Tag: to change the world

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.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Pos­si­bil­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty in the Late Mod­ern World by James Davi­son Hunter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2017. The read­ing sched­ule is online at https://xastanford.org/summer-reading

We’re almost done. One more week of read­ing and we fin­ish out the book. Wow.

This, in short, is the foun­da­tion of a the­ol­o­gy of faith­ful pres­ence. It can be sum­ma­rized in two essen­tial lessons for our time. The first is that 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. From this fol­lows the sec­ond: 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 chal­lenge of dif­fer­ence.  page 241, empha­sis in orig­i­nal

“What­ev­er you do, work at it with all your heart, as work­ing for the Lord, not for men” (Col. 3:22–24). What we do cer­tain­ly would include our jobs, but the real­i­ty is that our tasks are many, and they range far beyond paid labor. They involve our work as par­ents, stu­dents, vol­un­teers, cit­i­zens, and the like. But in the many capac­i­ties in which we oper­ate, St. Paul’s instruc­tion is that we pur­sue our tasks with all of our hearts. This not only sug­gests that we give our full atten­tion to those tasks but that we pur­sue excel­lence in them.  page 246

And he gives a few exam­ples of the way our work can express our devo­tion to God:

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Pos­si­bil­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty in the Late Mod­ern World by James Davi­son Hunter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2017. The read­ing sched­ule is online at https://xastanford.org/summer-reading

I found chap­ter three much more engag­ing than chap­ter two. If you’re get­ting bogged down, it gets bet­ter.

Chapter Two: Old Cultural Wineskins

If sin­cer­i­ty were the same thing as faith­ful­ness, then all would be well, for Chris­tians, as a rule, are noth­ing if not sincere—not least in their desire to be “faith­ful in their own gen­er­a­tion.” But if I am even par­tial­ly cor­rect about the nature and pro­fun­di­ty of the changes of late moder­ni­ty, then against these sin­cer­i­ty could nev­er be enough by itself. At least a frag­ment of wis­dom would be required as well. (page 213)

As a Protes­tant, I tru­ly believe in sola fide (faith alone). But very often I find Chris­tians in our cul­ture treat­ing faith as if it were a feel­ing or some mere sen­ti­ment. Faith encom­pass­es so much more than that! Faith that lacks faith­ful­ness is not the faith God requires — and faith­ful­ness is a mat­ter that springs from the con­vic­tions we have cul­ti­vat­ed and the habits we have devel­oped far more than it does from the emo­tion­al impuls­es we expe­ri­ence.

Chapter Three: The Groundwork for an Alternative Way

In a milieu where the church and its peo­ple are so quick­ly and round­ly crit­i­cized for their short­com­ings, it is easy to over­look a cen­tral the­o­log­i­cal truth; that is, that how­ev­er inad­e­quate or piti­ful the church may seem at times (and may, in fact, be), where the scrip­ture is pro­claimed, the sacra­ments admin­is­tered, and the peo­ple of God con­tin­ue to seek to fol­low God in word and deed, God is at work; the Holy Spir­it is still very much active. (page 225)

If I could have one truth tat­tooed on your gen­er­a­tion’s arm, some­thing like the above would be a strong con­tender. Always remem­ber that you are not mere­ly invit­ing peo­ple to fol­low Christ, you are invit­ing them to become part of the Body of Christ. You should love it and invite oth­ers to love it along­side you. Sad­ly, the Body of Christ is often slan­dered by believ­ers who think only of her faults (often with shock­ing inac­cu­ra­cy) and lit­tle of her strengths.

