Where To In the Culture Wars? Learning From Our Mistakes

In the culture wars the other side is proactive, hyper-active and ever-active, while our side is usually just asleep. The old joke about complacency applies especially to most of the church in the West: “Do you think we are too ignorant and too apathetic? I don’t know and I don’t care.”

The near universal ignorance of what is happening in the culture wars, and the almost complete indifference by most churches and church leaders has been appalling to witness. Despite decades of warnings from some of us, so much of the church has simply snoozed through its own demolition.

The activists have always had the churches in their sights, but hardly any Christian leaders had known about this or wanted to know about this. They preferred to live in dreamland, ignore the warnings, and denounce the watchmen on the wall seeking to wake a lethargic and lazy church.

Sure, some pastors and church leaders got it, but they were always a small minority. But it is not as if we had no reason for concern. Anyone even remotely aware of what had been going on for the past half century had ample evidence of what was going to be taking place.

The handwriting had always been on the wall, and anyone with a bit of discernment and awareness should have been able to see what was heading down the pipeline. Anyone even halfway following the homosexual lobby would have known what was coming our way.

Indeed, for many years I religiously read the homosexual press to see what they were up to and what they were planning. I shared my findings on a regular basis, but mainly to an uninterested and clueless audience. And I read their books and manifestos as well.

So many can be mentioned, but let me highlight just two of them. Way back in 1987 a very interesting and revealing article by Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill appeared in the homosexual press entitled “The Overhauling of Straight America”.

The article outlined a clear and cogent strategy by which homosexuals could best implement their goals. It included the following elements: desensitisation; portraying homosexuals as victims, not as aggressive challengers; giving the protectors a just cause; and making the victimisers look bad.

The activists had so much more to share along these lines, so that article was developed into a full-length book. In 1989 Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen (the real name of Erastes Pill) released the alarming volume, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Hatred and Fear of Homosexuals in the 90s.

That is the sort of book every Christian leader in the West should have owned, read, and responded to. But 99 per cent would likely never have even heard of it. I certainly have a well-worn copy of the book, with plenty of yellow highlighting. I have just pulled it off my shelves once again.

It is an eye-opening book, and it explains so much of what has been going on over the past three decades. The truth is, the activists had a plan, they had vision, they had determination, and they had commitment to achieving their aims. They thought long and hard about how they would revolutionise the West, and all their planning, hard work and mobilisation has paid off big time.

In a very short period of time a minority lifestyle universally frowned upon became the most powerful and influential lobby force in recent history. The “love that dare not speak its name” became the flavour of the month – and of the past few decades.

It is not just American homosexuals who have been so very active here. One Australian activist who I quoted in my 2011 book, Strained Relations, boasted about how far the homosexual lobby had come in such a short period of time. And he was saying all this back in 2000! As I wrote then:

Indeed, the extent to which the homosexual agenda is being implemented is nicely laid out in a recent book by Australian homosexual activist Graham Willett. In his book Living Out Loud he presents a history of homosexual activism in Australia. His book shows how successful the homosexual lobby has been in achieving its ends. Indeed, the author expresses amazement at how quickly and easily its ends have been attained.

A few representative quotes set the tone. He begins his book by noting “how very different” attitudes are today compared to not so very long ago: “Anti-gay ideas still exist in society, of course, but a basic liberal tolerance is the dominant mood. . . . It is a startling indication of just how far we have come that the moral crusaders’ demands are widely regarded as silly and unfair.”

His concluding chapter offers more of the same: “Never have homosexuality, the gay and lesbian community and their issues been more visible or more seriously dealt with by the mainstream, or more entrenched in social and political life. . . . One of the great changes of the past 40 years has been the growing visibility of lesbians and gay men in Australian society. . . . This visibility is reinforced by the role of the mainstream media.”

“The triumph of liberal tolerance is now more or less complete.” Indeed, so successful has the homosexual offensive been that Willett argues that the real problem for the homosexual community may be internal fragmentation due to its own diversity and acceptance.

