A Spiritual Crisis Needs Spiritual Solutions

Introducing the weekly essay series: The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening. Learn about America's deep spiritual crisis, how Wokeism exploits it, and how to reconnect with our spiritual roots.

The American Spirit Essays #1

In a Nutshell

I’m pleased to announce the launch of a new weekly essay series: The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening.  I’m trying something new with this series: pushing for paid subscribers.  Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve got bills to pay.  Compiling this material into readable form takes work.  I like to think my work has some value.  If you’ve got a free subscription to American Restoration, I’ll continue to post thoughts on topics of current interest as they arrive.  This American Spirit series is something different.  It’s a serialized effort to convey a fairly intricate understanding of a central struggle of our time.

So I’m asking for your support.  Please consider a paid subscription to get this series.  If you do, I commit to following through weekly for at least six months—that’s a minimum of twenty-six postings.  If I fail and you want a refund, please contact me.  I’ll find a way to get it back to you.  (Probably a good place for a force majeure clause: This guarantee only covers my own delinquencies and failures.  Technical challenges beyond my direct control don’t count.  So in the event of an EMP, don’t put chasing me for a couple of bucks at the top of your list).

That said, please share these essays with you friends and social networks. 

Cutting to the chase, this series makes a three-prong argument:

1. America is suffering from a deep spiritual crisis.  Nearly every major movement in contemporary American life—positive or negative, cultural, social, technological, economic, or political—is rooted in our national spiritual vacuum.

2. Wokeism is a new religion that has arisen to fill that vacuum.  Wokeism speaks to America’s most spiritually-starved people—young, urban, credentialed, professional elites shaping opinion and running institutions—in their own language and metaphor.  Wokeism lets them fill their spiritual needs while denying that any such needs exist.

3. To defeat Wokeism and restore America, we must reconnect with our own national spiritual roots.  The Declaration of Independence is a wonderfully spiritual document.  It defined a new nation and blessed it with a skeletal platform of spirituality and ethics.  Any faith tradition compatible with that platform can help its adherents become true, full Americans.  Wokeism, at least as currently configured, appears incompatible with the American spiritual platform.

Restoration & Revival

The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening is far from neutral.  It’s a full-throated defense of a traditional Americanism grounded in Biblical ethics.  It recognizes Wokeism as a false religion grounded in the anti-Biblical utopian tradition—the same tradition that gave the world communism and fascism.  Its goal is nothing less than reinvigorating and redirecting the cultural and political engagement of all American faith communities that embrace our defining national spiritual platform. 

Nevertheless, in part because I see Wokeism as a religion, these essays treat Wokeism seriously and respectfully.  It’s easy to mock those whose beliefs don’t align with our own.  Derision, however, is a poor way to understand what adherents really believe or feel.  When I say that Wokeism fills a spiritual vacuum using only contemporary language and metaphor, I’m recognizing that it plays an important defining role in the lives of the Woke.  As false as I may believe it to be, I can’t access the beliefs of the faithful unless I take their faith seriously. 

In fact, one of the driving goals behind this series is the development of an intellectual framework capable of underpinning a legal argument: The Woke are attempting to turn their faith into the established religion of the United States.  Unless we can be honest about what Wokeism is, we will be powerless to stop them.

Another goal is the revival of America’s spiritual tradition and a reinvigoration of religious involvement in American civic life.  In America today, few tradition-oriented religious leaders are effective at reaching beyond their own flocks.  They’re particularly poor at reaching the urban, credentialed, professional elite.  Wokeism, on the other hand, does a great job at reaching those people.  Why?  Only an understanding of what works can help our traditional faith leaders retool their messaging to reach this critically important audience. 

So why am I engaging on this potentially lengthy process?  Because I believe that it can breathe new life into America’s faith traditions, catapult them back into a position of cultural influence, and deploy the law to defeat the onslaught of supremacist Wokeism.  

