The daily news is replete with stories about the increasing polarization in our society. Many issues we once thought of as common ground, such as public health, have become battlegrounds instead. Perhaps we should be unsurprised then, to see that philanthropy is becoming increasingly enmeshed in these larger culture wars.

The “culture wars” concept was popularized by sociologist James Davison Hunter in his 1991 book, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. In it, he argues that the ideological battle he saw happening then between secular progressives and religious conservatives represented a schism in values and the broader sense of a shared U.S. identity wider than anything since the Civil War.

Since Hunter’s initial publication, some public figures have embraced the language of war, as these broad ideological differences play out across a variety of issues, and promote a win/lose mentality that undermines any belief in or serious efforts to reach compromise.

“In the U.S., three issues in particular have drawn philanthropy deeper into this polarization: racial justice, voting rights and civic engagement, and abortion rights.”

Today, those contested core values — privacy, property rights, human rights, religious freedom — continue to come into conflict with each other in ways that are not easy to resolve. Voices from across philanthropy are now picking up the language of “culture wars” to describe how those same conflicts show up in our work and conversations.

The Heritage Foundation offers nearly two dozen articles in their digital “Culture Wars” collection (2020). In August 2021, Inside Philanthropy asked “Where is Philanthropy?” in the nationwide debate on critical race theory (Matthiessen). Internationally, in the United Kingdom, commentators in the media debated whether the Ministry of Digital, Culture, Media and Skills, which oversees policy related to charities, is being turned into the “Ministry of Culture Wars” (Kennedy, 2021).

Read the full article about philanthropy and the Culture Wars by Teri Behrens at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy.