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SBC conservatives perceive the secularization of the public square and the accompanying government hostility to religion to be the greatest cultural concern of our time. There are three distinct ways of articulating this cultural perception: intellectual, informed activist, and populist. The intellectual position tends to come from confessional Calvinists and is marked by a depth of understanding and an appreciation for nuance. The informed activist position is primarily that of Richard Land and those who have worked with him at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). Land seeks to utilize his own academic training and understanding of history to fashion a coherent and intellectually compelling approach to politics, but the emphasis remains on what can be done to change American culture. This penchant for activism sometimes requires compromises that cannot be squared with the intellectual position. The populist approach tends to emanate from high-pro¤le preachers such as Adrian Rogers and James Draper. Populists help mobilize the troops behind the kinds of things Land and the ERLC want to do politically in Washington. Because there is a premium on mobilization and because the preachers who articulate the populist positions do not have the depth of academic training that the intellectuals or Land have, this is the least coherent of the three positions. Marked by intellectual and theological inconsistencies and claims about American history and culture that do not stand up to scrutiny, this position opened the door to some of the most extreme charges moderates leveled against the conservative movement in the 1980s when the Southern Baptist controversy was in full swing. 2 “The War of the Worlds” Southern Baptist Conservatives as Culture Warriors The Intellectual View of American Culture Al Mohler may be the most forceful and eloquent on the issue of cultural crisis and therefore represents the intellectual approach quite well. He believes that differing views of American culture played a very signi¤cant role in the whole SBC controversy. Along with most of the conservatives, he employs the culture-war terminology of sociologist James Davison Hunter when addressing cultural issues and the differences between conservatives and moderates. Hunter allows that many progressives remain active in religion , but they translate the moral imperatives of their tradition in a way that harmonizes with the tolerant and even relativistic spirit of the modern age. “In other words,” writes Hunter, “what all progressivist worldviews share in common is the tendency to resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life.”1 Hunter believes the culture war is fought by about 20 percent of the population on each end of the political/ cultural spectrum. While this leaves the majority of people in the middle as noncombatants, their mediating voices are lost in the battle. The middle, Hunter argues, is the ¤rst casualty of culture war, as the extremes on both sides de¤ne the issues and seek to delegitimize each other. Hunter’s analysis has come in for criticism. Several scholars believe the culture war paradigm explains or de¤nes today’s debates very inadequately. While acknowledging the two extremes on either end of the spectrum, these critics argue that the more moderate middle is still where the action is. The extremes simply have not polarized the debate to the extent that moderate voices get lost in the shouting, nor do the extremes inordinately de¤ne the debates.2 Cornell University professor of government Jeremy Rabkin contends: “As historical description, the notion of a culture war is a gross distortion. As a guide to contemporary strategists, it is a needless counsel of despair.”3 Rabkin argues that the culture war paradigm causes conservatives to ignore their victories and exaggerate their defeats. Even if true, this analysis cannot mean that self-professed cultural warriors do not exist. We all know they do, and Southern Baptist conservatives are prime examples. They have bought Hunter’s paradigm. The critics serve to remind us that the culture war is not the only thing going on in American politics and religion today. Indeed, it may be misleading to say that America is in a culture war, but it seems hard to deny that such a struggle exists. How else can one understand those who proclaim to be ¤ghting in just such a war? Conservatives make ready reference to culture war when discussing their victory in 42 • chapter 2 the SBC controversy. They believe their successful battle with moderate elites in their denomination cannot be understood without reference to Hunter’s analysis. This is...

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