American Sociological Association's CULTURE SECTION

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The Myth of Culture Wars

Chris Smith, UNC-Chapel Hill; with Michael Emerson, Bethel; Sally Gallagher, Oregon State; and Paul Kennedy, Gordon

Culture wars is a myth. The conventional wisdom that Americans are divided into two warring camps slugging it out over abortion, prayer in schools, and homosexuality is greatly exaggerated. Growing empirical evidence suggests it just is not true. In fact, most Americans have not taken up oppositional sides with warring "traditionalist" and "progressive" forces to wage their local and national battles. The vast majority of Americans are much more interested in whether their kids learn to read well, whether they can walk their streets safely at night, and whether the government can get the deficit under control than they are in protesting obscene art and gays marching in parades. The important issues for the mass of Americans, in other words, remain economic and social, not culture-wars issues.

The actual culture wars that we do see on television are being waged by a fairly small group of noisy, entrepreneurial activists, whose interests are served by the impression that all of America has taken up arms to join their fight. And too many in the academy and the media have cooperated in fostering this perception. But it is a misperception. The Pat Buchanans and Kate Michaelmans of the airwaves have declared war, but very few Americans have shown up for the fight.

The first clue that should cause us to suspect the culture wars story is evidence from opinion surveys. When pollsters ask the question, "What do you think is the biggest problem facing America today?," most Americans consistently say things like the federal deficit, crime, unemployment, health care, poverty, and racism. Somewhere down the list you find a few people saying moral decline. People almost never mention abortion, multiculturalism, prayer in schools, secular humanism, the imposition of the Christian right agenda, pornography, or homosexuality.

Ironically, some of the most outspoken culture-wars activists are coming to this realization. Take, for example, a 1993 article in Policy Review by Ralph Reed (1993), leader of the Christian Coalition, entitled, "Casting a Wider Net: Religious Conservatives Move Beyond Abortion and Homosexuality." In it, Reed argues that conservative Christian activists need to recognize that the abortion and homosexuality issues simply don't animate most Americans, and that, therefore, "the most urgent challenge for pro-family conservatives is to develop a broader issue agenda." Reed notes that in 1992 election exit polls, only 12 percent of voters, and only 22 percent even among self-identified, born-again evangelicals, listed abortion as an important voting issue. Likewise, only 16 percent of all voters mentioned family values as an issue affecting their vote. He also cites a survey showing that, besides the economy, "the chief concern of voters who attend church four time a month was not abortion, pornography, or prayer in school, but cutting waste in government and reducing the deficit." Reed concludes, "There is growing evidence to suggest that evangelicals and their Roman Catholic allies are concerned about the same issues as the broader electorate, but with a pro-family twist. Their primary interest is not to legislate against the sins of others, but to protect the health, welfare, and financial security of their own families."

Survey data can be deceiving, however. For they can fail to reveal the cultural meanings that respondents attach to "issues." To get at how people really make sense of their world, to really understand which issues concern them and why, one has to get out and actually converse with them, to sit down in their living rooms for a few hours and let them talk about themselves. This is what we have done. As the first phase of a collaborative, 3-year study of American evangelicals, in the summer of 1995, we conducted 128 open-ended, in-depth interviews with a random sample of churchgoing Protestants in Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Birmingham, and Durham, North Carolina. Our interviews lasted two hours each, and involved Protestants from every major tradition and denomination, sampled in proportion to their actual numbers in the American population. We surveyed the full spectrum of Protestantism, from liberals to fundamentalists, from the marginally committed to the fervent believer, from black Episcopalians to white pentecostals.1

We began by asking all of our 128 interviewees a series of open-ended questions about how their own sense of religious identity relates to other religious and secular groups, their experiences living as Christians in American society, and their perceptions of how American society is changing. After lengthy discussions on these questions, we then asked our interviewees to name the three specific issues or problems that they thought should be of greatest concern to Christians today. We continued by asking a variety of questions about Protestant cultural disestablishment and status decline, what should make Christians distinctive, Christian involvement in politics, the separation of church and state, and attitudes about the family, the media, morality, and cultural pluralism. If ever a study could detect Protestants' investment in culture wars, this was it.

In fact, we didn't detect much of it. To the contrary, through our in-depth interviews we made three interesting and mind-changing observations.

