The MagazineTo Change the World  Photo Credit: Erich Lessing The Irony, Tragedy, Natural Law A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought These two books concern the same general and difficult topic, one as old as the early church: the relationship of Christianity to culture. To Change the World takes up how Christian believers, their “citizenship in heaven” (as the Apostle Paul put it), should relate in this life to the world around them. James Davison Hunter, a University of Virginia sociologist who came to national attention almost two decades ago with Culture Wars, offers a paradigm for Christian engagement that he calls “faithful presence.” Accordingly, believers, sharing with nonbelievers a world that is more and more religiously pluralistic, are to seek “its overall flourishing.” Hunter presents his theology of faithful presence having spent much of his book arguing against forms of engagement that seek to transform culture in Christian terms, a quest that often ends up in politics. Because Hunter makes America (actually the America of the past 60 years) the focus of his inquiry, he treats individuals and organizations that will be familiar to an American audience, bluntly telling them “to abandon altogether talk of ‘redeeming the culture,’ ‘advancing the kingdom,’ ‘building the kingdom,’ ‘transforming the world,’ ‘reclaiming the culture,’ ‘reforming the culture,’ and ‘changing the world’”—doubtless not an exhaustive list. Neither the Christian right nor the Christian left (Hunter’s terms) will be happy with his downbeat assessment of their prospects. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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