The relationship between the original Great Awakening (17 – 18 century in America) and the American revolution is well understood. This original Great Awakening was marked by a dedication to the reading and study of Scripture, communal revivalism–which is a community devotion to forming society in light of biblical directives and guidance–and codification of biblical values into the then colonies’ moral structures. A misnomer which can be dismissed by reviewing the pre-1776 government literature is that many of of the Founding Fathers of America were bent towards Deism. Deism is the idea that God exists, that God set the world into motion, but that God is absent in the world on the day to day and instead the world is governed by so-called “natural laws.” A true Deist would not have a place for God entering into the world in the form of a man, which means a true Deist has no place for the truth or possibility of Jesus Christ. There is robust literature leading up to 1776 and after that directly and indirectly refers to the Biblical texts or to being a protestant Christian, which is a referendum against the idea that the general tenor of the Founding Fathers was deistic. Instead, the original Great Awakening with its emphasis on the actual words of Scripture was the ideological quarry from which the American revolution gathered a great deal of resources. The famous adage on many of our coins, e pluribus unum, “out of many, one,” may need to be inverted to help us understand how 1776 happened and was sustainable: ex uno plures, “out of one, many.”
Why does all this matter at this precise moment in 2024? The present cultural milieu of the conservative Right in America is expanding its influence to welcome those who are not historically conservatives through something popularly referred to as “the great awakening.” The great awakening of today should be starkly differentiated from the original Great Awakening. The latter was centered on the Christian God and the Bible while the former, today’s great awakening, is centered on seeing through the lies that have brainwashed, deceived, and captured many Americans for decades if not longer. The original Great Awakening was built ex uno plures, out of one protestant ideology, many colonies united to form the United States. I am not saying that Protestantism is a uniform set of beliefs; however, even today, there are foundational cornerstone beliefs that all conservative Protestant groups agree-upon. We can disregard the captured elements within Protestantism, often referred to as “liberal” or “progressive” protestantism, which really are an extension of American leftism or “wokeism.” Today’s great awakening is more the inverse of the original Great Awakening: e pluribus unum, out of many religious positions and worldviews, one people is coming together against the elites. My question for our moment in 2024 regards today’s great awakening’s sustainability. Can a group of non-ideologically aligned persons sustain the unity required to sustain the changes that come after the elites are defeated? The question is relevant because we want to know if our present struggle against globalism/elitism will provide my kids and their kids a brighter future. If the current struggle against globalism/elitism results in 4 years of conservative-MAGA rule but then retraces to the typical RINO and Democrat binary rulership, then little will be made of the current great awakening. It will not be seen as something that improved the lives of our kids or their kids; it will be little more than a populist trend tied to a strong personality–Donald Trump–that did not have the unifying ideological foundation to give it lasting effect.
In view of such a danger, I appeal to the original Great Awakening. The hopes of staying unified and not becoming immediately divided will reside in our ability to agree upon a formal set of documents as characterizing our identity and ethos. The way that the internet works with social media has made the idea of an immovable document that sets the identity and ethos all the more important. Social media makes things change fast; social movements change fast. An immovable document called the Bible has the battle-tested history behind it. First, the Bible upended Rome and ancient Greco-Roman values: much to the disapproval of Nietzsche. Then it spread to the Nordic tribes. It battled a sister religion Islam to a stalemate, and finally the Bible undergirded the American revolution. What has made America great are the ideals that came from and were sustained by Protestant Christianity and the Bible that identified it. My plea is that the current great awakening turn towards what we believe and move beyond focusing on what and who we dislike. We defeat the elites, and then what? Yes, the current great awakening is united by the belief in personal liberty and its protection from government. However, once the elites who use government to violate that freedom are defeated, whose definition of freedom will keep the unity of the people together? Christian freedom is about learning the good and doing it so that one’s ability to use their freedom expands and deepens, but it is not about just doing whatever someone wants. American freedom is often defined as “do as one pleases.” Islamic Americans must face the difficulty that the final goal of Islam is to establish theocracy wherever it gains standing and within that Sharia Law that comes out of it will prohibit the proselytizing by other religions: i.e., Islam does not protect the right to “freedom of religion.” Thus, Islam’s freedom of religion prohibits others’ religious freedom. My point is that today’s great awakening cannot stop with the negative: “we are joined as one people to stop the elites from violating our freedom.” It must go on to affirm the nature of that freedom at a level and depth that only a religion can provide.
It is to be remembered that every question about how to go about life is a religious question. Let’s take progressive wokeism as a religion for a moment. What makes a religion or cult? There are either founding documents or a measure of “divine right” which is the unilateral issuance of one’s word as law. Furthermore, there is either a fideism to the beliefs or a rational participation in those beliefs. Fideism, by the way, is the unmoving faithfulness to one’s religion or worldview despite evidence that contradicts it, and it is usually identified by a staunch close-mindedness to even hearing the counter-evidence. Western, progressive wokeism has the same belief-structure of all cults and religions although it leans to the side of the more irrational religions/cults. There is divine right, which are the talking points of the current media apparatus as it represents and reaffirms the “top liberal candidate or leader.” Wokeism expects fideism to its word and its beliefs. The implied beliefs within the “divine right” of wokeism may change but the fideism to those words are expected to be believed, upheld, and to be punished if any deviance happens. Wokeism’s position on abortion, which really is one of the only well-known policies of Kamala Harris’ 2024 democrat platform, codifies profiteering on a mother’s preference to kill her unborn baby as a defining feature. This affirms that “freedom to personally prefer” is more valuable than human life. It is a dark belief, but it can be wondered how many democrats think of it this way. More likely, the good democrat is merely staying within the cult’s requirement to be faithful to wokeism’s divine right.
Dr. Scalise