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 6 “The Cultural Economy of American Christianity” from Hunter’s website:

The actual vitality of American Christianity’s cultural capital today resides almost exclusively among average people in the pew rather than those in leadership, on the periphery not the center of cultural production, in tastes that run to the popular rather than the exceptional, the middle brow rather than the high brow, and almost always toward the practical as opposed to the theoretical or the imaginative. The collective impact of the Christian community on the nature and direction of the culture itself is negligible. They have been absent from the arenas in which the greatest influence in culture is exerted.

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

Hunter looks at spheres of influence and Christian presence in those spheres. He grants that Christians have been actively pursuing a presence in politics. In the realm of economics, he finds that Christian influence is greatest in small and mid-sized businesses; there is little Christian influence on the leadership of American capitalism.

The author then turns his focus to what he calls culture. He finds the use of Christian funds to be lacking; little money is invested in developing Christian intellectuals, social innovators or artists. Christian cultural artifacts are being produced but they are almost exclusively designed for Christian consumption. What is produced tends to be marginalized, rather than mainstream, and populist, rather than innovative. They are not the kind of works that impact the culture at large.

Even more critically, Hunter states, Christians are absent from the halls of cultural power. He lays out a cultural matrix, with headings of knowledge, morality and aesthetics, and he finds that Christians are not among the elite cultural players in any of those areas.

All of this seems to indicate, Hunter argues, that Christianity is a weak culture within the larger cultural spectrum. Two principal causes of this are fragmentation within the Christian movement and widespread acculturation by Christians in America. The result of all of this, according to the book, is “the idea that American Christianity could influence the larger culture in ways that are healthy and humane is, for the time being, doubtful.” (p.92)

Do you agree with Hunter’s assessment?