This post was written by Randy Newman on October 2, 2008
Is there an integrating force that joins evangelism and cultural influence? In other words, are Christians supposed to engage in works to change society or just in one, which is to change hearts? To add a specific point to it, should Christians called to the university try to influence the academic and social climate of their campus or just teach their specific classes and occasionally share the gospel with colleagues and students?
To be sure, the teaching and evangelizing are non-negotiables. But is there also a call to promote well being for students in other aspects besides academics or spirituality?
A little historical perspective may help. For much of church history, almost 1900 years of it, the church saw social responsibility and evangelism as two sides of the same Christ-centered, gospel-infused coin. The twentieth century is an anomaly. A split, which began long before the 1900s, became a great schism during the so-called Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. The liberal wing abandoned beliefs in doctrines which are central to the Christian faith: the deity of Christ, the authority of scripture, the lostness of people without Christ, etc. They replaced evangelism (since people really didn’t need salvation) with social action.
This prompted two responses. One voiced by J. Gresham Machen and echoed by many conservatives, was that Christianity and Liberalism are really two different religions. H. Richard Niebuhr described liberalism as, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
The second response was to separate evangelism from “the social gospel.” “Evangelism is what ‘Christians’ do and ’social action’ is what
liberals do.” After a while, there arose almost a knee-jerk reaction to any kind of social action done by Christians. The conservatives objected to any such involvement with warnings of “where that kind of thing ends up.”
But the same J. Gresham Machen (a theologian who helped form Westminster Theological Seminary) who saw liberalism as a completely different belief system than the gospel was not ready to neglect the need for social change. In fact, he saw social action as pre-evangelistic.
I actually have these words of his framed and hanging in my office: “False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the Gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas, which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.”
He called the church to change the environment in which people heard the gospel so they would be more receptive to it. Influencing education, promoting justice, caring for people’s physical needs, and displaying love to those least deserving of it were all part of the pre-evangelism he encouraged.
There’s much more to this argument. Please stay with me. I’ll share more of my thinking about this in a future Antecedents entry.
Part 2
This post was written by Mark Hansard on January 4, 2008
In an interesting article in the Boston Globe, Peter Berger, a sociologist at Boston University, has decided to study the “emerging evangelical intelligentsia” as a cultural phenomenon. A recent conference at Boston U. initiated the study, and evangelical scholars from across the country attended.
It is, of course, extremely gratifying to see non-evangelicals sit up and take notice of evangelicalism as an emerging intellectual force. It will be interesting to see the conclusions of Berger’s study, which is being run by Timothy Shah, an evangelical and public policy expert in Washington D.C.
As well, Michael Lindsay’s recent book, Faith in the Halls of Power, seems to be a sympathetic treatment of evangelicals in various positions of political, economic and intellectual leadership. I have not read the book, but I am very curious to see it. Lindsay has his Ph.D. from Princeton, and is a professor of sociology at Rice University.
Unfortunately, the Boston Globe article highlights some disturbing trends within evangelicalism (if that is what one could continue to call it) that I believe are decidedly un-evangelical. One implication of the article is that only ignorant fundamentalists would reject Darwinism or embrace Intelligent Design. However, even if, for the sake of argument, ID is a theological position and not a scientific one (as the article states), this would not make it irrational to believe.
As well, the statement in the article that some evangelicals believe non-Christians can go to heaven is puzzling. On what basis would that be possible? What would this do to the missions enterprise, and all that is said about it in Scripture, or verses such as Acts 4:12?
Nevertheless, the other “essential beliefs” identified as evangelical in the article I heartily agree with. Over the next decade perhaps, we will see more debate and definition of evangelicalism among a new generation of scholars. It should be very interesting to see this unfold.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on November 29, 2007
Marxism was supposed to produce the “New Man.” He’s a little late, but the New Man may be emerging in communist China.
A recent Reuters story (found here) describes the younger generation of twenty-somethings found in the wealthier districts of China. Almost all of them were raised as an “only child,” and evidently display many of the narcissistic, self-centered personality traits long associated with children without siblings – at least in popular lore. (I should probably add here that some of my best friends are only children.)
The article specifically focuses on the widespread (and quite casual) failure of marriages among this group. With the Chinese economy booming, and personal options and choices expanding exponentially, many Chinese simply can’t be bothered by the necessary give-and-take involved in sustaining a marriage. Considering the needs of another person is, after all, something with which they have had no previous experience. Divorce has become completely un-stigmatized in this echelon of society and marriages sometimes last only a few weeks.
Cohabitation is on the rise, and even extra-marital sex (quaintly called “cheating” by some in American society) is becoming accepted. All of these changes are an enormous departure from the Confucian ideals that have guided Chinese society for centuries.