Be slow to assume you have a good read on how the church has act­ed in his­to­ry. For that mat­ter, be slow to assume you have a good read on how the church is act­ing today. Have you heard that Joel Osteen’s church has been cal­lous dur­ing the flood­ing of Hous­ton? Red­dit, Twit­ter, and Face­book users sure got that impres­sion. Before you apol­o­gize to your friends for Osteen’s alleged hypocrisy, read these arti­cles: Flood him with crit­i­cism: Let him who is with­out sin cast the first stone at Joel Osteen and his church (Bob­by Ross, Jr, GetRe­li­gion), Was Joel Osteen’s Hous­ton ‘Megachurch’ Affect­ed By Hur­ri­cane Har­vey? (Snopes), The Joel Osteen Fias­co Says A Lot About Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty (Lau­ra Turn­er, Buz­zfeed). Based on the evi­dence I’ve seen, Lake­wood Church not only act­ed defen­si­bly  but actu­al­ly act­ed wise­ly and help­ful­ly. Act­ing in a man­ner unfa­mil­iar to some of their crit­ics, they were more con­cerned with actu­al­ly doing good than with mere­ly giv­ing the appear­ance of doing good.

This, inci­den­tal­ly, is a use­ful reminder that the Bible isn’t kid­ding when it tells us there will be those who “those who speak mali­cious­ly against your good behav­ior in Christ” (1 Peter 3:16, NIV). I often meet young Chris­tians who believe that if we just act nice­ly enough that the world will love us. You’re not going to be a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Jesus than Jesus Him­self was, and He was tor­tured to death. Tem­per your expec­ta­tions.

I say all that to say this: if you hear a neg­a­tive report about a church, do your home­work before you assume the crit­i­cisms you are hear­ing are accu­rate. A sur­pris­ing amount of the time the crit­i­cism will be false or will be mis­lead­ing­ly true.

But when a crit­i­cism of the Church is true we need to take it seri­ous­ly.

Nowhere is the task of crit­i­cal resis­tance more urgent than in the church itself for the ways that it too has accom­mo­dat­ed to the spir­it of the late mod­ern age. St. Peter is right to say, “judg­ment begins with the house­hold of God” (1 Pet. 4:17). Antithe­sis, then, means that the church’s own struc­tures and its own engage­ment with the world must be con­tin­u­al­ly scru­ti­nized. Here espe­cial­ly, crit­i­cal resis­tance must always be cre­ative and con­struc­tive; guid­ed by devo­tion to the beloved com­mu­ni­ty. (page 236)

Mov­ing on, Hunter iden­ti­fies a prob­lem that I think is par­tic­u­lar­ly strong at Stan­ford:

In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, Chris­tians have faith in God and, by and large, they believe and hold fast to the cen­tral truths of the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. But while they have faith, they have also been formed by the larg­er post-Chris­t­ian cul­ture, a cul­ture whose habits of life less and less resem­ble any­thing like the vision of human flour­ish­ing pro­vid­ed by the life of Christ and wit­ness of scrip­ture. The prob­lem, in oth­er words, is that Chris­tians have not been formed “in all wis­dom” that they might rise to the demands of faith­ful­ness in a time such as ours, “bear­ing fruit in every good work.” (page 227)

We need to rec­og­nize that our cul­ture is always try­ing to cre­ate unchris­t­ian con­vic­tions with­in us. Stan­ford does it more aggres­sive­ly than Amer­i­can soci­ety because the cam­pus is a much less free envi­ron­ment.

But that does­n’t mean that we give up and reject our soci­ety. Far from it.

When peo­ple are saved by God through faith in Christ they are not only being saved from their sins, they are saved in order to resume the tasks man­dat­ed at cre­ation, the task of car­ing for and cul­ti­vat­ing a world that hon­ors God and reflects his char­ac­ter and glo­ry. (page 236)

And so we par­tic­i­pate in our soci­ety and seek to make it bet­ter, rec­og­niz­ing that there is good­ness every­where because of God’s com­mon grace. But even when we find an area of align­ment of our val­ues with soci­ety’s, we rec­og­nize that there will be ten­sion.

