Politics is downstream from culture. This intriguing axiom, coined by the late Andrew Breitbart, is increasingly used during election cycles. While some discount the validity of this claim, undoubtedly there is valuable truth embedded within. As American culture devolves from its customary beliefs and original formularies into more secular, more pagan practices, our self-serving, corrupt politicians are more than happy to accommodate the crumbling.

One might finish the phrase by saying, If politics is downstream from culture, then policy is downstream from politics.

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This is why any positive change, reclamation of faith, renouncement of sin, or turning toward God must happen one soul at a time. It is the call of each believer to not only tend well to their own heart but also cultivate well the souls in the garden of life in which the Lord has placed them.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ~ John Adams

If you want to change politics, you must change culture.  And if you’re going to change culture, you must change lives.

The Political Spirit

I have written much concerning one of Jesus’ sternest warnings:  “Watch out! Beware the leaven of Herod.”  Leaven presents itself as a minuscule, mostly undetected element.  But once granted entry, it rapidly spreads through the entire lump of dough.  When Jesus references the leaven of Herod, He is speaking of the political spirit.

Herod Antipas was a corrupt, perverted, and depraved Roman ruler in Jesus’ day.  His reign embodied a secular, oppressive, deeply divisive quest for power and permanence through manipulation, deception, and the formation of unholy alliances.  To be clear, Jesus was not warning believers to avoid political engagement.  The leaven of the Kingdom is intended to touch and transform every facet of society, including government.

The political spirit ranks among the “world forces of darkness” and “spiritual forces of wickedness in the unseen places,” as the Apostle Paul describes in his letter to the Ephesians. Today’s rulers of the air are more powerful and no less destructive, yet the Church is often unsure at best and complicit at worst in discerning the leaven of the enemy.

The warring principalities wreaking chaos and destruction today are maniacally wielding their weapons of choice:  Abortion, climate catastrophism, the sterilization, castration, and mutilation of minors, globalism, LGBTQIA2S+ indoctrination of children, anti-purity campaigns, race huckstering, the science of depopulation, and the dim yet deadly tenets of cultural Marxism. Jesus’ dire warning to His followers is to vigilantly guard and protect against this political spirit from flowing into the Body of Christ.

The Church is not designed to be simply a lighthouse but also a dispenser of Heaven’s love and power and a transmitter of the Lord’s true nature. However, a quickly growing trend in the West reveals the flow is being reversed. Instead of the Church diffusing Heaven’s bits into the culture, the political spirit sneakily seeps through the stained glass and welcomely waltzes through the front door.

Cultural Christianity?

As dastardly as this reverse flow of culture into the Church is, another phenomenon is happening outside the Church that many believers aren’t quite sure what to make of.

I consider myself a cultural Christian.  I enjoy living in a culturally Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith. ~ Richard Dawkins

Oxford University atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, is making a claim that is both garnering attention and causing Christians to be confused.  What exactly is a cultural Christian?

It is historically undeniable that the Christian faith was intricately responsible for the formation of Western civilization.  The Church led the way in science, education, the arts, and medicine.  Literacy, women’s rights, human services, and the abolition of slavery were all pioneered by the Church.  So when Dawkins declares he is a cultural Christian, don’t get too excited.  He is really saying that he selfishly enjoys the benefits of the fruits of a faith he mocks from a God Whom he disdains.

I remember when The God Delusion was released.  I had a front-row seat to watch people jettison their faith, blow up their marriages and careers, and embark on the mirky waters of New Atheism.

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and purpose.  Somebody else must be responsible for my well-being, and somebody else must be to blame if I am hurt. Is it a similar infantilism that really lies behind the ‘need’ for a God?  ~ Dawkins in The God Delusion

Douglas Murray, one of my favorite authors and an indefatigable voice of our day, has a much softer, more contemplative tone in describing his brand of cultural Christianity.

