Cultural Engagement, Listening, and Public Theology

political tradition produces powerful and determined personalities like presidents Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon. It also produces highly successful entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller, Sam Walton, and even Steve Jobs.

At the point when institutionalists rely upon the strength of will and the virtuous sink into ideological bubbles, there is no room for partnerships between the two thus creating political problems that often seem insurmountable. Typically fewer Americans assent to the virtue tradition. It is safe to say, however, that people like this often serve as the clear power brokers in modern, partisan politics. Up until present times, the virtuous served the useful function of keeping political life contained, tame, and less abrasive. They shaped party platforms, occupied important places in media and movement organizations, and ultimately served as the gatekeepers for those seeking office. They shared mannerisms and personality preferences despite deep divisions along ideological lines.

An argument can be made that the lasting tension between the virtuous and the institutionalists only benefits those in the Hamiltonian, financial political culture. It can be easy to then conclude that the financial elites will always win no matter which political party holds power. Yet in a period when portions of those elites now foster specific ideological demands, those holding to traditional virtues as well as the value of traditional institutions should settle their grievances. In time, traditional virtues will be totally supplanted by new ideological fads and prescriptions. Irrespective of every religious and thoughtful effort to defend traditional virtues, the tide has turned against them. In no short order, the virtue tradition will further fragment along impenetrable ideological lines and ever more institutions will be forced to meet ideological litmus tests. The cultural descendants of Adams and Jefferson will suffer together unless “Jeffersonians” learn to speak the language of virtue and at least cautiously embrace it. But advocates of traditional virtues must be prepared to do what they historically failed to do. They must accept that the things that matter to most people are not found in elite culture, and they must learn to speak without pretention, or worse, apply principles totally alien to common circumstances. It may also demand that the virtuous accept that no matter how decent their leaders may be, corrupt institutions may still overwhelm the most steadfast. To state that both sides need each other now more than ever may seem trite. Their very survival now depends upon it.

1 The best lengthy treatment of the turbulent friendship of Adams and Jefferson remains Gordon S. Wood, Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (Penguin, 2017).

2 Forrest McDonad, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (University of Kansas Press, 1985). See especially chapter 3. McDonald covers the “financial” tradition most directly in Alexander Hamilton: A Biography (W.W. Norton, 1982).

3 See John Steele Gordon, Hamilton’s Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of our National Debt (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010), and The Business of America: Tales from the Marketplace - American Enterprise from the Settling of New England to the Breakup of AT&T (Walker and Company, 2001).

4 The literature on the “virtue” tradition is abundant and includes classic works such as Alasdair MacIntyr, After Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) to Quinten Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge University Press, 1978). To understand its shift in modern American, see Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: The Story of Ideas in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002).

5 Carol Hanisch, “The Personal is Political,” reprinted in Barbara A. Crow, Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader (New York University Press, 2000).

Guest Interview

CULTURAL ENGAGEMENT, LISTENING, AND PUBLIC THEOLOGY

Recently, D.A. Horton took some time to have a conversation with Ben Forrest, managing editor of Faith and the Academy. Horton is Assistant Professor of Intercultural Studies at California Baptist University. He is author of several books, including “Intensional: Kingdom Ethnicity in a Divided World.”

Forrest: As a Christian, what guides your view of public theology?

Horton: I recognize that the Kingdom of God is a theme that runs throughout Scripture, as the space in which God’s sovereignty is the reality that He rules and reigns over all things. I also recognize the role of the Church to be a preview of what His restoration of all creation is going to look like. When I look at all the different spaces of influences and issues in society, I look to apply the kingdom ethics found in Scripture to this specific topic. What I do in my teaching and writing is bring Scripture into dialogue with what is going on around me in society so that Scripture speaks into these lived realities.

Forrest: Can you tell the audience a little bit about who you are and what brought you to your role as professor, writer, and church planter in the pluralistic context of California?

