Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Neil Shenvi: Exposing, Refuting Wokeness, Cultural Marxism In America

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Neil Shenvi: Exposing, Refuting Wokeness, Cultural Marxism In America · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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No matter which direction you look in society today,
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there seems to be confusion, anxiety, anger,
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and downright irrationality.
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So definitions have changed.
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Values have been upended.
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People can no longer answer basic questions like,
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what is truth?
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What is a woman?
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What is marriage?
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What the heck happened?
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In their new book, Post Woke,
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asserting a biblical vision of race, gender, and sexuality.
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Dr. Neal Shenvie and Dr. Pat Sawyer
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offer an explanation for these monumental changes.
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Now, the common thread is found in critical theory,
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which is downstream from Marxist ideology.
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Well, we're blessed to have Neal Shenvie here today
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for this important discussion.
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That's next.
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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues,
0:56
discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity.
1:01
No topic off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Friends, family and Christ, thank you so much for tuning in.
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Very important podcast today, very important topic.
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You've heard a lot about woke and wokenness.
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And there's a chapter in this book, The Great of Wokening.
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I love it.
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But this is called Post Woke.
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We're going to get into the nuts and bolts of this
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with Dr. Neal Shenvie.
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The subtitle already gave it to you, but it's great asserting
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a biblical vision of race, gender, and sexuality.
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Now, Neal's bio is just really amazing.
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I mean, he's been to Duke and has got degrees from,
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I think, Princeton and Cal Berkeley in chemistry.
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And so Brainiac comes to mind for me because my goodness.
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So it's interesting that he writes about the content that he does.
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But he's happily married with four children that they homeschool.
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God bless him.
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I think a lot of our audience, as young enough to have kids,
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they do the same thing.
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But Dr. Shenvie, thank you so much for your time today.
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Good to see you.
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David, thank you so much for inviting me.
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Pleasure to be here.
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Yeah, thank you.
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Now, the first question right off the top
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after reading your bio.
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Oh, first of all, I want to mention your previous books.
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And you've got some amazing books out
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that I want to direct people to.
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It's not just Post Woke.
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But Jeff, bring those other book covers up critical dilemma.
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Another very important book.
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But I like this one too.
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A why believe?
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A reasoned approach to Christianity.
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So with that, I want to give you Neal's website.
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It's Shenvieapologetics.com.
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Shenvieapologetics.com.
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Christian apologetics from a home schooling.
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Theoretical chemist.
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And there's my first question, Neal.
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You've got this background in higher education and chemistry.
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And you're writing about things like social justice
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and critical theory and walkeness.
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So please explain for us how your background,
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what you went to school for, transitioned
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into what you're doing now and what you're writing about.
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That's an interesting long journey.
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So I became a Christian in graduate school studying
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Theoretical Chemistry, I got my PhD.
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And as soon as it became a Christian,
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I realized I wanted to share the gospel
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with my coworkers, my colleagues who
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were all intellectuals, often skeptics, atheist, agnostics.
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So I began studying Christian apologetics.
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And that led eventually to the publication
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of my first book, Why Believe, which
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was an attempt to, as the subtitle says,
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take a reasoned approach to Christianity.
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So I wanted to reach people who were kind of into STEM
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fields, science, and mathematics,
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and show them that the Christian faith is a rational faith.
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It is one rooted in truth, in reality, in reason and evidence.
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So that was the first book.
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And that book came out in 2022.
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But even the years before that, as I was finishing the first draft,
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I began to see something odd happening in our culture
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around the time of the rise of Black Lives Matter.
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So I finished that draft, and I began researching
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the topic of critical theory.
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And that's what was really a watershed
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because I met my friend and colleague, Dr. Pat Sawyer,
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my co-author, and he was getting a PhD in cultural studies
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studying the critical tradition.
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So he helped guide my thinking and my reading.
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And we came to collaborate and explain
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to the church why these ideas were rapidly
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infiltrating our culture and the church.
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This is like 2018 now, so a while ago.
