Could moving towards a post-political witness in the world exercise greater 'power' to change the culture?

In Hunter’s second essay titled, Rethinking Power (To Change the World), he reviews Christian history in the context of how Christians and the institutional church have used its power to transform culture. However, one of the biggest hurdles for believers to address and to overcome is the politicization of faith, where faith has become so enmeshed with politics as a way to find solutions to public problems that it has actually distorted the role of faith in society. Slowly, often imperceptively, there has been a turn toward the law and politics as the primary way of understanding all aspects of collective life (p.108). In Hunter’s view, this would apply to faith also.

  On the surface this may appear to be somewhat benign, but in essence what this means is that faith in society is now also viewed primarily through the lenses of law and politics. To counter this, there are those who would argue then, that for faith to have the power to change culture, it cannot be divorced from law and politics, but rather must engage them for leveraging purposes and even seek to change them so that biblical faith can take a more preeminent role is shaping culture. From this perspective, it becomes easier to understand why there are great sensitivities around the dual roles of politics and faith, and how they should or should not be entwined.

  Hunter looks at three specific groups of Christianity and describes how they have used power as a means to change culture or alternatively, not be influenced by it. The three groups are The Christian Right, The Christian Left and the Neo-Anabaptists. Before we briefly review these three groups, I believe it is important to understand that Hunter has taken a decidedly Western view of this, and that these three groups would not necessarily be reflected in all cultures. In fact, there is every probability that there are numerous variations of these groups where degrees of difference between them become somewhat ambiguous and difficult to define. In other words, applying only these three groups to our understanding of how Christian groups operate outside of the Western world may be far too simplistic.

  The Christian Right believes that the founding political documents reflected a profoundly Christian worldview, and that therefore, this once again should be at the foundation of culture reflected through our schools, hospitals, charity, laws, and so on. Anything that opposes this view is seen to be at odds with a Christian worldview, or even worse, at war with it: Thus someone coined the term, the culture wars. The conclusion is unavoidable: “nothing short of a great Civil War of values rages today throughout North America. Two sides with vastly differing and incompatible worldviews are locked in bitter conflict that permeates every level of society.”p.119 (Dobson and Bauer, Children at Risk). This has led to a desire by the Christian Right for dominance or controlling influence in American politics and culture (p.124).

  On the Left (Hunter describes them as politically progressive Christians, p.132), there exists a tension between two groups – the communitarian wing and the social libertarian wing. Individuals in the social libertarian group believe that every individual should have the autonomy and freedom to choose one’s own lifestyle. The Christian Left, tend to focus on the communitarian wing i.e. where liberty is understood more as liberation from poverty, usually caused by economic domination. They condemn the wealthy for their abuse of the poor, weak and marginalized. One of the criticisms of the Christian Left is that they have an extremely narrow focus that concentrates its efforts around the class warfare it believes is raging in our society and where the battle has shifted from a war on poverty to a war on the poor (p.138). The Christian Right however, appears to have virtually no interest in trying to challenge the powerful structures that maintain poverty in our culture. Hunter quotes Tom Sine as saying, “The pro-family folks need a wake-up call. The real threat to our Christian families isn’t some sinister elite living in Washington D.C. The real threat is Christian families unquestioningly buying into the secular aspirations and addictions of the American dream.” (p. 141). To the younger generation of believers this conflict and ‘abuse of power and irresponsibility’ leads many to abandon the institutional church.

  Like the Christian Left, The Neo-Anabaptists share a common dislike for the human and environmental consequences of an unrestrained market economy (p.150). It is different however in that its views play out more in theology and intellectual apologetics rather than in practice. Whereas the Christian Left are committed to a strong State to see its agenda realized in law and policy, the Ana-Baptists desire to keep their distance from the State, maintaining distrust towards their structure, action and use of power. The Neo-Anabaptists believe that the best way for the church to engage the culture is recognize the messianic identity and mission of Jesus. What does this look like? It is rejecting the temptation to use force or coercion and model an alternative relationship with the powers of the day. Their view is that if Jesus has “overcome the world” and has authority over “principalities and powers” then believers should simply ‘be’ the church, knowing and expecting that “it will suffer the condescension and hostility of the world for its social and political nonconformity.” (p. 158). In essence, the Anabaptists “accept powerlessness.” They view the politics of the Christian Right and the Christian Left as inappropriate intervention against the dominant powers of the State, rejecting the example set by Jesus and the way he chose to live in the context of Jewish Law under Roman Rule.

  If the public witness of the church is wrapped up in its political identity, reducing the Christian faith to a political ideology (at least in the West), then how do we move to a post-political witness in the world? This is the question that Hunter asks, and explores even deeper in his third essay that we will look at next week. Fundamentally though, because the Church is made up of individuals and communities, it collectively possesses power in the world. How can this power be used constructively? Hunter suggests that there are two things that must be done before this question can be addressed. Firstly, to disentangle the life and identity of the church from the life and identity of American society (p.184), and secondly, to decouple the “public” from the “political.” Politics is simply incapable of addressing every public issue.

