To Change the World (James Davison Hunter)

In this book, consisting of three interconnected essays, the author looks at world-changing, power, and what it means to be faithfully present as Christians. A summary follows.

Essay I: Christianity and World-Changing

Creation was created with potential. “God’s intention [is] that human beings both develop and cherish the world in ways that meet human needs and bring glory and honor to him. In this creative labor, we mirror God’s own generative act and thus reflect our very nature as ones made in his likeness.” This is the ‘creation mandate’ in Genesis 1:28, and it implicitly requires the creation of culture.

The fall of man didn’t change the creation mandate but certainly affects our ability to create and change culture. “Culture is a system of truth claims and moral obligations.” Each culture reflects good or bad values. How do we as Christians change the world (and culture) for the better?

“Politics is the tactic of choice for many Christians as they think about changing the world.” And this is a problem. We “have a healthy desire to change the world, but have done so with mixed effect.” Why? “The underpinning theory that [unconsciously] guides our efforts is deeply flawed; we pursue change through evangelism, social movements, and voting. These things matter but do not change culture.” What is the problem?

“The real problem of this working theory of culture and cultural change” is idealism. “In fact idealism misconstrues agency, implying the capacity to bring about influence where that capacity may not exist or where it may be only weak.” We must discard our prevailing view of culture if we are serious about changing the world, knowing that “Contemporary Christian understandings of power and politics are a very large part of what has made contemporary Christianity in America appalling, irrelevant, and ineffective—part and parcel of the worst elements of our lade-modern culture today, rather than a healthy alternative to it.”

He argues that real culture change “occurs through dense networks of elites operating in common purpose within institutions at the high-prestige centers of cultural production.” Which leads him to power (see next essay).

Essay II: Rethinking Power

World-changing needs power, “and the implicit theories of power” that guide its exercise “are deeply problematic.” It tends towards “conquest and domination.” It politicizes everything and makes people seethe “with resentment, anger, and bitterness.” Regrettably, Christians often operate with this same understanding of power and (on Right and Left) “aspire to a righteous empire.” On both sides, we are committed to “social change through politics and politically oriented social movements.” We conflate public with political. We selectively use “scripture to justify political interests.” We confuse “theology with national interests and identity.”

What is the result? We must remember is that “influence is never unidirectional in any relationship.” The church has been influenced by the culture and the tactics it adopts. “The tragedy is that in the name of resisting the internal deterioration of faith and the corruption of the world around them, many Christians . . . unwittingly embrace some of the most corrosive aspects of the cultural disintegration they decry. By nurturing its resentments, sustaining them through a discourse of negation toward outsiders, and in cases, pursuing their will to power, they become functional Nietzscheans, participating in the very cultural breakdown they so ardently strive to resist.”

What’s the way forward? “The first task is to disentangle the life and identity of the church from the life and identity of American society.” “The second task is for the church and for Christian believers to decouple the “public” form the “political.” Politics is always a crude simplification of public life and the common good is always more than its political expression.” There is power in everyday life outside of politics.

Ultimately, we can learn a lot about power by looking at Jesus. Four things to note:

• “His power was derived from his complete intimacy with and submission to his Father.” (John 12:49-50, 5:19, 30, 8:28, 38, 14:10, Hebrews 5:7-8, Matthew 4:1-10)
• He rejected “status and reputation and the privilege that accompanies them.” (Phillippians 2:6)
• “Compassion defines the power of his kingdom more than anything else.” “those degradations he endured willingly because of his love for fallen humanity and for his creation more broadly.” (Mark 10:45)
• “The noncoercive way in which he dealt with those outside of the community of faith.” (Luke 17:12-19, John 4:7-26, Luke 9:51-56, Matthew 5:39, 44)

Instead of embracing strategies that are “incapable of bringing about the ends to which they aspire” and “are deeply problematic, shortsighted, and at times, profoundly corrupted,” what “if the flourishing of Christian faith and its cultures depends on a model of power that derives from Christ’s life and teaching?” And “what does this look like in practice?”

Essay III: Toward a New City Commons: Reflections on a Theology of Faithful Presence

Faithfulness is not “a state of abstract piety floating above the multifaceted and compromising realities of daily life in actual situations.” Instead, “faithfulness works itself out in the context of complex social, political, economic, and cultural forces that prevail at a particular time and place.” “To face up to the challenge of integrity and faithfulness in our generation, then, requires that Christians understand the unique and evolving character of our times.”

In our times, there are two challenges for religious faith: difference and dissolution.

• Difference: Pluralism today . . . “exists without a dominant culture, at least not one of overwhelming credibility or one that is beyond challenge.” Social conditions should reinforce core beliefs. That core has shifted. “Pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability . . . the most important symbols of social, economic, political, and aesthetic life no longer point to him.”

