Glen Davis

I thought Hunter’s chap­ter on the reli­gious left was­n’t as strong as his chap­ter on the reli­gious right, although I appre­ci­at­ed that he high­light­ed the long his­to­ry of a polit­i­cal­ly-engaged reli­gious left. I am baf­fled when peo­ple act as though the politi­ciza­tion of the faith is exclu­sive­ly a prob­lem of the right. The reli­gious left is FAR more polit­i­cal than the reli­gious right. It’s not even close. It is not unusu­al to hear overt­ly polit­i­cal ser­mons in reli­gious left con­gre­ga­tions where­as it is van­ish­ing­ly rare to hear polit­i­cal ser­mons in a reli­gious right con­gre­ga­tion.

Some­thing to keep in mind is that nei­ther the reli­gious left nor the reli­gious right are above the par­ti­san­ship that dom­i­nates Amer­i­ca.

Giv­en the resources of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and the spe­cial inter­ests that dri­ve it, there is lit­tle ques­tion that pro­gres­sive Chris­tian­i­ty is instru­men­tal­ized (or used as a means to an end) by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in its quest for pow­er, just as con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tian­i­ty has been used for quite some time by the Repub­li­can Par­ty. (page 148)

Hunter explain what he con­sid­ers to be the dri­ving force of pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics: a par­tic­u­lar con­cep­tion of jus­tice illus­trat­ed by the French Rev­o­lu­tion’s call for lib­er­ty, equal­i­ty, and fra­ter­ni­ty.

The key word in the pro­gres­sive lex­i­con, and arguably the para­mount virtue, is jus­tice. Jus­tice, though, is defined as eco­nom­ic equi­ty — the equal­i­ty com­po­nent. With­in the con­tem­po­rary left, there is a ten­sion between the com­mu­ni­tar­i­an wing and the social lib­er­tar­i­an wing, and the divid­ing line is far from clearcut. Over the course of the last two cen­turies, lib­er­al­ism has had less to say about “fra­ter­ni­ty,” though social­ism has made this a cen­tral part of its agen­da. In (p.133) con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, most sec­u­lar pro­gres­sives define the “lib­er­ty” com­po­nent in terms of indi­vid­ual auton­o­my and the free­dom to choose one’s own lifestyle; that is, in terms of sex­u­al iden­ti­ty and prac­tice, rela­tion­ships, enter­tain­ment, and so on. But reli­gious­ly ori­ent­ed pro­gres­sives, Chris­tians among them, tend to lean toward the com­mu­ni­tar­i­an side of this divide. For these, lib­er­ty is under­stood large­ly as lib­er­a­tion; often enough this means free­dom for indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties from pover­ty caused by eco­nom­ic dom­i­na­tion and exploita­tion of the wealthy. As to com­mu­ni­ty itself (the “fra­ter­ni­ty” com­po­nent), it is the idea of sol­i­dar­i­ty among equals — across the bound­aries of race, eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, and social class. (page 132–133)

Hunter men­tions that the reli­gious left has less vis­i­bil­i­ty now than in the past, but I think his descrip­tion does­n’t do jus­tice to the extent of the main­line col­lapse. These denom­i­na­tions are implod­ing at a crazy rate. Researcher Ed Stet­zer puts it this way, “If the data con­tin­ues along the same pat­tern, main­line Protes­tants have an expi­ra­tion date when both trend lines cross zero in 2039. If the trend line con­tin­ues, they have 23 East­ers left.” (source)

Read that last sen­tence again. It’s stun­ning.