First, we were startled by so many people's obliviousness to culture wars. Not uneducated people, but college educated people. Young and old. Men and women. Many we interviewed, for example, were unaware of the existence of any important Christian political organizations. Many had either never heard of or knew very little about Jerry Falwell or the Moral Majority. Even fewer had heard of Ralph Reed or the Christian Coalition. Some confused the two. Others confused one or the other with an entirely unrelated person or organization. Many had not heard of Operation Rescue, and many more who had heard were not familiar with its goals and tactics. Furthermore, most interviewees confessed that they had either never heard of or did not really understand much about multiculturalism, school choice, tuition vouchers, New Age religion, or issues surrounding federal funding for the arts or alternative definitions of the family.

This observation confirms the growing suspicion among pollsters that most Americans do not even seem to know if they belong to the Religious Right or not. In a July 1994 CBS News/New York Times poll, 9 percent of Americans said they thought of themselves "as a member of the religious right movement." Two months later, 17 percent responded affirmatively to the same question. That same month, a Gallup poll using the identical question found that 11 percent of Americans identified with the Religious Right. Then Gallup polls in October showed 16 percent affirming, in November, 22 percent affirming, and in December, 14 percent affirming their membership in the Religious Right (see American Enterprise 1994; Princeton Religious Research Center 1995). Well, which is it? Nine percent or 22 percent?

Second, we were startled by the distaste among many of our interviewees, who were aware of culture wars, for culture wars. Our interviews, for example, revealed an almost universal distrust of Christian leaders associated with television or politics. It was clear that the fallout from the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart televangelist scandals of the 1980s has not dissipated, but have tainted every other Christian television figure but Billy Graham. As to Ralph Reed, because he seemed to many people to be "just old enough to attend the prom," many were willing to give him a chance. But most were quite pessimistic about his ability to remain clean, given the money and power at his disposal. Another target of universal antipathy among the people we interviewed who had heard about it was Randall Terry's pro-life organization, Operation Rescue. Not one of our interviewees spoke positively about him or it. Even the most committed pro-lifers were turned off by Operation Rescue's confrontation, shouting, and perceived negativity. Very many associated the shootings of abortion doctors and receptionists with Operation Rescue. And they wanted no part of it.

Third, more than a few of our interviewees thought that many specific culture wars issues were unimportant or foolish. Some, but certainly not all, thought that the fight for prayer in public schools, for example, was silly. Similarly, one Mennonite woman who called herself traditional and evangelical, confided, "Don't tell anyone I said this, but I really don't care about abortion. It's just not an issue for me. I think it's just as much a sin to bring a child into the world and not take care of him than it is to have an abortion. But I don't say that in public."

Far more interesting and important, however, than the unaware, the disinterested, and the antagonistic that we interviewed (of which there will always be some in any group), are those who were aware of and apparently friendly toward culture wars issues. They are the ones who we need most to understand, who most matter for our purposes.

When we asked interviewees open-ended questions about their Christian experience in and perceptions of the direction of American society, the vast majority of interviewees were united in voicing grave concerns about two issues: the breakdown of the American family and the decline in American education. On the surface, widespread troubles among Protestants about the state of the American family and educational system would seem to be a reservoir of emotional and cognitive fuel to inflame the culture wars. But, in fact, the vast majority of people we talked with, including those more tuned-in to culture wars issues, simply did not manifest a crusading spirit or tell stories of their engagement in culture wars battles. Why not?

A careful reading of interviewee's stories reveals two factors that counteract any serious involvement in culture wars.

The first was that many of those who are deeply concerned about family and education interpret problems in these areas in such a way as to negate most culture-wars impulses. When people reported to us that the breakdown of the American family was their primary concern, we asked them what they thought was causing this breakdown and what should be done in response. With few exceptions, they did not claim that the family was under attack by liberal elites, secular humanism, feminism, the federal government, or an immoral mass media. Even when we fished about for such answers, we did not hear them often. Instead, we sometimes heard stories about irresponsible parents, the decline of community, and poverty. However, far and away our interviewees' most common explanation for the breakdown of the American family--and this is true of conservative and liberal Protestants alike--was economic pressures that are pulling families apart, the disintegrating demands of the changing U.S. economy. One Southern Baptist man, well-informed about culture wars, observed:

The backbone of every country has got to be the family, but our family unit has broken down. The divorce rate is so high. And families are not raising their children with Christian ideals anymore. Parents are so involved in their careers that they are putting their children in daycare. They have to, in order to live in today's society, with the economy like it is, they just have to.

