To Change the World 3

Last updated on: September 2, 2011 at 11:46 am by Joel Willitts

To Change the World 3 2011-09-02T11:46:58-04:00 Joel Willitts

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James Hunter contents the approach taken to cultural change by Christians of every stripe is ultimately ineffective because it is based on a faulty view of culture. In his book To Change the World, he argues that the common view of culture is that culture is created as humans live out their ideas and values. Culture is “found in the hearts and minds of individuals” (6). “Culture is made up of the accumulation of values held by a majority of people and the choices made on the basis of those values” (6). According to this view, then, cultures change when the majority of people share a similar set of ideas and values and enact them in the world. If you change the heart and minds of the more and more people you will see culture change. He offers several key examples of this approach from Chuck Colson, to Focus on the Family’s Truth project, to a speech by the late Pope John Paul II. He shows that this is the prevailing approach of Christians today. Hunter comments that this “hearts and minds” view of culture is a product of the Enlightenment and was shared by the likes of Thomas Jefferson particularly in his fight for public education (9).

Hunter sketches the prevailing practices, or tactics, used by Christian communities that share the “hearts and minds” view of culture. These primary tactics are evangelism, political action, and social reform. As an Evangelical growing up in the shadow of the Moral Majority this is the kind of thing I’ve heard, “If we can elect a majority of Bible-believing, Christ-following, spirit-filled people into all levels of political office, we will steer our communities, states and country back in the right direction”. Or another one I’ve heard around Chicago, “If we can convince more Bible-believing, Christ-following, spirit-filled people to move into urban areas, we will see the city changed”.

According to Hunter, the core elements of this view of cultural change are:

cultural change results from transformed individuals,
cultural change can be willed into being, and
cultural change is democratic.

Hunter asks: does this approach work? Does this view change the world? He says, “yes and no; but it is mostly no” (18). Because “cultures simply do not change in these ways”. Hunter is not saying that the practices of evangelism, political action and social reform don’t matter or aren’t significant or don’t change lives. Rather his point is that as a tactic for sweeping cultural change these tactics simply don’t deliver, they don’t because they are based on a flawed theory of culture.

Hunter has at hand many examples of the ineffectiveness of approach. Adherents of the common view also clearly see the ineffectiveness of their efforts and have sought to turn up the heat on individual Christians. In a rather ironic passage, Hunter provides a commentary on what might best be referred to as the recent “Evangelical Surge” in the cultural war:

Here too the lesson is that because Christians are befuddled, Christians must be more diligent in learning and embrace more of God’s worldview. Only then will tings turn around . . . the burden of responsibility and action resides with the individual Christian and it is up to them to be better and do more to change the world. The apparent problem, in brief is twofold: First, Christians just aren’t Christian enough. Christians don’t think with an adequate enough Christian worldview, Christians are fuzzy-minded, Christians don’t pray hard enough, and Christians are generally lazy toward their duties as believers By the same token, there are not enough people who do fully embrace God’s call on their lives, praying, understanding, and working to change the world (23-24).

In the ironic tone of the passage, he’s essentially asking, “Is the problem wholly the result of lukewarm Christians and a small number of devoted disciples of Jesus or is something else also to blame, something that is even more fundamental?” This is a good question. It is true that individual Christians can do better. I can do better. But if Hunter’s right pulling up our boot straps and working harder will not accomplish the intended goal. A completely different view with a set of different practices is necessary.

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