It is impor­tant to empha­size that the realm of “com­mon grace” is, by no means, a neu­tral space. It is God’s grace after all—it emanates from him and its pur­pose is to give him glo­ry. To make strong and active affir­ma­tions about the present world, then, in no way implies the auton­o­my of knowl­edge, moral­i­ty, desire, jus­tice, or beau­ty. The idea that there are com­mon or objec­tive stan­dards for these things inde­pen­dent of the cre­at­ed order is an illu­sion. In the con­tem­po­rary world, neu­tral­i­ty is the pre­tence of all sec­u­lar estab­lish­ments; a myth con­cealed by its hege­mo­ny. (page 233)

As a result, we need to have a lev­el of skep­ti­cism about the struc­tures of our fall­en soci­ety.

In the present his­tor­i­cal con­text, this means that Chris­tians rec­og­nize that all social orga­ni­za­tions exist as par­o­dies of escha­to­log­i­cal hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imi­ta­tion of heav­en­ly com­mu­ni­ty; the mod­ern state, a deformed ver­sion of the eccle­sia; the mar­ket, a dis­tor­tion of con­sum­ma­tion; mod­ern enter­tain­ment, a car­i­ca­ture of joy; school­ing, a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of true for­ma­tion; lib­er­al­ism, a crass sim­u­lacrum of free­dom; and the sov­er­eign­ty we accord to the self, a par­o­dy of God him­self. As these insti­tu­tions and ideals become ends in them­selves, they become the objects of idol­a­try. (pages 234–235)

And now we’re get­ting close to what I take to be Hunter’s ulti­mate point: we don’t par­tic­i­pate in soci­ety pri­mar­i­ly to change the world. We do it sim­ply to bless those around us.

If there are benev­o­lent con­se­quences of our engage­ment with the world, in oth­er words, it is pre­cise­ly because it is not root­ed in a desire to change the world for the bet­ter but rather because it is an expres­sion of a desire to hon­or the cre­ator of all good­ness, beau­ty, and truth, a man­i­fes­ta­tion of our lov­ing obe­di­ence to God, and a ful­fill­ment of God’s com­mand to love our neigh­bor. (page 234, the orig­i­nal has empha­sis that I don’t think is being repro­duced here)

I’m eager to see where his argu­ment goes from here.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Pos­si­bil­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty in the Late Mod­ern World by James Davi­son Hunter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2017. The read­ing sched­ule is online at https://xastanford.org/summer-reading

This week’s read­ing was an inter­est­ing start to Hunter’s final essay. I’m curi­ous to see where he goes with it.

His over­all point is pret­ty sim­ple: mod­ern cul­ture under­mines faith. He frames the chal­lenge in two terms: dif­fer­ence and dis­so­lu­tion, which seem to rough­ly cor­re­spond to plu­ral­ism and per­va­sive uncer­tain­ty (the sense that no source of infor­ma­tion is thor­ough­ly trust­wor­thy).

The chal­lenge of plu­ral­ism is that it caus­es any giv­en belief to seem arbi­trary.

In [plu­ral­is­tic] cir­cum­stances, one is no longer enveloped by a uni­fied and inte­grat­ed nor­ma­tive uni­verse but con­front­ed by mul­ti­ple and frag­ment­ed per­spec­tives, any or all of which may seem, on their own terms, emi­nent­ly cred­i­ble. This social sit­u­a­tion oblig­ates one to choose, but once the choice is made—given the ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence of alter­na­tives in a mar­ket cul­ture ori­ent­ed toward con­sumer choice—one must reaf­firm that choice again and again. These are social con­di­tions that make faith­ful­ness dif­fi­cult and faith­less­ness almost nat­ur­al. (page 203)

It is true that there are reli­gious vir­tu­osi who main­tain strong beliefs on their own with lit­tle or no social sup­port but these indi­vid­u­als are rare. Most of us, how­ev­er, need the rein­force­ment that social insti­tu­tions pro­vide to believe coher­ent­ly and live with integri­ty. There is a soci­o­log­i­cal truth, then, to the state­ment extra eccle­si­am nul­la salus; that “there is no sal­va­tion out­side of the church.” Strong and coher­ent beliefs require strong insti­tu­tions envelop­ing those who aspire to believe. These are the con­di­tions that turn belief into set­tled con­vic­tions. (page 202)

The chal­lenge of per­va­sive uncer­tain­ty is that it under­mines all mean­ing, includ­ing reli­gious mean­ing. Hunter spends some time talk­ing about mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and media and how dis­con­nect­ed and super­fi­cial they cause our per­cep­tion of the world to be.

