Young Christians who feel marginalised, not listened to, powerless, and even oppressed within the church, have been given a voice in a new explosive book.
In Young, Woke and Christian: Words from a Missing Generation, 15 authors address “woke” issues, ranging from climate change and purity culture to racism and food poverty, with views that they say put them on the boundaries of church life.
The book is edited by PhD student Victoria Turner, who told a Religion Media Centre online briefing that young people were scapegoated in church communities. After several conversations when she was told that young people’s views on same-sex marriage or climate change were silenced, she became angry and decided to express their frustration.
“We’re trying to help the church align itself with the eyes of someone who lives under the boundaries, the liberation theology idea,” she said.
Professor Anthony Reddie, who wrote the book’s foreword, agreed. “I see being young as a form of marginalisation within the life of the church,” he said, with people listened to only if they have experience and authority, something that comes with age.
Three of the authors joined the briefing. Josh Mock wrote a chapter, “Queer, Christian and Tired”, and said past activism on sexuality had been replaced by dialogue and a more academic approach, but: “In my view, this is futile because dialogue with your oppressor while they’re still oppressing you won’t lead to liberation.”
Instead, he proposed “transgressive activism”, likening this to Jesus flipping over tables in the Temple, concluding: “I think we need to be more Christlike in activism.” He said people remember these acts and this prompts a conversation, moving the agenda forward.
Anna Twomlow, a seventh-generation Methodist, wrote about food poverty, a reality that should not exist. It was an embarrassment, she said.
But she, too, found the church failing: “I think that the church should be encouraging its participants to be involved in political movements: it should be encouraging protest, and it should be encouraging large-scale systematic change, which recognises that these issues that create food poverty are based on different inequalities in this country”.
On the question of dialogue versus direct action, she said: “As a queer person in the church, I’ve been a suffragist for the past 28 years, and I’m tired of being a suffragist. No one’s listening. It’s really exhausting.
“I think it’s almost a call to arms to the suffragettes to those of us who can no longer be peaceful, to those of us who can no longer sit in that dialogue and be not spoken down to, but not fully listened to you either.
“There’s been a lack of the suffragettes in this movement for a long time. And I think that’s part of it. Where are their suffragettes? Let’s have some action.”
“I think it’s almost a call to arms to the suffragettes to those of us who can no longer be peaceful, to those of us who can no longer sit in that dialogue and be not spoken down to, but not fully listened to you either”
– Anna Twomlow
Victoria Turner wrote in her editor’s preface that the 2017 and 2019 campaigns by Jeremy Corbyn had sparked the woke movement in the UK. She was among the ‘Corbynistas’ who followed him and describes a rally as like a charismatic religious experience. The deflation when Labour lost was mixed with a feeling of betrayal that the older generation had let them down.
In the briefing, she explained: “I think, generally, that just feels like there’s a lack of hope. And like a lack of a new way of thinking about the future in our society.
“I think the church, a lot of the time, is so afraid of upsetting people and causing divisions that the people who are already outside, stay outside”.
The church, she said, needed to move away from being centred in the home, and should instead move to the streets. “We need to be protesting with you, holding hands of people who are suffering.”
Molly Boot, who is training for the ministry in the Church of England, spoke about the gulf of understanding between generations on sexuality. Holding alternative ideas in church was hard: “A lot of us have testified to how tiring and difficult it is to be seen as a representative young voice”.
When seeking “fuel to the fire”, Molly looked to medieval spirituality and patristic authors and said there were radical threads in orthodox and traditional Christianity that were untapped.
Molly wrote a chapter on purity culture and how the church has traditionally denigrated sexual desire, with “oppression against especially young people and controlling young people’s freedom and sexuality”.
Instead, this chapter offered an alternative view, saying a resounding “yes” to the notion of loving God erotically. “Eros, this way of loving which is passionate and embodied, and takes the whole of ourselves, is absolutely the way in which we love God,” Molly said and this had been a thread through the scriptures and Christian history.
Reviewing the challenge now that Young Woke and Christian has exploded, the Rev Dr Peter Phillips said these were breakthrough prophetic voices and conversations were necessary and needed. At times there was a presumption that everybody had to think a certain way in order to be a genuine Christian, but that was not the case.
“I think that the conversation is really the most important thing. How do we hold people into that conversation and make it something that is open and valuable and good, listening to one another, rather than kind of demanding allegiance to every single issue that the book proposes?”
He was concerned that direct action polarised society. “We’ve got to be very, very careful that we do things in a way in which is itself loving and caring, and open to transformation and transition to allow the Spirit’s work”.
He added that there were many pressing issues in society at the beginning of the third millennium that were missing from the book such as digital rights, cyberspace and artificial intelligence.
Victoria Turner said in her preface that a second book might be in the wings, suggesting this may address Palestinian liberation, world Christianity, empire colonialism and mission, capitalism and global economic injustice.
Professor Reddie wished the book had been written 30 years ago when he was a young man and experienced feeling invisible in the church. He said to the contributors: “Good on you. Just speak out and be yourself.”
Full recording of the briefing via YouTube below:
