Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America - R book reviews

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1991 by Thomas Byrne Edsall

James Davison Hunter has written a brilliant analysis of the divisive, polarizing conflicts over values and morals that have come to shape American politics and American public discourse. Culture Wars(*) is a rare book in that it succeeds in both informing the reader and enlarging a debate that has become central not only to politics, but to such fundamental matters as dealings between man and woman, orthodox and secularist, and liberal and conservative. Hunter is a professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Virginia, and if this deeply inquisitive, fair-minded book reflects the character he brings to the classroom, he must be a marvelous teacher.

Although there are substantial flaws in Hunter's larger conclusions, he has discovered an illuminating way to look at major social trends. His basic argument is that there has been a massive lessening of divisions between religious groups based on "specific doctrinal issues or styles of religious practice." These past splits often pitted upper-class Protestants against working class, ethnic Catholics, placing Elliot Richardson and Tip O'Neill on opposite sides of the fence. Now, however, basic cultural conflicts often flare up within religious denominations: between the orthodox, who are committed to "an external, definable, and transcendent authority," and progressives or secularists, who are committed to a "resymbolization of historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life."

In today's cultural wars, then, the orthodox Jew may well discover he shares more common ground on critical issues with the evangelical fundamentalist than with the reform Jew or the mainline Episcopalian. Hunter quotes Rabbi Joshua O. Haberman to convey the subtle complexity of the new realignment of moral conflict: "As a Jew, I differ with a variety of Bible-believing Christians on theology, our nation's social agenda, and matters of public policy. I am, at times, repelled by fits of fanaticism and a narrow-minded, rigid dogmatism among fundamentalist extremists. Yet far greater than these differences and objections is the common moral and spiritual frame of reference I share with Christians, including fundamentalists. The Bible gave our nation its moral vision. And today, America's Bible Belt is our safety belt, the enduring guarantee of our fundamental rights and freedoms."

Sleeping with the enemy

The logic of this kind of allegiance on the Right, and its parallel on the Left, gives Hunter a basic framework with which to explain the emergence of ideological-religious alliances lacking denominational coherence that battle each other on major issues ranging from civil rights to judicial appointments. Divisions have emerged that array such groups as the National Organization of Women, the National Education Association, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, and the ACLU against Agudath Israel, the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Right to Life Committee, and Concerned Women for America.

These divisions, in turn, are helping to shape both liberal-conservative conflicts and Democratic-Republican splits. Surveys of the leadership of the three major denominations - Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic - show that partisan commitment to the GOP or the Democratic Party, as well as liberal or conservative stands on a host of issues from the Equal Rights Amendment to homosexuality, are determined much less by one's religion than by one's commitment to the orthodox or progressive wing of each religion. "The orthodox wings of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism were significantly more likely to condemn premarital sexual relations and cohabitation as |morally wrong' than each of their progressive counterparts, with similar patterns on pornography and family organization based on the centrality of the father."

Not only were progressives of all faiths far more likely to be Democrats than their orthodox brethren, but the splits between self-identified liberals and conservatives were even more extreme. This orthodox-progressive structuring of ideology and partisanship extends even to foreign policy, with progressives of all three faiths at least twice as likely as their orthodox counterparts to say they had little or no faith "in the ability of the United States to deal wisely with present world problems." Readers of The Washington Monthly, who almost assuredly include a disproportionate percentage of secular humanists, may find some comfort in Hunter's research showing that secularists are "the fastest growing community of |moral conviction' in America." From just 2 percent of the population in 1952, they had grown to 11 percent by the end of the eighties.

Those deeply enmeshed in these ethical-political-ideological battles invariably perceive their adversaries as dangerous moral dictators. "It is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make of themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes," was how science fiction writer Isaac Asimov described the Christian Right. Conversely, Morehead Kennedy, former Iranian hostage and foreign service officer, said that in his dealings with liberal religious groups, "I would have [had] a much easier time denying the resurrection than I would have questioning the nuclear freeze."