Navigating the Political and Cultural Winds

“Politics Follows Culture!”  

Navigating the Political and Cultural Winds

Part 2

[T]o “fix” the compass so that it tells you that the wrong way is the right way is far, far worse.^[1]  

[P]ublic measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good^[2]

[T]est everything; hold fast [to] what is good.^[3]

Are we having [political] fun yet?  Part 1 of this series explored how culture, law, and politics influence one another.  Understanding this is crucial for being inoculated from the various viruses that infect and influence our thinking during the political quagmire known as the Presidential election cycle.  Instead, we must think Christianly despite this political chaos.  Previously, we showed that while ideas have consequences, they do not stand alone.  They must be conveyed.  Culture does this in a myriad of ways.

Because TxC looks to Paul’s description of real reality outlined in Romans 1, we put this cultural dynamic in theological categories.  The ideas which are conveyed are cultural homiliesor sermons.  Who preaches them?  One conduit is the institutional cultural icons – the Legal, the Religious, and the Academic/Educational – but these homilies are also conveyed by simple, plain, and unassuming, but powerful pop cultural icons.  This latter conveyance is often unnoticed.  Yet, these latter icons and their homilies form powerful conveyor belts of ideas that influence how we think about – and do – law and politics. 

Make no mistake.  These cultural homilies send and reinforce messages to the broader culture.  Understanding how this occurs and operates equips us and forewarns us against foolish extremes when pondering politics.  As James Madison observed:

It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than promoted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.^[4]

Cultural homiletic icons exacerbate emotive reaction and lessen reasoned discourse.  One way to positively blunt this negative tendency is to become aware of how cultural homilies subtly undermine and erode sanctified thinking and conviction.  In that way we can truly “be transformed by the renewal of [our] minds.”^[5]  Let’s get to the gist.

Cultural Conduits, Cultural Champions, and Cultural Consequences

The following examples illustrate the sweeping power of icons^[6]as they shape cultural perceptions.  Such icons frequently serve as rubrics which invoke strong emotion and encapsulate a wide spectrum of the subject matter’s cultural connotation.  We may see the icon, but that icon conveys notions much deeper – like a good marketing slogan.  But all messengers – just like all preachers – are not equal.  Consider the following. 

Sexual “Liberation”

 Few today know Alfred Kinsey and what they do know has been distorted by Hollywood.  Kinsey’s abusive experimentation on infants formed the culture’s “liberated” view of sexuality, giving Freud’s sexual speculations the veneer of “hard” science.^[7]

However, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy life culturally epitomizes the sexual revolution.^[8]  Few know Kinsey, but virtually everyone knows Hefner, not so much the man, but what his image – his brand – conveys.

Civilizing Fisticuffs

Who today knows John Graham Chambers? 

Chambers formed ideas ultimately endorsed by John Douglas.  Who?  Douglas was the 9^th Marquess of Queensbury.  So?  Chamber’s ideas, championed by Douglas and his royal status, provided the foundational rules for boxing known as the Queensbury Rules.^[9]  But, neither Chambers nor Douglas is boxing’s true icon; this man clearly is:  Muhammed Ali

Hoops, Hoops; Who’s Got Next?!

And, while James Naismith is known to basketball scholars, is there any real doubt that this man, Lebron James, not Naismith, is the world’s current basketball icon?  

These sorts of relics, artifacts, and icons can be just as influential and culturally impactful as a SCOTUS opinion.  Think about it: 

• Do we really read Marx, or does Animal Farm inform us about Communism?

• Do we study and ponder Joseph Campbell’s neo-Buddhist popularization, The Power of Myth, or do we “just understand” that the “Force is with us”?^[10]

Mad Men:  Madison Avenue’s “Daily Devotionals”

And then, there is marketing, which markets more than products; marketing pushes and embraces messages often designed to spawn and affix feelings to the product, and messages always carry a non-neutral worldview. Consider these rather ordinary products and the worldview messages they convey: 

Frito-Lay: Rainbow Doritos – Incorporating the six-color^[11] “Pride Flag” to sell munchies.  