Many, such as this Baptist man, believe both parents bringing home two paychecks is a basic necessity today:

We found the same kind of dynamic at work regarding education. Very few faulted the spread of secular humanism, liberal influences, New Agers, or multiculturalists for the perceived educational breakdown. Rather, they mentioned problems like under-funded schools; oversized classes; under-qualified, overworked, or uncommitted teachers; irresponsible parents; top-heavy educational administrations; teachers unions; and, for a few, busing and racial integration. The lack of discipline in the classroom was also a major concern. But, returning to their deepest concern, many of those we interviewed traced education's woes back to the breakdown of the family, and traced that in turn to economic pressures that are pulling families apart. One man from a Holiness church remarked:

Schools are a microcosm of society. Society's families have broken down, and schools have become a repository for watching children. With the hectic world of both parents working, schools are becoming expensive day-care centers. Teachers are now supposed to be therapists, baby-sitters, and playmates first, educators last. I really believe it's a mess.

We were amazed to hear many religious conservatives sounding as much or more like the liberals we interviewed in indicting economic pressures more than moral decline as the primary cause of these social problems.

But what about practical education policy? Interestingly, precisely because of their recognized inability or lack of desire to achieve a Christian domination of the public schools, most respondents--including culturally aware conservatives--eschewed the crusading mentality of culture-wars activists. Take, for example, this Southern Baptist man, who is very much tuned in to the anxieties and programs of conservative Christian political organizations. After hearing him lament in detail the declining quality of education, we asked whether he was concerned about morality in school. He responded:

I don't really care about teachers teaching my kids morals. If they can teach them how to read and calculate and have good English and grammar, that's what I'm looking for from schools. I'm not looking for them to teach my kids ethics. I'll do that at home.

Similarly, for many (whether or not they could or could not control public schools), concerns such as the moral content of curriculum and textbooks, sex education, and school prayer are simply not burning issues. The attitude of this Pentecostal man was typical of many others:

Return prayer to schools? I'd just like to see prayer returned to Christian homes. Some are out there picketing. I say Christians should worry about their own righteousness and standing before God, and start living right themselves. They ought to worry about bring prayer back into their own homes and churches, their own lives. No, I'm not for crusades for prayer in public schools.

We also observed a second major factor that appeared to neutralize culture warring among some who otherwise seem ideologically sympathetic to culture wars. That is a widespread commitment to certain theological and political beliefs that inhibit an all-out, bare-knuckled struggle to establish Christian values and morals over all Americans. It became clear in our interviews that very many Protestants are beset by a very deep and difficult quandary that we call the "pluralism-versus-Christendom" dilemma. In short, many Protestants think that Christian morality should be the primary authority for American culture and society, and simultaneously think that everyone should be free to live as they see fit, even if that means rejecting Christianity. Because they firmly believe both simultaneously, the logic of each restrains the tendencies of the other from being carried too far.

On the Christendom side, most churchgoing American Protestants have inherited and more-or-less embrace the theological notion that there is a transcendent God who establishes absolute and universal standards of morality for individuals and societies; and that obedience to God's ways ultimately produces abundant life, while the rejection of God's ways produces individual and social degeneration and, finally, death. Most American Protestants, too, are heirs of a faith that for centuries enjoyed the status of de facto religious establishment. This Christendom legacy--which mixes essential elements of Christian doctrine with aspects of the historical Protestant experience in America, particularly Puritanism--makes Protestants want their morality and standards to be normative for American society. The Christendom impulse is illustrated in this exchange with a Baptist woman:

Q: Would you support a law to recognize homosexual marriages? A: Well, no. The Christian laws shouldn't do that. I'm totally against gay marriages and lesbians and them wanting to raise kids. Q: And if they say you're imposing your religious values and morals on them? A: Well, I'm just telling you what the Word of God says. Q: But if they said they don't believe in God or the Bible, then you would say? A: You can't change me, my beliefs. Q: So you're comfortable using laws to maintain Christian morals? A: Well, yes.

