An Americanized spiritual malformation is cultivated and manifested in many who adopt a culture war paradigm of engagement with others in politics, ethics, or religion (with ready-made support from talk radio, podcasts, cable news networks, and social media). This happens on both the right and the left. It shows up in pulpits across our country. The malformation I have in mind shows up in a variety of Christian communities, in a variety of ways, hindering the process and results of Christian moral and spiritual formation that is true, beautiful, and good.
I think there are problems related to sloth, pride, and humility that are created or exacerbated by adoption of the culture war paradigm. There is a worry here, however, with ascribing pride and a lack of humility to others. Is that not itself prideful, or at least not humble? It can be, and the danger of any moral critique like this lurks for those making it. I certainly have not mastered the virtue of humility, nor are pride and sloth absent from my life. The words of Blaise Pascal are helpful for anyone studying and speaking about not only humility, but character in general:
Talk about humility gives occasion for pride to the proud and humility to the humble…Few speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, dubiously of skepticism. We are nothing but lies, duplicity, contradiction, and we hide and disguise ourselves from ourselves.[1]
These are strong words (I would actually challenge the claim that “We are nothing but lies,” etc. given the goodness inherent in human beings as image-bearers of God). But the warning must be heeded; the moral and spiritual danger is real. We must do what we can to keep our talking about humility from fostering pride in us, especially when we are calling others away from pride and to more humility. It is a tension, but an unavoidable one. We can be mindful of it. We can be open to see and consider the ways we evince pride and sloth and other vices. And we should exercise care to walk in the way of humility exemplified by Jesus in the New Testament, in community with others who will help us along the Way.
In his book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, James Davison Hunter discusses the many different fronts of cultural conflict in the United States of America: the family, education, media, the arts, law, and electoral politics.[2] He defines such conflict as “political and social hostility rooted in different systems of moral understanding,” and goes on to say that “the end to which these hostilities tend is the domination of one cultural and moral ethos over all others.”[3] There are deep differences in how people view these fronts of cultural conflict and the particular issues present within them. The conflicts are often intense because they are about core beliefs, beliefs that are central to people’s identity and the sense of belonging such beliefs provide.
Hunter is right when he says that the stakes of this conflict are high: “At stake is how we as Americans will order our lives together.”[4] I want to consider something else here, something of much more import. For Christians, several other things are also at stake:
(i) how we order our lives together as citizens of the kingdom of God;
(ii) how we function as ambassadors for that kingdom in the midst of such cultural conflict; and
(iii) how our character is formed—often malformed—in such an environment.
Hunter provides a helpful analysis of the discourse of cultural warfare, which is relevant to (i)- (iii) above. The culture war is intensified by the way we engage one another on these issues in the public domain (and this was before social media!). While published in 1991, Hunter’s words remain apt for today, as he discusses strategies of fighting one’s culture war enemies using ridicule, insult, and name-calling, rather than actual dialogue; such tactics have become as or even more important than offering credible arguments.[5] In the discourse, it is vital to define one’s enemy in particular ways and to secure a monopoly on claims of legitimacy via important symbols. This all also tends toward intolerance, bigotry, and animosity.
Sadly, we see all of this in and from Christian communities. I doubt evidence is required for this, as we all have likely seen it, especially in the past 8 years or so. Simply attending to what is said from many pulpits each week as well as the dialogue, debate, sophistry, and grifting in various forms of media, including social media, provides plenty of examples. Christians across the theological and political spectrum have wrongly adopted this way of thinking and talking. A crucial failure of the culture-war paradigm of engagement is that it leads us to see other people as enemies, not fellow human beings made in God’s image. When we fall prey to this, all sorts of problems emerge.
In a culture war, we caricature others, their experiences, and their beliefs. We fail to understand, and perhaps fail to even try to understand, where they are coming from. This is because we are seeking to defeat them, rather than relate to them in the mercy, humility, and love of Jesus Christ.
The culture war approach has many other vices and fosters vice in those who adopt it. I will focus here briefly on the vice of sloth and then more extensively on the vice of pride in my next newsletter.
Consider sloth, understood as a resistance to the transformative demands of love.[8] We display the vice of sloth when we are indifferent to the needs of others, to what we owe them, and to what change might be demanded in us by fulfilling our obligations to them. When we think about issues related to the culture war, in particular those focused on by many American evangelicals, they tend to be about “others” (or at least they think they are about others). LGBTQ+ issues and abortion are clear examples of this. The aforementioned issues have become shibboleths for many (among white evangelicals, one could add issues related to race and immigration, too).
Rather than engaging people in the manner that love demands, many relate to members of the LGBTQ+ community in ways that display sloth. For example, some Christian parents condemn their gay children, kick them out of the house, prohibit them from coming home from college for the holidays, or even disown them. More generally, LGBTQ+ youth report lower levels of closeness with their parents, are more prone to suffer from homelessness, and suffer more from abuse by their parents.[9]
Rather than doing the hard work of loving our children and our neighbors as ourselves, many opt for rejecting or belittling their children and seeing their LGBTQ+ neighbors as enemies – not to be loved as Jesus urges - but as enemies, full stop. Many who have a traditional view on these issues often speak of loving people by telling them the truth, but such claims would be more convincing if they did actually speak in love, and moreso if they exemplified other forms of love, too. There is a strange preference for “speaking the truth in love” over a Christlike humble, self-denying, and sacrificial love that is also patient, kind, compassionate, merciful, and present. This is arguably, in part, another fruit of the culture war.
My conjecture, from the philosopher’s armchair, is that abortion and LGBTQ+ issues and individuals are easy targets because it is easy to condemn what you don’t experience, struggle with, or benefit from. We might add “what you fear” to this. Such issues are useful for instilling fear and thereby drawing donations to fund the culture war. If this is right, then perhaps that is why the many teachings about the value and role of wealth in God’s kingdom, and the general if not absolute rejection of violence, are minimized or even ignored by so many American Christians, including many whom we might consider to be mature in the faith.
What can we do? The answer is simple, albeit not easy. Walk in step with the Spirit. Engage others in humble love. Strive for compassionate curiosity, rather than elevating yourself as an “expert” on the issues. Stay true to your convictions, but be open to changing them as reason and God’s Spirit lead. But always stay true to that core command, to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. If we do these things, our light will shine before others who will see our good deeds and glorify our Father (Mt. 5:16).
We could use a lot more of that.
For more on these ideas, see my recent book:
[1] Blaise Pascal, Pensees (Penguin Books, 1995), 212-213.
[2] James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (Basic Books, 1991).
[3] Hunter, Culture Wars, 42.
[4] Hunter, Culture Wars, 34. Italics in original.
[5] Hunter, Culture Wars, 136.
[7]. Jesse T. Jackson, “Matt Chandler’s Deconstruction Comment Unravels Twitter,” ChurchLeaders (blog), December 7, 2021, https://churchleaders.com/news/412115-matt-chandler-deconstruction-comment-unravels-twitter.html.
[8] Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2020), ch. 5.