Christian Hip-Hop is Woke: Why Are the Anti-Woke Still Sleeping? [Op-Ed]

Christian Hip-Hop (CHH) is the biggest threat to the evangelical anti-woke agenda.

In what follows, I place voices from the CHH community in conversation with anti-woke evangelicals. I demonstrate that CHH identifies as woke, that it denounces anti-woke rhetoric, and I bring into question the ongoing silence of anti-woke voices regarding CHH.

Definitions

“Woke” is an evolving term, but there is a consensus that it refers to an awareness of racial injustice.

According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, “woke” is defined as an awareness of “social and political issues, especially racism.” Merriam-Webster situates the term as being “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Dictionary.com positions wokeness as “an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.”

Within the global genre of Christian Hip Hop, racial injustice is a prioritized topic expressed by artists and presented in music.

Christian Hip Hop is Woke

Christian Hip Hop is woke. There is no denying this fact. CHH artists have expressed concern over racial injustice for well over a decade. Prominent artists such as Sho Baraka, Propaganda, Jackie Hill Perry, Lecrae, Tedashii, Trip Lee, KB, Swoope, Reconcile, Derek Minor, and many others have utilized their music, visual media, authorship, and social media platforms to speak out against racial injustice. These artists collectively address a myriad of topics including colorblind rhetoric, colonialism, African-American self-determinism, race essentialism, Blackness, whiteness, colorism, cultural appropriation, Black history, systemic racism, gender disparity, racism within the church, and many other themes supposedly falling under the broader category of “woke.”

Self-Defined Woke Artists

CHH artists explicitly identify themselves as “woke.” Reconcile released a song titled “Woke” in his 2017 album Streets Don’t Love You. The chorus consists of the artist stating the word “woke” successively sixteen times. The song’s instrumental beat is identical to Lecrae’s “Co-Sign Pt. 2” from his 2013 album Church Clothes 2. Lecrae is featured on “Woke” performing an introductive spoken word addressing gang violence and police brutality. In 2019, Reconcile released Streets Don’t Love You 2. In his song “Straight to the Penn,” which references the school to the prison pipeline, he raps:

They say we woke
We on some other tip
Hate in their heart
They on some other tip

In addition to Reconcile, both Lecrae and KB include woke references in their music. Lecrae uses the term in a 2017 song titled “Facts.” Lecrae raps in the third person, “People wonder is he woke or just a new slave?” He further positions himself in the third person as being labeled “divisive” within the church. The third-person perspective shifts to a direct tone: “Told me shut my mouth and get my checks from Evangelicals.”

Two years following Lecrae’s song “Facts,” KB released his single “Lincoln.” He leaves the listener without question on his own stance. In the opening segment of the song, KB raises his tone energetically as he raps the line “We was woke before the phrase.” CHH is woke, and this puts it in dynamic opposition to the anti-woke and anti-social justice movements emerging within evangelicalism.

Anti-Woke Gatekeepers

Several individuals within the evangelical community have emerged as the gatekeepers of the anti-woke movement, which is increasingly gaining traction and articulation. Voddie Baucham, Owen Strachan, and John MacArthur are prominent spokesmen for anti-woke Christianity. Baucham wrote Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, Strachan penned Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel—and the Way to Stop It, and MacArthur initiated “The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel,” endorsed by Baucham, Strachan, and 17,000 additional signatures.

Baucham argues that social justice is antithetical to the gospel. He states that if “naive Christians” actually understood social justice they would run from it “like rats from a burning ship.” [1] He also opposes concepts of oppression. Baucham writes that those with “oppressed status” qualify for “the priesthood in the cult of antiracism.” [2] He argues that Critical Race Theory and social justice advocates champion a so-called “ethnic Gnosticism” that grants “special” knowledge, a form of knowledge that he readily rejects. [3]

Baucham writes about social justice, Critical Social Justice, and CRT. However, he rarely if ever actually defines his terms. Strachan continues this engagement with a more direct focus on “wokeness.” According to Strachan, the ideology of wokeness emerged from Karl Marx. [4] Strachan contends that “wokeness is not just not the Gospel. Wokeness is anti-Gospel.” [5]

It is worth noting that John MacArthur wrote the foreword to Christianity and Wokeness. According to MacArthur, concepts like systemic racism, colonization, and cultural appropriation are mere “buzzwords.” [6] It is also interesting that in a book entirely dedicated to wokeness, MacArthur never mentions the term in his foreword. He is preoccupied with CRT.