At the same time, the very same Protestants are committed to another belief that is inherently in tension with the idea of Christendom: individual volunteerism. This belief reflects other age-old Christian doctrines colored by the American Protestant experience of frontier revivalism, and by less religious aspects of American culture. Inherent in Protestant faith is the idea that individuals must ultimately decide for themselves to follow God or not; that truly meaningful moral actions cannot be forced, but must come voluntarily from the heart; and that Christians ultimately can't make people who do not want to be Christians to act as if they were. As one Pentecostal man said, "I am opposed to shoving anything down people's throats and I think God is too. He gives every person a right to choose. And we should also."

Furthermore, good old American individualism--of which most Protestants, conservatives and liberals alike, have imbibed deeply--prescribes that individuals should not be coerced by social institutions, especially by the government, and particularly not on personal matters; that freedom to pursue individual happiness is a paramount good; that people shouldn't meddle too deeply in other people's business; and that government usually provides poor solutions to social and cultural problems. This belief in individual volunteerism naturally eschews the domineering spirit of Christendom, and instead accepts, if not embraces, social and cultural tolerance and pluralism. So, in the very same discussion, the very same Baptist woman also affirmed the individual-volunteerism impulse:

Q: How do you feel about using laws to set social standards about family life or sexual morality? A: Well, I don't think the law can do that because that's not the law's responsibility. The Bible says it's people's own responsibility, not the law's. I think that's what has American in trouble now: we try to make the law take care of everything. I don't agree with using laws for that kind of thing. Q: You would rather have people live morally voluntarily, and not have the government trying to tell people how to live? A: Yes, that's right.

Notice, it is generally not that some Protestants embrace Christendom and others embrace individual volunteerism. Most of the people we interviewed, just like this Baptist woman, fully embrace both, even if they are not aware of it in these precise terms. And being caught on the horns of this dilemma creates within them a powerful self-restraining ambivalence about Christian social and political activism. Their volunteeristic thinking evokes the concerns of Christendom--God's laws are not optional, but binding on all people and nations, for their own good. At the same time, however, mental steps toward Christendom automatically rouse the opposition of volunteerism--you shouldn't force people to live like Christians. In the end, neither gets very far.

Historically, this pluralism-versus-Christendom dilemma was fairly easily resolved by the fact that Protestantism, although officially disestablished, in fact for centuries dominated America's public discourse and its major institutions. By failing to see the degree to which theirs was an imposed domination, the Protestant establishment had its cake and ate it too: it enjoyed a "Christian America" that it believed was voluntarily chosen by the American people. But since the Protestant establishment has increasingly lost control of public discourse and major institutions since the turn of the twentieth century, the majority of Protestants who want to affirm both Christendom and individual volunteerism face an increasingly uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. In the end, the ultimate practical consequence we saw in most of those we talked with was that any potential culture warring that Christendom tended to encourage was consistently reigned in and subdued by the tolerance and pluralism inherent in individual volunteerism. Battling to Christianize America just didn't sit right.

Between those who are oblivious to culture wars, those disdainful of culture wars, those who interpret America's problems in a way that neutralizes activism in culture wars, and those who hold beliefs about individual volunteerism that tend to counteract engagement in culture wars, there are not a lot of churchgoing Protestants left over to fight culture wars. And that helps to explain why even the Christian Coalition's relatively large number of member activists, impressive by standards of mo st social movements, still only amount to about one-half of one percent of the total population. Not quite a moral majority.

David Moore (1995) gives us another perspective in his April/May 1995 article in The Public Perspective, which uses survey data to identify the magnitude of the "Religious Right." According to Moore, if you define the Religious Right as politically conservative Independent or Republican Christians who say that religion is very important in their lives, who attend church services regularly, and who oppose abortion in all circumstances, then the Religious Right makes up only 4 percent of the American population, and only 9 percent of Republicans. Not exactly half of a nation torn in two. In fact, for most Americans, the brouhaha over culture wars is fairly distant and trivial.

NOTES

1Admittedly, a complete study of culture wars also needs to research Roman Catholic and non-religious Americans. But if personal investment in culture wars is ever to be found, according to conventional wisdom, it surely should be found among Protestant Christians, particularly among the most conservative and liberal Protestant Christians. That is where we looked.

REFERENCES

American Enterprise. 1994. "The Religious Right." American Enterprise. September/October.

Moore, David. 1995. "The 'Religious Right': Definition and Measurement." The Public Perspective. April/May.

Princeton Religious Research Center. 1995. "Who Belongs to the Religious Right?" Emerging Trends. 17:4. April.