What If Christians “Won” The Culture War?

James Chastek, a Catholic writer, fears what it might look like:

Christians occasionally daydream about winning the culture over for Christ. But this would mean that belief in Christ would be policed and encouraged in the same way that our current cultural beliefs are: by manipulation of the levers of power to control spoils, intimidate dissent, and coin new taboo words and thoughtcrimes that can immediately condemn without argument and persuade without reason. Any teacher is impressed by the degree to which cultural doctrines are thoroughly and universally believed and flawlessly applied in all particular situations; and they are not merely mouthed by children who, though really skeptical of what they are saying, mouth the words anyway. They really believe all that stuff – they even see it as self-evident.  Is that how I want someone to believe in Christ? Would I feel better if I could just silence dissent with a taboo word or the confidence that the thoughtcriminal would lose his job?

Dreher extends the thought experiment to more than just Christians, adding that “you don’t have to be any sort of religious believer to be a self-righteous prick”:

A useful thing for all of us to think about, no matter where we are in the culture war: What would victory look like? How would we treat the defeated? Would we impose a Versailles-style peace, thus setting the stage for a terrible backlash and resumption of the war? And, what would victory — the achievement of cultural hegemony and commanding power over the defeated — do to us? Would we become that which we hate?

As I write this, I’m thinking about a secular liberal I used to know. We weren’t friends, but we moved in the same circles. He was a smart guy and a paragon of crusading righteousness. You couldn’t joke with him about anything; he was always looking for signs of deviation. He was the sort of person who, if ever he gained power, would be ruthless with his enemies. This sort of person recurs through history, in all guises…

[H]e really was, and is, someone to be feared. People like that always are. They tend to be effective culture warriors, because they are tireless and uncompromising. Their moral ardor is not compromised by a sense of tragedy, of their own fallibility, of basic humanity, or even something as trivial as a sense of humor. I’ve been around people on the conservative side of the culture war who are like that; in those instances, I would rather be having a drink at a gay bar. I’m serious about that.