To Change the World: A Fourth Political Theology

James Hunter's book, To Change the World, is a stimulating challenge to the question of church and culture. Hunter's identification of the two essential tasks of the church with regard to culture and power are worth pondering:

"The church has two essential tasks. The first is to disentangle the life and identity of the church from the life and identity of American society. The second task is for the church and for Christian believers to decouple the “public” from the “political.” The way of Christ differs. His way operated in complete obedience to God the Father, it repudiated the symbolic trappings of elitism, it manifest compassion concretely out of calling and vocation, and it served the good of all and not just the good of the community of faith."

Hunter's groundwork for an alternative approach is described as follows:

"Christians are called to relate to the world within the dialectic of affirmation and antithesis. If there are benevolent consequences of our engagement with the world, it is precisely because it is not rooted in a desire to change the world for the better, but rather because it is an expression of a desire to honor the creator of all goodness, beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God, and a fulfillment of God’s command to love our neighbor. Antithesis, in contrast, is rooted in recognition of the totality of the fall. Consequently, however much Christians may be able to a affirm in the world, the church is always a “community of resistance.” The objective is to retrieve the good to which modern institutions and ideas aspire, to oppose those ideals and structures that undermine human flourishing, and to offer constructive alternatives for the realization of a better way."

Both of these above paragraphs are taken from the abstracts to the various chapters of his book, which Hunter provides at his web site.

The Church's Particularity

“Each church…reflects a distinctive culture or cultures…Regardless of its relationship to the prevailing culture around it, a given church is itself a cultural community with its own language, spoken or unspoken rules of conduct, expectations, and the like. While it is possible to discern authentic and inauthentic expressions of the gospel and church in a given culture, it is impossible to separate the gospel and the church from culture….As Newbigin sees it, ‘The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion’” (Exploring Ecclesiology, by Harper and Metzger, p. 275).

The Western, White Cultural Captivity of the Church

Soong-Chan Rah has written an important book, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity. It has an edge; it is a bit redundant, but it is an important book. If you are interested in the church and its cultural instantiation, this is a must read. Part of what it reveals is how far behind many of us (read "white cultural Christians") are with regard to the whole question of "race" and diversity, especially as it is impacting the church. Perhaps growing up in Asia and then working with the church there for so many years has biased my view. But I felt embarrased as I read this work: embarrased at our own cultural blindness. May the Lord use this volume to help open our eyes.

What Role Does the Church Have in Politics?

An interesting book, Debating the Divine, on the role of religion in American politics is now available in pdf format from American Progress.

Here are the contents:

Introduction

Debating the Divine, by Sally Steenland (pdf)

About the Authors (pdf)

Opening Essays

Civic Patriotism and the Critical Discussion of Religious Ideas, by David A. Hollinger (pdf)

Religious Pluralism in the Public Square, by Eboo Patel (pdf)

Responding Essays

The Two Cultures?, by Mark Lilla (pdf)

Religion in the Public Square, by Nicholas Wolterstorff (pdf)

Religions and Public Life: Problems of Translation, by Martha Minow (pdf)

Wisdom, Not Prescription: One Size Does Not Fit All, by Mark A. Noll (pdf)

Nobody Gets a Pass: Faith in Reason and Religious Pluralism Are Equally Questionable, by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite (pdf)

Clothes Encounters in the Naked Public Square, by T. Jeremy Gunn (pdf)

America’s Tower of Religious Babble Is Already Too High, by Susan Jacoby (pdf)

Religion and Community Organizing: Prophetic Religion and Social Justice Offer Avenues to a New Democratic Pluralism, by Charlene K. Sinclair (pdf)

The Rules of Engagement: How the American Tradition of Religious Freedom Helps Define Religion’s Role in Civic Debate, by Melissa Rogers (pdf)

Globalization, the End of Easy Consensus, and Beginning the Real Work of Pluralism, by Vincent J. Miller (pdf)

Liberals and Religion, by Alan Wolfe (pdf)

Closing Essays

Patterns of Engagement and Evasion, by David A. Hollinger (pdf)

The Promise of Religious Pluralism by Eboo Patel, (pdf)

Policymaker Response

Transforming the Religious–Secular Divide to Work for the Common Good, by John D. Podesta and Shaun Casey (pdf)

The Conservative Response in Anglicanism

An interesting meeting will take place starting tomorrow within the more conservative wing of the Anglican Church; the gathering is called GAFCON, the Global Anglican Futures conference. "Many conservatives pulled out of Lambeth (the gathering of Anglican bishops every ten years) in the ongoing dispute over homosexual ordination and same-sex blessings." Peter Jensen, who heads up the conference, suggests that GAFCON could turn into a movement "with sufficient institutional reality to make it a new force within the Anglican Communion." Again, the question is raised, what does it mean to be the Church today? What kind of corporate life do we construct together? What does the Church "as culture" look like?

An Apocalyptic Assessment from the Right

Dr. Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, believes there are four “modern horsemen of the apocalypse” that are “riding forth to wreak havoc and destruction in our society” – the denial of the sanctity of human life, the rise of hardcore Internet pornography, the radical homosexual agenda and its attempt to undermine marriage and radical Islamic jihadism.

Might 40% of "Evangelicals" Vote for Senator Obama?

According to an article in The Christian Post 30-40% of "evangelicals" may vote for Senator Obama for president this November. The article states:

"The fascination with the charismatic Illinois senator combined with evangelicals’ effort to not be seen as an appendage of the Republican Party could swing evangelical voters in Obama’s favor, predicted Mark DeMoss – a prominent public relations executive whose clients include Focus on the Family, Franklin Graham, and Campus Crusade for Christ –to Beliefnet.com."

“I will not be surprised if he gets one third of the evangelical vote,” DeMoss said in the interview. “I wouldn’t besurprised if it was 40 percent.”