross and being holy for that sacrifice. The apparently humiliated and defeated victim can possess supreme moral status, while worldly authorities can be radically mistaken about who is righteous. Now the structural oppressor–oppressed components are substantially Marxian in nature, but breed that belief system with other religions and you would not co-evolve to Wokeism. The Eastern religions are easy to ablate out. Islam, sharing many moral beliefs with Christianity still does not contain the moral primitive of original sin nor does it's central sacred narrative place God himself as the humiliated, tortured, and executed victim.
A good chunk of those can be found in pagan religions, though.
Let's take Communism: capital is the original sin, confession/repentance is done through continual revolution, the meek are the workers, Comintern are the missionaries, etc.
Woke, same thing: ability is the original sin, confession/repentance is done through continual humiliation, the meek are the disabled, USAID are the missionaries, etc.
So while I do think it presses the same moral buttons as Christianity (or perhaps more relevantly, Islam) does/did in the average follower (which is what I think people actually mean when they say it's a religion), I don't think it's actually a proper descendant.
Uhhh, I'd need to see serious evidence for that kind of assertion.
These are possible to find individually in pagan religions but not really all together in this package. Nolan just got asked this question by a Chinese Classics Professor, because Homeric Greeks don't really have the Christian concept of Atonement that pervaded, and was even a core theme, of his new movie. The Greeks saw the gods as beings, you offended them and you made amends much like you would if you offended your king. It's not repentance. Germanic/Norse Paganism, is almost the opposite in that vengeance for slights/wrongs was the moral basis. I feel like I could dig more and more, hence why I think you need evidence for this assertion, because nothing I can uncover even suggests this is close to the truth.
This is uniquely Christian, not even Judaism or Islam really hold to the conception of original sin. Adam sinned yes, but the whole of humanity does not bear the burden of his sin in either of those two religions. To define Original Sin, it is something like Primordial Transgression + Inherited Human condition = Inherent Moral Fault
Going down the list:
The concept of Original Sin is about as OG Christian as it can get. I'd go so far as to say that any ideology that borrows the concept, that developed in the west IS borrowing Christian Theology. So yes Communism and Wokeism, tightly match to Christianity. But if the genealogy of Wokeism is Christianity + Marxism, and 1848 Germany was still deeply religious, when Marx wrote Das Capital, then it stands to reason that Marxism and its descendants are also descendants of Western Christianity minus the Christian Metaphysics. After all Marx was culturally Christian. It's essentially Western Christian Theology all the way down.
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Yes. It does rely heavily on unproven claims and implications such as all differences in crime sanctions arising from police forces who simply hate dark skin, etc.
It also wants you to label huge groups as 'oppressors' with a very broad brush and claims that the individuals inside those groups cannot be legitimate victims, so feel free to tread on them. Jesus wouldn't approve of group identity based discrimination and revanchism.
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