A different path - 30 years of trying to transform culture into the conservative image has failed.

WORLD ^ | 11/6/08 | Cal Thomas

[XR7]

When Barack Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2009, he will do so in the 30th anniversary year of the founding of the so-called Religious Right. Born in 1979 and midwifed by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Religious Right was a reincarnation of previous religious-social movements that sought moral improvement through legislation and court rulings. Those earlier movements—from abolition (successful) to Prohibition (unsuccessful)—had mixed results.

Social movements that relied mainly on political power to enforce a conservative moral code weren't anywhere near as successful as those that focused on changing hearts. The four religious revivals, from the First Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740s to the Fourth Great Awakening in the late 1960s and early '70s, which touched America and instantly transformed millions of Americans (and American culture as a result), are testimony to that.

Thirty years of trying to use government to stop abortion, preserve opposite-sex marriage, improve television and movie content, and transform culture into the conservative evangelical image has failed. The question now becomes: Should conservative Christians redouble their efforts, contributing more millions to radio and TV preachers and activists, or would they be wise to try something else?

I opt for trying something else.

Too many conservative evangelicals have put too much faith in the power of government to transform culture. The futility inherent in such misplaced faith can be demonstrated by asking these activists a simple question: Does the secular left, when it holds power, persuade conservatives to live by their standards? Of course they do not. Why, then, would conservative evangelicals expect people who do not share their worldview and view of God to accept their beliefs when they control government?

Too many conservative evangelicals mistake political power for influence. Politicians who struggle with imposing a moral code on themselves are unlikely to succeed in their attempts to impose it on others. What is the answer, then, for conservative evangelicals who are rightly concerned about the corrosion of culture, the indifference to the value of human life, and the living arrangements of same- and opposite-sex couples?

The answer depends on the response to another question: Do conservative evangelicals want to feel good, or do they want to adopt a strategy that actually produces results? Clearly partisan politics have not achieved their objectives. Do they think they can succeed by committing themselves to 30 more years of the same?

If results are what conservative evangelicals want, they already have a model. It is contained in the life and commands of Jesus of Nazareth. Suppose millions of conservative evangelicals engaged in an old and proven type of radical behavior. Suppose they followed the admonition of Jesus to "love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison and care for widows and orphans," not as ends, as so many liberals do by using government, but as a means of demonstrating God's love for the whole person in order that people might seek Him?

Such a strategy could be more "transformational" than electing a new president, even the first president of color. But in order to succeed, such a strategy would not be led by charismatic figures, who would raise lots of money, be interviewed on Sunday talk shows, author books, and make gobs of money.

God teaches in His Word that His power (if that is what conservative evangelicals want and not their puny attempts at grabbing earthly power) is made perfect in weakness. He speaks of the tiny mustard seed, the seemingly worthless widow's mite, of taking the last place at the table and the humbling of one's self, the washing of feet, and similar acts and attitudes; the still, small voice. How did conservative evangelicals miss this and instead settle for a lesser power, which in reality is no power at all? When did they settle for an inferior "kingdom"?

Evangelicals are at a junction. They can take the path that will lead them to more futility and ineffective attempts to reform culture through government, or they can embrace the far more powerful methods outlined by the One they claim to follow. By following His example, they will decrease, but He will increase. They will get no credit, but they will see results. If conservative evangelicals choose obscurity and seek to glorify God, they will get much of what they hope for, but can never achieve, in and through politics.

[The Citizen Soldier]

However, conservatives started much later in the offense against liberals, and have never pursued them as viciously as liberals were willing to fight against conservatives.

You're spot on.

Rahm Emanuel is the gold standard. Unless we have people willing to fight as hard (dare I say, dirty?) as Mr. Emanuel, we will be longing for the days when we use to get 100 EV's in a presidential election.

[longtermmemmory]

attention conservatives, IF YOU WANT TO WIN THE CULTURE WARS, you must be elected to the school boards.

YOU MUST SELECT THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULUM.

obama is following the path of the 1938 national socialists by taking the children.

[achilles2000]

We have to walk and chew gum at the same time.

In addition to politics, we have to remake the culture. Doing that requires that we reallocate the time wasted on television, etc, and put it into changing our families, churches, communities, and local institutions.

