I’m doing a chapter-by-chapter summary of  James Davison Hunter’s new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). Today we’re on chapter 4.

Hunter has been looking at the fundamental flaws of the prevailing view of culture and cultural change. They are weak and ineffective because they fail to take into account

1. the nature of culture in its complexity; and
2. the factors that give culture its strength and resilience over time.

Hunter presents his social theory in eleven propositions, divided into two categories. We’ll look at the first category (on culture) today, and the second category (on cultural change) tomorrow:

Seven Propositions on Culture

1. Culture is a system of truth claims and moral obligations.

“Culture is, first and foremost, a normative order by which we comprehend other, the larger world, and ourselves and through which we individually and collectively order our experience” (p. 32).

At the heart of culture is a complex of norms, or commanding truths, which define the shoulds vs should-nots of our experience (i.e., good and evil, right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, honorable and shameful).

Frameworks of knowledge and understanding are largely prereflective (we take them for granted and things seem obvious) and are mainly coterminous with language—which is why it’s very difficult to change or question one’s worldview. Most of what shapes and directs us “operates far below what most of us are capable of consciously grasping” (p. 33).

2. Culture is a product of history.

Culture is highly resistant and durable over time; it’s less an invention of the will and more a slow product of history; the relationship of a culture to its history makes it “lumbering and erratic at the same time” (p. 34).

3. Culture is intrinsically dialectical.

There are two forms of this dialectic:

1. ideas and institutions; and
2. individuals and institutions.

Ideas and Institutions Intersect

“Culture is as much an infrastructure as it is ideas” (p. 34). Culture “is generated and exists at the intersection of ideas and institutions” (p. 34). “It is better to think of culture as a thing, if you will, manufactured not by lone individuals but rather by institutions and the elites who lead them” (p. 34).

Individuals and Institutions Are Inseparable

“Institutions cannot exist without the individuals who make them work, but individuals cannot be understood outside of the institutions that form them and frame all of their activity” (p. 35).

4. Culture is a resource, and, as such, a form of power.

Symbols are a resource. When cultural meaning is imputed to symbols, then culture can be thought to have symbolic capital.

(Examples: a winner of a Nobel Prize in literature has more symbolic capital than a romance novelist; The New York Times has more symbolic capital than The Dallas Morning News; Yale University has more symbolic capital than Bob Jones University, etc.)

Accumulating symbolic capital translates into a form of power and influence in terms of credibility and the power to define reality.

5. Cultural production and symbolic capital are stratified in a fairly rigid structure of “center” and “periphery.”

With cultural capital, it’s quality not quantity that matters. “The individuals, networks and institutions most critically involved in the production of a culture operate in the “center” where prestige is the highest, not on the periphery, where status is low” (p. 37).

(Examples, USA Today may sell more newspapers than The New York Times but the latter is at the center of cultural production.)

“The status structure of culture and cultural production is of paramount importance to understanding culture and cultural change” (p. 37).

6. Culture is generated within networks.

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).

7. Culture is neither autonomous nor fully coherent.

Culture (ideas + institutions) is “mixed together in the most complex ways imaginable with all other institutions” (esp. our market economy and the state) (p. 39). Because one cannot separate culture from its institutional spheres, “culture is never fully autonomous” (p. 39).

Given the tensions and internal antagonism of perspectives within culture, it can never be fully coherent.

Tomorrow we’ll look at Hunter’s four propositions on cultural change, where he tweaks the well-known maxim that “ideas have consequences.”

I’m doing a chapter-by-chapter summary of  James Davison Hunter’s new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Today we’re on chapter 3, “The Failure of the Common View.” (The “common view of culture” holds that cultures change when individuals change their ideas and values.)

Hunter clarifies that the three tactics—evangelism, political engagement, and social action—are themselves good things, and that much good can come from them. His criticism is with the “working theory that both undergirds these strategies and approves them as a primary if not only means for changing the world” (p. 18). The working theory itself is “fundamentally flawed.”

So according to the common view of cultural change, why aren’t Christians having more of an influence to shape culture? In effect, Hunter says, they think that “Christians are just not trying hard enough, acting decisively enough, or believing thoroughly or Christianly enough” (p. 22).

But the problem with this working theory of culture and cultural change and its strategies is its dependence upon idealism—the notion that ideas move history. As Colson puts it, “history is little more than the recording of the rise and fall of the great ideas—the worldview—that form our values and move us to act.” Hunter says that this “unqualified idealism” is “the convention among most American Christians” (p. 25).

Two other elements give this idealism a uniquely American and Protestant flavor:

1. individualism (“the autonomous and rational individual is the key actor in social change”); and
2. Christian pietism (“the most important goal in life is having one’s being right before God”).

Here’s the message that’s being communicated:

If people just pay better attention, learn better, be more consistent, they will understand better the challenges in our world today;

if they have the right values, believe the right things, embrace the right worldview, they will be better equipped to engage those challenges;

and if they have the courage to actually jump in the fray and there choose more wisely and act more decisively, they will rise to and overcome those challenges and change the world. (p. 27)

One of the ironies of idealism is that it is actually a manifestation of  dualism (the bifurcation of the secular and sacred, public and private, objective and subjective)—which the Christian culture-changers are seeking to challenge. He writes, “Idealism reinforces that dualism by ignoring the institutional nature of culture and disregarding the way culture is embedded in structures of power” (p. 27, my emphasis).

Hunter minces no words: “Every strategy and tactic for changing the world that is based on this working theory of culture and cultural change will fail—not most of these strategies, but all” (p. 27).

He’s not saying that renewing individual hearts and minds is a bad thing, or that worldview education won’t have good effects, or that Christians can be involved in social reform or the political process. Rather, “these things are just not decisively important if the goal is to change the world” (p. 27).

