To Change The World, Week Thirteen

I’ve very much enjoyed this book. Hav­ing said that, want to flag two reser­va­tions I have now that I’ve fin­ished read­ing it.

First, Hunter has a cer­tain qual­i­ty I’ve noticed in oth­er Chris­t­ian schol­ars (N.T. Wright comes to mind). It’s a John The Bap­tist syn­drome which man­i­fests as the schol­ars con­ceiv­ing of them­selves as lone voic­es cry­ing out in the wilder­ness, when in real­i­ty there is a broad con­ver­sa­tion they are par­tic­i­pat­ing in — and there are many who sub­stan­tial­ly agree with them.

James. K. A. Smith’s review in The Oth­er Jour­nal How (Not) To Change The World high­lights one exam­ple:

Indeed, one of the odd­i­ties of the book is the com­plete absence of Abra­ham Kuyper from the dis­cus­sion. I note this, not as a fail­ure to be com­pre­hen­sive (I respect the “essay” genre), but only because where Hunter ends up is so close to Kuyper’s mod­el (even if Hunter is right­ly crit­i­cal of Chuck Colson’s bas­tardiza­tion of Kuyper in How Now Shall We Live?).

And Andy Crouch gives sev­er­al more in his Books and Cul­ture review How Not To Change The World.

This leads to the one fea­ture of this book that is trou­bling, and gen­uine­ly per­plex­ing. Hunter is quite thor­ough in his doc­u­men­ta­tion of both the soci­o­log­i­cal lit­er­a­ture and pri­ma­ry sources from the Chris­t­ian Right, the Chris­t­ian Left, and the neo-Anabap­tists. What you are unlike­ly to ascer­tain from the text or the notes, how­ev­er, is the exis­tence of any Chris­t­ian schol­ar or pub­lic actor who has pur­sued the course Hunter rec­om­mends oth­er than Hunter him­self, along with a few of his stu­dents and asso­ciates. D. Michael Lind­say’s study of 360 Chris­tians “in the halls of pow­er” is waved aside as a mere cat­a­logu­ing of iso­lat­ed indi­vid­u­als, even as Hunter goes on to cri­tique their gen­er­al­ly pietis­tic and eccle­si­o­log­i­cal­ly defi­cient approach to their faith in pre­cise­ly the terms that Lind­say has used in inter­views about his work. Lind­say’s Feb­ru­ary 2008 arti­cle in the Amer­i­can Soci­o­log­i­cal Review argues for the impor­tance of over­lap­ping net­works and mod­els of élite agency. Hunter does not ref­er­ence it at all, nor John Schmalzbauer’s Peo­ple of Faith: Reli­gious Con­vic­tion in Jour­nal­ism and High­er Edu­ca­tion, nor, in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent vein, Rod­ney Stark’s The Rise of Chris­tian­i­ty. It would take noth­ing away from Hunter’s bril­liant syn­the­sis to acknowl­edge that oth­ers are doing sim­i­lar­ly impor­tant and influ­en­tial work.

When it comes to Chris­tians attempt­ing to do some good in the wider world, Hunter finds very few he can put in a good light. Charles Col­son is dis­missed as a qua­si-Hegelian ide­al­ist based on his enthu­si­asm for world­view edu­ca­tion, rather than rec­og­nized for his con­sid­er­able net­work-con­ven­ing savvy. Gabe Lyon­s’s Fer­mi Project comes in for sus­tained exam­i­na­tion only for its some­times glib pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al, not for the work it is doing to build over­lap­ping net­works of young élites in some vital cul­tur­al cen­ters. The patient and wide-rang­ing intel­li­gence of Os Guin­ness is sim­i­lar­ly passed over in the course of mak­ing a point about evan­gel­i­cal indi­vid­u­al­ism. Hunter devotes sev­er­al pages, rather than just an end­note, to dis­miss­ing my own book Cul­ture Mak­ing, and some of his crit­i­cisms, as of the oth­ers men­tioned, are fair as far as they go. But a read­er of his sum­ma­ry would nev­er guess how much my book and his over­lap in their fun­da­men­tal con­cerns and final vision

Sec­ond, at the end Hunter claims that we should not try to change the world. It seems to me he’s being a bit disin­gen­u­ous. He wants Chris­tians to be sent by the Church into every sphere of soci­ety (includ­ing the elite net­works which gen­er­ate cul­tur­al change) and take faith-based actions that lead to human flour­ish­ing. Hunter still believes Chris­tians should change the world, he just likes talk­ing about it in a more low-key way. His plan for trans­for­ma­tion is hum­ble, but it is nonethe­less a plan for trans­for­ma­tion.

It’s just some­thing to bear in mind. No book is per­fect, and as flaws go these are far from crip­pling. Hunter is gen­er­al­ly a clear writer and is clear­ly a pro­found thinker. All in all an out­stand­ing read.

