Glen Davis

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.

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 hope you’re lov­ing this book as much as I am. I find a stim­u­lat­ing obser­va­tion on near­ly every page. Last week I acci­den­tal­ly skipped one of the read­ings (chap­ter four), so today here are some thoughts on both chap­ter four and chap­ter five.

“Imag­ine, in this regard, a gen­uine ‘third great awak­en­ing’ occur­ring in Amer­i­ca, where half of the pop­u­la­tion is con­vert­ed to a deep Chris­t­ian faith. Unless this awak­en­ing extend­ed to envel­op the cul­tur­al gate­keep­ers, it would have lit­tle effect on the char­ac­ter of the sym­bols that are pro­duced and pre­vail in pub­lic and pri­vate cul­ture. And, with­out a fun­da­men­tal restruc­tur­ing of the insti­tu­tions of cul­ture for­ma­tion and trans­mis­sion in our society—the mar­ket, gov­ern­ment-spon­sored cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, edu­ca­tion at all lev­els, adver­tis­ing, enter­tain­ment, pub­lish­ing, and the news media, not to men­tion church — revival would have a neg­li­gi­ble long-term effect on the recon­sti­tu­tion of the cul­ture.” page 46

As it turns out, there actu­al­ly was such great awak­en­ing that goes large­ly unrec­og­nized by his­to­ri­ans. It was the Jesus peo­ple move­ment of the 60s and it played out exact­ly as Hunter describes. You can read more about it in God’s For­ev­er Fam­i­ly by Lar­ry Eskridge. The fact that most of you don’t know about it (and even Hunter appears not to, or at least not to appre­ci­ate how much it serves his pur­pose) illus­trates Hunter’s the­sis, much as the tem­per­ance move­ment does.

“Such is the sto­ry of one of the most pow­er­ful transat­lantic social reform move­ments of the nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth centuries—the tem­per­ance move­ment. This move­ment failed, of course, not least because it did not and could not address the cul­ture of restraint on which the par­tic­u­lar inter­est of tem­per­ance depend­ed. In the end, the ide­al of ‘tem­per­ance’ final­ly expired in deri­sion with the repeal of the Vol­stead Act in 1933, the word now hav­ing dis­ap­peared from our pub­lic vocab­u­lary.” page 46

That last sen­tence is stun­ning ‑ a word that iden­ti­fies the high­ly suc­cess­ful move­ment of the last cen­tu­ry has now dis­ap­peared from our day to day vocab­u­lary. More­over, Pro­hi­bi­tion (a crown­ing suc­cess of the tem­per­ance move­ment) has become syn­ony­mous with failed social pol­i­cy even though Pro­hi­bi­tion actu­al­ly achieved sig­nif­i­cant good: check out this Har­vard prof’s NY Times op-ed from 1989 argu­ing Actu­al­ly, Pro­hi­bi­tion Was a Suc­cess.

Con­trast that with the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion.

“The suc­cess of the Ref­or­ma­tion, as Protes­tants like to tell it, was a result of the tri­umph of truth over false­hood, true Chris­t­ian moral­i­ty over cor­rup­tion in the medieval church, gen­uine piety over false piety, and so on. To be sure, there was sham god­li­ness, spir­i­tu­al and moral cor­rup­tion, and the­o­log­i­cal (p.65) fab­ri­ca­tion for which the Ref­or­ma­tion stood as a cor­rec­tive. But there were oth­er reform move­ments of the late medieval peri­od that con­tend­ed for the same things as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and Hus and yet either failed or were ren­dered impo­tent. What made the Ref­or­ma­tion of the six­teenth cen­tu­ry suc­cess­ful, though, were fac­tors that were not exact­ly the­o­log­i­cal or spir­i­tu­al in nature.” pages 64–65

“At its heart, of course, the Ref­or­ma­tion was an intel­lec­tu­al and moral rev­o­lu­tion, orig­i­nat­ing with­in the the­o­log­i­cal fac­ul­ty of a Ger­man uni­ver­si­ty, which chal­lenged and offered a bib­lio­cen­tric alter­na­tive to late medieval the­ol­o­gy and reli­gious prac­tice. Foun­da­tion­al to this rev­o­lu­tion was the fact that the lead­ing reform­ers were all schol­ars of the first order. In addi­tion to the Bible, they had mas­tery over the ideas, log­ic, lan­guage, and texts of clas­si­cal thought and medieval scholas­ti­cism.” page 66

There is anoth­er use­ful illus­tra­tion of the Chris­tian­iza­tion of pagan Europe:

