It occurs to me that culture is “bottom up” in one sense, and “top down” in another. I stand by my statement that ultimately, the culture is what its leaders say it is. This is because the vast majority of people, including a strong majority of the intelligent and highly-educated, form their beliefs on the most basic issues of life not by thinking them through on their own, but by choosing which authorities they respect, and then following those authorities. To put it in the simplest terms, atheists and agnostics choose to follow the scientists and the professors, Christians choose to follow the Bible and the pastors and teachers they respect, and Joe Sixpack follows the popular pundits and the media. In this sense, culture is top down, as I have been maintaining.
But leaders cannot just teach whatever they want. Their followers have a certain worldview, and they will not accept any teaching emanating from those leaders they trust. Once the people in general have been taught and conditioned to go along with liberalism, they will not just follow leaders who suddenly start teaching conservatism. Rick Warren, for example, would lose most of his followers, and therefore most of his power, if he began teaching biblical Christianity: sin, atonement in the blood of Jesus, the need for repentance and true faith, and so on. In this sense, culture is also bottom up, and we can start to undermine the empire of the left by individual persuasion.
The problem with bottom-up reform is that if the leaders do not lose their nerve they can always block reform, if they are sufficiently ruthless. Reforming existing institutions (as opposed to forming independent and parallel institutions) requires inside agents.
Also, the normal functioning of any society, large or small, requires leaders who establish and exert force to maintain the culture. It is naïve to think that persuasion is enough. We also need the institutions of leadership to reinforce proper thought and action.
WorldviewDad, you listed a number of Christian-based organizations equipping Christian to fight the culture war. Good work is being done. But I believe that more is needed. In particular, we need to focus on:
• Opposing the premises of liberalism, not just its concrete projects such as legitimizing abortion and homosexuality. We need to focus on liberal premises, such as that nondiscrimination is the ultimate good, and that God is unknowable
• Opposing liberalism in the arena of public intellectual combat, and not just training Christians to think and act biblically. We need to attack the secularist and leftists in their headquarters (universities and media), showing to one and all that we have a better case.
• Alerting everyone to the fact that liberalism is not just a constant nuisance, it has de facto control of America and all of Western Civilization, and is a mortal threat. We need to show Christians and non Christians that this is not a fight over abstractions, it is a life-and-death matter.
Thank you for your response.
Yes there are “bottom up” and “top down” influences on culture but from your own comments about Rick Warren you show that the “bottom up” might be more powerful. If he, as a leader being followed, needs to stay within the confines of what his followers will listen to...then he is responding to the culture that he helped create...this becomes a “catch 22”.
My point is that we already have the institutions in place to fight this culture war...they are called churches. The problem is that too many of them have decided to follow culture instead of God’s Word. If true Christians could transform their churches to teach all of the Gospel, we would see cultural transformation.
Yes, leaders can exert force to control some areas of culture on the surface but that tends to lead to revolt over time. It is also during the most top down times that the Christian church tends to grow the strongest...when it is being attacked.
I agree that more needs to be done, but the fight needs to be waged correctly. The fight really is not about conservative vs liberal but God vs evil. We could convince or by your idea of “top down” force people to accept conservative ideas but that does not solve the problem...people are still going to need to understand why this is better, where do these ideas come from, etc.
And the most important question...what happens to me when I die...where am I going?
We can talk about the culture war all we want but if in the end we don’t share the Gospel and the people live a conservative life but end up in hell...we accomplished nothing.
God bless
I just don't believe this. Please provide me some evidence of it. "A culture is what its leader say it is" is nothing more than a platitude and incapable of verification either way. It does not comport with my experience. Leaders are who their culture decides to put into leadership positions. Please show me a single cultural movement which was established and integrated purely by social leaders. Your example of the gay movement is the exact opposite of this. The gay movement is generally credited as starting with a riot at the Stonewall bar in NYC back in the sixties. This was a spontaneous uprising. As word of this spread among homosexuals around the rest of the country they began to organize and come out to normalize their self-identity. Individual homosexuals in all walks of society began to push their goal through their art, writings, television, plays, and political behavior. Only after this spontaneous but organized behavior created a greater social acceptance of homosexuality did we see social "leaders" begin to be put in place to promote and normalize homosexuality. A classic bottoms up movement.
Spontaneous does not mean instantaneous and does not preclude organization. The Tea Party is also an example of a spontaneous movement which is also organized, albeit on a decentralized model. Leaders did not promote, encourage or predict the emergence of the Tea Party movement. I believe your entire position is an attempt to deal with spiritual matters (a degraded culture) with worldly solutions. Thus, I believe it is doomed to failure. Leaders mirror their culture not the other way around. And the only way to change the culture is one heart at a time through the power of the Gospel. Pete Townsend of "The Who" was correct in his take on what happens when you try to change culture by changing leaders - "Meet the new boss...same at the old boss."