×

Hunter’s To Change the World: The Common View of Culture

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.

LOAD MORE
Loading