***This is Part 1 of a series of articles on the necessity of Christian Love in the Political Arena.***

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” (Matt. 5:43-45)

“To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; to return good for evil is divine.” Alfred Plummer.

“Who Do You Love?” Bo Diddley

Wars—Cultural and Otherwise

Families who lost loved ones in World War 1, which was most of them in Britain, France, and Germany, simply referred to it as “the war.” It was a given part of their lives and did not need a more particular designation. In the same fashion, though not with the same gravity, the “Culture War” is now an accepted part of our vernacular. Many Americans see our culture as in a constant state of conflict that has escalated to the point of war. Not a fight. Not a disagreement. A war.

In the current milieu, we can trace the label to James Davidson Hunter, a sociologist who used the phrase to describe the fragmentation of American culture along very particular lines. Many social conflicts, especially those with religious components, were between differing religious groups. Think of the religious wars in Europe, or the frequent unease between Protestants and Catholics within the United States. Hunter argued, persuasively, American society was moving away from conflict between groups to conflict within groups. The breach is now between “the orthodox” and “the progressives,” where traditional, conservative (or liberal) Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and Protestants would have more in common, especially socially, culturally, and politically, with one another than with liberals (or conservatives) within their own religious traditions. The orthodox and progressives differ in how they understand history, tradition, authority, and truth. This fosters an interesting political reality, where religiously and socially diverse, yet ideologically convergent, coalitions operate in concert against their mirror images. Our religious disputes have not disappeared, but they have reformed around a new set of battle lines.

Hunter’s description illuminates contemporary divides over culturally tinged politics. Arguments about abortion, same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and the role of religion in public life are products of, and accelerants within, the culture war. The issues are multifaceted and have tendrils in law, policy, philosophy, and morality. Conservatives in one area tend to be conservative in the others. The same is true for Progressives. These “new” battle lines have been well-defined for several decades, and the Christian Right, for good or ill, not only grew into one of the chief contestants in these conflicts, but to the degree it exists as a cohesive entity, exists because of these conflicts.

The first wave of Christian Right elites, like James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Chuck Colson, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson, appeared convinced the movement was necessary because of the cultural transitions within American society. The sexual revolution, the growth of feminism, a seemingly prevailing moral and intellectual relativism, the onset of pluralism, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity revealed a country that had moved past some of its historic, religious influences. The Christian Right attempted to secure and use political power and influence to halt or reverse these trends.

The Christian Right opposed, of course, an already burgeoning movement of feminists, like the National Organization for Women, abortion rights activists, like the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARL), and gay rights advocates, like the GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). They also inspired a religiously based counter-movement of organizations that attempted to secure the separation of church and state (American United for the Separation of Church & State), to maintain a generous social welfare system (Sojourners), or to preach pacifism (Evangelicals for Social Action). These organizations spawned their own elites—Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Rob Boston, Tony Campolo, and others. They viewed themselves as not only opposing the Christian Right, but as advocating for a progressive political understanding of their faith.

The political parties, naturally, played their own role. As the culture war unfolded, especially surrounding abortion and gay rights, the parties organized around these issues. Pro-Life politics became a rallying cry not only for the Christian Right, but for the Republican Party as it embraced the upstart social movement. The Democrats incorporated feminists, gay rights advocates, and pro-choice proponents into their party. Our dominant parties are now somewhat defined by their positions on these cultural conflicts.

These relationships between party leaders and elites within social movements, like the Christian Right and Christian Left, are two-way affairs. In exchange for their policy and political support, parties expect a degree of loyalty. They anticipate political cover, an army, or at least a battalion, of willing soldiers, and a general defense of the party’s broader agenda. Organizations and advocates who offer their support expect actual policy progress, legal protection, and electoral benefits—access to donors, volunteers, and infrastructure. In some ways, it is a naked calculation made by both sides. As long as there is a benefit, there will be a relationship.

Ralph Reed, perhaps the most gifted politico of the early Christian Right, spoke often of having a “seat at the table” where important decisions were made. He wanted Christians to have an active voice as judicial nominees were considered and party planks were argued. In his wildly popular musical, Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, wrote of similar things. One of his characters longed to be in “the room where it happens,” to be present when “the sausage gets made.” This is an appealing vision, especially for those who feel perpetually on the outside. Few would turn down the offer of a ticket to travel from the murky shadows of marginalization into the corridors of influence.

