Thoughts on To Change the World by James Davison Hunter

Trying to change the world was probably not the right response to having my innocence shattered.

Photo by Maria Thalassinou on Unsplash (edited)

I sat in the forest green barrel chair, my legs tucked beneath me as I read the assigned pages in Life Management Under God, an 11th grade textbook from Abeka Academy. I was only 12 or 13 years old, but I was completing the course with my older sister. I turned the page and was arrested by an illustration of a tiny human whose arm was being torn from its body by cold metal forceps. For a life skills class that covered “preparing for marriage” and “fornication and adultery” but left out any explanation of sex and sexuality, the descriptions of abortion were detailed, graphic, and shocking.

I didn’t make it through the end of the first paragraph under the “D&C” heading before tears blurred my vision and sobs began to rock me in that barrel chair without my consent. I had long heard about the evils of abortion, but this was the first time I was learning what these procedures actually involved. I was caught off guard, and my tender heart was unprepared to encounter the world’s brokenness 12 inches from my face.

This was the first time I felt compelled to change the world. An urgency gripped me, and it would be over a decade before I could start to release my numb arm from its grasp.

James Davison Hunter, in his 2010 book To Change the World, recognizes,

“The passion to engage the world, to shape it and finally change it for the better, would seem to be an enduring mark of Christians on the world in which they live. To be Christian is to be obliged to engage the world, pursuing God’s restorative purposes over all of life, individual and corporate, public and private. This is the mandate of creation.

“Needless to say, the actual legacy of Christians in relation to this mandate is ambivalent, to say the least” (4).

Not long after my encounter with the graphic realities of abortion in that barrel chair, I convinced my parents to let me start a nonprofit. Well, convince is really too strong a word. It didn’t actually take much beyond sharing my vision to get them to help me draft official 501(c)3 articles of incorporation and list themselves as board members. Though you probably won’t be surprised, I am still just a tiny bit embarrassed to admit that we never collected a single donation, never inspired a single mother to choose life, never saved a single baby from those cold metal forceps.

I was moved to change the world, and everything I knew, the “social imaginary that serves as a backdrop for the ways in which the majority of those in America who call themselves Christians engage the world” (5) had told me that official, formal channels were the most effective and legitimate way to do so. Those channels could also get you mentioned in the news.

My nonprofit director aspirations failed before they even really got started, and about 10 years later my husband and I read To Change the World at the recommendation of my father-in-law. Hunter’s thesis is that

“[...] the dominant ways of thinking about culture and cultural change are flawed, for they are based on both specious social science and problematic theology. In brief, the model on which various strategies are based not only does not work, but it cannot work. On the basis of this working theory, Christians cannot “change the world” in a way that they, even in their diversity, desire” (5).

Hunter’s book hadn’t yet been published when I was sitting in that barrel chair, but I wonder if it could have saved me some of the angst of the years that followed. Perhaps, but both growing up and beautiful discipleship can only happen forward, while other lessons only come by looking back.

It’s been about 5 years since I first read To Change the World, and I’ve wanted to revisit it for a while. I would love to have you engage Hunter’s ideas with me. As I read over the next month or so I’ll share my thoughts. If you’d like to read along, grab a copy. And of course, we’ll pause for our monthly guest writers.

Aaron Hann

and

Christina Lynn Wallace

are on the schedule for the next two months and I can’t wait!

Beauty in Nature
I wish I could share smells over the internet, but alas, Silicon Valley has decided we need AI more than shared olfactory beauty. The scent of orange blossoms is one of my favorites. I could drink it in for days, and with citrus trees in my front yard, now I get to!

Beauty in Perseverance
My husband and I work for the same Christian organization, so sometimes what might be clearly defined as “work” spills over in our evenings and weekends as we discuss strategy and marketing and dream about seeing change happen in an institution we love. I’m reminding myself that perseverance and dedication is beautiful, but so are boundaries and work-life balance.

In pursuit of Beauty,