December 30, 2025
Amen to the Warning About Political Idolatry
First, a hearty amen to Daniel and Bobby’s recent and excellent article, “The Birth of Our King and Our Country’s Political Focus.” They are exactly right: politics has a way of spoiling even the most wonderful time of the year.
I was reminded of that last weekend when I took my family to the so-called “Holiday Market” in Washington, D.C. Not a single reference to Christ. No Christmas hymns. No nativity scenes. No visual or verbal trace of the story that once gave these markets their reason for existing. What we encountered instead was a generic winter festival—a curated hodgepodge of lights, crafts, and seasonal cheer scrubbed clean of any particular meaning. Aggressive secular cultural appropriation at its finest.
But tucked inside that absence was something more revealing still. In the booths where a traditional Christmas market would sell small nativity sets, First Noel greeting cards, or ornaments, there were instead anti-ICE posters and postcards lampooning various right-wing political figures. Political hostility had not merely entered the space; it had taken the place of the Holy Family. What once occupied the symbolic altar had been replaced—not with nothing, but with ideology.
Call it solstitial commerce if you like: a winter market still hungry for transcendence, but now stocked with grievance rather than referencing the One on whose shoulders true government rests.
That scene captured precisely the kind of political idolatry Daniel and Bobby were warning about—not politics as civic engagement, but politics as ultimate meaning.
It was in that vein that Daniel asked me to develop—not a counterproposal, but an expansion of a comment I made in response to the article.
“Political hostility had not merely entered the space; it had taken the place of the Holy Family.”
Breitbart’s Maxim: Politics Is Downstream from Culture
Andrew Breitbart’s well-known maxim—that politics is downstream from culture—is a useful heuristic, particularly in democratic societies where public sentiment, media, and shared moral imagination often precede legislation. I use it frequently myself. It reminds us that elections do not occur in a vacuum and that laws rarely emerge ex nihilo. Most of us already overestimate what politics alone can accomplish, so emphasizing culture’s formative role is often corrective—especially in a moment when political stakes have become, for many, essentially religious convictions.
When that happens, opposition to those who disagree easily rises to the level of theologicum odium—a throwback to an older age, when bishops and cardinals might order a hit on a dogmatic heterodox. In that sense, Donald Trump—once a paragon of pop culture, now seated at the Resolute Desk—becomes a poster child for Breitbart’s rule: culture first, politics later.
The Feedback Loop: When Politics Shapes Culture
But like most heuristics, the maxim only tells part of the story. The current does not run in a single direction. Politics and culture exist in a feedback loop, and at decisive moments political power moves upstream, shaping culture rather than merely reflecting it.
“Politics and culture exist in a feedback loop, and at decisive moments political power moves upstream, shaping culture rather than merely reflecting it.”
Historical Examples of Politics Moving Upstream
Consider the surveillance states of the twentieth century. Why did Soviet citizens and East Germans so readily inform on neighbors, coworkers, even family members? It was not because Germans were uniquely paranoid or morally defective. In East Germany, the regime did not mirror a suspicious culture—it manufactured one. The Stasi turned ordinary citizens into informants by making paranoia rational. When your employment, your children’s education, or your freedom depends on compliance, mistrust becomes a civic virtue. The state catechized suspicion, and culture followed.
Something similar—though obviously far less totalitarian—can be seen in the American context. Sometimes the change can be a good thing. I am not convinced that the median American in 1968 shared the moral vision embodied by the Johnson administration when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Public opinion lagged behind the law. And yet that top-down decision reshaped the moral imagination over time. Once segregation was declared illegal rather than merely “debatable,” attitudes recalibrated. Children grew up assuming what their grandparents had resisted. Politics did not wait for culture to catch up—it compelled it to.
A similar dynamic is visible after Obergefell v. Hodges. In barely a decade, American sentiment toward same-sex marriage shifted with remarkable speed. That shift cannot be explained simply as the vox populi dragging the Supreme Court along behind it. The decision functioned pedagogically. It reframed the moral baseline—especially for younger Americans—by signaling what was now considered not merely legal but settled. The law did not just recognize a consensus; it accelerated one.
“Public opinion lagged behind the law. And yet that top-down decision reshaped the moral imagination over time.”
The Cycle in Action: No-Fault Divorce and the Church
In one case, Breitbart’s maxim works both forward and back. It was Ronald Reagan—a former Hollywood B-movie actor—who, as governor of the Bear Flag State, signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law, cynically titled the California Family Law Act of 1969. The reform was justified by its proponents as compassionate and pragmatic: a way to reduce perjury and ease the emotional toll of marital breakdown. But once codified, it promptly reshaped expectations. Within only a few years, forty-nine states adopted similar statutes. Divorce rates spiked. Marriage became less a covenant to be preserved and more a contract to be exited—giving rise, in the process, to an entire industry of divorce and prenuptial-agreement lawyers.
At first, many churches protested. Yet by the 1980s, first-marriage divorce rates among American evangelicals hovered between 30 and 40 percent—roughly on par with the broader culture. What began as a legal accommodation became a cultural norm, which then worked its way back into the moral life of the church itself. In this case, culture informed policy, policy re-formed culture, and culture eventually discipled the church.
