In an address to the Trinity Forum (June 21-22, 2002), James Davison Hunter offered his perspective on changing the world. The ability to change the world, he suggests, does not come as is often assumed from the conversion of the hearts and minds of people, so they will have the right values and make the right choices and thus change the world. It is this view of changing the world that leads some faith communities to see evangelism as the primary means of culture change.
Hunter argues that the error of this perspective derives from three sources deep in modern Western thought. The first is Hegelian idealism, the view that ideas move history; the second is Lockean individualism, the view that the autonomous and rational individual is the key actor in social change; the third is Christian pietism, the view that the most important goal in life is having one’s heart right before God. While there is significant truth in each of these ways, strategies based upon them will fail.
1. In contrast to this perspective, Hunter argues that the key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network, and the new institutions that are created out of those networks.
For example, when we think of the movement that lead to the outlawing of slavery in England, we think of William Wilberforce. While clearly a charismatic figure, it was the Clapham Circle, a powerful network of Christian abolitionists, that carried the day. Individual charisma and genius certainly play a role, but those qualities don’t produce change apart from networks of similarly oriented people.
Several of Hunter’s other points challenge several assumptions that I and others have defended in this blog.
2. The individuals, networks and institutions most critically involved in the production of culture or civilization operate in the center, where prestige is the highest; not on the periphery, where status is low.
3. Long-term cultural change always occurs from the top down. In other words, the work of world-changing is the work of elites, gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management to the leading institutions in a society.
Hunter says that:
The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Awakenings, the Enlightenment, the triumph of capitalism over mercantilism and feudalism, all of the democratic revolutions in the West . . . all began among elites and then percolated into the larger society.
Am I mixing apples and oranges? Can we compare the Renaissance to the Reformation? The Awakenings to the Enlightenment? Is cultural (or civilizational) change the same as world change? As I help expand the Kingdom of God, do I need elites gatekeepers? Is launching spiritual movements something central or peripheral I don’t know.
James Davison Hunter is the Wm. R. Kenan Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies, University of Virginia
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