It
will not happen. Culture is too complex, and this sort of Christianity
(and possibly even more socially-acceptable forms) is so far outside the
mainsteam of power that nothing short of apocaylptic political,
economic, and social events could possibly bring about the large-scale
revival theocons hope for.
Of
course, Christian conservatives have been divided on cultural change
for a while now, and some of them have gone into power-hunger mode
("well, if elites have all the power, we'll just become the elites!").
See TeenPact, Patrick Henry College, Liberty University, etc. But these
elites-in-training, or "scholar-warriors," as the chancellor of my alma
mater once referred to them, eventually realize that to hold on to their
fundamentals, they will have to remain on the outside where they have
always been. Thus, the movement is no closer to getting access to the
center than it ever was.
That
reality is why, I think, many of us have deserted the culture wars as a
failed experiment, and set about discovering what Christianity has to
say to modern individuals, not people from a romanticized, nostalgic
world that has all but disappeared. I believe there is room and even
desperate need for meaningful faith in modern America. But the theocons
will never succeed in converting modern Americans into pre-modern
religionists, which when Flashing talks about rejecting consensus and
holding to "exclusive claims," it sounds like they want to do. Their
vision of a transformed America was and will always be a fantasy...
http://www.patrolmag.com/sessions/2157/why-moral-revival-will-never-change-the-world?
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