Baucham and Strachan both endorse “The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel,” which John MacArthur formulated with other evangelicals. The statement asserts that “we reject any teaching that encourages racial groups to view themselves as privileged oppressors or entitled victims of oppression.” It further argues, “We deny that the contemporary evangelical movement has any deliberate agenda to elevate one ethnic group and subjugate another.” [7]

Anti-Woke Rhetoric

Anti-woke evangelicalism utilizes several rhetorical strategies that inherently dismiss conversations around racism, white supremacy, and social justice. Colorblind rhetoric is central to these strategies. Research conducted by Sharen Kaur Mehta, Rachel C. Schneider, and Elaine Howard demonstrates how evangelicals construct “racial logics” that “produce a kind of divinized colorblindness.” [8] The authors argue that evangelicals easily situate “spiritual equality” as necessitating “social equality.” Anti-woke evangelicals assert that all are under the same category of the imago Dei. They view identities of distinction as inherently “divisive.” Strachan, for instance, invokes “theistic formation” and the imago Dei to dismiss identities of “heritage and skin color” which challenge the constructs of whiteness. [9]

Invoking the ministry of reconciliation is also a strategy for denouncing woke commitments. It serves as a means to maintain power. According to this view, Christians have received the ministry of reconciliation and operate under a certain privileged position to determine the means, outcomes, and avenues of racial reconciliation. Michelle Oyakawa situates the use of racial reconciliation logic as a means of controlling and preserving whiteness and dismissing any attempt to engage in social injustice. The author argues that “the racial reconciliation frame is deployed to discredit Christians who promote racial justice by classifying their actions as political and therefore damaging to the unity of the church.” [10]

Biblical essentialism is also frequently cited as an argument for dismissing social justice. Baucham positions works like The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby as being antithetical to the gospel. In fact, he argues that social justice proponents are assembling a “new canon” of texts as if they are somehow meant to replace the Bible itself. As he writes, “This attack on the sufficiency of Scripture should serve as a call to arms.” [11] However, there was never an attack on the “sufficiency of scripture.” Virgil Walker, an emerging voice in the anti-woke movement affiliated with Founders Ministries, also utilized this same argument. He states, for instance, that Christians replaced the Bible with authors like Tisby, DeAngelo, and Kindi at local Bible studies. [12]

Strachan denounced a similar list of books, including Tisby’s, at Founders Baptist Church in 2021. [13] Ironically, he gave everyone permission to pull out their phones and order Fault Lines by Baucham. If scripture is totally sufficient, then why is there a need for Fault Lines or Christianity and Wokeness to begin with? I digress.

CHH as Anti-Anti-Woke

CHH artists have positioned themselves against the ongoing anti-woke movement along with its problematic rhetoric.

Artists side with and even endorse texts that are denounced by anti-woke evangelicals. Lecrae wrote the foreword to The Color of Compromise. On their podcast, Southside Rabbi, KB and Ameen hosted Dr. Esau McCulley and promoted his book titled Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. McCulley has also come under constant criticism by anti-woke evangelicals.

Artists also express counter-polemics to anti-woke rhetoric. The song “Black Reconstruction” featuring Propaganda, Sho Baraka, and Lecrae demonstrates their own awareness and rejection of anti-woke rhetoric. They go so far as to mockingly mimic and then deny the anti-woke logic that lumps all of Black intellectual thought under Karl Marx. Lecrae raps about himself, “I used to love it when you only preached the gospel. Now you just a Marxist, Social Gospel apostle.” He then provides a counter logic of Black intellectual thought and culture that problematizes this simple and false reasoning.

