Culture wars. It sounds like an epic battle of the east meeting the west or two ways of life in stark contrast to each other clashing violently. However the culture wars that will be talked about today are those that have taken place in America since the 1960’s and between liberal and conservative Protestants. These issues that create the conflict have to do with the way the bible or religious leaders in the different sects interpret their legality or morality. The most important issues that have come to the forefront are those of abortion, the teaching of evolution and creation science, and issues pertaining to homosexuality.
The abortion issue is not new. People have looked for ways to be rid of unwanted pregnancies throughout time. In the late nineteenth century tonics were sold that were thought to help end pregnancies. The issue of abortion is the issue that has created the most violent and arguably emotional divisiveness in the culture wars. No other issue ahs brought people to the point where they are willing to murder in the way that abortion doctors have been killed.
It started in 1973 when, “the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade had effectively legalized abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy…it had overturned laws in all fifty states” (159). The pro life or anti abortion side started out as mainly a movement that Catholics in small numbers led. The first demonstration was, “against a Washington D.C., clinic carrying crucibles and wearing red berets…chanting, ‘Viva Cristo Rey’ (Long Live Christ the King)” (159). The leaders were arrested and dragged away by police after clinic windows were smashed. However through the next twenty years it evolved into an issue that led some of the most zealous protestors to be willing to kill doctors and bomb medical clinics. One of the reasons that people feel so strongly is that many Christians believe abortion is killing a baby, ‘their belief that the fetus was a human being from the moment of conception-a belief their adversaries did not share” (159-160). To many, this is the most heinous crime possible.
On one side are conservative Christians and Catholics generally and on the other side are more liberal Christians and Feminists. In the late 70’s and early 80’s in fact Catholic housewives were the main leader of the movement. Around this time, “a more confrontational style of anti-abortion activism developed, with chanted demonstrations outside abortion clinics, designed to disrupt the abortion providers and scare away women seeking the procedure” (162). As the 1980’s progressed those in charge of the movement changed. In 1987, “the creation of Operation Rescue marked the emergence of evangelicals in anti-abortion leadership and their strengthening partnership with conservative Catholics” (163). In the early 1990’s legal issues had started to create major problems for anti-abortion protests. This is when the extremists came out. Between March of 1993 and June of 1994 four violent activists killed two doctors, three others were killed, over five were wounded, and multiple clinics were bombed or attempted to be destroyed. The irony of these attacks was that it weakened the pro-life movement due to the fact that the majority of people against abortion did not believe in the kind of violence that these activists used.
This issue has managed to stay an important one however and is still one of the top issues that political candidates are picked out for. With President George W. Bush’s appointments of judges to the Supreme Court many pro-choice supporters feared a new conservative movement that would lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The battle between those who advocate the teaching of evolution versus those who believe that the way the bible states the world is created goes back at least 150 years around the time Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species were published. These two books went greatly against what the bible said, stating that the earth was millions of years old, not thousands and that humans and other species evolved throughout time and were not created as they are by God. In opposition to these theories Christians attempted to make the bibles version of creation legitimate by creating Creation science.
The teaching of Creation science is described as, “a scientific theory that explained the creation of the world, its current condition, and the existence of all the species in. It agreed with the first chapters of Genesis not only as a matter of faith but as a matter of verifiable science, and stood in stark opposition to the theory of evolution” (180). It went greatly against the theory of evolution, which states that humans developed gradually through genetic mutations over thousands of years, saying that, “human beings, made in God’s image, were not a merely evolutionary phenomenon and were not closely related to the rest of the animal kingdom” (182). This led to some battles over the years both in the courts and actual physical violence. The battles however have tended to focus around schools and their biology programs. This is because evolution is taught in these courses. Strangely enough these battles have centered on what are often considered boring, textbooks.
