What Role Do You Want to See Scholars Play?

Two updates.  The cyber-bullying of my son has taken some interesting turns.  The police have gotten involved, and, man, those folks get results fast.  They've subpoenaed Google and Facebook to get the address that created the false sites and they expect to have it nailed down by today.  And they plan to prosecute.  Yoiks. 

And I seem to have misread the review of Hunter's book sent my way by Dave T.  Mea culpa.

Thinking about Hunter's book and the responses to yesterday's post, I find myself wondering what hopes I have for scholars in this great, if nebulous endeavor that we're involved in on this fair blog.  Clearly the reason so many people alerted me to Hunter's book is that we have our own culture-shaping dreams.

And I find myself both really enjoying Hunter's book and fearing that I'm going to feel a little let down by the end, and feel let down by his very strengths.  What's great so far about the book is that he so eruditely eviscerates the culture-shaping ambitions of all sorts of people who, happily, I also don't especially believe in.  So I can root him on like I root on a local sports team. 

But I have this vague fear that I'm not going to love what he's for nearly so much as I love what he's against.  And that fear is based, again, on his strength--that he's a good and engaging scholar.  I'm thinking he's going to propose what he thinks is the best bet for culture shaping.  But my fear is that this will be his pet theory--scholars being good at championing such things--rather than something stemming from a culture-shaping movement he's actually led. 

I find myself thinking back to my days of reading the latest and greatest business books.  So many of them were written by consultants who had some great new scheme that would revolutionize business or management or sales or whatever.  And they're all really good writers--engaging, funny, full of great anecdotes.  But when you're done, you realize you've just read a zippy presentation of the great new plan that will revolutionize everything.  When someone actually tries it.  Which, as yet, no one ever has.  But the author hopes that you will and you'll write him and tell him how it goes.

And, so, to name names, as you might guess I'm not the biggest booster of, say, Chuck Colson or James Dobson.  But, much as I love reading Hunter's dismissal of them (and, man, do I ever enjoy it), I can't help feeling this niggling rejoinder of, "Well, sure, but you've gotta give them credit for at least this.  They put their money where their mouth is and they built organizations to try to execute their (faulty) vision of culture change.  They did something."  (And, just to say, I remain--from what little I know about it--very impressed with Colson's non-culture-change-directed organization, his prison ministry.)

It goes back to the classic Teddy Roosevelt quote that it's not the critic who counts, it's the person actually in the arena, etc. 

Now, of course, I could be completely misreading where Hunter will land, and I will indeed press through the book.

But, at the very least, it begs the question of what role would you hope to see scholars play in a great culture-shaping project (presuming one is possible, viz. Hunter...)?  We have several awesome scholars who at least pop in and out of this blog and sometimes even partner with us in actual projects.  Caleb and Brent come to mind. 

What role do you want to see scholars play?

Comments

[steven hamilton]

interesting that you mention caleb and brent...that's who i was thinking of!

the thought occurs to me and i wonder if we haven't put too much pressure on "scholars" to do our thinking for us a little too much (which - by-and-large - most of them like to do...thinking great thoughts and ideas that is). what i mean is, interacting with scholars for me has been most helpful in an "informed perspective" or "thoughtful re-orientation" sort of way, in that, they take the deeper look, and give the larger perspective, and while being suggestive for future endeavours, they begin looking deeply for others who are actually doing it (ergo the Roosevelt quote); some of the best scholarship i have read are those who have actually done it (newbigin) or who are involved with people doing the stuff. maybe it's the historian in me, but this "reflective-suggestive orientation" role is what i most cherish most in scholars (even if, like you, i kinda dig on some of their rants...)

[Dave T.]

Oh, to be brief for the moment. I share Dave's fears about the end of the book. Mix this in: Hunter relies on donors. Rich men. So do I. It's natural to conclude that "to change history" is to do so through "other people like my people." We all like to think that our people are either The Saviors or The Problem. Which is "problematic" because he could be right, even if it is somewhat selve serving and theoretical at present. Still, he could be right. Micah 6:8 comes to mind as to what's best for the world, besides what John, Paul, George & Ringo said. And that don't take no stinking plan.

[Dave T.]

Wow, two whole comments about scholars...nobody cares much about what scholars do? My, my, my...I hardly know what to say.

