To Change the World 2

Last updated on: August 21, 2011 at 10:09 am by Joel Willitts

To Change the World 2 2011-08-21T10:09:53-04:00 Joel Willitts

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I’ve recently begun a series of posts on James Hunter’s book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. We pick it up with chapter one – Christian faith and the Task of World-Change

Hunter begins with the foundation of God’s creational mandate. God created the world and humanity as the pinnacle of his creation. God made humanity to image him by acting as creative agents in his world. Hunter comments, “In the Christian view, . . . human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature world makers . . . For Christian believers, an obligation accompanies God’s gift of life, an obligation by no means negated by human sin” (3). In difference to the world, although present within Christian tradition, is extremely rare. “The passion to engage the world, to shape it and finally change it for the better, would seem to be an enduring mark of Christians on the world in which they live” (4).

Hunter admits, however, that the Christian legacy of world change is ambivalent. As he says it, “There is much for Christians to be inspired by and much of which repent [sic]” (4).

Christians of all traditions today can be found calling each other to engage the world and to change it for the better. The creational mandate inspiring the wide-ranging call among all branches of Christendom to be world changers shows a sincere and deep idealism that is no doubt honorable, but seriously flawed according to Hunter.

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 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 (5).

Do you share Hunter’s pessimism about the way Christians seek to engage the world and effect transformation? What flaws do you see?

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