To give the Marxists their due, I don’t think this is what they had in mind when they predicted the New Man. But is it possible that what is happening in China represents something actually new? A non-Western, and hence, non-Christian society passing from traditional mores to a post-modern, self-centered ethic – essentially within the span of one lifetime; other examples of this would be hard to find.
This cultural change presents something of a challenge to those of us who maintain that the way of living described here is contrary to human flourishing, and damages our souls. While perhaps true, convincing the young affluent Chinese would be a hard sell. They have no residual common moral ground in which such claims would make sense, even less than young affluent Americans.
Most of us Christians want to believe in natural law. We all take great comfort from Lewis’ arguments for a universal moral code in Mere Christianity. Yet a new generation of essentially amoral Chinese, living intently focused on material and sexual desire, would seem to present a great challenge to these notions. Perhaps we need less theory and more real life, hard case examples of seeing natural law apologetics in action.
Almost all of us know Chinese here in the US, either graduate students visiting, or professors. Perhaps this Reuters article could be a way to start a discussion of mores and morals. Of course, one should avoid an opener like, “What a selfish, immoral lot you Chinese are!”
Rather, one could ask:
– Have you seen examples of what the article describes? Do you think it is accurate?
– What are the implications of these trends for China’s future?
– Does it matter? Are some ways of living better than others? How does one decide that?
This post was written by Patrick Rist on September 3, 2007
W. Bradford Wilcox is Assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and a member of the James Madison Society at Princeton University. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, he held research fellowships at Princeton University, Yale University and the Brookings Institution.
Dr. Wilcox’s research focuses on the influence of religious belief and practice on marriage, cohabitation, parenting, and fatherhood. His most recent paper, “Religion, Race, and Relationships in Urban America,” studies the essential role fathers play in the creation of healthy families and in the positive development of children.
Dr. Wilcox has had articles published in The American Sociological Review, Social Forces, The Journal of Marriage and Family and The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. His work has also been featured in The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, CBS News, and numerous NPR stations.
AI: How did you first become interested in researching families in contemporary society?
Wilcox: I was raised by a single mother. As a college student, I became interested in studying the effects of fatherlessness on children, and the role that marriage plays in uniting mothers and fathers.
AI: Many of your findings would seem to be somewhat at odds with the received sociological wisdom. How is your work typically received?
Wilcox: I suspect that it is received with a measure of curiosity and hostility. Most of my colleagues are quite civil in their dealings with me. Some even indicate that they appreciate the unique perspective I bring to bear on religion and family life. But I also hear about comments made about me or my work that are more hostile. Some people think that I am shilling for the religious right.
AI: Do those in the sociological community know of your personal faith commitments? How has that affected how your work is viewed?
Wilcox: I think many scholars assume that I am a Christian, given my focus of research. I’m sure that colors the way that my work is received. But I try to stick pretty closely to the data. So that gives me some protection among fair-minded scholars. And, I’m happy to say, there are a good number of fair-minded scholars in sociology–especially in the best departments.
AI: What motivates you to keep going, to continue in this area?
Wilcox: I hope that my work in some ways increases the odds that children are raised by their mother and father in an intact, married family. I also view my work as a calling. This is my vocation, and I’m supposed to respond to that call with my heart, mind, and soul.
AI: Why should Christian scholars be involved in research on the family?
Wilcox: I think we often bring a different set of assumptions to bear on the study of the family. Sometimes these assumptions are vindicated, sometimes not. But we often can see family life differently than many of our peers because of our unique assumptions or worldview. This will often lead to breakthroughs in family scholarship.
AI: What do you envision as the potential payoffs? What will be the price of apathy?
Wilcox: The payoff is that our work can help the public, academics, and students rethink their assumptions about family life. Our work can even inspire people to change the ways they approach family life. The price of apathy–of not investigating the serious questions and topics about contemporary family life–is that the whole truth doesn’t get out, and that people don’t have the opportunity to make constructive changes in their family lives.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on June 19, 2007
In 1998, sociologist Byron Johnson, then a researcher at Vanderbilt University, wrote an article entitled, “Good News: It’s Slanted Our Way — How to successfully integrate the Christian worldview into your research,” for the CLM periodical, The Real Issue. In the article, Dr. Johnson outlined his vision for how research findings can actually support the Christian worldview and how those findings can be used to guide the policy debates going on in our country toward a more faith-friendly direction.
Since Vanderbilt, Byron has had appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton. He is now Co-Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University.
We asked Byron to comment on his article from a decade ago and about his journey since then.
