The back-up band played softly as the Christian entertainer with a wireless microphone introduced a song about the "upside-down" values of our culture.
"The life of a tree," he emphasized, "is not more important than the life of an unborn baby." With that the banquet hall exploded with emotion and applause.
His words, of course, were a jab—a political statement based on moral values. They are the words of war, according to James Davison Hunter, and the conflicts over abortion and the environment are only two of many fronts. In his recent book, Culture Wars, Hunter, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, was among the first to characterize America's angry divisions over abortion, homosexual rights, public education, and the definition of the family as a war. Critically acclaimed by religious and secular critics alike, this book has been quoted or reviewed in The Washington Post, The New Republic, and The New York Times, as well as Christianity Today.
Just up the road a few miles from Monticello, home to Thomas Jefferson and where President Bill Clinton's inaugural bus ride began, LEADERSHIP editors Marshall Shelley and Dave Goetz caught up with the professor. He had just returned home to Charlottesville, Virginia, after speaking about the cultural war to a group of law professors in California.
In your book, you say that underlying the political issues of abortion, the environment, gay rights, and so on is a deeper tug-of-war over moral authority. How are these specific controversies related?
These controversies tend to be framed in political terms when in fact the issues are much deeper. At stake are deeper symbolic or cultural issues.
For example, the controversy over abortion is not just about the politics of reproduction but about the meaning of motherhood and the nature of our obligations to each other. Even the debate over something as obscure as the accomplishments of Christopher Columbus is not an arcane historical debate but a controversy over what values we honor and what values we reject.
Cumulatively, these controversies point to a struggle to define the first principles by which we will order our lives together. But in every issue the question always comes back: How do we know what is right or wrong? or What is better? This is ultimately the question of moral authority: How we define the "good" society?
What are the competing definitions of "good"?
Two different sources of moral authority. Note what foundational values a person appeals to.
American public culture, broadly speaking, is a river made up of two major tributaries. One stream is the biblical culture that largely originated from Puritan intellectual and devotional life. The source of the other stream is the European Enlightenment. This was an attempt, by people like Thomas Jefferson, to revive classical humanism. From America's beginnings, then, the blending of these two streams has been turbulent.
Today's public debates over education, the family, science, the media, pit "orthodox" Americans who typically believe in a transcendent authority against "progressivist" Americans who tend to elevate human reason above all and therefore interpret life according to the spirit of the times.
These foundational differences in moral authority account for much of today's political conflicts.
Why do moral issues become political?
In this struggle, all resources are brought to bear. Most significantly, governmental support becomes a resource by which these battles are waged. Here we find the significance of elections and Supreme Court nominations and so on: at this level it's a struggle for the patronage of the state. Which side will the prince take?
How serious could this war become?
Though arguably the most modern country in the world, America is not above the kind of tribalistic struggle found in the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, or Northern Ireland. There, as here, the questions at stake are among the most fundamental: Who are we as a nation? What is the nature of our common life together? What is the "good" society that we aspire to and endeavor to pass on to our children? Those struggles, like our own, are over competing, yet nonnegotiable, ideals of national identity and purpose.
Will this culture war lead to violence?
I would not say violence is inevitable, but clearly our current struggle represents a formidable challenge to American democracy. Indeed, the last time Americans debated issues of human life and liberty and citizenship, the democratic process was suspended in favor of a violent resolution: the bloodiest war in American history, the Civil War.
You see, culture wars are inherently antidemocratic. Take abortion, for example. Each side speaks of its position as being a fundamental right. As a result, the basic tenets of each side-the right to life and the right to choose-are mutually exclusive.
When the issues are framed with that language, the democratic methods of dialogue and compromise automatically become irrelevant to the actors pursuing these agenda. We can only wait and see how our post-modern society deals with the recurring problem of national identity, violently or nonviolently.
Is there a "Christian" way to wage such a war?
Too many churches are embracing the option of power politics. They think to themselves, If we can only overturn Roe v. Wade or get our people into the Supreme Court then everything will be all right again.
The cultural agenda of the Reagan and Bush years is being reversed by the Clinton administration. And then in 1996, if a conservative gets elected to office and Congress changes hands, there will be an effort to reverse the agenda of the Clinton administration. And back and forth it promises to go.
The problem is that each side tries to foist a political solution on the problem, but there are no lasting political answers to a culture war. The true solutions can only be "prepolitical"-in the way we relate to each other as citizens over the substance of our beliefs and commitments.
In this we need to recognize the limits of politics. What politics does best is handle administrative problems. Democratic politics creates compromise and administers these compromises. And that means Christians are never going to be satisfied with political solutions-and they shouldn't be.
Should Christians forsake political efforts then?
Not at all. Politics is a legitimate activity for Christians. But too often Christians fall into "negative" politics. Christians on both sides of the cultural divide are far better at saying what they're against than what they are for.
