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For those Americans who hoped the culture wars would finally end, the month of June reminded us theyre just getting started.

Within hours of the Supreme Courts resolution of the battle over same-sex marriagethe triumph of a generation of gay-rights activistssome were already calling for further steps to take tax exemptions away from churches, use anti-discrimination laws to target religious non-profits, and crack down on religious schools access to voucher programs. We learned media entities would no longer publish the views of those opposed to gay marriage or treat it as an issue with two sides, and the American Civil Liberties Union announced it would no longer support bipartisan religious-freedom measures it once backed wholeheartedly. A reality TV star pushed the transgender rights movement into the center of the national dialogue even as Barack Obamas administration used its interpretation of Title IX to push its genderless bathroom policies into public schools. And we learned that pulling Confederate merchandise off the shelves isnt enough to mitigate the racism of the pastwe must bring down statues and street signs, too, destroying reminders of history now deemed inconvenient and unsafe.

On college campuses and in the workplace, across mass media and social media, for American celebrities and private citizens, every comment, act, or joke can make you the next target for a ritual of daily attack by outraged Twitter mobs. It is now an unavoidable fact of life that giving money to the wrong cause, making a clumsy attempt at humor, or taking the wrong side on a celebrity, religious debate, or magazine cover can lead to threats of violent death, end your career in an instant, or make you the most hated person in America for 15 minuteslonger if you bungle the apology.

Whether you care about the culture war or not, it cares about you.

How did we get here? By so many measures, there has never been a better time to be anything other than a straight white male in America. Women are thriving in higher education and the workforce. The Supreme Court just declared gay Americans can now marry anyone they please. We have elected and re-elected the nations first black president, and there is a good chance he might be followed by the first female president. The polls indicate social liberalism and libertarianism is triumphant in every arena; even acceptance of polygamy has doubled in the past 15 years, according to Gallup.

How can it be that just as these big issues about how we live together have been settled fairly decisively, the culture war seems more vicious than ever?

Understanding why we are here requires understanding where we came from, and why Culture War 4.0 just might be the worst and most destructive stage of the conflict over culture, values, and the American public square.

As with so many terrible things, it started with the Baby Boomers.

The first modern American culture war was initiated by the Left in the sixties. It was called the Counterculture, and consisted of a combination of two things: a promise of liberation from restrictions that seemed overly Puritanical and outmoded, combined with an ideological goal of the destruction of existing social institutions such as church, family, and capitalism.

The first aim had a broad appeal, promising freedom from blue-nosed moral scolds and a liberating revolution in human behavior. But the second was a more aggressive and provocative attack on institutions that had endured since before the country existed. By the late 1970s, the effects of the Counterculture were hitting with full force, and people didnt like what they saw.

That leads us to Culture War 2.0, which stretched through the 1980s and into the 1990s, when more conservative Boomers, including an expanding number of politically active evangelical Christians, banded together with the World War II generation to effectively reassert itself in directing American culture. The silent majority decided they were the Moral Majority, rallying around political movements to promote traditional values. Reagan Democrats partnered with Republicans to pursue a law-and-order agenda. Overwhelming bipartisan majorities passed religious freedom laws, which Bill Clinton dutifully signed. Political wives started a crusade against violent and sexually explicit television, movies, and popular music.

This was an era that saw Dee Snider of Twisted Sister taking on Al and Tipper Gore in Senate hearings. In it, you see the seeds of rebellionat that stage a value invoked against conservative traditionalism. The video for Were Not Gonna Take It (one of the Filthy Fifteen songs Democrats and Republicans targeted) is all about a bunch of Counterculture freaks rebelling against traditional society, as represented by an overbearing father figure.

But the wheel turns, and today, on the basis of the lyrics alone, that song could probably be co-opted as a libertarianish populist anthem for whoever runs against Hillary Clinton.

The iron law of the culture wars is that the public hates overreachand each side will always overreach. Culture War 2.0 started to wind down with the Clinton impeachment, which was presented (fairly or not) as an intrusive inquisition into the personal sex life of the president, an indictment of something that, while tawdry, was no longer viewed as rendering a president unfit for office. The televangelists, many of whom had projected an image of being holier than thou before proving to be less holy than thou (remember Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and the rest) were in decline. Pair that with the infidelities of Republican leaders in Congress, and the country seemed to say: Who were they to judge Clinton for his actionsor the rest of us, for that matter?

