On Sunday (August 29), Texas pastor Ed Young said in a sermon that he and Fellowship Church had been “canceled” last week by media giant Meta after they were disallowed from promoting a paid advertisement for their sermon series “Woke or Awake” on Facebook.
“Well, I got canceled this week,” Young said as he took the stage. “Our friends at Facebook just canceled me. Our incredible media team put together these ads, and we showed these ads. And, for some reason, Mark Zuckerberg and his friends didn’t dig them.”
Young then directed the congregation’s attention to the screen, where the ad began to play. In it, Young said, “Everywhere we turn, we’re getting hit by the wave of wokeism. Racism. Our sexuality. The educational system. Our government. Even our churches—we’re afraid to talk about what it means to be woke. We’re gonna take a deep dive into wokeism and discover it is an ideology that is satanic. It is dangerous.”
The ad was met with cheering and applause from the congregation.
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“So here’s what they sent to us,” Young told the church. “‘This ad doesn’t comply with our advertising policies.’”
Young then immediately pivoted to talking about soft serve ice cream, a discussion he would use as the opening illustration for his sermon. After serving himself a swirl cone from a machine onstage, Young said, “The thing about ice cream is, if that’s all you eat, eventually you’ll die.”
Soft serve ice cream has been the featured metaphor throughout Young’s series.
“I’m afraid that the church, in general, I’m afraid that many leaders and pastors just are serving this soft serve ice cream—soft males serving soft serve ice cream,” Young went on to say. The soft serve he referred to was what he called, “progressive Christianity” and “liberal Christianity,” which Young said has “infiltrated the church.”
“What is wokeology? I made that term up,” Young said. “Basically, it’s this: ‘I am central and the source of truth. It’s about me.’ And in wokeism, we’ve learned in this post modernistic period, man has really looked inside of himself for answers.”
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“This, though, has infiltrated the church: soft serve ice cream,” Young argued. “What is a woke church? I’m glad you’re asking—I could tell you were asking that question. Number one, they, being wokers, emphasize the love of God over the holiness of God.”
