to theologise the world
Posted by Paul | Filed under culture
The Other Journal has posted a helpful discussion between James K.A. Smith and James Davison Hunter, coming off the back of ‘to change the world’. One area they touch on is the need to develop theologies for the areas that we move in outside the church. Taking about a champion of Hauerwas, Hunter notes that
it became clear that he had nothing constructive or encouraging to say to me as a professional or to any of the businesspeople or professionals in his church about our vocations in the world. The absence of any theological reflection on his part about work and vocation reflected the old dualism that has been at the heart of modernity and Christianity’s capitulation to it. It also rendered him mute to those looking for wisdom about how to live their lives in the world outside the church. … I also think it is quite possible that [a church with this view] would have a harder time transferring their faith to the next generation for the simple reason that faith would seem disconnected from the range of life and work experiences outside of the church’s own activities.
This has been on my mind a lot recently. Even where churches do take notice about life ‘outside’, the theology can be rather generic and limited. We need to start to work out expansive theologies that touch the specifics of life & work outside church activities. Or as Hunter puts it we need
robust theologies of engagement in the service industry and in the trades, or in the professions—arts, business, science, technology, and medicine, academia, and so on.
How do we do this? The starting point has to be to listen. Not to come with ready-made answers, but to talk and find out what the real issues and real problems are. Then we can move on and find appropriate, theologically-informed answers. I’m reminded of Tim Keller’s stories of moving to New York and having actors asking about the validity of method acting, or financiers about short-selling. By talking and listening, the real issues could be addressed.
Hard work? Of course. But, if we do this, then we will start to weave an appropriate Fabric of Faithfulness and come to the stage where Christians are truly
active and productive in every sphere of life—the service industry, skilled labor, education, business, philanthropy, science, medicine, law, the arts, academia, and, yes, politics too, and at every level, for there would not only be theologies to support them but resources to prepare, launch, and sustain them.
to change the world
Posted by Paul | Filed under culture
Over the summer, I read the excellent ‘To Change The World’ by James Davison Hunter. Given the exposure that the book has been getting, I guess anyone reading this has come across it already. If not, James K.A Smith has posted a good review of it on the other journal. Here is a (very) brief overview together with some random personal reactions…
The book is an assembly of three interlocking extended essays on the subject of Christian interaction with culture. The first essay looks at the approaches that Christians try in order to have a ‘positive influence’ on culture. Hunter’s main target here is the assumption that all that is needed to change the world is for enough grassroots Christians to get their worldview sorted, resulting in a spread through the culture at large. The essay suggests that this misunderstands how culture works; the path of culture through history is not merely a story of ideas, but that other aspects — in particular, institutions and elites — have a significant role. That it is only when the right ideas are in the right places that the culture as a whole changes.
What I found interesting is the way this argument fits with a wider trend of rethinking the place of worldviews. Not that anyone wants to discard them completely. But there is a growing recognition in Christian writing that we are more that brains-on-sticks, that the idea of worldview has to be held in a wider context. Of particular note here is James K.A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, which emphasises the place of practices & liturgies in the formation of people, rather than purely knowledge and ideas. But we might also bring in Crouch’s Culture Making, which reminds us that just thinking an analysing is not enough, to live responsibly we also need to be acting and creating.
Hunter’s second chapter looks at the our current views on power. The focus is on the way that Christians, particularly in the USA, have become so politicised that anyone wanting to ‘make a difference’ in public life only thinks in political terms. Hence, the only solution to the problems we see are voting in the right candidate, lobbying for our issues, etc. Ironically, for me, the truth of this became most clear when reading some of the negative response to Hunter’s book. Frequently, the reactions reflected a purely political view of the world and fear that Hunter’ arguments will undermine the possibility of making a change.
You can get a good flavour of this second essay by reading the transcript of a discussion between Hunter and US journalists on the Ethics and Public Policy Centre website. An interesting point made there is that this politicisation is not such a temptation in Europe simply because there are insufficient Christians in the electorate to think that they can make an impact. This seems relatively uncontroversial to me, but I worry that we sometimes import the US attitude in the UK, even if we don’t have the overt politicisation. A key example is the use of fear to motivate people to lobby their MPs, with an underlying sense that we are being hard-done-by and our values being ignored. More than once Christians have been urged to write/pray/etc. based on the dire consequences that certain legislation might have for church life. The trend of such motivations could easily produce a bunker mentality where we defend ourselves from the culture rather than loving and serving those around us.
Which neatly leads into the final essay, which puts forward a model for Christian involvement in public life. Hunter characterises the predominant attitudes as ‘defensive against’, ‘relevant to’ and ‘purity from’. He notes that all have positive aspects, but have taken a wrong path. Hunter contrast these three with the idea of ‘faithful presence within’. (Tim Keller has also been discussing this model for a while, based on Hunter’s work; he has a good introduction in his talk to newfrontiers.)