One of the most famous battles was the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 having to due with Tennessee’s anti-evolution laws. Since then many southern states have had to have the courts decide what can be taught. The 1980’s had Arkansas and Louisiana pass that laws that required both evolution and creation science taught in the classroom. The American Civil Liberties Union sued both states, “claiming that the state was covertly introducing religious content into its science curriculum and thus violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment” (183). Both states lost their cases. Louisiana lost an appeal and eventually the case went to the Supreme Court where Louisiana lost again with 72 Nobel Prize winners in the natural sciences going against their law. In West Virginia the battle turned violent. A new series of textbooks was introduced into the schools in 1974 in Kanawha County. A group of fundamentalist Christians felt the books were immoral while, “other religious groups-the mainstream churches-approved of the books. The local Episcopal clergy, along with a group of ten ministers from other churches, including Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Jews” (184) supported the books. Local miners refused to go to work and the schools were faced with widespread boycotts when the school year started. The worst violence came when two elementary schools were bombed with dynamite although the schools were closed by the superintendent and almost all of the school buses vandalized. The textbooks were eventually pulled. No conclusive victory can be claimed by either side and it is safe to say this issue will remain as long as those that cling to biblical inerrancy still are out there. This segment has grown in America with the fundamentalist movement growing. Another reason this issue has proved so divisive is that it has essentially pitted science versus religion by making evolution the enemy of creation science. Therefore the issue between those that believe in evolution and those that believe in creation is turned into a much bigger battle than it otherwise would be.
The last main issue that separates liberal and conservative Protestants is that of homosexuality. Homosexuality has multiple facets that Christianity has had to address including if it is even morally acceptable, ordination of gays, and the issue of gay marriage. Not until relatively recently have gays been widely accepted in America, “the gay liberation movement developed in the 1970s…among the objectives were civil and legal recognition of gay partners as the equivalent of spouses, and legislation to prevent discrimination against them in jobs and housing” (232). While the government has been somewhat helpful in this pursuit by legalizing homosexual acts and passing anti-discrimination legislation, “religious conservatives…described homosexuality as a horrible sin” (232). They believed that homosexuality was one of many temptations in the world and that one should resist it instead of rationalizing being homosexual. However many liberal churches started support of gay liberation as early as the 1960s. One church, “the United Church of Christ issued a declaration in favor of full civil rights for homosexuals in 1969” (234) and in the 1980s many churches started support groups as the AIDS crisis came about. A gay theology developed as well often by reinterpreting passages that conservative Christians used to decry homosexuality as a sin to show that homosexuality was not. As with the other issues this widened the gap between conservative churches where homosexuality was looked at as wrong and liberal churches where homosexuality was accepted. The Southern Baptist Convention’s said, “even the desire to engage in a homosexual relationship is always sinful, impure, degrading, shameful, unnatural, indecent, and perverted” (236). Jerry Falwell, an evangelical leader, said AIDS was a judgment of homosexuality and the Christian Coalition, an organization of conservative Christians worked to pass the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Churches also faced the problem of ordaining gays. Episcopals among others allowed ordination in the 1990s while Catholics still had a ban. Recently gay marriage has come up as an issue. In the 2004 and 2006 elections talk came up about attempts to pass a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage while more liberal states were allowing it as the same time.
None of these issues can be seen to be going towards a conclusive end but certain things can be stated about each. Abortion while still very much aligned between conservative and liberal lines can be harder to pin down just along these lines. There are many instances with people being personally opposed while supporting its legality or vice versa. The Creation Science/Evolution issue is one that seems to be very clear cut between liberal and conservative Christians although it is also an issue between secular and religious. The homosexuality issue seems to be one that is unique. With each new generation people are more and more accepting in general of homosexuals while conservative Christians continue to view it as a sin. This issue does seem to be making progress in the direction of acceptance as churches over the years have generally accepted or softened their original views. There is no end in sight to the cultural wars. In fact with a conservative Christian seriously in the race for the presidency they may even intensify. The only thing that can be said is that when deeply held religious beliefs meet ideas that contradict, a war of culture will start.
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