gospelinlife.com/article/r…

“First, we should recognize that politics is “downstream” from culture. During this election, both sides claimed to be “battling for the soul of the culture.” But politics can only respond to major cultural trends, not create them. For example, in 1905, no politician, no matter how powerful, could have passed sexual harassment legislation. The culture had to change before such laws could be formulated and enforced. Interestingly, even the Civil Rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s is now being seen as more of a religious movement than a political one (see David L. Chappell’s book, A Stone of Hope, 2004).

Culture changes when a society’s mind, heart, and imagination is captured by new ideas that are developed by thinkers, expounded in both scholarly and popular forms, depicted in innumerable works of art, and then lived out attractively by communities of people who are committed to them. Politics only comes along later and responds to what is happening. It may resist or support cultural changes, but it can’t generate them.

The current obsession with politics misses this. A particular group cannot “change the culture” by taking power. Any group that simply goes after power without aiming to serve the common good will not win the hearts of society; the basic narratives animating such a group will not capture society’s imagination. This is not to say that Christians should be less involved in politics than they are, for example, in scholarship, art, journalism, education, film-making, literature, and business. But we should not think that politics is any more central to the forging of culture than these other pursuits. It may, in the final analysis, be less so.”