What Are Christians to Do After Losing the Culture War?

The sad fact is, American culture is growing increasingly hostile toward Christianity.  People used to talk of a Culture War.  I have news for you my friends.  The war is over.  We lost.  We live in a country where drag queen story hours for children are sweeping the nation and encouraging children to “transition” to another gender (and there are no longer just two anymore, in case you were wondering) has become all the rage.

We have politicians racing to see who can take the most extreme position in support of abortion.  Apparently, infanticide is on the table now.  The US Congress has refused to take up a vote on whether babies who survive abortion should be provided medical care.  The prevailing opinion of those in charge of Congress now is obviously – no, they should not.

We always took comfort in the fact that we were the majority.  Surely as long as the majority of the country answered yes to whether or not they were a Christian in a poll, America could never become hostile to Christian beliefs.  But the people who call themselves Christians today are very different than Christians from previous generations.  Today there are self-professed Christians that among other things, do not believe in much of the Bible (the creation in particular).  Many view the Judeo-Christian moral code to be outdated.  Some don’t believe in Hell.  Some don’t even believe in the divinity of Jesus.

But even many of those who do believe as a traditional Christian should have been complicit in this cultural shift.  It happens one small compromise at a time.  A popular TV show that pushes the boundaries of taste just a little further.  A must-see movie that is just a bit more outrageous than what we would normally feel comfortable watching.  A video game for our kids that blurs the lines of good and evil and is more violent than anything we grew up playing, but hey all the other kids are playing it.

Some were moved by the “Love is Love” movement and helped make Gay Marriage mainstream.  But the culture warriors opposed to Christian values weren’t content to stop there.  What followed were Christians who owned bakeries or wedding venues facing the loss of their livelihoods for refusing to participate in ceremonies that they felt were against their beliefs.  And then, embolden by the triumphs of the Homosexual movement, Transsexuals have risen up demanding that our society be remade to accommodate their unique mental condition.  Once again, many Christians have opened the door for them out of compassion and a desire not to be seen as judgmental.  Both are the proper instincts for Christians.  And that is where our dilemma lies.  For the very nature of our Christianity is turned against us and we soon find ourselves branded as hateful if we don’t accept things like shared bathrooms and locker rooms.


If you think it is bad now, just wait.  Here are a few possible things on the horizon: polygamy, pedophilia, bestiality, and the ritual sacrifice of aborted children in pagan ceremonies.  If you think that sounds crazy how crazy would 100 genders, Bruce Jenner proclaiming to be a woman, and politicians openly making a case for infanticide have sounded about fifteen years ago? 

But if the war is lost, what are we to do now?  We do two things.  We live a Christian life and we refuse to participate in any further cultural madness.

Living a Christian life means allowing Christianity to permeate all aspects of your life.  There has been a growing trend to convince Christians that they must keep their beliefs to themselves.  The Separation of Church and State is constantly invoked (a term that is found no where in the Constitution by the way).  This country was settled by Christians who were fleeing religious persecution at the hands of the Church of England.  The founders never intended that government officials should not be guided by their beliefs.  What they did intend to do was to make sure there would never be an official Church of the United States that would tell people how they had to worship and what they had to believe.  However, more and more it seems like an official “secular” church is being established seeking to tell people precisely what they should believe.

Judeo-Christian themes permeate the architecture of the buildings in our nation’s Capitol and the documents upon which this nation was founded.  The sermons of Christian ministers helped stoke the fires of rebellion against England.  Thomas Jefferson, the man who penned the term Separation of Church and State, attended Christian church services held in the Capitol Building.  So don’t let anyone tell you that there is no place for your Christian beliefs in politics or in our culture.  

Living a Christian life is done in big ways and little ways.  Here are some examples:

1.       Stop voting for politicians who advocate policies that will undermine Christian values.
2.       Stop doing business with companies that are undermining Christian values.
3.       Stop compromising your values.  Don’t watch those TV shows and movies that are deliberately pushing the envelope and shifting us further from our Christian values.
4.       Start going to church if you aren’t already.  It is important that Christians be seen actively participating in their faith.  It is important for children to see their parents actively worshiping God.
5.        Start saying a brief prayer at your meals both at home and especially when you are dining out.  I’m not talking about making a big show of it when you are in a restaurant.  But it is important that you get comfortable living out your faith in public.  This is a small way to do it.
6.       Start attending school board meetings and take voting for school board members seriously.  Perhaps consider running for a school board position yourself.  We lost the culture war in large part because we lost the hearts and minds of far too many young people.
7.       Stay informed.  Too many Christians have been on cruise control just thinking that the country they grew up in would always be the same.  You don’t need to spend hours watching the news.  Just take some time every day to get the news from the source of your choice and then do some additional research if you come across a story/event that is particularly concerning.

I had also mentioned that Christians should no longer participate in furthering cultural madness.  Others have termed this “Refusing to Go Off the Cliff”.  This is where it starts to get difficult, because there is a risk of some form of persecution, be it social ostracization or an actual loss of livelihood.  But we as Christians really need to take a stand on some of the affronts to human nature and simple biology we have seen unfold.  Here are just a few things we need to stand for:

1.       There are only 2 genders – male and female.
2.       “Transitioning” a child to another gender is a form of child abuse.  There are enough cases of individuals who made the decision to transition as an adult that have gone on to regret it and transition back to make it completely irresponsible to think that a child is capable of properly contributing to a decision to make such a life-altering change.
3.       We as Christians and Americans should respect the right of adults to choose to live as another gender.  After all, God gave all of us the free will to live as we choose.  However, choices have consequences.  We have a right to stand against policies intended to normalize previously deemed abnormal behavior if such policies undermine our values.  We have a right to say that our wives and daughters should not be forced to suddenly be ok with having biological males in their bathrooms and locker rooms just to validate the self-esteem of a gender confused individual.  And our daughters should not be asked to compete in high school and collegiate sports against boys who have decided that they are now girls but retain the obvious competitive edge of their biology.
4.       We as Christians need to stand for the truth that life begins at conception.  It is at conception when a unique human DNA code is created.  Just because the nature of human biology is such that every human begins life in a woman’s womb it does not give a woman the right to claim authority of life and death over the unique individual inside of her.  We also need to be consistent in this belief, as hard as it can be in cases of rape.  A human life is a human life, regardless of how it is conceived or whether or not its parents want it to live.
5.       We need to be watchful against any attempts to censor the Bible or any forms of Christian speech that those who have chosen to alter our country’s traditional values might brand as hate speech.  This is the next step in the evolution of their validation.  The first step is acceptance.  The second is normalization.  The third step is the marginalization of any opposition.  The final step is the silencing of opposition.
6.       We need to brace ourselves to stand against the coming forms of aberrant behavior that we will soon be asked to accept and normalize.  There will be appeals to our compassion.  We will be shamed as bigots if we don’t go whatever the next mile is with those who have seized control of our culture.  But we must stand strong because any further descent will plunge our country into a darkness that may be irredeemable.

Just because we have lost the culture war does not mean that all is lost.  The tables have now turned.  We must adopt the tactics of those who defeated us.  Say what you will about those on the other side of this battle, but they ultimately fought harder and smarter than us.  They had the courage to stand even when they were labeled as different and bizarre.  They were tenacious, never giving up even in the face of early losses.  The rebounded from any set-back and fought harder. 
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If we ever want to reclaim our place in American culture, we need to resolve to fight even harder than they did, because unlike we have been up until now, they are ever-vigilant and still pushing the boundaries further.  But fight we must, or else we will find ourselves as the new Pilgrims, seeking refuge from a country that has no place for our beliefs.
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