Classics
These are posts that are old but good
Engaging the City of Man: Christian Faith and Politics
Posted by: Albert Mohler on September 3, 2004 Classics •
Over the last 20 years, evangelical Christians have been politically mobilized in an outpouring of moral concern and political engagement unprecedented since the crusade against slavery in the 19th century. Is this a good development? With the 2004 presidential campaign now under way, the issue of political involvement emerges anew with urgency.
To what extent should Christians be involved in the political process?
This question has troubled the Christian conscience for centuries. The emergence of the modern evangelical movement in the post World War II era brought a renewed concern for engagement with the culture and the political process. The late Carl F. H. Henry addressed evangelicals with a manifesto for Christian engagement in his landmark book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. As Dr. Henry eloquently argued, disengagement from the critical issues of the day is not an option.
An evangelical theology for political participation must be grounded in the larger context of cultural engagement. As the Christian worldview makes clear, our ultimate concern must be the glory of God. Building from that, we understand that when we are instructed by Scripture to love God and then to love our neighbor as ourselves, we are given a clear mandate for the right kind of cultural engagement.
We love our neighbor because we first love God. In His sovereignty, our Creator has put us within this cultural context in order that we may display His glory by preaching the gospel, confronting persons with God’s truth, and serving as agents of salt and light in a dark and fallen world. In other words, love of God leads us to love our neighbor—and love of neighbor requires our participation in the culture and in the political process.
Writing even as the Romans Empire fell, Augustine, the great bishop and theologian of the early church, made this case in his monumental work, The City of God. As Augustine explained, humanity is confronted by two cities—the City of God and the City of Man. The City of God is eternal, and takes as its sole concern the greater glory of God. In the City of God, all things are ruled by God’s Word, and the perfect rule of God is the passion of all its citizens.
In the City of Man, however, the reality is very different. This city is filled with mixed passions, mixed allegiances, and compromised principles. Though the City of God is marked by unconditional obedience to the command of God, citizens of the City of Man demonstrate deadly patterns of disobedience, even as they celebrate and claim their moral autonomy, and then revolt against the Creator.
Of course, we know that the City of God is eternal, even as the City of Man is passing. But this does not mean that the City of Man is ultimately unimportant, and it does not allow the church to forfeit its responsibility to love its citizens. Love of neighbor – grounded in our love for God – requires us to work for good in the City of Man, even as we set as our first priority the preaching of the gospel—the only means of bringing citizens of the City of Man into citizenship in the City of God.
Thus, Christians bear important responsibilities in both cities. Even as we know that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven, and even as we set our sights on the glory of the City of God, we must work for good, justice, and righteousness in the City of Man. We do so, not merely because we are commanded to love its citizens, but because we know that they are loved by the very God we serve.
From generation to generation, Christians often swing between two extremes, either ignoring the City of Man or considering it to be our main concern. A biblical balance establishes the fact that the City of Man is indeed passing, and chastens us from believing that the City of Man and its realities can ever be of ultimate importance. Yet, we also know that each of us is, by God’s own design, a citizen – though temporarily – of the City of Man. When Jesus instructed that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, He pointed His followers to the City of Man and gave us a clear assignment. The only alternatives that remain are obedience and disobedience to this call.
Love of neighbor for the sake of loving God is a profound political philosophy that strikes a balance between the disobedience of political disengagement and the idolatry of politics as our main priority. As evangelical Christians, we must engage in political action, not because we believe the conceit that politics is ultimate, but because we must obey our Redeemer when He commanded that we must love our neighbor.
We are concerned for the culture not because we believe that the culture is ultimate, but because we know that our neighbors must hear the gospel, even as we hope and strive for their good, peace, security, and well-being.
The Kingdom of God is not up for vote in the 2004 elections, and there are no polling places in the City of God. Nevertheless, it is by God’s sovereignty that we are now confronted with these times, our current crucial issues of debate, and the political decisions that will be answered in the electoral process.
This is no time for silence, and no time for shirking our responsibilities as Christian citizens. Ominous signs of moral collapse and cultural decay now appear on our contemporary horizon. A society ready to put the institution of marriage up for demolition and transformation is a society losing its most basic moral sense. A culture ready to treat human embryos as material for medical experimentation is a society turning its back on human dignity and the sacredness of human life.