Yep, they are seeing all their efforts pay off with remarkable success. While they planned, worked and fomented their sexual revolution, most of the church in particular and the West in general just stayed in its comatose condition, blissfully unaware or unconcerned about this remarkable social, cultural, sexual and moral revolution.

And so today in Australia we now look back to just two days ago and the passage of fake marriage. I have already penned two articles on Black Thursday:

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2017/12/07/australias-day-infamy/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2017/12/08/day-day-infamy/

So which way forward? First, let me say a massive thankyou to all who did work and pray and get involved in the past few months. You are champions. Your efforts were not in vain, and I salute each and every one of you who did commit to this battle.

But much more should have been done, and of course it should have been done much earlier. A good part of the reason for why we lost is because we were never really engaged in the first place. We never took this threat seriously, and so we basically lost by default.

And now we will have to pay the price. It will not be pretty. It is already getting very ugly out there, and the darkness will continue to get worse. Yes, many believers are now becoming aware and are getting concerned. They see what a big loss this has been, and they are wanting to know what they can do.

Thus after the passage of this fake marriage bill I have had some Christians asking me if we can get some petitions going, etc. While I am glad some believers are concerned about this and want to take some action, it is a bit late now for this.

The time for petitions and everything else to resist the war on family, faith and freedom was the last 20 to 30 years or so. We should have been fully engaged for decades now. But sadly far too many churches and Christians were asleep at the wheel.

And when we tried to warn them and alert them to the war that had been declared against marriage and family and Christianity, most either ignored us or claimed we were overreacting and fear-mongering. They said we were being judgmental and unloving and unChristlike.

They said Christians should stay out of politics and just be nice to people. Yeah, that’s done a lot of good. We can see where that advice has gotten us. Make no mistake, however: I am not saying it is too late and we can now do nothing. Quite to the contrary, we keep working, we keep praying, and we keep getting involved.

Our job is now so much harder. The other side has it all: they have the mainstream media, the finances, the resources, the governments, the universities, the judiciary, popular culture, and so on. We have none of that. But we do have something they do not have.

We have God on our side. We have truth. We have that which is right. That means we will ultimately win. Sure, there will be major losses along the way, but we know how all this will finally play out. So we do not despair, we do not surrender, we do not head to the hills. Instead, we stay, we stand, and we fight.

The fake marriage bill is not the end of all things. It is just the beginning of the next step in this war. We keep on keeping on, and one day we will hear those words from our Lord, “Well done good and faithful servant”. So we press on.

Sure, we must learn the lessons of history here. We must be aware of all the mistakes we made in the past, and learn from them. The other side won this battle because they were committed, dedicated and active. They had a plan and they worked toward it. We were asleep, apathetic and unaware.

That has to change. We now must step up to the plate. We all must enlist in the cultural and spiritual army that needs to be raised up to engage in the next phase of the campaign. Who will join me? Who will say, “Here I am Lord, send me”?

[1615 words]

29 Replies to “Where To In the Culture Wars? Learning From Our Mistakes”

  1. Hi Bill and all no-voting readers. Does anyone know the details of any potential move to challenge the new law in the High Court on the grounds of it being outside the understood definition of marriage in the constitution. If just half of all no-voters contributed just $1.00 there would be a $2.4 million fighting fund. Please pass on any information anyone might be aware of.

  2. Hi Bill, you are so right. In the late 1970s, I was starting my uni studies to upgrade my teaching qualifications. One subject was “Sociology of Deviance” – and homosexuality was one of the four deviant behaviours being explored! How things have changed! Later, in the early to mid 80s, after completing my Education degree , I was tutoring in Educational Psychology at a uni. I was really concerned about the humanistic view coming in and I kept thinking about how this would affect how children would think. I prayed quite a lot about it. (Actually, I quietly added some thoughts and questions in the tutorials I did with the students). But, as you say, it has all intensified. We are surely in a battle- and, as you say, it’s been going on a long time.

