Recently in Culture Wars Category

Obama's political advisers dread any issue that could trigger a culture war and diminish his support among independent voters.

I asked Gingrich if his conversion had changed some fundamental political beliefs for him. He said it was the other way around--that political developments had made him more overtly Christian: "The whole effort to create a ruthless, amoral, situational ethics culture has probably driven me toward a more overt Christianity.

Charles Craig, president of Georgia Bio, a private nonprofit that promotes Georgia's life sciences industry, said the legislation would hurt Georgia's ability to recruit biotech firms.

"It would embarrass the state," Craig said. Georgia is trying to use an international biotech convention in Atlanta in May to showcase the state as a good place to do biotechnology business.

Kenneth Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, listened to the committee debate but did not offer an opinion. All he would say was that during the upcoming biotech convention, "The eyes of the world are going to be on Georgia."

Tom Daniel, senior vice chancellor for the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, said the university system opposes the bill. "We're concerned it would have a damaging effect on research being done now and our ability to successfully do that in the future," he said.

It's been so hard to get past the culture wars because 1) they involve real differences of belief and principle; and 2) a lot of our politics has come to be structured around them. It is a bit churlish--OK, I'm a bit of a churl--to diss those who, with the best of intentions, are trying to mark out a middle ground for at least some moderate types on either side to occupy. But to imagine that middle-ground positions can, or indeed should, neutralize profound disagreements over the norms that govern abortion and the rights of non-heterosexuals in our society is a mistake.

So the culture wars will continue, in one form or another. And with that in mind, let me recommend A Field Guide to the Culture Wars by Mike McGough, sometime editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and now a Washington-based editorial writer for the Lost Angeles Times. Hot off the press, the book not only tells you who's who and what's what but provides essential context for understanding why. Mike's one of those old-breed intellectual journalists who combines deep knowledge of religion and law with a love of the daily cut-and-thrust of politics. On a subject that stirs ungodly passions, his is a dispassionate voice of reasoned understanding. So order your copy today.

Not.

But according to the big story of the day in our little neck of the woods, that's the goal of Third Way's exercise in brokering a "Come Let Us Reason Together" agreement on a few issues between some of the usual middle-of-the-road evangelicals and some of the usual bien-pensant progressive evangelicals. With the imprimatur and nihil obstat of that sponsor of all goodly coalitions, Rabbi David Saperstein. Brody puffs and Gilgoff's got the story and Pastordan snorts.

To me, this smacks too much of creating that elusive centrist evangelicalism we've all been reading so much about, and not enough about, well, policy coalitions. If you want to go for comprehensive immigration reform, go for it; and bring all those Catholics along. See how much of the pro-choice crowd will sign on to abortion reduction. Get behind a no-torture resolution in Congress. The way to end the Culture Wars is not to create a third way (pace Third Way), but to do the work itself. Sez I.

In one of those anniversary pieces that sometimes attribute more significance to what is being remembered than is deserved, Peter Baker suggests in today's NYT that the impeachment of Bill Clinton 10 years ago marks the beginning of the vendetta-like conflict that characterizes politics in the nation's capital:

Indeed, except for brief interludes, Washington in the last decade has been governed by a climate of anger and animosity, a modern-day tribalism pitting faction against faction that some trace to the days of the impeachment.

What the impeachment may more truly have signified is indicated in a quote from Mark Corallo, an aide to former Louisiana congressman (and almost speaker) Bob Livingston at the time and later a Justice Department spokesman under President Bush:

At the end of the day, the Republicans were hurt more. We became the party of the moral jihad. I’m as guilty as anyone. We all got wrapped up in it.

Sarah Posner, who writes the FundamentaList column for the American Prospect, has a useful piece up on Religion Dispatches anatomizing what sometimes passes for the religious left inside the Beltway. Posner's grumpy point is that the likes of Jim Wallis and Mara Vanderslice and Katie Paris and Burns Strider are not the real left, but rather the house liberals of the Democratic Party--actually it's important for Wallis to pretend that he's not--who are more priestly than prophetic in their witness for peace and justice. This is not the first time such a lament has been heard in the land. A new book, Dispatches from the Religious Left, rounds up a bunch of outside-the-Beltway lefties to make the case for themselves. I don't have a problem with their case, and I understand their annoyance, but that doesn't seem to me sufficient grounds for scorning those toiling in the spiritual vineyards of Democratic Party politics. There's a role for priests as well as prophets in this world.

Update: Pastor Dan doesn't disagree with me on the possible virtues of insiderhood. It's a nice question, though, whether by prophetic standards Kossack Nation is insider or outsider.

Diversity = Bigotry = Cultural Fascism = Multicultural Religion.

Ipse dixit Donohue.