Kulturkampf
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

It was roughly about the time of the end of the cold war that the culture war became news. Evangelical sociologist J.D. Hunter wrote Culture Wars, which became a bestseller. In its wake came Hunter's sequel, Before The Shooting Begins. Neo-evangelical Tom Sines fired back with Cease Fire. We Reformed folk got involved when my friend Michael Horton tried to rise above the fray with his Beyond Culture Wars. Then we signed a deal with the Russians in Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and Peter Kreeft invited everyone but the atheists to join the allies in his Ecumenical Jihad.

Soon David Wells rode in like some sort of General MacArthur and weighed in with three separate volumes, and before long not a few scholars and theologians were left scratching their amillenial heads wondering Whatever Happened to Theology? Suddenly cultural critics disappeared from the radar screen. We need them back.

The bifurcation of the culture wars from the theological wars is a sure sign of failure on the theological battlefield. Rightly understood, to fight against the assumptions and the institutions of the world is what we call in theology fighting worldliness. But we don't want to call it that, lest the world start calling us fundamentalists, and stop calling us-when they can suppress the snickers-scholars. We are only willing to fight worldliness if we can fight it on the world's terms.

Culture, we must remember, is religion externalized. It is the justification of our justification, as James argues. It is how we show what it is we believe. Professions of faith are meaningless when we embrace a culture that denies the faith.

That is why we too fight the culture wars, but fight them theologically. J.D. Hunter argued that the protagonists in the battle were the progressives and the orthodox. Orthodox was defined rather loosely, as anyone who affirmed an objective, external, transcendent source of the good and the true. They do not need to agree on what that standard is to join this army, merely that there is a standard. On the other side are the progressives who deny any transcendent source but bicker each other over whose imminent source should prevail.

To fight along these lines, however, is to deny the true transcendent source. If we are at ease with Muslims or Mormons or Roman Catholics as our brothers in battle, we are fighting for something other than the crown rights of King Jesus. And when we do that, we demonstrate to the watching world where our loyalty is.

It was during World War II that C. S. Lewis took pen to paper to defend the reading and studying of great literature. It was argued then that with such a titanic struggle going on, we simply did not have time for such poppycock. Reading Shakespeare was all well and good when things are going fine, but didn't he know there was a war on? Mr. Lewis defended Shakespeare not on the grounds that reading Shakespeare was good for the war effort, nor on the grounds that a war torn people needed a diversion. Rather he argued that we can not escape culture. There is no culture-less choice; the only true question is whether we will invest in good culture or bad culture. Better it should be good culture.

When some of our amillennial brothers suggest that culture is beside the point, that what we need is more dusty tomes on the roots of the Marian controversy in the l7th century, they are not only making the same mistake but are showing themselves to be prisoners of an earlier culture war. They have been overrun by gnosticism and haven't looked up from their scrolls enough to notice. While theology lies beneath the culture wars, there is nothing beyond them. The Lordship of Christ is over all things, and so our calling is to make that manifest in all places.

On the other hand, when others become collaborators by suggesting that we lay down our theological weapons and join forces with Rome, or Salt Lake City, or Constantinople, or Mecca, we must resist that call. No matter how tight the alliance, no matter how wise our strategy, we can rest assured that a pluralistic theology will birth a pluralistic culture. What we believe about Jesus, and the gospel of His kingdom will shape the culture that we build. If we believe that what we believe is a matter of little importance, we build a culture upon sand.

In short, we fight the war on both fronts because we understand that there is but one front. We fight the culture war because the culture is fighting us. It is seeking to shape our theology, just as we hope to see our theology shape it. We must defend ourselves, remembering that while the devil cannot win, he can fight. Before we can take over culture, in short, we must first free the homeland. We will not succeed until we expel the enemy from our midst. This is the greatest battle of the culture war-to get not culture, but their culture, out of our heads, and out of our hands, not so that we can go back to our dusty books, but so that we can raise up the culture of He who was raised up.

The culture is not the mere setting of our theological battles but is the very prize of the battle. And the theology is not merely the style of our uniform but the very weapon of the battle. We are now, as always, about the compelling business of making visible the invisible kingdom of Jesus Christ. We are bringing all things-not just politics, and not just theology, but all things-under subjection.

Now is no time to don the blue helmets of the one world worldview. We do not set Jesus aside to go and kill Mohammed. Now is the time, because it is always the time, to grind the head of the serpent into the dust he must eat, in every part of our lives.