The figurative war became a literal one when a white supremacist terrorist shot and killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, SC. We've seen Confederate flags coming down and rainbow flags going up. And we've seen a lot of grandstanding by local politicians.
I think Pat Buchanan was the first person I heard use the term "culture war," though certainly Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority thought of themselves in much the same way. These are people who believe it is a divine mandate to seize the culture from humanists, atheists, and other non-Christians so as to enact laws based upon the morality of the Bible, as interpreted by their leaders.
But they're going to lose.
They are going to lose and they already have. Many times.
As Neil Carter pointed out in a brilliant post last week, modern evangelicals like to pretend that they were on the cutting edge of the Civil Rights Movement. But a careful examination of source materials of the era does not bear this out. The most conservative evangelical denominations were those that defended the practice of slavery and it is no surprise that most of these fought against desegregation. Bob Jones University did not admit black students until 1970 and then continued a policy of prohibiting interracial dating.
The movement gained much steam in the years following Roe v. Wade, although many evangelical leaders were initially rather lukewarm on the issue of abortion. There was rock and rap music, women's rights, evolution v. intelligent design, marijuana, and gay rights . . . And there's something interesting about that list.
In every single case, it is clear that the culture has moved progressively toward secular values. Yes, we have Tipper Gore stickers on our CDs, but it's pretty rare to hear of anyone trying to ban a record. Women still make just 78 cents on every dollar a man makes, but very few Americans think this state of affairs is preferable. We are woefully behind other industrialized nations in accepting evolution as a fact, but more Americans do now than ever before. Marijuana is being legalized in more and more states and we will probably see a change in federal policy in the next few years. And now there is last week's SCOTUS ruling legalizing gay marriage in every state of the union.
The extreme right sees nefarious forces at work. There is a vast communist conspiracy, it is the liberal media, or Satan is at work. Given the energy and money spent to defeat these causes, it seems only reasonable to imagine that your enemies have dark and unimaginable tools to work with.
I think the truth is more mundane.
The Christian Right is going to lose because most of them actually like the world they live in. And who could blame them? One article floating around social media this week listed companies that were celebrating gay marriage, including Visa and Mastercard, Coke and Pepsi, Facebook and Twitter. Jesus may have told his followers to take up their crosses, but most evangelicals I know would have a hard time giving up Coca-Cola.
Witness the Texas pastor who announced that he was "ready to burn" to protest gay marriage, only to clarify after the court's decision that it was, of course, meant figuratively. And can you blame him? I mean, I'm sure living in Texas is no picnic, but he probably hasn't even had a chance to see Jurassic World and he still hasn't gotten the iPhone 6 yet.
Contrast this with civil rights leaders who endured beatings, dogs, and lynchings to secure liberties for people of every color. Can you really imagine hundreds of thousands of evangelicals ready to die just to keep two guys from registering at Macy's?
I eschew the term "liberal" (a topic for another time) but I like the word "progressive," for this very reason. "Progressive" values are the ones that lead to real progress in our culture. They are the values that lead us from superstition to the scientific method, from feudalism to equity, from oppression to liberty. They are the values that gave us vaccination and the moon landing. But they are also the values that gave us rock and roll and cable television.
Because conservative evangelicals are first and foremost human beings, they still value progress. They may not believe in evolution, but they certainly enjoy the benefits that evolutionary biology has given us. They may not value gay marriage, but they do not want a return to marriage as it was in the first century, no matter how much they protest otherwise.
100 years ago the foremost social cause among evangelicals was the temperance movement. Today, a large number of them are social drinkers and it is unthinkable that they would support prohibition. The Coors family, one of the largest beer producers in the U.S., supports organizations like the Heritage Foundation. As important as that cause was to a large part of the American population, it was no competition with the great taste of beer. It tastes good even to fundamentalists.
100 years from now there will probably still be those who identify as conservative evangelicals. But many of them will claim that evangelicals have always supported gay marriage. Others will privately oppose it, but will agree that the rule of law is what is best for living in a pluralistic culture. They will alter their understanding of what the Bible says about it, without so much as a nod to their critics of yesteryear.
Progress is too great a temptation to resist.
Thumbs up. Good essay. Hopeful. Thanks.
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