Is There a Culture War? a Dialogue on Values and American Public Life

Is There A Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life

Is America at war with itself over cultural issues? Or does the conflict exist primarily in the minds of political activists and pundits? In a new collection of essays entitled Is There a Culture War?, two leading scholars examine the cultural divides within American society and their implications for American politics. James Davison Hunter is a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, where he also is executive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Alan Wolfe is a professor of political science at Boston College, where he directs the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. This executive summary, drawn from the book’s introduction and essays, summarizes their arguments. The volume is part of the Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life, a series of books edited by E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Brookings Institution and Michael Cromartie of the Ethics & Public Policy Center.

n 1991, University of Virginia Professor sexuality, Work, the Right, the Left and Each Other. James Davison Hunter published a book that Wolfe argued that if there was a culture war, Iwas destined to change the national debate most Americans weren’t taking sides. “Amer- over cultural politics. In Culture Wars: the icans believed in both traditional religious val- Struggle to Define America, Hunter argued that ues and personal freedom,” he says now, “and it there was a battle raging between “traditional- was not always easy for them to decide which ists,” who were committed to moral ideals was more important.” inherited from the past, and “progressivists,” who idealized change and flexibility. These dif- So which is it, a culture war or one nation after ferent world views, Hunter argued, were all? Hunter’s reflections about the origins of the responsible for increasingly heated disputes culture war are the starting point for this discus- over such issues as abortion, sexuality, educa- sion, followed by Wolfe’s response and brief tion and the role of religious institutions in soci- commentaries by Gertrude Himmelfarb, profes- ety. “Cumulatively,” Hunter says in his essay, sor emeritus of history at the Graduate School of “these debates concerning the wide range of the City University of New York, and Morris social institutions amounted to a struggle over Fiorina, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution the meaning of America.” and Wendt Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. The views expressed in The culture war debate intensified with the the volume and the executive summary are appearance of another influential book in 1998, those of the authors and do not necessarily Alan Wolfe’s One Nation, After All: What Middle- reflect the views of the Brookings Institution or Class Americans Really Think About God, Country, the Ethics & Public Policy Center. The Pew Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homo- Forum on Religion & Public Life is a project of

Executive Summary 2 the Pew Research Center and does not take posi- One of the dividing lines that Hunter dis- tions on policy debates. cerned in these disputes involved new alliances of conservative Protestants, Cath- Hunter on the Culture War olics and Jews on one side of the issues, and liberal Protestants, Catholics and Jews on the James Hunter says he first became aware of other side. Those alliances led him to question what he called the culture war in the late 1980s, traditional definitions of “left” and “right” when he noticed similar tactics being used by based on economic and class interests. activists on both sides of a range of issues, from Instead, Hunter suggested a new “axis of ten- abortion and gay rights to anti-smoking cam- sion” centered on cultural concerns. “The his- paigns and protests against nuclear power. torical significance of this new axis has been “Many of these conflicts were playing out in evident in the ways in which it cuts across local settings around the country with no con- age-old divisions among Protestants, nection to each other,” Hunter notes, “yet Catholics, and Jews,” he writes. “The ortho- across the range of issues the lines of division dox traditions in these faiths now have much were similar, the rhetorical strategies and cul- more in common with each other than they do tural motifs were comparable, and the patterns with progressives in their own faith tradi- of engagement were alike.” tions, and vice versa.”

Looking for “a cultural thread that could make Hunter notes that his critics often cite public sense of this confusing jumble,” Hunter offered opinion data to support their position that his culture war theory. “The heart of the cul- there are no religious-cultural differences that ture war argument,” Hunter writes, “was that are politically significant in America. But in American public culture was undergoing a Hunter’s view, those critics mistakenly define realignment that, in turn, was generating sig- culture as simply “the sum total of attitudes, nificant tension and conflict. These antago- values and opinions of the individuals making nisms were playing out not just on the surface up a society.” A better, more complete defini- of social life (that is, in its cultural politics) but tion of American culture, he says, includes our at the deepest and most complex networks of profound levels. … Thus institutions, individuals underneath the myriad Hunter questions traditional and rituals. political controversies definitions of “left” and “right” over so-called cultural “It was and is only at this issues, there were yet based on economic and class level,” Hunter writes, deeper crises over the interests. Instead, he suggests a “that the term culture war very meaning and pur- – with its implications of pose of the core institu- new “axis of tension” centered on stridency, polarization, tions of American civi- mobilization of resources, lization. Behind the poli- cultural concerns. and so on – has its great- tics of abortion was a con- est conceptual force. It troversy over a momentous debate over the explains, among other things, how it is that our meaning of motherhood, of individual liberty, public discourse becomes disembodied from and of our obligations to one another. … (and hence larger than and independent of) the Behind the contentious argument about the individual voices that give it expression. In this legal rights of gays and lesbians was a more way it explains how our public discourse serious debate over the fundamental nature of becomes more polarized than Americans as a the family and appropriate sexuality.” people are.”

