There seems to be a movement afoot among liberal Christians and younger Christians that the “religious right” started the so called “culture wars.” I’ve read about this in many places, but one was a book review in Christianity Today by one of these youngsters, and the other was piece about scorn poured on conservative Christians by the progressive versions. I figured I’d get in on the fun, because progressive anything (except or course progressive rock n’ roll) is in fact regressive and its arguments so easy to dismantle.

Along with this line of thinking is a lament that conservative Christians have been sucked into partisan politics to the exclusion or detriment of their Christian faith. Of course this means such Christians have aligned themselves too readily with the Republican Party, and that the enlightened approach is of course on the other side. Personally, I would take the scorn of a progressive of any stripe as a badge of honor.

The problem with this line of thinking is that many people deny that the so called culture wars were started by a secularist assault on traditional religious, i.e. Judeo-Christian values. This actually goes back centuries to the so called “Enlightenment,” but found its real cultural start in the French Revolution. That didn’t work out so well. The revolution that respected religion, i.e. in America, fared a whole lot better. But the spirit of the French Revolution has infected the secular left ever since.

This virus began its slow march into American cultural consciousness with the Supreme Court decision written by Justice Hugo Black in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education, in which Black invented an unbreachable wall separating church and state. Then the Supreme Court decided in 1962, again in an opinion written by Justice Black, to literally outlaw prayer in public schools. Then again in 1973 in Roe v. Wade the court decided the abortion was legal until a baby was literally born. Of course in between those two decisions we had “the 60s” and a cultural revolution, which was very much a sexual revolution, and driven by cultural elites in entertainment, education and media.

None of these assaults on traditional religious values was precipitated by the “religious right.” The war had been declared and the “religious right” was compelled to defend itself. But those who lament the culture wars blame conservative religious types for it, and just want them to shut up so the progressive vision of society can continue unchallenged.

The re-definition of marriage is just the latest assault in trying to silence religious people from the public square. The secular liberal left and well meaning religious folks, like Carrie Underwood in a most recent example, think that re-defining marriage is about “rights” and they just want everyone to be “equal.” That these are facile arguments for re-defining an institution that has existed for millennia is obvious, but it’s hard to be against “equality” and “fairness.”

The Supreme Court decisions above took issues that should have been solved politically and culturally, and imposed top-down rulings by a handful of people with power to coerce several hundred million people. This is what those who want to re-define marriage demand now, and if that happens, all those who defend marriage will be by law seen as bigots. There is no way around this if we allow this issue to be be framed as one of “equality” or “justice” or “fairness” or “rights”. Marriage exists for one reason and one reason only, and that is not to affirm anyone’s romantic relationship. It exists because men and women can have children, and since the state is to a large degree responsible for civilization, affirming the unique nature of this arrangement has always existed, until now.

Don’t be surprised if there is another top-down mandate re-defining marriage that the culture wars will be just starting to heat up.