Hunter, To Change the World

Share this:

James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Oxford University Press, 2010.

Referenced in: Christian Political Theory, Church and State Relations

LifeandLeadership.com Summary

With regard to how political theory informs the work of the church in the realms of social compassion and justice, I appreciate books like this one. It comes from one of today’s most recognized scholars in church and culture, James Davison Hunter (bio below). It is a scholarly critique of the tendency of Christians to align themselves with political entities to achieve more power with their agendas. Hunter describes and critiques three different “factions” that have tried to bring about change through power:

The Conservative Right (“defensive against”)
The Progressive Left (“relevance to”)
The Neo-Anabaptists (“purity from”)

He lumps together such divergent figures as James Dobson, Jim Wallis, and Stanley Hauerwas as “functional Nietzscheans, participating in the very cultural breakdown they so ardently strive to resist.” (175)

The way toward cultural change, he proposes, is not through such power, but through “faithful presence.”

Cultures are profoundly resistant to intentional change — period … Christians need to abandon talk about “redeeming the culture,” “advancing the kingdom,” and “changing the world.” Such talk carries too much weight, implying conquest and domination. If there is a possibility for human flourishing in our world, it does not begin when we win the culture wars but when God’s word of love becomes flesh in us, reaching every sphere of social life. When faithful presence existed in church history, it manifested itself in the creation of hospitals and the flourishing of art, the best scholarship, the most profound and world-changing kind of service and care – again, not only for the household of faith but for everyone. Faithful presence isn’t new; it’s just something we need to recover.” (36)

This is a much more indirect path toward change:

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. (45)

And this is contrast to the prevailing view in three ways:

Against idealism, the view that ideas move history, we now see ideas inexorably grounded in social conditions and circumstances, not just material objects.
Against individualism, which influences us to view the autonomous and rational individual—even if a genius—as the key factor in social change, we now see the power of networks and the new institutions that they create, and the communities that surround them that make the difference.
Against Christian pietism, which biases us to see the individual’s “heart and mind” as the primary source and repository of culture, we now see that hearts and minds are only tangentially related to the movements of culture, that culture is much more complicated and has a life independent of individual mind, feeling, and will; indeed, that it is not so much individual hearts and minds that move cultures but cultures that ultimate shape the hearts and minds and, thus, direct the lives of individuals. (45)

In this respect, Hunter upholds the role of institutionalized faith over against mere pietism as a means toward this “faithful presence.” He says, “faithful presence is not the work of the individual alone but also the individual in concert with the community.” (35)

Another contention is that

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… because they have been absent from the arenas in which the greatest influence in the culture is exerted. (89)

His belief in “top-down,” even institutional change is over against populist, pietist, “bottom up” changes.

The best section of the book is Chapter 4, “An Alternative View of Culture and Cultural Change in Eleven Propositions.” Here he condenses his view into seven propositions about culture and four about cultural change. The last four are especially pertinent:

Cultures change from the top down, rarely if ever from the bottom up. This does not minimize grass roots bottom up mobilizations of people for causes, but contends that the profound cultural changes always occur “top down.”

The work of world-making and world-changing are, by and large, the work of elites: gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management within spheres of social life. Even where impetus for change draws from popular agitation, it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites. (p. 41)

Deep-rooted cultural change tends to begin with those whose work is most conceptual and invisible and it moves through to those whose work is most concrete and visible. 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 popularizes who simplify ideas and practitioners who apply those ideas. All of this, of course, transpires through networks and structures of cultural production.” (41-42)
Change is typically initiated by elites who are outside of the centermost positions of prestige. 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. The novelty they represent and offer calls into question the rightness and legitimacy of the established ideas and practices of the culture’s leading gatekeepers. The goal of any such innovation is to infiltrate the center and, in time, redefine the leading ideas and practices of the center. (42-43)
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. But when cultural and symbolic capital overlap with social capital and economic capital and, in time, political capital, and these various resources are directed toward shared ends, the world, indeed, changes. (43)
Cultures change, but rarely if ever without a fight. By its 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 delegitimization; of naming one normal and right and its competition, deviant, inferior, stupid, un-American, or just plain evil. Yet conflict is one of the permanent fixtures of cultural change. It is typically through different manifestations of conflict and contest that change in culture is forged. (43-44)

While I think this is an excellent treatment of the subject, and I am largely in agreement, there are a few caveats. First, the belief in “top down” change may be more or less factual, but something in me wants to say that it underestimates change that comes from the “bottom up.” Is not this more in keeping with the story of Jesus and the early church? Second, he is right in saying that possessing the right belief system is inadequate to change culture. Yet it seems a stretch to present as evidence American Christianity’s lack of success in social change. American Christianity is simply too nominal and insipid to be seen as a true representation of the kind of change the church can or cannot create on a large scale. Third, he presents an almost exclusively future conception of the kingdom and designates current manifestations of the kingdom as triumphalism, even to the point of minimizing the prophetic role (perhaps unwittingly). Fourth, he also shares much of the current missional/emergent conversations preoccupation with the evil of Constantine, who may get more credit than he deserves.

On the whole, this is an excellent book that puts forth a healthy overall thesis. There are enough weaknesses to require critical reading, but there are many gems. Be sure and see the Amazon Q and A on this book.

From the Publisher

The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive—and provocative—answers to these questions.

Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christians eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles W. Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls “faithful presence”—an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of “faithful presence.” Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be.

Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.

About the Author

James Davison Hunter is LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He is the author of Culture Wars and The Death of Character.

***For additional information on this resource, including reviews, click the bookstore links. Check the reference at page top or the links below for resource guides on related topics.***

Related Areas

See Other Resource Guides on Christian Social Ministry:

See Resources on Over 100 Ministry Topics:

Ministry Resource Guides Index

Church and Culture, Church and State, Political Theology, Social Ministry