Addendum thought: this blog seems to be concerned with reaching people about Jesus. Thus I read scholars like Brent saying he has no use for politics, cuz it's not job #1. I guess I just want to ask: what happens after you reach someone for Jesus? The only right & proper thing is to drop everything else except a job and a family and go out & reach others for Jesus? If that was true, we should all be working for Campus Crusade. Or at the very least, we shouldn't get married because Paul says that's the #1 distraction to ministry. Not that politics is #1, 1A or 2 or 22 on "a list" but do y'all ever think about how we're living in exile, and Israel was instructed to plant crops and live for the welfare of Babylon? That's what I meant by being cheeky by quoting the Beatles. Talk about Christ, sure, I'm paid to. But live for The Lord where you are. And I'm going to insist on being a thorn in your side when it comes to politics. It's a part of life. If you choose to do it, do it. For the Lord. I really don't do any politics. But if you do, I can't see you in sin. Jesus or Paul never discouraged it. But they did discourage marriage & building bigger barns.

[brian]

I'm not sure how to interpret this (sarcastic? adversarial?) tone Dave T. takes above...

But, as someone who has dedicated the last decade of my life to scholarship, and who hopes to have a career in academia (specifically biblical scholarship; at least this is what I've done in the past as an adjunct type and now a PhD student, though no one can tell what the economy is going to bring for people like me), I want to say that I definitely hope there is a place for scholars in any attempt to spark a revival amongst secularists in the increasingly secular west.
And I've spent more time than I can accurately convey here in thinking about this very issue...but somehow I feel like I'd be cheapening it by going on and on in a response to a blog post. (Not that this blog is a "cheap" venue, esp. in relation to other blogs.)

So I'll just say: scholars who are (or want to be) followers of Jesus need the church, badly; they need small groups and Bible studies and service projects and pastors. And the church needs scholars and thinkers, and it has benefited enormously from them for 2000 years.

Also: I think this quote from Dave S. up in the main post re: business consultant/scholars is interesting: "But when you're done, you realize you've just read a zippy presentation of the great new plan that will revolutionize everything." Indeed, I've thought this same thing about not a few sermons I've heard in my life...(present church 100% excluded!! :) So I'm not sure how this applies to scholarship qua scholarship (or if it was meant to)?
Anyway: I love scholarship, and I've devoted my life to it, and I want it (no, need it) to mean something in terms of my life in communities of faith.

Thanks for the good post; I'm worried this topic will get buried b/c of the weekend! I'm curious to hear what others have to say...

[brian]

In fact, if I could briefly add one point: since the religious church movements that are currently least effective in reaching secularists are overwhelmingly perceived as being hostile to the spirit and results of scholarly types of inquiry (e.g., to science, evolutionary theory, etc.), a "Not Religious" type of revival would seem to benefit greatly by showing how, in fact, people who want to follow Jesus can be either open to the insights of various kids of scholarship or live lives in academic contexts themselves.

[Brian Odom]

A few modern influential scholars come to my mind: Lewis, Willard, Boyd, and Wright. In my mind, the impact of each of these is that they fulfill a prophetic role of saying the right thing at the right time.

To attempt a summary of how they've influenced me: Lewis helped Christians see that God's universe holds more possibilities than does a reductionist reading of the Bible. Willard (Divine Conspiracy) articulated the idea of the gospel as being good news for experiential life and not primarily being about sin management. Boyd (Satan and the Problem of Evil) points out a very practical need for a theology which incorporates real struggle against evil and (Turning from Judgment to the Love of God) argues that a tendency towards judgment, far from being a godly instinct, is intimately connected with the Fall. Wright (Simply Christian, The Challenge of Jesus), attempts to create a historically believable Christology which can be meaningful to our contemporaries. In each of these cases, it seems like there is a call to something with practical implications, and not just a case against something (ala one of Dave's points in the post.)

I'd say that Boyd and Wright are still very fresh for me, but it's difficult to go back and really enjoy reading the earlier Lewis and Willard (for the case of Divine Conspiracy at least). I think the only slightly older writings seem less fresh, partly because they were so effective at getting us to accept new ideas which we have by now internalized, and partly because their arguments were designed to convince a particular culture of something, thereby losing a little timelessness. So, I’m wondering if one role of scholarship working right is to deliver a sort of timely prophesy. However, especially if they are successful in doing their job, those excellent scholarly treatises have a much more limited shelf life than does Prophecy with a capital P.

