Considering Culture Shift

There is a place for “bite-sized” reflections on ethical issues. Al Mohler provides just that in Culture Shift: The Battle for the Moral Heart of America.  I suspect this book is taken from his blog posts from 2001-2005. I read the expanded edition which contains some newer chapters from 2010-11. The chapters are short enough to read in less than 30 minutes. Mohler interacts with events and controversies, so these pieces are not abstract. As John Piper notes, he is clear-headed.

While he tackles some complex issues, I never got the sense I was in over my head. He makes the material accessible to ordinary people. He has 3 chapters on Public Law, first laying out 3 secular arguments, then 3 secular myths and finally 5 theses. Many of these chapters are still relevant, like his chapter on Offendedness. There are chapters wrestling with 9/11, the Tsumani, abortion, Darwinism and more. These are things to think about. At times you can see how perceptive he is.

“Instead, Saletan argued that the pro-abortion movement should coalesce around an agenda of lowering the total number of abortions and increasing the use of contraceptives.”

This, for instance, has been the rhetoric of our President.

But he looks not merely at personal sins, but at structures. This is not as common for conservatives. This is part of the tension between conservatives and progressives today. The one sees personal morality as the main issue, and the other public morality as the main issue so sin is found either in the individual or the structures. For a Christian, we should recognize both. And both need to be addressed.

“Sin is so interwoven in our lives and institutional structures that we often cannot even see it.”

The book is good as far as it goes. But I wish Dr. Mohler had set his heights higher than he did. This book is about skirmishes in the culture war. There is very little about the big picture (one good chapter that hints at this is Nineveh, New Orleans, and the City of Man). The book does not often get below the skirmishes to the presuppositions that really drive the cultural conflict (Hard America, Soft America is one of the exceptions). So one is not really sure why we stand were we stand, and how we should proceed. Unaddressed questions include the role of the church versus the role of the Christian. Does he assume a transformationalist model, a 2 kingdom model (he does make use of Augustine a few times, so maybe), a classical Baptist model of separation etc.? What was really missing, from my perspective, was how the gospel relates to all of this. This is what I mean by setting his sights too low. There are a number of bigger picture issues that are either assumed or not clearly addressed. This places the book closer to being “conservative” than being “Christian”. It addresses moral, and I usually agree with him on those. But you can be a cultural conservative without any faith in Christ and agree with most of the book. This doesn’t make it bad, just not what I’m really wanting. It would be great if this were a profound critique of progressive secular humanism, explore more of its presuppositions and revealing it to be a self-defeating system. Instead, it grappled with most of these issues on a more superficial level. That is needed, but the other is needed even more.

[I received a promotional copy of this book for the purposes of review.]