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life Hunter also argues that public opinion polling tance, he instead asks, in an echo of Vietnam- 3 can mask subtle differences, making it appear era protestors, What if they gave a culture war that politically moderate Americans are all and no one came? alike. A closer look at the data, he says, shows that moderates are divided by subtle political Most Americans do not know or care about leanings that make them susceptible to mobi- the culture war being fought by partisans and lization by various politi- pundits, Wolfe says, and cal elites. While his critics when asked, do not have dismiss elites as “noisy Most Americans do not know or strong sympathies with extremists,” Hunter be- care about the culture war being either side, even on “the lieves their framing of so-called moral issues” public discussion and ral- fought by partisans and pundits, that the partisans and lying of citizens is crucial. pundits say are most He notes the tendency of Wolfe says, and when asked, do divisive. He suggests elites to swoop into local not have strong sympathies with that the important cul- controversies, galvanize tural conflicts take place the population and use either side, even on “the so-called not between Americans the disputes to promote moral issues.” but within individuals, as their own interests. The they struggle to live general population is not meaningful lives and as polarized as these activists, Hunter notes. make difficult personal decisions about life, But the power of elites is made even greater by death, relationships and family. the larger public’s inability to challenge their stark, uncompromising framing. This leads to Cultural issues become polarizing and perva- polarized choices at election time, forcing Am- sive, he says, because political parties and ide- ericans – even those in the middle – to choose ologically driven interest groups rely on con- sides. flict to energize fundraising and help elect can- didates. In Wolfe’s view, shifts in politics and Finally, Hunter argues, cultural conflict is religion have brought those two worlds closer, inevitable, since culture always involves indi- fueling this elite culture war. viduals and institutions competing for resources and position. He suggests that his Wolfe argues that the political parties have critics fail to acknowledge that “given,” and become more ideological, allowing one-issue instead mistakenly look for consensus in public activists to set much of the agenda. opinion. He says those who continue to dismiss Conservatives have gained more political cultural conflict risk ignoring the diversity power, he says, yet they feel less powerful essential for a healthy democracy. “For the because their political gains have not enabled social sciences,” he says, “this is not merely a them to change cultural behaviors. As Wolfe lapse but a missed opportunity.” describes it, a central paradox of the culture war is that “America has moved to the right politi- Wolfe: The Culture War cally at the same time it has moved to the left that Never Came culturally.” Alan Wolfe is among those who argue that if Wolfe says the growth of religiously conserva- there is a culture war, it barely exists beyond tive denominations has also contributed to the the minds of journalists and political activists. culture war. However, he rejects Hunter’s Rather than assigning the conflict great impor- claim that the most devoutly religious of each

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 4 denomination are pitted against the least Himmelfarb: The Other observant. For example, he says, there is little Culture War tension within the African-American or Jewish communities, which remain overwhelmingly “The culture war has taken an interesting politically liberal. He also challenges the notion turn,” Gertrude Himmelfarb says in the intro- that there has been a strong shift to the right duction to her essay. “Combatants on both among Catholics. The realignment that Hunter sides are declaring victory and, in doing so, describes simply has not happened, he argues. pronouncing the culture war over and done with.” Indeed, she writes, “for some – for Alan In Wolfe’s view, the country is becoming nei- Wolfe most notably—there never was a war,” ther more religious nor “entering a period of or if there was, it is “on its last legs.” rampant secularism,” as some observers argue. The proportion of Americans who identify Himmelfarb reserves her sharpest criticism for themselves as having no religious preference is those conservatives (she does not place Hunter growing, he says, but the proportion who say among them) who “report that the [culture] they believe in God remains high – further evi- war is over (or almost over) because they are dence that Americans are not divided along winning it.” These “cultural triumphalists,” as religious lines, as Hunter believes. Himmelfarb calls them, bolster their case by citing statistics showing a decline in the inci- Wolfe identifies two changes in national politics dence of crime, violence, abortion, divorce, that he says would end what he sees as a conflict out-of-wedlock births and the like. “The statis- of elites. The first has already occurred, he says, tics are encouraging and very welcome,” she because the Democrats have declared a “truce” writes, “but not, unhappily, altogether conclu- by moving toward the sive. If the divorce rate is political center. Next, he stable … it is because says, “Conservatives Himmelfarb says conservatives fewer people are getting motivated by passionate “may be winning the war over married. … If the propor- anger about the moral tion of children in mar- decline of their country one sense of culture, that meas- ried-parent families rose will need to become more by a single percent, that introspective [and]…con- ured by the indices of crime, vio- still leaves a third of chil- sider that politics, even lence, illegitimacy, and the like. dren with unmarried par- conservative politics, can- ents.” not help them if their mar- But they are losing ... the war In any case, those on riages are unhappy, their over the popular culture – losing either side who say the children rebellious, and culture war is over may their willpower weak.” it by default, by sheer, willful be missing the point, she inattention.” suggests. They are debat- Americans, he concludes, ing a political war, a con- want moderation and flict quite different from balance in their own lives and from the coun- one that is genuinely cultural – and it is the lat- try’s leaders – not conflict and polarization. ter that really matters, she maintains. “We are not a nation of zealots determined to make enemies of each other,” he says. “We are Some of the weapons in the true cultural con- instead a society that, faced with crises in the flict take unlikely forms, such as the television past, eventually found ways to come together cartoon series South Park, a show conservatives in defense of our common heritage.” find appealing because it targets a liberal cul-