Contents

With those teasers in mind, here’s some housekeeping.  I plan to publish one essay a week for several months.  In an attempt to keep their length manageable, I’ll have to break some ideas into multiple weekly essays.  I’m going to try to keep them under 1,000 words each, so please spare me the angst of a TL/DR label.  As I publish, I will also update this space to serve as an index.

I encourage feedback and comments as well as sharing.  I’m also looking for partners.  If you know of anyone who may be interested in funding my work, hosting speeches, seminars, or courses, or any organization that might benefit from strategic advising, please connect us. 

An essay series is a fine thing, but unless it galvanizes action it’s of purely academic interest.  My goal is to galvanize action towards a bona fide American restoration and American spiritual revival.

That said, watch this space as the series grows:

1. A Spiritual Crisis Needs Spiritual Solutions (1/29/23)

2. The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening: How Did We Get Here? (2/5/23)

3. The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening: What are We Going to Do About it? (2/12/23)

4. Never Without a Religion (2/19/23)

5. The American Spiritual Platform (2/26/23)

6. Lessons of Rejection: Mea Culpa (3/5/23)

7. Lessons of Rejection: Through the Looking Glass (3/12/23)

8. Lessons of Rejection: A Basic Human Need (3/19/23)

9. Something New Under the Sun: From Scarcity to Abundance (3/26/23)

10. Something New Under the Sun: The Supernatural Abhors a Vacuum (4/2/23)

11. The Separation that Defined America: Christian Exceptionalism (4/9/23)

12. The Separation that Defined America: From Europe to America (4/16/23)

13. The Separation that Defined America: The American Experience (4/23/23)

14. A Big Tent is not a Universal Shelter: Utopian Socialism (4/30/23)

15. A Big Tent is not a Universal Shelter: The Morality of Abundance (5/7/23)

16. A Big Tent is not a Universal Shelter: The Utopian Spirit (5/14/23)

17. Rise of a New Faith: The Challenge of Modernity (5/21/23)

18. Rise of a New Faith: Wokeism Rises to the Challenge (5/28/23)

19. The Eschatology of Climate Change: The End of Times (6/4/23)

20. The Eschatology of Climate Change: Climate Politics & Mythology (6/11/23)

21. The Woke Soul: Woke Soulcraft (6/18/23)

22. The Woke Soul: Trans Trampled (6/25/23)

23. The Woke Soul: Physicality & Psychology (7/2/23)

24. The Woke Soul: A Beautiful Story (7/9/23)

25. Racism, the Woke Evil: More Important than Good (7/16/23)

26. Racism, the Woke Evil: Racist Woke Antiracism (7/23/23)

27. Racism, the Woke Evil: Wokeism Need Racism (7/30/23)

28. The Virus that Keeps on Giving: A Plague of Biblical Proportions (8/6/23)

29. The Virus that Keeps on Giving: The Richness of Ritual (8/13/23)

30. The Virus that Keeps on Giving: The Sacred Garb (8/20/23)

31. The Virus that Keeps on Giving: The Rite of Passage (8/27/23)

    Coming Soon:

32. The God of the Woke (9/3/23)

33. A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: The Rest of the West (9/10/23)

34. A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: The Reds & the Greens (9/17/23)

35. A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: Chinese Characteristics (9/24/23)

36. A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: We’re Not Alone (10/1/23)

37. Battle Lines Drawn: Abundance vs. Human Nature (10/8/23)

38. Battle Lines Drawn: Abundance Doesn’t Bring Meaning (10/15/23)

39. Making My Case: Reality Makes Sense (10/22/23)

40. Making My Case: The Concept Formerly Known as Human Rights (10/29/23)

41. Making My Case: Wokeism Against Blasphemy (11/5/23)

42. Message to the Faithful (11/12/23)

43. All Good Things (11/19/23)

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Please subscribe to receive weekly installations of The American Spirit vs. The Great Awokening.

For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com

To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see:  The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).

To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).

To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at https://coalition4america.com/.

To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.