Chapter 4 of Hunter’s book is superb. In it, he describes what actual cultural change looks like, and he gives us this description in 11 propositions. It is superb, not because these 11 propositions cover everything, but rather because they reveal how much needs to be covered. I have a few yeah, buts, but I …
Small Mission Buildings in San Antonio
I am enjoying James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World. In addition, I have read Andy Crouch’s review of the book in Books & Culture, and have listened to Ken Myer’s interview of Hunter on the most recent Mars Hill publication. At the same time, enjoyment aside, I do think Hunter gets off on the …
How Secularists Fence the Table
Sociologists speak of plausibility structures, those shared community assumptions that make shared assumptions make sense. If you grew up Mormon in southeast Idaho, celestial marriage makes sense. If you grew up in Alabama, not so much. This undeniable truth is one of the things that tends to make educated sociologists, and those who love them, …
Hindus, Tea Parties, and Social Justification
In order to offer someone a financial reward without him working for it, the government must first ensure that somebody else works for a financial reward without getting it. There is no other way. This reality is obscured by the dynamics of social justification. In every corporate body, there are the justified and the unjustified. …
How Noah’s Ark Was Way Too Wet
James Davison Hunter has this to say about contemporary Christian political involvement. “These qualifications notwithstanding, the reality is that politics is the tactic of choice for many Christians as they think about changing the world . . . It is not an exaggeration to say that the dominant public witness of the Christian churches in …
The Giant Dimblemuffin
In our public square tangles, we have gotten ourselves into trouble as a result of believing what the nonbelievers tell us about our arrangement. Whenever Christians try to argue for “principled pluralism,” they are doing so on the basis of this trust — and it is profoundly a misplaced trust. Think of it this way. …
When Civilizations Are Baptized in Infancy
When theological folks dichotomize, they often do it without regard to the reality of time. And this causes no end of trouble. Given their assumptions about the political dualities of life, the anabaptist impulse to reject infant baptism is a shrewd one, because all these things are connected together. And infant baptism is a statement, …
The Brotherhood of Man Goes Phut
The other day, I was reminded, yet again, of the central heresy of our age. The president, in his Easter address, called upon all of us to remember our “shared spirit of humanity,” and he trotted out that tired “family of man” stuff. While he personally was remembering the resurrection of Jesus, others — Jews, …
Breasts and Wombs Matter
I have now finished James K.A. Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom. On my Goodreads page, I rated it at 3 stars, not because it was a mediocre book, but rather because parts of it were outstanding and parts were atrocious. 3 was taking an average. The main failing of the book was that while Smith …
A Tornado With Boots
The perennial temptation for modern Reformed Protestants, especially after they get college degrees, is to float toward the sky in wisps of gnostic vapor. Doctrinalism is one kind of gnosticism, and pietism another. Literary structuralism is yet another one. Note that I did not say doctrine, of which the apostle Paul approved, and I did …