Trouble in the City of Man is a call to action for citizens of the City of God, and that call to action must involve political involvement as well. Christians may well be the last citizens who know the difference between the eternal and the temporal, the ultimate and the urgent. God’s truth is eternal and Christian convictions must be commitments of permanence. Political alliances and arrangements are, by definition, temporary and conditional. This is no time for America’s Christians to confuse the City of Man with the City of God. At the same time, we can never be counted faithful in the City of God if we neglect our duty in the City of Man. That’s a good principle to remember as America gears up for a political season.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to http://www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to http://www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
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Values-Based Voting Not an Option, but a Scriptural Mandate
Posted by: Dwayne Hastings on July 15, 2004 Classics •
By the time the polls closed on Election Day 2000, 56 million American adults with the right to vote had not. Over half of those individuals (37.3 million) hadn’t even bothered to register to vote.
Those numbers concerned Richard Land and were the impetus behind the development of iVoteValues.com, an initiative to register and educate voters launched by the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Land is president of the ERLC.
The goal of the “grassroots voter mobilization and education effort” is to register two million previously unregistered but qualified Americans for the 2008 election cycle. The initiative also will work to promote an awareness of the immediate and long-term importance of “values-based voting.” The effort’s linchpin: iVoteValues.com
While voter turnout among registered voters in 2000 bounced back from a modern-day low of 82 percent in the presidential contest between Clinton and Dole in 1996 (86 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in 2000), just over 66 percent of Americans who were actually eligible to vote voted in the last presidential election.
Land also is convinced many voters who are voting don’t consider scriptural precepts when they vote. And a survey of American voters proves his point. Just over a third of Americans say their faith guides their voting decisions, according to a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Another study confirmed that most Americans leave their faith out of their voting decisions. Only 39 percent of adults surveyed by the Gallup organization in November 2003 said their personal religious beliefs were very or extremely important in making choices in the polling booth. A similar study by the Pew Forum discovered 38 percent of respondents considered their faith having an impact on how they vote.
Interestingly, the Pew Forum survey found four out of ten Americans (41 percent) believe there has been too little reference to religion by politicians. Twenty-one percent of people said there had been too much reference to religious faith by politicians. Just under a third of those surveyed said there was the “right amount” of expressions of faith and prayer by political leaders.
The biblical footing for iVoteValues.com’s call to civic engagement by Christians is solid, according to Land, noting Jesus urges His followers to be “salt” and “light” in the culture. Land says participation in the electoral process should be an important element of every believer’s life.
Looking to Scripture, Land is confident God expects Christians to register to vote and vote for the candidates whose positions most closely square with His values. That is the intent of the iVoteValues.com resources, he says, particularly the effort’s Web site that allows citizens to begin the voter registration process, details elements of the two major party’s platforms, and delineates the Bible’s position on many critical issues.
Yet he knows it is an uphill battle to engage that segment of the U.S. adult population that declines to take part in the country’s electoral process.
This section of the American public came under scrutiny in the “Vanishing Voter Project” of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where the “public’s waning interest in political campaigns” has been examined at length.
The project discovered that in 1960, 60 percent of the nation’s televisions tuned in to the October debates between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy; in 2000, fewer than 30 percent watched the debates between Gore and Bush.
Why the drop-off in interest and the resultant tendency to leave one’s faith at home when going into the voting booth? More media alternatives (cable channels); increasingly bitter and longer campaigns; media saturation (24/7 news and analysis on TV and the Internet); diminishing party loyalties; and an increased number of so-call “independent” voters, reports the Harvard-based project.
In a June 2000 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll of Americans who acknowledged they don’t usually vote, 44 percent said it wouldn’t make much of a difference whether George W. Bush or Al Gore was elected president.
A Census Bureau study after the 1996 election, which saw turnout at record lows, determined the primary reason registered voters didn’t vote was because they couldn’t take time off from work or were simply too busy.
