Embarking

That’s not exactly how he phrases it, but James Davison Hunter in his recent book To Change the World: Irony, Tragedy, and The Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World questions the possibility of Christians really changing the world through intention.   It’s not nearly that simple, particularly for this brilliant sociologist, but Hunter argues – among other things – that changing the world is a long, complicated process involving cultural elites and centers of power, particularly in politics, that run contrary to the biblical vision given to us by Jesus.  I’ve been reading this book over the past couple months and have finally brought it to conclusion, although I think I’ll read it again.  In a nutshell, Hunter challenges the assumption that aggregated individuals through grassroots efforts can make any lasting or significant change in culture, particularly without wielding the very power of coercion that Christianity rejects.

I think Andy Crouch from the Christian Vision Project sums it up well when he says, “The irony is that there is no phrase more beloved to a certain kind of Christian than ‘to change the world.’ But in Hunter’s persuasive account, the strategies those very same Christians have pursued are, by themselves, woefully incapable of changing the world…”  ”…the very idea of ‘changing the world’ is rooted in a quest for dominance that fundamentally misunderstands the Christian gospel and the way of Jesus.”

Hunter goes on to critique the Christian Right (conservatives), The Christian Left (liberals or mainliners), and what he calls the “Neo-Anabaptists” made up of folks like Hauerwas, Yoder, Claiborne, and the New Monastics.  In this critique, Hunter betrays his philosophical (or sociological?) postmodernism in agreement with the likes of Foucault, Nietzsche, and others about language, power, and the coercive nature of culture creation.

There are several people who engage Hunter’s work, not the least of which are Andy Crouch and Chuck Colsen (see the posts below) who ask some great questions.  What I found interesting was that nowhere (I’m sure it’s out there somewhere) have I yet seen someone challenge the philological, linguistic, postmodern philosophical assumptions of Hunter’s work.  Don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with Hunter on these points about power and cultural transformation, but he doesn’t fully tip his hands about the philosophical foundations of those ideas, choosing instead to shroud them more spiritually in the non-coercive, non-violent leadership of Jesus.  I happen to think these two things are very compatible, but haven’t seen much work done to connect the two (which I’d love to do if I had the time).  Hunter does his sociological work as a Christian within a postmodern philosophical framework, but only acknowledges his indebtedness to the likes of Foucault at a cursory level hidden in the endnotes (yes, some of us do read them, cf. endnote 1, Chapter 4, Part I) and to Nietzshe with a short explication ofressentiment from Nietzsche and its relationship to Christianity in Chapter 7 of Part II.  Generally I find most Christians merely lambasting postmodern thought and philosophy without a) really understanding some of the seminal thoughts, b) seeing the ability to be a Christian and acknowledge some of these realities, or c) understanding how deeply these ideas affect issues of hermeneutics, missions, and even contextualization.

Don’t get me wrong, there are serious problems with postmodern philosophy, postmodernity as a cultural project, unthoughtful “postmodern churches” and edgy “postmodern pastors”.  But some of the more serious questions about our embeddedness in cultures of understanding based on would help us think through contextualization in mission, understanding of  power and language might help us avoid our sometimes coercive tendencies (in marketing, preaching, the use of guilt, etc.), and a greater honesty about our presuppositions and framing stories might help us get closer to real conversation with people about basic beliefs without mere condemnation and help our evangelism.  Recently Tim Keller told a group I was a part of that we need a new approach to apologetics, and I think this is part of it.  Hunter, in my opinion, opens the door to some of these conversations in a different (and potentially less volatile) way than Brian McLaren.

So, here are a couple wrap up thoughts on Hunter’s book:

1. This is a wonderful, scholarly work on how cultural change actually functions.
2. This work requires additional study on these issues by Christians and non-Christians alike.
3. There is much more work to be done in helping Christians to wrestle with some of these underlying issues of power, language, and culture (which, honestly, postmodern philosophy is mostly about).
4. This analysis is extremely helpful in understanding many of the drawbacks of the Christian Right, Christian Left, and the Neo-Anabaptist approaches and their rooting (or not) in ressentiment (which, interestingly enough, was the subject of one of my senior seminar papers in 1994 dealing with Neitzsche and the will to power.)