  3. Our alphabet friends continue to mangle our language. Straightforward, universally understood words such as ‘marriage’, ‘husband’ and ‘bridesmaid’ now need to be accompanied by explanations. Meanwhile they create new words such ‘genderqueer’ and ‘non-binary’- which are beyond explanation. Meanwhile I am dismissed/denigrated as a ‘heteronormative’, ‘cis-gender-male’.

    Possibly it is time to re-establish who we are. Some possibilities: I am MFmarried. My wife is in a FMmarriage. We have a God Ordained, GOMarriage. Our children have MFparents.
    Because some words are now so corrupted, I would not use ‘two-gender marriage’ or ‘two-sex marriage’.

    Bill: Possibly your readers may have other/better words to uniquely define (the disambiguation of) our relationships within the new fuzzy, gender-less, androgynous word-soup continually being created by the gender-fairies.

  4. You want a fighting fund? Keep me posted as to when and where please.

  5. The challenge of promoting God’s Truth in this hostile society has been surprisingly uplifting to say the least.

    God has prepared ALL of us who are prepared to die for Him for battle with His Mighty Word…….

    What a Great Sword We Wield.

    Our Faith grows stronger through persecution,
    Our faithless families witness 1st Hand the Power of God’s influence on all those we come in contact with.
    And our fair-weather, socially aware, politically correct friends drop away one by one……

    Thank you Bill for these Fighting Words:
    With God on Our Side – How can We not Rejoice!

  6. Thank you Bill. I just write to encourage you. I find your writing helpful and articulates the issues well. It is also good motivation for myself and others to be informed and be able to engage on various topics at hand. God bless.

  7. Bill you are right in saying large parts of the Church and its leadership ignored the warning signs but I’d go further to say that the helped in the destruction. The Church swallowed the Social Justice, equality, Politically Correct behavior and speech, the victimisation issue and all the other drivel designed by Cultural Marxism behind the LGBTQI . These people were minorities in most western Culture and had to have huge monetary and organizational backing across the decades. I point to one individual in particular, George Soros. Now we even have the Pope spewing out anti Christian statements and calling the scriptures and Christ into question. I believe the former Pope was forced from office by evil people to install one of their own.

  8. Thanks, Bill. I have thought for a long time that the focus on spiritual realities may have blunted the church’s ability (or willingness) to engage with the realities you talk about. Yes, it seems we proven we really have been too ‘heavenly minded’ to be of much ‘earthly good’ – especially in the area of the culture wars. Now the cost to regain ground looks to be far higher than many of us might have expected to see in this country. And this battle may go on after many of us have passed on. It will also be for our children to struggle through the confusion of this current time and rediscover the reality of Christian values and why they are worth fighting for. And much damage has already been done in that area, also. The struggle to recapture ground may yet carry over to the third and fourth generation after us, so deep is this uprooting of the Christian worldview in the west.

  9. It is true that God is on our side and with respect to homosexuals and all sinners I still think that the most effective way forward is the full unmodified good news of Jesus Christ. Because the human condition is to naturally sin this leads us into forms of sin which have been around since the Fall, homosexuality included.

    However, the big questions of life – what happens when I die? (it depends on your response to Jesus) or am I good? (No) – still leads the incredibly good news that as much of a mess that sin can make of our lives, people deep down know that repentance and faith in Jesus and what He achieved at the cross has paid the penalty and credited us with His righteousness. This brings true freedom and it is something that I will share until my dying breath. Only with salvation can all the other rubbish be dealt with, given salvation is a three-stage process of justification, sanctification and glorification.

    I would spend my energies on this, and warning all and any sinner of the reality of hell as a consequence that Jesus spoke of. It is still very important to explain the harmfulness and rebelliousness of homosexual actions and defend marriage as part of an overall effort of being a witness of righteousness.

  10. God’s prophetical message to the last of the seven churches,

    “I would thou wert cold or hot.
    16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
    17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”

    is God’s message to today’s church.

  11. Many Christians now don’t want to be radical or stand up for the truth. However, “If they don’t stand for something, they will fall for anything.” They looked at the people ringing the alarm and said they were too radical and too harsh and unChristian.The devil made good use of this weakness and lack of strength and unity.