AI: In your article written almost ten years ago, you stated that the data was “slanted our way.” What did you mean by that, and has your work since then confirmed or challenged that statement?
BRJ: What I really meant by the statement the data are “slanted our way” is that solid research usually yields findings that resonate in important ways with a Christian worldview. For example, we now know from meta analyses (i.e. systematic and objective reviews of entire research literatures) of hundreds of empirical studies that increasing religious commitment is associated with less depression, fewer instances of suicidal ideation, lower levels of hypertension, increased life expectancy, reduced crime and delinquency, and decreasing alcohol and drug abuse, to mention just a few areas. In short, published research documents that increasing religiosity is an important protective factor that helps to buffer or shield people from deleterious outcomes. We also know from a significant body of research that increasing religiosity is positively associated with measures of hope, meaning, and purpose. Stated differently, increasing religiousness is associated with what sociologists like to call pro-social behavior. In this way, you can see that studies examining the role of religion in a number of ways can provide useful data and information that policy-makers and others should know and care about. Similarly, we now know that faith is an important factor in volunteerism, civic engagement, and charitable giving. These kind of findings are what was behind the statement.
AI: The article primarily describes your work with prisons. Where did your research go from there? Do you still do recidivism research?
BRJ: Over the last ten years I have published a number of studies on the role of religion among prisoners and former prisoners and find that religion can be an important factor (among others) in reducing the likelihood of future arrests and incarceration. I have also published a number of studies looking at the role of religion in reducing crime and delinquency among youth and adolescents. As a result of these studies and others by some of my colleagues, religion has now become a widely recognized variable in the mainstream criminology literature. We’re now working on a major grant for the Department of Justice where we’re producing a series of studies connecting religiosity to prosocial youth behavior. Instead of studying what factors help us predict why some kids do bad things, we are trying to understand what factors help predict why kids do good things – a much more positive approach to the subject matter. These federally funded studies may help change the way we think about crime and delinquency in America.
AI: Your article advises professors to become more “media savvy”. Why would a professor host a press conference on his or her findings, rather than simply publishing something in a prestigious journal? How would you answer those with misgivings about that approach, who might say it was “un-academic”?
BRJ: It is very important to publish in prestigious journals and that is a goal that one should continue to achieve, even after tenure. But the unfortunate reality is that outside of a few fellow academics, next to nobody reads these prestigious journals. Journalists don’t like them because they tend to be filled with technical jargon and statistics. By releasing these studies in lay-friendly fashion through press releases and press conferences, allows the media to understand the research and the possible implications of the research, and then to write about the research in a way that the masses get exposed to the findings. For example, we completed an important study on religion in America and released the results in a lay-friendly format in September 2006, at the National Press Club. The research subsequently appeared as the cover story in USA Today, as well as appearing on the cover of Time, Newsweek, and hundreds of other newspapers, radio, and all the major television markets.
AI: Dave Larson, who unexpectedly passed away a few years ago, was a huge player in this field. Describe his influence on you and your vision.
BRJ: Dave was a great mentor to me. He helped me catch a vision for how solid research could have a profound influence for good. Dave was a great scholar for sure, but he also understood how to connect with so many different kinds of scholars and people to produce so much important research and to get the word out. He almost single-handedly quarterbacked the development of the massive spirituality and health literature. A great many scholars, like me, will always be indebted to him.
AI: How do you think senior scholars can play a similar role in the lives and careers of younger scholars?
BRJ: I can’t say enough about how important it is for senior scholars to mentor junior scholars. Dave Larson and I talked about this all the time and how each of us should try to help the next generation of scholars. Such mentoring efforts, I believe, can greatly enhance the quality and quantity of research of the person being mentored. And of course, the more and better research produced as a result, I believe, will continue to show the important and beneficial ways in which faith matters to people and societies.
This post was written by Patrick Rist on April 19, 2007
The Wendell Berry short story, “Watch With Me,” from the collection by the same name (1994), revolves around the character Thacker Hample, a person given to “fits” and other bizarre behaviors, who one day picks up a neighbor’s loaded shotgun and wanders off into the woods after mentioning that he may kill himself.
The neighbor, Tol Proundfoot, begins following Thacker to make sure he doesn’t harm himself or anyone else. He sends word to other neighbors to come help, and for the rest of a long day and long night, Tol and his companions follow and watch Thacker from a distance as he meanders across their rural county.
This is not a lark for these men. They are aware that there is potential danger involved in what they are doing. They hardly speak to one another as they follow, and rarely even walk together. By the end of the story, which ends, if not happily, at least without tragedy, they are tired and hungry and behind in their work on their farms. Yet they do what they do without resentment and without complaint.
