In his often-quoted 1994 book, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War, sociologist James Davison Hunter described the culture wars as ongoing ideological disputes between various “orthodox” and “progressive” interests. Hunter maintained that the continuing liberal-versus-conservative arguments over controversial issues such as abortion, feminism, and homosexuality had become increasingly polarized and hostile—so much so that the nation was suffering from the lack of a more moderate and complex understanding of contemporary social problems. Democratic debate and discussion had become, in Hunter’s view, “obnoxious, at the very least; dangerous at the worst.”

Not all analysts agree with Hunter. Sociologist Rhys H. Williams, editor of Culture Wars in American Politics, grants that there are significant differences in opinion between liberals and conservatives but contends...