Enough of that for now.  I have more to say, and if I find the time I’ll write more.  Here are some helpful articles that give some more information about the book and Crouch and Colsen’s responses.

• Executive Summary of Is There a Culture War:  A Dialogue on Values and American Public Life from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2006 featuring Michael Cromartie, Alan Wolfe, James Hunter, and others.
• Andy Crouch’s response Hunter and I Agree on Culture Making (He just seems not to know it) in Christianity Today and How Not to Change the World in Books and Culture.  I read Crouch’s book last year, and really enjoyed it.  Crouch takes issue with Hunter’s cursory overview of his book, and having read it, I agree with Crouch.  I ran into him at the Q Conference a few weeks ago and ask him, “What did you think of Hunter’s challenge to your book,” to which he responded, “Have you read my review in Books & Culture?”  Thanks for the tip, Andy, and it was good to meet you.
• Chuck Colsen responded in his article More Than a Faithful Presence in Christianity Today.
• Interview of Hunter by Christopher Benson Faithful Presence in Christianity Today.

“The world is changing. Some people are hip to it, others are not. If you want to buy groceries in 5 yeqrs, id recommend listening closely to the former and avoiding the latter: just my two cents.” -Hugh MacLeod

One of the interesting things that Dr. Tim Keller said at the North American Network gathering for City to City was something like the following:

“The reason secularists are afraid of Christians is their belief that if we get in power, we will take everyone else’s freedoms away.”

I found this to be an interesting and enlightening comment.  I’m not sure the word “afraid” hits it quite right, but what Keller is getting at is that Christians are often not great “citizens” in the secular society because of our propensity towards creating a government which takes things away from people – rights, civil liberties, freedom of belief, etc.  I’m not sure this has happened in recent history in any way of significance, but the threat is certainly there from the Christian Right.  The sense that, if Christians would be placed into major political positions of power, we would use our power to estrange others of different beliefs is palpable in at least the rhetoric.  The interesting thing about this is that certainly, any political group lobbying for power hopes in someway to use that power to leverage their beliefs for their version of the good of the country.  I’m not so sure that Christians are all that different in this political sense than any other idealogical group.  However, my deeper question (and possibly Keller’s) is whether there is another way to approach cities, politics, and the social sphere in general from a Christian perspective or from Christian values and beliefs.

There are lots of questions wrapped in whether and how Christians should be involved in politics.  And historically, there are any number of ways in which Christians have approached the public realm, from ruling and reigning to fomenting revolution to isolation.  Today, Christians can be found on the left, on the right, in the middle, and on the outskirts.   What I appreciated, though, about Keller’s comments was that it is disturbing that our neighbors and fellow citizens would be worried about persecution and oppression under a Christian lead government.  That’s enlightening when we think about it deeply.  I realized that I’m afraid of many of the Christians I know getting into the political realm for the same reasons.  So, Keller asks, why don’t our neighbors think we love them?  Why don’t people in the city think we love their city?  If we are truly loving our neighbors as ourselves and seeking the welfare of the city (and country), why would that be threatening?  Is it the confusion in their hearts and minds, or is it in something we have done? (my bias is that it’s something we are responsible for more than anything… cf. the wonderful book UnChristian by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman).

I’ve been reading the book To Change the World by James Davison Hunter, which is a fascinating book on culture, history, power, Christianity, and change.  In that book, I think it’s chapter 5, Hunter shares some history of the relationship between Christians and political movements.  One of his arguments (to be really simplistic) is that when the cultural elites are truly converted and lead with humanity in mind through true care for the poor, estranged, and powerless that Christianity has been the most effective in cultural change.  Though I haven’t heard enough on Keller, I think this is where he’s pointing.  How do you impact the cultures of power and ideas while maintaining a heart for true justice and care for all humanity?