Message:  Homosexuality is as normal and “every day” as snacking

Burger King: Depicting two same-sex attracted men: “Be your Way”^[12] enjoying the Special Pride Whopper

Message:  One’s identity may be constructed, and once constructed that identity can include affirming and celebrating same-sex desiresculminating over sharing food – a communion event of sorts

The Gap:  Depicting a male couple stuffed into one T-shirt together with these slogans – “Be One” and “Be Your Own T”

Message:  Aping, yet subverting Genesis 2 and Matthew 19, two persons, irrespective of biological complementarity, can become one flesh – a biological impossibility is being pitched – messaged and marketed – as conceivable and plausible

Banana Republic:  Depicting a “married” male couple holding small children, while sloganeering – “True Outfitters”

Message:  Coupling must include the next generation irrespective of whether the couple is inherently sterile – as are all same-sex groupings – warping the creational norm to “be fruitful and multiply”

Ray-Ban:  Depicting an iconic 1942 photo on Wall Street, yet updating it to depict a male couple strolling boldly hand-in-hand linked with an ethical admonition: “Never Hide”

Message:  One’s sexuality can be stylishly “Wall Street elite” yet must be publicly lived and affirmed, aping yet subverting Christ’s directive that “you will be my witnesses . . .”^[13]

Target:  Depicting a same-sex couple celebrating, while wrapped in a towel together – “Be Yourself Together”

Message:  One’s identity is contained in and satisfied by one’s sexual choices; coupling “completes” one’s identity, subverting the creational norm of “two becoming one”

Tylenol:  Depicting a female couple presenting a Thanksgiving Dinner within an “updated” iconic Rockwell painting (Freedom from Want): “Family is what you make it out to be”

Message: “Family,” like “identity,” is neither natural, nor biological, but rather is to be constructed, and thus untethered to any objective metaphysical reality

Walmart:  Featuring a flirting male couple in a video mini-series entitled “Love is in the Aisle”

Message:  Love is all that matters, whether found online or in the aisle of America’s largest retailer; the objects of affection, however, are irrelevant because “love is love” – ignoring that true love requires obeying the Lord’s commandments

Legal documents themselves, as documents, also play a culturalrole affirming that law follows culture, except when it doesn’t.  As Jonah Goldberg explains:

But the Constitution is a cultural and psychological artifact as well. It informs the way we think about government, rights, and civil society. Our tendency to take things for granted rusts all that glitters eventually. So when we say, “I can do this because the Constitution gives me the right to do this,” it seems perfectly natural, but it is actually one of the most radical things a human can say.^[14]

These cultural relics and icons incubate, cultivate, catalyze, order, and affirm habits (of thought and conduct), which both derive from and affect Culture.  Remember:  Culture is what humans do and thus we must account for the anthropological aspects of deep Culture—What they are and what they shape.  As John Stonestreet summarizes, these cultural relics shape our:

• Loves
  • Longings
    • Loyalties
    • Labors
    • Liturgies^[15]

Exploring the “L” Word

This latter category requires additional comment.  Too frequently Christians get bogged down debating high church versus law church.  The reality is that every church uses some liturgy, whether ornate or not and whether acknowledged or not.  As Jonathan Cruse explains:

All churches from every denominational stripe have an order of worship. Sometimes we think “liturgical” is only a fitting adjective for churches that meet in cathedrals and still use Gregorian chant. Not so. If your church worships, it has a liturgy. Churches that claim to be “non-liturgical” still follow a pattern of worship. Maybe it begins with announcements, then singing, a sermon, and some more singing, before concluding with a sending prayer. That is a liturgy.^[16] 

Thus, our worship services reflect some form of liturgy.  And, so does our culture. Put differently, “liturgy” is never confined to Sunday morning church services.  Christians unfortunately, may miss the cultural liturgies that likewise impact our thinking and shape our mundane rhythms of life.  Understand that paganism is not indifferent to liturgy.  Paganism trumpets and seeks to impose its own values and does so often by using liturgical means – reminders and rhythms foisted upon society.  Paganism understands liturgy’s power, particularly as a means for shaping the public’s expectations and moral imagination – habituating the culture to first be indifferent to sexual sin and then eventually to affirm and protect it. 

