Culture Wars The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter (z-lib.org)

d t~! PREFACE .

circles. The idea has come into circulation as people have reflected gn the simdanues and diYSiihiiantles between our own ume and c1rcum-

rman u ur: m o e last decades of the

-n"""1""'n""'e"'e'!"e"""n~-c"""e""'n"!""'u"""ry,...-r~l"."a~t~tl~·m~e~!"'e~t~e°"'rm"""""~de·scribed the political fallout from Bismarck's efforts to unify the disparate German principalities into a unified nation-state. On the surface, the dispute pitted Protestants against Catholics over the religious content and character of public education. Such an issµe seems innocuous enough from the vantage point of the late twentieth century. But more was involved than meets the modern eye. i;:.d.J1ca•ion was a symbol of German unity and gatjoQ,al identity. German pm•estant§ :md CathoUq were battling over the moral character of the nati1;m-as it would be passed on to future generationt in the schools.

The culture war in America today is of a fundamentally different cast. Education is just one of the areas of cultural cleavage and is probably not the most divisive. The antagonisms no longer arise between Protestants and Catholics but, as we will see, among a very different and historically unlikely configuration of cultural players. Yet like the kul- turkampf a century ago, the specific issues being debated today, while important on their own, are really about something deeper and more significant. This book is mainly concerned with understanding and interpreting both the surface issues and the underlying realities of the contemporary culture war, as well as its historical significance and political implications.

I have been helped at all stages of creating this book by many, many people. My first debt of thanks goes to Robert Lynn, Craig Dykstra, and James Wind, and the Lilly Endowment which they most ably serve, not only for generously providing the resources to carry out this project but for their probing, challenging, and supportive engagement with me on the ideas of this book. With the support of the endowment I was able to draw on the assistance of several graduate students for different aspects and stages of the project. It was both fun and stimulating in this regard to work with John Rice, James Hawdon,James Tucker, Beth Schwieger, Tracy Fessenden, Karen Marsh, Jim Nolan, and Leslie Gunning.

Several colleagues read all of the manuscript in various draft stages and offered invaluable comments. I am especially grateful to Ken Myers, Gianfranco Poggi, Paul Kingston, Robert Wuthnow, Peter Berger, William Lee Miller, Jesse Pitts, Jeff Hadden, John Seel, and Os Guinness. Thn,mghout the course of the project, I also received strategic insi~hts and advice from Steven Tipton, Michael Aeschliman, Michael Cromartie~.

PREFACE

xiii

George Weigel, Richard Neuhaus, Donald Black, and Mark Lupher. Many of the individuals I have acknowledged here would undoubtedly take issue with me on at least some part of the book, but their willingness to engage me in civil and substantive debate has made the writing of this book, from beginning to end, a joy.

In addition to these I am indebted to Susan Arellano, formerly at BasicBooks, for her intellectual insight and .editorial support. The book is markedly the better for it. My appreciation also extends to Martin Kessler at BasicBooks for shepherding this project through to the end.

,, Last, but not least, I am .abidingly grateful to my wife, Honey-a truer companion there never was-and to my children, who challenge · me, entertain me, and always bring me down to earth.

I

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

Stories from the Front

DISPATCH: 7 NOVEMBER, SAN FRANCISCO

San Franciscans will go to the polls today to vote on Proposition S, a referendum that, if passed, would allow unmarried couples to register their "domestic partnership" with the city clerk and would grant hospital visitation and bereavement rights to registered city employees. The proposition would primarily benefit the city's large gay and lesbian population, who are forbidden by state law to marry. Most· of the city's political leadership endorsed the proposal earlier this year, but before the law could take effeet, a petition circulated against it gathered 27,000 signatures, enough to take the issue to a citywide vote. Many of the proposition 's supporters view today's vote as a test of San Francisco's reputation as "an island of civility," as the late Representative Phillip Burton called it. Yet opponents, including the Archdiocese ofSan Francisco, believe that the proposition would undermine the sanctity of the nuclear family. The size of the turnout could be critical to the outcome of the measure, particularly in an off-year election in which low voter ·turnout is common.

