Protect Democracy: The End of the Culture Wars? Don't Let Down Your Guard Yet

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by Protect Democracy from Buzzflash.net

Progressive organizations and writers have lately begun to postulate about the pending end of the culture wars; the battle of ideologies and worldviews that has created deep political divides, and attracted many white, working class Americans to vote for corporatist agendas that do not represent their own best interests. Writers and pundits who believe that the culture wars are no longer an issue in politics ignore the realities of rural, Southern, and Midwestern America, where conservative worldviews, and the values that they instill, still dominate the social, religious, and educational institutions.

It is easy to see why many progressives have convinced themselves that the culture wars are coming to an end. The obvious indicator was the domination of the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections. After eight years of an extremist right wing Republican administration, much of that time with control of Congress, voters chose a dramatic change, giving control of the federal government to the Democrats and electing the country's first non-white president. Optimistic progressives chose to interpret this as a rejection by Americans of modern Republican politics and its anti-progressive social values narrative.

Another explanation of why the culture wars are ending was offered by Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress in his recent article, "The Coming End of the Culture Wars" in the July edition of American Progress, in which he theorized that changing American demographics; especially the coming of age of the 1980s generation, whom he perceives as a more tolerant generation; and the rapid population growth of certain minority communities that he sees as more progressive than the old mainstream white America.

Both of these explanations make sense to Northeasterners and other big city progressives, because they reflect the reality in which they live. It is a different than the reality that shapes communities and individuals in the South, Midwest, and West of the country, and in the sprawling suburbs and exurbs of the cities of those regions.

The heavy political losses suffered by the Religious Right in 2008 were by no means an indication of loss of political power. The Religious Right continues to pursue its social agenda of fighting teaching of evolution and expanding the acceptance of creationism as a sound scientific theory, restricting access to abortion, fighting gay rights and other key issues. Consider the candidate for mayor of Tulsa, whose platform included building a creation science museum at the city zoo. Her campaign is all about keeping the culture wars going.

The results of 2008 show the emergence of a new brand of fundamentalism; one that is less recognizable by non-Evangelicals but more intrusive in people's lives and with a more organized and developed plan for political domination. The Religious Right had new faces in 2008. Absent from prominence was the old guard, replaced by the likes of Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Warren. The new Religious Right embraces what was once consider the fringe of fundamentalism, filled with faith healing, spiritual warfare, and demon expulsion. Because it has eschewed the end-times theology of the old fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists, and replaced it with a different theology, based on taking dominion of government and society, progressives can mistake the new Religious Right as less hostile.

The new Religious Right relies heavily on faith-based social services to take dominion over government and social institutions, both in the U.S. and in other countries. Their rhetoric about AIDS and poverty is easily interpreted by progressives as common ground. However, if progressives were aware of the methods employed by these groups, such as "taking territory" and "spiritual warfare," they would understand that these groups threaten progressivism and pluralism, and are not allies.

The penetration that conservative and evangelical groups have made into the Democratic Party and progressive organizations is a significant threat to the future of progressivism. Many progressives have lost faith in the Democratic Party as a counter-balance to corporatism; seeing the current two party system in the U.S. as a battle between a party of socially conservative religious corporatists and a party of more socially liberal corporatists. However, even this delineation of political parties is at risk as religious conservatives have made significant inroads into the Democratic Party. As Bruce Wilson noted in his recent article on Talk2Action, there is a growing tendency for progressives to accept evangelicals who show an interest in progressive social causes. The acceptance of groups such "Come Let Us Reason Together" to jointly pursue common causes such as the environment, Darfur, poverty, or immigration reform opens the door to a conservative evangelical agenda in otherwise progressive movements.

Allowing fundamentalist extremist Rev. Samuel Rodriguez a private audience and prayer session with then-presidential candidate Barack Obama may have been a strategy of appeasement of on Obama's part, but the open embrace of Rodriguez by the Democratic Party indicates that there is a great misunderstanding of the agenda of such groups. Rodriguez is an advisor and participant in, among other things, a militant youth oriented movement that has called for martyrs in the fight against gay rights and abortion rights. Progressives seem to believe that they can share common ground with aggressive evangelicals on certain issues while shunning the rest of their agendas.

