The Culture We Can Actually Build

When Donald Trump was first reelected president, there was a lot of talk in conservative evangelical circles about the need for building. In light of the failures of so many legacy institutions during 2020, including Christian ones, there was a necessity to replace mistrusted churches and other organizations with trusted ones. Both fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals have their own different building strategies. The fundamentalists opted for Bible Institutes and discipleship as their sole focuses after the modernist controversy, while the neo-evangelicals decided to pursue cultural influence by Christianizing secular fields.

Ordinary Pattern, Extraordinary Goals

Let me illustrate with two examples. Jack Wyrtzen, a fundamentalist and the founder of Word of Life Bible Institute, said, “I believe it is the responsibility of every generation to reach their generation for Christ.” I used to go to Word of Life summer camps and evangelistic events as a child. Carl Henry criticized this kind of approach, stating, “Many of our Bible institutes, evangelical colleges, and even seminaries seem blissfully unaware of the new demands upon us.” People needed answers for real-world social problems, not just security in the life to come.

Whereas Wyrtzen promoted Bible knowledge and evangelism, Henry promoted Christian competence in every university field, pushing the Christian worldview and training global leaders. In my opinion, Liberty University is a good example of an institution that brought together both these approaches into an organization intended to train “champions for Christ.”

Having attended a culturally involved evangelical church early in life and a number of evangelical schools later in life, I am familiar with the longstanding discussion between evangelism and worldview promotion as means for cultural engagement. Something about it always seemed off to me, though, like it was unnatural. Sometimes I sensed that both sides wanted Christians to seize the means of cultural production. One side wanted to convert the workers as they entered the factory. The other wanted to incubate future members of the advisory board. Yet both seemed to think artificially, as cultural outsiders looking for the right mix of ingredients to build the final culture-securing recipe. When I opened my Bible, I saw something different.

Christians participate in disciple making endeavors so that people would know God and “be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). Christians pursued excellence in various fields because it brought glory to their Creator (1 Corinthians 10:31). Christians lived in such a way, through their good deeds, that outsiders were prompted to glorify God (1 Peter 2:12). It seemed to me like ancient Christians behaved rather normally. They aspired to a quiet life (1 Thessalonians 4:11) where they could raise children and continue their unique cultures while organically spreading Christ’s teaching. In the end, they wished to please God.

I believe we should strategize for social impact, but whatever influence we have is a means for greater glory. Social influence in itself is not the final goal, and if it ever becomes that, we may have gained the world and lost our souls in the process. If we saddle most of our young people with burdens God did not give them, such as reaching an entire generation or returning America back to God, we are operating at an elevated scale and setting ourselves up for disappointment.

Some will misunderstand my point as a call to mediocrity. Actually, it is a call to excellence by the means God has ordained for cultures to continue. Let me explain.

Real Culture

Both neo-evangelicals and fundamentalists are movements primarily reacting to the loss of cultural influence during the turn of the twentieth century. We have never been able to regain the influence we lost. The long slide down toward cultural ruin is hard to live in. My suggestion, instead of putting our eggs in the next podcaster, preacher, or power broker as the ticket for Christian expansion, is to think in terms of how cultures naturally spread and secure themselves.

I used to occasionally work in Hasidic enclaves in New York. One thing that always stood out to me was the way they pursued learning at young ages, even if they lived in a messy home. The joke about Jewish children being given the option as to whether they want to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer has some truth in it. Theirs is a culture aware of its own minority status and potential for being persecuted. They maintain strong in-group preferences and seek insulated professions, not to reach the world, but to continue their own culture.

My entire life, I have watched the Southern culture of my Mississippi kin get diluted and eroded through various means. Their culture is very tied to land, religion, and the hierarchies that flow from those things. In the light of modernity with its mechanization, immigration, and centralization, they must find ways to adapt without compromising what makes them unique. This is a difficult task, but not impossible. Their culture lives on through sports, music, cuisine, literature, and military leadership.

Having recently traveled to Mexico, I was struck by the sophistication and scale of Teotihuacan. The Aztecs possessed a highly advanced civilization for their time, but it was overtaken by one with greater military power. Yet some of their descendants remain and seek to continue their ancestors’ ways through art and religion. As long as they continue to have children and transmit their culture in the natural ways God has afforded humans to do such things, there will always be Aztecs.

I bring up these examples to make a simple point. Cultures are sustained and secured through natural means and there is no substitute for this. Children grow, are taught, and experience a way of life they in turn pass down as their own children grow. This is the idea behind the Shema in Deuteronomy 6. Securing leadership positions that allow for our own cultural transmission, and then actually transmitting our culture by simply having children and not forgetting to raise them properly, is the need of the hour.

Institutions, Elites, and the Long Game

We cannot be passive about this. That was the error of the Baby Boomers, who seemed to think that as long as they elected Republicans, they did not need to be intimately involved in their children’s formation because society still supported basic values. It turns out society changed. But how did it change?

At this point, most conservative treatments of the subject will take you to a smoke-filled room where some radical pontificated the steps for cultural transformation and then carried it out. The problem with this is that it neglects an important aspect of the revolution. Ideas alone did not overcome America. Those ideas had to be propagated from somewhere. The secular Left needed cultural institutions, and therefore, they needed cultural leaders. They went into entertainment, academia, and media because they knew these were places where they could push their views.

