Culture War Strategy

In an earlier posting, I postulated evangelism (fundamentalism), messianic and persecution complexes, and money as motivating the evangelical Christian right (ECR) attempts to dominate mainstream America. However, identifying these behavioral influences does not explain how an individual ECR member acquires these traits. An individual's behavior is determined by the culture in which they are socialized, a process of personal development, involving family, peer pressure, education and other formative life experiences. The United States has many diverse lifestyles that form sub-cultures within the broad culture of American society. To attempt to list all of the distinct sub-cultures would amount to cataloging the diversity of the nation, a task beyond the scope of this essay. The socialization context of the sub-culture, rather than its process, determines the behavioral traits of its members.

Within mainstream American culture, Christian fundamentalism (and its extension, evangelism) forms a sub-culture with its own institutions. Fundamentalist churches, schools, political organizations, and media, and fields of art (Christian literature and music) and pseudo-science (creationism and intelligent design) exist in parallel with the institutions, arts and sciences of mainstream American culture. Socialization in this fundamentalist sub-culture produces members of the evangelical Christian right whose ethos provides the rationale for extending itself into mainstream American culture.

Christian fundamentalist sub-culture and mainstream American culture overlap in several aspects and differ in others. For example, overlap occurs in the economy and health care, while differences exist in entertainment and education. Fundamentalists work and shop in the same places as mainstream Americans, and use the same medicines and health care providers. Fundamentalists have special entertainment venues for vocal music and literature. Fundamentalist schools feature a curriculum that includes religious doctrine and pseudo-sciences. Of course, a few businesses in the general economy stress a sub-culture orientation, i.e. Christian bookstores and various tradesmen, professionals and service providers who advertise their Christian ethos. There are also artists and writers with a Christian identity who have mass appeal.

The conflict between Christian fundamentalist sub-culture and mainstream American culture, the so-called culture war, occurs mainly within the institutions where the members of the former interface with members of the latter. In public schools, conflict occurs over the appropriateness of books read in literature classes, science education that contradicts biblically based pseudo-science, and abstinence teaching policies in sex education. In government, conflict occurs in areas such as the legality of abortion, judicial interpretation of the law and school finance. The ECR has the initiative in the culture war. Mainstream America is in a defensive posture, because of its ethos to respect diversity, and needs a strategy to counter the assault on mainstream American values. To be successful, the strategy must have realistic, practical goals based on reason rather than faith. The strategy must demonstrate the benefits of an inclusive society to all sub-cultures, including the members of the evangelical Christian right.