A challenge due serious consideration

For the past 50 years the Christian community (or communities) has sought to bring transformation to the culture by a strategy that is “almost wholly mistaken.” The “common view” is that “the way to change the world is to change the thinking of individuals. Then, when enough people with the right thinking, the correct worldview, act strongly enough, culture will be changed.” This view has motivated and directed the styles and actions of Christian churches and groups, of all persuasions, for multiple generations. And this approach has not fulfilled its mission because it fails to work with the forces that do bring change in cultures. This argument is made, persuasively I believe, by James Davison Hunter in To Change the World. The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). In his several books, Hunter, LaBrossse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia, looks at modern American culture and the influence of Christians in it.

Even more strongly, Hunter argues that the strategies used by the majority of Christians and Christian organizations have contributed to the demise of Christian values in the culture. He asks why, if the Common View is valid, have not the strong values and dedication to propagating these of modern Christianity moved the American culture toward its values. The reality is movement in the opposite direction. He points out that “in America today, 86 to 88 percent of the people adhere to some faith commitments (survey results referenced). And yet our culture – business culture, law and government, the academic world, popular entertainment – is intensely materialistic and secular. … 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?”

And this is not just the product of rampant secularism which the Christian community resists. “But there is another way in which Christians in America have assimilated the dominant political culture. As I argue in Chapter 2 of this essay, contemporary political culture in America is marked by a ressentiment manifested by a narrative of injury and, in turn, a discourse of negation toward all those they perceive to be to blame. Through each expresses this ressentiment differently, in different degrees and to different ends, it is present in all of these factions (Christian Right, Christian Left; Neo-Anabaptist). It is especially prominent, of course, among Christian conservatives, which may be why they have been so effective over the years in mobilizing their rank and file to political action. Ressentiment is also centrally present among Christian progressives and it is clearly a major source of their new solidarity and the motive behind their recent assertiveness in Democratic party policies. Both the Right and the Left ground their positions in biblical authority and they both appeal to democratic ideals and practices to justify their actions. But the ressentiment that marks the way they operate makes it clear that a crucial part of what motivates them is a will to dominate. The neo-Anabaptists are different in this regard. It is true that they too participate fully in the discourse of negation but domination is not their intent.” (p. 168-'69)

[ressentiment: Fr. resentment, plus anger, envy, hate, rage, and revenge as a motive]

Developing a theory of how cultures change, Hunter proposes, “that cultures are profoundly resistant to intentional change – period. They are certainly resistant to the mere exertion of individual will by ordinary individuals or by a well-organized movement of individuals. … The most profound changes in culture can be seen first as they penetrate into the linguistic and mythic fabric of a social order. …. In this light, we can see that evangelism, politics, social reform, and the creation of artifacts – if effective – all bring about good ends: changed hearts and minds, changed laws, changed social behaviors. But they don't directly influence the moral fabric that makes these changes sustainable over the long term, sustainable precisely because they are implicit and as implicit, they form the presuppositional base of social life.” The forces that influence change in culture are at the centers, and for over 50 years Christians in America have been almost totally absent from these centers. “... 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.

The posture that has been taken by most Christian organizations is to seek change in the culture through political influence and action. Hunter argues that the trend since the 1960s in America is to politicize everything. And Christian movements have joined the trend and act as if political action is the only way to achieve their goals. In this way Christians have accepted the present political culture, have tried to influence and use it and have, in turn, been used by it. And we have failed. More, we have precipitated a backlash so that “Christian” is a label little respected in the culture and an object of disdain by many, many who are trying to bring change to the culture, change for the good, at least in their eyes.

In a chapter devoted to explaining contemporary political theory and the importance of distinguishing between democracy and the state, the latter holding the more power (read the chapter to follow this), Hunter concludes, “ there are no political solutions to the problems most people care about. …. What the state cannot do is provide fully satisfactory solutions to the problems of values in our society.”

“The irony, of course, is that no group in American society has done more to politicize values over the last half century, and therefore undermine their renewal, than Christians – both on the Right (since the early 1980s) and on the Left (during the 1960s and 1970s). Both sides are implicated and remain implicated today. And he provocatively suggests, “... it would be salutary for the church and its leadership to remain silent for a season until it learns how to engage politics and even talk politics in ways that are non-Nietzschean.” [Christians Nietzschean?!]

Does Hunter have an alternative? Of course, that is why he wrote the book. In place of (exclusively) political action and a hope-against-hope that “ when enough people with the right thinking, the correct worldview, act strongly enough, culture will be changed,” he proposes “faithful presence within.” Faithful presence is to live the incarnation, taking our model from Jesus who in his incarnation became present in the world, to us, to all, being the revelation of God who engages us, as we are. “In respect to God's presence: “we are the 'other'. Though we are irreducibly different from him and , in our sin, irreducibly estranged from him, he does not regard us as either 'danger' or 'darkness'. We neither threaten him nor diminish him in any way. The second point is that though he is all powerful, he pursues us, identifies with us, and offers us life through his sacrifice not because he needs us to do something for him but simply because he loves us and desires intimacy with all his creation. In other words, he does not use his power instrumentally in ways that force us against our will.” In other words, Jesus engages in no politics and uses no force in pursuing change in us and in culture.

The hope for Christian influence in culture is not through doing anything to change culture but by being a changed culture. “Let me finally stress that any good that is generated by Christians is only the net effect of caring for something more than the good created. 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 and beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God ,and a fulfillment of God's command to love our neighbor.”

I'm in!

Reading note: Two other books assisted me in these reflections, both by Rodney Stark: The Rise of Christianity, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996, and The Victory of Reason. How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success, New York: Random House, 2005.