I live in Spain.\u00a0 The church, and by extension Christianity has for many centuries been in a position of power and influence.\u00a0 In the modern age, this power became toxic.\u00a0 The church sided with the economic elite, the crown, and the powerful, often against the interests of religious freedom, freedom of speech, democracy, and the rights of the poor during the many years of political and social upheaval.\u00a0 This all came to an apex during the horrific Spanish Civil War, when the church sided with the fascist ascension of the dictator General Francisco Franco, who would go on to rule Spain under an iron grip for some 40 years.\u00a0 There is no way to avoid the obvious here, the church completely failed in its calling, and became an instrument of violence and oppression.\u00a0 The current fall out of this failure has been catastrophic, as people have fled the church in droves since the 1980\u2019s making a country which was once 99% Catholic, now only 20% practicing Catholic.\u00a0 A recent conversation with a friend sums it all up: \u201cpeople have rejected the church, because the church is a symbol of oppression and dictatorship.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is from this perspective that I am often amused by the consistent claims of \u201cChristendom\u201d and \u201cchurch-state\u201d accommodation from both Christian and non-Christian perspectives alike in the USA.\u00a0 President Bush has become a particular target of the ire of many, and with good cause.\u00a0 While, I don\u2019t wish to become a political apologist at all in this post, I do wish to point out what to me often feels like so much pointless self-absorbed whining.\u00a0 While Bush certainly made some significant mistakes in managing one of the most difficult jobs in the world, he also with a stroke of an evangelical, compassionate pen saved millions of people\u2019s lives with his impetus to enact the largest US aid action with respects to AIDS and Africa.\u00a0 The facts of history often fail to fall neatly into our narratives.\u00a0 So what are we to make of all this?\u00a0<\/p>\n
If anything, James Davidson Hunter in To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and of Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World<\/em> begins to unpack the issues that arise from a realistic appraisal of Spanish and American Christianity, and everything in between.\u00a0 Hunter makes the case that the prevalent American movements with respects to politics (conservative, progressive, and neo-Anabaptist) are all faulty in their ontological premises, and thus are simply spinning their wheels in respects to actually \u201cchanging the culture.\u201d\u00a0 Hunter goes on to develop a more robust definition of culture and how historically it is truly transformed and affected, while at the same time showing that politics is not a historically proven method for enacting Christian transformation of culture. Specifically, the state is not truly subject to the will of the democratic electorate, and that rarely are there \u201cpolitical solutions to the problems most people care about.\u201d\u00a0 This feels instantly true, as a historical observer of politics from the American experiment I rarely see that politics essentially and completely makes exacting change.\u00a0 History, culture, and society are much too complex. From here, Hunter explains that all of American Christianity has essentially fully opted for politics as the most important form of public engagement.\u00a0 In a sense, all of American Christianity (even those who attempt to extricate themselves from it) is locked in a political dialectic.\u00a0<\/p>\n One need only watch American television, or peruse through the evangelical blogosphere to find out how politicized the Christian world has become.\u00a0 One will find the full scope of nihilistic negation (Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter spring to mind) in conservative voices castigating the Obama administration and progressive voices castigating those who castigate.\u00a0 Yet, all are locked in political discourse, and ultimately a will to power and dominance.\u00a0 What is ultimately amazing is how \u201cevangelical\u201d in their political and theological discourse the progressive and neo-Anabaptist perspective has become, while at the same time, claiming to have moved beyond conservative evangelicalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is where Hunter steps in with the real weight of his work.\u00a0 He argues for a post-political stance for the church.\u00a0 He hopes for an expression of Christianity that has a realistic perspective of power and also seeks to disentangle itself from the ontological politicization of America.\u00a0 Power cannot be avoided. \u00a0It is essential to human experience and relationship, but by following a Christological theology of power, there might be hope.\u00a0 Jesus had power, and as such, power is not necessarily bad, but as humans (and sinful at that) we will always fail in our application of power, just as I as a father am given power, but often fail in my use of it with my own children, who I deeply love.\u00a0 Therefore, true grace and forgiveness are necessary.\u00a0 Hunter then makes the bold statement in full opposition to our postmodern world reeking of ressentiment<\/em> : \u201cThe question for the church, then, is not about choosing between power and powerlessness but rather, to the extent that it has space to do so, how will the church and its people use the power that they have.\u201d<\/p>\n The answer is of course Jesus, no matter how much our world screams that it must be a squirrel.*<\/p>\n Is it possible that Hunter offers a true way forward between the confusion of Catholic Spain and compassionate George Bush?<\/p>\n How can we model a Christ like use of power?<\/p>\n *Sunday School Teacher: I am thinking of an animal with a bushy tail, and he lives in a tree.<\/p>\n Class: Silence<\/p>\n SS Teacher: Come on.\u00a0 You know this. \u00a0It is a small, furry animal.\u00a0 It eats nuts, and likes to jump around from tree to tree.<\/p>\n Class: Silence<\/p>\n SS Teacher: This is easy, it\u2019s a mammal, and it starts with an \u201cS.\u201d<\/p>\n Brave Sunday School Student: Well, I know the answer is Jesus, but it really sounds like you are talking about a squirrel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I live in Spain.\u00a0 The church, and by extension Christianity has for many centuries been in a position of power and influence.\u00a0 In the modern age, this power became toxic.\u00a0 The church sided with the economic elite, the crown, and the powerful, often against the interests of religious freedom, freedom of speech, democracy, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"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":[253,21,5,95],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church","tag-dminglp","tag-hunter","tag-power"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915","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\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}