Dispatches from the Culture Wars

originally published August 20, 2008

Blame Ronald Reagan for it. He’s the guy who usually gets the credit for bringing down the Soviet Union. Not a rotting infrastructure, a hopelessly Byzantine and corrupt government, a disenfranchised populace, and crushing debt - it was all Reagan. He took out the Evil Empire singlehandedly and in the process took away the best enemy we ever had. For the last 20 years our leaders have been searching for a new boogeyman to keep us paranoid and frightened enough to keep them in office, but Qaddafi folded, we took out Noriega and Pablo Escobar and Saddam, Kim Jong Il refused to play fair, and we don’t really seem that interested in catching Bin Laden - so what do we do for an enemy now?

We feed on ourselves, of course. If you listen to Bill O’Reilly and Pat Robertson and Sean Hannity and their ilk, America is fighting for its life in a “culture war,” under constant attack from godless Hollywood, feminists, abortionists, evolutionists and proponents of same-sex marriage and one-world government, all conspiring to take our country straight to hell in a shopping cart that skews to the left. As a nation we have strayed far afield from the precepts of a stern but loving Christian God whose master plan for America apparently requires social conservatism, covered-dish Protestantism, supply-side economics, inoffensive country music and lite-rock, and the Hallmark Channel. Hip-hop and Bravo make baby Jesus cry.

The strident rhetoric of hard-right evangelicals and the resulting backlash of a newly empowered atheist movement led by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have set the tone for the current national conflict, but that tone is shrill and damaging and distracting. Us versus Them. We’re right, they’re wrong. There is no debate here, no discussion, no consideration of a necessary middle ground in which the religious and secular communities can come together to alleviate the social and economic woes growing wild like mushrooms in the shadow of the Big Argument.

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Opening Up: Author and television producer Dan Merchant got fed up with the bickering and decided to do something about it. A committed evangelical, Merchant observed that the intolerance of his louder brethren was not only un-Christlike but fostered a reactive intolerance of Christians as a whole by people outside the church. Determined to open at least some lines of communication, he donned a jumpsuit covered in bumper stickers expressing a wide range of pro- and anti-Christian views and took to the streets with a film crew to get reactions, using bumper-sticker rhetoric as a way to open discussions rather than close them. The result is the core of a documentary and his book, both titled Lord, Save Us from Your Followers: Why Is the Gospel of Love Dividing America? (Thomas Nelson, 2008).

Merchant’s resolve in fostering open dialogue pays off as he pins down interviews with people as diverse as Al Franken and Rick Santorum, Michael Reagan and San Francisco’s transvestite cult figure Sister Mary Timothy, Christian author Tony Campolo and Tony the Beat Poet from Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. All of them, even the oft-vilified Santorum, iterate the real harm that has been done to their own positions and those of their opponents by the “Us versus Them” adversarial stance adopted by both sides. As Merchant’s subjects touch upon their particular niches within the debate - Franken’s church-and-state arguments, Santorum and Timothy’s opposing views on homosexuality - all agree that an understanding of those who oppose them is the first step toward any kind of real change.

The most remarkable chapters in the book, however, are when Merchant puts himself in the hot seat and forces himself to examine his own faith. He finds himself tagging along on a trip to Ethiopia with Christian aid workers and realizes the hollowness inherent in his past checkbook charity. He accompanies mission folk as they tend to the homeless in Portland, OR, not only feeding them but washing their feet, experiencing “What Would Jesus Do?” in a very literal sense. And he sets up a “confessional booth” in the midst of a Gay Pride Festival in which he confesses his prejudices against gays and apologizes for his own sins and those of his fellow Christians, opening up dialogues and connecting with people he never would have otherwise.

Merchant’s book is inconsistent, often lightweight and very reminiscent of the reportage-by-cheap-stunt M.O. of Michael Moore, but unlike Moore, Merchant’s aim is not outrage. Ultimately Merchant makes the case for detente in the culture war, for the vocal fringe evangelicals to drop the “God, guns and guts” posturing, and the vocal secularists to let go of their whole smug intellectual bit and just talk to each other. It would be both the Christian and the humanist thing to do.

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Talk About Culture: While the culture war is being fought in the air by Fox News and Air America and on the ground by troops frantically crowbarring Jesus and Darwin Fish off each other’s cars, a large segment of the evangelical population has responded to the conflict by opting out of mainstream culture in favor of a parallel world of Christian theme parks, creationist museums, and a music scene that echoes the forms (rock, metal, hip-hop, electronica) of popular genres but cleaves exclusively to themes of praise and worship. While most of us on the secular side of the fence are vaguely aware that these things exist, we don’t actually know a heck of a lot about Christian pop culture - a multibillion-dollar industry and the prime source of thought and entertainment for millions of Americans.

Enter Daniel Radosh. A self-labeled wiseass New York Jew, Radosh found himself by chance at an evangelical rock concert and was amazed at the fan base for bands he’d never heard of. Realizing the depth and breadth of this other universe, he embarked upon a year-long journey to explore it. To this end, Radosh attended Christian merchandise trade shows, met with the owner of the largest Christian book retailer in the U.S., and interviewed Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker, two of the hottest writers of Christian thrillers on the market. He spent a day at a theme park in Orlando devoted to recreating ancient Jerusalem and participated in a long-running Passion Play in Arkansas. The book about it all is Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture (Scribner, 2008).

Radosh logged extensive time with Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye and now a pierced and tattooed preacher rebelling against the charismatic hokum of his parents’ TV ministry, and the two of them took a tour of a Hell House - the militant evangelical version of a Halloween spookhouse where the frights involve depictions of gory backroom abortions and actual damnation - in Brooklyn. He traveled to our own Athens (!) to watch a full card of evangelical pro wrestling. He read the entire Left Behind series and Stephen Baldwin’s lunatic paean to totally smokin’ faith through skateboarding for Jesus. Talk about battlefield journalism.

This is not to say that Radosh’s book is entirely a tour of the national freakshow. Although he finds much in the world of evangelical pop culture that deserves derision, he also encountered many people who are simply attempting to take the culture and entertainment that they love and use it to express a heartfelt faith without the cynicism inherent in the secular arena. These are the people wrestling with the question, does Christian pop serve as a bridge to the mainstream or do the popular trappings detract from the message? Radosh asks this question as well, as he finds much in this parallel world to like.

The even-handed treatment that Radosh ultimately provides in his book is refreshing to encounter, as the indiscriminate tarring of all people of faith with the same brush by the anti-religionists is every bit as noxious as any neocon who insists that Jesus is a Republican. Although he admits he is often sorely tempted to write off the evangelicals, he refuses to allow himself to take the easy road of ridicule. The result is a well-crafted, funny and insightful dispatch from the heart of the culture wars.

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Coupl'a More: Also highly recommended are Joel Kilpatrick’s A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Habitat (HarperCollins, 2006) and the new book by Lewis Black, our favorite apoplectic comedian, Me of Little Faith (Penguin, 2008). While both books take shots at contemporary Christian culture, at their core is a further argument for bridging the gap between believers and non-believers, and both are very much worth the time.

John G. Nettles