Paul informs us that the nadir of the truth being exchanged for the lie manifests itself in vile sexual behavior, behavior that seeks to be approved in the culture.^[17]  Because of this, we can expect to see a religious impulse and packaging – a liturgy – be crafted to catechize the culture to this end.  And, that’s precisely what we see.

Consider the LGTBTQ agenda.  By crafting a type of liturgical calendar – designed to rehearse LGTBTQ history and regularly celebrate it societally – these activists seek to intentionally shape society as a whole to embrace and reflect their unrighteous sexual ethics.  They do so by pushing a sexual liturgical calendar.  As non-Christian Abigail Shrier describes it: 

Indeed, the school calendars at so many schools insist that LGBTQ students be not merely treated equally and fairly, but revered for their bravery.^[18]  The year-long Pride Parade often begins in October with “Coming Out Day,” “International Pronouns Day,” and LGBTQ History Month; November brings “Transgender Awareness Week,” capped off by “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” a vigil for transgender individuals killed for this identity.  March is “Transgender Visibility Month.”  April contributes “Day of Silence / Day of Action” to spread awareness of bullying and harassment of LGBTQ students.  May offers “Harvey Milk Day,” dedicated to mourning the prominent gay rights activist; and June of course, is Pride Month – thirty days dedicated to celebrating LGBTQ identities and decrying anti-LGBTQ oppression.^[19]  

Here’s a key caveat:  If our “life rhythms” by default increasingly conform to pagan liturgies, then we will become like what we worship.^[20]  Liturgy matters.

And, this is true, whether it occurs in church services or in the broader culture.  

And, culture, liturgy, and their transmitters shape another “L word:” Law.

Law as a Cultural Force

Positive law is also Cultural because it’s what man does, and thus is not separate from Culture.  Law too is a powerful Cultural icon, artifact, relic, champion, catalyst, and conduit.^[21]  This reality precipitates three implications that inform and impact culture, politics, and law.  

First, law as culture is never neutral; rather, positive law serves as a conduit for prior moral choices and those choices expressed statutorily will reflect either just or unjust substantive content as scripture teaches:

Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute?^[22]

because they had not obeyed my rules, but had rejected my statutes and profaned my Sabbaths, ¹and their eyes were set on their fathers’ idols.  Moreover, I gave them statutes that were not good and rules by which they could not have life.^[23]

Second, law as culture is pedagogical, impacting beyond the particular prescriptive dictate:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, ¹I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if ²the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”^[24]

Third, law, as culture, affects the greater culture because it signals, informs, and then functions in three cultural roles.  Law acts as a:

• Mirror – Sets a comparative Standard:  Do I measure up?

• Muzzle – Unleashes or Restrains by granting or withholding permission:  Will Society ignore, permit, forbid or mandate X?

• Map – Diagrams the way of “being right” and living “the good life”:  What must I do?^[25]

But, all is not so hunky-dory today because not all mirrors, muzzles, and maps function accurately or well.  Why?  Because idolatry – the exchange of truth for the lie – corrodes both the law and those who use it.^[26]

Compasses, Calibration, and “Conservative” Morals Legislation

Big cultural problems can arise as law discharges these cultural functions.  Tom Wright explains using a navigational metaphor:

It is one thing to insist on walking south when the compass is pointing north.  But to “fix” the compass so that it tells you that the wrong way is the right way is far, far worse.  You can correct a mistake.  But once you tell yourself it wasn’t a mistake there’s no way back.^[27]