  I must admit that Hunter’s essay on Rethinking Power has been both challenging and stimulating. After working with Focus on the Family (Dr. James Dobson was the Founder) for 17 years, the first 10 years outside of the U.S, I found it even more interesting reflecting on the emerging conflicts that arose from staff in their desire to be effective Christian witnesses to a new generation that is largely biblically illiterate, and how their views represented a sprinkling from the Christian Right, the Christian Left, and the Neo Anabaptists as described by Hunter. Without wanting to pre-empt Hunter’s conclusion in his Third Essay, perhaps rather than move to a centrist position, we can extract biblical characteristics from all three groups and coin a term to represent them…not Right or Left or Neo. How about simply, Christian? There’s a thought!

Fortunately, Changing the World is not Dependent on My Social Media Skills

To Change the World by James Davison Hunter is the first major text my friends are I are analyzing as part of a Doctor in Ministry on Global Missional Leadership through George Fox University. If you want to follow the dialog you can go to the following link  www.dmingml.com.

For the past few days I thought I had been interacting with others about their own reflections on Hunter’s work, as well as posting some of my own thoughts, only to discover that these had somewhere been chewed up in cyberspace. Fortunately, you can visit the link above and quickly realize that a very intelligent, inquisitive dialog has been going on without me and indeed appears not to have missed me at all! :)

Not to diminish some of the exhaustive work that Hunter has captured in his book, in essence, he is asking the question of how do Christians live our their faith in the culture in which they are engaged?

He assumes firstly that Christians want to engage the culture, and in fact, desire to change it, and goes on to critique a number of traditional models to which Christians subscribe to that measure the degree to which they believe Christians should engage the culture, and the nature of that engagement. This is quite a fascinating analysis, and one that is quite provocative. For me, one of the most critical questions that Hunter raises is on p.6, “To understand how to change the world, one must begin with an understanding of what needs to be changed. In short, everything hinges on how we understand the nature of culture.”

He proposes that for one major group, namely ‘evangelicals’, that their understanding of culture has more to do with the values/morals that individuals hold dear to themselves and the belief that if they could just convince everyone else how important those values are, then the culture would change to reflect those values and that would result in victory! Consequently, he believes that evangelicals tend to be more focused on the strategy of evangelizing individuals who in turn will evangelize others ultimately leading to a ‘majority rules’ perspective that places them in a position of influence and power to protect and change the culture. Although I believe Hunter doesn’t have a higher enough view of the role of evangelism in bringing about cultural transformation, I tend to cringe at the prospect that all Christians have to do is ‘win’ people over, ‘win’ enough people, and then through the power of that group enforce their values and try to impose them upon others – usually, the political process is chosen as the primary vehicle to achieve this end.

There are many examples throughout history where the Church has become implicated in these political processes which has led to non-believers becoming confused, angry and resentful. Sadly, many believers have also become disenfranchised by the Church because of this and left the Church, further weakening the transformational capability of the Church in communities around the world. The irony in this is, that this was not the strategy deployed by Jesus. Although Jesus was intentional about the way he engaged individuals and sought to point them to God, it was clear that he did not seek to ‘win’ them all one by one until he had an army that was capable of enforcing the values he espoused. In fact, he frequently steered away from confronting the powerful political and religious institutions of the day that potentially had the power to reinforce what Jesus preached and lived.

It appears to me that Hunter flounders a little at this point. He clearly believes that Christians are incapable of ushering in substantial cultural change unless it has the support of the elites or powerful institutions. While Jesus is a central figure in the world’s history and a ‘game-changer’ and understood the significance of his historical role in God’s wider purposes, Hunter believes that many Christians are naïve (almost arrogant) in seeking to change culture because they assume they understand exactly what God wants to change in the culture, and how he wants to do that through them. While each of us could recall examples that would support his case, equally, there are many examples when cultural transformation has been initiated because of one individual listening to the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, I found Hunter’s treatment of the reality and role of the Holy Spirit lacking.

I do however, accept Hunter’s proposition, that it is the responsibility of every believer to practice the faithful presence of Christ. How this plays out for individuals and institutions is still to be explored.

Thanks Joe Burnham ((#dmingml))

Joe is my hero!

I found out that I was dialoging into cyberspace, including leaving comments on blogs and they would just disappear – still don’t know why! I thought I left one on Andy’s site yesterday, but it is nowhere to be found.

Today, Joe helped me set up a posterous account and linked it to my facebook, twitter and blog. The best thing of all? It works. So, watch out!

Thanks Jason, Cliff and Loren for your patience.

Have a great weekend!

Glenn

Testing Posterous for Glenn Williams ((#dmingml))

Test

To Change the World

I've recently started a Doctorate of Ministry in Global Missional Leadership through George Fox University.

The first text I am grappling with is Jame's Hunter's book, 'To Change the World.'

Very simply, Hunter questions some of the traditional and more evangelical thinking that changing culture results from changing one heart and mind at a time. Is this really possible, given that there are powerful people in influential institutions within our culture that are really responsible for setting the direction of our culture?

Can you and I really effect widespread biblical change in our culture if we do not have the power wielded by our major institutions? Many of the characters in the Bible were leaders placed in strategic positions of influence.

Having asked these questions, it would appear from a study of the Gospels in the New Testament, that Jesus didn't seek human power, as much as question its rhetoric and hypocrisy. In some ways, he frustrated the institutions of the day by not seeking to become one of them. Look at the result. Started a small movement with 12 disciples that grew beyond the breadth and width of any one institution - religious or not!

What do you think?