Jesus said this in his inauguration into ministry in Luke 4, quoting from the Isaiah 61 vision:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

One of the questions here is how this message and mission of Jesus – the good news – is being missed by our culture when Christians try to enter into the public realm?

I think Keller’s right.  We don’t know how to enter the public discourse, and often aren’t allowed into the public discourse as Christians because of our reputation.  We do need a new apologetic that arises out of the message and mission of Jesus for a new humanity, rooted in love and redeemed by love, for all people.

Again, we return to love, the gospel of love, the message of love, the heart of love, the approach of love, the words of love, the power of love, the conviction of love, the character of love, the way forward through love.  Love.  Jesus.  Simple.

What would a politics or public discourse of love look like, feel like, and sound like?  What if the world looked to Christians and said instead, “We would love to have you at the table because we know if you were in power, more people would experience the true freedom that love brings.”

I spent this past week in Miami a meeting with a number of Church Planting Networks and planters too look at the possibility of beginning a North American Network for city movements.  This gathering was catalyzed by the folks at Redeemer City to City and brought together people from  Renew South Florida, Acts29, the RCA, many from the PCA, the SBC, the GCM Collective, and others.  It was an awesome time to meet other folks who are passionate about reaching North America, particular through cities.  It was great to hear the unique challenges and opportunities that cities bring and present to the church.  The outcome of this gathering was that a group will be formed, likely to be called the City to City Collective for shared resourcing, networking, encouragement, and more.  It’ll be great to see what unfolds.

Tim Keller of Redeemer in New York was the keynote speaker, and I want to share just a few things.  In the first session, The Challenge of North American Cities, Keller said that the expense of cities, the complexity of cities, and the mobility of cities makes a church plant there very hard.  Knowing that, it’s important to see larger trends, and in that vein he spoke about the decline of cities from 1970-1990 in which cities were hollowed out at the core, with suburban flight the order of the day.  This left an urban desolation in many cases, with increased crime rates, devalued properties, and a cultural malaise.  The rich would commute from the suburbs and leave the urban poor in the central city.  From the 1990′s to today, there was been an upsurge in cities, a renewal of the urban core.  In many ways this was due to gentrification (young professionals re-locating to urban environments).  Crime went down, cultural productivity increased, and the core of cities have thus seen a resurgence.  However, the poor are also often displaced as property values increase and the city finds cultural and economic renewal.  Each era presents a different kind of opportunity, different needs, and different responses by the church.    The follow up question is, then, what is the future of the city?

Keller, then, offered his analysis of what the future holds for American cities.  First, he spoke of the following positive trends:

• North American churches are globalizing.  This is a positive trend because strong international connections create stability and prestige.  Because the era of America as an economic self-sufficient engine is over, globalization is important.
• North American churches are urbanizing.  By urbanizing, Keller was particularly speaking to the trend in cities towards smart growth, urban planning of  the New Urbanism kind.  He referenced the return to a walkable, mixed-use human settlement in cities, including places to work, live, shop, play, and learn within 10 minutes as opposed to the suburbanizing affect in which everything is about commuting and doing life with people that are not the same people you live with.  There are lots of great books on this, and I think he’s right on about not only emerging urban planning, but also that this is a positive trend not only for cities and human beings in general who live there, but also for the church because it creates a possible parish that is not merely made up of people commuting to their favorite church or speaker.

Secondly, he spoke of negative trends:

• The rise of great need:  Here, Keller focused on the recent recession and global financial meltdown, particularly in American cities.
• However, though this is a negative trend in some ways in terms of urban development, Keller rewinded to remind us that through our history lessons we learn that God has often used urban dysfunction to win the hearts of people.  When we are in times of great need, there is also great opportunity for the church to respond.

So, for Keller, the future of urban ministry looks good because of globalization, new urbanism, and increased need.

