‘Woke’ means love all

Pastor welcomes visit to his world

On Feb. 8, Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted: “I’m the first woman to lead my state. Biden is the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t tell you what a woman is. Every day we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong.”

I’ve read this tweet numerous times. It gets stranger the more times I read it. It’s not clear to me how it is at all helpful or kind. It appears to demonize a large cross-section of Arkansans.

I imagine that when Sanders thinks of a woke mob, she thinks of me and the people I hang out with. I am certainly affiliated with the political movements she calls woke (although we rarely, if ever, use that term ourselves). And many of the students and families in my community and congregation are queer, which presumably is what she is antagonizing when she claims we “can’t tell you what a woman is.”

I am a Christian. This means I am part of a community of people who believe it is caring and kind and empathetic and helpful to trust others when they tell us their identity. I believe it is the Christian thing to do. So, for example, when Sanders says she is a woman, I believe her.

This, to me, is being “woke.” Something along the lines of 1 Corinthians 16: “Stay awake, stand firm in your faith, be brave, be strong. Everything should be done in love.”

I really do try to remain awake to the fact that I’m a sinner and need to be woken up in various ways to how I can love my neighbor better.

As a pastor who regularly officiates “rituals,” the part of her tweet I found the most puzzling was her claim that the woke mob tells her she must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols.

But what are the rituals of the woke mob? I’d honestly like to know. It’s surprising to me that there are rituals of my people that I myself haven’t witnessed.

And although I’ll fully acknowledge there are some flags associated with being woke, chief among them the pride flag — which I do fly gladly — I’m not familiar with a salute. In fact, I don’t think there is one.

Perhaps what Sanders is implying in all of this is that the recognition and honoring of each person’s gender identity and sexual orientation is itself “worshiping false idols.” Respecting all gender identities and sexual orientations is “crazy and wrong.”

If she thinks that, I’m uncertain how to proceed, other than to invite her to spend some time in my congregation, at the public schools subbing with me, or just in our community getting to know the people. That’s a good exercise for a governor at any time, but maybe before she posts a next tweet she might want to talk to at least one woke pastor to find out our actual rituals, a bit more about the flags we love, and why we are committed to loving God in Christ above every kind of idol, in particular the idol of political spin. After all, God commanded us to love our neighbor, which is my current working definition of “woke.”