“Culture informed policy, policy re-formed culture, and culture eventually discipled the church.”
More Examples of Upstream Influence
The examples multiply. Roe v. Wade did not merely codify a pre-existing moral agreement; it reshaped the moral landscape for a generation. Brown v. Board of Education did not wait for hearts to change before classrooms did. Even the New Deal created habits, expectations, and dependencies that altered how Americans understood government itself. In each case, power moved first, culture followed, and eventually culture began reinforcing the political settlement that had initially outpaced it.
This upstream influence is not limited to laws and court decisions; it also operates through elite moral behavior. The Clinton years offer a striking example. The scandals surrounding Bill Clinton were not merely private peccadilloes exposed by an overzealous press; they became a national cultural event. The Monica Lewinsky affair saturated late-night comedy, cable news, magazine covers, and pop culture. The nation was trained—explicitly—to separate private morality from public competence, to treat character as optional rather than constitutive. Standards were not merely violated; they were renegotiated in public.
That renegotiation had consequences. Once elite transgression is absorbed without meaningful moral cost, the bar lowers for those who follow. It is difficult to imagine the political viability of figures like Donald Trump or Gavin Newsom in the pre-Lewinsky moral climate. By the late 1990s, the cultural antibodies were weaker. What once would have been disqualifying had become survivable—perhaps even expected.
“This upstream influence is not limited to laws and court decisions; it also operates through elite moral behavior.”
A similar dynamic can be observed during the Obama years, though operating along an adjacent axis. Barack Obama consistently framed American life through the lens of racial grievance—sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly—treating racial tension not as a tragic inheritance to be healed, but as a permanent explanatory framework for politics itself. This was not merely descriptive rhetoric; it was formative. The bully pulpit works downward. By the time the killing of George Floyd ignited nationwide protests, the response was not simply spontaneous outrage. It bore the marks of a narrative long rehearsed.
Scripture’s Perspective on Rulers and Cultural Formation 
Scripture is acutely aware of this formative power, which is why it treats civic rulers with such gravity in judgment. In Psalm 82, God summons the rulers of the earth and indicts them not for private vice but for public failure: they judge unjustly, show partiality, and neglect the weak. The result is not merely legal corruption but cultural collapse—“all the foundations of the earth are shaken.” Authority, in the biblical imagination, is never neutral. Leaders do not merely respond to the vox populi; they shape it. They disciple a people in what to tolerate, whom to protect, and how to interpret reality itself.
Because rulers catechize nations—through law, rhetoric, and example—God holds them accountable not only for their actions, but for the moral world they leave behind.
In stable democracies, culture often sets the menu. But politics still decides the meal. And once served, people tend to acquire a taste for it.
“In stable democracies, culture often sets the menu. But politics still decides the meal. And once served, people tend to acquire a taste for it.”
Holding the Line as Christians
That is why Daniel and Bobby’s piece was so poignant. For Christians, the counsel is simple—if not easy: hold the line. We do not derive our values from cultural consensus or political momentum. For us, they flow downward from King Jesus.
Because he came through the womb, we honor life even in gestation—not as an abstraction, but as a confession of the Incarnation itself (Luke 1:41–44; Galatians 4:4). Because he submitted to earthly authority and paid the temple tax, we likewise render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, without mistaking Caesar for God (Matthew 17:24–27; Matthew 22:21). Because he labored with his hands as a carpenter in Nazareth, we honor ordinary work and those who build, fix, harvest, and serve—not merely those who rule or theorize (Mark 6:3; 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12).
Because Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, Pharisees and Zealots, Samaritans and Gentiles; because he marveled at the faith of a Roman centurion; because he crossed boundaries his world insisted must remain intact, we know that men and women of every tribe and tongue and people and nation are of unspeakable worth—each one made in the image and likeness of God (Luke 7:1–10; Luke 15:1–2; John 4:7–26; Genesis 1:26–27).
Because he knew poverty and identified himself with the hungry, the stranger, and the imprisoned, we honor the least of these—not as a political slogan, but as a mark of faithfulness (Matthew 25:31–46; 2 Corinthians 8:9). And because he told us to follow him and make disciples of all nations, we do not outsource obedience to culture or politics—we do what he says (Matthew 28:18–20).
“We do not derive our values from cultural consensus or political momentum. For us, they flow downward from King Jesus.”
Because our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers and principalities that enslave and deceive, we resist the temptation to turn our neighbors into enemies (Ephesians 6:12). Political anger may feel righteous, but the wrath of man has never produced the righteousness of God (James 1:20).
And because his earthly ministry was sustained by the unostentatious generosity of faithful women—women who gave not for recognition but for the sake of the kingdom—we give freely and intentionally to ministries that proclaim Christ rather than traffic in outrage (Luke 8:1–3). Supporting work like RENEW.org is not about partisanship; it is about participation. It is one small way of advancing the reign of the true King in a world tempted to crown many substitutes.
Christians do not wait to see which way the cultural winds are blowing before deciding what is good. We already know. Our politics—such as they are—are downstream from a throne, not a ballot box.
