Right of Reply – Woke, common sense and GAFCON: Chuck Stephens

Key topics:Rob Hersov critiques “woke” ideology and its global cultural impact.African Anglicans push back against liberal Church leadership via GAFCON.Orthodox Anglicans outnumber liberals, asserting faith and unity globally..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Chuck Stephens.This is a prompt and prompted response to Rob Hersov’s article “The woke insanity destroying America, and infecting South Africa”. Specifically to one sentence that sums up his place as a thought leader:“And in South Africa peak woke is over and the pushback has begun.”He rolls ten talking points into the term “woke”. These are critical race theory, DEI, transgender madness, defund the police, cancel culture, the myth of systemic racism, white privilege, identity politics, climate hysteria and open borders. It is a very comprehensive list. In one word, it is “revisionism”. Revising the familiar narratives of common sense with distortions.The scope of “woke” is quite astounding – no wonder President Trump started his second presidency with a “full court press”. Call it the Great Reversal.There are historical precedents. One is China’s Cultural Revolution. China’s vast cultural heritage was poisoned, setting the stage for Mao’s triumph and bloodletting. The cultural revulsion of the Marxists led to the bloody Cultural Revolution. Here is how John Carpenter aptly describes the Leftist playbook:“Few civilizations had more to boast of: paper, printing, gunpowder, silk, and a meritocratic culture of scholarship. Confucianism’s wisdom tradition rivaled Solomon’s Proverbs, and the imperial examination system gave poor peasants a path to power. Zhang Jian, born destitute in the Qing dynasty, rose to ministerial rank by merit alone. But Mao’s useful idiots denounced Confucianism as bourgeois oppression, cast filial piety as stifling, and convinced a generation that the old ways were the “four olds,” dead weight to be thrown overboard. Hence, they unleashed a “Cultural Revolution,” destroying centuries of wisdom and killing tens of millions. If the Marxists could do that to China, with such a glorious inheritance, it could happen anywhere.”.Read more: .Rob Hersov: The woke insanity destroying America, and infecting South Africa.Sound familiar? It had been averted in England, whose historians note that John Wesley and George Whitefield, two Anglican clergymen triggered the 18th-century Great Awakening. Historians agree that this spiritual renewal saved England from the kind of blood-soaked social renewal that engulfed France. By reviving faith, they prevented a generation from turning their anger into nihilistic rage.Speaking of the French Revolution, it certainly deposed the monarchy through its reign of terror. But Democracy was still-born, and soon supplanted by dictatorship with the rise of Napoleon. Only when his empire was vanquished could the Republic really rise. There are parallels to these three historic examples in the “pushback” that Rob Hersov observes. Certainly, woke has gone broke and that is no joke.In Africa, the pushback is taking on new proportions. For twenty years, African Anglicans have patiently tried to cajole and rebuke liberal Anglicans especially those in the UK. The high incidence of child abuse has brought both Anglicans and Catholics into disrepute. Suddenly, the archbishop of Canterbury was forced to resign due to such a scandal. Just as suddenly, the Church of England in its self-absorption, chose a new archbishop - a woman who has endorsed same-sex marriage. This was one bridge too far, because the two issues that have preoccupied Anglicans for the past 50 years are the ordination of women and the marriage or ordination of LGBTQ+ people.In the church context, letting societal beliefs, convictions and values creep into core theology is called “syncretism”. So it is that African Anglicans, who have remained firmly attached to orthodox Anglican beliefs, have confronted liberal Anglicans over practices that do not align with scripture.For a long period, this co-habitation in one denomination by two schools of thought has bought some time. A new movement was launched – not a new denomination – called GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference). This gave rise to terms such as “dissident fidelity”, “pluralistic unity” and “mutual loyalty”. This is more of a checkerboard than a rainbow!One Anglican described it this way: "the charge that GAFCON is a breakaway or separatist group is not supported by the evidence. It is a movement of reform and revitalisation which has enabled faithful Anglicans to remain within the Communion, especially in North America and Brazil. While being clear that participation in its common life is based upon fidelity to the biblical gospel, not merely upon historic ties, the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration of 2008 says quite unequivocally that 'Our fellowship is not breaking away from the Anglican Communion'. (Rev. Charles Raven)”But given the pushback against woke in the secular world, and the rise of conservatism against Leftist agendas in recent trending, the African contingent finally threw down the gauntlet this month, upon learning of the selection of a liberal woman as Archbishop of Canterbury. Enough is enough.Is the church democratic? Or does it practice top-down leadership? Here are some calculations that are rounded and not comprehensive. Also, they are generalized because in one country like Canada, there are both evangelical and liberal Anglicans, so the statistics are not exact. However, they tell the tale:Liberal Anglicans are concentrated in the UK (13 million), Australia (4 million), USA (2 million called Episcopaleans), Canada (1 million), New Zealand (0.5 million), Ireland (0.5 million). Totaling 21 million.Whereas evangelical Anglicans are concentrated in Africa – Nigeria (20 million), Uganda (11 million), Kenya (7 million), Sudan and South Sudan (5 million), Tanzania 2 million, southern Africa (4 million). This totals 49 million.The above two clusters total 70 million, by far the majority of the 95 million in the world-wide Anglican communion. In short, orthodox evangelical Anglicans out-number liberal or “syncretistic” Anglicans by 2-to-1. So it came as no surprise, upon learning of the new archbishop’s selection, that GAFCON issued its own statement saying it “abandons global Anglicans, as the Church of England has chosen a leader who will further divide an already split Communion.”The October 3 statement read: “due to the failure of successive Archbishops of Canterbury to guard the faith, the office can no longer function as a credible leader of Anglicans, let alone a focus of unity… The reset of our beloved Communion is now uniquely in the hands of Gafcon, and we are ready to take the lead.”.Read more:.Woke is fading, is Anti-Woke next? – Nia-Malika Henderson.Then the most Reverend Dr Laurent Mbanda, chairman of the GAFCON Primates’ Council and Primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, published a letter declaring that the true Anglican Church is now under GAFCON. It’s sort of a religious UDI (unilateral declaration of independence). A gathering of Anglicans is being convened in March 2026 in Nigeria to chart the way forward.We’re here to win. Not merely a theological argument. But to win souls for Jesus. He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, his truth is marching on!

Right of Reply – Woke, common sense and GAFCON: Chuck Stephens

Related Stories

The medals we celebrate - and the champions South Africa may never discover

Jaltech’s Series B Fundraise: Private Debt Targeting a 2.68x Money Multiple

YouTube stars emerge as a new investment asset class: Lionel Laurent

Jaltech Private Debt Fund: What investors need to know before the July close