Lastly, in terms of cities, Keller mentioned the following future trends to expect:

1. Increasing hostility in the culture wars.  He was particularly on target when he said that we are fighting a Two Front War:  Secularists think Christians are too moralistic.  Muslims and Hindus think we are too permissive.  There will, then, be increasing hostility from secularists and increasing hostility from fundamentalists (of all sorts, including Christians).
2. More opportunities for justice and mercy.  This is true particularly because of the increasing needs in the global financial meltdown and the increasing gap between the rich and the poort.
3. Culture-making will be increasingly important, particularly with respect to the integration of faith and work.  People in the city will desire more and more the integration between multifarious worlds.
4. A new kind of apologetics.  This part was particularly poignant for me.  Back in 2000, I started a class called “Beyond Apologetics” because I was realizing that because of the shifts we are experiencing in late modernity or post-modernity, that a new kind of apologetics is needed.  This doesn’t mean that the classic apologetics are wrong or bad, but merely that we need a new apologetic for a new emerging culture.  In Keller’s words, “We need to answer questions people are actually asking” or in one of the bylines of my former church in Ann Arbor, “Ask questions worth answering; seek answers worth believing.”  Here are some of the points and reasons for a new apologetic:

• The world essentially says to Christians, “You are not good neighbors.”
• We need more cogent and powerful answers to questions that people are actually asking.
• The basic objection alongside of evil & suffering, etc. is that Christians are bad citizens of pluralistic cities because as we grow and if we grow, we will take away people’s rights and freedoms.
• We are completely outflanked in the public arena.
• We have to care for the whole parish, including our secular neighbors.
• The public narrative is that Christians are intolerant, and that is very powerful and makes it extremely hard to enter public discourse.

Keller also spoke about the stages of development of the catachuminate which we need to revisit, and how the church is failing in its response to homosexuality.  That’s a long conversation for another time.

I’ll blog a bit more on this in the future if I can find the time, including some of his other sessions.

I’ve had about 10 books going for awhile, and I’m trying of focus on finishing one at a time. I just finished reading The New Monasticism: What it has to say to the church, “an insider’s perspective” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. I’ve mentioned the new monasticism before, and I have a lot of respect for what they’re trying to do. The New Monasticism movement reminds me a little bit of the way George Hunger III described St. Patrick’s monastic project in the Celtic Way of Evangelism (a fabulous book, and a must read as far as I’m concerned.)  He talked about how the early missionary monks to the Celts moved into their cities and rural sprawl and created a kind of monastic island in the middle of these people.  These monastic communities had a strict rule of life, served the people in their community, offered hospitality to strangers, and sought to transform a culture from the inside out.

I really appreciate the 12 Marks of the New Monasticism.  Hartgrove gives a good basic understanding of how monastics have been a part of renewal in the church throughout various centuries.  He writes about how monastics seek not to separate from the church or become an alternative, but to bring renewal and reformation to the church by returning to some key roots such as hospitality, sharing all things in common, prayer, and serving others.  This is how Hartgrove begins, by sounding the call, “the church in America isn’t living up to what it’s supposed to be.  Somehow we’ve lost our way.”  The point of monastic movements is to remind the church of its true identity, and that’s true for the New Monastics as well.

I had a fabulous conversation with a gentleman from my church recently who’s feeling the same way.  He loves the church, and yet he feels like the church in America missing the point of the mission at so many levels by putting money and energy into too many things that are not the heart of the reasons for the church in the world on God’s mission.  In his words, “We’ve so boughten into the American dream, that we’ve forgotten what the church is supposed to be.”  Hartgrove writes about this very thing.

What’s unique about this movement is that it takes seriously the renewal of the church and the ancient practices of monasticism in a way that is both inclusive of married couples and families and is also deeply embedded within the cultures of this world, particularly urban settings.  These settings are often referred these days by many of us as “abandoned places of the empire,” referring to those places, particularly urban, that have been deeply affected by the contemporary empire’s of consumerism and progress.  I’ve appreciated everything I’ve read and heard from the many in this movement and am already seeing how they are affecting the church in dramatic ways, Shane Claiborne being one of the key players here.