The 2004 effort to push state measures designed to stop gay marriage in tandem with George W. Bushs re-election effort was a Pyrrhic victory.

Add one other big factor. The Counterculture kids from the 1960s and 70s were now ensconced in positions of power. They had taken over the universities in the 1990s and began to assert a campus culture of conformity on issues involving religion and sex. They had established themselves as the leaders in entertainment and popular culture. The nostalgic and implicitly conservative pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s, where villains were Nazis, Communists, feckless bureaucrats, and irresponsible reportersgave way to influential depictions designed to press a change in social norms. 1998 brought Bill Clintons impeachment, but it also brought Will & Grace and a push for greater tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality. The crusade for gay marriagea key change in goals for the gay-rights movementthrew religious conservatives into a defensive posture, causing them to fight to maintain their mores as public policy via gay-marriage bans.

The 2004 effort to push state measures designed to stop gay marriage in tandem with George W. Bushs re-election effort was a Pyrrhic victory, one which contributed to the Great Sort that eliminated the last of the Reagan Democrats. The efforts of religious leaders and traditionalists to win the argument at the ballot box won temporarily, but could not last in a country where they no longer controlled the culture or the courts, and where these non-traditional relationships were depicted as healthy and normal on a daily basis in mass media and social media. The eventual triumph of the Counterculture was ensured.

Today we live in the early stages of that triumph, and as a small number of public intellectuals and media commentators predicted, it is a bloody triumph indeed. Culture War 4.0 brings the Counterculture full circle: now they have become the blue-nosed, Puritanical establishment. Once they began to achieve their goals and saw the culture moving their way, they moved from making a plea for tolerance and freedom to demanding persecution of anyone who dissents against the new orthodoxy in even the smallest way.

Whichever side believes it is winning will tend to overreach, pushing too far, too fast, and alienating the public.

In just the past two years, the Countercultures neo-Puritanical reign has made things political that were never thought to be: Shirtstorms and Gamergate, Chik-fil-A and Brandon Eich, Indiana and Sad Puppies, and dont you dare say Caitlyn Jenner isnt a hero.

History teaches us two clear lessons about the ebb and flow of the Culture War: first, that whichever side believes it is winning will tend to overreach, pushing too far, too fast, and in the process alienating the public. The second is that the American people tend to oppose whoever they see as the aggressor in the Culture Warswhoever they see as trying to intrusively impose their values on other people and bullying everyone who disagrees.

Notice how a triumphalist Left can go from reasonable to totalitarian in what seems like five minutes. Should we take down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina statehouse? You will get a lot of Republicans to agree, including Gov. Nikki Haley. So the Left immediately demands that every last vestige of the Confederacy be wiped from history, from public sculptures to Gone With the Wind to educational Civil War games in iTunes. From now on, apparently, only re-educational games will be permitted. Or the Supreme Court mandates gay marriage and #lovewinsfollowed by an immediate hatefest, with people spitting on priests and demanding we revoke the tax exemption for churches.

If history repeats itself, it is good news for traditional Americans and bad news for the Left, which has taken on the role of Grand Inquisitor so rapidly that overnight civil liberties have become a Republican issue. Slowly but surely, the American Right is adopting the role of the cultural insurgent standing up for the freedom of the little guy. They crowdfund the pizza shop, baker, and photographer; they rebel against the establishment in the gaming media and at sci-fi conventions; they buy their chicken sandwiches in droves. The latest acronym that came out of the Sad Puppies movement says it all. They describe their opponents as CHORFs: cliquish, holier-than-thou, obnoxious, reactionary, fascists. This is their description of the cultural Left.

The religious Right, libertarians, and even the moderate Left are already being drawn together by their refusal to be cowed into conformity by social justice warriors.

There is significant potential for a new, diverse coalition that responds to this overreach. The religious Right, libertarians, and even the moderate Left are already being drawn together by their refusal to be cowed into conformity by social justice warriors. The comedians who rebel against an audience that calls every joke racist or sexist, the professors who refuse to be cowed by the threat of Title IX lawsuits, the religious believers who fight for their right to practice their beliefs outside the pew represent a coalition that will reject the neo-Puritanism of the Counterculture, rebel against its speech codes and safe spaces, and reassert the right to speak ones mind in the public square. Atheists and believers alike can unite in this beliefas we, the authors of this piece, have.

