Readeeming the Time, the blog where the fervor and froth for a new book, reaches fever pitch!

Okay, that might be slightly over-selling things, but if I mark-it-to-maybe, it might be underselling this up and coming title.

Justin Taylor, a.k.a., the Source, has described it this way…

I suspect this will be one of the most important books published in 2010

Ooooh, the anticipation grows!

Taylor is want to be on the publishing ball, as it comes with his job-territory, so don’t take my word for it, when you can very well take his!  Where is the trust-love?!

Here is how the product description encapsulates this title…

The call to make the world a better place is inherent in the Christian belief and practice. But why have efforts to change the world by Christians so often failed or gone tragically awry? And how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative? In To Change the World, James Davison Hunter offers persuasive–and provocative–answers to these questions.

Hunter begins with a penetrating appraisal of the most popular models of world-changing among Christians today, highlighting the ways they are inherently flawed and therefore incapable of generating the change to which they aspire. Because change implies power, all Christian eventually embrace strategies of political engagement. Hunter offers a trenchant critique of the political theologies of the Christian Right and Left and the Neo-Anabaptists, taking on many respected leaders, from Charles Colson to Jim Wallis and Stanley Hauerwas. Hunter argues that all too often these political theologies worsen the very problems they are designed to solve. What is really needed is a different paradigm of Christian engagement with the world, one that Hunter calls “faithful presence”–an ideal of Christian practice that is not only individual but institutional; a model that plays out not only in all relationships but in our work and all spheres of social life. He offers real-life examples, large and small, of what can be accomplished through the practice of “faithful presence.” Such practices will be more fruitful, Hunter argues, more exemplary, and more deeply transfiguring than any more overtly ambitious attempts can ever be.

Written with keen insight, deep faith, and profound historical grasp, To Change the World will forever change the way Christians view and talk about their role in the modern world.

I have noticed that Taylor has completed some Jedi blog-trick, and has some more information from the Oxford Press, which is really a fuller description than the previous portion that you have just read, which in Taylor’s flow, this previous section, forms the final few paragraphs.  Moving on, here are a few blurbs, noting the Tim Keller Hat Tip to this title…

“How should Christians act in the world? The dominant answer in America today seems to be: through politics. But the major model of Christian political action, visible most obviously but not exclusively in the Christian Right, has been a politics fuelled by resentment and a sense of victimization, actuated by a strong will to power, and a propensity to demonize its opponents. This politics is a capitulation to the worst elements of the contemporary culture it claims to be redeeming. Hunter offers an acute end penetrating analysis of this paradoxical and distressing phenomenon, and carefully charts an alternative course for contemporary Christians, a form of ‘faithful presence’ within culture and society. The book is brimful of insightful challenges to our conventional understanding of things, and of inspiring suggestions for a new departure.”
– Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

“For anyone interested in American Christianity, whether believer or observer, this is an extraordinarily important and valuable book. Hunter’s analysis of culture and the capacity of Christians to influence it (or not) is the most sophisticated and subtle I have ever seen, explaining why most treatments of the subject are gravely inadequate. His treatment of religion and power in the American context is similarly illuminating. Finally his theology of faithful presence offers a promising alternative to most of the approaches on offer today whether from liberals or conservatives. The encounter of social science and theology has often been vapid; Hunter shows how vibrant it can be.”
– Robert Bellah, co-author of Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

“No writer or thinker has taught me as much as James Hunter has about this all-important and complex subject of how culture is changed.”
– Tim Keller, author of Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters

You can check out more on this title at JT’s  (can I call you that… and a H/T to you for the hook-up) blog… HERE… and you can find the details to purchase this book on Amazon… HERE!

Readeeming the Time!

Jonny

Leave Comment