The significance of ‘faithful presence’ can perhaps be described as going into the world (rather than withdrawing) as a distinctive community/voice (rather than assimilating), but with the aim of serving and enable flourishing wherever we can (rather assuming that we will somehow create a Christianised culture). For me this brings a great balance between the two extremes that either make Christianity about ‘personal salvation and holiness’ or assume that ‘given enough time, we’ll bring the kingdom of God in right-here-right-now’. It also brings out well the idea of service as a key aspect of our relations with others, which is obviously a focus in the Bible. It is not clear that the three alternative quite manage to give this the emphasis it should have.
This introduction of ‘faithful presence’ is really the key for the book. It is Hunter’s alternative to misguided attempts ‘to change the world’ (the title is ironic). Hopefully, it will stimulate new ways for Christians to truly serve the culture in a Christ-like way. This can be simply on a personal level — to recognise that our work and wider activities can be a part of our ‘faithful presence’ has the potential to revolutionise the way we approach daily life. But Hunter has more than this in mind; he is thinking also of serving communities, of institutions acting as a faithful presence. It will be interesting to see how the church responds to this challenge.
Culture making and community (2)
Posted by Paul | Filed under culture
In my last post I pulled together a few thoughts on making art and community. Widening this out a little, we can bring in similar ideas from the recent books on culture by James Davison Hunter and Andy Crouch.
Borrowing Justin Taylor’s summary of Hunter:
Thomas Carlyle’s “great man of history” view — “the history of the world is but the biography of great men”—is mostly wrong.
Rather, “the key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network [=community] and the new institutions that are created out of those networks” (p. 38). The more “dense” (active, interactive) the network, the more influential it could be.
Yes, there have been charismatic, heroic geniuses in history (Luther, Calvin, Wilberforce, etc.). But “charisma and genius and their cultural consequences do not exist outside of networks of similarly oriented people and similarly aligned institutions” (p. 38).
…
In history, “at every point of challenge and change, we find a rich source of patronage that provided resources for intellectuals and educators who, in the context of dense networks, imagine, theorize, and propagate an alternative universe.” Along with the elites there are often “artists, poets, musicians, and the like who symbolize, narrate, and popularize this vision.” New institutions give tangible expression by forming and enacting that culture. The result is a “vibrant cultural economy that gives articulation in multiple forms, and critical mass to the ideals and practices and goods of the alternative culture in ways that both defy yet still resonate with the existing social environment”.
In Culture Making, Crouch talks about the 3, the 12 and the 120 of any cultural project: the small group who ‘innovate and create a new cultural good’; and ‘concentric circles’ of people who add the weight that allow it to reach it’s full potential.
Absolutely no one makes culture alone. There may be periods of solitude where we work to shape our contribution to our own cultural sphere and scale. But for our work alone to bear any fruit at all, we will need to join a three. So one of the most important questions for our calling is, Who are your 3? Who are the few people you trust enough to risk creativing something together?
It is such communities, not just their famous representatives, that actually transform culture. Communities are the way God intervenes to offer, within every culture, a different and better horizon. To be Christian is to stake our lives on this belief: the only cultural goods that ultimately matter are the ones that love creates.
Culture making and community (1)
Posted by Paul | Filed under culture
What was emphasised to me most clearly from the Everything conference last weekend was the importance of community & relationship in cultural activity.
The seminar on art by Matt Hatch and David Sorley made the point best – probably because the message and the medium were so well matched.
In the discussion it was clear that the successful place of art in their church came from relationship; that the key was building trust (between the leaders and ‘creatives’ in the church) gradually over a number of projects. On top of this, the church, acting as a regular client, is effectively a benefactor of Sorley’s creative work both in and outside the church.
The words were backed up by the presentation – the interaction and conversation between the two of them during the seminar made the point just as clearly: here was something that worked because of their friendship and mutual confidence.
Broadening this out, maybe we can summarise the importance of relationship in this way: without building trust more adventurous and creative ideas would be dismissed, the community would be impoverished and creatives left frustrated; without regular clients/benefactors the work would be unsustainable.
A similar point comes out in Malcolm Gladwell’s article Late Bloomers. Taking Cézanne as an example he suggests that:
If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.
This is what is so instructive about any biography of Cézanne. Accounts of his life start out being about Cézanne, and then quickly turn into the story of Cézanne’s circle.
…
But for Zola, Cézanne would have remained an unhappy banker’s son in Provence; but for Pissarro, he would never have learned how to paint; but for Vollard (at the urging of Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, and Monet), his canvases would have rotted away in some attic; and, but for his father, Cézanne’s long apprenticeship would have been a financial impossibility.
So the first challenge for those wanting in make culture is to make relationships. To lose the caricature of the artist as heroic individual, or to put aside suspicion (depending which side of the fence you are) and to work on building trust and confidence with those around.
Tags: community, culture, Everything Conference
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...