Not Tiring of the ‘Culture Wars’ — Moral, Liberty or Otherwise

This week marked the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, fought July 1-3, 1863. In a letter to the Governor of Maine, Joshua Chamberlain, Medal of Honor recipient for action at Gettysburg with the 20th Maine Infantry, wrote: “I fear this war, so costly of blood and treasure, will not cease until men of the North are willing to leave good positions, and sacrifice the dearest personal interests, to rescue our country from desolation, and defend the national existence against treachery.”

Similarly, I believe our liberties will continue to be lost until the men and women of our country begin to fight back in a war that has been thrust upon us, a war that rages even if we’ve yet to acknowledge its existence. Many Americans have had the luxury of ignoring the culture wars. It’s much harder to ignore a war, however, when it arrives on your doorstep.

Joshua Chamberlain also wrote, “It is something great and greatening to cherish an ideal; to act in the light of truth that is far-away and far above; to set aside the near advantage, the momentary pleasure; the snatching of seeming good to self; and to act for remoter ends, for higher good, and for interests other than our own.”

Left alone, government overreach will never stop and will very soon become impossible to ignore. The freedom to hold differing views on abortion and homosexuality mean little apart from the liberty to express those views. Perhaps the Christians who grew weary of the culture wars will come back and assist us in the liberty culture war “for higher good and for interests other than our own.”

Jeff Wright, Jr. is a grateful husband, blessed daddy, and long-suffering Redskins fan. He is a Prison Chaplain in the “city of lost souls,” holds a ThM from Dallas Seminary, and is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. Jeff is a civil liberties activist on behalf of the “sacred order of freemen” and minister of the “fellowship of twice-born sinners.”