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The Culture War
I read with interest the essay by Janice Shaw Crouse, Ph.D., entitled
"Winning the Culture War," recently published on this listserv (VirtueOnline).
In her view, the only hope for the country is for conservatives to
politically defeat the liberals and reintroduce Judeo-Christian values. What
does Crouse see wrong with the country?
The sins Dr. Crouse mentions in her essay are as follows: teenage pregnancy,
sex outside of marriage, abortion, drugs, unwed births, divorce,
cohabitation, STD's, homosexuality, and the shooting of innocent school
children. In her view, these evils are the results of a liberal onslaught
carried out by the media, the universities, liberal think tanks, and by
progressive humanists feminists. The corruption is also promoted by
organizations such as MoveOn, People for the American Way, the ACLU, Planned
Parenthood, the National Education Association, and so forth. She believes
that conservatives must enter the political process to reverse these evils.
What are we to make of this?
First, she is not dealing with the fundamental realities of American life. A
fundamental, daily reality for virtually all Americans is the American
economic system composed primarily of giant corporations. These corporations
continually expand in order to compete in the market, offset downturns, and
give a good return on the shareholders’ investments. To expand, these
corporations must produce an ever-growing flood of goods and services which
the public must be induced to consume. To promote continuous consumption,
corporations must advertise and the American public is saturated with
advertising from morning until night. This advertising does not appeal to
the sacrificial self created in Jesus by new birth from above. New persons
in Christ Jesus daily take up their crosses, restrain their passions,
sacrifice themselves for the good of others, avoid excessive consumption,
turn the other cheek, and serve others rather than seeking to be served.
Jesus taught this quite clearly. He also lived it. Advertising, by contrast,
violates these Christian norms relentlessly. It offers exactly what the
devil offered Jesus -- bodily satisfactions, power and wealth, and personal
glory. As a result, the whole nation is awash in a sea of sinful
consumption. This is the world in which we live.
As long as the country affirms an economic system based on expansion and
consumption, the country will naturally affirm a permissive approach to life
that promotes the evils Dr. Crouse deplores. Only when Christians began to
obey the economic teaching of Scripture, limits, concern for the poor, the
evils of unbridled material accumulation, will there be any real hope for
winning the culture war. In my view, Dr. Crouse failed to get at the root of
the problem. The root problem is that this country is committed to an
economic order that requires the continuous satisfaction of sinful desires,
for apart from ever-expanding consumption, the economic order would
collapse. In short, the economic order is anti-Christian, and one sign of
that fact is the sinful sexual craze described by Dr. Crouse
Further, in order to maximize profits, the giant corporations require a
continuous stream of cheap raw materials, cheap labor, and new investment
opportunities. These can be found overseas and the giant corporations scour
the world to satisfy their needs. America now sits atop a gigantic
world-wide enterprise, enmeshed with other powerful nations and economic
combines, which together dominate the world. This economic system
concentrates enormous wealth in a few hands, and these people by and large,
direct the economic order and run the government. American politicians are
wealthy, funded by the very wealthy, and beholden to the rich and powerful.
They know that their foreign economic interests, such things as oil in the
Middle East, minerals and food products in Latin America, cheap industrial
goods from Asia, and so forth, must be protected. For decades, the United
States has meted out a steady stream of wars, kidnappings, invasions, and
subversions. The populace, including Christians, rarely judge these
interventions by Christian standards, nor do they take the time to discover
what is really happening. Perhaps a few of these foreign interventions could
be justified by Christian just war theory, but most are the brutal
protection of American interests papered over by words such as “democracy”
and “freedom.” Seen in the large, they are the continuation of the 19th
century conquest and exploitation of the North American land mass. The
result, beginning with African slaves and the Indians of North America, and
now with the people of Iraq, is terrible suffering.
