“Toward a Theology of Faithful Presence” is the fourth chapter of the third essay of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World. The abstract of this chapter, from Hunter’s website, reads as follows:

The incarnation is the only adequate reply to the challenges of dissolution, the erosion of trust between word and world and the problems that attend it. It is the way the Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ and the purposes to which the incarnation was directed that are the only adequate reply to the challenge of difference. Pursuit, identification, the offer of life through sacrificial love—this is what God’s faithful presence means. At root, a theology of faithful presence begins with an acknowledgement of God’s faithful presence to us, manifested through religion, vocation, and other spheres of influence, and that his call upon Christians is that they be faithfully present to him in return. This model stands in opposition to the “defensive against,” “relevance to,” and “purity from” paradigms, Hunter suggests a model of engagement called “faithful presence within.”

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

Moving forward from the above description, Hunter mentions three areas where Christians need to be “faithfully present”:

• To each other. Hunter isn’t talking about Christians being present for other Christians; he’s talking about the Christian’s relationship to strangers. He doesn’t mean merely through benevolence, but through participation in all human institutions. Just as God has shown us, we are to pursue others, identify with them and offer sacrificial love.
• To our tasks. Hunter says the key to this is found in Colossians 3, where Paul talks about doing whatever we do “as working for the Lord.” He asserts that what we do has value when done for God, apart from any other benefit it may have. The most important is that we do our best in order to please God and be obedient to him.
• Within our spheres of influence. We wield “power” and must not do so thoughtlessly. We can’t conform passively to the world. Hunter explains, “What this means is that where and to the extent we are able, faithful presence commits us to do what we can to create conditions in the structures of social life we inhabit that are conducive to the flourishing of all.” (p. 247)

Hunter then compares this approach to the three political approaches he has previously described. He sees the “relevant to” approach as being insufficient because it is in the end indistinguishable from the world around it, except for maintaining high moral ideals. The “defensive against” approach sees no value to worldly tasks except how they serve evangelistic purposes. The neo-Anabaptists place no value on tasks done outside the church and can therefore offer no advice to those who have to work for a living; the heroes invoked by the neo-Anabaptists are almost exclusively people who have dedicated themselves to work supported by the church.

So what does “faithful presence” look like? In the first place, Hunter says, Christians attend to everyone they come in contact with, believer and non-believer. In our tasks, Hunter explains, we give priority to substance over style, enduring over passing, depth over breadth, and excellence over packaging. In this way, God is glorified and we gain a glimpse of the coming kingdom. Finally, Hunter says that everything we do must promote shalom, God’s peace, among those around us.

Hunter offers two more chapters that seek to explain further his view of “faithful presence”; I’ll try and save my response for then. But you don’t have to! Feel free to offer comments, questions, etc.