Cultural Change

There is a massive cultural change taking place in US at the moment, and it is going against Christians. The gay marriage issue is just one little symptom. It is true that Christians in the US have massive privilege, but it is a legacy from the past, and it will disappear. It is true that 70 percent of Americans call themselves Christian, but that is just identification with the dominant culture. Once they realise that Christianity is no longer dominant, they will quickly change their allegiance.

The US is about twenty-years behind NZ. In the 1960s, the church here had a place of privilege here too. Now it is considered a joke by the media. Back then, most politician would say they went to church, even if they rarely did. Now if you say you are a Christian you will not get elected. All my school friends knew what denomination they were. Now no one cares.

Americans Christian will soon find themselves in the same situation. Looking at Christians or churches on American television programs, you will see where the future is going. So Christians in America should be worried. In such a violent country it could lead to nasty persecution once it is realised that they are a minority.

On the other hand, I have no sympathy with Christian grumbling, because the situation is where it is because they have failed to preach the gospel. They are the cause of the problem they are grumbling about, because it is evidence that they have failed to the job.

The situation is made messy, because American Christianity has taken on a lot of junk from US nationalism, which has nothing to with the gospel. Not only has this contributed to the failure of the gospel, but it make American Christianity look rather ugly. Hopefully, losing the culture war will expose the junk, and strip it away. The American church will have to get back to the Christian core to recover a message that will influence in their culture again.

Lost Cultural Battle

I do not expect to find wisdom in the New York Times, but David Brooks’ editorial on the Supreme Court decision summed up the situation really well.

Here is my take on the situation. A wise general knows:

• Persisting with a battle that is lost does not help win the war.
• Letting the enemy choose the battleground unnecessarily gives him a huge advantage.
• Fight battles at places where you are strong and the enemy is weak is the best way to win the war.

The battle for the culture was lost a long time ago. Continuing to fight that battle, as if we could still win it is pointless. We need to step back, and find a new way to challenge the culture, on a ground where we are strong.

David Brooks was right when he wrote,

Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.

Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture...

These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution... a culture war that, at least over the near term, they are destined to lose.

For four or five centuries, culture was shaped by newspapers and pamphlets, but mostly the pulpit. The sermon was the main culture-forming event of the week, so Christian values had a huge influence.

In the modern world, culture is determined by television, movies and social media, not by ideas from a book that most people have never read.

At first it seemed like television was on our side, because it portrayed a pseudo-Christian reality. When I first started watching television in the 1960s, programs like the Donna Reed Show portrayed real two-parent familes. That was the norm. There were single-parent shows like the Andy Griffith show and My Three Sons, but they were interesting because they were clearly abnormal. In hindsight, I presume they were the thin end of the wedge, because they made a single-parent family look practical.

Of course, the two-parent family living in the suburbs and driving everywhere that was portrayed in these programs was a miserable imitation of the Christian family. That is why it was unable to withstand the pressure of cultural change. The cultural battle was already lost, because Christians believed this pathetic distortion was “the Christian family”.

The 1970s brought the Happy Days of the Cunningham family, but even in this program the counter-cultural Fonz gradually moved from lurking in the shadows and into the heart of the family.

Now the counter-culture has becomes the culture. On modern US Television, alternative relationships are the norm, and they have been for a long time. In contrast, Christian families are rare, or odd. Christians might be forty percent of the population, but they are missing from television, except in the irrelevant ghetto of Christian television.

The battle for the culture has been lost for nearly twenty years. Those who understand this were not surprised by the Supreme Court decision. The judges are old, so they are just catching up to where the rest of the culture arrived a decade ago.

Continuing to confront a hostile culture about the sexual revolution just makes us look ugly. Especially the news is full of stories of church leaders joining the sexual revolution.

Last night on our TV news, I saw two men with Bibles standing on a street in the US and yelling at a 9 year old girl waving a rainbow flag. It was probably a set up, but it made Christians look ugly, especially because these men are not shouting at pastors who commit adultery. For many viewers, the incident would have confirmed their view that Christians are angry, hateful and hypocritical. If Jesus is like that, they are not interested in him.

In my next post, I would look at better battle strategy, one that will enable us to win the war, by losing, like Jesus did.