But Land believes this apathetic behavior is fueled by something other than people having too much to do on Election Day. He says too many people—voters and nonvoters alike—lack appreciation for the fact that one’s faith-based values should be impacting their decisions in the voting booth.
Once Americans understand that the Bible has something to say about contemporary issues, and by extension the positions of the candidates, Land believes more Americans will register and vote and those who already are voting will consider more carefully the policy positions of the candidates.
This is at the core of the iVoteValues.com effort, he insists. It is why well-known figures such as Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council are slated to join Land on visits to key cities for iVoteValues.com rallies this summer. The initiative will be well represented by a specially outfitted iVote.Values.com 18-wheel tractor-trailer that will be touring the country to aid in voter awareness and voter registration efforts.
The effort also calls for churches to observe two National Voter Registration Days: Sunday, July 4, and Sunday, September 26 (the final Sunday before the voter registration deadline in most states). iVoteValues.com will provide churches with non-partisan voter registration and voter awareness resources that are well within the Internal Tax code restrictions for 501©(3) organizations, explains Land, saying once individuals are registered to vote, statistics show they normally make it to the polls on Election Day.
“Most people who are registered to vote actually vote,” agrees Amie Jamieson in a U.S. Census Bureau release. “Historically, the likelihood of actually voting, once registered, has remained high, with the peak at 91 percent in 1968.”
If Richard Land has his way, the 2004 elections will go down in history with the highest voter participation ever and more Americans of faith than ever will understand the Bible does have something to say about their voting decisions. “How America votes has a tremendous impact on the future of the nation and its citizens,” Land concludes.
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Is The Religious Right Really Right?
Posted by: Albert Mohler on July 13, 2004 Classics •
With the 2004 presidential election looming before us, the secular media are sure to begin issuing ominous warnings about the influence of the so-called “Religious Right.” Every four years or so — roughly following the pattern of presidential elections—the media rediscover conservative Christians and set out to warn the rest of the population of the supposed threat posed by evangelicals active in the political sphere.
The Religious Right emerged on the national political scene in a big way in the 1980 presidential election, when Ronald Reagan was elected President with the overwhelming support of evangelical Christians. The evangelical support for Ronald Reagan — who, after all, defeated a “born again” Southern Baptist president—caught the national media by surprise and led to an avalanche of analysis. What would this new evangelical involvement in politics mean for the country? Were the evangelicals here to stay?
This election year promises to be no different, at least in terms of media scrutiny. With issues like same-sex marriage on the national agenda, the values-centered voting patterns of conservative Christians will play a big part in the presidential election. A fascinating look at the Religious Right and its critics is offered by Christian Networks Journal in its Winter 2004 issue, “Religious Right or Wrong?” The issue features an exchange of articles between Rev. Matt Fitzgerald, pastor of Epiphany Church in Chicago, Illinois, and Dr. Ronald H. Nash, professor of Christian Philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Fitzgerald, representing the religious left, and Nash, a prominent conservative philosopher, present a lively exchange focused on the influence of the Religious Right.
In, “Why the Religious Right is Wrong,” Fitzgerald aims a broadside attack on the political involvement of conservative Christians. Fitzgerald, we might note, does not mince words. He identifies all evangelicals as fundamentalists, and charges that “belief in the inerrancy of Scripture saps God of majesty and mystery.” Fitzgerald claims that his church takes the Bible “too seriously to read it literally,” and argues that though “the Christian story speaks God’s truth,” this story is not to be limited to the Holy Scriptures. As he argues, “the doctrine of Biblical infallibility wants to trap the Divine inside texts that God’s power ultimately transcends.” This misrepresentation of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is eccentric, to say the least. Doctrines do not have “wants” and are incapable of “trapping” the Divine.
Though Fitzgerald is predictably opposed to evangelicals on the basis of political judgment, he is remarkably candid in addressing his critique to the Gospel as preached and taught in evangelical churches. As he explains, “Conservative churchgoers are taught to believe that they deserve judgment, but that Jesus comes rushing in to save them.” Evangelicals, Fitzgerald asserts, believe that humanity is “doomed” by its sinfulness and must be rescued from without, by the intervention of God in the person of Jesus Christ. According to Fitzgerald, conservative churches grow because conservative Christians “flock” to churches which tell the story of redemption and rescue. According to his analysis, “the threat of judgment plays a necessary role in the story that shapes their lives.”
