War’s in the name of Religion are never holy, including the so-called Culture War
Images are etched into memories that arouse fears, prejudices that stir up conflict and deepen rifts. The historical epochs, when colliding worlds tried to dominate each other, have come to an end but they continue to be felt. History tells us the struggle between the orient and the oxidant, of religious conflicts to achieve victory and glory, yet whenever people fought wars, in the name of God, they left behind trails of death and destruction. There will always be an alternative, the path of tolerance, and understanding. So why have religions that demand peace, continue to fight against each other? Perhaps because they got lost in their pursuit of earthly power. No War Has Ever Been Holy.
During the course of the Sixties, "everything changed," says Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who was born in 1953 and came of age in the Sixties. "It was much different in the Sixties compared to what it meant to be growing up in the Fifties." He points to the movement for women's rights, civil rights for blacks, an increase in tolerance for differences and diversity, and technological breakthroughs among the most important trends of the decade. "The sky literally became the limit in terms of what was possible technologically," he says. There was affluence on an unprecedented scale for most Americans but also a rising sense of social conscience based on the idea that millions of people of color and other disadvantaged groups were being left behind.
As the decade wore on, government exploded under the Great Society of President Lyndon Johnson, which bought about a social revolution of federal activism far beyond the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s. The Vietnam War led to widespread disillusionment and cynicism about the truthfulness and integrity of the government and the military. The decade ended with conservative Richard Nixon in the White House and a deeply polarized electorate, with the South, turned solidly Republican after being reliably Democratic for a generation. It also marked the rise of the Sun Belt as a powerful conservative force in national politics that gave rise to conservative presidents Nixon and Ronald Reagan of California, and George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush of Texas. Centrist Democrats Jimmy Carter of Georgia and Bill Clinton of Arkansas also represented the power of the Sun Belt.
In summary, writes sociologist Todd Gitlin in The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage: "The genies that the Sixties loosed are still abroad in the land, inspiring and unsettling and offending, making trouble. For the civil rights and antiwar and countercultural and woman's and the rest of that decade's movements forced upon us central issues for Western civilization—fundamental questions of value, fundamental divides of culture, fundamental debates about the nature of the good life."
Christian fundamentalism became overtly political in the ’80s with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and with it the Culture War. There can be no doubt that the heyday of Christian fundamentalism in America was the George W. Bush administration. Conservatives craved reassurance that they were defenders of “morality”, despite supporting an invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But those deaths were Muslims, not White American Christians. The claims to moral superiority mainly came in the form of support for the anti-abortion movement, the “traditional” role of women, anti-gay and lesbian efforts, religious bigotry against Muslims and others, anti-immigration efforts in order to promote a white majority, and the embracing of the prosperity gospel. All while claiming a right to Christian forgiveness when their leaders themselves were caught committing adultery, caught with prostitutes, soliciting gay sex, and committing financial crimes.
White evangelicals still hold considerable political power and are key constituents of Donald Trump along with non-college-educated white voters. Abortion and LGBTQ rights are still under threat, as they have made major inroads into the federal judiciary.
Perversely, however, the cultural power of white evangelicals is clearly fading, both in terms of numbers and relevance, and that process started long before Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr.’s name was ever associated with a “pool boy.” Bibles have been largely replaced with MAGA. Public prayer has given way, among right-wingers, to chants of “Lock her up.” You hardly hear anyone on Fox News these days talking up premarital abstinence anymore. They’re too busy arguing that it’s no big deal that Trump has routinely cheated on his wives, or that it’s “pearl-clutching” to be angry that he has bragged about committing sexual assault.
White Evangelicalism is in decline, but in the Trump era another movement is rising to take its place, a movement that scratches that same right-wing itch towards false piety and elaborate tribalist mythologies that are incomprehensible to outsiders: QAnon.
Yes, QAnon, the bizarre paranoid conspiracy theory that holds (more or less) that behind the scenes of observable reality lies a shadowy worldwide pedophile ring run by Democrats and prominent celebrities, and that Trump’s bizarre and self-serving authoritarian behavior is actually an elaborate ruse to hide his secret fight to destroy this elite child-abuse conspiracy.
With the continued corruption of its leaders and the full embrace of Donald Trump, it’s hard to see how white evangelicalism survives in its current form as a political force in American politics.