The Religious Right achieved another significant milestone in 2008. When Rick Warren interviewed the two major party candidates in national television, he set the precedent of having the candidates pass a "faith-and-values" test as part of the election campaign. The significance of this should not be overlooked. By 2008, no candidate for president could run a campaign without nationally televised scrutiny by a religious leader. Despite the outcome of the election, this was a victory for the conservative evangelical community -- and a victory in an important battle of the culture wars.

The election of the first African American president may have been a sign of a willingness of more Americans to accept ethnic and racial diversity in political leadership. One should not ignore, however, that it also arose a dormant racist sentiment in parts of the country in which racism never really died. The campaign for the runoff election for the U.S. Senate seat in Georgia was run mainly on the basis of denying President Obama a veto-proof majority. The racism in the campaign was not hidden -- non-white, presumably non-Christian, possibly non-American Obama could not be given a free hand to force his anti-American worldview on Americans.

Popular opinion in the South is that the subprime crisis was the result of liberals in Washington forcing banks to give mortgages to African Americans as reparations for slavery; an opinion that you are as likely to hear from a white businessperson or lawyer or CPA as you are to hear it from the white working class. This is not an attitude that makes one hopeful that culture wars are over.

A 30-year concerted effort has given religious conservatives control of many of the school boards in the South and other traditionally conservative parts of the country. Their dominant position has served to tear down the wall of separation in reality, if not via legislation or judicial decision. Nobody in a these communities would challenge open prayer and hymn singing at school events, teachers and administrators who quote the Bible, or overt religious symbols such as bibles and crosses in the classroom; and few teachers are willing to address subjects considered taboo by religious right leadership, such as homosexuality, abortion, contraception, and evolution in an academic, educational way. Discussion of such topics is limited to describing them in religious terms as evil and anti-Christian. This approach to sensitive or controversial topics results in a monolithic group mentality, with little room for diversity of views.

What this means is that the next generation of leaders and voters in the South is being raised with a religious right worldview and values, not with values of tolerance and social progressiveness as theorized by Teixeira.

The changing-demographics explanation also has room for doubt. While the observation that demographics are changing is undeniable, and that some minority groups are growing in size and strength, it is questionable that these groups are, or will remain, more progressive. The efforts of fundamentalist Protestant denominations to proselytize traditionally Catholic Hispanics are well documented, and have achieved some success. With this acceptance of the evangelical faith comes the evangelical worldview, whose anti-abortion, anti-birth control, and anti-gay attitudes may be consistent with the teachings of the Catholicism they learned.

However, those conservative values form part of the right wing worldview that is integral to their new faith; anti-environmentalism, anti-labor, pro-business, anti-regulation, and a willingness to go to war to impose their religion and culture on others. These minorities will not form the next generation of progressive voters if the influence of Evangelicals continues to grow in their communities. The rapid growth of Rev. Samuel Rodriguez' Hispanic evangelical organization, which claims to have 16 million members, more than one-third of the total Hispanic population of the country, is indication that this large demographic is not tending towards progressivism.

Steven Jonas' BuzzFlash commentary, "How the South Won the Civil War," goes one step further and claims, in essence, that the culture war is over and progressives lost. I am less pessimistic, but the need for vigilance has never been greater. It is easy for progressives to let their guard down in the wake of more-favorable election outcomes, and let conservatives set the agendas for progressive causes and organizations while aggressively expanding their own agendas where they have traditional strong bases.

There is no room for common ground with right-wing groups and the kinds of religious leaders who call for the assassination of the president, as did Rev. Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona. It was a member of Anderson's church who arrived at President Obama's town hall meeting carrying a rifle. There is no room for common ground with evangelical leaders such as Lou Engle, who has made recent public appearances with Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich, who called for Christians to martyr themselves for the cause of ending legal abortion during a Proposition 8 rally in California. (Engle is one of the religious leaders whose polemics were frequently aimed at murdered gynecologist Dr. George Tiller).

Rick Warren, who teaches that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, and who preaches that his followers should have the same conviction as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao in their pursuit of world domination, is not an ally of progressives, and his prominent position in the conservative religious world is not going to allow the culture wars to end, at least not with an outcome that is acceptable to progressives.

Progressives must remain firm in their resolve to resist the right-wing social and corporatist agenda while pursuing the progressive priorities of education, healthcare, the environment, poverty and hunger alleviation, and social justice. The war isn't lost yet, but we're fooling ourselves if we think we're winning.

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY