(OPINION) Have you “seen the light” yet? As Christianity has declined in the United States, other faiths have moved quickly to fill the void. In previous articles, I have written about the explosive growth that witchcraft and Satanism have both experienced in recent years. But Christianity’s main rival in the U.S. is neither one of them.

Today, “woke” ideology and the backlash to it are constantly in the news. Our politicians are defined by their adherence to it, virtually all of our corporations are very careful to show public submission to it, many of our entertainers have become rabid proponents for it, and our public schools are being transformed into indoctrination centers for the cause.

As a result, we now have millions upon millions of young people that have a remarkably consistent set of core values. Unfortunately, those core values are pretty much the opposite of the core values of the people that once founded this country. Throughout much of our history, most Americans derived their core values from religion, and that is still true today.

You see, the truth is that there is much that is “religious” in the “woke” movement. It has its own rituals, practices, flags, songs, mantras, gatherings, and evangelists. Of course, there are also heretics, and “cancel culture” has emerged as a way to punish those heretics.

In this new environment, either you will be “awakened” willingly or you will suffer the consequences. I really like how Michael Vlahos described the “new national church” that is now evolving all around us…

What does it mean to be woke? First and foremost, “woke” is a religious signal that you have heard the Good News and Seen the Light. Awakening means both witnessing revealed truth and experiencing spiritual transformation. Today this has taken the form of a collective enunciation: Of a new national church, reformed and transformed, to replace the original American sect, which is wicked and corrupted.

In simple, practical terms, the Church of Woke is pledged to the destruction of Racism, Patriarchy, and Heteronormativity. We are supposed to be a very tolerant society, but there is no tolerance in this new religion…

In the woke religion, Christian beliefs about justice and truth are supplanted with contemporary doctrines of equality, LGBTQ+, aggressive feminism, anti-capitalism, cultural shame, historical national sin, legacy guilt, claims of privilege, intersectionality, micro-aggression, critical race beliefs, BLM, compelled speech and inclusion of all self-identities; but there’s no tolerance for those who challenge the woke faith. The woke spirit takes a young person who desires to do good and shifts them into a hating machine, an angry, bitter person.

Let me ask you a question. If you encounter an angry person in the street demanding that you change your ways, is that individual more likely to be a Christian preacher or a radical “woke” activist? I think that we all know the answer to that question.

Many of those that are “woke” believe their “gospel” with a fervor that would make the most extreme Islamic jihadists blush. If you do not agree with them, you are “evil” and you are part of the problem. According to Vivek Ramaswamy, we have now reached a point where “wokeness” actually “meets the Supreme Court test for religion”…

“Wokeness” has become so pervasive across America’s institutions from schools to corporations that author Vivek Ramaswamy argues it meets the Supreme Court test for religion. “Wokeness is a secular religion. It isn’t a religion based on God. It isn’t a religion that offers a path to redemption, but it is a secular religion nonetheless,” Ramaswamy, author of Woke, Inc. tells CBN News.

Meanwhile, the influence of Christianity in our society continues to wane. According to a brand new survey that was just conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, only 16 percent of us still consider religion to be the most important part of our lives…

A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows that only 16 percent of Americans say religion is the most important part of their lives — down from a fifth a decade ago.

Meanwhile, about a quarter of Americans say they used to follow a different religion to the one they currently practice — a share of the population that keeps growing.

Church attendance has been declining for decades, and the percentage of Americans that identify as Christians “has been steadily dropping”…

The number of Americans who attend church once a week fell from 19 percent in 2019 to 16 percent last year, says the survey of some 6,600 adults across all 50 states. (READ MORE)