The 19^th Century saw several consequences precipitated by wrongly calibrated compasses used by the states to promote law and policy.  These consequences stemmed from a well-intended populist impulse involving so-called “morals legislation”^[28]touching prostitution, gambling, and alcohol consumption.^[29]

Ultimately, this ground swell of frothy populism led to the promotion and ratification of Prohibition, the 18^th amendment thereby both federalizing and constitutionalizing the issue.^[30]  These populists were zealous, but not in accordance with knowledge.  They convinced themselves that they were “making the world a better place.”  They did not.  Instead, this zeal led to the unintended entrenchment and growth of organized crime, particularly la cosa nostra.^[31]  While scripture condemns habitual drunkenness, it also commands using strong drink to celebrate and medicinally.^[32]  To ban all alcohol reflects a mis-calibrated moral compass.  That wrongly calibrated moral compass thus directed society toward a wrong legal destination.  Which should be a political lesson for us today, just as James Madison warned:  passionate extremes fail to accomplish what they promise.  Accordingly, be wary of “movement” mentalities, particularly in the church – political proposals and zeal should be evaluated with godly reflection as to whether they actually advance – genuinely promote – a defined public good by an authorized moral means.  Prohibition, despite being well-intended, did neither.

Movements like populism actually tend to be more psychological and sociological than substantively moral.  Often, they result in cannibalizing what they had hoped to conserve.  As Dr. Sandlin explains:

Movements tend to be magnets for “movement types,” people who find the solace of personal identity most fully in a movement. . . .

For movements to last beyond a single generation, they need bold, energetic, creative young thinkers and leaders to defend the movement against intellectual opposition and dilution, and to carry the ideological torch forward. The irony is that if this second generation is too bold, energetic, and creative (and these are good traits), it may feel compelled to revise what it considers flaws in the movement’s ideology and thereby risk criticism that it has betrayed the movement’s founders and founding tenets. But if there are no bold, energetic, creative young thinkers on the horizon, the movement will lose its vitality and peter out. A movement must have these new thinkers and leaders, but it can’t afford to keep them.^[33]

Today we see similar populist frothing, demanding that folks “never punch to the Right” – as if God’s standard of truth-telling and accountability is suspended because of where someone fits on a particular political spectrum.  Nonsense.  But this mentality exhibits a movement mentality and has and will again precipitate cultural trouble for everyone.  Let’s consider an example.

Political Populism and Misconstruing the Common Good: Banning Imbeciles and Booze (and then Babies)

Making the “world a better place” justified the Supreme Court’s Buck v. Bell: stopping imbeciles and other disfavored dimwitted persons from procreating.  The same rationale also justified a seemingly less draconian consequence by banning alcohol. Let’s first consider the pathway that led to legally approved involuntary sterilization.  How did this happen?  

Law coercing sterilization did not create the eugenics culture; rather it arose from it.  That ambient eugenics culture “in the air” provided fertile ground that shaped the culture’s moral imagination and plausibility structures.  These then granted permission and then actively supported forced sterility.

In particular, the then extant social theory bred, spread, and “validated” Social Darwinism.  Next, the extant scientific ethos embraced eugenics as the means to instantiate this general commitment to Social Darwinism. Finally, the current populist political ethos, informed and energized by both Marxist and religious Progressives, sought utopia – imposed by the State’s coercive arm.  This potent combination was then practically embraced and transmitted by key elite popularizers and transmitters like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.^[34]  This milieu then catalyzed legal reactions, law following culture:

• By 1907 to 1918 fifteen states, captivated by this utopian vision, involuntarily sterilized 3233 people^[35]  The states’ citizens, however pushed back and rightly so.

• Accordingly, from 1912 to 1921 eight States faced challenges to these utopian provisions with citizens winning 7 with the only one loss^[36]  Eugenics would not die so easily, however.  These legal victories were not definitive given the extant culture.