An envi­ron­ment that is con­sti­tut­ed by sur­face images and sim­u­la­tions and that is frag­ment­ed and flat­tened out can­not help but under­mine the real­i­ty to which Chris­t­ian belief and faith point. The words we use sim­ply fail to have the same kind of trac­tion they once did. In such a con­text, it is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that there is a spir­i­tu­al real­i­ty more real than the mate­r­i­al world we live in. Nei­ther is such an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to depth in reflec­tion, rela­tion­ships, or com­mit­ments. It is dif­fi­cult to dis­cov­er the qual­i­ty of inti­ma­cy in a friend­ship or in love that is nur­tured through time and atten­tive­ness to the sub­tleties of need, mem­o­ry, joy, and hurt. So too, it is dif­fi­cult to forge moral com­mit­ments capa­ble of endur­ing the vagaries of hard­ship, bore­dom, fail­ure, and even tri­umph. A world cre­at­ed by these tech­nolo­gies may not occlude depth in these ways but it will war against it. (page 210)

In sum­ma­ry:

It is crit­i­cal to note that [the effect of plu­ral­ism, per­va­sive uncer­tain­ty, and relat­ed trends] is pri­mar­i­ly man­i­fest­ed not as prob­lems that can be seen, objec­ti­fied, ana­lyzed, and respond­ed to but as a com­plex array of assump­tions so deeply tak­en for grant­ed that they can­not be ful­ly grasped much less ques­tioned. Cul­ture is most pow­er­ful, as I have argued, when it is per­ceived as self-evi­dent. (211)

If you res­onate with these obser­va­tions, I rec­om­mend you take a look at one of our recent sum­mer read­ing projects, How (Not) To Be Sec­u­lar by James K. A. Smith. It’s a help­ful (and short) book that deals with the nature of faith in mod­ern sec­u­lar con­texts. A good sum­ma­ry of it is at The Gospel Coali­tion.

Final­ly, some­thing worth remem­ber­ing at Stan­ford:

But rad­i­cal skep­ti­cism lead­ing to rad­i­cal nihilism is, of course, rare. Apart from a few celebri­ty nihilists and a few dis­af­fect­ed grad­u­ate stu­dents, there are actu­al­ly few con­sis­tent rel­a­tivists or com­mit­ted post­mod­ernists for the sim­ple rea­son that it is not liv­able. (page 207)

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Pos­si­bil­i­ty of Chris­tian­i­ty in the Late Mod­ern World by James Davi­son Hunter, I’ll post my thoughts here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2017. The read­ing sched­ule is online at https://xastanford.org/summer-reading

Most peo­ple think that what mat­ters is the ide­o­log­i­cal direc­tion of one’s pol­i­tics. Are you con­ser­v­a­tive? Are you lib­er­al? These dif­fer­ences occu­py most of our atten­tion and argu­ment. What is nev­er chal­lenged is the pro­cliv­i­ty to think of the Chris­t­ian faith and its engage­ment with the cul­ture around it in polit­i­cal terms. (page 168)