For those of us who ponder politics for a living, this is just simply the way things are. Politics in a free society is about building sometimes wobbly coalitions to get things accomplished. But when we put such coalitions within this culture war framework, things get more complex. Bluntly, our political parties, interest groups, and elites benefit from the culture war. Division—over abortion or same-sex marriage or Supreme Court nominations—yields votes, campaign donations, and zealous activists willing to wage war. We have created and facilitated an industry based on the culture war motif.

War: What (or Who) is it Good For?

At the end of a half century of service to his country, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a farewell address. Eisenhower made his first career as a superior military officer in World Wars 1 and 2. He eventually rose to become the Supreme Allied Commander of military forces in the European Theater during the second conflict. Eisenhower oversaw the Allied invasion of Normandy. This was a man familiar with the ways of war, and though conflict had carried him to the heights of power, his farewell address to the United States contained an explicit warning about the nature of war and peace.

As Eisenhower spoke in 1961, just days before John F. Kennedy was to replace him, American military might would have been unimaginable to his predecessors. “Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.” The resources necessary to fight wars both cold and hot, nuclear or conventional, were staggering, but they existed ultimately to pursue peace. “Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.” Eisenhower did not bemoan the strength or size of the American military.

He warned instead of an emerging “military-industrial complex” that could assume too much power within the American regime. This combination of massive companies that provided weapons and technological advancement, a military that always desired the latest and largest armaments, and a political class that gained from strong connections to those companies, presented a potential problem for a democratic state. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Only vigilance could prevent those who benefit from the war machine from assuming too much power and control.

Eisenhower understood the reciprocal relationship between the government and corporate interests. They need one another and neither have an incentive to limit spending or influence. Perhaps most darkly, they may find themselves in situations where war is profitable. War requires more and better weapons, which would enrich companies, and it also frequently gives governments extreme amounts of power to marshal people and resources. Rights and liberties are often most at threat during periods of war, even in free societies.

Freedoms are endangered during war because those in power typically have a stronger, and freer, hand. This increased power is due in part to necessity, but it also exists because those being governed are much more likely to turn a blind eye to abuses of power that appear to be for the “common good.” Even free populations become far more unified during military conflicts, especially as they begin. Unity grows out of shared sacrifice. There are no higher stakes than sending sons, and sometimes daughters, to foreign lands from which they may not return, or, in the extreme, wielding a weapon to defend hearth and home against invaders. Populations not only rally around the flag, they willingly subsidize wars and forego what were once considered basic necessities to aid war efforts. World War II, even for those who eventually won, was a monument to sacrifice. Beyond the obvious human cost, people altered their lives to achieve a common aim. They hung up blackout curtains so night bombers would have fewer illuminated targets. They planted Victory Gardens to supplement their meager diets. War, perhaps uniquely, binds us socially, psychologically, culturally, and politically—at least temporarily. While such solidarity can be attained through tyranny and coercion, free societies tend only to work together at this level when under the duress of armed conflict.

This phenomenon has not gone unnoticed. Politicians and thinkers, at least for the past century, have sought to unify nations by borrowing the rhetoric of war and applying it to other realms. William James, the philosopher, spoke and wrote of the “moral equivalent of war,” where people and societies might retain the discipline and fitness that results from war even during times of peace. This would allow society collectively to battle its persistent problems. Such thinking underpins the “War on Drugs,” the “War on Poverty,” or, the “War on Cancer.” It is an effort to put the issue beyond debate and politics and to steer unusual resources to “fight,” with a unified front, a different sort of battle.

Most would agree that “fighting” poverty, drug abuse, and cancer are noble ends, though we may disagree on the best methods of combat. Those are commonly understood social and medical matters that impact wide segments of the population and to defeat them would be an unequivocal good. They are obvious enemies that have no true defenders. War rhetoric has taken a different turn since the beginning of the Culture War. We speak now of the “War on Christmas,” the “War on Women,” the “War on Religious Liberty,” and even the “War on Boys.” These conflicts are not stand alone wars; they are battles in the Culture War.

The existence of the Culture War, and its skirmishes, should provoke two questions for believers as they enter into the public square. First, who benefits from the Culture War? Second, who, exactly, are we fighting?