The culture war will always be with us. There are always people who want to change the culture and an establishment that wants to ward off these insurgents. The Sad Puppies are just the Salon des Refuss with different playersand what were the Renaissance and Enlightenment, if not one giant culture war? But there is some good that comes of it, as well.

The culture wars of the past produced great achievements in art, architecture, literature, and science as the opposing parties strove to demonstrate that they had more to offer and deserved the peoples admiration and loyalty. Those culture wars gave us Michelangelos David, Galileos science, Miltons Paradise Lost, the Declaration of Independence and the First Amendment, and the movement for the abolition of slavery.

Culture wars are at their best when both sides have to rely on persuasion to win peoples hearts and minds.

Culture wars are at their best when both sides have to rely on persuasion to win peoples hearts and minds. Culture wars are at their worst when they turn into an excuse for censorship and conformity. So maybe its time to divert less of our energy into outrage at the backward values of the other guy and more of it into making the case for our own values, competing over who can provide the most appealing, inspirational, and profound cultural visionwho can best serve humanitys deepest spiritual needs. Instead of having a culture war, lets turn it into a culture competition. At the very least, we might produce some enduring cultural achievements, and this era might be remembered for more than just the acrimony of its divisions.

This is the hopeful side of the culture warsa call for engagement, not retreat. Religious believers weighing the option of withdrawing from a culture increasingly hostile to their values should redouble their efforts to cultivate their ideas within active subcultures that influence the nation and the next generation of Americans. Those who share a commitment to the freedom to think, speak, associate, publish, and express their beliefs may not have the American Civil Liberties Union in our corner any morebut that just means that we get to take up the noble cause, and the moral authority, they have abandoned.

Yes, this can be a dangerous time to be active in the culture. But its very hard to make speech codes, safe spaces, and other anti-thoughtcrime measures work in the long term. Sometimes all it takes for the whole apparatus to come crashing down is a handful of people brave enough to speak their minds without fear.

Benjamin Domenech is publisher of The Federalist and writes the daily newsletter The Transom. Robert Tracinski is senior writer at The Federalist and publishes The Tracinski Letter.

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Welcome To Culture War 4.0: The Coming Overreach

"A lively chronicle. . . . Mr. Hartman's book makes two major contributions. The first is his framing of the culture wars debate from its earliest days. . . . His second major contribution is his conclusion that the culture wars are over."

"As a guide to the late twentieth-century culture wars, Hartman is unrivalled. . . . Incisive portraits of individual players in the culture wars dramas. . . . Reading Hartman sometimes feels like debriefing with friends after a raucous night out, an experience punctuated by laughter, head-scratching, and moments of regret for the excesses involved."

"A provocative review of a formative epoch."

"A valuable addition to the growing body of literature historicizing the post-Sixties era. . . . Classic intellectual history. . . . Thoughtful and thought-provoking."

"An unparalleled guide . . . making sense of the polarized politics that have plagued the USA for the past four decades. . . . Hartman's central point is that the debates were deadly serious, asking fundamental questions abotu who we are as a nation, and about who we want to be. . . . In his efforts to provide an overview and explanation of the culture wars, Hartman is to date without peer."

"Hartman's text is nothing less than required reading on the culture wars, their history, and their impact on American public life."

"The frist book to tell the story of this war in all its diversity. . . . Hartman, to his credit, insists that the issues at stake in cultural politics are 'real and compelling.' . . . His affections clearly rest with the liberals, but he is generally nonpoloemical in his accounts of the two sides."

"Andrew Hartman has worked with a deft hand and a keen mind to give us an absorbing account of the last half-century of culture wars in the United States. By digging far beneath the cross-fire style of political rhetoric that bombards us today, Hartman shows how the seismic changes in American society, most notably in the struggle to create a more equal and inclusive democracy, unleashed a fierce conservative attempt to hold on to a world that was escaping their grip."

"Whatever happened to the culture wars? Americans don't argue the way they used to, at least not over hot-button cultural issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. Andrew Hartman has produced both a history and a eulogy, providing a new and compelling explanation for the rise and fall of the culture wars. But don't celebrate too soon. On the ashes of the culture wars, we've built a bleak and acquisitive country dedicated to individual freedom over social democracy. Anyone who wants to take account of the culture wars--or to wrestle with their complicated legacy--will also have to grapple with this important book."

"A War for the Soul of America illuminates the most contentious issues of the last half of the twentieth century. In lively, elegant prose, Andrew Hartman explains how and why the consensus that appeared to permeate the nation following World War II frayed and fractured so dramatically in the 1960s. With keen insight and analysis, he shows that the Culture Wars were not marginal distractions from the main issues of the day. Rather, they were profound struggles over the very foundation of what it meant to be an American. In tracing the history of those conflicts over the last half of the twentieth century, Hartman provides a new understanding of the tensions and processes that transformed the nation."

See original here:
A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture ...

Is there anything left in American public life that isnt an occasion for political rancor and division? NFL games are now nothing more than crude pieces of political theater. On Sunday even Vice President Mike Pence got in on the act, showing up to a Colts-49ers game then leaving after a few players knelt during the national anthem. Next day was Columbus Day, which the cities of Los Angeles and Austin decided this year to replace with Indigenous Peoples Day, because Christopher Columbus is apparently the new Robert E. Lee. And its only Tuesday.

It should be obvious by now that our culture wars will henceforth be constant and unending; the next battle could be triggered by almost anything. Whether its the reactions (or non-reactions) of Hollywood celebrities to the unsurprising news of Harvey Weinsteins sexual misdeeds or the outraged calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment the instant news broke of the Las Vegas massacre, very little can happen in America now without it being an occasion for an appeal to ones own political tribe. No matter how tawdry or horrifying the news, there is vanishingly little room for solidarity because there is no appetite for it. Not even late-night comedy shows with their shrinking audiences can resist the urge to devolve into partisan political rants.

For all his eagerness to wage the culture wars in his improvised, bombastic style, this didnt begin with Donald Trump. It didnt begin with Barack Obama, either, but a recent study by Pew Research Center found that divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values reached record levels during the Obama administration. You dont need a Pew survey to tell you that, of course, but the data helps illuminate an otherwise vague feeling that American society is coming apart at the seams, and has been for years.

The Pew study measures responses to issues Pew has been asking about since 1994, things like welfare, race, and immigration. On almost every count, the gaps between Republicans and Democrats held more or less steady up until around 2010, when they began to widen. Today, Republicans and Democrats are now further apart ideologically than at any point in more than two decades, with the median Republican more conservative than 97 percent of Democrats and the median Democrat more liberal than 95 percent of Republicans. Heres what that looks like in a chart:

Pick your issue. On immigration, 84 percent of Democrats say immigrants strengthen the country, while only 42 percent of Republicans say the same. Ten years ago, those percentages were nearly identical. On environmental regulation, 77 percent of Democrats say more regulation is worth the cost, compared to just 36 percent of Republicans. A decade ago, that spread was 67 and 58 percent, respectively. On whether Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence, 65 percent of Republicans say it does while 69 percent of Democrats say it doesnt. When Pew first asked that question in 2002, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the partisan gap was just 11 points.

Heres the other notable thing about Pews findings. Among the ten questions about political values that Pew has asked since 1994, the partisan gap is much larger than divisions based on demographic differences like age, race, and education. For example, the average partisan gap has increased from 15 to 36 points, whereas 20 years ago the average partisan differences on these issues were only somewhat wider than differences by religious attendance or educational attainment and about as wide as the differences between blacks and whites (14 points, on average). Today, the party divide is much wider than any of these demographic differences.

The Pew survey is a rich trove of fascinating survey data, but it mostly confirms what we can all see for ourselves: Americans are sorting themselves into political tribes that have less and less in common. Partisanship has even crept into the online dating scene. Last month the dating website OkCupid announced a partnership with Planned Parenthood that allows users to attach a badge to their profile, the obvious purpose of which is to avoid accidentally going on a date with someone who doesnt share ones views on abortion.

That brings us to something else that might get lost in the Pew numbers: the median Democratic voter has radicalized much faster than the median Republican voter, and most of this radicalization happened while a Democratic president was in office. That counterintuitive trend points to a larger problem with how the Left in particular understands the American project and our prospects for living together in peace and prosperity. Although its true that Republicans have moved further to the right as Democrats have moved further to the left, its the leftward slide that should worry us.

For all their shortcomings, conservatives at least have a limiting principle for politics. Most of them believe, for example, in the principles enshrined in the Constitution and maintain that no matter how bad things are, the Bill of Rights is a necessary bulwark, sometimes the only bulwark, against tyranny and violence. In contrast, heres Timothy Egan of The New York Times arguing unabashedly for the repeal of the Second and Fifth Amendments.

The rapid radicalization of Democrats along these lines follows a ruthless logic about the entire premise of the American constitutional order. If you believe, as progressives increasingly do, that America was founded under false pretenses and built on racial oppression, then why bother conserving it? And why bother trying to compromise with those on the other side, especially if they reject progressives unifying theory that America is forever cursed by its original sin of slavery, which nothing can expiate?

Before you scoff, understand that this view of race and America is increasingly mainstream on the American Left. To read someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose recent articlein The Atlantic is a manifesto of racial identity politics that argues Trumps presidency is based on white supremacy, is to realize that progressive elites no longer believe they can share a republic with conservatives, or really anyone with whom they disagree.

Coates has attained near god-like status among progressives with his oracular writings on race and politics, which take for granted the immutability of race and racial animus. So its deeply disturbing when he writes, as he does in a new collection of essays, that should white supremacy fall, the means by which that happens might be unthinkable to those of us bound by present realities and politics.

What does Coates mean by that? It isnt hard to guess, and lately Coates isnt trying too hard to disguise it. In a recent interview with Ezra Klein of Vox, Coates expanded on this idea. Writes Klein:

When he tries to describe the events that would erase Americas wealth gap, that would see the end of white supremacy, his thoughts flicker to the French Revolution, to the executions and the terror. Its very easy for me to see myself being contemporary with processes that might make for an equal world, more equality, and maybe the complete abolition of race as a construct, and being horrified by the process, maybe even attacking the process. I think these things dont tend to happen peacefully.

This is the circuitous, stumbling language of man who knows precisely what he wants to say but isnt sure if he should come right out and say it. Coates isnt alone in feinting toward violence as a meansperhaps the only means, if Coates is to be taken at his wordof achieving social justice. On college campuses, progressive activists increasingly dont even bother mincing words, they just forcibly silence anyone who disagrees with them, as a Black Lives Matter group did recently during an event featuring the American Civil Liberties Unionat the College of William and Mary. (Ironically, the talk was supposed to be about students and the First Amendment.)

For a sincere progressive, almost everything that happened in the past is a crime against the present, and the only greatness America can attain is by repudiating its past and shamingor silencing, if possibleall those who believe preserving our constitutional order is the best way for all of us to get along.

Seen in that light, the radicalization of Democrats is something qualitatively different, and much more dangerous, than the radicalization of Republicans. It means, among other things, that the culture war is now going to encompass everything, and that it will never end.

Continued here:
Left's Sirens Already Hinting Our Culture Wars Will End In ...

America's most famous Jesuit has a great gift for spiritual writing. But his polemics have helped to widen the Church's divisions

Fr James Martin SJ is an American priest and author who has cornered the market in affable and polished liberal Catholicism. He is the most famous Jesuit in the United States; probably the most popular, too. And also the most disliked. Hated, even.

The name will mean nothing to most British Catholics. Nor will the phenomenon of the simultaneously admired and despised media priest. The Catholic Church in this country is only mildly affected by the culture wars. We can all think of a few pugnacious traditionalist clergy and their smarmy liberal counterparts but there is no one who can give a talk on Jesus that (a) fills every seat in a major cathedral and (b) draws a crowd of protestors outside who accuse him of leading souls to hell.

Why is Fr Martin such an affront to conservative Catholics? Hes a liberal Jesuit, but that is hardly a novelty. And hes not a very liberal Jesuit, compared to, say, the peace activist Fr Daniel Berrigan, who once broke into General Electric premises to damage nuclear missile nose cones and pour blood on documents.

That was in 1980, two years before James Martin also entered General Electric as a trainee accountant fresh out of Pennsylvanias elite Wharton Business School.

Fr Martin, 57, was not quite one of the heartless Wall Street Masters of the Universe depicted in Tom Wolfes Bonfire of the Vanities but, as a highly paid young graduate in mid-Eighties Manhattan, he hung out in bars on the Upper East Side where there was cocaine in the bathroom for the adventurous. And he took pride in stepping over the homeless.

Martin tells us this in his book In Good Company, his account of getting fed up with the petty cruelties of corporate America and joining the Jesuits at the age of 26. Its not a very interesting book, considering the subject matter. Jim was a rather conventional young man. Its hard to imagine him joining the coke-snorting adventurous in the bathroom; his only love affair seems to have been with Brooks Brothers, purveyor of button-down shirts to conservative preppies.

When he joined the Jesuits he was asked whether he was a virgin and said no. This was the right answer seminary directors in the 1980s preferred applicants to have had a bit of experience but he adds that it was also a lie.

He grew up in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, and although his parents didnt go to Mass every Sunday their son did. Apart from a brief loss of faith at university, he never stopped practising, avoiding self-consciously trendy churches in favour of parishes with proper choral music. He decided to become a priest because he was worried by his drift into selfishness and felt he had a vocation.

Martin soon discovered that life in the Society of Jesus contained its fair share of petty corporate cruelties including the indignity of having to wear a black shirt made out of the dreaded polyester. But they were easily outweighed by the satisfying rigour of Ignatian spirituality, about which he writes with a warm and inviting fluency. Thirty years on, he has never regretted becoming a Jesuit not even when clipping the toenails of old men in a Jamaican hospice. Posted to Nairobi, he used his Wharton training to help refugees set up small businesses.

Whats not to like? Or, rather, what is there to dislike so intensely about a priest who is always scrupulously polite and has always been careful not to dissent from the Magisterium of the Church? British Catholics find the passions he arouses rather puzzling. But American Catholics dont. Or, to put it another way, the phenomenon of James Martin SJ tells us a lot about the differences between the Church in Britain and the United States.

In middle age, Fr Martin has moved to the Left. He hasnt drifted into progressive politics, as some priests do: rather, he has danced his way from one bandwagon to the next, acquiring a formidable following along the way. He has nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter, but his fan base predates social media.

He is at ease to put it mildly in Hollywood. He prepared the late Philip Seymour Hoffman for his role as a suspected sex abuser with a twinkle in his eye in the film Doubt. More recently he took the Spider-Man heartthrob Andrew Garfield, who played a Jesuit in Martin Scorseses Silence, through the Spiritual Exercises. As a result, Garfield from an agnostic Jewish background says he found himself falling in love with Jesus Christ. According to America magazine, the dogmatically left-liberal publication that tirelessly promotes Martin, the priest was hesitant about the experiment.

His critics find that hard to believe: they see Jim Martin as a self-promoter and celebrity-hunter. This may or may not be fair but its worth asking why celebrities respond to this Jesuits message. Is it because he tells them what they want to hear?

Not necessarily. You cannot understand Fr Martin without reading The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, a far better book than his anodyne spiritual autobiography. Its an elegantly written, user-friendly guide to something very tough: the spirituality of St Ignatius Loyola, which requires almost obsessive self-examination. Martins own commitment to this process is surprisingly fierce: for example, he loves the austerity of daily Mass. He name-checks all the usual liberal suspects Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Sister Helen Prejean but also writes admiringly of Cardinal Avery Dulles, Michael Novak and Evelyn Waugh In other writings he has berated Hollywood for its anti-Catholicism, and especially its sneering attitude towards celibacy.

And yet unfortunately there is another side to Fr Martin, one which has become intrusive since the election of Pope Francis. He thinks more clearly than the first Jesuit pontiff but, to an even greater degree than Francis, he embraces the fashionable consensus on just about everything in a manner which inevitably alienates conservative Catholics. And, like the Pope, he doesnt necessarily help the people whose suffering he is trying to address.

Has Amoris Laetitia made life easier for divorced and remarried Catholics, who now find themselves at the centre of one of the most unproductive rows in Church history? Its increasingly clear that the answer is no. Likewise, James Martins Building a Bridge is not the priceless gift to gay Catholics that its fans clearly think it is.

This short book is pompously subtitled How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity. The message is that Catholics in same-sex partnerships can be reconciled to the Church through the exercise of these virtues. But can they? Surely there is an insurmountable barrier to reconciliation namely, the Churchs teaching that all homosexual acts are sinful.

This is something Fr Martin refuses to debate. Many gay Catholics are appalled by a teaching that, in their view, is tantamount to the Church saying that its OK to be left-handed so long as you dont write with your left hand. Building a Bridge does not defend the Church against this charge; nor does it propose any change to teaching. As the conservative Catholic columnist Matthew Schmitz observes, it skips over fundamental questions of sexual morality and concentrates instead on good manners.

The paradoxical effect has been to provoke displays of aggression by some conservative Catholics. There has always been a fine line between defending the Churchs prohibition on homosexual acts and being nasty about gays. That line has all but disappeared since the books publication thus appearing to strengthen Fr Martins case. He knows that, if you goad your opponents, they will play into your hands with ad hominem attacks. Pope Francis knows it, too. So does the Holy Fathers close ally, Fr Antonio Spadaro.

Is it a coincidence that all three men are Jesuits? Fr Martin loves to deplore personal attacks on liberal priests yet he does so in a passive-aggressive manner that only makes matters worse. His enemies call him slippery Jim. That sounds mean, but perhaps they have a point. For example, Fr Martin is on record as saying that he will never oppose Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Yet he has also been recorded telling a gay man, in a question-and-answer session, that I do hope that in 10 years time youll be able to kiss your partner or, you know, soon, to be your husband [at the sign of peace during Mass]. Why not?

You could interpret this as intellectual dishonesty or as evidence that Fr Martin is torn between his true convictions and fidelity to the Society of Jesus. Either way, it suggests that his ministry to gay people has over-reached itself. His talents should be employed elsewhere which is not a euphemism for silencing him (an impossible task in any case).

The truth is that James Martin is, like many of us, a victim of the culture wars. The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything can be read with profit by any Catholic or non-believers who are trying to live a good life but dont know how to start. It is a book that has led people to Christ the authors clear intention and will continue to do so. But the Fr Martin who writes in America, and who has taken to siding automatically with the progressive side in any argument, is deliberately cutting himself off from Catholics who honestly disagree with his political opinions. Worse, he is provoking some of them to react fiercely against him and the people on whose behalf he claims to speak.

That is the nature of Americas culture wars. It is not the nature of Ignatian spirituality. If the engaging Fr Martin really cannot see that, then perhaps he should be learning, rather than teaching, fearless methods of self-examination.

Damian Thompson is editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald and associate editor of The Spectator

This article first appeared in the May 11 2018 issue of the Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

See original here:
Caught in the culture wars | CatholicHerald.co.uk

Government health care. Racial equality. Income disparity.

Theyre familiar battles in 2017. But not so familiar seven decades ago.

Yet many seeds of todays culture wars were sown in an unlikely place and time: a Finnish farming community in rural Minnesota at the height of World War II.

Though the global conflict still raged, it was becoming clear by 1944 that the United States and its allies would win. But what kind of world would we live in when the cataclysm ended?

The question was on many minds, including that of Theodore Brameld, an energetic, idealistic many would say left-wing education professor at the University of Minnesota.

Forty miles west of Duluth, in the town of Floodwood (pop. 570), Brameld conducted an experiment that one academic called the first example of educational futurism.

Brameld challenged the entire junior and senior classes at Floodwood High School 51 students in all to create a blueprint for the future, to envision the postwar world theyd lead.

For four months in the spring of 1944, for two hours a day, they studied an intensive curriculum that pushed them to draw conclusions about government, society and how America could make its way in the new world.

These rural Minnesota kids, many of them from immigrant homes, came out in favor of radical ideas like national health care and supported a national public works program, public ownership of natural resources, eliminating the poll tax and lowering the voting age.

Brameld published the conclusions of the Floodwood project in a book, Design for America a thin, rather dry academic summary. After its publication years before the red-baiting Sen. Joe McCarthy burst on the scene Bramelds book would become the center of a controversy stirred by the National Council for American Education, a right-wing lobbying organization.

Calling the project an attempt to indoctrin[ate] high school students with collectivist and anti-American ideology, the council launched a national campaign against the book, its author and the students.

One of those students was my mother.

The Finns were on board

Brameld chose fertile ground for his experiment. Floodwood was largely settled by Finns, who were widely known for their liberal views.

Many were poor farmers who had formed cooperative organizations to market their produce. Mayor Sanfrid Ruohoniemi my grandfather was calling for government ownership of the towns utilities. And the weekly Floodwood Forum editorialized strongly in favor of international cooperation in the postwar world.

Brameld was using Floodwood to show that issues and social ideology could be dealt with through a level of discourse that would allow students to explore and decide for themselves, said Craig Kridel, an emeritus professor of education at the University of South Carolina who has studied Bramelds work.

Brameld was a rising star in the academic world, and the Floodwood project would give him an important calling card. He didnt rig the results of his experiment, Kridel said, but he definitely picked a favorable laboratory.

He knew that there was a very strong Finnish socialist tradition in Floodwood, Kridel said. He felt it was a community that would resonate with the ideas.

Brameld also pioneered a philosophy of education he called reconstructionism the idea that schools could lead the way in reconstructing society with reasoned self-examination.

Brameld believed that was the point of schools to be a meeting ground to explore ideas in an open way, Kridel said.

My mother, Ann Ruohoniemi, grew up in a Finnish immigrant household and didnt speak English until she went to school. She was a junior at the time of Bramelds experiment; her name appears in the books acknowledgments, along with the other 50 students who took part names like Matalamaki, Perkkio and Karkiainen.

Yet I never heard her mention Design for America or her part in it. She died young, at 46, when I was about the same age she was during Bramelds experiment. I only happened to learn about the Floodwood project when I found articles about it in some old clipping files the Star Tribune was disposing of after digitizing its news archive.

Collectivist, anti-American

The letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star got straight to the point:

I wonder how many of us know that our state university, supported by taxes, is engaged in teaching socialism and communism to our youth?

That note from a Minneapolis reader kicked off a commotion that kept university officials scrambling to defend themselves for years afterward, generating what U of M President J.L. Morrill called nasty and damaging publicity.

The National Council for American Education had discovered Design for America. In 1948 four years after the Floodwood project and three years after publication of Bramelds book the council sent a two-page flier denouncing the project to its national mailing list.

Soon, the university was getting letters from powerful figures across the country corporate executives, legislators and politicians, including former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen, who was then president of the University of Pennsylvania.

They asked how the university had gotten itself involved with teaching American youth that Communism and Socialism offer a way of life superior to our American system, as the flier put it.

As the controversy roiled, Morrill strongly supported the universitys right to academic inquiry.

The fact is that if we had the kind of university in which only our views, yours and mine, were held or expressed, it would be no good really as a university at all, Morrill wrote to Richard Griggs, a member of the universitys Board of Regents.

But Morrill also was careful to distance himself from Brameld, who by then had left the U for New York University.

Brameld himself wrote a fiery response in the Minneapolis Star, denouncing the smear-sheet published by a group of notorious native fascists of the kind who were driven into their holes during the war.

The debate continues

In 1976, Kridel, then a young teaching associate, sent a survey to the Floodwood students who had taken part in Design for America. Nineteen of the 51 responded. (My mother wasnt among them.) Their responses were mixed.

The project gave me a more complete understanding of being involved, one student wrote.

I think the project stunk and was a complete waste of time and education, said another.

Taught us how to judge for ourselves by studying facts as we saw them, rather than being told! wrote a third.

Addressing perhaps the crucial question in the Floodwood controversy, Kridel asked the former students if they felt they had been indoctrinated by the project. Three said yes and two didnt respond; 14 said no.

Some 70 years after the students of Floodwood created their blueprint for the future, debates over what America should look like still rage. And topics like government health care, racial equality and income disparity are just as polarizing.

The Floodwood project itself lives on only in dusty files at the U of M archives and in a copy of Design for America at the Minneapolis public library.

It hasnt been checked out since 1962.

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Today's culture wars foretold in tiny Floodwood, Minn., 70 ...