James Hunter's Vision for Cultural Flourishing

I just finished Hunter's book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. I quite liked it. But I think an equally epic and quite possibly more accurate title could have been, To Change the World: Why It Involves More Parts To Generate A Flourishing Culture Than Christians Usually Assume and Why Christians Should Be Involved In All These Parts and At All Levels Rather Than Only Their Favorite Parts and Levels. Or something like that.

This entry will not attempt anything near a review. I don't have the time. Final papers bears down upon me once again. I do, though, want to mention a few things. One, I strongly recommend the book, because I think it's an important book. What Hunter has accomplished in nearly 300 pages of compact writing and small type is impressive. He has connected biblical, theological, political, sociological and historical lines of inquiry in a way that brings about a coherent picture of cultural life. That can only be done well by someone who has spent the better part of life studying the way societies tick. Artists will do well to read it. Those who care about the arts would too.

Two other things stood out. One, I liked the way he rendered the idea of "elites" and the role they place in the shaping of society. I've long felt that the ragged and uneven role that believer artists play in society owes in large part to a) our ideas about art ("our" = conservative Protestants), b) our dim view of the vocation of the artist and c) our unwillingness to invest in our young people to help them enter the best art schools and to pursue excellence at the highest levels of the profession. But, well, nothing original there. I found Hunter's exposition to be persuasive and would only fear the ways that readers might run with it in directions that Hunter repeatedly warns us against.

Two, I found the following bit at the end of his chapter, "Toward a Theology of Faithful Presence," to be worth pasting on my office bulletin board:

"As to our spheres of influence, a theology of faithful presence obligates us to do what we are able, under the sovereignty of God, to shape the patterns of life and work and relationship--that is, the institutions of which our lives are constituted--toward a shalom that seeks the welfare not only of those of the household of God but of all. That power will be wielded is inevitable. But the means of influence and the ends of influence must conform to the exercise of power modeled by Christ.

"Thus, when the Word of life is enacted within the whole body of Christ in all of its members through an engagement that is individual, corporate, and institutional, not only does the word become flesh, but an entire lexicon and grammar becomes flesh in a living narrative that unfolds in the body of Christ; a narrative that points to God's redemptive purposes. It is authentic because it is enacted and finally persuasive because it reflects and reveals the shalom of God."

Curiously enough, the language of that last sentence resembles the language Barth uses to describe beauty.

I confess that I don't feel ready to say (at length) what I think the book got right and wrong. I'd like to chew on its contents a little longer. In fact, starting tomorrow, Monday, I'll have a chance to spend a bit of focused time with the author. That will surely help the understanding process. I've been invited along with other Anglican leaders (mostly pastors, I think) to engage the ideas in Hunter's book over the course of three days. We'll gather in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Greg Thompson, pastor at Trinity Presbyterian Church, will function as our gracious host. I'm grateful for the invitation and I'll be curious to see what kinds of comments are made about the arts.

Speaking of the arts, there's one little thing that Hunter did that chaffed ever so slightly. He's not alone in this, but every time it popped up I wanted to grind my teeth. You'll probably groan or sigh when you read this, but maybe not. When the arts came up as a topic, either on their own or in connection with other industries of culture, he would often write "arts and music" or "arts and literature." What's wrong here, you ask? Not the end of the world, of course, but it's one of the subtle ways that the arts get misrepresented (misconstrued?) and that plenty of artists become relegated to the margins--yet again.

Binary phrases like this lead you to believe that the arts at the end of the day involve music, literature and the arts. Which arts? Typically the visual arts. This perpetuates, I'm afraid, a bias for arts which are perceived as privileged--again, music, literature and some visual art--and against arts which usually don't make the list of coveted media. Such as what? Such as theater, film, dance (modern, ballet, contemporary), the graphic arts, the electronic media arts or the performance arts, for starters. I give Hunter the benefit of the doubt on this, and happily so, but for the record here is my plea. Either write "arts" and refer by this to all media or spell them out or tell your reader why you've chosen to highlight only a few. Please don't assume that it's obvious why you've chosen only a few. If you do, you'll be perpetuating unhelpful and, in the case of actual artists, hurtful ways of perceiving--yes you guessed it--the arts.

One last thing. If I were to venture a critique of Hunter's narrative of cultural behavior, it would be this: that his primary error was one of omission, not of commission. It was not so much what he said and how he argued his case that I found troubling. I found these positively stimulating, inspiring, challenging and illuminating. Where he failed, if I can use this language, is in a lack of charity for his interlocutors. His rhetoric lacked a certain grace, especially in Sections I and II. By Section III he seems to have recovered an irenic, invitatory rhetoric. But prior to that it felt like reading a polemic inspired by Hell's Kitchen, where Hunter sliced and diced the "common view." He judged a "failure" the views of folks like Colson, Pearcey, Guiness, Wallis, McLaren, Yoder, Hauerwas and Crouch (et al).

Let me be personal here. I didn't like the way he served up and summarily dismissed my friend Andy Crouch's book Culture Making. (See here for Andy's own take.) While Andy does not develop ideas about power and networks at the same comprehensive length that Hunter did, Andy places these ideas centrally in his own third section, entitled "Calling." I've found myself frequently referring in public to Andy's 3s, 12s and 120s, and intuitively perhaps I have always thought of the 120s as a network of sorts.

From reading Hunter's re-telling of Culture Making you'd never know Andy had constructive things to say about networks and power. Andy covers similar territory as Hunter but--and this really mystifies me--Hunter fails to show points of continuity between his ideas on human flourishing and those of his colleagues in this business of observing, analyzing and prescribing ways to live well in our North American culture.  It made me sad, actually. I also found it to be a weakness of the book. In a way, it undermined his presumed goal, which at the very least included a resounding affirmation of the role that the church and all its motley members play in contributing to the well-being of a culture. Had Hunter unpacked his ideas while bringing along his fellow travelers, such as Andy, he would have modeled a communal way of doing scholarly work. Telling and showing together would have produced a powerful witness to the beauty of the ecclesia Christi. As it is, you get the feeling that Hunter has arrived at these conclusions on his own (which I can't imagine he would ever feel the need to claim).

Let me end by saying what I know only in part. Writing a book is hard work. Writing a good book is like running and winning an Ironman race, which, last I checked, is a thoroughgoingly wearying endeavor. Writing a great book is like winning that Ironman, then immediately appearing on Jeopardy and winning that too. It's doable, but pretty difficult. I know this mainly by watching friends write good books. Hunter's book is a good book. He has written a book that I will revisit repeatedly, as I have Andy's book and Niebuhr's too.

If you have the wherewithal, read To Change the World with a small group of friends. It's ripe for long discussions late into the night, and should be accompanied by only the best adult beverages. Hunter's vision of a New City Commons is beautiful and, by the end of his last chapter, welled up in me an ache to see it come into being. I hope I can do my part to serve the art sector of this vision of common flourishing. I'll certainly give it a try. The arts are well worth lovingly stewarding under Christ's tutelage, and the artists who make all this art, the good and the bad and even, pray God, the great, deserve our best prayers and our most generous patronage as they too seek to discern what faithful presence looks like in their respective spheres of life.