Now a few thoughts from the clos­ing chap­ters:

CHAPTER FIVE: THE BURDEN OF LEADERSHIP — A THEOLOGY OF FAITHFUL PRESENCE IN PRACTICE

Hunter thinks that we should serve God in our gen­er­a­tion by prac­tic­ing what he calls “faith­ful pres­ence.” Both words mat­ter — we must be faith­ful to God and present in every sphere of soci­ety.

“But the great com­mis­sion can also be inter­pret­ed in terms of social struc­ture. The church is to go into all realms of social life: in vol­un­teer and paid labor—skilled and unskilled labor, the crafts, engi­neer­ing, com­merce, art, law, archi­tec­ture, teach­ing, health care, and ser­vice. Indeed, the church should be send­ing peo­ple out in these realms—not only dis­ci­pling those in these fields by pro­vid­ing the the­o­log­i­cal resources to form them well, but in fact men­tor­ing and pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port for young adults who are gift­ed and called into these voca­tions.” (page 257)

There is a par­tic­u­lar per­il for those who called into the high-sta­tus voca­tions:

Because Chris­tian­i­ty has lost sta­tus in the insti­tu­tion­al cen­ters of the mod­ern world, those believ­ers who work and live in the high­er ech­e­lons of cul­ture, pol­i­tics, busi­ness, and finance are under great pres­sure to care­ful­ly “man­age their iden­ti­ties” in part by hid­ing this dis­cred­it­ing infor­ma­tion about them­selves. In this case, the con­se­quence of dis­clo­sure is to be exclud­ed them­selves. The temp­ta­tion to be decep­tive or dis­hon­est about one’s faith in these cir­cles is enor­mous. (258–259)

This is a real thing that I have seen many times at Stan­ford. I recall one grad­u­ate stu­dent hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing when her PI found out she was an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian. Her con­cern that she might expe­ri­ence neg­a­tive con­se­quences was not imag­i­nary, although in her case I recall things work­ing out just fine. But there is def­i­nite ani­mus against Chris­tian­i­ty in some elite cir­cles. Look at the Sen­ate’s dis­grace­ful grilling of judi­cial nom­i­nee Amy Bar­rett for her Catholic faith. She open­ly and care­ful­ly dis­cussed the impli­ca­tions of her faith for pub­lic ser­vice and had her words turned into the lit­er­al oppo­site of what she said (you can read more about it in item six of last week’s Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing).

But even as we rec­og­nize that our faith might at times bring neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions into our lives, we need to remem­ber that we are not allowed to hide our light under a bushel. You don’t have to report to work wear­ing a Chris­t­ian t‑shirt, but you must nev­er pull a Peter and say, “I don’t know the man!”

In oth­er words, don’t sac­ri­fice faith­ful­ness on the altar of pres­ence. Gain­ing a seat at the table is not worth your soul.

CHAPTER SIX: TOWARD A NEW CITY COMMONS

In this final chap­ter Hunter sum­ma­rizes his argu­ment and then lays his cards on the table: he thinks chang­ing the world is a fool­ish goal.

Will engag­ing the world in the way dis­cussed here change the world? This, I believe, is the wrong ques­tion.… The ques­tion is wrong because, for Chris­tians, it makes the pri­ma­ry sub­servient to the sec­ondary. By mak­ing a cer­tain under­stand­ing of the good in soci­ety the objec­tive, the source of the good—God him­self and the inti­ma­cy he offers—becomes noth­ing more than a tool to be used to achieve that objec­tive.… 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. Don’t get me wrong: these are goods we should care about and pur­sue with great pas­sion. 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. (285–286)

I appre­ci­ate so much of Hunter’s per­spec­tive through­out this book, and in par­tic­u­lar am glad that he warns us away from focus­ing on what I have heard called “caus­es more wor­thy than holy.” We love God first and most and what­ev­er social good we do (and it should be sig­nif­i­cant) flows out of that.

Hunter clos­es with this:

The fact is that Christ’s vic­to­ry over the prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers was a vic­to­ry over the pow­er of oppres­sive institutions—the sense that real­i­ty is what it is, that all is as it should be, that the ways of the world are estab­lished and can­not be changed; that the rules by which the world oper­ates are ones we must accept and not chal­lenge. We are not bound by the “neces­si­ties” of his­to­ry and soci­ety but are free from them. He broke their sov­er­eign­ty and, as a result, all things are pos­si­ble. It is this real­i­ty that frees all Chris­tians to active­ly, cre­ative­ly, and con­struc­tive­ly seek the good in their rela­tion­ships, in their tasks, in their spheres of influ­ence, and in their cities.

Against the present real­i­ties of our his­tor­i­cal moment, it is impos­si­ble to say what can actu­al­ly be accom­plished. There are intractable uncer­tain­ties that can­not be avoid­ed. 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. (page 286)

I hope you enjoyed the book as much as I did!

Here endeth the read­ing.