I listen to Dennis Prager when I get the chance. He is a Jewish Conservative talk show host who is calm, articulate and gracious. He column today in Jewish World Review speaks to the issue of the culture wars and does the best job I have seen in quite some time in defining what the culture wars actually are.
I have grown a bit weary of the secular press characterizing the culture wars as an attempt for a few narrow, fundamentalist, right-wing zealots to impose a theocracy on the rest of the culture, a culture which we are told has been secular since the days of Thomas Jefferson. I am growing more weary of the tendency of many evangelical Christian authors and bloggers to essentially say the same thing, that Christian involvement in politics (read conservative Republicanism) is unbiblical and damages the church. More on that in a later post.
Prager does a great service by providing a bit of clarity. What the culture wars are about is not religion per se, but morality based on a text that is shared across many very different viewpoints:
Very often the dividing line in America is portrayed as between those who believe in G-d and those who don't. But the vast majority of Americans believe in G-d, and belief in G-d alone rarely affects people's values. Many liberals believe in G-d; many conservatives do. What matters is not whether people believe in G-d but what text, if any, they believe to be divine. Those who believe that He has spoken through a given text will generally think differently from those who believe that no text is divine. Such people will usually get their values from other texts, or more likely from their conscience and heart.
I find the emphasis on the word "text" telling. Postmodern thinkers, imbibed rather freely by many cutting edge evangelicals today, like to speak of texts. But for them texts have no meaning until interpreted. What Prager points out is that many viewpoints exist about religion, and within those many viewpoints there is a common unified understanding about the basic meaning of certain shared texts.
An evangelical Protestant who might regard Mormonism as nothing more than a heretical cult will find himself seated next to Mormons at a rally on behalf of the Boy Scouts. An Orthodox rabbi who might never set foot in a church will join a panel of Christians in opposing the redefining of marriage.
In other words, far from being a matter of right wing fundamentalist Christians imposing a narrow view on culture, the culture war is about many folks who would strongly disagree about theology banding together on certain issues that have broad implications for society. These are issues, not about a view of God, but about public policy as it relates to a common, broad consensus on morality.
Name the issue: same-sex marriage; the morality of medically unnecessary abortions; capital punishment for murder; the willingness to label certain actions, regimes, even people "evil"; skepticism regarding the United Nations and the World Court; strong support for Israel. While there are exceptions — there are, for example, secular conservatives who share the Bible-believers' social views — belief in a G-d-based authority of the Torah is as close to a predictable dividing line as exists.
I appreciate the clarity of separating the theological differences (who is God?) from the common ethical and moral code (what is our responsibility to our wives, children, community or nation?). If you too see the difference, please pass it along to others, maybe even folks like Jim Wallis, Greg Boyd, Barack Obama.
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