Chuck Mcllhenny

Issues like Proposition S move Chuck Mcllhenny to anger-one might be tempted to say a holy and ·righteous anger. A forty-three-year-old

4	INTRODUCTION

pastor of a small Presbyterian church not far from the Golden Gate Bridge, he helped lead the challenge to the "domestic partners" ordinance passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors earlier that year. He was not the only one angry enough to act against the proposal; a large coalition of Evangelical Protestants, ethnic Roman Catholics, black Pentecostals, and older citizens from various parts of the city were also moved to work day and night against it.

In Chuck's view the domestic artners

a live-in over, w oever he ors e may be. But this, he says, "was all a ruse-nothmg but an emouonal red herrin ."The real, not-so-hidCien agen a was to give legal recogmuon to homosexual unions. T ay

,e 1 represented an effort "to redefine the

marriage relationship and therefore the family itself," and was therefore nothing less than ua fundamental attack upon Christianity, a fundamental attack upon the traditional, biblical family and marriage ideal."

As a committed Evangelical Christian trained for the ministry at the Reformed Episcopal and Westminster seminaries as well as at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, .Chuck looks to the Scripture as the final source of authority on all moral and religious matters, including this one. Some issues may be open for debate because Scripture does not say much or is altogether silent. But on the issue of homosexuality, Chuck maintains, there is no skirting the matter. "In Scripture," he ·argues, "you have clear and explicit statements prohibiting homosexuality. Nowhere in the Bible does it explicitly and literally state, 'Thou shalt not commit abortion,' but you do have those explicit prohibitions against homosexuality." While part of the strategy for mobilizing the opposition to the proposition was to argue that it was financially unfeasible, Chuck admits that these arguments were somewhat disingenuous: "Ultimately the reason we rejected it was for moral and scriptural reasons.... It is a reinterpretation of God's creation ordinances." But can one forbid "sin" among people

who make o retense to b	a1	s hat tall it sin? Christian
morality," Chuck res		ommanil-
, or example, contain univer	rmc1	!es of morality and ttiat is

ow I appeal tot em. I say, 'Hey, listen, Jesus di n t argue against rape. There's nothing against rape in the New Testament. Does that mean that rape is fine?' I don't know of anybody who would say it is."

Although political initiatives such as the domestic partners bill raise Chuck's ire, they n~ longer surprise him. Over the past sixteen years he has become a veteran of such struggles. When he arrived in San Francisco

PROLOGUE

5

at the age of twenty-six, however, these kinds of concerns were far from his mind. He had been working as an assistant pastor at a church in Long Beach, California, when the pastorship of a small Orthodox Presbyterian church in the Bay Area opened up. Chuck was ambivalent about taking the position; his heart was really in teaching, not in parish ministry. In the end, though, he took the job, thinking that he would stay at the church for a year or so. Perhaps, he thought, the position would be a stepping stone to another job and another city where he would fulfill his dream of teaching.

But something happened in Chuck's ministry that he never anticipated. In one of those early years, his church hired a new organist. The man who took the job was a friendly, competent musician who publicly professed faith in Christ. After three months, however, the church

learned that the new or	anist was a homosexual. This in itself was not
necessarily a pro em; 1	t e man co e	· sin and turned away

from his homosexual lifestyle, he could stay. We are all sinners, after all. Yet the organist had no intention of changing his life, and that proved to be the rub. The teachings of the church would not allow anyone deliberately and openly "living in sin" to be ·an active part of the church community. It was not an easy decision for a thirty-one-year-old to carry out, but Chuck was obligated by his faith and by his loyalty to the church community. He had no choice but to let the organist go.

As it turned out, this event was the begmnmg ot a"lbng, intense, and divisive legal battle. The organist and his supporters charged discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, while Chuck's side invoked the First Amendment of the Constitution to defend a religious community's right to order its affairs without government interference. Two · full years, "tens of thousands ofdollars, and a good deal of planning and worrying went into the battle in the courts. In the end, much to Chuck's relief, the church won the case.

T
ways minor, however, compared to the ot er			mds of roblems he ad
to ace.	en t e case	e ront page o	t e local an regiona

~pers," he reminisces, "we received so many death threats that we had to leave the city." Chuck and his family had never confronted anylhmg hke this befo':e. What else could they do? But their intent was not to stay away permanently. After the publicity died down, Chuck was back in Sap fragcj5cg ready tn c3rry gn+ Bur fgr Cb•1 cl5 '4fcllhc1Hif, b~h his life and hi§ miWi'i'l'-wc11ld geyer agajn be the same. From that point on, the man who was to become known as "the iron fist of

6	INTRODUCTION

(

?

orthodoxy" became an outspoken critic of homosexuality in San Francisco.

