W. Davd Phillips

I am continuing to work through the book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davidson Hunter.

To share the Gospel is to share the gift of life; the making of disciples is foundational to the Christian faith. And peoples’ lives do change profoundly when they receive the gift of grace – their attitudes and behaviors are transformed and, in turn, they can and often do have a positive effect on those around them. In a similar vein, no one would deny that law, public policy, and politics are worthy vocations for Christians to pursue. The pursuit of justice and righteousness in these vocations can give glory to God and provide great service to many. Finally, social movements oriented toward moral reform have done enormous good in the past and still do in the present. But do they change the world? The answer is both yes and no; but mostly no. Cultures simply do not change in these ways, or at least no in the way people think they do.

In a previous post, I described how getting people to have the right the heart and mind, the right values and worldview, was the prevailing way to change culture. However, if culture were simply about hearts and minds, then the influence of various minorities – gays and Jews, for example – would be relatively insignificant. And Christians would have enormous influence in shaping law, public policy and social strategy. But this is not the case.

The advocates of the dominant strategies of cultural change all tend to agree, in effect, that the reason Christians do not have more influence in shaping the culture is that Christians are just not trying hard enough, acting decisively enough, or believing thoroughly or Christianly enough. The issue for them is that Christians need to be more committed. They need to embrace more fully the Christian worldview. The burden of responsibility and action resides with the individual Christian and it is up to them to be better and do more to change the world.

The problem is twofold. First, Christians just aren’t Christian enough. Christians don’t think with an adequate enough Christian worldview. They are fuzzy-minded. They do not pray enough, and they are lazy in their duties as believers. In the same way, there are not enough people who do fully embrace God’s call on their lives, praying, understanding, and working to change the world.

But is this it? (more…)