In the case of abortion, for example, we're told we must choose only one of two options-the life of the unborn child or the good of a young woman trapped in a difficult situation. I believe Christians need to reframe this issue in such a way that we are concerned for both. We need to think creatively how we can define reality in such a way that it becomes unthinkable to do anything but care for both.
A friend of mine recently suggested one way this might be done. Christians, he said, might go into a state and find 10,000 families who will sign a petition, saying they will adopt any child regardless of race, gender, or physical condition. They then could hold a rally on the steps of the state building, making the statement: "In the state of California, there are no unwanted children."
An act of that nature fundamentally alters the debate. Who can dispute that? That kind of action, plus a means of caring for the young mothers, would offer more hopeful options into the controversy.
Instead of forcing a moral stance on those opposed, then, you feel a more lasting solution is a positive example?
Christians need to recover the art of persuasion. Part of that persuasion means incarnating the gospel in our personal and collective lives.
An example of this comes from Chuck McIlhenny, the Presbyterian pastor I profiled at the beginning of Culture Wars. For all of his outspoken opposition to gay rights, he, his family, and his church still carry on a ministry of compassion to AIDS patients (most of whom are homosexuals). It's their way of expressing "love for the sinner."
Questioning whether today's widespread concern for people with AIDS will last, McIlhenny said to me, "It's possible that in fifty years time, the only people caring for the dying AIDS patient will be the Christians. We're the only ones who have a compelling reason to do so."
He may be on to something. His statement is a powerful testimony to one of the most effective means of engaging the culture war: to incarnate the compassion of Christ, even, and especially, to those with whom one disagrees.
What steps can pastors take to help their people clarify the issues in these conflicts?
Most people operate with a recipe knowledge of public affairs and of their faith. They can repeat the slogans but they cannot articulate in any great depth why they take the positions they do. Thus, when they find themselves in an argument over issues like homosexuality, the funding of the arts, or abortion, they often articulate little more than their personal feelings, tastes, and preferences.
Let me give you an illustration. In one sociology of religion class, I asked all the students about their religious background and commitments. One young woman named Barb said she was a Christian.
"What tradition of Christian faith do you identify with?" I asked. "The northern European traditions? English pietism?"
Silence. I could see she was groping for something to say.
"Professor Hunter," she replied, "I don't know how to answer that question. I just know I love Jesus."
I admired both her simplicity and boldness, but I was concerned at her lack of identity. She was unable to articulate anything about her faith except her devotion. Though she had grown up in Sunday school, she knew nothing about Calvin, Luther, Zwingli, or Hus. She not only couldn't explain the background of her beliefs, she couldn't articulate how her beliefs could play a part in a healthy society.
This is just a case in point that I've seen again and again. Churches have to do better at passing on to the Barbs of this world their rich traditions of moral understanding and reasoning. This will enable them to speak a language beyond their emotions, making them competent for civic, public debate. This is, in many respects, what Robert Bellah and his colleagues were arguing and promoting in their book Habits of the Heart.
Are there any lessons from church history to steer us through this minefield?
I think the first three centuries of Christianity are filled with examples. Believers back then lived out their faith without political power.
But American Christians do have a certain measure of political clout. How should it be used?
The hard question everyone needs to ask is What are our expectations of political power?
The goal of both camps in America's culture war seems to be to conquer America's public life through power politics, hoping that the opposition will just vanish or "come around to see things our way." That's not going to happen anytime soon. Utopian politics of the kind we see today are a guarantee of sustained conflict.
The only democratic way beyond a culture war is through it-through the messy, tedious, seemingly endless task of arguing through the substance underneath all of these issues. This does not mean one should compromise one's ideals. Nevertheless, one can be confident that the democratic outcome will be something less than heaven on earth.
What is the most pressing need of the hour?
All of us are too eager to speak of our own special interests. We need to raise our sights to the common good. We need a vision of the common good that respects our traditions as inviolable but at the same time recognizes that we do live with people with whom we fundamentally disagree.
"The cleavages at the heart of the contemporary culture war are created by what I would like to call the impulse toward orthodoxy and the impulse toward progressivism. …
Orthodoxy … is the commitment on the part of adherents to an external, definable, and transcendent authority. … Within cultural progressivism, by contrast, moral authority tends to be defined by the spirit of the modern age, a spirit of rationalism and subjectivism."
-James Davison Hunter in Culture Wars
"What finally unites the orthodox and the progressive across tradition and divides the orthodox and progressive within tradition are different formulations of moral authority."
-James Davison Hunter in Culture Wars
"The polarization of contemporary public discussion is in fact intensified by and institutionalized through the very media by which that discussion takes place. It is through these media that public discourse acquires a life of its own; not only do the categories of public rhetoric become detached from the intentions of the speaker, they also overpower the subtleties of perspective and opinion of the vast majority of citizens who position themselves "somewhere in the middle" of these debates. … Middling positions and the nuances of moral commitment, then, get played into the grid of opposing rhetorical extremes."
-James Davison Hunter in Culture Wars
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