Amazingly enough, Fitzgerald is bold to announce that liberal churches no longer believe in the threat of divine judgment and thus no longer look to rescue by a divine Savior. Even as evangelical Christians experience the radical transformation that comes by faith in Jesus Christ, “few people in the mainline church experience this sort of transformation.”
Fitzgerald explains that the liberal churches embraced a protest against “rigid and controlling religious orthodoxy and political tyranny.” Attempting to keep one foot in the modern world and the other in the Christian tradition, the mainline churches have accommodated themselves to a modernist perspective—a position Fitzgerald describes as “a very honest stance.”
What about the threat of divine judgment? “As people who believe that humanity has the answer to its own problems we no longer believe we’re doomed,” he explains. As Fitzgerald parodies the evangelical understanding of the Gospel, he accuses us of forcing a “rescue” on persons who are only standing in knee-deep water, and thus in need of no rescue at all. Liberal churches see the situation otherwise: “We think we’re splashing around in the shallow end of some motel pool, but Christian songs, scripture and stories treat us as if we are drowning in a storm-tossed sea. Because its liberal Protestant listeners no longer subscribe to the notion that humanity is in grave danger, the message of salvation is rendered nonsensical. Jesus has become the answer to a question we are no longer asking.”
Fitzgerald is not at all pleased that conservative Christians are now politically organized and involved in the political sphere. He declares that his church welcomes people “of all sexual orientations.” He identifies his vision of Christianity with the political left and charges the Religious Right with an “arrogant conflation of God’s will with American military might.”
Dr. Ronald Nash doesn’t beat around the bush in his response to Fitzgerald’s critique. One of America’s most prominent Christian apologists, Nash accuses Fitzgerald of demonstrating “either a defective grasp of American church history over the past fifty years and/or an emotional problem that makes one wonder if he knows what he’s talking about.” Take that, Mister “I take the Bible too seriously to read it literally.”
Turning the question on Fitzgerald himself, Nash accuses the Chicago pastor of harboring ill will towards evangelicals, who are simply following the example set by religious liberals in organizing themselves politically and seeking to influence public policy. At the same time, Nash understands that Fitzgerald’s agenda goes beyond politics.
“Suddenly the shoe is on the other foot,” Nash observes. “Religious conservatives have discovered the social dimension of the Gospel—although some never really lost sight of it. Now the liberals like Rev. Fitzgerald wish conservatives would go back into their churches and forget the political arena. Well, perhaps that sentence is too simplistic. Rev. Fitzgerald, it appears, would also prefer that they stop preaching their Gospel.”
Religious liberals conveniently force all evangelicals into their concept of fundamentalism, and then warn the nation of a horde of unwashed conservatives seeking to force an extreme vision on the nation. The scare tactics aren’t working.
Nash knows an evangelical when he sees one, and he defines an evangelical as “a Christian believer whose theology is traditional or orthodox, who takes the Bible as his ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice, who has had a religious conversion, and who is interested in helping others have a similar conversion experience.”
As Nash explains, evangelicals are deeply concerned about the nation’s moral crisis, the state of public schools, the mounting death toll of abortion, as well as a host of other issues including racial and social justice, poverty, and the environment. He points to evangelical ministries directed toward the alleviation of poverty and human suffering around the world. A published author and expert in the Christian analysis of economics, Nash also asserts that evangelicals generally oppose liberal social programs “because they are often counter-productive and they hurt the poor.” With wit sustained by wisdom, Nash observes: “With friends like the religious left, America’s poor and disadvantaged do not need any enemies.”
Finally, Nash accuses Fitzgerald and fellow leaders of the religious left of harboring a deep and dishonest hostility toward Christian conservatives, treating them as “bare-footed Neanderthals living in the fever swamps of Tennessee.” As Nash laments, “I think we have a right to expect a minister to be trained in the church history of the past fifty years and speak the truth.” According to Nash, “Fitzgerald owes an apology to the millions of faithful Christians he has maligned in his article.”