• Dissolution: “the deconstruction of the most basic assumptions about reality.” Civilization is based on confidence that there is a correspondence between words and realities; “that the world and our being in it are articulable.” Everything today is subjective. “in the contemporary world we have the capacity to question everything but little ability to affirm anything beyond our own personal whims and possessive interests.”

He suggests there are three paradigms of engagement with the culture:

1. Defensive against (Conservative): “create a defensive enclave that is set against the world.” “Retain the distinctiveness of Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy within the larger world.”
2. Relevance to (Liberal): makes “a priority of being connected to the pressing issues of the day.”
3. Purity from (neo-Anabaptist): “there is very little that can be done for the world because, in its fallen state, the world is irredeemable this side of Christ’s return.”

Problem with each? “The desire to be “relevant to” the world has come at the cost of abandoning distinctiveness. The desire to be “Defensive against” the world is rooted in a desire to retain distinctiveness, but this has been manifested in ways that are, on the one hand, aggressive and confrontational and, on the other, culturally trivial and inconsequential. Finally, the desire to be “pure from” the world has entailed a disengagement and withdrawal from active presence in huge areas of social life.”

He proposes “that Christians are called to relate to the world within a dialectic of affirmation and antithesis.”

• Affirmation: “based on the recognition that culture and culture-making have their own validity before God that is not nullified [bad word?] by the fall.” “Goodness, beauty, and truth remain in this fallen creation.” “People of every creed and no creed have talents and abilities, possess knowledge, wisdom, and inventiveness, and hold standards of goodness, truth, justice, morality, and beauty that are, in relative degree, in harmony with God’s will and purposes. These are all gifts of grace that are lavished on people whether Christian or not."
• Antithesis: “rooted in a recognition of the totality of the fall.” “All social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community”, etc. Within this context, “the church is always a ‘community of resistance.’” But the resistance is “not simply negational” but “creative and constructive.” The “objective is to retrieve the good to which modern institutions and ideas implicitly or explicitly aspire.” “To offer constructive alternatives.”

His central argument is for “a theology of faithful presence.” “It can be summarized in two essential lessons.”

• "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.”
• "The way the Word became incarnate in Jesus Christ and the purposes to which the incarnation was directed . . . are the only adequate reply to challenge of difference.”

“In all, presence and place matter decisively.” “The very character of God and the heart of his Word is that God is fully and faithfully present to us.” “His faithful presence is an expression of commitment marked by at least four attributes:”

• He pursues us. (Deuteronomy 7:6, Isaiah 43:1, Jeremiah 31:3, John 3:16)
• His identification with us (Psalms 103:14, Phil. 2:7, Matthew 20:29-34)
• Found in the life he offers (Genesis 17:3, Jeremiah 29:11, John 1:3, 10:10)
• It is only made possible by his sacrificial love. (Zephaniah 1:7, Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:1, Hebrews 10:10)

“Pursuit, identification, the offer of life through sacrificial love—this is what God’s faithful presence means.” And “at root, a theology of faithful presence begins with an acknowledgement of God’s faithful presence to us and that his call upon us is that we be faithfully present to him in return.”

1. “Faithful presence means that we are to be fully present to each other within the community of faith and fully present to those who are not.” Regardless of in or out of our faith community, “we are to pursue others, identify with others, and labor towards the fullness of others through sacrificial love.”
2. “Faithful presence requires that Christians be fully present and committed to their tasks.”
3. “Faithful presence in the world means that Christians are fully present and committed in their spheres of social influence, whatever they may be: their families, neighborhoods, voluntary activities, and places of work.” There is power in social life . . . “Christians will wield it in relationships and in the institutions and organizations of which they are a part. The question we face is how will we use whatever power we have.”

“Faithful presence calls believers to yield their will to God and to nurture and cultivate the world where God has placed them.”

This theology “obligates us to do what we are able, under the sovereignty of God, to shape the patterns of life and work and relationship—that is, the institutions of which our lives are constituted—toward a shalom that seeks the welfare not only of those of the household of God but of all. That power will be wielded is inevitable. But the means of influence and the ends of influence must conform to the exercise of power modeled by Christ.”

“Certainly Christians, at their best, will neither create a perfect world nor one that is altogether new; but by enacting shalom and seeking it on behalf of all others through the practice of faithful presence, it is possible, just possible, that they will help to make the world a little bit better.”

-------

Great book! I only skimmed it but still managed 8+ pages of notes, which I further condensed in the above. A lot of interesting points and food for thought. It is a mix between academic and accessible.

Rating: A