New York Times Columnist David Brooks recently wrote about the Culture War growing in the United States.  Brooks, an American conservative, feels that the clashing cultures can be basically defined by their spiritual beliefs or, put more simply, Christian and non-Christian.  I remember a time when I was living in California and Christians seemed to always be talking about how we had no real political representation in America and were being slowly decimated by the non-believing political powerhouses.  Prayer had been taken out of school and Christian values in general seemed to be disappearing from the country we loved.

Predictably, it wasn’t long afterwards that the Christian Right became a strong political faction.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t too much later that many Christians began to wish that their faith had stayed out of politics altogether.  That’s the problem with politics and faith.   Politics is the art of compromise, but faith is the art of standing fast.  Then you have the extremists.  Pretty soon many Christian politicians seemed to be campaigning more on hate than love.  Political rhetoric, as it usually does, got way out of hand.  And when something that regu-larly appears in the headlines and on the news those poor folks who are out there barely holding on to a strand or two of sanity start to lose it.  Abortion clinics get bombed, abortionists get murdered, gays are attacked and then some unholy demonic twist of faith like the Westboro Baptist Church comes along and starts demonstrating their hate at the funerals of soldiers, who no matter your belief on war, died believing they were defending the country they loved – the country we love.

Brooks reports that Christianity is in decline in the United States. “The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is drop-ping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.”

This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when we consider that the face of Christianity has moved from the sacrificial love of a dying savior to the hate-filled face of an angry protestor.  Brooks goes on to say that,” Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture. They fear they will soon be treated as social pariahs, the moral equivalent of segregationists because of their adherence to scriptural teaching on gay marriage. They fear their colleges will be decertified, their religious institutions will lose their tax-exempt status, their religious liberty will come under greater assault.”

This is probably also true, but to committed Christians should not be too surprised by this either.  We are not the world and we are commanded to love the world, but that does not mean the world will love us.  Yes, we need to take a stand, but our victories are won by love, not political power and certainly not by violence.  Love the unwed mother in desperate need of help. Love the young gay man, who has always felt out of place in the hetero world. And for God’s sake love the family who has lost their son in a desert far away because he did what his government told him to do.

Brooks quotes Rod Dreher’s (author of How Dante Can Save Your Life) essay in Time in which “he argued that it was time for Christians to strategically retreat into their own communities, where they could keep ‘the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness.’”  Dreher went on to say that, “We have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist.”

Dreher and Brooks argue against the Christian political mentality of “fighting on”, against the Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage and other political challenges to our faith.  Instead Brooks write the following: “We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many communities have suffered a loss of social capital. Many young people grow up in a sexual and social environment rendered barbaric because there are no common norms. Many adults hunger for meaning and goodness, but lack a spiritual vocabulary to think things through. Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely.”

Christian values are not best demonstrated by spitting at gays, soldiers and unwed mothers, but rather by helping nurture unstable families, working to create jobs for people being released from prison who are trying to turn their life around, trying in every way that they can to show true love to those who are so desperately seeking it.  Brooks says this culture war is “more Albert Schweitzer and Dorothy Day than Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham; more Salvation Army than Moral Majority. It’s doing purposefully in public what social conservatives already do in private.”

It’s not about Christian changing their opinions of what they believ is right but about, as Brook says, repairing “a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace.”

Doing that takes real values, real faith and real love.

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