His public visibility, he says, emerged not because he deliberately, sought out the spotlight but rather because the media sought him for his outspoken views on homosexuality and his compulsion to tell the truth as he saw it. The consequences of his willingness to take a public stand were devastating, however, for with each i:adio interview, television appearance, city council testimony, and other public statements he made, violence would follow. Through that year and the years that follgwed,

the windows of Chuck1s church were re eatedl smashed ·				ar
1e	estro e , a	s ra -pamted on the outside			e
c urch, and the church s1gp		repeats v destroyed. "People," he says,

-"will come to our house during the day, sometimes in the middle of the -

night, and scream at us, or they'll park their car in front of the house and blare their horn for minutes on ~nd." Three years after the lawsuit,

on a day in earl une, his church and tlie manse next tg " where he an is am lived uckily, no one was hurt in the incident.

Chuck Mcllhenny is a man of conviction and resolve, but his involvement in these local disputes has taken a toll. Is it any wonder? Most of his marriage has been lived in the shadow of these trying circumstances; his children, too, have faced these pressures virtually all of their lives. Still the family stays together, trying, as he puts it, to "hang tough." And somehow they do. One day a group of people demonstrated on the street in front of his house, some chanting epithets, some, he says, screaming. Without any prompting, Chuck's thirteen-year-old son put his arm around him and said, "I'm with you, Dad." Expressions of family togetherness such as these, Chuck says, make the trouble a lot easier to face.

One of the ways he and his wife and their three children have learned to stay together through the notoriety as well as the danger of maintaining their witness in that city is by immersing themselves in the stories and truths of the Bible. As Chuck puts it, they "read tons of Scripture." He says that the Psalms of the Old Testament are especially helpful "because they talk about persecution like ours." He also reads and rereads the_Gospels, and the book of Acts "because it describes the experiences of other Christians in situations like ours." Not only this, he o~ns a copy of the original eight-volume edition of Foice's Book ofMartyrs, a history of Christian martyrdom written in the mid-:sixtee_nth century, which lends him solace but which he also finds depressing. Then, too, the family is sustained by a number of support structures. One of the

PROLOGUE

7

most important is a private Christian_ school, sixteen miles away from home, where he and Donna send their kids. Not only are the headmaster, teachers, and students all supportive, but, as Chuck says, the school gives his children "total relief from living here for at least ten hours a day." The protection in this case is as much physical as it is moral.

With all of this, one might well wonder why Chuck and his family stay in San Francisco. Wouldn't it be easier for them to go to Waco, Texas, or Greensboro, North Carolina-any city or town where they would not have to face these problems? In fact, he was recently asked to pastor a small church in New Zealand. Wouldn't that do?

Apparently not. They stay in San Francisco first and foremost because they believe that they are called to minister in that community. Yet they have less spiritual reasons as well; Chuck admits that the ci~y has simply grown on them. Over the years, a once new and unfamiliar neighborhood has become their neighborhood; why should they leave? A measure of this evolving commitment is seen in the fact that while Chuck and his family used to escape San Francisco at every opportunity, they now have friends and family come to stay with them in the city. "We want to show that this is not a house of terror but one of security," he says. "We want to show that the Lord is our safety and that this neighborhood is our home and here you will have security."

Chuck's commitment to the city and his neighborhood is also reflected in a story he tells of a minister he encountered a few years back. The fellow was an evangelist from the nearby coastal town of Monterey, who boasted that he was going to come into San Francisco "to clean it up"-to ~ght the prostitution, pornography, and homosexuality. An affable sort, Chuck made him an offer: "You can come and live with me," he said. "As a matter of fact, we can work together. Bring your children with you." The evangelist admitted that he didn't really want to live in the city. Chuck's response was to the point: "Then keep your mouth shut! If you ever want to change San Francisco, fine--:-come on, move into the city, list your name in the phone book, and we'll do it together." But the evangelist demurred, and that was the last time Chuck ever heard from him. For Reverend Mcllhenny, words are fairly cheap. One has to live out one's beliefs in a commitment to the place where one lives.