Moreover, nothing will improve if we don’t resolve to give up the middle class welfare entitlement known as “free public education”. In fact, without our children the left would collapse because giving them our children provides cashflow (every child in the public schools is a revenue unit) and impressionable minds to warp with leftist ideology.

The problem is that principled politics is relatively easy. Changing the culture by rescuing our children, changing spending and viewing patterns, and the many other things that would transform the country virtually overnight require real effort. Remaking the culture involves doing things that we can do without asking anyone else’s permission and without anyone else’s approval. That is the big opportunity. But too many of us are all for “conservatism” as long as we don’t really have to reorder our lives.

This post isn’t aimed at you - I’m just taking this opportunity to vent.

[carikadon]

Understood, but you can only do that by eliminating the Teachers Unions and the unnecessary layers and layers of Liberal Bureaucracy that run our public school systems. Remember, these are government agencies. Hard to fire government workers.

I live in Texas, still pretty conservative. I am just saying that the Dims are going to do their best to eliminate Home Schooling in all States. Not just CA. My son and daughter-in-law (who was home schooled and is deaf) are going to home school my grandson. They live in FLA.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Thomas isn’t saying abandon efforts to change government, he’s just (very wisely) saying to abandon efforts to use it to directly engineer culture. What’s needed is to stick to secular, concrete issues when working to influence government. Property rights, cutting taxes, RKBA — these are the areas where a solid majority can be built, but only if social/religious issues are taken off the table. And when people have more control over their money and property, they are better able to live their lives and raise their children according to their own beliefs.

The RKBA issue, for example, would have been definitively won decades ago, if conservatives had not been consistently packaging the issue in candidates who were simultaneously ranting against abortion and gay marriage. Hordes of radical feminists and gays would have gotten on board, with RKBA dovetailing perfectly with their internal political rallying point of “we’re constantly victims of violence”. Once that issue is won, there is inevitably a subtle shift in worldview, away from “government needs to take care of me”, to “I can and should take care of myself”.

[Tallguy]

In fact, without our children the left would collapse because giving them our children provides cashflow (every child in the public schools is a revenue unit) and impressionable minds to warp with leftist ideology.

It's more than that. Liberal parents have fewer children on average. Without the children of non-liberals locked into the public schools, their political ideas would literally die-out in a couple of generations. This is why amnesty for illegal immigrants is the current cause celeb amoung libs.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm

Alliance for the Separation of School & State
1071 N. Fulton Street
Fresno CA 93728
ph: 559.499.1776
fax: 559.499.1703
email: contact@schoolandstate.org

The founder died on Election Day... how sad!

Fresno, California rocks! It’s the home of this fine organization and our own beloved FreeRepublic!

[Alcibiades]

Agreed, this sounds exactly like surrender. What would Christianity be if they had practiced this during the early days of the church? Would it even exist?

Christians are called to live based on their beliefs. Part of living is to take part in the political process. Politics is the means that Christians have to influence the world. Jesus himself never hesitated to take offense at those who were working against the church. The moneylenders in the temple, pharisees, and others. Christians are called to pray for their enemies but to also act as caretakers for their fellow man and be good stewards of the earth. How can Christians fulfill their purpose if they are turning their backs to the world?

America would still be a colony of England if the founders (primarily religious) had done what is being advocated here. Slavery would still exist in America if not for Christians opposing it. 30 years is the blink of an eye when looked at from the history of Christianity. It's certainly not enough time to judge if Christians should remove themselves from politics.

[gipper81]

Rahm Emanuel is the gold standard. Unless we have people willing to fight as hard (dare I say, dirty?) as Mr. Emanuel, we will be longing for the days when we use to get 100 EV's in a presidential election.

I agree to an extent. However, we are not permitted to fight dirty. We are permitted to fight with 1 or 2 hands tied. (However, that does beg the question whether we should accept those terms).

If we ever did have a "Rahm" he would be demonized by all. Was Lee Atwater that guy for us? To a degree, but not like this guy Rahm.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

>If we ever did have a “Rahm” he would be demonized by all.

Sarah Palin anyone?

[rdb3]

Too many conservative evangelicals have put too much faith in the power of government to transform culture.

I think along this line.

You can only go so far using the power of the state to change culture in a Judeo/Christian manner.