  12. Hi Bill,
    Thanks for your latest piece. I have written to you before about this topic – the apathy of Western Christians.
    I remember when I was the Victorian Chairman and State Director of the Australian Christian Lobby for a time back in the early 2000’s and tried to run workshops on the culture wars, related political issues and the very real need for Christians to get active and involved. Despite wide advertising in churches across Melbourne, I would be lucky to get 6-10 people attend. Nobody was interested then; nobody is interested now!
    Most ‘Christians’ actually don’t really believe in God, nor do they live a truly biblical lifestyle. They simply live a capitalist lifestyle the same as everyone else and perhaps merely go to church on Sunday. That’s enough for them in their comfortable lifestyle, and that’s why I gave up trying to change them.
    I recently attended a presentation by Professor Ian Plimer on the climate change and global warming fraud currently being inflicted upon us (another part of the socialist battle for control). I was fortunate enough to be able to have a long conversation with Professor Plimer afterwards. He said that the climate change/global warming fraud is now so well entrenched that nothing will change until people start to die as a result.
    I suspect the same is true of these present culture wars, of which the homosexual revolution is but one element. Nothing much will change and it will continue to get worse until people are being put in jail and killed.
    However, what is now deeply disturbing and troubling is that in the past when we have been exposed to external threats (Nazism, Communism, Japanese imperialism, etc), it has been the free West that has come along and saved us. But what happens now that it is actually the not-so-free West itself that is the threat to its own populations from ‘the enemy within’, and in particular, the so-called ‘socialist alternative’ and Islam? This is a whole new ball game and can only eventually end in civil war. Where will all the ‘Christians’ stand then, when the war is in their own street? Will they stand up for what is right then? Or will they just be hauled off to the Gulag with a white cross sown to their Gucci T shirt?
    By the by, you may be interested to know that after seven years of hard work I have just been awarded a PhD! 🙂

  13. When the homosexual community first asked for acceptance in about 1980 my thoughts were, they won’t stop there! Homosexuality is not the only battle front over the last few decades. Other ones I am very aware of are, creation Vs evolution, the inroads of Islam in the west, climate change distortions and lies as well as the general decline in (Australian) Christian commitment since the 1960s. (We won’t mention the UN and its hidden agenda together with the Australian government).

    Thanks Bill, I only just stumbled on your blog. Prayerfully keep up the good work.

  14. Well presented topic as usual, Bill.
    The battle must be fought within our own spirit first if we are to be effective spiritual soldiers for Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Lord and King. It is time to humble ourselves, kneel down in furtive prayer and repent from our sinful ways of complacency, lack of faith and misplaced trust in the worldly solutions to our world’s spiritual diseases. We must collectively cry out to God for His gracious forgiveness, eternal guidance and immeasurable mercy to heal our spirits, hearts and minds so that we can gain the strength, purpose and knowledge to fight the battles ahead for the glory of God alone!
    In Jesus Christ’s holy name, I pray for spiritual healing over our land and beyond its borders to all peoples in every country on Earth. Furthermore I call on God’s angels to assist us in the battles ahead and ask that the Holy Spirit of God equip and train us for the battles ahead. Jesus you promised to be with us forever and we gratefully thank you for loving us and abiding with us throughout our struggles here on Earth. Finally I pray for all Christians to rise up and put on the whole armour of God and thereby defeat the enemy within first and thereafter the Devil’s army in the spiritual realm in due course. May God endorse our collective prayers with the victories we seek on this day and into the future. Amen , thank you Jesus! ?

  15. We have been in the ‘culture war’ since Adam ate the apple.
    The post reformation fake truce allowing Satan to regroup, is over.
    Satan repealed it in the sixties.
    All real Christians are his enemies – always have been – and must be prepared to die.
    Fake Christians will surrender and join his forces, many as fifth columnists identifying the real ones to be persecuted.
    But real Christians were often put to death by the fake Church before and during the reformation .
    They ushered in centuries of New Life in the West, so I expect deaths and New Life to escalate from now on until Australia is truly The Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.

