Social Change Is Unsustainable

Russell Moore is the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Updated June 29, 2015, 6:45 AM

A generation ago, Merle Haggard sang, “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee.” Now, not only does Muskogee smoke marijuana, so does Merle Haggard himself.

It is rooted in a view of human nature that often ignores biology, history, and tradition as well as moral theology.

No one paying the least bit of attention could conclude anything other than that the left is on the winning side of most of the culture wars these days. Questions that were once wedge issues in favor of social conservatism — from the sexual revolution to drug use — now work in the other direction, and dramatically so.

That said, American history doesn’t work in the linear way progressives want it to, or that conservatives fear it will. The 1960s brought real change in American culture in some ways good and in some ways bad, but it hardly brought the dawning of the Age of Aquarius the counter-culture expected. The Reagan years likewise brought about some lasting changes but it didn’t usher in the theocracy of television evangelists some hysterical progressives claimed was coming. Cultural revolutions tend to overreach, and generations tend to swing back and forth on cultural issues.

As a social conservative, I am hopeful because I think much of the ambient culture — especially as it relates to the sexual revolution — is simply unsustainable. These developments are unsustainable because many of them are rooted in a view of human nature that often ignores biology, history and tradition as well as moral theology.

Moreover, a view of progress that ignores the limits of human nature and civilization often leads to the sort of hubris that overreaches and self-contradicts.

Social conservatives must recognize the bend of the present milieu but not over-interpret it as the bend of history itself. We must articulate why we believe, for instance, that children need both a mother and a father and why laissez-faire sexuality hurts people, families and communities. But we must do so by seeking to persuade those who fundamentally disagree with us, not just by screaming at them. And we must keep a witness going for future generations who may well be burned over by the choices of their parents and seeking a different, more ancient, path.