The Cultural elites supporting eugenics in general and sterilization in particular instigated a national – rather than state-based – litigation strategy by contriving a lawsuit involving Virginia’s provision.  As Judge Sutton notes, the trial was a sham; Carrie Buck never received justice and this led not only to Buck v. Bell affirming Virginia’s eugenic law, but also federalizing the issue thereby stopping societal debate—and thus shuttering both state law and citizen dissent.  Put differently, once the Supreme Court in Buck “granted permission” for eugenic regulation, dissent was no longer morally plausible.  Culture followed law.

In 1927 the nation had “learned” – because Buck taught this to the culture – that eugenics is good and that attacking healthy tissue – sterilizing imbeciles – served that purpose.  

This is precisely what is currently developing culturally regarding so-called “gender transition.”  The elite culture deems this current attacking of healthy reproductive tissue “good” – by sanctioning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and mutilating irreversible surgery.  What will the Supreme Court do?  Will we see another Buck?  We should know one way or another during the Court’s current term.^[37]

By legalizing involuntary sterilization, the Court in Buck further catalyzed culture.  The Court changed the legal winds, and state policy makers got the message from the Court’s cultural homily and again responded^[38] but this time aligned with the Supreme Court’s newly approved direction.  The legal compass had been mis-calibrated, just as it had been with Prohibition.  This again reflects Paul’s teaching – When the Truth is exchanged for the Lie, unrighteous practices press to be approved.^[39]

Within two years, 12 states followed Buck’s safe harbor by enacting similar sterilization statutes; within four years, another 10 states followed suit; and by 1931 a total of 28 states authorized coercively sterilizing its own citizens.^[40] Law both followed – and created – culture.  

Buck’s saga demonstrates why the thinking Christian must be attuned to both cultural dynamics as well as legal/political matters.  Bad idolatrous theology cannot be cabined to just law, just politics or just culture. Focusing on one to the exclusion of the others in effect jettisons Christ’s Lordship from all reality.  Did our culture learn a good lesson from Buck?  Sadly, it did not.

Another well-intended cultural moment occurred three years after Buck. In 1930 the Religious Robe of Culture lit a fuse leading not just to practical sterility, but unintentionally to the actual death of millions as the consequences of this idea played out culturally – far exceeding the damage caused by Buck:  Abortion on demand.

Equally worse, this move in 1930 ultimately provided legal and cultural “cover” for directly attacking the creational norm of marriage and the ontological binary character of humanity, immutably created male and female.  Ideas expand to the logical boundaries.  This led to same-sex “marriage” and “gender transition.”  In other words, this move re-introduced and magnified a corrupting Pagan view of reality that spawned legal and cultural consequences.  

That is a tragic story for our next Dicta edition which explores what happens when the culture “permits” unrighteous practices which are then increasingly approved by law and politics.

^[1] N.T. Wright, After You Believe – Why Christian Character Matters, (2010), 153

^[2] James Madison, Federalist No. 37

^[3] 1 Thess. 5:21

^[4] The Federalist, No. 37

^[5] Romans 12:2

^[6] Yes, it’s appropriate to use photos in making scholarly points because scripture informs us that Christ is not only God the Word (John 1:1 word = logos) but is also the image of Him (Col. 1:15 image = eikon).

^[7] J. Alan Branch, Alfred Kinsey, A Brief Summary and Critique, https://erlc.com/research/alfred-kinsey-a-brief-summary-and-critique/

^[8] Hefner, famous for promoting loose sexuality – sex separated from procreation and commitment – also  funded legal efforts to promote legalizing abortion. Cassy Fiano-Chesser, Hugh Hefner, who helped to legalize abortion, called women “object.” [capitalization in the original] https://www.liveaction.org/news/hefner-legalize-abortion-women-objects/

^[9] https://www.boxingdaily.com/boxing-news/queensberry-rules/

^[10] For a compelling and popular theological understanding of how George Lucas brought Campbell’s paganism to the masses, see, Peter Jones, The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back:  An Old Heresy for the New Age (1992); and Spirit Wars:  Pagan Revival in Christian America (1997)

^[11] The post-Noahic rainbow actually contains seven colors.