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And ever since then, yeah, we've seen even more of a need
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for people, and especially Christians,
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to understand and reject these ideas.
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So you probably saw a lot in higher education.
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I mean, I'm looking at your bio again.
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You worked as a research scientist at Yale and at Duke.
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And you've published over 30 peer-reviewed scientific papers.
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And your writings on critical theory
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have been published as well in like the Gospel Coalition,
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Icon, Racheo Christie, which we interview 20 Groole
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and others from Racheo Christie.
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So I spoke with you about five years ago,
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maybe six years ago, on a radio talk show that I was doing.
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I think the topic I'm thinking must have been,
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maybe it was just before critical theory,
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maybe the Black Lives Matter was going on there.
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And I don't remember, but I think we spoke on these issues.
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And so I'm so thankful that you're writing about these
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and you can reach people that I would not be able to reach.
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But let's start with with wokeness.
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As it's expressed in our culture today,
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it's rooted in an area of knowledge known as critical theory.
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Now you wrote your previous book on critical theory.
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Would you go back and just explain that for us
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before we dive into your new book?
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Sure, we define wokeness as the cultural manifestation
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of ideas rooted in critical theory.
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So people see wokeness, they see drag queen story hour,
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they see Black Lives Matter, they see blues, clues,
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kids programming featuring drag queens singing songs
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about asexual transgender beavers.
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And this is all real stuff happening.
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And they know something's happening, they know it's woke.
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But what is wokeness?
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And we show in our books that wokeness actually
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is not just progressive, fattish zeitgeist,
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it's actually rooted in an intellectual tradition
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that goes back to Karl Marx.
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So we define wokeness or critical theory
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in terms of four big ideas, briefly, the social binary,
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the ideas that society is divided into oppressor groups
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and oppressed groups along lines of race, class,
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gender sexuality, Christianity, and host of other factors.
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And the two, that division happens
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because of what's called hegemonic power.
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That means that the ruling class, whether it's whites
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or men or heterosexuals, has imposed their ideas and values
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and habits on culture in a way that seems natural
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and normal, maybe even god ordained.
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But those values and norms really function
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to justify the power and the privilege of the ruling class.
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And all of us get brainwashed into these oppressive ideas.
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So how do we escape?
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ID number three is lived experience that oppressed people
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because of their lived experience of racism, sexism,
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and injustice can wake up, they can achieve
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a critical consciousness colloquially, they can get woke.
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And because of that, they can see reality as it actually
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is and they have the authority to explain to the rest
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of us who are still blind what reality is actually like.
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And then for the end goal of critical theory
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has always been social justice, which they define
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in terms of destroying this oppressed or oppressed binary
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by dismantling the systems and structures,
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which perpetuate the ruling class's power.
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So in a nutshell, critical theory today is all about
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those four ideas, social binary, hegemonic power,
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lived experience, and social justice.
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These are the four pillars of contemporary critical theory.
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Thank you for walking us through that.
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And let's just park for a moment on social justice
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because that is so misunderstood in the church today
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in the Christian church.
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I would go so far as to say social justice, quote,
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Christianity is apostasy.
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Because whenever you put a word in front of justice,
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there's a problem, right?
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And they're pushing the wrong things,
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maybe under good intentions, could you speak to that
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for a moment?
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The key question is who defines justice, what is justice?
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So certainly the Bible defines justice,
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it cares about justice, God commands us to seek justice.
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But what is justice?
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What is morality?
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What is right and wrong?
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We have to turn to God who is the foundation of justice
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to understand what that means.
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And the secular social justice movement
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has embraced a definition of justice and truth and morality
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that is written in these neo-Marxist categories,
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which Christians must reject.
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And just one reason why critical theory would see,
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let's say the gender binary, the idea that there are men
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and women male and female, they would see that idea
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as oppressive and in need of redress.
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They think social justice occurs when and only when
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we have torn down the systems and structures
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which perpetuate ideas like the gender binary.
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But obviously as Christians we would say no,
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the gender binary is not oppressive,
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it is God's design for our good and his glory.
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And it would be unjust to tear down the gender binary.
