Dear friends,
Thank-you, thank you each for your support.
The means by which -- this is the issue that you and I are all very, very concerned about. The means by which God communicates and communes with people. The means by which we must live our lives together in order to have Life to the fullest. The means by which we live and exist as members of the human race.
Woke-ism, as I explain in my essay "Woke Dysphoria at Concordia," is a potent, intoxicating cocktail of Progressivism, Neo-Pragmatism, and Communism. It is irrational, irreligious, and immoral. It gives us nothing but restlessness, dysphoria, pathological, global Angst. It hurts and harms our children educationally, in their God-given sexuality, in their bodies and in their minds.

Adherents of the anti-religion of Wokeness despise the very means by which God speaks to people in His Hebrew and Greek texts, therefore they despise those of us who are people of faith. Woke-ism defames pious Jews, confessional Christians, and orthodox Muslims, the adherents of every Abrahamic religion.

We people of the Book, people of sacred texts, people laboring to be people of good faith -- we are their "basket of deplorables." Woke-ism is thus a cult of anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim folks.

These folks especially deplore those of us who profess the self-evident truths and authority of every sacrosanct text, the divine authority of biblical texts especially. My suspension is a suspension of God's grace.

The issue is not me, but the nourishment I provide as a clay vessel for what is good, beautiful, and true -- in particular as a vessel for the humanizing and Life-giving water of God's words to us (Psalm 1).

In Lutheran theology, we speak of the Word and Sacraments as "God's means of grace" to people. These are the means by which we live whereas Woke persons deliver nothing but harm, harm to themselves, to our children, and to our children's children.

In this connection, consider our duty of care to our neighbors. It is the case that my academic neighbors -- professors who are also our neighbors in need, as Jesus says  -- that our neighbors in Evangelical colleges, in Catholic universities, and in other institutions of higher learning are being fired, disciplined, threatened by Woke administrations, boards, and faculties. Concordia is not an island unto itself. The harm my administration is doing is intensive, extensive, and profound. They are engaged in profound intra- and extramural harm to education and the transmission of Western culture.

While it appears to be way, way too late to handle this by any process that will occur to them, nevertheless, they must be led to repent and to demonstrate the fruit of faith.

You can see that the means by which is the issue by watching the systemic disregard and disdain for God's Word by being exhibited by my administrators and my university's Board of Regents committees.

In a reconciliation meeting on Friday (24 February), my ecclesial superior began with Scripture. I anchored my responses in Scripture (the first verses of Job and 1 Corinthians 4, especially). My pastoral advisor admonished them with Scripture.

But there was no Scripture whatsoever on other side, none. Except for an embarrassing, off-handed assertion that I deserve to be suspended  because "offending people is a sin." Of course, as my pastoral advisor said in conclusion, "If a professor is not upsetting students and professors who live by the worldview of Wokeism or any other anti-Christian doctrine  -- then there is something seriously wrong. The Lord of peace Himself says, 'I have not come to bring peace, but division' (Luke 12)."

One other point for our consideration and our conversations.  In Politics, Book 1, Aristotle defines the human race as the logos or language species. He explains that it is language that establishes and undergirds our fellowship as human beings together. Luther matter-of-factly stipulates Aristotle's basic understanding in his (Luther's) 1536 Disputation Concerning Mankind. This is what we believe, teach and confess.

According to Western from the time of our Greek forebears through the Reformation century, language is the means by which we enjoy and sustain fellowship with one another humanely and humanly.

Woke-ism, you see, is a crime against our common humanity as surely as it is a denial of God's authoritative means by which He communicates and communes with us human beings.
Rev 
Gregory P Schulz, DMin, PhD