In 2016, journalist Kat Chow traced the evolution of the phrase politically correct. Chow recalled a 1991 commencement address at the University of Michigan given by then-president George H. W. Bush in which he stated: “The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones.”
As they say, if history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it does rhyme. Each time the pendulum swings (or the universe’s moral arc bends) toward justice and equality, it is met with strong opposition, a countermovement that co-opts specific language in an attempt to push the pendulum back in the opposite direction. In the 1980s, political correctness emerged as an effort to make room for greater multicultural awareness and diversity. By the time of Bush’s speech, it was being decried by conservatives as a new form of prejudice. More recently, the word “woke” gained popularity as a term to describe people who are alert and aware of racism and other forms of social injustice. But today, particularly among conservatives, it might as well mean “anything that stands in the way of the conservative agenda.” It is used as a catchall insult toward progressive people, policies, actions, and institutions.
Of course, words can and do change meaning across time and cultures. When I teach biblical Greek, I warn my students that their newfound knowledge will not equip them to fluently read a newspaper during a vacation to Greece; it won’t even enable them to easily read other ancient texts like Sophocles’s Oedipus the King. Studying ancient meanings of words and how they have shifted can help us understand cultures, contexts, and our own language. In light of the weaponization of “wokeness” in our own time, I think it worth exploring the two Greek words in the New Testament that can be translated as “woke.”
