The Culture War: Part 1

A lecture I gave for a Baptist church on the culture war between Evangelical Christianity and the forces of secularism.

Introduction

            The United States culture today is far different than it was even a generation ago. Intellectualism is equated with unbelief. Look at the different brainiac educational programs: the Discovery Channel, the Big Think, Bill Nye, National Geographic, and the like. They are all extremely secular. When something like the Discovery Channel has something on Jesus or the Bible, it is usually something that does not support the Evangelical worldview.

            As our education goes, so do our ideologies. Darwinian biology is rampant, and infects every aspect of how Americans view life. One of the worst changes is in America’s sexual ethics. Because we are seen as evolved primates, sexual liberation is the norm. The idea of sex, marriage, and procreation being one indivisible whole is basically gone, and has been replaced with increasingly depraved pornography and the hook-up culture. No-fault divorce and the acceptance of fornication have led to record levels of children growing up in broken homes, which greatly increases their chances of becoming career criminals. Diseases are spread faster and faster, and the sex education programs in our schools are treating these diseases as a rite of passage. This is not just advanced by atheists, but also by deeply spiritual people, such as Oprah. Even Evangelicals, such as Rob Bell, are fully in line with this ethic of sexual liberation. It seems only a matter of time before same sex marriage becomes law and Evangelicals are punished for speaking out against it.

            But it doesn’t stop there, one only need to look at Europe to see what potentially awaits us. As theologically conservative Christians have continued to lose control of the main rudders of society (government, education, the news media), secularism has become increasingly aggressive in stamping out the remains of Evangelical Christianity. This is why Germany does not allow homeschooling. The supreme court of Germany stated that they prohibit homeschooling to prevent the rise of parallel religious or philosophically motivated societies. In plain English, they do not want to see anything like Christian Fundamentalism become in any way mainstream in Germany. Instead, they want to make sure that the government-run public schools ensure uniform indoctrination of the public. Sweden is even worse. Not only is homeschooling forbidden, but it is illegal for any school to teach against Darwinian biology. So if you live in Sweden, your children will be brainwashed with Darwinism whether you like it or not. And this will happen to us, too, if we lose this culture war.

            Potentially, it could get as bad for us as it was for Orthodox Judaism in the old Soviet Union. Orthodox Rabbinical Judaism had survived almost 2000 years of intense persecution by both the Church and the Muslim empire, yet neither had effectively wiped the religion out. The Bolshevik revolution came to Russia, and brought about the all-controlling State. The Communist party took over all areas of life, especially the educational institutions. Children were taught anti-religious propaganda in the schools. If the parents offered objections or counterarguments, and the kids repeated them in the schools, then the government would come to their door and send the family to the gulags to mine uranium for a few years. Repeat offenses would result in the kids getting repossessed. Within one generation, Orthodox Judaism was annihilated in the Soviet Union.

How Secularism Began

            Dr. Craig notes the beginning of secularism in the western world in Reasonable Faith. During the Protestant Reformation, the struggle between Roman Catholics and the different denominations of Protestantism led to many bloody and terrible wars. It was in the wake of these wars that the worldview of Deism began to take hold. The Deists believed that no religion was correct, and believed that religion was the cause of such massive bloodshed. As a result, the Deists undertook their great project to undermine belief in the Christian faith.

            The first step in this master plan: Philosophy, which is the one discipline that affects all other academic disciplines. The Deists’ first task was to come up with arguments against divine revelation. The Deists noticed that as science advanced, the world looked more like a machine run by inviolable laws. Therefore, no one, not even God, can act in a way contrary to these laws, so miracles are not possible. Therefore, Christianity is false. Also, they argued that because all our knowledge is based on sense experience, then we cannot know about things outside the world of sense experience. So any talk about metaphysics or about God, is simply gibberish. It’s nonsense.

