to change the world & soft difference
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
With all the discussion that James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World has generated, it seems a good time to point out that Miroslav Volf’s excellent essay ‘Soft Difference’ is available as a pdf on the website of the Yale Centre of Faith and Culture.
In this paper, Volf considers how the church should interact with culture based on a close reading of 1 Peter. Reading Volf’s paper alongside Hunter’s book, it’s easy to see the influence of Volf’s discussion on the faithful presence idea (&, I suspect, on a number of other perspectives on culture). For instance, take these key paragraphs:
Christians do not come into their social world from outside seeking either to accommodate to their new home (like second generation immigrants would), shape it in the image of the one they have left behind (like colonizers would), or establish a little haven in the strange new world reminiscent of the old (as resident aliens would). They are not outsiders who either seek to become insiders or maintain strenuously the status of outsiders. Christians are the insiders who have diverted from their culture by being born again. They are by definition those who are not what they used to be, those who do not live like they used to live. Christian difference is therefore not an insertion of something new into the old from outside, but a bursting out of the new precisely within the proper space of the old.
…the Petrine community … did not wish to impose itself or the kingdom of God on the world, but to live in faithfulness to God and to the values of God’s kingdom, inviting others to do the same. It had no desire to do for others what they did not want done for them. They had no covert totalitarian agenda. Rather, the community was to live an alternative way of life in the present social setting, transforming it, as it could, from within. In any case, the community did not seek to exert social or political pressure, but to give public witness to a new way of life.
Here we find the rejection of ‘relevant to’/'defensive against’/'purity from’; with the alternative of living faithfully and transforming from within.
But Volf adds something that doesn’t come out in Hunter’s analysis — the dynamic picture of ‘bursting out of the new precisely within the proper space of the old’. Here we have a new creation/resurrection type image that adds a new dimension over ‘faithful presence’ and introduces an interesting new facet. The key from this perspective is that the church is not filled with outsiders to the culture, but with re-born insiders. Hence
The question of how to live in a non-Christian environment, then, does not translate simply into the question of whether one adopts or rejects the social practices of the environment. This is the question outsiders ask, who have the luxury of observing a culture from a vantage point that is external to that culture. Christians do not have such a vantage point since they have experienced a new birth as inhabitants of a particular culture. Hence they are in an important sense insiders. As those who are a part of the environment from which they have diverted by having been born again and whose difference is therefore internal to that environment, Christians ask, “Which beliefs and practices of the culture that is ours must we reject now that our self has been reconstituted by new birth? Which can we retain? What must we reshape to reflect better the values of God’s new creation?”
…we should not lose sight of the rich diversity within any given culture and therefore of the multiple ways in which the gospel relates to it, such as being “against the culture” and “converting the culture,” ”subverting the culture” and in some sense being even “of the culture” all at the same time.
Despite quoting some reasonable chunks of the essay, this really only touches a small part of Volf’s discussion, so do go and have a look at the whole thing. And particularly if you’re thinking through Hunter’s book — Volf’s essay is a valuable addition to the conversation. Particularly if you want to add to the theological underpinning.
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.
Things that helped this week…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
A couple of things this week that were immensely helpful…
The first was a post by Don Miller on his blog: The Context for Spirituality is not Spirituality
If we think we are going to grow in faith by sitting around at a Bible study, we are wrong. That stuff is fine, but without a story, without diving into something really difficult, something that requires us to look to God for support and wisdom and comfort, it will be more difficult to become a person of great faith.
The second was an old talk by Tim Keller: The New Jerusalem. The stand-out for me in this was his discussion of the statement in Revelation that God is ‘making all things new’. He brought out the distinction – lost in english — between chronological newness and the quality of newness/freshness. That everything that God touches becomes fresh and new; there is endless opening up and discovery. We’re so used to decay and deterioration that we only experience this with chronologically new things, but with God and in the New Creation all that changes…
Desiring the Kingdom
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James K.A Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom is one of the most interesting books that I’ve read this year. I’ve just found an mp3 of a talk based on the book at www.calvin.edu/january/2010/smith.htm. It picks up on a lot of the key points from the book, so makes a great intro if you haven’t read it…
Hauerwas on the Life of a Theologian
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A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...