The men do not follow and watch after Thacker because he is their friend. Thacker is simply too backward and odd to be anyone’s friend. Rather, the men commit themselves to their task because both they and Thacker live together. In some way that probably none of them could defend or even articulate, this forces upon them an obligation to Thacker and to his welfare.
Thacker walks on alone. Yet he is far from alone.
Like most of Berry’s fiction, “Watch With Me” takes place before mass culture infiltrated every corner of our continent and our psyches. And also like most of his fiction as well as his nonfiction, Berry here holds up an ideal that we may not even be able to recognize, much less affirm.
The ideal is one of connectedness, or community, and the inherent obligation that arises from simply living in proximity to another. This is a hard teaching, and few of us can accept it.
Because for all the talk of “community” or “unity” today, both within the church and outside it, the simple fact is that we like living in a mass society. We like anonymity. We like going to the store and not having to speak to anyone or be recognized. We like not having to be involved with our neighbors’ lives, or even know their names, if we’d rather not. Who has time for it? We can now choose with whom we want to have “community,” and if it becomes messy or somehow disappointing, we can move on to someone else and have “community” with them.
And all this runs along rather smoothly, but with hidden costs. These costs become devastatingly visible when a Thacker Hample gets it in his addled brain to kill a few dozen of us.
Berry, who pastor and theologian Eugene Peterson actually calls a prophet, challenges us to hold some of our most unquestioned ways of life at a critical distance and try to see how odd they are in comparison to how most of the human race has lived through the centuries. But this is hard, and sometimes sounds like blame. It is not blame, but it is an attempt at being as clear-eyed as possible.
Is society somehow to blame for the horrors perpetuated at Virginia Tech this week? Of course not. We must affirm personal culpability; to do otherwise is simply reprehensible, especially in light of subsequent information discovered about the murderer.
But we must also acknowledge that we live in a society in which mobility, anonymity and sheer numbers of people make it possible for someone to be completely unknown by and disconnected to anyone else. This type of society has become normative for us; it is difficult to imagine any other way. We sometimes lose sight of its true perversity, and we seldom think about what it could be doing to us.
Neither you nor I nor Wendell Berry can do very much about mass society and its attendant anonymity. The fix is in, and it’s unlikely that a nation of 300 million is going to become less mass-oriented or impersonal. But for the sake of our own souls, perhaps we should be less glib about it, and more willing to contemplate the possibility that our “tastes” have become corrupted, like someone who prefers watching TV to walking in the woods, or McDonalds to a home cooked meal.
If we prefer anonymity to connection, if we prefer diversion to actually getting involved in others’ lives, and if we are content with cheap and easy “community-lite,” then perhaps we have been too deeply conditioned by our frenetic culture. Perhaps there is something there of which we should repent. We should ask our gracious God to change our tastes, and to protect us from the consequences of a system in which we have been all-too-willing participants.
This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 5, 2007
In my last post on Brave New World, I mentioned that contemporary culture is listing toward a confluence of unbridled hedonism and increasing government parentalism, something similar, but not as extreme, as Huxley’s new society. Today I want to discuss another prophetic facet of Huxley’s story (This post contains spoilers. If you have not read the book and do not want the ending revealed, read no further).
In the climax of Huxley’s book, Mustapha Mond, a leader of Huxley’s fictitious civilization, explains the price to pay for creating a completely happy, pleasure-filled society. He admits that civilization has sacrificed truth on the altar of happiness. A whole society was created in which Shakespeare, William James, Cardinal Henry Newman, the Bible, and other great works of thought and literature are censored and unknown to the general population because it would interfere with their soma-filled, risk-free lives.
As Mond, explains (I should note here that Huxley’s society worships Henry Ford as the model of this new, mechanistic utopia):
“It’s curious to read what people in the time of our Ford used to write about scientific progress…knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value. All the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift…”
Comfort and happiness replaced truth and beauty. Are we already observing the beginnings of this shift in Western culture? It seems to me two aspects of contemporary culture lend themselves to this view.
First, we are increasingly living in a technological age in which our virtual worlds are more important than the real one. High-definition television, ipods, increasingly realistic video games, fantasy baseball, you name it, are separating us from the real world and real relationships. Why have a conversation with an actual person when one could, say, watch a DVD in the family SUV? Or listen to music on an ipod? Or chat online with Instant Messenger? Don’t get me wrong, I like the new gadgets as much as the next guy. But when technology can give us ever more realistic virtual worlds, what’s to keep anyone engaged with the real one?