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So that's just one obvious example
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where we see a deep conflict between the assumptions
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of critical theory and the truths of the Bible.
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Yeah, I think a lot of people that may be fall for some
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of these maybe nice sounding ideas on the surface.
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I think maybe their literacy in the Bible
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is not where it should be in their discernment.
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But let's go to briefly, I didn't mention your book
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by the way, Pastor Kevin DeYoung said,
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if someone asks me what is wokeness and what is wrong with it,
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the first book I'll recommend is post-woke.
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So God bless you, you got a lot of great endorsements.
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I want to just mention some of the people
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because we have them on this podcast.
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I spoke to Dr. Irwin Lutzer, Melissa Doherty,
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she's been on the podcast and she's coming back
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in a month or so, Sean McDowell, Hillary Morgan Ferrer,
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great people, great apologists and authors
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and they put out great content.
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So in order for people that maybe have,
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maybe they're in the body of Christ
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and they're understanding some of these things,
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but maybe they still get seduced or deceived.
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You say that we live in a time of religious revival,
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but it's not Christianity.
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Other things have filled this void.
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If you take God out or if you kind of,
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you listen to these other ideas
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which what's happening in government education,
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Hollywood, media, and on and on and on,
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they remove God, something fills it in wokeness, Marxism.
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These are definitely things that are popular today.
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I was gonna ask you, what do you mean when you say
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we're in a time of religious revival,
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but it's not Christianity.
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Are the other things are going on?
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Yeah, I think you can view wokeness.
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Make the case you can treat wokeness
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as a worldview or a pseudo religion.
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It gives you a sense of meaning and purpose,
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community, identity.
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It talks about who you are, what human beings are,
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our big problem in life, which is oppression,
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had to solve the problem, activism,
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sense of purpose.
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People wanna be on the right side of history, identity.
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You can identify with your demographic group.
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I can see myself in terms of race, gender, sexuality.
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These are all identity factors
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that really are the core of my being.
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So it's giving you an alternate vision of everything,
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which is why you can't really hold onto it
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and Christianity together.
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They will compete for your allegiance.
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So in the book, we make it clear that many people
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get drawn towards wokeness for good
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and understandable reasons.
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They don't like injustice, they don't like racism.
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They care about the vulnerable.
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These are good Christian impulses,
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but they're being redirected in a bad and dangerous direction.
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So in our book, we spent a lot of time affirming, hey,
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we also oppose racism.
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We also believe that men and women
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are beautifully made and wonderfully made
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and made in God's image.
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We have firm these things as Christians.
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So we're not trying to diminish your thirst and hunger
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for true justice, for true love and community, yes.
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But we want to channel it in biblical directions
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and show you how the Bible fulfills those longings
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and critical theory does not.
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Amen.
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So what do you see as the catalyst for this cultural shift
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away from Christianity?
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Because you cite that in the book, and I absolutely agree.
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We've had George Barna and others, Adam Rasmussen
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and others on this podcast.
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There is definitely a cultural shift,
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even non-Christian polling like Pew and Gallup.
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It's very clear over the many decades.
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But what do you think is the catalyst for this?
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I think the perfect storm.
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I think that society has undergone lots of changes,
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especially since the sexual revolution.
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I think there's lots of factors.
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And such a lot of just studying this.
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One factor is that a lot of people
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are growing up in broken families coming out of divorces.
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And family dynamics will shape your view of God.
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If God presents himself as father to us,
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well, if you've had a bad father or an absent father,
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of course, you're going to feel distanced from God.
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You feel like, well, my father was a terrible person
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and left me.
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Why should I seek the love of a heavenly father?
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That's one big factor.
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Another factor is that the sexual revolution also
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led people to seek fulfillment in romance.
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And they felt that could have filled this existential void
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that is left when you remove Christianity.
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Again, they longed for love.
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Why?
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Because human beings do urine for love.
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But they didn't seek that love in a creator.
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They now sought that love in other human beings.
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And then I think finally, I'd say that education is
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like a huge role.