Eisenhower worried about the military-industrial complex, and the entities that would gain either from war, or more insidiously, the hovering, ever-present specter of war. When it comes to the Culture War, we must be wary of the grievance-industrial complex, an array of organizations, individuals, and networks who reap rewards from the perpetuation of the Culture War. They are politicians, political parties, interest groups, think tanks, talk radio hosts, cable news commentators, authors, and celebrities. They are Republicans and Democrats. They are conservatives and progressives. They are religious and atheistic. They are found on both sides of the cultural trench and they have grown wealthy or powerful as the conflict has spread. Unlike generals, these leaders are content with the status quo so long as they remain perched above the ruin. They feed on outrage and search for the next front on which to fight. They specialize in the call to arms and use it to beg for votes, listeners, readers, clicks, donations, members, or volunteers. They traffic in kernels of truth, but avoid the complications of context and nuance, for those might help explain disagreements. They crave passionate devotion and unity, so long as it forms behind them.

They are the kids in the hall who gather around two boys pushing one another and chant, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” They raise the stakes. They turn a shove into a punch into a blade into a gun. But they are worse than those ignorant children who revel in tedium-breaking fisticuffs. They seek the struggle and then escalate it by their very presence as they shine the spotlight of national attention onto a scene surely now distorted and unnatural under this level of scrutiny. They then sell tickets to the fracas, interview the belligerents, issue a fundraising missive or three, and then howl about the dangers of the hallway. “Be careful,” they warn. “You could be next. Enemies lurk around every corner.”

Such appeals, be they from FoxNews or CNN, are effective because of the social stratification that has taken place during the past half century. Charles Murray and Robert Putnam chronicle the “big sort,” where Americans, especially white Americans, have moved into geographic, cultural, and social bubbles. Most people work, socialize, shop, and worship with those who are just like themselves. They are similar economically and in educational backgrounds. Institutions, like churches or synagogues, that used to be “melting pots,” where those from different backgrounds came together, are losing their own variety. Elites, defined economically and educationally, gravitate toward their own kind, while others do so as well. Too many of us don’t venture beyond our comfortable bubbles.

The information we “gather” tends to reinforce those bubbles. Cable television, newspapers, and websites that deliver “news” long ago ceased even attempting to appeal to the mainstream or moderate. They have effectively ditched the long-standing journalistic expectation of detachment. Instead of “broadcasting” for the widest possible audience, information outlets “narrowcast” for a smaller, loyal niche audience that is socially, culturally, and politically homogeneous. Information traffic for such outlets tends to flow in one ideological direction, largely affirming the basic beliefs of those who consume it. When we meld these concepts together, they become more powerful. It is easier to consider someone an “enemy” when you rarely come across people like them, hear their arguments, or belong to entities or institutions that include them. When you do learn about them, it is with information designed to cast them as radical, extreme, and destructive. There is an array of people and organizations who not only “win” with the Culture War, they have a strong interest in perpetuating it. Without comment on who is right or wrong, the two “sides” are of the same coin. Division, conflict, and strife sell. Passionate hatred turns neatly into resources.

Second, who, precisely, are these “enemies?” The Culture War here differs from the made up wars against social diseases, for such antagonists are abstract ills—like poverty or drug abuse—that impact people but are not the people themselves. The Culture War, when it comes to framing foes, is closer to shooting wars. In the Culture War, our enemies are flesh and blood humans, but we do not find them on far away fields of battle. They are political foes referred to as “theocons” or “dirty libs.” They are “snowflakes” or “cucks.” They are out to destroy whatever it is we might hold dear—from Baby Jesus in the manger to our preferred prophylactics. They are Supreme Court justices ready to tear down whichever liberty we cling to (Privacy, Gun Rights, Speech, Free Exercise), threatening the very fabric of the nation itself. They are politicians who embody evil, who comb their hair only to cover the horns that must surely jut from their scalps. The Culture War is, for both sides, a holy war against an implacable opponent who must be defeated at every ballot box, in every court document, on every cable news broadcast, or in every social media post. They are no longer fellow citizens who happen to have a contrary worldview. No, they have moved from the time-honored category of “political opponent” and into the more dehumanizing classification of “enemy.”