Many people find it difficult to believe the foregoing. Why? The nation as a
whole solves a fundamental problem, the need for economic and political
security. As a result, many people are incapable of fully grasping the
country's evils because they worship the country as a god that protects and
nurtures them. For example, one of my conservative, Christian friends once
told me that "Ronald Reagan is my hero, my John Wayne." I then asked him how
he liked the Democratic Party. He didn't. I asked him to tell me what was
wrong with the Democrats. He listed a number of evils and I agreed with many
of them. I then pointed out that Scripture clearly teaches that all persons
are sinners. All of us, from great to small, hurt the people around us and
misuse the resources God has given us. For those who possess great influence
and wealth, as do political parties and governmental leaders, these sins
have terrible consequences. For most of the rest of us, it is our family and
friends who suffer. I then asked my conservative friend to tell me the sins
of the Republican Party. He could think of nothing, except one trivial case
of some Republican who had taken a bride or something to that effect.
Consistently, he had made a god, an idol, out of the country, the flag,
Ronald Reagan, and John Wayne. As a result, he filtered out all evidence
that would diminish his god. The result of his blindness, and he is not
alone, is blind support for public policies that cause great suffering. This
idolatry is a terrible sin, a violation of the first commandment.
By focusing on sexual sins, Dr. Crouse failed to grasp the depth of the
problem. She writes as if the culture war was between conservatives and
liberals, as if the conservatives were right and the liberals wrong. It
isn't a war between conservatives and liberals. It is a war of all of us
against God. That's the real war. That is why Jesus had to die. This
country, liberals and conservatives together, is an idolatrous nation. Its
three primary gods are Venus, Mammon, and Mars, the headlong pursuit of sex,
wealth, and military power. As a broad generalization, conservatives worship
Mammon and Mars, liberals worship Venus and Mammon.
The true God, the great God, will not brook this idolatry.
He is just. Sooner or later we will reap what we sow. To avoid that outcome,
we need to repent, not just of sexual sins, but all sins, including the
headlong pursuit of wealth and power.
What was the attitude of Jesus or the prophets in the face of a nation that
would not repent? First of all, they did not hate or denigrate their
country. Hating one’s country is as idolatrous as blind love. No, they
grieved for their nation, knowing their people would suffer for their sins.
And they were right, the nation was destroyed. Here is Jeremiah,
experiencing the coming judgment even before it happens.
Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the
agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For
I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry.
Disaster follows disaster; the whole land lies in ruins. In an instant
my tents are destroyed, my shelter in a moment. How long must I see the
battle standard and hear the sound of the trumpet? (Jer. 4:19-21)
This is Jesus, sick at heart over the impending destruction.
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and
stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children
together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not
willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will
not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of
the Lord." (Lk. 13:34-5)
Let me recommend a few books, starting with the Bible. I take
it for granted that most Christians, at least those who adhere to a
straightforward reading of the Bible understand that Scripture commands
sexual purity, sex restricted to a man and woman in marriage. I affirm
that biblical norm and am very sorry for the immense suffering caused by
failure to uphold that norm. I do not take it for granted that most
Christians are willing to understand and obey what the Bible has to say on
war and economic justice. To that end, read Amos and Luke's gospel and
notice what God says about the poor and economic justice. Ask yourself a
simple question, Is our economic system biblical? Secondly, read R.H. Tawney,
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism(New York: The New American
Library of World Literature, Inc., 1955), as well as Karl Polayni,
Origins of our Time, the Great Transformation (London: Victor Gollancz
LTD, 1945). There you will discover that the economic perspective that
dominates our culture is a radical departure from both Scripture and Church
tradition. Further, check out the website of Veterans for Peace (www.veteransforpeace.org)
and ruthlessly face what they have to say. It seems obvious to me that the
war in Iraq is both illegal and immoral. Finally, read Jim Wallis, God's
Politics: Why the Right Got It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (HarperSanFrancisco,
2006). It is excellent.
Finally, like Dr. Crouse, I am in favor of political involvement, especially
by people who repent and believe the Bible, all of it.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
October, 2006home