If we’re serious about changing the world, the first thing to do is to “discard the prevailing view of culture and cultural change and start from scratch” (p. 27).

At this point Hunter offers a four-page “coda” on Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making and his perspective of “culture as artifact.” Crouch argues that ideas, symbols, worldviews, etc. are mediated through things, and it is through the cultural artifacts that we encounter and make sense of the world. To change the culture, we have to create more of it. Christians should invest in creative cultural production.

I won’t reproduce all of Hunter’s analysis of Crouch’s approach—certain aspects of which he finds laudable. But he ultimately believes that “this view still suffers from fundamental flaws that render it inadequate for understanding the complexity of the world and Christianity’s relationship to it” (p. 29). Despite its merits, it is still individualistic, with cultural change being willed into being (by investing in and creating cultural goods) and is democratic (a bottom-up approach to change).

Hunter also notes that the market populism underlying Crouch’s approach “is reinforced by the absence of the church itself from the discussion” (p. 30).

Tomorrow we’ll look at chapter 4, a summary of Hunter’s alternative approach on how to view culture and cultural change.

I’m doing a chapter-by-chapter summary of  James Davison Hunter’s new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Chapter 2 is on “Culture: The Common View.”

Even though they are many views on culture, one view in particular has “gained predominance in the public imagination.” Charles Colson, Jim Wallis, James Dobson—all are cited as believing  and promoting this view, which holds that the essence of culture is found in the values (moral preferences) in the heart and minds of individuals. A culture, then, is made up of the accumulation of values held by the majority of people and the resulting choices those people make.

“Worldview” thinking is slightly more sophisticated. “Though driven by ideas, worldviews exist primarily in the hearts and minds and imaginations of individuals and take form in choices made by individuals” (p. 7).

Good ideas form the basis for good values which lead to good choices.

In contrast, bad ideas form the basis for mistaken or immoral values which lead to bad choices.

Changing culture requires more and more individuals embracing the good (i.e., good ideas leading to good values leading to good choices) instead of the bad. “Change the values of the common person for the better and a good society will follow in turn” (p. 9).

Christians generally employ three tactics to implement this working theory of how to change the world:

1. evangelism: not only as a way of saving souls but of transforming individuals and, indirectly, the culture;
2. political action: elect Christians who have the right values and worldview and therefore will make the right choices;
3. social reform: renew civil society through social movements of moral reform (addressing problems within families, schools, neighborhoods, etc.)

These tactics, of course, are not mutually exclusive. They all share in common a fundamental assumption: “Cultures change when people change” (p. 16, emphasis his).

Hunter lists three implications that are embedded within this view:

1. cultural change must proceed individually—one by one;
2. cultural change can be willed into being;
3. cultural change is democratic—bottom-up among ordinary people (rather than top-down by the elites).

William Wilberforce is often listed as the exemplar, and the message is clear: “If you have the courage and hold to the right values and if you think Christianly with an adequate Christian worldview, you too can change the world” (p. 17).

What does Hunter think of this model?

“This account is almost wholly mistaken” (p. 17).

In the next chapter we’ll see why.

For those following the discussion about James Hunter’s new book To Change the World, here’s a related Presidential Lecture he delivered at the University of Montana (April 6, 2009).

You can listen below to the talk, “Public Service and the Idea of a Changing World.” The first 5 minutes is introduction; the lecture itself is just under an hour in length; and then he answers questions for about 20 minutes.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

You can also download it.

See also this PDF, a transcript of a talk that Hunter gave to the Board of the Trinity Forum in June 2002 that formed the basis for the book.

HT: Tullian

I’m doing a chapter-by-chapter summary of  James Davison Hunter’s new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010).

The first “essay” of the book is on “Christianity and World-Changing,” and the first chapter in on “Christian Faith and the Task of World-Changing.”

Genesis 2:15 says that Yahweh “took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate [Hb. abad: work, nurture, sustain, husband] and keep [Hb. shamar: safeguard, preserve, care for, protect] it.” “These active verbs,” Hunter writes, “convey God’s intention that human beings both develop and cherish the world in ways that meet human needs and bring glory and honor to him” (p. 3). Christians therefore view human beings as designed by God to be “world-makers,” reflecting God’s goodness and his design for human flourishing.

With regard to the cultural mandate, Christians have a legacy of ambivalence: “There is much for Christians to be inspired by and much of which repent” (p. 4).

Hunter lists numerous mission statements from denominations and parachurch organizations “calling each other to engage the world and to change it for the better” (p. 4).

In the first essay, Hunter’s goal is to examine the ways in which diverse Christians “actually think about the creation mandate today, examining the implicit theory and explicit practices that operate within this complex and often conflicted religious and cultural moment” (p. 5, my emphasis).

What will Hunter argue?

I contend that the dominant ways of thinking about culture and cultural change are flawed, for they are based on both specious social science and problematic theology.

In brief, the model on which various strategies are based not only does not work, but it cannot work.

On the basis of this working theory, Christians cannot “change the world” in a way that they, even in their diversity, desire. (p. 5, my emphasis)

I’ve begun reading James Davison Hunter’s new book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2010). This is a highly significant book; I’m already benefiting from and being corrected and challenged by it. A website has been set up to further the conversation.

I’ll try to blog my way through the book, chapter by chapter (something I’ve never done with a book before).

In the preface Hunter explains that his concerns can be grouped into two broad categories, the academic and the personal.

The basic academic question is:

How is religious faith possible in the late modern world?

Related to this are questions like:

• Is it possible?
• How does the encounter of religious faith with modernity change the nature and experience of faith?
• How does it change modernity itself?

The personal question is related to the academic:

How do believers live out their faith under the conditions of the late modern world?