(CP) Canadian psychologist and cultural commentator Jordan Peterson recently criticized the infiltration of what he called “woke” ideology into Protestant churches, warning that many Christian institutions are straying from their core values in favour of cultural trends to the detriment of society.
In an interview with The Christian Post on the premiere of the film Am I Racist? featuring his Daily Wire colleague Matt Walsh, the 62-year-old writer pointed to the prevalence of rainbow flags outside many Protestant churches as representing a deeper abandonment of foundational Christian beliefs in favor of what he called “hedonistic pride.”
“We must be concerned by the capture of the Protestant churches by the woke rainbow mob,” he said. “In Canada and Great Britain, many of the mainstream Protestant churches are covered with rainbow flags. When the Christians start worshiping hedonistic pride, something has gone dreadfully flawed.”
Peterson said the embrace of identity politics by some churches is a dangerous shift away from the core teachings of Christianity and poses a threat to the integrity of the religion, particularly for younger generations who is likely to be more vulnerable to cultural trends.
But even conservative Evangelical churches usually are not proof against problems, the We Who Wrestle With God writer said.
“There’s no shortage of bad actors as well within the Christian community of the kind that the atheists are inclined to object to,” he said.
“The fundamental problem with religious enterprise is that it may possibly be captured by the psychopathic narcissists, and that is what you see within the Gospel story. Christ is persecuted most intensely by the Pharisees, the scribes and the lawyers … the Pharisees are religious hypocrites who use religion for their very own self-aggrandizement. That’s an actual danger within the religious enterprise, and particularly the more Evangelical types of Christianity have been susceptible to being overrun by self-serving charlatans. That’s an issue.”
Peterson advised Christians to be grounded in skepticism — not of religion itself, but of those that would misuse it. “By their fruits, you’ll know them,” he said, stressing that the Scripture verse is beneficial when determining whether religious leaders are genuinely committed to the religion or merely using it for their very own purposes.
“You need to concentrate to the incontrovertible fact that not everybody who says ‘Lord, Lord goes to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,'” he said.
Though not a professing Christian, Peterson ceaselessly discusses Christian themes, values and Biblical stories in his work and has stressed the cultural and moral significance of Christianity, especially within the context of Western civilization. He once wrote that “The Bible is, for higher or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization, of Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of fine and evil.”
Despite his concerns concerning the state of recent churches, the father-of-two told CP he finds hope in a growing trend: the revival of church attendance, particularly in conservative circles.
Exposing children to traditional religious values, he said, might be key in navigating the complexities of recent life — especially within the age of social media.
“We are seeing a revival of church-going, especially of the more conservative type,” Peterson said. “And I believe that is probably also useful. Providing [children] with something like exposure to classic religious ideas is obligatory.”
According to Peterson, biblical ideas offer an ethical framework that may also help children navigate the temptations and dangers of recent technology, from pornography to the social isolation brought on by overexposure to screens.
“One of the things that screens do to kids is interfere with their ability to play, make friends, and interact socially,” he said. He urged parents to limit their kid’s exposure to electronic devices, especially in the course of the critical developmental years. “At least [children] should keep away from electronic phones until they’re through their fictional play period — so no less than ten years old,” he advised.
The Beyond Order writer also stressed the importance of teaching children to be intelligent consumers of content. He encouraged parents to have interaction in open conversations with their children about what they’re watching and why, helping them navigate the complex digital landscape.
“You need to expose them to the world of ideas,” he said. “You do this by being attentive to what they’re consuming, ensuring the channels of communication are open and communicating with them about what it’s that they are watching and why.”
While Peterson acknowledged the role of social media in fostering division, he rejected the concept that Americans are as polarized as they could appear. Drawing on polling data from a “liberal-leaning friend,” he suggested that nearly all of Americans, no matter political affiliation, agree on key issues.
“What we’re seeing is that bad actors are garnering an amazing amount of attention online and fostering political polarization,” he explained.
These manipulative figures, based on Peterson, are exploiting social media to create an illusion of greater division than actually exists.
“This is not a recent phenomenon,” he added. “This happens to cultures quite ceaselessly, when the psychopathic manipulators get the upper hand, and that is when you have got extremely damaging revolutions. But it’s not because individuals are actually polarized. It’s since the bad actors have crawled out from underneath the rocks and are having free reign. Some of that could be a technological problem because we do not know find out how to regulate social behavior on social media platforms … you’ll be able to say whatever you would like, and you are not held answerable for it. This has led to a terrible deterioration of public discourse that is very dangerous.”