I wouldn’t wait long for that apology, for Fitzgerald and his fellow religious liberals see the Religious Right as a formidable threat and one they cannot dare to take seriously in terms of an intellectual argument. Liberalism’s arguments are now threadbare and worn, and conservatives have been offering the most compelling policy proposals put forward in the public square over the last several years. Political liberalism is on the retreat, even as lifestyle liberalism is now on the ascent in America and in other advanced nations.
Nevertheless, Fitzgerald’s acid attack is useful in helping evangelicals to see how the “other side” sees us. Nash’s article should remind evangelicals that this fight is not going to be won with pithy platitudes and public politeness. Here’s hoping that Professor Nash is right when he argues that religious conservatives are not about to turn on their heels and retreat from the political arena. The next few months should show us where we stand.
Sources: See Christian Networks Journal
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Red and Blue America--The Washington Post Takes a Look
Posted by: Albert Mohler on April 29, 2004 Classics •
Like a political version of the Continental Divide, a great chasm now separates Americans on multiple fronts ranging from morality to cultural taste and from politics to religion. In a very real sense, we are in danger of dividing into two separate cultures.
This development has caught the attention of The Washington Post, and the paper has responded with a fascinating three-part series on “Red-Blue America.” As might be expected, the Post gives first attention to the political nature of the divide. With the 2004 presidential elections on the horizon, the paper notes a hardening of political lines, as the nation appears to be split right down the middle in terms of a liberal/conservative division. While in previous elections candidates gave strategic attention to those known as “swing voters,” both parties now see the election hinging on their ability to get their base voters to the polls. By some reckonings, the nation is now fully divided along partisan and ideological lines, with the Republican and Democratic parties each claiming about forty-seven percent of the nation’s likely voters. Writing for the Post, reporter David Von Drehle explained that as many as seven out of ten voters say they “have already made up their minds and cannot be swayed.”
The split between “Red” and “Blue” America is traced to the familiar electoral maps used by the networks and other media with reference to voting patterns in the Electoral College. Red America — primarily the districts that voted for George W. Bush — is found in the South and in America’s heartland — populated by farmers, families, and churchgoers. Blue America — primarily those districts that voted for Al Gore — is found on the two coasts and in university centers, where young urban professionals and those involved in the knowledge culture tend to congregate. The values that separate Red and Blue America cover everything from abortion and sexuality to entertainment choices and sporting events. Political scientist Hans Noel of the University of California at Los Angeles argues that the country is now polarized around conservative and liberal positions which—for the first time in the nation’s history — correspond to party lines. “It has taken 40 or 50 years to work itself out, but the ideological division in America — which is not new — is now lined up with the party division,” he said. Some go so far as to describe the nation in terms of two tribes “unhappily sharing the country.” As Noel remarked: “People in these two countries don’t even see each other.”
How does this apply to a political race? Pollster John Zogby reports that voters for Bush were “more likely to be married, less likely to join a union, more likely to be regular churchgoers — mostly at Protestant churches—and far more likely to be ‘born again’ Christians.” Zogby, who often works for Republican candidates, argues that these demographic trends were indicated by “clear statistical margins.”
A pollster traditionally associated with Democrats, Stanley B. Greenberg, has reported similar findings. According to the Post, Greenberg found that Blue Americans “are most likely to be found among highly educated women, non-churchgoers, union members and the ‘cosmopolitans’ of the New York area, New England and California.”
The human reality behind these statistical trends was brought to life by Post reporter David Finkel in two articles published in the series. The first was written from Sugar Land, Texas, and focused on Britton Stein as a representative of Red America. According to Stein, a landscaper, a Republican, and a devout conservative Roman Catholic, George W. Bush is “a man, a man’s man, a manly man.” Al Gore, on the other hand, is “a ranting and raving little whiny baby.” Mr. Stein seems never to be at a loss for words. According to Finkel’s reporting, “he lives in a house that has six guns in the closets and 21 crosses in the main hallway. His wife cuts his hair with electric clippers. His three daughters aren’t embarrassed when he kissed them on their cheeks. He loves his family, hamburgers and his dog. He believes in God, prays daily and goes to church weekly. He has a jumbo smoker in his backyard and a 40-foot tree he has climbed to hang Christmas lights. He has a pickup truck that he has filled with water for the Fourth of July parade, driving splashing kids around a community where Boy Scouts plant American flags in the yards. His truck is a Chevy. His beer is Bud Light. His savior is Jesus Christ.” This is not Kerry Country.