The New Monastics have also, like many people I respect, been deeply influenced by John Perkins.  Years ago, I sent some students to learn from Perkins and his community, and it was a life-changing experience for many of them.  Particularly, his 3 R’s are foundational (Relocation, Redistribution, and Reconciliation) for only only the New Monastic movement, but for other renewal thinkers in the urban settings as well (ie. Christian Community Development Association).  The other thing I deeply value is people like this who are able to speak intelligently and passionately about justice issues, poverty, and concern for the least of these while also maintaining some of the evangelical commitments of the Scripture.  More and more voices are emerging that are neither conservative nor liberal, fundamentalist nor mainline, republican nor democrat but hold together the biblical truths which cross such narrow, dualistic, and truncated views of the Scripture.

Good read for anyone who is thinking about the emerging church, renewal of the church and culture, poverty, urban ministry, community, and what some consider a more “radical” Christianity, which I think is probably closer to the identity of the early church than many of the churches in America today.

These are some of my notes from the seventh session of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.

• Focus, study and replicate the 2 that are stellar
• Look for the bright spots and find out what’s different; throw resources behind those and multiply

When going after big issues, focus on sequences of small solutions and small starts.

“Shrink the change” – Take a large change, and run a micro version; get some small victory.  Then, resource and multiply and go big.

We owe it to people to prepare them for adversity.

Ideo's View of Hope to Confidence

There are people who have the “growth mindset.”  They are always thinking that with work, they can become better.  But built into that whole process is a tolerance for failure.

“Failure is not an option” is ridiculous.  It is often through failure that success comes.  It may be an early warning sign for success.

Sometimes we think we have a problem with someone who won’t change, or won’t accept our ideas.  In this sense, we think we have a “people” problem when we might actually have a “situation” problem.  This is called a fundamental attribution problem.

These are some of my notes from the sixh session of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.

“Speeches take place within a context never a vaccum.  Listeners bring to the occassion not only their dreams and aspirations, but a range of questions about the speaker.  Who is he down deep?  What does he really stand for?  Does he speak with authority?  Does he care about people like me? Can I place my faith and trust in him?”

–Gergen

These are some of my notes from the third part of the fifth session of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.

“The very people who should have been protecting us were our attackers.”

These are some of my notes from the second part of the fifth session of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.

These are some of my notes from the first part of the fifth session of the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.  Thanks to Louis who helped me with this session while I answered a pager call.

Third culture is about adaptation.  Third culture is pain and discomfort because we interact with those who are different.  The Great Commandments are about third culture.

Third culture leaders go after the misfits more than the masses.

• FAILURE IS SUCCESS to God
• Your failure, your pain, is your platform to humanity, it is what the World connects to you on it is what gives quality to your voice for the generation to connect to you
• Most of the world doesn’t understand America’s success, but they will understand suffering, maybe suffering is success
• Do we set aside time to listen to people’s story?
• Gifts are important and skills, but our narrative is key
• Walk slowly, see the people
• Do I see them?  Do I have the eyes of a follower?
• Weakness will guide us more than our strengths
• We often worry about how to quantify a vision… DON’T we already have a vision?  LOVE GOD LOVE NEIGHBOR
• RELATIONSHIPS TRUMP VISION!
• You can’t have great vision without a great relationship with God
• Jesus only did what he saw his father doing (JOHN 5)
• We need more relationaries not visionaries
• People to walk for a while people to talk for a while, where you feel the vibe
• Best discipleship happens with life on life not a process or program

Third culture leaders have a different set of metrics.

• CHANGE PRIORITIES
• Hang out with people different than us
• Read people different than us

Third culture leaders know that obedience is more important than passion.

4 Acts of Obedience of a Third Culture Leader

1. Deeper Collaboration
2. Communal LIving
3. Prayer
4. Radical sacrifice for the outsider