How many Christian conservatives enter these fields today? I am not talking about evangelical training centers that aspire to enter these fields, seven mountain mandate advocates with 501c3s, or podcasters like myself who talk about the need to be involved. I am talking about actually entering these fields with a resolve to do the opposite of what is currently being done. How many blue-collar Christians who are not in these influential sectors themselves raise their children with the strength and support to enter them?

The evangelical movement is not thick enough culturally to accomplish this task. It does not have a reward system capable of competing with secular reward systems, nor does it command the allegiance that naturally attaches itself to particular places and people. Formulas, abstractions, and public statements are not enough, especially against utopian ideologues. The motivation for a cultural takeover must come from families who are part of cultures that wish to defend those cultures. It must come from children who consciously make the choice to love their own and are content to work in their corner of the world.

The brash language I hear regularly online about how Christians are going to take over, degeneracy is cancelled, remigration is inevitable, and so forth mostly comes from internet personalities with little understanding of power and institutions. What they are hoping for is a revolutionary move among the masses toward political victories that will ensure the continuation of their cultures. I do not see how this is much different than the religious right’s approach, which was not to train elites as much as it was to vote their way into having a seat at the table. Meanwhile, secular progressives owned the table by playing the long game, one institutional leader at a time.

Christian conservatives are at a crossroads right now when it comes to expanding and securing their place. Every culture must be able to secure itself as it transmits its unique ways to its children. Without children, security, or transmission, the process fails. All three are needed. Christians must choose whether they want to keep building shallow personalities or get serious and pursue actual power.

Currently, “evangelicals who make up about 28 percent of the United States population are significantly underrepresented in other influential sectors. They account for only about 4 percent of the scientific community, 7 percent of the legal elite by one estimate, likely less than 8 percent of journalists, and fewer than 19 percent of college professors” (Against the Waves, 250).

Returning to Normality

I am not calling for yet another top-down plan with a pearly white smile on the front where some talking head tells Christian grandmas how a gift to his ministry will ensure the continuation of Christianity because of some cultural initiative that is purely in-house. I am not calling for more edgy podcasters who talk big and make demands that look like powerful moves to gullible people. I am calling for normality.

In other words, take a deep breath, realize God is in control, assess your own life and purpose, see if you are using the abilities God has given you to their full potential, make adjustments to pursue full fulfillment, and then simply do all the things God has called you to do. Be a light. Raise your children. Go on a bicycle ride or whatever it is you like to do. The world does not rest on your shoulders. It rests on Christ, and He overcame it. The future of your culture does belong to you, but only in your neck of the woods. Help your children, or those in your proximity who you take responsibility for, to achieve the best outcome for their own abilities.

We should continue to support Bible schools and evangelism efforts, but not so we can change an entire generation. I grew up hearing about how my generation was “Generation Joshua” or the pro-life generation or something similar. It was never really true, but there were hopes it could be. Messaging alone will not make that happen, though. It actually happens as you pursue and do normal things to your best ability. The branding might even get in the way because it gives the impression that souls enjoying God forever are a means by which we recapture cultural ascendance. Actually, someone coming to know Christ is the reward in itself, and whatever byproducts come from that are secondary.

Cultural recapture will be a byproduct of living for Christ personally, locally, and professionally. It will not be the result of another rebranded media campaign where we think we are winning because we say we are winning.

Family and Community First

Let me close with a real-life example of where this can get off the rails. Years ago, I found out about what I can only describe as a Christian homeschooling cult in Ohio that advocated younger, unestablished underage girls marrying older, established males in the hope that, through producing a maximum amount of children over a long period of time, who then vote, America could be recaptured for Christians. There are many problems with this philosophy, but one of them is the motivation for it in the first place. The strategy focused on voters, not leaders. It assumed cultural transmission would occur and continue even as the mothers who rocked cradles had little time to ground themselves before commencing into motherhood. And it devalued the family by subordinating it to the mission of recapturing the country.

There is a better way, and it is actually outlined in scripture. Just make disciples and raise families. Teach your children to love the things God loves. Give them memories and experiences they will cherish, defend, and pass down themselves. Help them reach their full capacity. Provide support, if you have the means, for other members of your culture who are gaining influence but have limited resources. I know teachers who are doing good work but lack the resources to live a middle-class life. We can do good to others, but we should do good to the household of faith first.

I am more and more convinced that our giving should go to those we know and trust in our local communities before it goes to national organizations, as important as some of those organizations are. A thick community that takes care of itself, sees itself as culturally Christian, harbors a core of actual born-again believers, is not afraid to pursue leadership, and transmits its own uniqueness to the next generation is the plan for the future. Out of these high-trust local environments will come the great leaders we need for the national stage. But that is not the reason we support them. We support our communities because they are ours and God has given them to us.

Both the fundamentalists and the neo-evangelicals aimed high with their rhetoric, but did not seem to understand well how things like power and culture interact with each other. Both have done some good, and continuing the good things they accomplished, such as the beginning of competitive Christian education, the preservation of Bible knowledge, and the advancement of homeschooling and Christian schools, is necessary.

But let us consider how we can reduce the anxious attitude of regaining the culture as outsiders and substitute for it a confidence in raising families and pursuing excellence for God as insiders in a society God has already put us in. Volunteer for the fire department, enroll in town league soccer, join a charitable cause, even if they are not distinctly Christian-branded. Be part of the community and enjoy it. God only gave you one. If by His grace, He chooses to move in a special way as He has in times past, it will be the cause of even more rejoicing.

(This piece was originally published on Jon Harris’ substack)

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