The culture war

There's a battle going on for the soul of the United States. Don't believe me? Just ask Bill O'Reilly, who came out and said it in his syndicated column this January, writing that there is a "culture war raging throughout the USA" and blaming it on "secular forces that see any Christian public display as an affront." Or ask House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who wrote in a letter to the Traditional Values Coalition that "for the last 40 years, the anti-Christian Left in America has waged a sustained attack against faith in God, traditional moral norms, the rule of law and the traditional marriage-based family."

O'Reilly and DeLay are right about one thing: There is undoubtedly a cultural war taking place in the United States, one that will have repercussions for generations to come. But it was not started by godless liberals, as they would have you believe. It was started by a group of extremists who want the world created in their image and who are becoming more influential by the day.

In the semester I have spent writing this column I have been accused, in comments on dailypennsylvanian.com and in a Jan. 19 column by Jennifer Weiss, of being anti-Christian. That is not the case. Indeed, I believe that Christianity has often been a force for good in modern times. Christians led the civil rights movement; they are at the forefront of many of the country's major charities. Many are led by their faith to wonderful acts of kindness and compassion. I attended a Quaker school for 14 years, and I saw there the incredible power that Christianity can have to change the world for the better.

My problem is with the forces of evangelical Christianity, ever more prevalent in the highest levels of government and media, that are seeking to remake this country as a theocracy. These people don't want you to be able to live your life the way you want to lead it; they don't want you to have access to anything they personally disapprove of. They don't want your children to learn about evolution, and all too many of them don't want your children to learn that homosexuals might be people, too.

In a column entitled "Suicide by Secularism?" which ran in The Washington Post this past Sunday, conservative columnist George Will wrote about what he perceives as an increasing secularity that threatens the very survival of Europe and the United States. "The challenge confronting the church can be expressed in one word: modernity," he wrote. "The church preaches that freedom is life lived in conformity to God's will as manifested in revelation and interpreted by the church. Modernity teaches that freedom is the sovereignty of the individual's will -- personal volition that is spontaneous, unconditioned, inviolable and self-legitimizing."

Will hit the nail on the head. The "culture war" being fought in the United States may seem like a series of unconnected battles over abortion rights, homosexual marriage and what we can or can't watch on television. But in the end, the fight comes down to two sides, and the choice is black and white. Eventually, we will all be asked to make the same choice the inhabitants of countries ruled by Islamic law once were: Do we believe that we should be allowed to act as free people, or do we believe that a particular religion's interpretation of God's law should dictate our daily life?

Evidence that the war is raging is all around us. We can see it in our schools, where the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection, the veracity of which only a few fringe scientists dispute, is under attack by people who argue that in the interests of fairness and balance, the Christian story of creation must be taught as well. The creation stories of the thousands of other world religions are, of course, ignored. We can see it in our media, where a fight against "indecency" in broadcasting is slowly stripping us of the freedom to see even movies like Saving Private Ryan on TV because of the complaints of a small but active minority. We can see it in the new NBC miniseries Revelations, which depicts scientists as unwilling to look for God and doctors as dark, ominous forces seeking to take the life of an instrument of God whose physical state is remarkably similar to Terri Schiavo's before her death.

This culture war has not abated, and it seems increasingly likely that it will not until every demand of this extremist fringe is met. It's up to the rest of us not to retreat as our freedoms are taken away.

Alex Koppelman is a senior individualized major in the College from Baltimore and former editor-in-chief of 34th Street Magazine. Rock the Casbah appears on Thursdays.

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