Judeo-Christian - Culture Wars

Culture Wars

The term became especially significant in American politics, and usage of the term "Judeo-Christian values" grew in the so-called culture wars, of the 1990s.

James Dobson, a prominent conservative spokesman, said the Judeo-Christian tradition includes the right to display the following documents in Kentucky schools, after they were banned by a federal judge in May 2000 as "conveying a very specific governmental endorsement of religion":

• an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, which reads, "All men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
• the preamble to the Constitution of Kentucky, which states, "We, the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties we enjoy, and invoking the continuance of these blessings, do ordain and establish this Constitution"
• the national motto, "In God we trust"
• a page from the congressional record of Wednesday, February 2, 1983, Vol. 129, No. 8, which declares 1983 as the "Year of the Bible" and lists the Ten Commandments
• a proclamation by President Ronald Reagan marking 1983 the "Year of the Bible"
• a proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln designating April 30, 1863, a "National Day of Prayer and Humiliation"
• an excerpt from President Lincoln's "Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible," which reads, "The Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man"
• The Mayflower Compact of 1620, in which the Plymouth colony's founders invoke "the name of God" and explain that their journey was taken, among other reasons, "for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith"

Prominent champions of the term also identify it with the historic American religious traditions. The Jewish Conservative columnist Dennis Prager, for example, writes:

The concept of Judeo-Christian values does not rest on a claim that the two religions are identical. It promotes the concept there is a shared intersection of values based on the Hebrew Bible ("Torah"), brought into our culture by the founding generations of Biblically oriented Protestants, that is fundamental to American history, cultural identity, and institutions.

Some secularists reject the use of "Judeo-Christian" as a code-word for a particular kind of Christian America, with scant regard to modern Jewish, Catholic, or Christian traditions, including the liberal strains of different faiths, such as Reform Judaism and liberal Protestant Christianity.