When we combine these virtual worlds with the commonplace attitude among the young that everyone ought to believe what makes him or her happy, we can now see the beginnings of Huxley’s utopia. Truth gets pushed aside in the name of individual fulfillment. After all, who’s to say my virtual world isn’t actually the real one, and the outside world is actually the unreal one? Who cares? Besides, I can create my own virtual world through believing what I want to believe! Who are you to tell me that your world is the real one?
As Mustapha Mond says, “God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice.” Indeed.
In Part 3 of this series, we will examine the implications of these cultural trends for academia.
Part 1 Part 3
This post was written by Mark Hansard on April 2, 2007
This year marks the 75th Anniversary of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and for many reasons, Huxley’s Orwellian story remains as relevant today as it did when he wrote it.
In fact, in two important areas, Huxley’s novel is remarkably prophetic. The opening scenes in which we are introduced to a genetic engineering factory, observing as new embryos are created, assembly-line style, with certain genetic proclivities to fit within their needed castes, are chilling. After embryos are created, named, and “bottled,” for example, they make their way on the conveyer belt to the “social predestination room,” in which they are genetically examined, chosen for their future caste according to the needs of the society, and carefully environmentally engineered.
While we are a long way from social and genetic engineering on this scale, we are taking our first steps toward such engineering through market forces already at work. Recently ABC News ran a profile of a woman in Texas who runs an embryo bank out of her home, in which she includes “Ph.D. sperm,” and eggs donated from “attractive” females with at least a college education. You can read about it here. There is certainly enough market interest to make such “designer babies” ubiquitous. I would be grieved (although not surprised) if eventually we saw the government design “aggressive” babies for use in the military. Huxley reminds us that such abuses are a realistic possibility.
Another thought provoking facet of Huxley’s story is the use of soma, a drug that the government uses to keep people blissfully ignorant and peaceful, “happy” at all costs. As one character admonishes a distraught friend, “What you need is a gramme of soma…One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.” Here he is repeating a mantra with which he was blissfully brainwashed as an unsuspecting embryo on a conveyor belt.
It seems to me these scenes are remarkably prophetic in that in contemporary American culture we see a confluence of unbridled hedonism and increasing government parentalism. These days it’s not just that every individual has a right to pursue happiness, it seems that the government is increasingly seen as the institution that must provide such happiness for the individual (e.g. making trans-fats illegal in New York restaurants—do we not have the ability to make these decisions on our own?). The use of soma in the novel allows the government not only to control the population, but to keep them happy and to protect them from themselves. Are we headed toward our own drug-controlled, parental society? Only time will tell.
One thing’s for sure. Every once in awhile, we all need a good dose of Brave New World.
Part 2 Part 3
This post was written by Mark Hansard on May 14, 2006
In the May/June issue of Books & Culture, Wilfred McClay’s “Auspicious Criticism: the Challenge of Christopher Shannon,” examines the new edition of Shannon’s book, Conspicuous Criticism. McClay’s review is at once an effort to afford Shannon’s book “the respectful attention across the intellectual spectrum that it deserves,” as well as lament that even ten years after it was first published, very few of the “relevant tribes of academics” have given it the time of day.
This is due in part, McClay writes, because Shannon’s book critiques the very foundations of much work in the social-science fields: “For Shannon, the reification and subsequent problematizing of ‘culture’ is itself the great iatrogenic disease of our times, the error at the heart of the social scientific method, the source of the very social woes that the social sciences have proved so incapable of curing.”
Small wonder, he writes, that few in the social sciences have paid attention. After all, to take Shannon’s work seriously would require questioning the very foundations of their work, and who wants to do that? It is much easier to simply ignore such criticisms and go forward with what one is already doing.
In fact, McClay writes, very little in the modern academy is revolutionary or “paradigm-shifting.” Instead, it is simply another institution bogged down with “business-as-usual” activities, in this case of the academic world: publishing research, editing journals, pursuing tenure, “all under the surprisingly powerful conforming influence of peer review.” Here McClay is worth quoting at length:
The truth of the matter is that the academy is one of the most procedurally conservative institutions in modern life. By challenging the canons and the professional assumptions behind them, a book like Shannon’s took a position that is almost unassimilable, hence more easily ignored than engaged.
If McClay is right, this ought not to be. After all, continuing to question is at the very heart of the intellectual enterprise, and questioning antecedents and presuppositions of a field is at the very heart of academic integration. Whether Shannon’s critique hits the mark is beside the point. The larger question McClay raises is this: Does the peer-review process, because it is so carefully built upon research which has gone before, prevent one from even questioning the antecedents or presuppositions of the field in which one labors? If so, perhaps it is time for a change.
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