We’re going through James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World chapter by chapter over the next few weeks. Here’s the abstract of chapter 5 “Evidence in History” from Hunter’s website:

The alternative view of cultural change that assigns roles not only to ideas but also to elites, networks, technology, and new institutions, provides a much better account of the growth in plausibility and popularity of these important cultural developments. This is the evidence of history—particularly clear in an overview of key moments in church history and the rise of the Enlightenment and its various manifestations. Change in culture or civilization simply does not occur when there is change in the beliefs and values in the hearts and minds of ordinary people or in the creation of mere artifacts.

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

OK, I’ll admit it. This chapter bothered me. Again, looking back, I can see that Hunter wasn’t really advocating what he was describing, he was merely reporting what had happened. In his description of the spread of Christianity, he in no way shows how the world changed the church even as the church was changing the world. In later essays, he’ll make it clear that that very thing is inevitable; you are always changed in some way by the very thing you seek to change. This especially applies to the church when it tries to use the ways of the world to change the world.

Getting back to the book, Hunter in this chapter traces key moments in church history and shows how the changes brought about at those times were top-down, institutionally-driven changes, rather than “grassroots” movements. Changes in beliefs and values don’t bring about culture change, nor does the production of artifacts (books, movies, etc.). As Hunter states, “ideas can have revolutionary and world-changing consequences and yet they appear to do so only when the kinds of structural conditions described here are in place.” (p. 78)

In the end, this chapter merely provides the historical evidence to back up the propositions of the last chapter.