  16. I was one of those caught napping. As far as I was concerned homosexuality was one of those things that it was a shame to even speak of (Eph 5:12). Fifteen years ago the idea that we would now have laws based on imaginary lies and that the moral majority would no longer exist just did not seem remotely possible. Australia was a light to the world I thought. I used to think that the ABC and SBS were a little left leaning but basically I took what they said as reasonably authoritative but then I started to wake up and noticed that what they were saying was simply not true. It was not until I started to actually check the news stories and opinions promulgated on the ABC’s talk shows that I started to realize the extent of the lies and propaganda which is still apparently going on basically unchecked. This is the problem. The power wielded by media groups to form opinion and fundamentally brainwash people is astounding. I should have realized earlier because I had a good idea (having worked at a TV station for about a year) just how much money people spent on advertising. They would not be doing that if it was not effective. I used to think the attacks on Christian identities in dramas and comedies from the BBC etc. were just lighthearted but now I realize this is actually what people have come to think of Christianity. The atheist/immoral propaganda has completely replaced the reality of the situation in many people’s minds.

    People have no idea just how much they are being manipulated. A few years back you would never hear anyone saying “holy sh**” but now you even hear Christians say this blasphemy and expletive without the slightest idea of what is coming from their mouth. This is how much people have been controlled and their thinking manipulated but the scriptures are very clear that we will be judged by our words.

    Until something can be done about what people are feeding their brains there will be no moral advancement, only continued degeneration but people don’t care. As long as they are not aware of the consequences they go on the same with no intention of being moral and the media is making very sure they are continually kept completely unaware of the consequences and reality, unless, of course, they can manipulate it to serve their agenda. Until we have something like Moses returning from the mountain with God’s Commandments, no one wants to ruin the immorality party.

  17. Absolutely with you Bill. We thank God for your leadership (an attribute tragically extremely weak on the ground in our region, where the local church is more concerned about ensuring that women remain relegated to serving only in the kitchen than in believers taking a stand for the Kingdom, and the minister proclaims his cowardice from the pulpit).
    We look forward very much to hearing your guidance about how we may faithfully serve our Lord moving forward now, with goal posts in our society having been so profoundly moved last Thursday.
    Reflecting, it seems that the bottom line in our Western societies is rejection of belief in God*, often with transfer of allegiance, albeit in many cases unwittingly, to the new atheistic religion of humanism (rejection of faith in God having been fuelled by the teaching of evolution as fact, as well as children being lied to about Santa Claus. When they are disappointed and even shocked to realize that they have been deceived throughout their lives up until that time, concepts of trust, as well as any concept of Jesus as God, is likely relegated also to the status of myth. Contempt for Christianity has tragically been fuelled also by extreme disillusionment by the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse.)
    *important reading: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag”, Templeton Prize Lecture, 10 May 1983 (London) http://orthodoxnet.com/blog/2011/07/men-have-forgotten-god-alexander-solzhenitsyn/
    How best to be able to make faith real to people today? . . so that they too may come to find peace and joy, meaning and purpose in relationship with our living Lord . . and then have opportunity also to alert them to the sad and destructive flow-on implications of last Thursday’s changing of marriage law by Federal Parliament (as well as the slippery slope for potential and inevitable abuse with Victoria’s recent euthanasia legislation)?
    Having come from an unbelieving home, I am eternally grateful for those who had the passion and commitment to tell me the good news of the Gospel. I thank God also for the opportunities He has given me to serve Him in the past. Here I am, Lord, send me. With the energy, passion and commitment that You have given to me, please lead me into ways I may fruitfully serve You (other, and as well as, in kitchens).
    Please guide us Bill with encouragement and suggestions about how we may effectively make a difference for God’s Kingdom in our society now, with ‘revenge’ towards Christians on the horizon (as warned, out of concern for Christians, by Mark Latham last Thursday night).
    And Bill, how can we best serve and care for you and your family? We were wiped out financially in recent times, however God is good and we truly want to help meet your family’s needs.
    With sincere appreciation, Suzanna and family

