Glen Davis

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.