            The result of this change in Philosophy led to massive changes in theology and biblical studies. Theologians had to re-construct the field of theology to accommodate the belief that we cannot know anything about the supernatural. Hence, liberal theology was born. Liberal theology is not so much about God, as it is just a form of sociology. Biblical studies had to accommodate the view that miracles do not occur. The Bible became a book not about God’s attributes and miraculous intervention throughout history, but a set of good moral tales, like Aesop’s fables. The task of biblical scholars was to demythologize the Bible. In doing so, they hoped that they would be able to preserve Christianity in some form, even if this liberal Christianity had little to do with the Christianity as practiced by the early church.

How it Hit America

            This change in European academia took time to hit American shores. Because of the separation of church and state, American academics did not have the same incentive to undermine religion as their European counterparts did. So how did America become so secularized? The answer is: through anti-intellectualism in the church. Once upon a time, the pastor was the most learned person in the community. Most of the universities were founded by church leaders in order to teach theology. This changed after the success of the Great Awakening revivals. The revival movements themselves were successes. In fact, they were so successful, that they would eventually lead to the downfall of Evangelical Christianity in America. The emotion-based evangelism, and simple preaching based on personal stories gained so many converts so quickly, that the churches emphasized that at the expense of intellectual development. As a result, many people became converted, and yet had no real knowledge of doctrine. This led to the birth of many cults, including the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York’s famous “burned over district.”

            But the rise of the cults was not the only problem. After the Civil War, the rising secularism in Europe was finally exported to America. The Enlightenment view of philosophy attacked the arguments for the existence of God and the possibility of miracles. Enlightenment biblical scholarship led scholars, particularly German scholars, to distrust the Bible as a historically accurate source. Finally, Darwinian biology also came to America, calling into question our very purpose, as well as the reliability of Genesis. It also led to an enormous rise in atheism.

            Because the revivals had so greatly weakened the churches intellectually, they were simply no match for the intellectually rigorous secularism that was threatening their very worldview. Instead of retrenching themselves intellectually, and gearing up for a war of ideas with the secularists, Christians generally abandoned the mainstream intellectual realm and became suspicious of intellectual issues altogether. Christian Fundamentalism retreated from the mainstream universities and the mainline seminaries, letting the secularists conquer them almost uncontested. Christianity retreated into a little subculture with Christian universities, Christian music, and Christian movies and entertainment. By cutting itself off from the mainstream society, Christian Fundamentalism gave up its ability to influence the majority of the American population. The anti-Christian secularists slowly took over, and were able to work the mainstream culture against the worldview of Christian Fundamentalism.

            Worse, rapturist eschatology justified this move. The popular idea at the time was that the end of the world was coming soon, and so the Christian communities sought to protect themselves from the secular influence as they waited for either the rapture or the return of Christ. This is like Americans who are in a foreign country which is undergoing a violent revolution. As the revolutionaries capture location after location, the Americans continue to retreat until they lock themselves inside the walls of the embassy, hoping that the helicopters will arrive before the embassy is overrun. The problem is, those helicopters might not be coming for another thousand years or more. If we give up the culture war, and try to isolate ourselves until the rapture arrives, we might find American Evangelicalism exterminated long before the return of Christ.

The Scopes Trial

            As Darwinism was sweeping through academia, many Christians became uneasy, and sought to keep it out of the public schools. However, there were also forces at work who were determined to force secularism on the American public, which is why the Scopes Monkey trial became the media fest that it was. The New York Civil Liberties Union wanted to force a confrontation with the creationists, so they asked for a volunteer to state that he taught evolution in an area where the law forbid doing so. The confrontation happened in the backwoods country of Tennessee, and the press turned the entire trial into a national sensation. On the side representing the creationists was William Jennings Bryan, a politician who had little training in biology, theology, biblical studies, or apologetics. On the evolution side was Clarence Darrow, who was perhaps New York’s top criminal attorney. In 100 murder cases, he had only one loss. Bryan’s real blunder was his eagerness to cross swords with Darrow. The result was a disaster. Bryan took the witness stand was absolutely demolished by Darrow. Ironically, this whole confrontation was expunged from the record, as it was irrelevant to the case. Still, the confrontation was a huge public relations victory for the secularists. Let this be a lesson to any pastor who wants to debate skeptics.

