Was Jesus woke? Why this is the wrong question
First published in Sight Magazine, 16 September 2025
“Woke folk hate us Christians,” my friend insisted. “They hate being judged but they’re hypocrites because they’re the first to brand us as X-phobic.”
So I rhetorically evoked “what would Jesus do?” – a phrase first coined by Rev Charles Sheldon’s 1896 book In His Steps.
This question took me on a journey that kept leading me to a provocative question: ‘was Jesus woke?’
Every time I asked this question of my Christian friends, it was like waving a red rag to a bull!
Imagine the irony if those Christians who had argued most fiercely against Jesus being ‘woke’ were forced to concede the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of woke – “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” – was, indeed part of the character of Christ.
My journey took me back to 1938 when black American folk singer Lead Belly coined the phrase ‘stay woke’ in his song Scottsboro Boys about nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women.
But woke has recently been weaponised by the political right as a slur to silence the political left.
I remember the pre-election campaign earlier this year, labelling the Australian Prime Minister as “weak, woke and sending us broke”. It reinforced the stereotype of pathetic empaths who capitulate to noisy minorities.
Beneath the din of name-calling is a serious question that some Christians are wrestling with: if the Gospel stories took place here and now, would Jesus be labelled woke?
For certain Christians, Jesus’ outreach to the marginalised and his compassion for the outcasts (lepers, adulterers, sinners, criminals, poor, Gentiles, blind, crippled) epitomised the inclusivity of wokeness. Jesus rebuked the religious elite for their exclusivity (Matthew 22:23).
Others offer a light-hearted parody of ‘Woke Jesus’, which mocks this revisionist labelling. Jesus was no stranger to false accusations such as blasphemy, sedition, subversion and tax evasion (Luke 23:2).
Then I saw the sign: ‘Wrong way – go back!’ Throughout this curious journey, I was asking the wrong question.
Who are we to act as a jury, handing down a verdict on whether Jesus was woke? Are we daring to put Jesus in a (witness) box, and judge the ultimate judge? Are we reducing the Son of God to fit our temporary political lens?
Are we weaponising selective Scripture, quoted out of context, to peddle our agenda? For example, “whatever you did for one of the least of these…” (Matthew 25:40) is not a rally for a social uprising but a personal calling to see Jesus in each individual encounter. Even Satan could misappropriate quotes from the Bible! (Matthew 4:5-6).
When we think we have awakened a political prism, we fall asleep to the Gospel in its full cultural, historical and spiritual context.
In the Gospels, I cannot see Jesus ever galvanising and mobilising minority groups to mass political movements: #LepersLivesMatter or #TurnTheTables or #PhariseesAreHypocrites.
His messages and miracles were public. But the spiritual journey to the Kingdom of God was always personal: ‘sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven’ (Matthew 19:21). Again, this must not be misconstrued as a social(ist) revolution, but a specific answer to a personal question: ‘what good thing must I do to get eternal life?’
Jesus did not ask His followers to #RiseUp against the Roman oppression or the religious hypocrisy. He asked them to repent from the real enemy: sin.
My journey started with labels of us versus them, which is a futile prism that refracts away from the one true light. Rather than asking whether Jesus is woke, we should remove these spectacles and ask whether we are obeying his new commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 13:34).