The Theology of Identity Politics

In American Awakening, Georgetown political theory dean Joshua Mitchell unmasks identity politics for what it is: a toxic outgrowth of Protestant Christianity that threatens the American regime of liberty and self-government. The book builds on popular critiques of wokeness by placing the phenomenon in the grander scheme of our post-1989 experiment in secular hyper-liberalism.

While other writers have noted the religious fervor that underpins wokeness, few have gone beyond caricaturing it. For many religious-minded people, to speak of any similarities between identity politics and Christianity sounds like wild exaggeration. Yet...