As a born-again Believer in Christ, I think the real impact on our culture we have is in how we live our lives as representatives of Him and in bringing glory to Him.

What I really find puzzling is how we can act somewhat un-Christian towards not just the world, but to each other, all the while claiming His Name.

Amazing << Hear this. Feel this, and tell me that this isn't music.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

Actually it was Karl Rove. So you are/were right. Now we need a new guy.

[achilles2000]

They need the impressionable minds of the children in government schools because they lack enough young impressionable minds of their own ;-)

[Tallguy]

You said it better...

[Tallguy]

My reading is that this is exactly how the Christianity evolved from a clandestine, persecuted religion into the dominant religion of the late Roman Empire. Frequently the local Bishop was the only moral man that you could turn to to gain assistance, the local Roman official being either corrupt, disinterested, or a pagan-barbarian carpetbagger. The Church grew as a parallel power-structure of sorts.

[Houghton M.]

Respectfully, I don’t see most of what you wrote here within the body of Thomas’s article. What’s RBKA? Thomas does not mention it. You outline a strategy here that makes sense to you and involves “taking the relgious issues off the table”—but it seems to be your strategy, not Thomas’s.

I was responding to Thomas. He does seem to be arguing for a withdrawal that I think is inappropriate.

You have a different agenda from Thomas. It needs to be dealt with on it’s own merits. You seem to think that “concrete” = “secular” and that being secular and concrete rather than religious will work politically. Sorry, but the religious issues are on the agenda because the Left put them there by attacking them.

You cannot have any politics devoid of religious issues because culture is a tissue of religious, language, history, sociology etc. Secularism of the right will not work. The religiously naked public square was forced on by the Left but we cannot win space in the public square simply by offering a conservative secular public square.

But even that’s beside the point. The single most conflicted issue, even among conservatives (libertarians versus social-religious conservatives) is abortion and IT IS NOT A RELIGIOUS ISSUE but rather a justice issue. If the unborn are innocent human individuals, then killing them is unjust.

From that perspective, framing the debate as a question whether “religious issues” should be “taken off the table” already gets us off on the wrong foot.

And that’s where I would also fault Thomas. “The Religious Right” is a label forced on that movement by its enemies. Thomas should not even be framing the issue as “religious.” Because what launched the so-called “religious right” in the 1970s was Roe V. Wade, which was not about religion but about plain justice. True, it was primarily religious people who rose up against the plain injustice of RvW, but that does not mean it was a religious issue. Framing the debate as a religious issue was the first great victory of the pro-aborts.

[Houghton M.]

I do agree about your point that it’s not wise to try to use the government to directly engineer culture. But I think Thomas went farther than that. And while I do agree that it is foolish to use the government to engineer culture, we are forced, by necessity, to resist Leftist efforts to engineer culture because those efforts are killing our culture. If not resisted, by political means, they will eventually destroy us. We cannot withdraw from the political struggle. No, the political struggle if seen solely as a technique-political struggle rather than arising from the broader conservative culture, will fail. But even as we try to “grow the culture” we have to take concrete political defensive positions, using the levers of government recourse that are available to us. And religious issues necessarily will be part of that because the Left has used government power against our religious beliefs. There is no such thing as a purely secular political struggle.

[Heartland Mom]

Changing the culture by rescuing our children, changing spending and viewing patterns, and the many other things that would transform the country virtually overnight require real effort. Remaking the culture involves doing things that we can do without asking anyone else’s permission and without anyone else’s approval. That is the big opportunity. But too many of us are all for “conservatism” as long as we don’t really have to reorder our lives.

Agreed. And it isn't enough to rescue our own children. We should be doing that anyway. No, we have to reach out to the brainwashed children of Dims. In addition to school, we need to use the media to our own advantage. Disney and Nickelodeon networks have lots of kids programing. Work on getting our messages out there first because a majority of Lib parents just plop their kids down in front of the electronic babysitter.

[outinyellowdogcountry]

There is definately a role for Christians in the public forum. We should do all the things he says but we cannot totally back off from government. He must be tired of the fight. I understand but think where we would be if conservative Christians had not engaged the left. I believe that abortion was legalized when the church was telling people not to get involved with the government and were busy condemning dancing and drinking. The real attack from Satan slipped in under the door. How can it be wrong to oppose legislation of immoral issues?