To Change The World, Week Four

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
The first part of this week’s read­ing is a straight­for­ward exten­sion of Hunter’s thought so far, per­haps best summed up by this obser­va­tion:
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)
A book he men­tions in the footnotes, Faith In The Halls Of Pow­er by D. Michael Lind­say, is def­i­nite­ly worth read­ing in con­junc­tion with this one. The book is avail­able online through the Stan­ford library. I post­ed some excerpts from it a few years ago: Notes from Faith in the Halls of Pow­er.
What I was most pleased by in this week’s read­ings were Hunter’s reflec­tions about the per­ils of elit­ism.
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)
Here is my chal­lenge to you, some­one who is being con­di­tioned by Stan­ford to serve in elite roles. What­ev­er you wind up doing, learn to love what you do with­out dis­dain­ing less elite believ­ers. This is hard­er than you think it will be. A part of elite cul­ture you must remain vig­i­lant against is osten­ta­tious­ly despis­ing peo­ple who rel­ish pop­u­lar cul­ture. One key mark­er will be whether you tru­ly view believ­ers who have nev­er heard the word inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty and who view Den­ny’s as the pin­na­cle of cui­sine as broth­ers and sis­ters wor­thy of cel­e­brat­ing and defend­ing. In oth­er words, be elite with­out being elit­ist.
Worth read­ing in this regard is the recent David Brooks New York Times col­umn and its fren­zied respons­es.
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.
The above snip­pet will be fea­tured in today’s Fri­day email.
Giv­en our sum­mer read­ing, I sup­posed I should high­light that this is from a New York Times colum­nist. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I delib­er­ate­ly choose arti­cles from high-sta­tus insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als that are either direct­ly rel­e­vant to the Chris­t­ian life or are ger­mane to a Chris­t­ian view of human flour­ish­ing. I don’t hold to this rigid­ly, but it’s some­thing I am very aware of when com­pos­ing each Fri­day email. It’s one small step towards help­ing our com­mu­ni­ty inter­act with the most influ­en­tial parts of cul­ture.
Inci­den­tal­ly, if you don’t get those Fri­day emails and are inter­est­ed in them, you can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe

2 thoughts on “To Change The World, Week Four”

  1. The obser­va­tions about elit­ism are arrived at through intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty and crit­i­cal think­ing. To then take the leap that we, non-elit­ists, must find a way to infil­trate the elit­ist net­works with­out pledg­ing loy­al­ty to elite net­works and caus­es and thus becom­ing elit­ist is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­hon­est and ignores the doc­u­ment­ed real­i­ty of elit­ist net­work design.

    Reply

    1. I may have expressed myself poor­ly. I’m not writ­ing to encour­age peo­ple to infil­trate elite net­works — I’m writ­ing to Stan­ford stu­dents who are on track to enter into var­i­ous elite net­works. Giv­en that they will like­ly end up mov­ing in the sort of cir­cles that Hunter describes, I want them to be wary of the seduc­tive pow­er of those net­works. I want them to feel com­fort­able with peo­ple liv­ing in urban Man­hat­tan and in small-town Mis­souri, and to treat with dig­ni­ty some­one dis­cussing the lat­est aca­d­e­m­ic sym­po­sium they attend­ed and some­one describ­ing their favorite NASCAR dri­ver.

      Reply

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