Religiously conservative Christians here are fond of writing about culture and culture wars. They write about how to regroup from losing a culture war as well as thinking that we need to fight them in the first place. Trevin Wax (click here for a bio), who is a decent writer for the Gospel Coalition, wrote an article earlier in the month in an effort to try to identify the most critical cultural issues for this year. He first gave information on how to find the views of some prominent Christian thinkers on the subject. Then he listed his own views and divided them between the most urgent cultural issue across the globe as well as the most pressing cultural issue for Christians in the West (click here for the article).
In terms of the world, Wax identified the persecution of Christians as being the most important cultural issue that Christians face. And that persecution calls on us Christians to minister faithfully to those fellow believers whose lives are under siege. Though there is comparatively no persecution of Christians in America today, the same cannot be said of other parts of the world, especially in the Orient and Africa where rival religions have resorted to violence in interacting with Christians.
Regarding the West, Christians, Wax is quick to say that Christians there need to to up their game so that the Christian idea of morality, especially regarding sexual issues and marriage, gains a prominent part in the public square. The problem, according to Wax, is our lack of 'imagination' in presenting the Christian case for morality. Thus, our problem is internal rather than external.
In both cases, Wax inadvertently demonstrates problems that affected how he identifies urgent cultural issues. These two problems show the insularity of many religiously conservative Christians in both the West if not the world and authoritarianism.
The biggest cultural issues for Christians according to Wax revolve around what is either happening to or not happening inside of Christians and it involves the Western Christian partial reduction of of morality to sexual and marital issues. We are so fixated on either being persecuted or on how society reacts to our our pet sexual issues, that we have become oblivious to the real life circumstances and moral concerns of others especially as they apply to non-sexual and non-marital issues.
Certainly worldwide persecution of Christians is an important issue that we cannot ignore. But the persecution of those from other faiths is also important. And in some areas, Christians have a hand in that persecution. And yet, this is not mentioned. For when Christians give political support to governments that attack the followers of other religions around the world, then Christians are supporting those attacks and are inviting reprisals on their brothers and sisters in the faith. Our support for Israel's Occupation against the Palestinians has not only produced the persecution of Palestinian Muslims, it has caused hardships for many a Palestinian Christian as well. And when Muslim reprisals are in response to Israel's Occupation, then Christian support for that Occupation has invited those reprisals.
Likewise, when Christians in the West press their moral values on society to the extent that they deny equality for those in society who hold to different moral values, especially values concerning sexuality, they show little regard for those outside of their community. Perhaps how religiously conservative Christians have been pressing their moral values on others is what Wax refers to when he says that Christians have a 'shriveled' imagination in how to promote their values, but that seems unlikely. Christians who have pressured society into accepting their moral values to the extent that they end up trying to deny equality for others cannot see the effects that their efforts have had on others. They can only think of their end game.
Another characteristic exhibited
that is also interfering with the ability of many religiously
conservative Christians to identify is authoritarianism and the desire
to gain control over society. That trait is seen in the attempts to use the law in order to impose Christian moral values, again especially sexual values, on society.
Our authoritarianism produces scorn for Christians among these in the West who value freedom. The opposition to equality in society for the LGBT community exhibited by many religiously conservative Christian has offended not just that community but its growing number of sympathizers. They see the issue as being that of these Christians trying to use their religious freedom to discriminate against others. And such a use of religious freedom hearkens back to when many religiously conservative Christians used their religious beliefs to defend Jim Crow. And when the Civil Rights Movement became prominent, there was hardly a religiously conservative Christian in the Movement.
Certainly, we don't want Christians to conform to the less than biblical morals promoted in today's culture. But, we also don't want the moral values of society to be superior to the moral values of Christians. We should be free to admit when that occurs, but we should not want that to happen. And society's moral values sometimes exceed our own when we act controlling or ignore the neglect of moral values in our economic and political systems or in our nation's policies.
Thus the biggest cultural challenge that Christians face in 2018 is not what Wax is suggesting. Rather, the most pressing cultural issue is how to share society, and the world for those super patriotic American Christians, with others as equals while maintaining biblical morals. The oppression of others, which has resulted from how religiously conservative Christians have tried to make Christian morals part of the public life, is not only causing scorn to be put on Christians by others, it is causing some Christians to question Biblical sexual morals. If we don't stop being inner-directed and controlling, we will be providing fuel for the persecution of ourselves.
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