To Change the World, a reflection by Dr. Dale Meyer
These last days I finished “To Change the World” by James Davison Hunter. Hunter is the Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and his book was published by Oxford University Press in 2010.
Despite the fact that Christians are the most populous religious group in the United States, American culture has become increasingly secular, sometimes stridently anti-Christian. Various Christian reactions have often been controversial and divisive. Hunter: “The proclivity toward domination and toward the politicization of everything leads Christianity today to bizarre turns; turns that, in my view, transform much of the Christian public witness into the very opposite of the witness Christianity is supposed to offer.” He sees no return to a “Christian” America, if ever there was such a thing. What does he propose?
“It may be that the healthiest course of action for Christians…is to be silent for a season and learn how to enact their faith in public through acts of shalom rather than to try again to represent it publicly through law, policy, and political mobilization.” (280-281) I’ll put it this way: If your church disappeared, would your community lament the loss?
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