Finkel’s second article was written from San Francisco, and focuses on the Harrison family as representatives of Blue America. The Harrisons describe Bill Clinton in terms like “intelligent,” “charismatic” and “a good representation of America.” George W. Bush, on the other hand, is “frightening,” “a total imbecile,” and “monkey boy.”
Like the Steins, the Harrisons are Catholics, but their understanding of Catholicism is very different from the conservative piety and theology of the Stein family. According to Finkel, “their neighborhood is filled with restaurants that are cafes and stores that are boutiques, and their neighbors include straight people, gay people, rich people, homeless people, married people, single people, and the House minority leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who says of this place: ‘I think it is more American then most places in the country’.”
John Kenneth White of Catholic University argues that the Steins and the Harrisons represent two “parallel universes.” Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush will compete for votes in these two parallel universes, knowing full well that what endears them to one universe will make them an object of scorn in the other. For most Americans, the election is not just about politics—it is about choosing a picture of America for the future.
White, who teaches political science, explains that lifestyle issues such as marriage, church, sexuality, gay rights, and guns separate these two moral universes. David Finkel gets down to the basic questions at hand: “Is the United States to be guided by the rigid morality of the Ten Commandments, or by something more elastic? By the desire for national security or civil liberties? By the feeling that leaders are authoritative or authoritarian? What is the proper definition of marriage? Of family? Of the true American life?” There is very little middle ground on these issues.
The split between Red and Blue America has been noted by many scholars and reporters, but few have approached the issue with the verve and insight of David Brooks. In “One Nation, Slightly Divisible”, an article published in the December 2001 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, Brooks described the split between Red and Blue America in terms of lifestyle and cultural issues virtually all can understand: “Different sorts of institutions dominate life in these two places. In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America they have QVC, the Pro Bowlers tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing. In Red America the Wal-Marts are massive, with parking lots the size of state parks. In Blue America the stores are small but the markups are big. You’ll rarely see a Christmas store in Blue America, but in Red America, even in July, you’ll come upon stores selling fake Christmas trees, wreath-decorated napkins, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer collectable thimbles and spoons, and little snow-covered villages.”
Brooks went on to describe Blue America as culturally enlightened, sophisticated, and cosmopolitan, but completely out of touch with the culture of Red America. “We don’t know who Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins are, even though the novels they have co-written have sold about 40 million copies over the past few years. We don’t know what James Dobson says on his radio program, which is listened to by millions. We don’t know about Reba or Travis. We don’t know what happens in mega-churches on Wednesday evenings, and some of us couldn’t tell you the difference between a fundamentalist and an evangelical, let alone describe what it means to be a Pentecostal. Very few of us know what goes on in Branson, Missouri, even though is has seven million visitors a year, or could name even five NASCAR drivers, although stock-car races are the best-attended sporting events in the country. We don’t know how to shoot or clean a rifle. We can’t tell a military officers rank by looking at his insignia. We don’t know what soy beans look like when they’re growing in a field.”
Even so, Brooks ended with an optimistic conclusion. Despite the lifestyle, moral, and spiritual issues dividing Americans in to two different camps, Brooks denied that the nation is fundamentally divided into two immovable groups. “We are not a divided nation. We are a cafeteria nation,” Brooks argued. “There is no Culture War,” he firmly insisted. Nevertheless, voting trends say otherwise. As one letter writer to The Atlantic Monthly responded to Brooks, “Americans . . . let their ballots do the talking, and in the 2000 election they voted as if there was indeed such a war.”
The Washington Post series does not offer the final word on the subject, but the paper’s insightful reporting demonstrates that our current cultural conflict is deeper than most Americans have ever imagined. Both sides see the 2004 presidential election as crucial for the nation’s future. Both sides are right.
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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to http://www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to http://www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu. Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com.
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