Do We Need a Cultural Counter-Revolution?

“I am not just exasperated with politics! Don’t we need a cultural counter-revolution?”

I can well understand how the questioner felt on both counts! Some of us grew up during The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, which overturned our Judeo-Christian sexual ethics and gave birth to a “new age of promiscuity, adultery, abortion, illegitimacy, venereal disease, AIDS, divorce, living together, gay rights, and gay marriage.” Both before, during, and after this sexual revolution there was a concurrent “cultural revolution” which came to be called the culture war, fought over such pivotal issues as abortion, homosexuality, prayer in schools, and even the observance of Christmas.

Most social commentators have pronounced that the Judeo-Christian traditionalists lost the culture war when the Supreme Court voted 5-4 in favor of gay marriage. There is no denying that “secularism reigns supreme in most of academia, and the news and entertainment media” within what is often touted as a “post-Christian society or culture.” This secularism embraces and endorses a multiculturalism that bends over backwards for most any and every culture with the pronounced exception of Judeo-Christianity.

Perhaps it is time not for a concession speech by Christians willing to be ushered off the public stage and into a closet, but for Christians to speak out at every opportunity to raise pertinent and pointed – if not provocative –questions such as these that follow. Let me share with you a personal experience Joanna and I had this past fall when we sought to “catch the colors” in New England and visit one of my alma maters.

This secularism embraces and endorses a multiculturalism that bends over backwards for most any and every culture with the pronounced exception of Judeo-Christianity.

While we didn’t “catch the colors” just right, we did catch a good glimpse of post-Christian culture. Picturesque, but empty, churches. Once-upon-a-time Christian colleges with rich endowments and majestic buildings, but now characterized by a pervasive secular mindset.

As we strolled through the campus past Connecticut Hall, the model for Old College at the University of Georgia founded by Yale alumni, I thought about the book written by William Buckley during his student days in the late 1940s God and Man at Yale.

I bought and read this book during my first year. He documented how the Christian culture was being actively replaced by an atheist/secular/humanist philosophy preached, promoted, and pushed by activist professors. He wrote: “I propose, simply, to expose what I regard as an extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that, under the protective label ‘academic freedom,’ has produced one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of these supporters to be atheistic socialists.”

What was happening then continued happening, which helps explain why we lost the culture war. And it is a war we need not have lost. We cannot only answer our critics’ questions, but ask them questions for which they do not have good answers!

1. How fair and balanced is our post-Christian culture? While “academic freedom and artistic license” are often mentioned in defense of criticizing and ridiculing Christian mores, should we not expect some measure of fair play on their playing fields? Do we not need another book like William Buckley’s God and Man at Yale which documents the biased and overly one-sided “secular” or “humanist” perspectives?
2. How well does our post-Christian culture cultivate humility and honesty, responsibility and accountability, in its students and it leaders?
3. How well does our post-Christian culture explain goodness and graciousness, lovingkindness and forgiveness?
4. How well does our post-Christian culture cultivate volunteers willing to work in disaster relief soup kitchens and other crisis missions?
5. How well does our post-Christian culture explain evil?
6. How well does our post-Christian culture cope with suffering and death?
7. How well does our post-Christian culture compete historically with our Judeo-Christian culture?

Let’s explore how well atheists, secularists, and humanists, the outspoken promoters of the post-Christian culture, can answer these questions!