Sho Baraka also points out this faulty and dismissive line of thought when rapping “Chill baby boy. Karl Marx didn’t send me.” Baraka’s verse includes encyclopedic references to Black literature and culture, as per usual for Baraka.

Additionally, CHH is constantly pointing out the flaws of anti-woke colorblind rhetoric. Sho Baraka raps that “during my youth I lost my sense of being colorblind.” [14] Lecrae raps that colorblindness is “repulsive,” and further states that “colorblind folks can’t appreciate your hues.” [15] Tedashii raps “most of us colorblind.” [16] And Derek Minor performs the lyrics, “even if you colorblind, your vision still in black and white.” He concludes his rhyme scheme by stating, “you see me.” [17] These artists actively acknowledge, embody, and defend the culture, ethnicity, struggle, joy, intellect, and spiritual reality of Black humanity. To deny color is to systemically dismiss an entire universe of Black Christian ontology.

Many white evangelicals adamantly oppose views of oppression. For instance, Strachan uplifts the categories of “believer and unbeliever” while rejecting the divisions of “oppressed and oppressor.” [18] CHH offers a counter-narrative. According to CHH, Christ is standing in the place of oppression. In his song “New Portrait,” KB defines Jesus as “the God of the oppressed,” and he states that Jesus “died as a criminal from the hood part of town.”

On Propaganda’s song “We No Entiende,” Swoope features a verse that includes the line, “Christ died in the Blackest way possible with his hands up and his momma there watching Him.”

Swoope along with other artists also highlight systemic racism, a reality that anti-woke proponents reject. Swoope raps in his song “Still” that “system ain’t built for my people that’s facts. With all of that I still wanna be Black.” Trip Lee raps in his song “Supernatural,” “wish our world wasn’t programmed to see thug on my face.” In Derek Minor’s song titled “Nothing to Something,” Propaganda raps, “system kill out prophets and mock our mournful.” Using the analogy of walls, Lecrae references systemic racism in his foreword to The Color of Compromise when stating, “if we built the walls on purpose, we need to tear down the walls on purpose.” [19]

Sho Baraka even points out that the knowledge production within evangelicalism is systemically racist when rapping in his song “Bethesda”:

To talk to God they told me to climb a mountain
I’m thirsty for his revelation
Where is the colored fountain?

Lecrae, KB, and Voddie Baucham

CHH artists openly disassociate themselves from anti-woke proponents. In an interview with Rapzilla, KB called Fault Lines both “laughable” and “dangerous.” He further states in the interview:

“At the bottom of all of this is that in order to get away from doing the deep work of introspection, the study of history, laboring with the messiness of the society, being wrong and repenting and beginning again—in order to avoid the heavy lifting of all that stuff—what people have always done is that they map all their problems onto somebody else and that somebody else becomes their enemy, their target. They are the incarnation of everything that is wrong, and then you feel good about attacking that while ignoring yourself. That’s exactly what is happening right now.” [20]

The most salient example of the CHH disassociation with the anti-woke movement is Lecrae’s mention of Baucham in his song titled “Deconstruction”:

And Voddie was a hero of mine, met with him plenty times
This time, when he spoke, it cut me deeper than I realized
Doubled-down, spoke about my pain, I was met with blame
“Shame on you, ‘Crae, stop crying, get back to Jesus’ name”

Lecrae’s complicated or even severed relationship with Baucham is widely recognized. In fact, there are a slew of articles documenting and analyzing the impact of Lecrae’s open reference to Baucham.

Lecrae has his views on Baucham, and Baucham has his own views on hip-hop. Hip-hop aesthetics are both celebrated and rejected within the culture and the church. In his book titled He Saw that It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair A Broken World, Sho Baraka alludes to the ongoing distaste of hip hop. He writes, “Hip-hop is often perceived as low art in comparison with the work of Shakespeare.” [21] Ironically, Strachan begins his introduction to Christianity and Wokeness with Shakespeare. [22]

Baucham publicly defended this low view of hip-hop culture. In 2014, Baucham took questions at Antioch Bible Church in South Africa. At the end of his time, a participant asked Baucham about his opinion on Christian Hip Hop. He openly articulated his distaste for hip-hop culture, and postured hip-hop as being “antithetical” to the gospel. He further described hip-hop culture in demeaning terms, classifying it as the “bastardization of language.”