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So the left began its long march of the institutions
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in the 60s, and they have managed
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to largely control education in the United States
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from cave really through grad school.
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So a lot of it, if you send your kids to any school,
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including, unfortunately, Christian schools
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and Christian colleges, they will often
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be exposed to these ideas.
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You can't keep them out.
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And even if you say, well, they're not going to college,
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well, even in the workplace, they're
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going to encounter woke ideas.
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And woke ideas, as we show in the book,
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are at their foundation atheistic.
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They just, even if they leave a room
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for some kind of spiritual supernatural something,
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they don't think about that when it comes to social theorizing.
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So he's just, God is not there as part of the equation.
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And so this convergence of many different factors,
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but all of them have pushed people away
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from traditional Christianity and towards other forms
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of thinking, including those shaped by critical theory.
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Yeah, definitely an agenda.
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Most of us would call it a demonic agenda that's taking place.
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You call it a perfect storm.
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And there is a lot of factors involved.
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But thank you shout out to Antonio Gramsey
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in the long march through the institutions.
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They've been very successful.
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It's evil.
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It's demonic, but they've been very successful
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at this long term plan.
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But when we come back from our very brief pause
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with Dr. Neal Shenvi, I'm going to ask him,
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he says one of the most important steps in any discussion
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is defining your terms.
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We'll talk about that in just a minute.
16:06
Register now for the World View Matters Conference
16:09
May 1st and 2nd in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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Experts speakers include Alex Newman, Brianna Clawson,
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That's worldviewmattersconference.com.
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The book is post woke.
16:44
And again, friends, you can get it.
16:46
It links to Amazon as well at Neal's website.
16:49
That's Shenviapologetics.com, SHENVIapologetics.com.
16:56
So Neal, the left has done a very good job, very scheming,
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at changing language, changing meanings.
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And so you say one of the most important steps
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in a discussion on any of these things
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is defining the terms.
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Explain that a little bit and how we can do that.
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This is Rampin, our society today.
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Words no longer have their traditional dictionary definitions.
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I mean, literally you can go to the dictionary, look up words,
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and we're using them, doesn't reflect their dictionary usage.
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So you have to ask people, what do you mean by that
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with almost every term, whether it's woman or animal, anything?
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I think the fountain head of critical theories,
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many errors, is the definition of oppression.
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So critical theorist in the 60s redefined oppression
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to not refer to tyranny in justice and cruelty,
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which is how oppression is defined in the Bible, say,
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or in the dictionary.
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Instead, they redefined oppression to refer to any time
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a ruling class, whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians,
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supposedly impose their values on culture.
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That is oppression.
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The assumption there is that there are no transcendent norms
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or values that are actually got ordained.
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All values, all norms, all symbols, all habits,
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are actually a mere power plays that are engaged
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in by the rulers of society.
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So that's how they redefine oppression.
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Now, why is that important?
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Because critical theorists will say things like this,
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don't you care about oppression?
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And you say, well, yeah, as a Christian, the Bible says
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that we're supposed to oppose oppression,
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that Jesus himself was oppressed and afflicted.
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So sure, I'm against oppression.
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And they'll say great, because the gender binary is oppression.
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And you say, wait, wait, wait, what just happened?
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Exactly.
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They've redefined the word to include anytime
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the ruling class, whether it's again anyone,
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who supposedly has power, has imposed their values on culture.
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But we have to stop right away and say, time out.
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You're assuming there are no actual good values
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that are God's standards, that he actually built into the creation
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and that are not minor, yours or they're not white
19:04
or black or male or female, they're gods.
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And they are good.
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We should uphold those standards.
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So we have to be careful, because otherwise,
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they'll play this linguistic shell game
19:14
where they're changing definitions.
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You're not sure what happened one wrong.
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Another example will be justice.
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What do you mean by justice?
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I mean everyone getting what they deserve.
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God deserves all the glory and justice is giving it to him.
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My neighbor deserves my love.
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That means giving it to him.
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If you work, you deserve your wages.
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This is what justice means in the Bible.
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But in critical theory, justice means essentially
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all groups having equal outcomes, no matter what.
