ABSTRACT
The ‘culture wars’ took root in the United States in the 1960s, and have been expanding since the 1980s, opposing (very broadly speaking) progressive secularism and conservative evangelicalism. This deep conflict over the country's ideological core has taken place against the backdrop of the ‘browning’ of America (as the proportion of ‘whites’ in the population declines and is projected to decline further in coming years), the growth of secularism (particularly among cultural elites) and the decline of the hegemony of evangelical Protestantism (Hunter, 2009; Kaufmann, 2004). At issue has been the prominence of orthodox religious morality in the public sphere, as reflected in such diverse touchstone domains as gender roles, homosexuality, abortion, the artistic canon and production, public history and education (Hunter, 2009). This ongoing series of cultural and political conflicts has significant implications for the study of nationalism, given that the nation state is a contested political arena, and that nationalist discourse has largely been the medium through which ideological clashes have taken place as competitors advance rival claims to speak for the nation's true best interests. As James Hunter has argued, these debates have been dominated by elites on both sides, leading to increased polarization, an exaggerated dichotomy between competing worldviews, and a ‘semi-permanent legitimation crisis’ in which each side rejects outright the exercise of power by the other (ibid.: 1321). Nevertheless, these culture wars are not fought merely in the media by elites, but are also waged on the ground by various grassroots organizations.
