This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
People have almost given up on bridging the divides in American life. Republicans and Democrats cannot pass any bipartisan legislation or even watch the same Super Bowl halftime shows. And yet throughout the last two decades of polarization, one figure seems to have discerned the code for bringing both sides of the culture war together. His name was Jeffrey Epstein.
The Epstein files have largely been redacted, with parts of them hidden from us, but we’ve seen enough to know that Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell were two of the most corrupt and connected sex criminals in American history. Despite how much is still confusing, we can also see this: On at least one important point, the most outlandish theories were right. There really is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses. And many of them were people building a following by telling others that there is a global conspiracy of wealthy, elite sexual perverts fleecing the masses.
Reading through the names of those connected with Epstein, one can hardly believe the range listed there. Some were unsurprising: for instance, creepy filmmaker Woody Allen or the man formerly known as Prince Andrew. But even then, the scope is unsettling. Even the Dalai Lama had to put out a statement noting that he was never involved with Epstein. Just as incredible, many of the people listed were partying with those they spend a lot of time telling the rest of us to hate.
Both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were apparently friendly with Epstein. The New Age syncretist Deepak Chopra is in the documents many times—often with shady, enigmatic phrases—but so are those who accused the pope of New Age syncretism. With Middle Eastern tensions what they are, still the files include both sheikhs and Israelis. All over the files are connections with both left-wing populist provocateur Noam Chomsky and right-wing populist provocateur Steve Bannon. Epstein makes fun of evangelicals yet recommends a James Dobson article.
How can this be?
Maybe one reason is that Jeffrey Epstein figured out the deep, dark secret of this moment: The people who fight culture wars often believe what they say, but the people who lead culture wars often don’t.
The heiress Leona Helmsley, when accused of defrauding the government, famously said in a moment worthy of Marie Antoinette, “Only the little people pay taxes.” Maybe the Epstein class is telling us, “Only the little people have culture wars.”
Chomsky, after all, spent a lifetime arguing that wealth inequality was a moral atrocity, that billionaires in their luxury were taking advantage of the working class. Whatever is later proven about his personal participation, or lack thereof, in crimes, we know already that flying on Epstein’s private jet was not much a problem for his solidarity-with-the-workers-of-the-world conscience.
A sign behind Steve Bannon’s seat on YouTube videos of his podcast reads, “There are NO conspiracies, but there are NO coincidences.” Yet in recovered emails, Bannon reportedly told Epstein how he could avoid accountability and put together a populist, nationalist, Catholic, and evangelical coalition—with the implication that it could end the #MeToo movement. He said this kind of coalition could “reverse Alabama,” presumably referring to the rejection of US Senate candidate Roy Moore over allegations of his sexual misconduct with girls.
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Referring to the Hollywood-led Time’s Up movement, which argued that men should be held accountable for rape, harassment, and molestation, Bannon wrote to an Epstein already convicted for sex crimes: “This coalition staves off [‘]times up’ for next decade plus.” Even while those in these files sought to mobilize religious people to protect predatory men, Bannon and Epstein in emails reportedly discussed ways to discredit Pope Francis.
The main priority coming out of the Epstein revelations should be justice for the survivors and victims of these crimes and accountability for anyone who participated in them or covered them up. But perhaps we also ought to learn one other thing: that we have all been duped.
Some of the same people on the right who told us culture wars are necessary for sexual virtue and the protection of children could look away when they saw these problems in one of their own.
Some of the same people on the left who told us that the sexual revolution is about empowering women and girls and that the oppressed should be liberated suddenly lost their nerve when the predatory misogynist had their same politics—and a yacht.
Across their political and cultural differences, how can these sketchy figures—almost all of whom have contributed to our cultural state of seeing politics as a religion—pal around this way? The Bible already tells us: “And Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before this they had been at enmity with each other” (Luke 23:12, ESV). Their real goal was not policy objectives or cultural well-being; it was power and money and anarchy of the appetite.
Predators know one of the easiest ways to go unseen is to change the moral calculus. As long as we define virtue and vice by a set of political or cultural or “worldview” opinions rather than character and integrity and behavior, they can avert accountability forever.
Holding opinions, after all, is easy. Once a person chooses a tribe, the brain easily adjusts to whatever set of slogans and shibboleths he or she needs to repeat. The pursuit of holiness or even simple human decency and accountability is much more difficult. As long as we can assume that whoever agrees with us on the “defining issues” of the day is good and whoever disagrees is bad, we end up with precisely what we have now: chaos, hatred, a fracturing public order, and the loss of institutions and norms.
People in your church have blocked one another on social media because of how life-or-death important a set of political opinions seems to be. But those who egg them on have not blocked each other. They are laughing themselves all the way to the poolside massage table.
We think we are in the middle of a future-shaping culture war, but the generals of that war are sharing emails making fun of their troops. People look to these titanic figures and assume them to be new George Washingtons or Winston Churchills or even Napoleon Bonapartes or Friedrich Nietzsches when they’re really just Caligulas. They teach us to hate each other on the basis of our red or blue jerseys, but they’re playing for the same team. They incite us to scream at one another over whether we like Bad Bunny or Kid Rock, but they’re listening to their own music.
And worst of all, they are discipling us. They are teaching us to evaluate whether we think fidelity is praiseworthy or weak or whether rape is evil or insignificant on the basis of who’s doing it. They are teaching us to evaluate which children’s screams are worth hearing on the basis of whose side it would help or hurt. The end result is that those who scream about the good of their team and the evil of the other stop believing in good or evil at all. All they come to care about is power.
No man is an island, John Donne told us. But a whole culture can be an island, and that island is Epstein’s.
We don’t have to live this way. We can choose another path. Our country hangs by a slender strand over an abyss. And it might just be that it did not hang itself.
Russell Moore is editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.
