We’re going through James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. My primary reason for this is purely selfish… I want to use some of this material in the future, and this is a good way to force myself to analyze it and preserve the important parts.

Here’s the abstract of chapter 3 “The Failure of the Common View” from Hunter’s website:

If cultures were simply a matter of hearts and minds, then the influence of various minorities—whoever they are and whatever that may be—would be relatively insignificant. But they are not. The real problem of this working theory of culture and cultural change and the strategies that derive from it is idealism—that something non-physical is the primary reality. Idealism has three features in this view: ideas, individualism, and pietism. However, idealism misconstrues agency; underplays the importance of history; ignores the way culture is generated, coordinated, and organized; and imputes a logic and rationality to culture. Every strategy and tactic for changing the world that is based upon this working theory of culture and cultural change will fail—not most of these strategies, but all.

http://jamesdavisonhunter.com/to-change-the-world/chapter-abstracts/

In this chapter, Hunter talks about the apparent problem, the one articulated by “world change” advocates. This apparent problem has two parts: (1) Christians aren’t fervent enough; (2) There aren’t enough Christians who really embrace God’s call. Hunter argues that the real idea is what he calls “idealism,” the concept that what is real is the non-physical. The material world exists but what has “greater ontological significance” are ideas. To illustrate this concept, Hunter quotes Charles Colson as saying, “history is little more than the recording of the rise and fall of the great ideas—the worldviews—that form our values and move us to act.” According to Hunter, this is the belief of most American Christians.

Hunter argues that this fails to take into account the material realities that drive culture. It ignores the “institutional nature of culture” and overlooks the fact that structure is “embedded in structures of power.” (p. 27)

In a coda, this chapter looks at Andy Crouch’s teachings about “culture as artifact,” culture being defined by the goods it produces. Hunter admits that this view overcomes the dualism of the primary view, but it doesn’t recognize the structures holding culture up.

Both of these views, idealism and “culture as artifact” focus on the individual, rather than the church. Hunter insists that there must be an alternative view. That view will be expressed in later chapters.