To Change the World: James Davison Hunter’s “Faithful Presence” Meets Political Theologies on the Margins

I. Christianity as Culture: The Need for Discernment

The Incarnation lies at the heart of Hunter’s theology of “faithful presence.” That the Word of God became flesh in a particular time and place proves central to Hunter’s theology because it is “the only adequate reply” to the late modern challenges of dissolution and difference (241). In a world where presence and place matter increasingly less, where new technologies allow connection without physical presence, where every place begins to look like no place in particular, we live an increasingly disembodied and dislocated life (238–39). Hunter sees this dissolution in the undermining of religious tradition and the disjuncture between words and the realities they once named. But the incarnate Word reunites “Word and world,” assuring us of God’s reality and presence (241). Furthermore, the embodiment of God’s Word within our own lives provides a response to the realities of difference, to a world where pluralism throws into question the collective identity of religious traditions, their beliefs and practices, and even the possibility of belief itself (204).

In Hunter’s judgment, the “relevance to” paradigm does not handle these challenges well, but the emphasis his own position places on embodiment and particularity of time and place provides an important connection to these perspectives. Perhaps no other group of theologians emphasizes these realities more than liberation and feminist theologians, who unfailingly draw attention to the significance of material realities, context, and social location. One important product of this emphasis is an awareness of theology as an inherently cultural (and political) activity—a thesis Hunter shares. As Kathryn Tanner puts it, “Theology is something that human beings produce. Like all human activities, it is historically and socially conditioned; it cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of human sociocultural practices.” ¹

Likewise, Hunter acknowledges Christianity as a culture and therefore the nature of theology as a cultural endeavor. In fact, used as descriptions of Christianity, Hunter’s seven propositions on culture would meet with feminist approval: Christianity is a “system of truth claims and moral obligations,” “a product of history,” “intrinsically dialectical,” “a resource and, as such, a form of power” (32–35). Within Christianity, “cultural production and symbolic capital are stratified in a fairly rigid structure of ‘center’ and ‘periphery,’” the tradition is “generated within networks,” and is “neither autonomous nor fully coherent” (36–38). Indeed, Hunter recognizes that cultures are porous. He labels Christianity a “weak culture,” meaning that it is prone to fragmentation and acculturation that prevents it from wielding monolithic influence capable of producing wholesale cultural change (91). According to Hunter, “the wheat and tares of culture” are “mixed together in inseparable ways” (230). “Any effort to draw a sharp line between the church and the world cannot help but result in failure” (182).

This recognition leads Hunter, wisely, to emphasize discernment. Here again, Hunter’s perceptive call for a dialectic of affirmation and antithesis sounds awfully familiar to feminist ears. Feminists, too, embrace a variety of methods that celebrate the goodness, beauty, truth, and justice of the created order but also exercise discriminating judgment in identifying when that order reflects the Fall more than the coming Kingdom. Such dialectics are present in Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s “feminist critical hermeneutics of suspicion,” ² Rosemary Radford Ruether’s “prophetic principle,” ³ or womanist Delores S. Williams’s principle of “God's word of survival and quality of life to oppressed communities.” ⁴ These are, of course, quite diverse hermeneutical tools, but they share a concern to discriminate between the redemptive and the oppressive, between that consistent with Christ and that at odds with Christ. Hunter’s discussion of the need for such discernment through the dialectic of affirmation and antithesis is among the strongest in the book (231–36).

Hunter nevertheless pits Christianity against culture in unhelpful ways that fail to acknowledge the very fluidity he affirms. References to “the nihilism of the dominant culture” (177); characterizations of the “larger post-Christian culture” as “a culture whose habits of life less and less resemble anything like the vision of human flourishing provided by the life of Christ and witness of scripture” (227); and calls for an “alternative formation to that offered by popular culture” (282–83) reinforce the dualistic church–world approach that Hunter supposedly rejects, betraying his otherwise careful attention to this complex relationship. Such a view contradicts his insightful calls for discernment, and risks, as feminist theologian Mary McClintock Fulkerson puts it, “overlooking both the worldly way that communities live out their faith and the worldly way that God is among us.” ⁵ It may be that in his desire to articulate a theological position that overcomes the challenges of dissolution and difference, Hunter overdraws distinctions not only between his own position and those of the “relevance to” paradigm, but between those of the Word and World.

II. Attention to Difference and Preferential Option for the Poor

Another core similarity between Hunter’s position and that of liberation and feminist theologies is attention to difference and the “preferential option for the poor.” ⁶ While Hunter does not use this language, he does identify “the least privileged” and “the most disadvantaged” as being “of special concern” (271). Furthermore, the vignettes he offers of faithful presence feature concern for the poor, the marginal, and the vulnerable. The automotive company in Hunter’s first vignette takes as its guiding question, “what does it mean to do good to the vulnerable?”; the art gallery in the second “operat[es] from the premise that people with the greatest need ha[ve] the greatest need for beauty”; and the not-for-profit housing corporation in the third operates according to the “belief that all people deserve safe, clean, affordable housing” (266–67). Although liberationists would argue that Hunter’s paradigm does not go far enough to challenge existing systems of injustice, they would nevertheless applaud these efforts as practices of solidarity. Indeed, Hunter describes the practice of “faithful presence within” in ways that resonate with feminist and liberationists projects: it is “living and working toward the well-being of others,” (269) and concerned with “the flourishing of the world around us” (261).

Yet despite this emphasis on difference, on the marginalized and suffering, Hunter develops other parts of his theology of faithful presence with less than full sensitivity to what dedication to difference and flourishing might look like in practice. In fact, Hunter’s discussion of difference eclipses differences of race, gender, and class to focus on differences of religious tradition and worldview. And for all his attention to promoting the flourishing of others, Hunter employs theological language and concepts that feminist and womanists have devoted their careers to interrogating, particularly the uncritical use of patriarchal God language and the celebration of sacrifice.

The gender exclusive language may seem inconsequential, but it is inconsonant with the emphasis Hunter otherwise places on the marginal and vulnerable. Consider the following:

Though we are irreducibly different from him … he does not regard us as either “danger” or “darkness.” We neither threaten him nor diminish him … he is all powerful, he pursues us, he identifies with us, and offers us life through his sacrifice not because he needs us to do something for him but simply because he loves us … he does not use his power instrumentally … (243)

Similarly, Hunter’s uncritical embrace of sacrifice as a norm of practice for “faithful presence” ignores feminist and womanist concerns about redemptive suffering, sacrifice, and servanthood. One of the most important contributions feminists and womanists make to theology is to question the theological sanction these potentially harmful norms often enjoy. In Williams’s words, “People do not have to attach sacred validation to a bloody cross in order to be redeemed or to be Christians.” ⁸ Similarly, Jacquelyn Grant argues that the context of black women’s social, economic, and political disempowerment renders the concept of servanthood more sinful than redemptive. ⁹ Hunter’s failure to acknowledge these well-founded concerns suggests that, in practice, “faithful presence” does not overturn oppressive power structures.

Indeed, Hunter’s compelling description of the church as a “community of resistance” which “think[s] through resistance in an institutional way”—an idea many feminists and liberationists would affirm—seems especially odd against this backdrop (235). If his own theology ignores feminist and womanist concerns, I am not sure what to make of Hunter’s call for churches to “model its alternative both symbolically” and “in the conduct of bodily life,” to “challenge all structures that dishonor God, dehumanize people, and neglect or do harm to the creation” (235). Hunter wisely acknowledges that churches are human institutions and therefore “participate in the structures of power at work in the world” (182), so why not model the resistance to which the church is called by challenging the churches’ own structures of patriarchal power?

III. Praxis and Politics: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cultural Change

Finally, a third promising similarity is Hunter’s language of “faithful presence as practice”, which calls to mind liberation theologies’ and feminist theologies’ emphasis on praxis (265). Hunter’s critique regards the form this practice often takes: politics. I think most Christians would not disagree with Hunter’s call to engage the manifold realms and tasks of public and private life, but in his efforts to encourage a more robust public engagement, Hunter underestimates the importance of political action. Appealing to Jeremiah to support his concept of “faithful presence,” Hunter argues that “this was not a posture of radical and prophetic challenge to the powers that be, but neither was it a passive acceptance of the established order” (277–78). But, as Martin Luther King demonstrates, sometimes a radical and prophetic challenge is precisely what is needed!

Indeed, King is curiously absent in Hunter’s study—another oddity given King’s successful implementation of Hunter’s theory of cultural change. Of course, the civil rights movement challenges the idea that culture only changes from the top down, but Hunter would acknowledge that top-down leadership of the civil rights movement depended upon the activities and preparation of those on the ground. This nuance aside, King actually demonstrates Hunter’s propositions on cultural change: “Change is Typically Initiated by Elites Who are Outside the Centermost Positions of Prestige” (42); “World-Changing is Most Concentrated When the Networks of Elites and the Institutions they Lead Overlap” (43); and “Cultures Change, But Rarely If Ever Without a Fight” (43). Moreover, King’s Christ-centered ethic features both an emphasis on the power of sacrificial love, as in Hunter’s paradigm, and a vision of hope antithetical to the ressentiment that Hunter identifies in contemporary Christian political engagement (107).

Yet Hunter rarely mentions King. When King does appear, it is in a list of “heroic figures” (134), “exemplary Christians” (164), or as an example of the “greatness” of “individual charisma and genius” (38), or “how one person can make a significant difference in the world” (16). These characterizations obscure King’s role as a leader working in dense networks of elites and institutions on the periphery of power, who engaged in a cultural struggle, and whose accomplishments were implemented, in part, from the top down through legislative change. Of course, King hardly fits the description of “quietly radical” that Hunter ascribes to “faithful presence” (272). But as John Howard Yoder would likely remind us, neither does Jesus. Thus, despite Hunter’s insightful call for Christians to be present “to each other … in our tasks  … within our spheres of influence” (244–47), the example of Jesus dictates that politics is one thing Christian faithfulness cannot forgo.

Obviously, for King and others, Christian political practice engages the formal structures of the state. But theologians as diverse as John Howard Yoder, Kathryn Tanner, and Jacquelyn Grant teach us that theology is always political. Hunter acknowledges that those who desire a “redefinition of politics” or reclamation of “a ‘proper’ understanding of the political”—one that includes activities independent of formal state structures—may achieve the same end intended in his call to “decouple the public from the political” (186). His worry is that “such efforts will be swallowed up by the current ways in which politics is thought of and used” (186). This is a good worry, but it may be that the inherently political nature of the theological task renders the distinction superfluous. Like other distinctions Hunter makes—for example, between the paradigms “defensive against,” “relevant to,” “purity from,” and “faithful presence within”—this distinction serves an important analytical and rhetorical purpose in his book. But in terms of Christian faithfulness, these distinctions may create unnecessarily stark divisions between necessarily diverse theological positions—positions that nevertheless share an abundance of resources with which to collaborate in faithfulness. After all, as Hunter’s rich proposal suggests, we need to begin fleshing out that seventh chapter.