In his view, hip-hop is a low culture. He stated that “it’s not the best that culture has to offer.” According to his own logic, hip-hop is an “inferior subculture.” In reference to CHH, he prescribed that “we do not drag the church down into this inferior subculture.” He further articulated that hip-hop neither connects the church together nor does it bridge the church to the historical past. He concludes that the church should prioritize high forms of culture. In his final remarks, he expressed his own sorrow that CHH was permeating places like South Africa. [23]

Violence of Appropriation

In his song titled “Darkie,” Propaganda raps that “I’m from the most mimicked culture.” Propaganda is referencing the cultural creativity that stems from the Black community. The cultural production that is often mimicked includes music, dance, style, art, and language. Tedashii references this mimicked reality when rapping, “to be accepted for your dances but rejected for your stances.” [24]

In March of 2023, Owen Strachan participated in a form of cultural mimicking. Strachan joined the Babylon Bee Podcast to talk about his work on men and the church. At the end of the show, Strachan performed a freestyle rap. The hosts provided Strachan with theological terms like eschatology and justification, and Strachan utilized these terms in his freestyle flow. [25]

The performance can be interpreted through many lenses. Some might find it impressive, corny, or even a cringe version of Sway in the Morning. Regardless of interpretation, Strachan employs the art form of hip-hop to communicate his own message. Is it a form of appropriation or cultural hybridity? This hip-hop performance is of little cost to the community that created hip-hop. But Strachan is engaging in another form of language appropriation that is certainly violent against a culture that created an avenue of expression.

Writers like Strachan, Baucham, and MacArthur are providing the church with “woke” definitions. Christian consumers can now purchase works like Fault Lines and Christianity and Wokeness. But these books are not merely written modes of information. They are forms of market capital centered around a handful of words and phrases like “Critical Race Theory,” “social justice,” and “woke.”

This brings us to an important question: who has ownership rights for the term “woke”? According to free market capitalism, no one owns the term. But where does it emerge?

According to Altheria Caldera, “woke” is a “colloquial term.” [26] In other words, it emerged from a particular community. The author highlights a 2016 article titled “How ‘woke’ went from black activist watchword to teen Internet slang” by Charles Pulliam-Moore. [27] This article offers a suggestion for the history of the term. Pulliam-Moore proposes that a prominent usage of the phrase occurred in a 2008 song titled “Master Teacher” by Erykah Badu. Badu’s usage of the term is in reference to the fight for racial equality.

“Woke” originated from Black urban youth culture protesting racism. But now the table has turned. Evangelicals appropriated the word and created an entire capitalist market that turns fabricated woke fear into real dollar signs. This appropriation comes not only with avenues of revenue, it also includes paths of new definitions. Woke once meant the awareness of social injustice. But writers like Strachan are reconstructing the term’s meaning. Woke is now anti-Christian, Marxist, leftist, heretical, divisive, and worldly.

Woke Evangelical Markets

The anti-woke market is mostly the creation of ongoing evangelical business empires. The evangelical politician and entrepreneur Stuart Epperson established Salem Media Group. Christianity Today recently covered the life of Epperson and the market “empires” he created. [28] This media group focused on platforming conservative evangelicals on radio airwaves. He platformed politically conservative voices like Eric Metaxas, John MacArthur, and Charlie Kirk.

Kirk recently denounced Lecrae on stage at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California while talking with Jack Hibbs. [29] As an aside, Lecrae offers a rebuttal in his song “CC4.”

The multimillion-dollar business that platforms conservative evangelicals also owns Salem Books, which published Fault Lines and Christianity and Wokeness. David Santrella, a millionaire living in California, is the current CEO of Salem Media Group. Santrella is now the financial beneficiary of a word created by urban youth.

