What You Need to Know in the Conflict Between Church and Culture

When I began working as a religious liberty lawyer, I became intimately involved in the conflicts between the culture and the church. I could see how the increasing liberalization of society was causing people to express disdain for Christian principles and any proclamations of moral absolutes. The cultural trend was infecting state and federal governments, corporations, the news, education, and more. Christians who hold to a firmly biblical perspective are not only in the minority; they are the despised minority. The lawsuits we handled and the accompanying deceptive media coverage about those lawsuits revealed to me that the country is in flux. While the Bible warns us that the world will hate Christians, it is still alarming to watch America’s rabid disdain for religion, and for Christianity in particular.

When you work on the front lines of the culture wars, you learn to discern the truth from the lies in the media. Over the last several years of working as a constitutional lawyer, I learned a lot about how the media manipulates the public. I would read the coverage about our cases and realize that the media was doing its best to portray the religious as the enemies in the conflict. The mainstream media rarely covered our cases in a positive light. The manipulation was effective because I realized that even Christians believed what the media told them.

During the past decade, the culture’s respect for morality and especially religion has depleted to a dangerously low level. Those who have biblical views are compared to the worst people in history, like Hitler and white supremacists. The nation is starkly divided politically, and the secular culture sees anyone with opposing views as morally deficient and unworthy of the same treatment that they are entitled to. The combination of these two trends—disdain for religious views and severe political division—has produced a series of problems for the church.

The most serious problem is that the church, which consists of sincere Democrats and Republicans, has become divided by political disagreements instead of being united in our common love for Christ. Another issue is that Christians of both political factions lack the knowledge that will help them to understand the other side’s perspective and, more importantly, prevent them from seeing the biblical errors in their own perspectives. Members of the church have gone along with lies that keep them in the good graces of their political and social groups rather than embracing the truth that keeps them in right standing with God. The Bible says that God’s people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6), and what is happening to the church in today’s society is a clear illustration of that.

From a cultural standpoint, the division and moral decline makes America susceptible to losing its position as the freest nation in the world and becoming a tyrannical country. Many people have written books warning about the rise of tyranny in our society. I reference some of these books in my own book, Uncommon Courage, and I add to their insights in hopes of giving you a more comprehensive understanding about the issues we face in our country, and I do this as someone who has seen this battle from different angles. I have a unique vantage point. I am a fairly young Christian constitutional lawyer who also happens to be a black woman. I’ve worked in education, law, politics, and the media. I believe the Lord has compelled me to share what I’ve learned in the hope of building up the church and strengthening our country. If you are someone who desires to learn more about this work and take part in it, I hope that reading Uncommon Courage inspires you to become a warrior for Christ in a hostile culture in need of God’s love.