Happy Epiphany! Wokeism is not post-modern Marxism, but heretical Christianity

So they went to church as I had done. Which meant I had to go to church too (which wasn't as difficult as it sounds because I got the gig playing the organ wherever we went, although people wondered why I never took communion).

And then one day I realised that when you translate 'Israel' into English it means 'to struggle with God', and then it became okay to take communion again, and put all that atheism behind me, because faith isn't a matter of blind acceptance after all.

In the early 20th Century, the Enlightenment finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. Without a uniting story the project will founder, but it seems that despite the libraries being full of books that try to find that story, no one has come up with a better one than the one begun in Bethlehem a bit over 2,000 years ago.

Particularly, the passage where the outside world, in the form of the Magi, the Kings from the East, turn up and recognise the deity in the baby in the manger.

Theologically this is an epochal moment because it signifies the change in God's original promise which was to the Jews – you will be my people and I will be your God. This is the moment when the God of the Jews becomes the God for everyone.

Yet that is a magical and emotional story, and the Enlightenment is not about magic or emotion, nor is it about the theological intricacies of the covenants between deities and peoples.

And now we have modern Magi – Peterson, Ferguson, Ali, Thiel, Campbell, Brand, and many more – metaphorically reenacting the event.

Why? Because Ferguson's 'vibe' is about the reassertion of values and social structures which might have fed the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, but which are essentially Christian.

The modern Magi have come to realise that there is only one way to incorporate those things in a durable way. It's through the imaginative acceptance of something higher than ourselves which justifies a belief in an absolute 'truth' rather than the subjective, anarchic and destructive 'my truth'.

That understanding has brought them back to church. Not all in the same way, and some as functional Christians (as I might describe myself) and some on a much more mystical basis.

It's worth pondering over what's left of the holidays just how that translates to all of us, and how it might unfold. Maybe it just means putting Christ back into Christmas next year, and maybe it's much more.

Is there a better story, or do we have it already?

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Epiphany,