Woke Church Glossary: “Reconciliation”

They keep using that word….

In yet another episode of the Church of England being hijacked by wokeness, The Venerable Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, Archdeacon of Liverpool, tweeted the following:

I went to a conference on whiteness last autumn. It was very good, very interesting and made me realise: whiteness is to race as patriarchy is to gender.
So yes, let's have anti whiteness, & let's smash the patriarchy.
That's not anti-white, or anti-men, it's anti-oppression.

Now you won’t find the original tweet, only screenshots of it.  For after getting throughly ratioed, the Archdeacon took her X account private.  Her explanation was that X is “perhaps not the best place for a nuanced argument.” Pushing for anti-whiteness and smashing the patriarchy is oh-so nuanced, don’t you know.

It will not surprise you that I could rant about this episode several ways to Easter Sunday.  But instead I want to get analytical and focus on a much abused word: “reconciliation.”

For where The Venerable got the above drivel was, as the Telegraph reports, a “‘Racial Justice Conference’ in Birmingham … organised by Reconciliation Initiatives, a charity working in partnership with Coventry Cathedral to help churches ‘contribute to reconciliation in wider society’.”

Note that the conference the Archdeacon attended was not something detached from the Church of England, but had the approval, even partnership of Coventry Cathedral of the Church of England.

The conference hijacked what should be a perfectly good word, “reconciliation.”  That is what Critical Theory, aka wokeness, always does — hijack good words, give them them new woke definitions that are about the opposite of the previous accepted definitions, and use those words to push woke poison.  A classic example is changing the definition of “racism” so that to be “antiracist” one has to be actually racist against White people.

Back to “reconciliation.”  What makes this hijacking of what was a good word most appalling is that reconciliation is an important Christian doctrine.  This Holy Week, Christians remember that Christ suffered and died in order to reconcile us to God.   In short (and forgive my plain, perhaps inexact language), without Christ we are at enmity against God because of our sin.  Indeed sin, practically by definition, is rebellion against God and His holiness.  But Jesus Christ died to take our sin and its ultimate penalty upon Himself.  He is “the Lamb of God who takest away the sin of the world.”  So, our sin being dealt with at the Cross, we can be reconciled to God by turning to Christ and trusting in His dying and rising again for us.

Reconciliation is a wonderful, comforting and vital doctrine! Read 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans 5 for more.

So reconciliation concerns Christ reconciling us to God by dying and rising again for us.  Of course, that has applications in how we should live.  Christians should strive to be reconciled to each other, forgiving each other and living in unity.

Now lib churchers in recent decades just love to use the word “reconciliation.”  But they should be told, in the words of the almost canonical Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Before wokeness was a thing, twenty years ago, almost every other word out of the mouth of Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was “reconciliation.”  But by her other words and actions, it was clear that she meant the opposite of the Christian doctrine.  As she opposed the basic doctrines of The Faith and as she crushed, sued and drove out most of the faithful orthodox that remained in The Episcopal Church at the beginning of her tenure, it became very clear that “reconciliation” out of her mouth was a Satanic counterfeit.  “Reconciliation” meant, among other evils, submitting to her apostasy or else.

Today woke churchers also love that word “reconciliation.”  They keep using that word.  I do not think it means what they think it means.  But we need to be aware of what they think it means so we are not fooled.  And we have to get beyond their definition games to do that.  Just as “reconciliation” under Schori meant in practice trampling upon the orthodox until they submit or leave, reconciliation under woke churchers means something very different than the Biblical definition or even what the woke might say it means.  If you want an example of a woke definition of reconciliation, you can read Jemar Tisby, but he is handing out poisoned Kool-aid.  He is sugar-coating what CT reconciliation is.

With the woke, “reconciliation” in practice means not so much reconciliation to God as it does reconciliation to them and their agenda.  Reconciliation means agreeing with them.  If you are white, you must agree that you are racist and that “whiteness” is evil.  If you are a straight male, you must agree on “smashing heteronormity” and “smashing the patriarchy.”  And don’t you dare buck up against being called “cis.”  If you are a woman, you must agree that the male that you are competing against or that is in your locker room is every bit as much a woman as you.  And on and on and on, and if we submit, they will come up with more predatory absurdities to which we must also submit.  The woke, like other totalitarians and like Satan, are never satisfied. For they are servants of Satan.

And you must not only agree but also fork over the big bucks or buckets of pounds as the Church of England is.

If you don’t agree to their grift, then you must be racist etc.  No reconciliation for you!

Of course, the irony is hardly anything is more divisive than the woke church version of reconciliation as the Venerable Archdeacon found out fast.  Critical Theory leads to the opposite of actual reconciliation as we have all found out.

So in short, woke reconciliation means gladly submitting to their rainbow jackboot.  Christian reconciliation means Jesus submitted to carrying the weight of our sin and death so we may live free, not enslaved any more to our own sin or to evil ideologies (Romans 8:21, Galatians 5:1), and be really reconciled to God.

I like living under Christian reconciliation better.  During this Holy Week, I shall be all the more thankful for the great reconciliation brought about by the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Why fall for predatory counterfeits?  Why should the church should give any place to counterfeits?