^[12] Previously, Burger King’s tag line was “Have it your way.”  That phrase sounded in ethics.  The current tag line now sounds in metaphysics which coheres with the idolatrous trend toward expressive individualism and sexual self-determination:  gender dysphoric men no longer “identify” as women; they ARE women, according to gender ideology.  This of course is absurd.  

^[13] Acts 1:8

^[14] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy (2018), 96

^[15] See John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle, A Practical Guide to Culture, (2017), 39 

^[16] Jonathan Cruse, What is Liturgy?  https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/liturgy

^[17] Romans 1:18-32

^[18] Note:  this echoes Romans 1:32 – unrighteous practices must be approved.

^[19] Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage; The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, (2020) 69

^[20] Cf., Ps. 115:8

^[21] It’s often noted that “Politics is downstream from culture” or that “law follows culture” – While it is correct to understand that “bare” positive law often reflects and/or influences that which exists in the broader cultural narrative, it is mistaken to classify that law as something different or distinct from culture.  Because it’s what mankind does, positive law IS culture.  It can be differentiated from other aspects of culture but does not reside in a different taxonomic category.

^[22] Ps. 94:20

^[23] Ezek. 20:24, 25

^[24] Romans 7:7

^[25] This is a popular way of communicating the traditional three uses of the law.  For those unfamiliar with these distinctions, see, The Threefold Use of the Law, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/threefold-use-law

^[26] Technically, the law itself is not sinful, but fallen man’s approach to it can be as noted above citing Romans 7:7 – “What then shall we say?  That the law is sin?  By no means!” 

^[27] N.T. Wright, After You Believe – Why Christian Character Matters, (2010), 153

^[28] See, John W. Compton, The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution, (2014)

^[29] Curious and scripturally astute readers may at this point play “which of these things is not like the others.”

^[30] The theme of severing debate by federalizing an issue recurs, as we will see in Part 3.  Federalizing matters also signals both a consolidation of power as well as growth of the “fourth branch of government,” the Administrative State.  For an historical analysis and critique, see, Philip Hamburger, Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, (2014).

^[31] “Prohibition practically created organized crime in America. It provided members of small-time street gangs with the greatest opportunity ever — feeding the need of Americans coast to coast to drink beer, wine and hard liquor on the sly.”  http://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-rise-of-organized-crime/the-mob-during-prohibition/

^[32] Prov. 31:6; 1 Timothy 5:23

^[33] P. Andrew Sandlin, Saying Goodbye to Christian Reconstructionism, https://www.garynorth.com/SandlinFarewell.pdf

^[34] Both Wilson and Roosevelt professed Christianity in the Reformed tradition, Presbyterian and Christian Reformed respectively.  Roosevelt, for example, once quipped that he “wish[ed] very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding.”  Jeffrey S Sutton, 51 Imperfect Solutions – States and the Making of American Constitutional Law, (2018), 87.  This ought to sound a sober warning to Christians who think only rank unbelievers, apostates, and Nazi pagans could embrace and enact policy based on eugenics.

^[35] California performed 79% or 2558, Id. at 84-132

^[36] The loss occurred in Washington State which affirmed the statute.  Id., at 93

^[37] United States v. Skrmetti, to be argued December 4, 2024; see, https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-skrmetti/

^[38] Adapted from Jeffrey S Sutton, 51 Imperfect Solutions – States and the Making of American Constitutional Law, (2018), chapter 5 – Note:  no state below the Mason-Dixon Line enacted and enforced these provisions until 1919, enervating the common myth that asserts that sterilization policies were the racist products of Southern “Lost Cause” revenge.  Rather, the progressively-infatuated areas rushed to sever fertility of certain citizens:  New England and the West Coast.

^[39] Romans 1:32

^[40] Ironically, Hitler was democratically elected two years later.  Der Fuhrer tardily joined the eugenics party long after Roosevelt and Wilson.