I was brought up a believing Christian for most of my life, into my adult life, and find myself in the self-confessedly conflicted, complex situation of being, among other things, an uncomfortable agnostic who recognizes the values and virtues the Christian faith has had on the shaping of Western society.  But I myself can not believe. ~ Douglas Murray

Though he has not publicly said it, I believe Douglas’ apprehension may be partly due to the fact he is gay.  I pray the same God of his youth is wooing him back to repentance and belief.

In a recent interview with Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk also donned his jersey for Team Cultural Christian.  At age 53, he has already accomplished generations worth of invention, innovation, and success.  While I have deep concerns about his work with AI and Neuralink, his purchase of Twitter and the release of the Twitter Files prove to be one of the most effective moves ever taken against government censorship and Big Tech control over free speech.

While I’m not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise, and that there’s tremendous wisdom in turning the other cheek.  I would say I’m probably a cultural Christian. ~ Elon Musk

This brings us to possibly the most famous cultural Christian of all, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. I must disclose that I have consumed hundreds of hours of his lectures and interviews, read his books, and attended his live show twice. So, while I may be influenced in my analysis, I am also well suited to do so.

Because Peterson is exceptionally intellectual and was forged on the pages of Carl Jung, his overcomplicated thought processes prevent him from saying plainly what believers want to hear.  When asked, “Do you believe in God?” his cranial contorting is clear to see:

It’s not a well-posed question.  It’s too complicated an issue to be dealt with like that.  What do you mean by ‘believe’?  Do you think a statement about God is something like a scientific theory?  Is it a factual question or a list of facts?  I’ll stake my life on the proposition that God exists.  I think that’s the right answer.

When asked, “Is the Bible true?” his depth of heart is clear to see:

It isn’t that the Bible is true.  It’s that the Bible is the precondition for the manifestation of truth, which makes it way more true than just true. The proposition that underlies Western culture is that there is a transcendent morality instantiated in the figure of God, who is the personification of morality. 

When asked, “Is Jesus God?” his willingness to bow low is evident:

The figure of Christ is an actual person who lived, plus a myth, so in that sense, Christ is the union of the objective world and the narrative world.  Christ seems oddly plausible to me, but I still don’t know what to make of it because it’s far too terrifying a reality to believe.  I don’t know what would happen to you if you fully believed it. 

But when asked, “If a video camera was set up outside of Jesus’ tomb, would we see a man walk out?”  Jordan emphatically replied, “Yes.”

Some believe he should not be giving Bible-based lectures. I will attest that at the last show I attended, although his treatment of Scripture is mainly through a psychological lens, the insights he pulled from the narrative of Cain and Abel continue to stir in my heart.  I wish more preachers would shed their cautiousness and dare to delve deeper into the unplumbable waters of the Living Word as Peterson does.

A remarkable aspect of what is happening is that while many churches drift into confusion and diminish in power, the Gospel is emerging from some of the most unexpected places.  We haven’t even mentioned the very public conversion and baptism of Russel Brand and the millions his message of transformation is reaching!

What then of salvation?  It is predictably tedious when Christians rush to slam the gavel on who is in and who is out, who goes to Heaven and who goes to hell, who are the sheep and who are the goats.

Salvation belongs to The Lord. ~ Psalms 3:8

In Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13, the servants ask if they should gather up the tares.  Jesus said, “No.  Let them both grow until the harvest.”  His reason?  “In gathering the weeds, you may uproot some of the wheat with them.”  It is clear we are neither capable nor expected to always spot the difference.

And when the apostle John said to Jesus in Mark 9, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.”  Jesus replied, “Do not stop them . . . Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Believers can move too quickly and confidently, dividing the sheep from the goats here and now.  However, that separation does not occur until the end of the age, and only one person is permitted to perform that task:  The King.

In the meantime, may we pray not only for cultural Christians to grow into Spirit-filled, saving faith but also for believers to remain intent on releasing the leaven of the Kingdom into the culture.

Keith Guinta blogs at www.winepatch.org. He is a husband and father, and he has been a worship leader and church planter. Photo credit: Painting by Raphael – Royal Collection of the United Kingdom, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1718078.