The focal point of Chuck's commitment to neighborhood and city is his unwillingness to see it taken over by what he regards as immorality. "Unlike other cities," he maintains, "the fight between a biblical morality and the new morality is crystal-clear in San Francisco. The line is drawn

8 INTRODU°CTION

real sharp." Thus, for him, the idea that San Francisco could be considered an "island of civility," as described in the opening "dispatch," is a monstrous and mean-spirited joke. "I like to describe San Francisco," he observes, "as the city that leads the way of secular humanism. If you want to see a godless city-in its governmental, political, and social di- mensions-this is it." Homosexuality, he claims, "is just the tip of the iceberg." Immorality is institutionalized at every level. It is, he says, "part of the zeitgei.st," or spirit, of the times.

Chuck recognizes that San Francisco is unique in many ways, yet at the same time he believes that what is happening there is symptomatic of a problem unfolding in America as a whole. He frames this assessment in terms of his view of American history. UgHke some other Funda- n;entalists, he does not believe that America was ever really a Christian

nation; Christianity was never mstitutionalized m the structures of government. 'Sun, he says, I the Lora has blessed our na.tmn over the

Qbnturies because our cultural heritage was Christian." This will not be the case for long, he hastens to add, "particularly if America continues to follow the lead of San Francisco m rejecting that heritage." One of the ways America is abandoning that heritage, he argues, is by rejecting the original Christian meaning of the concepts of freedom and justice. "We will rue the day when we took the Declaration out of its Christian moorings." Thus, for him, both the political and spiritual task for Americans is to return America to its Christian roots. "What .are my alternatives?" he asks. "Do I want a godly society or an ungodly society? If I want a godly society then I must advocate godly candidates....

I want a Christian society, so I'll advocate Christians running for office."

Chuck hesitates to predict the future. But if the outcome of the conflicts he has found himself embroiled in, as well as those facing America as a whole, is unclear, the stakes of the conflict are very clear. Those stakes, he claims, are nothing less than the life and death of our society. "The homosexual issue," he says, "is a secondary issue. The real fundamental issue is.a secular humanism which rejects Christ and the Scriptures as your basis to society. And the ultimate end is always deathdeath to a society." For Chuck, it is a bitter irony that Christianity is often presented as "a social pathology"-for example, as perhaps the main hindrance to dealing effectively with the AIDS problem. In fact, Chuck is "more convinced than ever that ... it is the Gospel alone that will stem the tide" of these moral trends.

PROLOGUE

9

Richmond Young

They live in the same city, but otherwise, Richmond Young and Chuck Mcllhenny have little in common. One point of agreement, ironically, would be the political significance of the domestic partners referendum. Both men believe that the bill was ultimately designed to give official recognition to gay and lesbian relationships. But while homosexuality is so deeply and morally repugnant to one of them, it is a natural and appropriate form of human relationship to the other. So, too, while official recognition of such a relationship represents government support of immorality to one, it implies a movement toward greater equality and justice under the law to the other. "Some people," Richmond says, "want to think of gays as lonely, isolated, and unable to form stable relationships. One of the things I want people to understand is that gay people do form lasting relationships where they honor each other's feelings. The domestic partners law was just a mechanism to allow people to show that." He agrees at one level, then, with those who say that the referendum is "an effort by lesbians and gay men to find acceptance as part of a family." This was not, he says, an effort to redefine the family in a proactive way, as Chuck believes; it was more an effort to recognize and reflect in law the more inclusive and flexible way in which the family has actually evolved in our contemporary society. To this end, Richmond Young worked the precincts of San Francisco trying to get out the "Yes" vote on Proposition S.

In a city the size of San Francisco, it is not surprising that the two men do not know each other personally. Richmond does know Chuck by reputation, however, and his opinion is not at all flattering. "Reverend Mcllhenny," he says, "can't be characterized as anything else but an antigay bigot. He's not a homophobe. Homophobia is a word that's been used so often that people have forgotten what it means, which is an irrational fear of homosexuals and of homosexuality.... I wouldn't say that about Mcllhenny." Richmond readily admits that Chuck McIlhenny's opposition to homosexuality stems not from a desire for power, which he says drives some of his opponents in the Bay Area, but -rather a bigotry "rooted in ignorance." He believes, too, probably incorrectly, that Chuck's hostility toward homosexuality "would lose a lot of its force if [he] would understand what it is like to be gay and what gays were like as people. It's interesting," he remarks, "we .think of this kind of bigotry and homophobia as something that takes place in cities like Houston