“In sum, the con­ver­sion of bar­bar­ian Europe took cen­turies. The move­ment of change was from the high­er ech­e­lons of the social order to the low­er; indeed it took mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions after roy­al con­ver­sion for Chris­tian­iza­tion in the cul­ture and among the com­mon peo­ple to occur. Look­ing back, it is easy to be ambiva­lent about all that occurred. One can find Chris­t­ian faith that is at its most exemplary—enacted love that is hum­ble, coura­geous, sac­ri­fi­cial, gen­er­ous, and so on. One can also find Chris­tian­i­ty syn­cretized with pagan­ism and rife with corruption—forced con­ver­sions, bribery, greed, cal­cu­lat­ing, pow­er-hun­gry, and exploita­tive. There is much here to learn from and emu­late and every bit as much to detest.” pages 60–61

Inci­den­tal­ly, foot­notes 101–106 are quite inter­est­ing and give fur­ther his­tor­i­cal illus­tra­tions. I guess they were in the ini­tial text and an edi­tor made him trim the chap­ter down.

These his­tor­i­cal sum­maries are meant to illus­trate Hunter’s eleven the­ses about cul­ture and cul­tur­al change. I’ve sum­ma­rized them below in case you did­n’t have a chance to read chap­ter 4.

One: Cul­ture is a sys­tem of truth claims and moral oblig­a­tions

“That is, our under­stand­ing of the world is so tak­en-for-grant­ed that it seems utter­ly obvi­ous. It bears repeat­ing that it is not just our view of what is right or wrong or true or false but our under­stand­ing of time, space, and identity—the very essence of real­i­ty as we expe­ri­ence it.… Most of what real­ly counts, in terms of what shapes us and directs us, we are not aware of; it oper­ates far below what most of us are capa­ble of con­scious­ly grasp­ing.” (page 33)

Two: Cul­ture is a prod­uct of his­to­ry

“Cul­ture takes form as the slow accre­tions of mean­ing in soci­ety over long peri­ods of time.… The iner­tia built into cul­ture by virtue of its rela­tion­ship to its long his­to­ry tends to make it lum­ber­ing and errat­ic at the same time. (pages 33–34)

Three: Cul­ture is instrin­cal­ly dialec­ti­cal

“To put it blunt­ly, cul­ture is as much an infra­struc­ture as it is ideas. It takes shape in con­crete insti­tu­tion­al form.… Anoth­er way to say this is that cul­ture is intrin­si­cal­ly dialec­ti­cal. It is gen­er­at­ed and exists at the inter­face between ideas and insti­tu­tions; between the sym­bol­ic and the social and phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment.” (page 34)

“Insti­tu­tions can­not exist with­out the indi­vid­u­als who make them work, but indi­vid­u­als can­not be under­stood out­side of the insti­tu­tions that form them and frame all of their activ­i­ty. That said, in the for­ma­tion of cul­ture, one should not be under the illu­sion that the dialec­tic is even­ly bal­anced. While indi­vid­u­als are not pow­er­less by any stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, insti­tu­tions have much greater pow­er.” (page 35)

Four: Cul­ture is a resource and, as such, a form of pow­er

“…sym­bols in the form of knowl­edge, tech­ni­cal know-how, cre­den­tials, and cul­tur­al accom­plish­ments can also be thought of as a form of cap­i­tal. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cul­tur­al mean­ing imput­ed to such things, cul­ture can be under­stood as sym­bol­ic cap­i­tal. Though, unlike mon­ey, sym­bol­ic cap­i­tal can­not read­i­ly be trans­ferred from one gen­er­a­tion to anoth­er, or from one indi­vid­ual to anoth­er, like mon­ey, sym­bol­ic cap­i­tal can be accu­mu­lat­ed. Some indi­vid­u­als, some orga­ni­za­tions, and some objects have more and accu­mu­late more sym­bol­ic cap­i­tal than oth­ers.” page 35

“…accu­mu­lat­ed sym­bol­ic cap­i­tal trans­lates into a kind of pow­er and influ­ence. But influ­ence of what kind? It starts as cred­i­bil­i­ty, an author­i­ty one pos­sess­es which puts one in a posi­tion to be lis­tened to and tak­en seri­ous­ly. It ends as the pow­er to define real­i­ty itself.” page 36

Five: Cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion and sym­bol­ic cap­i­tal are strat­i­fied in a fair­ly rigid struc­ture of “center” and “periphery”

“…one may be able to get as good an edu­ca­tion at Blue­field State Col­lege in Blue­field, West Vir­ginia, as one would at Har­vard, but Har­vard, as an insti­tu­tion, is at the cen­ter and Blue­field State is at the periph­ery of cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion. There­fore, some­one with a cre­den­tial from Har­vard will find many more oppor­tu­ni­ties than some­one from Blue­field State and will more like­ly end up in a posi­tion of greater influ­ence than the oth­er.” page 37