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life ture of political correctness, but that also con- the United States has become both more 5 tains vulgarity and raunchiness that conserva- politically conservative and more culturally tives should find offensive. “To an old culture liberal. Things only appear that way, Fiorina warrior like myself,” Himmelfarb says, “South says, because America’s political system is Park conservatism is an oxymoron, being not majoritarian – adopting polices to which the only anti-liberal but anti-conservative as well.” minority must resign itself – while its economic system represents While Wolfe contends the many minority tastes culture war does not Fiorina, like Wolfe, believes that when it comes to culture: touch ordinary Amer- the culture war is an elite phe- Society readily caters to icans, Himmelfarb says a demand for music, the broad public is “enor- nomenon that does not resonate books and movies that a mously affected, every with the larger public. majority might well day in every way, by the reject. The result, accord- kind of culture symbol- ing to Fiorina, is that ized by those South Park brats.” Citing exam- while minority preferences are masked in ples of increasing cultural acceptance of vul- politics, they are always apparent in popular garity and explicit sex, she argues that the pub- culture. This creates an illusion, he says, that lic has become so accustomed to “escalating the country has become more conservative assaults” on traditional values that people politically and more liberal culturally than is hardly remain aware of them. actually the case.

Conservatives “may be winning the war over Fiorina also questions Hunter’s argument one sense of culture, that measured by the that elites control the conversation about cul- indices of crime, violence, illegitimacy, and the ture, countering that “elites naturally like to like,” she says. “But they are losing the other believe in their own importance, but that they war, the war over the popular culture – losing tend to exaggerate it.” A culture war among it by default, by sheer, willful inattention.” elites could lead to polarization among the They are losing the “minds and hearts, the general public, but Fiorina believes it is more sensibilities and spirits” of a public “in thrall likely to cause the wider public to further dis- to the popular culture.” The real culture war, engage from politics. Himmelfarb concludes, is by no means over. Finally, Fiorina insists that Hunter is wrong Fiorina: An Elite in saying that cultural issues have overshad- Culture War owed the importance of traditional economic issues. The income gap between white Rep- Morris Fiorina, like Wolfe, believes that the ublican and Democratic voters has grown culture war is an elite phenomenon that does rather than diminished, Fiorina says, and not resonate with the larger public. “Political continues to be a major factor in American elites may be engaged in a culture war,” he politics. says, “but they are not reflecting popular preferences.” This elite culture war, he Hunter and Wolfe Respond argues, pushes politics into areas where the public would rather it keep out. Hunter disagrees with Wolfe’s and Fiorina’s basic approach to the question of a culture war But Fiorina disagrees with Wolfe on at least because in his view they focus too much on one point: he rejects Wolfe’s contention that politics – elections, campaigns, voting behavior