There are no com­pre­hen­sive polit­i­cal solu­tions to the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of “fam­i­ly val­ues,” the desire for equi­ty, or the chal­lenge of achiev­ing con­sen­sus and sol­i­dar­i­ty in a cul­tur­al con­text of frag­men­ta­tion and polar­iza­tion. There are no real polit­i­cal solu­tions to the absence of decen­cy or the spread of vul­gar­i­ty. But because the state is a clum­sy instru­ment and final­ly root­ed in coer­cion, it will always fail to ade­quate­ly or direct­ly address the human ele­ments of these prob­lems; the ele­ments that make them poignant in the first place. As a rule, when the state does become involved in such mat­ters, its actions can often cre­ate more prob­lems through unin­tend­ed con­se­quences, not few­er. (page 171)

At best, the state’s role address­ing human prob­lems is par­tial and lim­it­ed. It is not near­ly as influ­en­tial as the expec­ta­tions most peo­ple have of it. It is true that laws are not neu­tral. They do reflect val­ues. But laws can­not gen­er­ate val­ues, or instill val­ues, or set­tle the con­flict over val­ues. (page 171)

…while it may be true that moral­i­ty can­not be leg­is­lat­ed, behav­ior can be reg­u­lat­ed. It may be true that the law can­not change the heart but it can restrain the heart­less. It may be true that the law can­not make a man love me but it can keep him from lynch­ing me and I think that is pret­ty impor­tant, also. (pdf source)

Val­ues can­not be achieved polit­i­cal­ly because pol­i­tics is invari­ably about power—not only pow­er, but final­ly about pow­er. For pol­i­tics to be about more than pow­er, it depends on a realm that is inde­pen­dent of the polit­i­cal sphere. It depends on moral cri­te­ria, insti­tu­tion­al­ized and prac­ticed in the social order, that are autonomous from the realm of pol­i­tics. The prob­lem is that the impulse toward politi­ciza­tion extends to the politi­ciza­tion of val­ues. This means that the auton­o­my of moral cri­te­ria on which a high­er prac­tice of pol­i­tics depends is increas­ing­ly lost. Today, most of the ideals and val­ues that are dis­cussed in pub­lic have acquired polit­i­cal con­tent and con­no­ta­tion. Fair­ness? Equi­ty? Jus­tice? Lib­er­ty? These have come to have lit­tle or no mean­ing out­side of the realm of pol­i­tics. (page 172, empha­sis in orig­i­nal)

First, one of Hunter’s obser­va­tions illus­trates why Brex­it hap­pened — the bureau­crat­ic state is fun­da­men­tal­ly non-demo­c­ra­t­ic. That is hard to han­dle when it is con­strained by your demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions. How much hard­er must it be when the bureau­cra­cy stands above your elec­toral process as it does in the EU?

The state, by con­trast, is where the real pow­er resides. The state is a mas­sive, rel­a­tive­ly autonomous bureau­crat­ic orga­ni­za­tion whose pur­pose is to admin­is­ter innu­mer­able dis­crete tasks that make the regime func­tion. Deci­sions made are fil­tered through numer­ous, often unre­lat­ed bureaus staffed by pro­fes­sion­als who have their own autonomous (and non­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic) deci­sion-mak­ing author­i­ty. The tasks the state under­takes may be influ­enced by ideals or val­ues pro­vid­ed by the polit­i­cal class, but those tasks do not embody those ideals.  (page 170)

There is a basis in fact for the claims made by each of these groups. Yet an iden­ti­ty root­ed in resent­ment and hos­til­i­ty is an inher­ent­ly weak iden­ti­ty pre­cise­ly because it is estab­lished neg­a­tive­ly, by accen­tu­at­ing the bound­aries between insid­ers and out­siders and the wrongs done by those out­siders. (page 173)

The capac­i­ty to define real­i­ty varies exten­sive­ly and those indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that have more engage in a kind of “sym­bol­ic vio­lence” (or forms of coer­cion that are effect­ed with­out phys­i­cal force) against those who have less. The ulti­mate expres­sion of this sym­bol­ic vio­lence is to so thor­ough­ly define a sit­u­a­tion that dis­sent or oppo­si­tion becomes unimag­in­able. (page 178)

Stud­ies have shown that even vol­un­tary orga­ni­za­tions pro­tect their orga­ni­za­tion­al inter­ests against the inter­ests and needs of the very mem­bers they are sup­posed to serve. (page 179)

This week’s chap­ter focus­es on the neo-Anabap­tist strand in Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty.

