Why Secularism Rules in a Christian Majority Society

Joe Couto of Christian Week

interviews Michael Van Pelt on the challenge of religion and secularism in Canadian public life.

TORONTO, ON-Tim Hollaar’s high-powered job as a vice president for the Canadian subsidiary of Australian-owned mining giant WMC Resources Limited sees him engaged in the cutthroat international mining business, where huge profits are made and lost everyday.

But as a Christian, Hollaar finds it difficult to act in a "life-changing way” as demanded by his faith.

That’s why Hollaar took time out of his schedule, including catching an early flight from Calgary, to take in controversial American sociologist James Davison Hunter’s first ever address to a Canadian audience on June 17 in Toronto.

Hollaar said he was attracted by the University of Virginia professor’s unique views on how North American Christians can change culture and hoped for "takeaways” he could use to integrate faith and business.

Hollaar was among a diverse group of 100 business people, church leaders and social workers who gathered at the Ontario legislature to hear a view on cultural change that challenges traditional Christian evangelism and outreach methods.

While Hunter, department chair and director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, took aim at the "commercial/entertainment” world’s "energetic but superficial” culture, he also confronted "creedal communities,” which he believes have become increasingly marginalized.

"U.S. evangelical influence on the culture is minimal,” said Hunter. "Many [churches and denominations] are self-aggrandizing institutions-visionless, unsophisticated, naïve and out-of-touch with the world around them.”

Fundamental to the church’s failure in influencing our culture is the view about how culture is actually changed. Hunter argued the prevailing view-that by convincing individuals to adopt the "right values” culture will be influenced for the better-is simply wrong.

The proof is in the fact that while faith communities have always and continue to dominate North American society numerically, business, law and government have moved steadily toward secularism, said Hunter.

He also argued that numerical size is not necessarily a guarantee of influence. For example, America’s homosexual community-at best three per cent of the population-has made extraordinary gains in visibility, legitimacy and legal rights during the past several decades.

Instead, Hunter told his audience, cultural change depends not just on changing hearts, but on developing networks that promote change. Furthermore, he argued that "elites” are the ones that drive culture.

"Such power arises from overlapping networks of leaders and overlapping resources, all operating in the centre of institutions,” he said. "Change happens when elites overlap.”

The message seemed to resonate with people such as Paul Weigel, president of the Ontario-based Forerunner radio ministry. "I thought Hunter has a very perceptive and realistic view of the way culture is formed in western society even if it is radically different than most of our current perceptions,” said Weigel.

"It has been a paradigm shift that has left me trying to adapt all that he said into the many different areas in which we are involved.”

Michael Van Pelt, president of the Work Research Foundation, believes Hunter’s challenge to the traditional view of cultural change is needed at a time when public debate about public life has never been greater.

"We wanted to bring Hunter here to challenge us about public life and the influencing of culture,” said Van Pelt, whose economic think-tank helped organize Hunter’s address.

Van Pelt said that by bringing together "diverse leaders with diverse callings,” his organization hopes to inspire Christian leaders from a wide variety of fields to be "change agents challenged to think about influence in every aspect of their lives.”