Sometimes what a publisher doesn’t publish is just as important as what it does publish.
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To Change the World 5: Seeking the Common Good
James Davison Hunter tells us, in To Change the World, that the political frameworks of the Christian Right, the Christian Left and the neo-Anabaptists are inherently defective. Is there another option besides these three, which Hunter reframes as “defense against,” “relevance to” and “purity from” the culture? What’s his solution?
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To Change the World 4: Three Choices Both the Same
Often [I have wondered](http://andyunedited.ivpress.com/2010/09/uncommon_decency.php#more) in frustration, Why does everything seem so politicized? Why are the extremes the only apparent option? Where are the sober, even-handed, reasoned, moderate alternatives?
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To Change the World 3: Between Presumption and Hope
What’s the central dilemma for Christians who want to change the world? James Davison Hunter answers: Even though populism is organic to American Christianity, what actually brings about change instead is the
combination of powerful institutions, networks, interests and symbols. And when it comes to the latter, American Christianity is decidedly on the outside looking in.
The ten biggest independent foundations give away billions; the ten biggest religious foundations give away millions (pp. 82-83). Professors at Christian colleges have twice the teaching load of their counterparts at elite and research universities—so they are at a huge disadvantage in any ambition to lead their academic disciplines (p. 86).
Then he quits preachin’ and starts meddlin’.
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Paper Tiger?
To Change the World 2: The Untold Story of Christianity
Christianity has long been “Exhibit A” of populist movements [changing the world](http://andyunedited.ivpress.com/2010/10/to_change_the_world_1.php). Two thousand years of history clearly show these people on the margins transforming their societies through the power of the gospel. Right? Why then is James Davison Hunter’s [*To Change the World*](http://www.amazon.com/Change-World-Tragedy-Possibility-Christianity/dp/0199730806/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287011037&sr=1-1) so negative about the ability of a widespread impulse in ordinary people to transform society?
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To Change the World 1: The Limits of Popular Opinion
Evangelicals want to change the world. So do Episcopalians, Lutherans and Catholics. They all fall in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, who thought that if we can educate people—inform them, change their minds—then freedom will flourish and good will prevail.
They’re all wrong. James Davison Hunter says he knows why in To Change the World.
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The Man’s Man of Letters
My latest excursion in literary tourism took me just fourteen miles from our offices in Westmont when I recently visited the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway with some friends. The house in Oak Park, Illinois, has largely been restored to its original condition.
Here young Ernest joined in prayers with his grandfather Abba, a Civil War hero for the Union who led a “colored brigade.” Here he was entertained, along with his siblings by the stories spun by his father. Here he heard his mother, a veteran of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, offer music lessons. And so pieces of the influence on Ernest as a writer begin to emerge.
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Please Don’t Use the Dictionary!
It’s one of the most common and one of the dullest tools that writers or speakers pull out of their toolboxes–quoting a dictionary definition when trying to make a point. It happens every day whether it’s a blogger, a teacher, a preacher or a speaker. Webster gets quoted to define some painfully ordinary word like professional or accidental or addiction. Why is this such a problem?
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It’s the Smell I Remember
It’s the smell I remember.
When my older sister was in high school she got a summer job at the local bookstore in the center of our town. It was only about a mile from home, so I would sometimes walk or ride my bike there to visit her. I tried not to interrupt her professional duties too much. It was there that I first learned to browse.
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