When peo­ple are speak­ing about neo-Anabap­tists, they gen­er­al­ly have in mind peo­ple strong­ly influ­enced by the­olo­gians like John Howard Yoder and Stan­ley Hau­er­waus. They are best known for their com­mit­ment to paci­fism, their focus on the prob­lem of pover­ty and the need for jus­tice, and their skep­ti­cism of non-church enti­ties such as the state and the mar­ket — sort of a bap­tized blend of social­ist and lib­er­tar­i­an thought.

Hunter sum­ma­rizes their basic cri­tique of the church’s rela­tion to cul­ture like so:

“The prob­lem today is that the Amer­i­can church is caught up in a dual alle­giance to both Christ and the polit­i­cal econ­o­my of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy and con­sumer cap­i­tal­ism. Loy­al­ty to this polit­i­cal econ­o­my is noth­ing less than idol­a­try.” (page 155)

And their paci­fism is not just about non-war­fare. It is usu­al­ly much broad­er than that.

“For neo-Anabap­tists, paci­fism is the fun­da­men­tal mark of Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship and the cen­tral eth­i­cal teach­ing of the gospel.… Anabap­tists, of course, are per­haps best known his­tor­i­cal­ly for their paci­fism in wartime. Yet war is not the cen­tral prob­lem­at­ic but vio­lence itself—broadly defined. This is why the state fig­ures so promi­nent­ly with­in the Anabap­tist imag­i­na­tion. The state is the locus of self-legit­i­mat­ing vio­lence and its very exis­tence is defined by the exer­cise (or the threat of exer­cise) of coer­cion. Its pow­er is always man­i­fest­ly or latent­ly coer­cive.” (pages 158, 159)

If that sounds awe­some to you, you’re prob­a­bly won­der­ing why you’ve nev­er heard of this per­spec­tive before. There’s a good rea­son:

[Neo-Anabap­tism] is main­ly known through its intel­lec­tu­al apolo­gias; it plays out more in the­ol­o­gy than in prac­tice, more in polit­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ties than in insti­tu­tion­al struc­tures.” (page 150)

This seems almost inevitable giv­en the instincts of neo-Anabap­tist Chris­tians. In Neo-Anabap­tists and the Bene­dict Option, Jake Meador sum­ma­rizes the predica­ment well:

To begin, the obvi­ous prob­lem for any reli­gious tra­di­tion that defines itself in such essen­tial oppo­si­tion to the gov­ern­ment but also, increas­ing­ly out of neces­si­ty, the mod­ern mar­ket, is that if you preach repen­tance to Cae­sar (or the Wolf of Wall Street) and they say “OK, I repent,” you don’t know what to tell them.

I once read an essay which claimed you could under­stand most of the prob­lems in the mod­ern world if you sim­ply grasped that Mus­lims do not know how to exist as a minor­i­ty and Chris­tians do not know how to exist as a major­i­ty. This lat­ter point is what Meador is dri­ving at. The neo-Anabap­tists are good at cri­tiquing exist­ing struc­tures but less skilled at craft­ing supe­ri­or struc­tures.