[Dave T.]

Hi Brian, Sorry I left you with a bad impression...I didn't mean to. I was somewhere between amused and concerned that a blog that gets 10's of hits in a few hours got one (!) over hours, even over one day - ! - besides mine (!) - on scholars!! It's as if scholars don't matter a bit to this community! And then I got carried away in being concerned about the anti-politics flavor of many of the usual post-ers. So without anyone posting on scholarship I went with an addendum thought or two.

I shared the concern Dave S. has that Hunter might be swayed quite humanly by the kinds of persuasions we're all subject to, to be beholden to our chosen audience, to think what we've dedicated ourselves to is THE REAL plan that saves the church and the human race. It's a common frailty for all of us, me included. So, my tone was to imply that scholars aren't the end all, but that the commoness of Micah 6:8 and LOVE is better than any special plan among faculty. And I say that even though I'm paid to do ministry among faculty, something I love doing and can't believe I get paid to do. Glad you're out there as a scholar. Aren't you too wondering what happened to all the usual post-ers? Did the week-end really swallow them whole? Or are scholars boring to this group?

[Brent]

I feel obligated to point out Dave T. is mischaracterizing me here. That's not how I think about politics at all. I don't feel obligated to clarify, though.

[Brent]

Sorry for not commenting earlier...last week of classes here and preparing for a six-week research trip to England....

I think Brian is right that the role of the scholar is the role of prophet. Like OT prophets, when scholars do their jobs well, they call us to honesty and authenticity. They help non-scholars (pastors in particular, but others as well) identify the places where they have become myopic and blind to truth and show us other truths we never knew existed. When I read Wright's Surprised by Hope recently, I had revelations after revelation about how I had led popular culture strongly influence the way I thought about heaven and was recalled to a Biblical eschatology that motivated and heals.

The problem Dave S. identified in the post is that some scholars aren't content just with this role - they think they can not only point to the truth, but also tell us how to fix things. There I think they can often step a bit beyond their mandate, or at least that aspect of their work should perhaps be accepted with more skepticism. Theory and implementation are two different things :)

As for myself, well...I think I owe this blog a guest post about how aspects of my own work as a linguist are strongly motivated (for me, anyway) by Biblical principles that the church often ignores. If I can come up for air at all between now and the end of May, I'll try to do that.

[DJ Sybear]

So I'm all for scholarship being a good thing in the life of the Church.

So just a thought...

Do we (the community here) have any perspectives on the work of Paul Hiebert? As far as I can tell, he seems to have been the guy who came up with bounded and centered sets as a construct related to missiology.

Frankly, I'm surprised I had never heard his name mentioned by any emerging church or contemporary ecclesiology sources I'd read or heard until I went looking for the origination of the theory a couple weeks ago. (Of course, he may have been mentioned, but not thoroughly enough that I remembered him.) It would seem to me that his approach and entry point might be particularly relevant to our topics here.

Maybe Hiebert's notable "absence" from the shop talk of church life is a statement in itself about the role of scholarship in churches. Scholarship is useful, but scholars less so? Strange.

[Crispin Schroeder]

Brian,
I agree with what you say and have been thinking the same things.

It seems to me that what is really amazing about C.S. Lewis. N.T. Wright and even Greg Boyd as that these guys are really concerned about non-scholars getting what they are saying. There work is really tied to practitioners as much as academics. I think that is a real big deal. All three of these scholars have very accessible stuff to non-scholars (for instance Chronicles of Narnia, Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce to name a few by Lewis, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope and the For Everyone series by Wright, and Boyd's Myth of a Christian Nation and Myth of a Christian Religion etc.) So while each of these scholars could definitely isolate themselves in the world of academia, they make a concerted effort to get these ideas in the hands of everyday folk. It was the entry level stuff that these guys wrote that lead me to much more scholarly works.

Here's a musical analogy: Miles Davis was an amazing and popular jazz musician. He could have easily just hung out in a world of complex jazz pieces that, for 99 percent of the population, would have just flown right over their heads (and he certainly did some of that stuff) but there was just enough stuff that was accessible to a large portion of the population that now he is not only regarded as one of the best horn players and pioneers of modern jazz but also one of the most popular. Miles Davis was for many music lovers a bit of a gateway into the complexities of jazz music. I am sure that there are many out there who started with his music and than began to explore more and more of the jazz for the simple fact his music didn't sound so completely foreign to the average listener.