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life 6 and party ideology. His own focus, he main- put a culture war in place even if ordinary peo- tains, is culture itself, and that fundamental ple do not want one to exist.” difference in emphasis is why they disagree about the pervasiveness of the culture war. “It Wolfe concedes that differences exist between is not just that they are approaching it differ- traditional and progressive people in America, ently,” he says. “They are actually analyzing but he maintains that the divisions do not different things.” imply an all-out war. He further argues that conservative voters in many instances show For him, the political elements of the culture themselves to be non-traditional in their per- war are merely the most visible symptoms of a sonal lives – by switching religious faiths, mov- deeper conflict. “Culture nearly always leads ing from place to place or divorcing and remar- politics, not the other way around,” he says. rying. Liberals, he argues – and liberal faiths – Thus the political shift to the right and the cul- are often much more traditional at heart. tural shift to the left mean that cultural conservatives are on the losing end of the more Americans form a single society, Wolfe main- important conflict because they have sought tains, because they cherish the same core val- political solutions to deeply cultural issues. ues of tolerance, pluralism and commitment to “What political solution is there to the absence individualism. Any differences are political, of decency?” he asks. “To the spread of vulgar- not cultural or religious, he concludes. And ity? To the lack of civility and want of compas- thus our best hope as a nation is to “build on sion? The answer, of course, is none – there are the consensus among ordinary people as a no political solutions to these concerns, and the counter to the extremism that characterizes so headlong pursuit of them by conservatives will much of our current political elite.” lead, inevitably, to failure.” This, ultimately, is where Hunter and Wolfe Wolfe, in turn, rejects Hunter’s definition of agree – that Americans share a belief in and culture as a network of institutions and organ- commitment to the project of democracy. izations because he believes it downplays the Where they disagree is on the nature and con- power of individuals. As Wolfe states, “I am sequences of the diversity inherent in such a distrustful of those who argue that structures democracy.

Contributors

Michael Cromartie is vice president at the International Religious Freedom and has served as Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he directs chair and vice-chair of the commission. both the Evangelicals in Civic Life and Religion and Media programs. He is a senior adviser to the Pew E.J. Dionne, Jr. is a senior fellow in Governance Forum on Religion & Public Life; a senior fellow Studies at the Brookings Institution and University with the Trinity Forum; and an advisory editor of Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Christianity Today. He is the editor of 14 books, Culture and Georgetown University. He is also a including, most recently, Religion, Culture, and syndicated columnist with The Washington Post and International Conflict (2005) and Religion and Politics a senior adviser to the Pew Forum on Religion & in America (2005). He was appointed by President Public Life. He is the author of Why Americans Hate George W. Bush to the U.S. Commission on Politics (2nd ed., 2004), Stand Up Fight Back (2004)

Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and They Only Look Dead (1996). He is also the edi- Cultures (2001), The Demoralization of Society (1995), 7 tor or coeditor of several Brookings volumes includ- On Looking into the Abyss (1994), Poverty and ing Sacred Places, Civic Purposes (2001), What’s God Compassion (1991) and intellectual biographies of Got to Do with the American Experiment? (2000) and Charles Darwin, Lord Acton and John Stuart Mill. Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (1998). James Davison Hunter is the LaBrosse- Levinson Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Morris P. Fiorina is a senior fellow at the Theory at the University of Virginia and the execu- Hoover Institution and the Wendt Family Professor tive director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in of Political Science at Stanford University. He is the Culture. He is the author of The Death of Character: coauthor of Culture War: The Myth of a Polarized Moral Education in an Age without Good or Evil (2000), America (2nd ed., 2005), with Samuel J. Abrams and Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (1991), Jeremy C. Pope. Earlier he published numerous Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in articles and books including Divided Government America’s Culture War (1994), Evangelicalism: The (2nd ed., 1996), Congress—Keystone of the Washington Coming Generation (1987) and American Establishment (1989) and Home Style and Washington Evangelicalism: Conservative Religion and the Work (1989), coedited with David Rohde. The Quandary of Modernity (1983). In 2005 he was award- Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral ed the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Independence (1987), coauthored with Bruce Cain Letters. and John Ferejohn, won the 1988 Richard F. Fenno Prize. He is also coeditor of Continuity and Change in Alan Wolfe is professor of political science and House Elections. director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His most Gertrude Himmelfarb is professor emeritus of recent books include Does American Democracy Still the Graduate School of the City University of New Work? (2006), Return to Greatness: How America Lost York. She is a member of the Council of Scholars of Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover the Library of Congress and a fellow of the British It (2005), The Transformation of American Religion: Academy and of the American Academy of Arts How We Actually Practice Our Faith (2003) and An and Sciences. Her most recent books are The Moral Intellectual in Public (2003). Both One Nation, After Imagination (2006) and The Roads to Modernity (2004). All (1998) and Moral Freedom (2001) were selected as Among her other books are One Nation, Two New York Times Notable Books of the Year.

Is There a Culture War? A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life is jointly published by the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center. It is available from the Brookings Institution Press. For more information about this publication please visit http://pewforum.org/dialogues.

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