{"id":17056,"date":"2018-03-15T18:15:37","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T01:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17056"},"modified":"2018-03-15T18:15:46","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T01:15:46","slug":"hearts-and-minds-doesnt-seem-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/hearts-and-minds-doesnt-seem-to-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Hearts and Minds…doesn’t seem to work"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Hunter starts his discussion on changing the world speaking on the Christian desire to change hearts and minds. “The essence of culture is found in the\u00a0hearts and minds of individuals<\/em>” [1] When I hear these words the first thing that comes to mind is war.<\/p>\n

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It brings to mind a quote from Lyndon B. Johnson\u00a0\u201cWe must be ready to fight in Vietnam, but the ultimate victory will depend upon the hearts and the minds of the people who actually live out there.\u201d\u00a0 [2] The problem I find is this puts Christians at war with the culture. I do know we are at war with the evil one, but to put ourselves at war with a culture seems counterproductive. We are not at war with people and culture is nothing if it is not what people believe and how they live that out. If you look at the genesis of this phrase “hearts and minds” it is not something new, in fact John Adams used it in 1818 to describe the Revolutionary War, FDR used it in 1934 when talking about the economy, 1963 sees JFK using it talking about the Cold War, George H. Bush used it in a speech about bringing liberty to the Middle East, Iranian President\u00a0Mahmoud\u00a0 Ahmadinejad used in in a speech attacking the U.N in 2006, and\u00a0<\/b>Barack Obama used it in 2009 speaking on the war on terror.<\/p>\n

It seems whenever the goal is to win hearts and minds, the goal is to dominate. With that in mind Hunter goes on to examine just what does it take to change a culture in his book,\u00a0To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.<\/em> I was concerned when I first started the book because it seemed as if Hunter was using it as a diatribe against the world. In fact, when he uses as part of a larger quote”America as a nation is losing its soul” [3], the tone seems condescending at best. He then quotes James Dobson when he says “you tell them what to believe and you model what you want them to understand and\u00a0in one generation<\/em>, you change the whole culture”[4], which, as much as I do like James Dobson, seems very narrow minded. Richard King pulls out an aspect of this when he writes “At the individual or \u201clocal\u201d level, Hunter criticizes contemporary Christians for holding an \u201cHegelian\u201d view of culture, according to which culture is primarily a contest between contending \u201cbig\u201d ideas. Not at all: cultural continuity and coherence depend upon the power of institutions: \u201cculture is as much an infrastructure as it is in ideas\u201d [5]. The idea of changing culture is not one that happens overnight.<\/p>\n

So when Hunter, in chapter five, begins to dispute the “one generation” theory put forth by Dobson, I was relieved. Throughout this chapter Hunter traces the rise of Christianity as a purveyor of culter. From a small Jewish sect to the religion of the empire was not a one generation thing. There is not a doubt in my mind that Paul spent many years trying to win the “hearts and minds” of those who did not know Christ, but in scripture what we find is Paul spending time pouring into those who are already Christian. The idea of making disciples is at the forefront of most of the epistles of Paul. Hunter goes on to show that it really was not a matter of winning “hearts and minds” that changed the culture of the Roman empire from a pagan to a Christian religion. He shows that it actually was the work of those who were well educated elites. He points out “education was exceptionally important, for much of the spiritual and cultural creativity of the church resided in the establishment and transformation of the schools of that time.” [6] So the argument is not why can Christians not affect the culture like we used to, but the better question would be, why are Christians not part of the elite in politics, the arts, education, etc. Why, when Christians make main stream movies are they always subpar? Why are Christians not writing books on the best seller list? I think these are better questions to be delved into.<\/p>\n

In my opinion it goes back to the Scopes Monkey Trial. In 1925 Christian thought on evolution, and really in academics was put to the test, and even though John Scopes lost the trial, Christians lost the battle for the “hearts and minds”. Up until that point, there were many Christians in all of the above mentioned areas, after William Jennings Bryan was made to look the fool by Clarence Darrow, Christians seemed to pull out of all areas of influence, whether by choice or by being forced out, and let those who are not Christ followers set the narrative from that point on.<\/p>\n

I do not think this is about winning a war, I think this is about Christians being secure in their faith enough to make inroads into not only politics (which I think is a poor choice any way) into education, the arts and the like. It is not about making the world believe how we believe. It is about living a life as a Christian and being a positive influence without being angry and ugly about it.<\/p>\n

[1] Hunter, James Davison.\u00a0To change the world: the irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity today<\/i>. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. p6.<\/p>\n

[2] http:\/\/www.presidency.ucsb.edu\/ws\/?pid=26942<\/p>\n

[3]\u00a0Hunter, James Davison.\u00a0To change the world: the irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity today<\/i>. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. p 10.<\/p>\n

[4]Hunter, James Davison.\u00a0To change the world: the irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity today<\/i>. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. p13.<\/p>\n

[5]\u00a0King, Richard. “James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.” Society 48, no. 4 (2011): 359-62.<\/p>\n

[6]\u00a0Hunter, James Davison.\u00a0To change the world: the irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity today<\/i>. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. p 51.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Hunter starts his discussion on changing the world speaking on the Christian desire to change hearts and minds. “The essence of culture is found in the\u00a0hearts and minds of individuals” [1] When I hear these words the first thing that comes to mind is war. It brings to mind a quote from Lyndon B. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17056"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17123,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17056\/revisions\/17123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}