Those on the left and the right dis­agree about the rea­sons for the demise of the once-strong denom­i­na­tions. I think Rod­ney Stark put it well:

“The wreck­age of the for­mer Main­line denom­i­na­tions is strewn upon the shoal of a mod­ernist the­ol­o­gy that began to dom­i­nate the Main­line sem­i­nar­ies ear­ly in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. This the­ol­o­gy pre­sumed that advances in human knowl­edge had made faith out­mod­ed… Even­tu­al­ly, Main­line the­olo­gians dis­card­ed near­ly every doc­tri­nal aspect of tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty.” (from Amer­i­ca’s Bless­ings)

So due to their weak­ness, orga­ni­za­tions on the reli­gious left were not tak­en seri­ous­ly by politi­cians and aca­d­e­mics as they had once been.

Their polit­i­cal advo­ca­cy was also most­ly ignored until the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial win in 2004. It was only then that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, for many decades tone-deaf to faith, rec­og­nized that it would not mobi­lize the Amer­i­can pub­lic and win elec­tions until it learned to use the lan­guage and gram­mar of faith that has always informed the val­ues and beliefs of most Amer­i­cans. The prob­lem was that most Democ­rats have been uncom­fort­able using the lan­guage of faith. From across the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, many called for “soul-search­ing” and inter­nal reform that would address the so-called God-gap.

I am sure at the time Hunter wrote this it seemed that the Democ­rats had learned the impor­tance of wel­com­ing peo­ple of faith, but although Barack Oba­ma’s cam­paign did this very well Hilary Clin­ton’s cam­paign did this out­ra­geous­ly poor­ly. This is iron­ic because I believe Hilary Clin­ton to be far more per­son­al­ly pious than Barack Oba­ma.

Emma Green inter­viewed Michael Wear about this in the Atlantic “Democ­rats Have A Reli­gion Prob­lem”

“Barack Oba­ma was the per­fect tran­si­tion­al pres­i­dent from the old par­ty to the new. He could speak in reli­gious terms in a way that most white, sec­u­lar lib­er­als were not will­ing to con­front him on. He “got away with” reli­gious lan­guage and out­reach that would get oth­er Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians more robust cri­tiques from the left. He was able to paper over a lot of the reli­gious ten­sions in the par­ty that oth­er, less skilled politi­cians will not be able to paper over.”

An even more illu­mi­nat­ing read is by Ruth Gra­ham at Slate: “Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers” -

This elec­tion cycle, Chris­tian­i­ty Today made mul­ti­ple attempts to request an inter­view with Hillary Clin­ton, accord­ing to Kate Shell­nutt, an edi­tor there. The cam­paign nev­er respond­ed. Of course, cam­paigns turn down inter­view requests all the time. But the Clin­ton cam­paign was the only one that didn’t reply at all. And this wasn’t the only sign this year that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date had no inter­est in speak­ing to evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians. She spent lit­tle ener­gy explain­ing her views on abor­tion to them and lit­tle time talk­ing about reli­gious free­dom. She didn’t hire a full-time faith out­reach direc­tor until June and had no one focused specif­i­cal­ly on evan­gel­i­cal out­reach. She didn’t give a major speech to the evan­gel­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty and nev­er met pub­licly with evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers. Reli­gious pub­li­ca­tions reach­ing out to her cam­paign with ques­tions were fre­quent­ly met with silence. Some evan­gel­i­cal insid­ers are now ask­ing: Why didn’t Hillary Clin­ton even try to get us to vote for her?

And in a can­di­date for under­state­ment of the decade:

“For all of the diver­si­ty one can find among pro­gres­sives, one of the cen­tral cat­a­lysts of sol­i­dar­i­ty over the years has been their hos­til­i­ty to the lead­ers, orga­ni­za­tions, ide­ol­o­gy, and agen­da of the Chris­t­ian Right.” (page 139)

This is true of my friends on the reli­gious left. Their anger at the reli­gious right is a thing to behold. From afar. I am con­vinced that some of them are quite pre­pared to punch you in the name of tol­er­ance.

Again, I thought this chap­ter was less strong (although I imag­ine the infor­ma­tion in it was new­er to many of you).

