Subversion & NASCAR

If history is any indicator, if the church wins the "culture war", it will be the beginning of our problems. As my Hebrew homeboy, Shaun, pointed out in yesterday's comments, prohibition was an example of what happens when the church wins the culture war. I might add that the only remaining evidence of prohibition's cultural impact is NASCAR, by way of stock car racing.


The culture-changing social movements of history have typically been subversive ones, circumventing mainstream politics, media, business, etc., because their adherents did not possess cultural power. Their leaders were nobodies, outcasts. Their values and ideas were discounted by the majority. They attracted rebels and misfits into an army of ordinary people who led by the sheer force of their ideals and personal commitment to living out those ideals. Think the early church--before Constantine.

But we've gotten lazy. Because of the church's failure to live out its own ideals, it's lost its attractional force as a social movement. We've attempted to shore up this influence by fighting for our rights and redressing our greivances in the courts; creating television, music and entertainment alternatives to the secular counterparts in which we have no influence; fielding and supporting political candidates that will legislate in our favor. It's not that any of these avenues are intrinsically wrong, but they are not the biblical norm.

As my boss mentioned to me at lunch today, the biblical norm is probably China, where an oppressed minority with no political power is becoming an irreversible groundswell that is impervious to persecution. Of course, this could all change if freedom comes to China, Christians gain cultural and political dominance, start publishing houses, TV stations, record labels and build a market for Thomas Kinkade paintings and WWJD bracelets. ... maybe even sponsor a stock car!