Ironically, for all of Baucham’s critiques of hip-hop and the bastardization of language, he is profiting from and aiding in the construction of an entire capital market around urban “slang” culture. Fortunately for Baucham, Strachan, Santrella, and the Salem Media Group, evangelicals are gullible enough and so divorced from Black intellectual thought that they are willing to throw money at the emerging “woke” market. The evangelical empire is growing at the expense of real cultural creatives.

The most mimicked culture is still outside the constructs of market power.

CHH and Evangelicalism

Christian Hip-Hop is one of the most pervasive cultures in the church today. CHH voices are published by Waterbrook, Tyndale, and Zondervan. Artists frequently collaborate with some of the biggest names in Christian Contemporary Music. Their music is played by youth groups across the U.S. CHH is also global.

Lecrae has nearly three million listeners on platforms like Spotify. Sho Baraka is producing literature and lecturing in universities. Propaganda is seen on popular podcasts talking about hip-hop and culture. KB recently received a Dove Award at the largest Christian music event. Jackie Hill Perry is a respected author in Reformed spaces. Swoope is producing content that is both explicitly Christian and unapologetically Black. Additionally, there are hundreds if not thousands of emerging CHH artists around the globe that are looking up to this established generation in CHH. One cannot deny the impact of CHH on the church.

At the same time, CHH is actively talking about the inherent racism within the evangelical church. Lecrae recognizes the open conflict within the church. He writes, “My work as a black hip-hop artist with an audience in white evangelicalism has shown me the tension that exists between black and white America.” [30] Unlike Lecrae, Sho Baraka opted out of the evangelical marketplace several years ago to express his own Black creativity. He writes in his book about the racialized policing of Black art in the evangelical music industry. He reminisces on his experience and situates himself as an “orphaned Black evangelical.” [31] Sho writes that he was never home in the palace of the evangelical market.

Other artists express a similar reality with somewhat more enraged and mournful language. Tedashii, in his recent song titled “Mirror Talk,” publicly displays his own sense of pain and trauma caused by the evangelical church:

Had to make it off the plantation
Evangelicals love me less than this damn nation
Walked on eggshells enduring this fan hatred
Fake friends telling me to have patience
Like I ain’t spend years assimilatin’ for acceptance
Like I ain’t work in they churches despite they efforts
Like I ain’t see ‘em sit silent when cops behead us
Done with people using me for white blessings

Christian Hip Hop artists are openly critiquing the faults of the evangelical church in their music, and millions of listeners are hearing their stories. In their songs, books, and podcasts, artists and creatives in the CHH space are complicating the all too simple anti-woke narrative. There is an entire generation listening, watching, learning, and sympathizing with these artists. And while there are many listeners beyond the evangelical church structure, there are countless young CHH sympathizers within the evangelical church.

Waking Up the Anti-Woke

If CHH is making so much noise about the anti-woke agenda, then why do we hear crickets chirping from the anti-woke organizers?

Baucham offered no public rebuttal to Lecrae’s song “Deconstruction.” Strachan wrote an article in 2014 defending Lecrae, but he has since said nothing about the artist. [32] For all their attacks on Tisby, did both Baucham and Strachan really overlook Lecrae’s endorsement? Are they both completely unaware of the CHH critique of evangelical racism and anti-woke rhetoric? There is song after song pointing out these inconsistencies of the church culture that Baucham and Strachan defend.

There are multiple possibilities for the ongoing silence. The anti-woke crowd might possibly give no real attention to CHH. They also may assume that CHH has no real impact on the church in the U.S. and abroad. It is also possible that everyone knows the impact of these artists, but they purposefully stay quiet.

Let’s be honest, there are really no consequences within the church for scapegoating Karl Marx. Even scholars of CRT likely mean next to nothing to evangelicals. Further still, Jemar Tisby was mostly an unknown name amongst white evangelicals prior to the anti-woke evangelical world. But someone like Lecrae is a little too close to home. A movement like CHH is intimately involved in the church, even within the evangelical church. CHH is listened to by an entire generation of evangelicals. Did Baucham and Strachan really overlook that? Or do they fully understand the consequences of attacking CHH?

Christian Hip-Hop was around long before this anti-woke agenda. To many of us, the entire anti-woke fiasco makes no sense at all.

