Commentary: Culture vs law
BY CHELSEA ARNHOLD
Student reporter
Judge Roy Moore has been adjourned from his post. The Ten Commandments monument has been taken down from his courtroom in Montgomery, Ala. These incidents are a cultural crises that we confront — as opposed to chiefly legal.
Legal and jurisprudential reform, though needed, is not strategically central today.
The Unites States was shaped by a few basic Christian truths: religious liberty, mistrust of power, and protection of minorities from majorities.
Without the benefit of historic hindsight, they did not grasp the incompatibility between the novel Enlightenment surrounding them and Christianity; in fact, they often seemed to want to synthesize the two.
Religious liberty did not mean freedom from religion, but freedom with and because of religion.
Moore is a godly, courageous man who recognizes the role Christian revelation played in the founding of this country, notably in the nation's law base.
When the Declaration of Independence spoke of "the laws of nature and of nature's God," Jefferson had in mind the Christian God and His laws (whether "natural" or Biblical), not some other "god."
Moore knows this, and he has stood for the symbolic appearance of the Ten Commandments in his court.
This is not to suggest that the Christian critics of his idea, like Pat Robertson, are enemies of religious liberty. Robertson and other critics are grappling with the right strategy by which to revive a Christian culture; and we should listen to what they have to say, even thought we may disagree with their suggestions.
The Ten Commandments monument is largely symbolic of the deeper cultural issue. Our society is not, and has never been, driven by law and politics. These are only expressions of culture, and they are subordinate to the more vital expressions, like the arts.
Judge Moore did not lose in his struggle. He lost his struggle with John Lennon, Steven Spielberg, and Jane Fonda in the '60s and '70s.
The system of law has been overcome by the arts, because humans are more illogical than rational. Law is the legitimate justification of denomination, this is why the founding fathers, seeing the flaws in man, separated our government into three equal parts
The Great Stand will not be in an Alabama courthouse or in front of abortion clinics. Hollywood is where the Great Stand should start, in the universities, in the newsrooms of cable TV networks, and on Broadway. When the culture changes, law will change. When the TV and the music changes, culture will change.
Culture takes over law and politics every time. This is why Judge Moore had lost even before he began, and his followers will continue to lose in the immediate future.
Culture is the people, we are the people, and as "we the people" it is up to us to step forward and take responsibility for what the culture is becoming.
For instance if Hollywood is driving our culture, and Hollywood is driven by money, then are we not in the driver's seat? Individually and corporately we need to decide not to support entertainment that is contrary to our values.
