Tag Archives: to change the world

Chapter 2: Culture: The Common View

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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 2 “Culture: The Common View” from Hunter’s website:

The “common view” is that culture is made up of the accumulation of values held by the majority of people and the choices made on the basis of those values. If a culture is good, it is because the good values embraced by individuals lead to good choices. If people’s hearts and minds are converted, they will have the right values, they will make the right choices and culture will change in turn. Common View Summary: 1) Real change is individual, 2) Cultural changed can be willed into being, and 3) Change is democratic—from the bottom-up by ordinary citizens.

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

The style of this chapter is quite interesting. You go through the whole chapter with Hunter making a case for this view, presenting the evidence to support, quoting from a wide range of religious leaders. In the next-to-the-last paragraph, Hunter says:

At the end of the day, the message is clear: even if not in the lofty realms of political life that he was called to, you too can be a Wilberforce. … If you have the courage and hold to the right values and if you think Christianly with an adequate Christian worldview, you too can change the world. (To Change The World, pp.16-17)

Then he drops the bombshell:

This account is almost wholly mistaken. (p. 17)

I’ll admit, the last sentence came as quite a relief. I mean, on the one hand, I understand the importance of worldview and its role in culture. Yet so much of what Hunter seemed to be advocating was the “rah, rah, let’s make this nation Christian again” rhetoric that mixes spirituality with nationalism. My interest in the book rose as I realized Hunter was not going to repeat the usual mantras of Americanized Christianity.

Little did I know that Hunter had in store several more roller coasters of expectations for his unsuspecting readers.

I know it’s early on to react to much of what Hunter is saying (since he’s mainly presenting views he doesn’t agree with), but I’d like to know if I’ve explained his point well enough for you to see what he’s saying. Feel free to ask questions. I’ll do my best to answer according to the content of the book, not just my own ideas.

Chapter 1: The Christian Faith and the Task of World-Changing

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On Friday, I gave an overview of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World. I want to go through Hunter’s material 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.

However, I also believe in slow cooking here in the Kitchen, so this step by step process will help us all to be able to comment on Hunter’s thoughts as we go along. To get us started, let me quote the abstract of Chapter 1 “The Christian Faith and the Task of World-Changing” from the author’s website:

Human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature, world-makers. People fulfill their individual and collective destiny in the art, music, literature, commerce, law, and scholarship they cultivate, the relationships they build, and in the institutions they develop—the families, churches, associations, communities they live in and sustain—as they reflect the good of God and His designs for flourishing.

Hunter contends that the dominant ways of thinking about culture and cultural change are flawed, for they are based upon both specious social science and problematic theology. The model upon which various strategies are based not only does not work, but it cannot work. On the basis of this working theory, Christians cannot “change the world” in a way that they, even in their diversity, desire.

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

This is a short chapter. (To be honest, the abstract seems disproportionately long). The chapter begins with a reference to creation and to the mandate given in Genesis 2:15—“The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Hunter says that the two main Hebrew verbs in this sentence mean (1) work, nurture, sustain, husband; and (2) safeguard, preserve, care for, protect. (As I went through the book, I was disappointed to find that this initial use of Scripture in the opening paragraphs is not a sign of things to come. Most of the book is the analysis of a social scientist, not a theologian.) This creation mandate, the book affirms, requires Christians to be engaged with their world, actively trying to make it better.

Hunter points out numerous Christian groups that mention changing the world as one of their primary aims. He included Abilene Christian University in the list, I guess because of the “Change the World” fundraising campaign from early this century. The rest of this essay will focus on showing that Christian efforts to change the world are based on an erroneous assumption about how the world changes.

To Change The World by James Davison Hunter

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Others have written about James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World, enough so that I almost feel like the late-comer to the party. Let me encourage you, for example, to read through Jay Guin’s analysis of the book.

Still, I feel that Hunter’s subject matter aligns so closely with matters near and dear to my heart (and oft written about in this blog), that I’d like to take some time to look at this book. Today I’ll do a bit of a review, or at least an overview. Later I’ll examine some of the ideas in a closer way.

The full title of the book is To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. The title is intended as a bit of irony, mainly because Hunter will argue that Christians can’t change the world without being changed by the world in the process. He contends that the world is changed not only through ideas (worldview) but also through elites, networks, technology, and new institutions. World-changing implies power, power that typically is defined in terms of conquest and domination. When power is seen primarily in terms of political domination, it becomes the opposite of what Christians are called to be.

Hunter analyzes three types of Christian politics: the Christian right, the Christian left and the neo-Anabaptists. He calls these views toward culture, respectively, “defensive against,” “relevance to,” and “purity from.” He sees these groups as utilizing ineffective means for engaging culture.

Hunter argues that the principal issues to be addressed are difference and dissolution: how do we relate to a world that is not our world and how do we deal with the “deconstruction of the most basic assumptions about reality.” (p. 205) The solution that Hunter proposes is “faithful presence.” Using Jeremiah 29:4-7 as his textual base, Hunter says that Christians should maintain their distinctiveness but do it in a way that serves the common good. He observes,

“In short, commitment to the new city commons is a commitment of the community of faith to the highest ideals and practices of human flourishing in a pluralistic world.” (p. 279)

In the end, Hunter says that Christians shouldn’t worry about changing the world, because the world, and history, cannot be controlled and managed. He states,

“To be sure, Christianity is not, first and foremost, about establishing righteousness or creating good values or securing justice or making peace in the world. … But for Christians, these are all secondary to the primary good of God himself and the primary task of worshipping him and honoring him in all they do.” (pp.285-286)

Hunter says that Christians won’t create a perfect world, but will help to make the world a little bit better.

Chapter abstracts of the book can be found on Hunter’s website.