Before the Scopes trial, the strengths of Fundamentalism were in the northern and eastern section of the United States. Fundamentalism was looked upon as a conservative, businesslike, sophisticated, and urban coalition. After the Scopes trial, the image of Fundamentalism was one of ignorant, dangerous backwoods rednecks, people who must at all costs be prevented from gaining any level of political power.

The Aftermath

The aftermath of the Scopes trial was different than anyone would have expected. Fundamentalism grew quite rapidly after the trial, although this was despite the outcome, not because of it. Many bible colleges were founded, and the Fundamentalist movement gained a sizeable percentage of the American population. The problem was that Fundamentalism basically kept the adherents out of the public intellectual realm, where they could wield the most influence over the culture. The Fundamentalist movement gained large numbers, but in the areas of least cultural leverage. The effects endure to this day. Evangelical Christians compose about a fifth of the American population, and yet compose far less than a fifth of the scientific community, academics, members of the news media, and government leaders.

In the past, Fundamentalists have been able to hide themselves from atheist arguments by retreating into isolationism, living away from the liberal cities and homeschooling their children. But now, thanks to the Internet, there is no longer any place to hide. If the arguments from the unbelievers are superior to our own, then they will inevitably overcome us given enough time. We cannot run and hide for much longer.

The Light

There is hope. Dr. Craig himself is at the forefront of a movement in America that is undoing the effects of the Scopes trial. Organizations like Reasonable Faith, Biola University, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, and the Discovery Institute are all working to turn the tide in this culture war, and there have been some enormous successes. The atheist philosopher Quentin Smith is scared to death over what he calls the desecularization of philosophy. While religious philosophy was dead in the first half of the 20^th century, the work of Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, and William Lane Craig finally overcame the objections of the Deists and now, the arguments for God are back on the table. The logical argument from evil, which states that God cannot co-exist with evil, which has plagued theism for over 2,000 years is now considered soundly refuted thanks to the work of one man: Alvin Plantinga. The pro-life movement is gaining tremendous momentum thanks to ultrasound. And now, ultrasound devices are becoming available on your smartphone. Thanks to the work of Liberty University, we are starting to see members of the Evangelical Right entering the news media and politics.

In The Case For a Creator, Lee Strobel talks about one of Dr. Craig’s encounters with a top Eastern European physicist, whose study of science had destroyed her belief in God. She said that now when she looks at the world, all she sees is darkness without and darkness within. After being given his dissertation on the Kalaam argument, and as she read it over a few days, she became more and more excited. She knew all the people he was quoting, and knew that he was quoting them accurately. Finally, when she returned his dissertation she announced “I now believe in God. Thank you for restoring my faith in him.” He asked the scientist if she would want to know God in a personal way. When she accepted, Dr. Craig then invited her to meet that night in a local restaurant. When they met, he had given the scientist a handwritten version of the Four Spiritual Laws tract that he and Jan had prepared earlier that day. They read through the booklet and got to the part that asks whether God is outside your life or on the throne of your life, she stopped reading because it was too personal. The next day, Dr. Craig saw that the scientist’s face was beaming with joy. She told him that she had gone into her home that night and prayed to accept Christ into her life. She took all the drugs that she had been abusing and flushed them down the toilet. Several months later, Dr. Craig met her at another convention, and she told Dr. Craig that the two most precious possessions that she had were her New Testament and four spiritual laws tract that Dr. Craig had given her.

The question is: is this going to last, or will it be a flash in the pan? I propose that we will determine the answer to that question. Next week, we will get to work on what we can do about this culture war. How is it being fought today, and how can we help? What can we do to win this fight?