All this to say, I am a big fan of scholar staying connected to the church and making an effort to make their ideas accessible to a wider audience.

Along these lines I also think that it would be good to see more interaction and dialogue between scholars and artists because art has a way of taking theological ideas and connecting with folks on a bit more of a heart level. This no doubt worked amazingly for C.S. Lewis years ago and even these days for folks like Rob Bell (and I would even put Wright in this category a bit because there is definitely an art to the way he writes things drawing on music and poetry and story).

[Jeff]

Good. To put things roughly, I think it's helpful when people "know their place."

For example- when a pastor with a couple semesters of greek gets up and critiques the NIV's translation of a passage, I just wince. I think "Really? You and your greek lexicon that still has the "used" sticker on it are going to outdo scholars with decades of translation experience? Scholars who can probably translate Hieroglyphics better than you can translate ebonics?"

And, as you indicated, vice-versa.

[Brent]

Good example. Though I often think when pastors do things like that it is not that they are doing the work (poorly) on their own, but rather they have read something someone else wrote and are using it in their sermon. That is fine, but it means pastors should try to do two things: better vet their resources so they know they are reading good stuff written by qualified scholars, and cite their sources in their sermons. Seems to me like there is some shame associated with the latter in pastor culture - like if a pastor admits he got one of his points from someone else, it means he can't think for himself. I have heard pastors deliver material I know they got wholesale from the book they are currently reading and never mention the book or its author. I'm not saying it is unethical to do that (the pastorate isn't academia), but I don't think it is helpful and possibly its even harmful.

[Jeff]

I agree. And honestly, done well, the "refer to experts" tactic really plays well. IE, "Several commenters on this text have noted that the translation is tricky and some even think...", or "A profound thinker on how life integrates with work recently published a book that gives us a helpful model..." It actually makes it seem like the pastor maybe puts some work into these here sermons...

[Vinceation]

I think the "refer to experts" tactic is nothing but helpful. It also helps take down the "speaker is a superstar of faith" notion. I often tell people that just about everything I ever say is someone else's awesome thought, I'm just a good compiler of information.

[Dave T.]

To quote you, Brent,

I am a citizen of the Kingdom only and all of my allegiances lie there. This citizenship might compel me to engaged in the world's political structures in specific ways from time to time, but only to the extent that those structures can be a tool to building the Kingdom. In my opinion, this only happens on rare occasions. In most cases, the two are opposed to each other. Therefore, in most cases I tend to think we should, like Jesus, stay away from political positions and action.

Brent, I'm sorry, I should have never said "I'm going to be a thorn in your side" because you can't SEE me smiling and winking at you. So I've got to be more careful with my wording. Your post suggests you'll act occasionally, but not routinely. I guess you don't see Jesus as being political. However, I know scholars & pastors who could point you to bookcases full of books that suggest that Jesus was the most political person of all time. I don't think anyone should object to your choice to remain aloof and vote or act when you're so moved, that's pretty much what I do. But your comments seem to condemn the activists in politics among as. It seems like you look down on them from your kingdom loft. In my opinion, that just doesn't seem to help. Feel free to not reply, I just wanted to apologize for mis-speaking.

[Brent]

One has to be clear about what is meant by 'political.' If by political, one means something like 'seeking to effect change by gaining political power within the present state system of government,' then I think Jesus was very a-political. He refused to engage that system. Arguments that he only refused to engage the system b/c he was a disenfranchised Galilean or because Rome was too oppressive or something similar hold no water for me. If God wanted to enter the world as a centurion or Caesar, he could have. If Jesus wanted to topple Rome with armies of angels, he could have done that too.

But if we mean 'political' more broadly as something like 'have a set of principles through which one views and acts toward human institutions,' then I think Jesus was extremely political. He advocated a position of extreme pacifism (Luke 6:29) and a passive toleration of government authority (Luke 20:25), among other things.

The central question for a political activist is this: can anything be gained for the Kingdom by gaining political power? I think the answer is no. That is because the Kingdom of God doesn't run on political power, which is always top-down and derives from the threat of violence. The Kingdom of God runs on mutual service and submission, a spirit of self-sacrificing love. Governments don't run that way. Governments can't run that way. The path to the Kingdom is a narrow one, and it doesn't run through Washington.