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It means dismantling these systems
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as opposed to produce racism, sexism,
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classism, et cetera, dismantling all those norms
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that produce the social binary.
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These are two totally different understandings of justice.
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So for example, when I see something like justice
19:56
would include supporting traditional marriage.
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It is just that a man and a woman are united in matrimony,
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because that creates a family, it propels society,
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it's good for human beings.
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They would say that is injustice that marriages unjust
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because it perpetuates heterosexual norms.
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So once again, they've redefined justice
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and from that, flows a plethora of errors.
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You can go on to what is a woman or what is truth.
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All of these basic concepts have been redefined.
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So you have to define your terms.
20:30
Great question.
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What do you mean by that?
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And another one is how did you come to that conclusion?
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Another great question.
20:36
Because my goodness, let me recommend Webster's 1828
20:40
dictionary guys if you don't already use that.
20:43
So Neil, there's a quote from your book that says,
20:46
a person who offers love at the expense of truth
20:50
is not truly loving.
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And yet, Christians can also be confused
20:58
or deceived about these things.
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So how are these critical theories and these wrong ideas
21:04
infiltrating the church?
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So how does that happen?
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It's often through compassion, because of course,
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Christians are called to be compassion.
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But again, compassion's been redefined
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to mean basically affirmation.
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Compassion means telling people what makes them happy
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and what they want to hear.
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And Christians, but Christians don't realize that again,
21:23
the game being played and fall for that,
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we have to step back and say, what is real compassion?
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Real compassion means doing what's best for the person,
21:30
feeling bad for them, wanting to help them
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and therefore doing what's good for them.
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That doesn't always correspond to what they think
21:37
is good for themselves.
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Example, if you have kids, you know that what would make them
21:42
happy in the moment and what is good for them
21:45
are very different, very, very different often.
21:47
My three-year-old might say, I would love to have
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a whole cake tonight for dinner.
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And I say, because I love you, not in spite of my love for you,
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because of my love for you, I will not give you what you want.
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I'll give you what you actually need.
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The example in the book that we use is Detransitioners.
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These are often young women who, in later in life,
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decided they were men,
22:10
transitioned their gender identity to male,
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sometimes took hormones, sometimes had surgeries,
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and after a year is sometimes said,
22:18
this is not working, I made a mistake,
22:20
and treat transition to back to their birth gender
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and said, no, I really am a woman.
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And many of these women are now coming forward and saying,
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what went wrong?
22:29
My whole life, everyone around me did nothing
22:32
but give me affirmation.
22:33
They told me, yes, you are a man.
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Yes, we support you, we love you, you're brave and stunning.
22:38
And now looking back, they made a mess of their lives.
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They sometimes harm their bodies,
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and they actually, their testimony is this,
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why did no one actually love me enough
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to tell me the truth?
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Where were the people who cared about me truly,
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and were willing to speak hard truth to me?
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It's truth that I needed to hear,
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even though I would have rejected it at the time.
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The example we use is if you have an anorexic young woman
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who is starving herself to death,
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and she says, if you love me, you'll call me fat.
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I know I'm fat, I believe I'm fat,
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everybody else tells me I'm fat,
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because they love me, why won't you call me fat?
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And then we say to her, honey,
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it's because I love you that I will not lie to you.
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You are not fat, you are killing yourself out of my love.
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I will have real compassion and tell you
23:24
the real truth about yourself,
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and I will do anything to show you the way
23:28
that you should live that will bring you
23:30
actual peace and happiness.
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Amen.
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Excellent example about someone who's anorexic,
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and friends, if we just understand as a Christian,
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God's order and God's design, creation, male, female,
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marriage, family, gender falls into that too.
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We need to know the truth of what the Bible teaches
23:49
on these things, and it's very clear
23:51
there's no ambiguity, no gray area in scripture.
23:53
I wanna jump to something,
23:55
we're under four minutes already,
23:56
and there's so many other questions I had for you,
23:58
but this goes by really fast.
