The Culture Wars and Beyond: A response to Jody and Rick

In responding to our current cultural situation, two questions are paramount: 1) How am I called to respond? and 2) What is my judgment of the current situation?  These questions underlie the argument between Jody Bottum (here) and Rick Garnett (here).

In a recent Patheos essay, Jody writes: Forget the culture-wars crap. It was a fight worth having, back in the day when there was enough Christendom left to be worth defending. ... Start, instead, with re-enchnatment." I don't understand how we benefit from a house divided.  Why can't God be calling Jody to get out of the culture wars and focus on re-enchantment of the world through literary means while simultaneously calling Rick to fight for the legal rights for the unborn and religious freedom for all?  I don't see it as an either/or but a both/and according to our unique call.

What we hear and how we answer will be influenced, I suspect, by our assessment of the current state of our culture. The Christian who believes that we live in a truly post-Christian culture where Christian understandings of the human person, of reason, of truth, of goodness, and of beauty fail to get any traction might conclude that his or her time is better spent re-enchanting the world with beauty to provide an opening to the human heart that - when expanded - will be more open to the Good News and all that the Gospel entails. On the other hand, the Christian who believes that arguments on behalf of the unborn (or the poor, or the immigrant) and arguments for religious freedom can still gain traction in our culture, will, if called to do so, continue to make those arguments vigorously in the public square, our courthouses, and legislative assemblies.  

It seems to me that there is room for both/and!