Six: Cul­ture is gen­er­at­ed with­in net­works

“…the key actor in his­to­ry is not indi­vid­ual genius but rather the net­work and the new insti­tu­tions that are cre­at­ed out of those net­works. And the more “dense” the network—that is, the more active and inter­ac­tive the network—the more influ­en­tial it could be. This is where the stuff of cul­ture and cul­tur­al change is pro­duced. In mak­ing this case, I don’t want to under­play the role of indi­vid­ual charis­ma and genius. With­in any net­work, there is usu­al­ly one who pro­vides a cer­tain unprece­dent­ed lead­er­ship, who offers a greater degree of artic­u­la­tion or who puts more at risk finan­cial­ly, social­ly, and rep­u­ta­tion­al­ly, or who pro­vides the con­nec­tive tis­sue for the net­work itself. This is where we do find the great­ness of a Mar­tin Luther or John Calvin, a William Wilber­force, a Dorothy Day, a Mar­tin Luther King, and so on.” page 38

Sev­en: Cul­ture is nei­ther autonomous nor ful­ly coher­ent

“In some ways, the expan­sion of the state in the last sev­er­al decades is due to its grow­ing role in the pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion. Sci­ence and edu­ca­tion are, in the main, appendages of the state, as are the myr­i­ad reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies deal­ing with health, occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty, wel­fare, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions among oth­ers. So too, of course, is the judi­cia­ry. This means not only that the state pro­vides much of the finan­cial, per­son­nel, and admin­is­tra­tive infra­struc­ture for the knowl­edge indus­try but also that the state can lim­it dis­sent through its coer­cive pow­ers. It is in the realm of edu­ca­tion where these pow­ers are most crit­i­cal­ly at work.” page 40

Eight: Cul­tures change from the top down, rarely if ever from the bot­tom up

“Even where the impe­tus for change draws from pop­u­lar agi­ta­tion, it does not gain trac­tion until it is embraced and prop­a­gat­ed by elites.” page 41

“In a very crude for­mu­la­tion, the process begins with the­o­rists who gen­er­ate ideas and knowl­edge; moves to researchers who explore, revise, expand, and val­i­date ideas; moves on to teach­ers and edu­ca­tors who pass those ideas on to oth­ers, then pass­es on to pop­u­lar­iz­ers who sim­pli­fy ideas and prac­ti­tion­ers who apply those ideas. All of this, of course, tran­spires through net­works and struc­tures of cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.” page 42

Nine: Change is typ­i­cal­ly ini­ti­at­ed by elites who are out­side of the cen­ter­most posi­tions of pres­tige

“Wher­ev­er inno­va­tion begins, it comes as a chal­lenge to the dom­i­nant ideas and moral sys­tems defined by the elites who pos­sess the high­est lev­els of sym­bol­ic cap­i­tal. Inno­va­tion, in oth­er words, gen­er­al­ly moves from elites and the insti­tu­tions they lead to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion but among elites who do not nec­es­sar­i­ly occu­py the high­est ech­e­lons of pres­tige.” page 42

Ten: World-chang­ing is most con­cen­trat­ed when the net­works of elites and the insti­tu­tions they lead over­lap

“The impe­tus, ener­gy, and direc­tion for world-mak­ing and world-chang­ing are great­est where var­i­ous forms of cul­tur­al, social, eco­nom­ic, and often polit­i­cal resources over­lap. In short, when net­works of elites in over­lap­ping fields of cul­ture and over­lap­ping spheres of social life come togeth­er with their var­ied resources and act in com­mon pur­pose, cul­tures do change and change pro­found­ly. Per­sis­tence over time is essen­tial; lit­tle of sig­nif­i­cance hap­pens in three to five years.” page 43

Eleven: Cul­tures change, but rarely if ever with­out a fight

“By its very nature, cul­ture is a realm in which insti­tu­tions and their agents seek to defend one under­stand­ing of the world against alter­na­tives, which are always either present or latent. That work is the work of legit­i­ma­tion and dele­git­i­ma­tion; of nam­ing one nor­mal and right and its com­pe­ti­tion, deviant, infe­ri­or, stu­pid, inad­e­quate, ridicu­lous, un-Amer­i­can, polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect, or just plain evil.” pages 43–44

To sum up: 

“at every point of chal­lenge and change, we find a rich source of patron­age that pro­vid­ed resources for intel­lec­tu­als and edu­ca­tors who, in the con­text of dense net­works, imag­ine, the­o­rize, and prop­a­gate an alter­na­tive cul­ture. Often enough, along­side these elites are artists, poets, musi­cians, and the like who sym­bol­ize, nar­rate, and pop­u­lar­ize this vision. New insti­tu­tions are cre­at­ed that give form to that cul­ture, enact it, and, in so doing, give tan­gi­ble expres­sion to it.” pages 77–78

Also, I thought this obser­va­tion was insight­ful:

“To live in a cul­ture is, in most times and places, to expe­ri­ence the world as sta­ble and endur­ing. This is true even in times of great social change and cul­tur­al upheaval. We tend not to expe­ri­ence the change as change but only real­ly rec­og­nize it for what it is in ret­ro­spect.” page 78

“This means that in Amer­i­ca today, 86 to 88 per­cent of the peo­ple adhere to some faith com­mit­ments. And yet our culture—business cul­ture, law and gov­ern­ment, the aca­d­e­m­ic world, pop­u­lar entertainment—is intense­ly mate­ri­al­is­tic and sec­u­lar. Only occa­sion­al­ly do we hear ref­er­ences to reli­gious tran­scen­dence in these realms, and even these are vague, gener­ic, and void of par­tic­u­lar­i­ty. If cul­ture is the accu­mu­la­tion of val­ues and the choic­es made by indi­vid­u­als on the basis of these val­ues, then how is it that Amer­i­can pub­lic cul­ture today is so pro­found­ly sec­u­lar in its char­ac­ter?” (page 19)

“Con­sid­er, by con­trast the expe­ri­ence of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Amer­i­ca. Except for a brief peri­od in the mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Jews have nev­er com­prised more than 3.5 per­cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion. Yet, as David Hollinger has shown, the con­tri­bu­tion of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to sci­ence, lit­er­a­ture, art, music, let­ters, film, and archi­tec­ture is both bril­liant and unrivaled.5 And these con­tri­bu­tions were made in a con­text often defined by open, aggres­sive, and mali­cious anti-Semi­tism; an anti-Semi­tism man­i­fest­ed in restric­tions and quo­tas against Jews in pri­vate schools, camps, col­leges, resorts, and places of employ­ment, in pub­lic den­i­gra­tion by some of the most respect­ed lead­ers of the time (includ­ing Hen­ry Ford), and in phys­i­cal assault on Jews, espe­cial­ly young Jews.” (page 20)

“A sim­i­lar sto­ry of influ­ence can be told of the gay com­mu­ni­ty. At most 3 per­cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion, their influ­ence has become enor­mous; again far dis­pro­por­tion­ate to their size. It is worth point­ing out too that most of the gains in vis­i­bil­i­ty, legit­i­ma­cy, and legal rights by the gay rights move­ment were made dur­ing the twelve con­ser­v­a­tive years of the Rea­gan and Bush pres­i­den­cies. Those advances con­tin­ue large­ly unabat­ed through the present—a time when a major­i­ty in the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion has remained pri­vate­ly trou­bled by homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.” (page 20)

“…ide­al­ism mis­con­strues agency, imply­ing the capac­i­ty to bring about influ­ence where that capac­i­ty may not exist or where it may only be weak. Ide­al­ism under­plays the impor­tance of his­to­ry and his­tor­i­cal forces and its inter­ac­tion with cul­ture as it is lived and expe­ri­enced. Fur­ther, ide­al­ism ignores the way cul­ture is gen­er­at­ed, coor­di­nat­ed, and orga­nized. Thus, it under­rates how dif­fi­cult it is to pen­e­trate cul­ture and influ­ence its direc­tion.” (page 26)

“In sum, ide­al­ism leads to a naïveté about the nature of cul­ture and its dynam­ics that is, in the end, fatal. Every strat­e­gy and tac­tic for chang­ing the world that is based on this work­ing the­o­ry of cul­ture and cul­tur­al change will fail—not most of these strate­gies, but all.” (page 27, empha­sis mine)

“Over the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, Evan­gel­i­cals have been dis­tin­guished by their mas­sive cul­tur­al out­put in books and book pub­lish­ing, mag­a­zines, radio, music, bible stud­ies, the­ol­o­gy, Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tion at all lev­els, and so on. Giv­en the suc­cess of these ven­tures, it is clear that con­sump­tion has matched pro­duc­tion. With­out doubt, this cre­ativ­i­ty has far out­matched the cul­tur­al out­put of prob­a­bly any oth­er faith tra­di­tion in Amer­i­ca. It is true that Evan­gel­i­cals have not been active in high art or in film, but these facts alone do not account for their dra­mat­ic mar­gin­al­iza­tion in Amer­i­can soci­ety, not least since oth­er much small­er minori­ties have had a much greater influ­ence.” (page 29)

• Crouch’s review of Hunter’s book: How Not to Change the World (Books and Cul­ture)
• Crouch’s sub­se­quent response to Hunter’s criticism: Hunter and I Agree on Cul­ture Mak­ing (He Just Seems Not to Know It) (Chris­tian­i­ty Today)
• A response by Chuck Col­son to Hunter: More Than Faith­ful Pres­ence (Chris­tian­i­ty Today)
• A response by Hunter to both Crouch and Col­son: Faith­ful Pres­ence Is Not Qui­etism (Chris­tian­i­ty Today)