24:00
One of them I wanted to ask you about race
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has been a big issue and a dividing issue,
24:05
even in the church, but I wanna ask you about statistics
24:09
that people don't often cite, but it's true,
24:12
you don't hear the media talking about them.
24:14
So do the stats support an epidemic of police brutality
24:19
against blacks in this country,
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because the media would sell blacks
24:24
as one of the oppressed groups,
24:25
and they're the ones that are being targeted by police,
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but that's really not true, is it?
24:31
No, they did a series of different stories,
24:33
so we have all the data in the book you look at,
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but one important statistic or comparison is that
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the chance of an unarmed black man being killed by police
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is roughly the same as the chance of him being killed
24:45
by lightning, so it's extremely rare.
24:47
Lightning.
24:48
And even at the height, yeah, lightning,
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the height of black lives matter,
24:51
even then roughly the same amount of whites
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and blacks were being killed by police,
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and almost all of them, not all of them,
24:58
almost all of them were in the process of committing a crime,
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were violent, resisting arrest, and had a weapon.
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So if you look at the number of either black or anyone
25:09
who's being killed by police,
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the vast majority are armed,
25:13
and an alternate and wished police in committing a crime.
25:17
So if you take those away,
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there are some tragic cases absolutely
25:20
of both white and black men being killed by police.
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Unjustly, we should absolutely say no, that's wrong.
25:27
We want to treat that in the courts
25:28
and prosecute people that have actually committed a crime,
25:31
whether civilians or police officers,
25:34
they both can commit crimes.
25:36
But the data does not actually support the idea
25:39
that black men are being killed indiscriminately by police,
25:41
that just is not true.
25:43
It's a tiny fraction of percent.
25:46
And even the vast majority of black men,
25:48
obviously didn't even encounter police
25:50
in the given year, much less in any way harmed by them.
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So actually, so the last thing,
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if you ask black people, do you want more or fewer police
25:59
in your neighborhood, it's split like 20, want more,
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60% want exactly the same and 20% want less,
26:06
but it's not like this overwhelming number
26:08
of black people who don't want police around.
26:10
They want police like all of us do.
26:13
This is really amazing, the lies and propaganda
26:15
that the loudest voices seem to get through.
26:18
Even Christians, again, can be deceived,
26:21
but that's another point I want to end with this.
26:23
We only have a minute left, Neil.
26:25
A lot of people just don't want to touch on any of these issues,
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maybe because they don't know how to express them
26:30
or defend the faith, but that's a problem
26:32
because you read about that in your book too.
26:33
So why do you say that the Christian
26:35
who wants to reject any kind of cultural
26:37
or political involvement, that's not a good thing,
26:40
really brief in a minute.
26:43
Sure, number one works out in light.
26:44
Jesus expects us to stand for truth
26:47
and for the sake of our neighbor,
26:48
our neighbor is being hurt by these lies.
26:50
If we love our neighbor, we'll speak the truth
26:53
out of love for him, not hatred.
26:55
And second, these ideas have implications for theology
26:58
and people's eternal destinies.
26:59
If they're rejecting God's goodness,
27:01
they're rejecting His understanding of oppression
27:04
and justice, they're rejecting the truth,
27:06
that will lead them to eternal death.
27:08
We want them to hear the gospel
27:10
and for them to repent and believe the gospel
27:12
and be saved because we love them.
27:14
You can't just separate out cultural stuff
27:17
and theological stuff, in this case, they're related.
27:20
So again, we're not putting culture or politics,
27:22
the culture we're first, we're putting the gospel first,
27:25
because of that, we have to get involved
27:27
in these cultural issues.
27:29
Amen.
27:30
Thank you, Neil.
27:31
The book is post woke.
27:32
You can go to Shenvieapologetics.com.
27:35
You can also connect with Neil Shenvieapologetics
27:37
on Facebook friends.
27:39
Thank you, Neil.
27:39
Thanks for your time. God bless you, brother.
27:42
Thank you, David.
27:43
God bless you, guys, and thank you so much for tuning in
27:46
and, as always, keep speaking the truth
27:49
about things that matter.