The presidential campaign this year resurrected a term usually reserved in history books as code for the 1990s. Or should it more appropriately be understood as a perpetual aspect of American political discourse? Are we really engaged in another culture war? Or is Anna Quindlen right in her recent declaration that “the culture wars are over”?

Culture wars are conflicts between competing worldviews, between different systems of moral understanding and moral authority. At stake is power and control; at their core is the matter of identity; at the forefront, where all the shouting occurs, is a host of social issues. Positions on various sides of those issues are so deeply held that there is little tolerance for any position but one’s own.

The culture wars of the 1990s were boldly launched by the fervor of politics in another presidential election year, 1992, in language that declared the nation was engaged in “a war for the soul of America.” Claims by one political party that it alone spoke for family values implied that there was but one type of family whose values were of a piece. As positions hardened, the possibility that all families had values seemed somehow to fade from public discourse.

The decade wore on and the culture war settled into trench warfare. Tensions only worsened as the end of the century — you remember Y2K — approached and a fin de siècle mood of anxiety and anticipation reflected fear-based predictions of all manner of dire developments. Fortunately the mood lightened as the new millennium emerged without any of those dire events coming to pass other than another election cycle.

Soon after, the national tragedy of September 11, 2001, shifted America’s focus. Differences of opinion on social issues were displaced by calls for unity in the face of the terrorist attack. Yet the guise of unity turned out to be short-lived when differences resurfaced and intensified amid narrowed definitions of patriotism and civil rights in the face of another war, this one against terrorism.

The years since have seen an increasingly polarized discourse in the populist phenomenon of blogs and online comments in response to editorials and op-eds, with not only commentators and talking heads but entire networks identified with one stance or the other. Sharp distinctions on social issues preclude civil conversation. So-called debates are nothing of the sort, serving instead as opportunities to remind audiences of the bad things in store if the opponent is elected. It sure feels like a culture war, one cast in shades of red and blue.

James Davison Hunter, the scholar most closely identified with the notion of culture wars, finds the roots of the late twentieth century conflict over the meaning of America in the rising religious pluralism that followed World War II. Whereas earlier, denominations and religious traditions had squared off against one another, by the end of the nineteenth century fissures developing within traditions laid the foundation for the restructuring or realignment of American religion that was firmly in place by mid-century. Davison identifies the opposing positions — defined not only by very different worldviews but by appeals to differing understandings of moral authority and truth — as orthodoxy (or traditionalism) and progressivism. Most people call them conservatives and liberals.

As an American historian, I find the concept of culture war helps explain why particular periods of our national history need to be seen as much more complex than we once thought. As a denominational historian, the concept not only provides perspective to the influence of larger society on the developing identity of church bodies but explains growing and deepening intra-faith tensions. Denominations divide these days over issues of sexuality and gender rather than the theological difference that once gave clarity, meaning and distinctiveness to denominational identity.

Is there a lesson churches might learn from the culture wars? Gerald Graff, in Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education, suggests that acknowledging the differences among us can lead to more engaged teaching and learning. Graff argues that “controversy clarifies” by providing opportunity to point out relationships between differing positions. He presumes, of course, that conversation is possible among those holding different perspectives. The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin thought it was when he proposed the Catholic Common Ground initiative only months before his death. Bernardin’s project to renew dialogue among polarized Catholics was severely criticized by several of his fellow bishops, especially Cardinal Bernard Law, who complained that the Church already had common ground in scripture and tradition as mediated by the Roman Catholic magisterium.

Philosopher John Roth believes that “Americans are kept at odds by the very things on which they agree.” Churches are as well. Elsewhere I have suggested that a primary reason Lutherans have not had greater influence on the American religious landscape is that they have been too busy fighting — engaged in culture wars — with one another. What does it say to the larger world when some within a confessional tradition stake claim to being the true confessionals? So many of the arguments between and among Lutherans are and have been about the confessional statements themselves, documents understood to be the agreement — indeed, the concord — among those who bear the name of the reformer.

Polls during the election season revealed that Americans seem interested in reducing the rhetoric of divisiveness that is associated with the culture war. They wish less contentiousness and negativity and more effort at seeking solutions in the face of an uncertain future. With the roots of the culture war deeply embedded in the nation’s religious history, might America’s churches take the lead in restoring conversation among cultural combatants? The war will surely go on, because it’s really at heart an American family feud. But truce is an option, one that does not ask or expect abandonment of belief, only that we stop shooting, and shouting, at one another.