The neo-Anabap­tists claim their mes­sage is prophet­ic but in its net effect (that is, in what peo­ple both inside and out­side of the tra­di­tion hear), it is over­whelm­ing­ly a mes­sage of anger, dis­par­age­ment, and nega­tion. (page 165)

As a Pen­te­costal, I found this bit inter­est­ing:

The con­cept of “prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers” bears some fur­ther reflec­tion because of its impor­tance to the neo-Anabap­tist tra­di­tion. The con­cept refers to the insti­tu­tion­al or sys­temic pat­terns of thought, behav­ior, and rela­tion­ship that gov­ern our lives and the spir­i­tu­al realm that ani­mates them. They were orig­i­nal­ly part of the cre­at­ed order and as such, were good. They were intend­ed to medi­ate the cre­ative pur­pos­es of God in the world, but like us they are now fall­en. Rather than reflect­ing truth, they became adver­saries of the truth. Rather than serv­ing the aim of human flour­ish­ing, they came to dom­i­nate, coerce, and enslave humankind by claim­ing for them­selves absolute pow­er. They are “the rulers of this age” (1 Cor. 2:6). The pow­er they wield is, at its source and in its con­se­quences, demon­ic in char­ac­ter. (page 157)

Whether you con­sid­er your­self con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­er­al, I encour­age you to care­ful­ly reflect on these last three chap­ters (on the reli­gious right, the reli­gious left, and the neo-Anabap­tists), seek­ing to gain sym­pa­thy for the posi­tions you shy away from.

Which reminds me: I for­got to send the Chris­t­ian cri­tique of lib­er­al­ism with last week’s read­ings. Sor­ry! Read the linked essay “The Prob­lem With Lib­er­al­ism” by J. Budziszews­ki, a Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal philoso­pher at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas. In case you missed it, I sent his com­pan­ion essay on con­ser­vatism with the chap­ter notes two weeks ago. My hope is that these cri­tiques by Budziszews­ki will com­ple­ment the read­ings from Hunter so that whether you lean left or right you’ll both find a chap­ter that describes your views fair­ly while also encoun­ter­ing a thought­ful cri­tique of your tribe.

Against the pre­vail­ing view, the main rea­son why Chris­t­ian believ­ers today (from var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties) have not had the influ­ence in the cul­ture to which they have aspired is not that they don’t believe enough, or try hard enough, or care enough, or think Chris­tian­ly enough, or have the right world­view, but rather because they have been absent from the are­nas in which the great­est influ­ence in the cul­ture is exert­ed. (page 89, empha­sis in orig­i­nal)

The sig­nif­i­cance of every per­son before God irre­spec­tive of world­ly stature or accom­plish­ment and the care for the least are the eth­i­cal hall­marks of Chris­tian­i­ty.… This is why elitism—a dis­po­si­tion and rela­tion­al­i­ty of supe­ri­or­i­ty, con­de­scen­sion, and enti­tle­ment by social elites—is so abhor­rent for the Chris­t­ian. Its foun­da­tion is exclu­sion on the implic­it (and some­times explic­it) view that peo­ple are not equal in love and dig­ni­ty before God. Thus, by its very nature, elit­ism is exploita­tive. So far as I can tell, elit­ism for believ­ers is despi­ca­ble and utter­ly anath­e­ma to the gospel they cher­ish. (page 94)

What­ev­er its larg­er influ­ence in the world may be, a cul­ture that is gen­uine­ly alter­na­tive can­not emerge with­out faith­ful pres­ence in all areas of life. This will include net­works (and more, com­mu­ni­ties) of counter-lead­ers oper­at­ing with­in the upper ech­e­lons of cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and social life gen­er­al­ly. These are realms of per­for­mance and dis­tinc­tion that may be rare and inac­ces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son, but they are still crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to both the renew­al of the church and its engage­ment with the cul­ture. (page 96)

How We Are Ruin­ing Amer­i­ca (David Brooks, NYT): “To feel at home in oppor­tu­ni­ty-rich areas, you’ve got to under­stand the right barre tech­niques, sport the right baby car­ri­er, have the right pod­cast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to men­tion pos­sess the right atti­tudes about David Fos­ter Wal­lace, child-rear­ing, gen­der norms and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.” This col­umn spawned much deri­sion on social media, but I strong­ly agree with Brooks. Here are two sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tions from Fred­die deBoer on the left and from Rod Dreher on the right. Dan Drezn­er takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion.