Prophetic minister Dutch Sheets recently wrote a piece encouraging Christians to “win the culture war.” Predictably, Sheets views a primary battlefield of the culture war as politics, questioning President Obama’s contention that America is not a “Christian nation” and citing statements from the founding fathers that reflect their religious fervor.

(Sidenote: Not to question our founders’ faith, but I picture historians 300 years from now reading campaign speeches from the 2008 election and inferring from them similar levels of evangelical enthusiasm.)

Has any Christian community ever “won” the culture war in a nation? If it did, what did it look like? Did sinners stop sinning? Did gay men start getting married … to women? Did abortion rates decline? Did they allow/enforce prayer in schools? Did they ditch Darwin and start teaching seven-day creationism? Did the government finally give Christians the respect they deserve and start passing laws to make it more convenient to serve God?

In my opinion, nothing good has come of the “culture war,” except a combative relationship between evangelicals and a broader secular culture that fears (perhaps legitimately) that a Christian minority aspires to reach the highest echelons of society, where it intends to enforce its puritanical code on an unbelieving majority.

In an interesting profile in the May Christianity Today, South Florida pastor (and grandson of Billy Graham) Tullian Tchividjian has an insightful view of the role of politics in the culture war:

“It’s super important for us to understand that politics are reflective, not directive. That is, the political arena is the place where policies are made which reflect the values of our culture–the habits of heart and mind–that are being shaped by other, more strategic arenas.”

More on this tomorrow, wherein I propose that the church has lost the art of subversion, the key to lasting cultural change.