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 PrintableVersion To change the worldLetter from AmericaA book which deserves a much longer review is James Davidson Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Later Modern World. As I say, I cannot possibly do this book justice in these few words, other than to say that if you are interested in the problem of cultural change in our day you really should read it. I don’t agree with everything that Hunter says. For instance, it is frustrating that Hunter (so sure footed elsewhere) makes if not monumental gaffes in historical summary, at least takes a particular side in the historical debate about particular events without seeming to realise that the side he is taking is far from non-controversial. He seems to regard it as an open and shut case that Luther was at least partly responsible for the German genocide of the Jews, and that Calvin was entirely responsible for the judicial execution of Servetus on religious grounds. As a historian (admittedly my period being a century or so later among the Puritans and the early Evangelical Awakening), those two statements are debatable and not to be taken at face value. That frustrates me, because to some extent it undoes a lot of the good work that Hunter does, of significant service to the church. Talking of the Puritans, you would also think that a brief survey of Protestantism would mention them quite a bit, especially writing as an American. These frustrations aside, Hunter’s thesis is engaging. He argues, at some length, that American Christians should not be attempting to change the world through judicial process and political hurly burly. He says that such attempts inevitably lead to the ‘instrumentalisation’ of those involved, that Christians seem to take on ‘Nietzschean’ tactics and so become the very thing they wanted to change. Instead, Hunter says, we should be aiming to be a ‘faithful presence’. We are na•ve to think that cultures can be changed ‘in a generation’ through taking over the schooling system, in particular. In fact, evangelical influence in America is strong where real cultural power is weak, and cultural change happens slowly and is effected through the influence of small cabals of highly powerful and influential people — the media, the politics, elite academia — so that hoi polloi Christians really shouldn’t think that if they are not a part of that group they have much hope of changing anything. Post-ConstantinianI am delighted and horrified by some of the direction this takes Hunter. Who could argue that powerful world change happens through powerful elites and that Christian influence in such circles is lacking? And who could argue that it is a ‘good thing’ to encourage Christians simply to be Christian (‘salt and light’, to coin a phrase) and not just think they should get a highly influential job so they can influence people, because that can turn their relationships with such people into manipulate ‘means’ rather than ‘ends’ in themselves, as a philosopher might put it? It is also important to realise that we are post-Constantinian in many ways in the West, no longer in Christendom, and getting used to that and living in that way — whether we take a text from Jeremiah’s advice to the Babylonian exiles, or from the New Testament — is a good thing. It may not be a bad thing to learn what it means to be church in a non-churched age and society. Perhaps it will sharpen us up. But there are ironies, and not just the ironies that Hunter points out. My favourite is (again) historical. Hunter begins listing his historical evidence for his case of faithful presence, having asserted that non-influential backwoods people cannot expect to change the world, starting (as he should) with the birth of the New Testament church. He is about to unfold the massive influence of the New Testament church to ‘change the world’ (or in Luke’s phrase to ‘turn the world upside down’) and does so, without a trace of the irony that it produces, by stating: ‘The Christian church had its origins as a small sect within Judaism at the periphery of the Roman Empire’ (p.49). Yes! And from that small seed came a very large tree. Granted, all sorts of big powerful things happened later, but it began in weakness, and my guess is that is the way of the gospel. Little place for evangelism?Mentioning the gospel, my other quibble with Hunter’s massive and impressive work is that he may have little place for evangelism per se as part of a world-changing project. Briefly, it appears at first blush that, because he feels that it is a mistake to think that world change happens when we change our worldviews, therefore evangelism is also a mistaken tactic for changing the world. But does this mean for Hunter that straightforward evangelism is now a ‘bad thing’? I hesitate to think so. But towards the end of the book he seems perhaps to confirm my suspicion. Because we think that cultural change happens through winning hearts and minds, therefore we attempt to change the world through evangelism, popular civic renewal movements, and get out the vote drives, when, in fact, because cultural change does not happen that way, ‘every initiative based on this perspective will fail to achieve the goals it hopes to meet’. That is not quite saying evangelism doesn’t matter; in fact he qualifies and clarifies that the hearts and minds of ordinary people are important (phew). He just doesn’t think that lots of evangelism will change the world. Instead, the Great Commission seems to be going into the world of work, law, arts, teaching, etc., and being a ‘faithful presence’ there. Again, who could argue? Except that it seems to also include making disciples and baptising people. Surely disciple-making is more than proselytism, but not less than evangelism? All that said, I can’t think of a much more important, stimulating, refreshing, insightful, readable and helpful book on the matter of changing culture. Just come with your biblical thinking cap firmly in place, and be aware that Hunter is working out of various philosophical and historical assumptions that you may or may not share. Josh Moody,
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