To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
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Amazon.com Review
Product Description
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 regularly 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 starts with a penetrating appraisal of the most well loved models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they wish. 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 regularly these political theologies make something worse 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 tiny, 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 past grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.
Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with James Davison Hunter
Q: Why did you write To Change the World?
Hunter: I wrote this book because I saw a disjunction between how Christians talk about changing the world, how they try to change the world, and how worlds –that is culture–really change. These disparities needed to be clarified.
Q: How does this erect on your previous work?
Hunter: One way it builds on my earlier work is that it provides a larger picture of the scenery of cultural conflict, why Christians seem to be neck deep in it, and why the approaches that they take in cultural conflict are so counterproductive. This is a response to some of the earlier work that I have done on the scenery of culture wars and alternatives to them.
Q: Who do you hope reads this book?
Hunter: The audience I had in mind was the diverse communities that make up American Christians and their institutional leaders–persons who reflect about the world we live in today and how best to engage it. Persons who reflect about these matters will find here a useful guide.
Q: What three things do you want readers to take away from reading this book?
Hunter: The primary ways of thinking about the world and how it changes in our society are mainly incorrect. There is an answer to the question of how to change the world, but how it really changes is different from how most people reflect.
Most people judge that politics is a large part of the answer to the problems that we face in the world, and so a second insight would be the limitations of politics. Political strategies are not only counter-productive to the ends that faith communities have in mind, but are antithetical to the ends that they seek to achieve.
A third thing that I would like for readers to take away is that there are alternative ways of thinking about the world we live in, and engaging it, that are constructive and draw upon resources within the Christian tradition. In the end, these strategies are not first and foremost about changing the world, but living toward the flourishing of others.
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- Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
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- The Story of the World Activity Book Three: Early Modern Times
- The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child, Volume 3: Early Modern Times
- The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World
There are some books by academics that are merely informative. This book will change the entire conversation. Whether one agrees with Hunter’s thesis or not, it is a significant marker in the sand and will have to be taken seriously by all. It is highly recommended.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Hunter’s theme in his “theology of faithful presence” pretty much repeats the same call for a holistic worldview that Schaeffer and Rushdoony wrote about. Hunter says we need to be consistent in living out our faith within the culture, especially with persons we encounter in our various social circles. I especially appreciated his evaluation of persons evangelicals and fundamentalists that have adopted a dualistic split in the way they live out their faith (p. 248). They judge their lives within the world (the culture) are secular and that the Bible does not apply to that part of their lives. In their view, the Bible is only relegated to their religious life within the church culture. This is what I refer to as the half-way Gospel. It teaches an unbiblical Platonic dualism that makes Jesus the lord of only half of our lives – the spiritual part. The Bible teaches Jesus is lord of everything, which includes the world and its cultures. This fake theology has produced Christians that are biblically divorced from the surrounding culture. They fail to act as a salty biblical influence to both the people they encounter and the cultures in which they reside. I wish Hunter would have further evaluated this dualism, which largely stems from dispensational theology and a Platonic worldview. It displaced the earlier covenant theology of the Reformation with its holistic worldview that transformed Europe. The influence of Platonic dualism needs to be addressed if evangelical Christians are to have an impact in transforming the world. We do this by discipling the nations according to “all” that Jesus (God) taught in the Ancient and New Testaments. We are to disciple the nations, not because some scholar determined that we should, but because Jesus commanded us to do so. (See Christianity Unshackled by Eberle)
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Christians are duty-bound to work to make the world better through faithfulness, like, and truth. But in “To Change the World,” James Davison Hunter believes and laments that Christians have largely been unsuccessful in transforming the world and then delivers practical means for believers to help improve many aspects of the world we live in. His solutions are insightful as they are provocative (I would more forcefully emphasize dealing with man’s sinful scenery).
Hunter assesses the work and strategies of:
- The Christian Right
- The Left
- block Colson
- Christian moderate Jim Wallis
- Stanley Hauerwas and many others.
The leader notes that various political theories and their application have hurt the cause of world transformation and he asserts that one needs to embrace, live out, and nurture “faithful presence.” The notion that the Christian should aim to be more fruitful as one follows Christ and applies His principles so that our world would renovate into a more peaceful and productive. I would accentuate applying biblical ethics in government as the most essential strategy: self-government, family tree government, church government, civil state government, and federal government. Nevertheless this volume is well-written as it proposes many perceptive thoughts for modifying our world.
There Are Moral Absolutes: How to Be Absolutely Sure That Christianity Alone Supplies
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5