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

Ear­li­er this week I saw an essay that illus­trates many of the ideas from our read­ing so far: Why Didn’t the Planned Par­ent­hood Videos Change the Abor­tion Debate? (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). Carter makes many points, but two stand out — the video mak­ers failed to coor­di­nate with insti­tu­tions and they also were attacked by elite net­works. To use Hunter’s ter­mi­nol­o­gy, Planned Par­ent­hood is an insti­tu­tion on the cen­ter and the Cen­ter for Med­ical Progress is an insti­tu­tion on the periph­ery — they had an uphill bat­tle for which they were unpre­pared because they appar­ent­ly held to the naive view of cul­ture Hunter cri­tiqued. I encour­age you to read the arti­cle and reflect upon the read­ings so far in light of it.

Hunter is now mov­ing onto the sec­ond theme of his book — rethink­ing pow­er in light of faith. He’s going to focus “on the con­ser­v­a­tive, pro­gres­sive, and neo-Anabap­tist posi­tions — because in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, these are the most promi­nent” (page 109). As Hunter hints, there are more the­o­log­i­cal options than these. Per­haps we will dis­cuss them as we move through this sec­ond essay.

His main point in this week’s read­ing is that in mod­ern soci­eties dis­cus­sions of pow­er are inevitably polit­i­cal.

“Pol­i­tics has become so cen­tral in our time that insti­tu­tions, groups, and issues are now defined rel­a­tive to the state, its laws and pro­ce­dures. Insti­tu­tions such as pop­u­lar and high­er edu­ca­tion, phil­an­thropy, sci­ence, the arts, and even the fam­i­ly under­stand their iden­ti­ty and func­tion accord­ing to what the state does or does not per­mit. Groups (women, minori­ties, gays, Chris­tians, etc.) have valid­i­ty not only but increas­ing­ly through the rights con­ferred by the state.” (page 103)

Hunter says this ten­den­cy is evi­dence of a weak social fab­ric.

“…the amount of law that exists in any soci­ety is always inverse­ly relat­ed to the coher­ence and sta­bil­i­ty of its com­mon cul­ture: law increas­es as cul­tur­al con­sen­sus decreas­es. By these lights, the fab­ric of the com­mon cul­ture in mod­ern Amer­i­ca has worn even more thin in the last sev­er­al decades and the extra­or­di­nary amount of lit­i­ga­tion we have seen in recent decades is just one place we see it.” (page 102)

Giv­en that laws will mul­ti­ply, the reach of the state will become ever more encom­pass­ing, and so inter­est groups feel it is imper­a­tive to get the state to act in align­ment with their val­ues. The state can­not sim­ply remain neu­tral, as Hunter explains:

“There is a tra­di­tion in polit­i­cal the­o­ry that claims that in a lib­er­al democ­ra­cy, the state is or should be neu­tral when it comes to ques­tions of the good. This is wrong main­ly because it is impos­si­ble. Law infers a moral judg­ment; pol­i­cy implies a world­view.” (page 103)

There is, of course, the caveat that this ressen­ti­ment-dri­ven impulse toward pow­er-seiz­ing is not always true of indi­vid­u­als — even influ­en­tial ones — but as Hunter demon­strat­ed in the pre­vi­ous essay the atti­tudes of indi­vid­u­als prove less sig­nif­i­cant than the atti­tudes of insti­tu­tions.

“I don’t want to over­state the case—clearly what I describe here are not ful­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly estab­lished real­i­ties; all is not pow­er and ressen­ti­ment. What makes it more com­pli­cat­ed (and inter­est­ing) is that there are gen­uine­ly pub­lic-spir­it­ed peo­ple on all sides of all issues. Indeed most peo­ple are not resent­ment-filled and pow­er hun­gry. But con­sis­tent with my view all along is the fact that the motives of indi­vid­u­als and the struc­tures of cul­ture are not the same thing.” (page 109)

This essay is off to a promis­ing start. I’m eager to see how he sum­ma­rizes the three the­o­log­i­cal options he men­tioned.