"Faithful Presence: What does it mean to be a Christian Today?" (James Davidson Hunter)
Posted by tom | Nov 9, 2011
Recently I had the opportunity to hear James Davidson Hunter, sociologist at the University of Virginia, present on Faithful Presence: What does it mean to be a Christian Today? I found much of what he shared very insightful. Below are some notes which I took. If the topic and/or book is of further interest, I encourage you to check out the post by my Emerging Scholars Network colleague Mike Hickerson, http://blog.emergingscholars.org/2010/08/changing-the-world-with-james-davison-hunter/.
James Davidson Hunter. Faithful Presence: What does it mean to be a Christian Today?
- Introduction
- Salt, light for a different world.
- Agents of godly change, kingdom builders
- Investment of millions of dollars, but what has it accomplished?
- On the face of it, not much . . . on the balance, a flop . . . the business model has failed . . . it hasn't delivered and yet it keeps asking for money.
- When faced with the idealism of the young to give their lives, what do we tell them? How do we guide them?
- The dominant ways are almost entirely wrong. They not only do not, but cannot work. They undermine what Christians hold to be true.
- Outline
- Summary of three leading Christian paradigms
- Challenges we face as all three misconstrue the fundamental challenge of our time
- Sketch a new paradigm
- Summary of the three leading Christian paradigms
- Jeremiah 29: Seek the welfare of where you're settling
- Defensive in Culture: Christian Right
- Defensive enclave
- Conservative
- Retain distinctiveness of orthodoxy/praxy
- Preserve faith against assault of secular modernity
- Create parallel structures
- Hold out hope of Christianity regaining place of privilege
- Evangelize unbelievers
- Launch direct, frontal attack (e.g., temperance, creation-evolution, pornography, abortion, homosexuality/gay rights, etc)
- Defensive enclave
- Relevance to Culture: Christian Left
- Seeker Church, Emerging Church
- Priority of being connected to the pressing issues of the day, i.e., making peace
- Missionality: not conformity with a given creed, but an evolving creed
- Purity from Culture
- Similar to Defensive In Culture, but little can be done for the world in its fallen state
- Extricate from the contaminating effects of the world
- Two kingdoms of church-world: withdraw into own community
- E.g., NeoAnabaptists, separation factions, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Pentecostals
- What is wrong?
- The problem is understood by
- Defensive in Culture as secularization
- Relevance to Culture as exploitation of people/environment by corporate capitalism
- Purity from Culture as violence and other deformities of power in the modern state
- The challenge of
- Difference: rooted in modern pluralism of different cultures in different places. Not comfortable with the other dominating or be submitted to. Pluralism undermines how we believe. On cannot believe innocently anymore.
- Disillusion: deconstruction of the most basic assumptions about reality which connect the shared meaning of our
- s with the real world.
- Bill Clinton was the first postmodern President.
- God, nature, democracy, science, tradition, etc in subjective cul-de-sacs.
- God is whoever he/she desires.
- Ability to question all, but not affirm anything.
- Cannot be confident . . . dissolves all reality . . . no meaningful moral compass
- Undercutting of the coherence, content, and character of belief
- To summarize: the problems of the three paradigms stem from that are that they were born in modernity. The problems we face are in late modernity/postmodernity. Christians hunger for authenticity and depth.
- The problem is understood by
- Faithful Presence within
- Language/words and their meaning
- Scripture says a lot about words.
- We have a broken trust between the Word and the world.
- Nine times in the opening chapter of Bible, God said and it was. This demonstrated a trust between the Word spoken and the world. God's word made the heavens and the earth.
- Incarnation: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us
- Not just the spectacular events (e.g., the Word rebuking the wind), but the daily ministry
- Reality of God's love for creation and making all things new.
- I Peter 1:23: For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
- God's Word is enacted in a particular place and time in history.Word and world come together because the word enacts.
- Two lessons regarding the incarnation:
- It is the only adaquate reply to the challenge of disillusion.
- It is the way the Word came into the world.
- God is fully faithful to us
- He pursues us. He has chosen, drawn, and invited us.
- He identifies with us. He knows our frame (Psalm 103:14).
- The shalom of flourishing is made possible through the sacrificial love of the "God with us" (i.e., Immanuel)
- Implicit points
- In this bigger drama of the Biblical narrative we are the other. We represent difference by virtue of our sin. . . . God does not regard us as danger or darkness.
- Although the All Powerful pursues, it is because he desires intimacy with creation.
- "Faithful Presence" begins with acknowledging God's Faithful Presence with us.
- We are to be fully present to each other in the community of faith and those outside of the church.
- The flourishing of each other and those outside the church requires sacrifical love.
- To welcome the stranger is to welcome Christ. . . . The stranger isn't strange to us.
- Fully faithful and committed to our tasks
- The garden in Genesis
- Work gives expression to divine labor in tension with cause
- Dignity versus the instrumentality of work.
- Colossians 3:17: And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Note: work not done for man.
- Full attention, with excellence
- Spheres of social influence wherever or whatever conditions or structures of life these may be . . . not simply warmed over pietism
- Do what we are able under the sovereignty of God.
- Use our power like Christ.
- Word becomes flesh, an entire lexicon: authentic because enacted. Persuasive.
- The Babylonian captivity (588 BC) is the context for Jeremiah 29:4-7.
- The loss of elite versus false prophets perspectives telling of a turnaround versus Jeremiah's Word from God.
- Do not be nostalgic, do not lead an insurrection, do not tie survival to Jerusalem. Exile was the place God was at work. God sent them into exile. Nebuchadnezzar was "God's servant." Time to build, plant, have children . . . "
- The fate of the conquerors related to the exiles who were to pursue the shalom of Babylon.
- Therefore, justifiable to be angry (Defensive In), to withdraw (Purity From), or to assimilate (Relevance To), but God calling to something different. God called the people of God to be faithfully present in culture by reflecting in their daily practice their relationship with God. Their faithfulness was a blessing where they were placed.
- The loss of elite versus false prophets perspectives telling of a turnaround versus Jeremiah's Word from God.
- We are exiles in the world.
- "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms." (I Peter 4:10).
- Will it change the world? Maybe.
- New territory demands the imagination of the church.
- We are to be fully present to each other in the community of faith and those outside of the church.
- Language/words and their meaning
- More thoughts, stemming from a response to a question: We end up speaking more to others about God than to God about others. We talk too much. We should pray more for souls and their well-being/welfare (e.g., what is good, true, beautiful . . . prosperity, order freedom). We should focus on enacting faith, hope, and love, but not in explicitly pietistic forms.
