To Change the World
To Change the World, by James Davison Hunter, Oxford Univ. Press (2010)
Hands-down, my favorite book so far this year is To Change the World, by James Davison Hunter. I read it relatively quickly – from May 13th through June 11th, and during that stretch it was the only book I gave much attention (other than the Scriptures), which is unusual for me. I delayed any write-up, though, because no simple summary would be sufficient. I’m not planning to give much comment on it even now, other than to say that Hunter’s book offers a lot of important thoughts for Christians.
I thoroughly enjoyed the competent examination of history and culture. I deeply appreciated the principled, thoughtful assessment of trends and common assumptions. And I loved the basic dependence on God’s faithfulness that must under-gird any reliable perspective for Christian responsibility and activity in the world.
I find the dissuasion from common calls to “change the world” far from discouraging, but actually refreshing and freeing. Hunter says that the book’s questions are “both broadly academic and deeply personal.” Personally (on both corporate and individual levels), it’s always healthy for Christians’ to see their calling in terms of faithfulness, not quantified fruitfulness. Only God “knows the ends from the beginning;” only God has the vantage point to issue ultimate value judgments. No degree of our righteousness – nor even our satisfaction – should ever be located in the works He’s given us to do. We make evaluations and assessments as tools to heighten discernment and to refine our focus, not as standards to evaluate accomplishment and attribute value (see 1 Corinthians 4, etc.) We must remember Isaiah 33:5-6, that He Himself will be the stability of our times.
If you’d like some summary, a book abstract is available on the Faithful Presence website. By all accounts, the book is significant. You can find plenty of reviews out there; two are linked here:
Andy Crouch, in Books and Culture
Justin Taylor, Between Two Worlds
I only briefly browsed these two reviews, and I think they might be helpful. I would caution against dismissing Hunter’s book too quickly, based on these or any reviews (the reviews themselves largely commend Hunter’s work, but sometimes people can read a review and think they have boxed up the whole book and all the concepts. Maybe sometimes that’s true, but I don’t think that would be the case here. The volume of reviews actually seem to testify that Hunter’s book, if nothing else, deserves a close first-hand look).
[...] book aims at neither the depth nor the scope of To Change the World. The authors do cite James Davison Hunter’s book several times, mostly in agreement. They [...]