Why?

Because “we was woke before the phrase.”
______________________________________

CITATIONS

1. Voddie Baucham Jr., “Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism Looming Catastrophe” (Salem Books, 2021), page 6.
2. Baucham, “Fault Lines,” page 91.
3. Baucham, “Fault Lines,” page 91.
4. Own Strachan, “Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement is Hijacking the Gospel—and the Way to Stop It” (Salem Books, 2021), page 19.
5. Strachan, “Christianity and Wokeness,” page 51.
6. John MacArthur, Foreword to “Christianity and Wokeness,” page xix.
7. “The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel”: https://statementonsocialjustice.com/#:~:text=All%20sinful%20actions%20and%20their,to%2C%20their%20identity%20in%20Christ
8. Sharen Kaur Mehta, Rachel C. Schneider, and Elaine Howard, “‘God Sees No Color’ So Why Should I? How White Christians Produce Divinized Colorblindness,” Sociological Inquiry 92, no. 2 (2022): page 624.
9. Strachan, “Christianity and Wokeness,” pages 59-61.
10. Michelle Oyakawa, “Racial Reconciliation As A Suppressive Frame in Evangelical Multiracial Churches,” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 80, no. 4 (2019): page 514.
11. Baucham, “Fault Lines,” page 130.
12. Virgil Walker, “Wide Door: Resolve in the Day of Opportunity,” Founders Ministries, 2021, YouTube, (00:13:55): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46xnHNZskcw#t=13m55
13. Owen Strachan, “Wokeness and Discernment,” Founders Baptist, 2021, YouTube, (00:08:40): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpNEIjN-m7Q#t=8m40s
14. Sho Baraka, “Foreward, 1619.”
15. Lecrae, “Black Reconstruction.”
16. Tedashii, “Mirror Talk.”
17. Derek Minor, “The Trap.”
18. Strachan, “Christianity and Wokeness,” page 69.
19. Lecrae, Lecrae, Foreward to “The Color of Compromise,” page 10.
20. KB, “KB, Critical Race Theory, and the King from Nazareth,” Rapzilla, 2021: https://rapzilla.com/2021-06-kb-critical-race-interview/
21. Sho Baraka, “He Saw that It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair A Broken World” (Waterbrook, 2021), pages 98-99.
22. Strachan, “Christianity and Wokeness,” page xxiii.
23. Voddie Baucham, “Voddie Baucham – Q&A,” Antioch Bible Church, 2014, YouTube, (00:38:45): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQvSg8Yxxkg#t=38m45s
24. Tedashii, “Mirror Talk.
25. Owen Strachan, “Does Society Hate Men?” The Babylon Bee Podcast, 2023, YouTube, (00:44:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gEmmxPjcZg#t=44m30s
26. Altheria Caldera, “Woke Pedagogy: A Framework for Teaching and Leanring,” Diversity, Social Justice, and the Educational Leader 2, no. 3 (2018): page 3.
27. Charles Pulliam-Moore, “How ‘woke’ went from black activist watchword to teen internet slang,” Spinter News, 2016: https://splinternews.com/how-woke-went-from-black-activist-watchword-to-teen-int-1793853989
28. Danial Silman, “Died: Stuart Epperson, Who Put Preachers and Political Talk on the Nation’s Radio Waves,” Christianity Today, 2023: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/july/stuart-epperson-died-salem-media-radio-christian-conservati.html
29. Charlie Kirk, “Happening Now: Featuring Charlie Kirk,” Real Life with Jack Hibbs, 2021, YouTube, (00:20:15): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVRLLbaWMRI#t=20m15s
30. Lecrae, Foreward to “The Color of Compromise,” page 9.
31. Baraka, “He Saw that It Was Good,” page 110.
32. Owen Strachan, “Everybody Leave Lecrae Alone,” Patheos, 2014: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thoughtlife/2014/02/everybody-leave-lecrae-alone/

The post Christian Hip-Hop is Woke: Why Are the Anti-Woke Still Sleeping? [Op-Ed] appeared first on Rapzilla.