  18. Our minister preached from Acts 4 today. When faced with enemies on all sides, Peter and John said “we cannot but speak…”
    Then the church came together to praise God’s sovereignty and pray for boldness!
    Thank you Bill, and all those who boldly speak the truth.
    This – “They said we were being judgmental and unloving and unChristlike.
    They said Christians should stay out of politics and just be nice to people.” Is something heard far too often in the church. How is it loving to keep God’s life giving Word from desperate sinners? How is it Christlike to be non-judgemental to the drowning? Praying for boldness, these lions are asleep in the Light, and dreaming that they’re only mice…

  19. Suzanna Balfour, thank you for posting that Solzhenitsyn link! I have a couple of books of his on my shelf (Cancer Ward and a first edition of Gulag Archipelago from my grandmother) but I hadn’t before seen that speech!

  20. Bill the Christian universal Church has a major handicap (naturally speaking) which impedes her from being the force for good that she should be in the world. It is divided. Even though we are supposed to have the Holy Spirit leading us we have never known how to get a long with other Christian groups. Each denomination keeps to itself so when difficulties come along that needs a unified response the church is hamstrung.

    The church was never called to be isolationist in nature but to be bonded together in love into the body of Christ. The result of division is inaction on important matters. There is a lack of will to face the world’s challenges together and Instead of one very powerful moral voice there are only a few heard at best where even they don’t share the same authoritative message.

    The Church in 300AD was married into the then Roman political system and over the next century was so corrupted there was little resemblance of the one Jesus Christ was the head. This seemed to be a disaster but even in such dire consequences God was able to use the situation to keep the church alive inside the powerful Catholic institution with its one voice to call for crusaded against the Islamists in order to save European Christendom. Could this have been achieved had the church been like it is today, fragmented? Who would have given the call to arms?

    It was only after the Islamists were defeated and humbled that the light of the gospel of Christ started to shine again and healing came to the world through the Protestant movement. I don’t know where the answer is in uniting the church’s voice in such a way that we could repel all this evil spiritual warfare against us but to survive in a thriving free democracy we must find a way if it isn’t already too late.

  21. Francis Schaffer was another watchman on the wall, wish I had discovered him much earlier. Re-programming of mind (from satan) began with the introduction of television, like many things a double edge sword, education, entertainment and news….seemed like a great leap forward now mostly morally corrupt. I’m dumbfounded by what some of my Christian brothers and sisters view on the idiot box. I was struck by a recent ABC reflection on the old “Countdown” TV series, at the time I was a regular viewer! , with hindsight it was pure and simply a softening of the masses for the gay lifestyle.
    Stay on the wall Bill we need you.

  22. We are at the end of this Age. Gobalism, Marxism and Islamism are being promoted by the Political Elite and the tide is coming in. While Christians are told to be Salt and Light our Mandate is to Preach the Gospel. One of the most maligned scriptures by the Liberals is Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. …….That is the mandate for the Church. Ray Comfort in his Evangelism uses Creation arguments and The 10 Commandments to focus people on their Spiritual plight whether they are LGBT…. or not. The ‘church’ is doomed, the buildings, denominations, ‘bible colleges’ all the ‘christian paraphernalia’ that have erred from this mandate. Some of the ‘church’ will compromise but the Real Church will go underground as it did in the time of the Nero’s and continue until Rom 11:25 is fulfilled, ‘For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. Rom 11:26 And so all Israel shall be saved’. Go and seek that last Man, Women, Boy or Girl.

  23. After reading the opening chapters of STEALING FROM A CHILD by Dr. David van Gend, I agree with you on being poorly prepared. I wish that I had been able to read it when it was first published and not post-SSM. It’s an eye-opener and well-researched. This book is highly recommended for its focus on the most contentious issue of all.

  24. Constitutional challenge is well underway and will be made public soon enough- it will be the legal challenge of the century!

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