Horton: I come from a heritage that is Mexican American, Native American, as well as various European ethnicities. I am a bit of a montage, but at the same time, I grew up in a predominantly AfricanAmerican context. I also grew up in poverty, with heavy gang and drug activity all around. I began to

When it comes to the ethnic divisions in our world, we speak often of seeking racial reconciliation. But at no point have all the different ethnicities on Earth been reconciled. Animosity, distrust, and hostility among people from various ethnicities have always existed in American history. Even in the church, we have often built walls — ethnic segregation, classism, sexism, and theological tribes to divide God’s people from each other. But it shouldn’t be this way. God’s people are the only people on earth who have experienced true reconciliation. Who better to enter into the ethnic tensions of our day with the hope of Jesus? Here, Horton steps into the tension to offer vision and practical guidance for Christians longing to embrace our Kingdom ethnicity, combating the hatred in our culture with the hope of Jesus Christ.

D.A. Horton, Intensional: Kingdom Ethnicity in a Divided World. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2019. $15.99

see brokenness in humanity multiplied everywhere I went. When the Lord saved me in my teenage years, I began to recognize that just because He has resurrected me, it does not mean my entire community has been resurrected to life. So I began to deal with the new tension of how to represent the Lord, how to share the Gospel, and how do I even defend my faith against all those various religions and philosophies which saturated my environment. I had to learn early on how to defend the faith before I even knew what apologetics was. Now that I live in California, God has allowed me to have a heart that is filled with empathy and compassion, which seeks to understand the people from all sorts of contexts. They often have different opinions, and from them I can learn what they are looking for and how to express the truth of God’s Word into their story.

California is filled with people from different cultures and worldviews. I have found that building my conversation from a shared vision of humanity allows conversations to find greater receptivity. So I don’t divorce my humanity from my faith, and this allows me to be seen as human to somebody who is unregenerate. Then, I can express common shared humanity and how the Gospel is good news for my frailties which leads to Gospel-infused conversations. My goal is to drive nonbelievers to become more inquisitive about my position, even if they feel like they're looking for inconsistencies in my worldview, which to me is an open door for more Christ-infused conversations that are contextualized to the topic at hand.

Forrest: As you are talking about shared humanity, one thing that I assume is required to cultivate that is a posture of listening. How have you cultivated that posture in your own walking with people in different worldviews, and how can Christians grow as listeners?

Horton: I was raised in a Pentecostal charismatic environment, from five to twenty-five. Alongside that rhythm comes the reality of holiness, from a charismatic Wesleyan influence. Holiness, from this perspective, often deteriorated into an avoidance of drinking, smoking, profanity, and sexual promiscuity. Then my biblical training was rooted in a classical dispensational perspective. The ethos of this was a bit rigid when engaging cultural conversations as to what is acceptable as Christian behavior or not. I say this as a backdrop because I used to have ears that would only listen to refute the person. What the Lord has done, as I have surrendered my heart more to Him, is mature my approach to listening. Previously, I never thought to listen to understand people as persons. I began to recognize greater value in listening in order to draw out the content of their heart. Now, I have learned to not only listen to them, but as I listen, to also ask the Holy Spirit to sensitize my being that my response is inviting and God-honoring. This includes still remaining theologically cognizant so that I can answer questions from Scripture. This approach has made follow-up questions more meaningful because it has allowed people to recognize that I am sincerely interested in their perspective and conclusions. When I then respond, I always do it by leveraging the conversation and asking something to the effect, “May I ask your permission to share my perspective and my experience of what shapes my vantage point to this issue?” Most often the response is, “Absolutely.” Active listening has gotten me much further in conversations than simply conditioning my responses to their questions in a pre-rehearsed, catechetical response.

Forrest: Continuing with the value of listening, how can the habit of listening help Christians engaging in apologetics, knowing that few have answers to all the questions that can be asked in an apologetic scenario? Can it/does it relieve some of that fear that is often associated with evangelism and apologetics?

Horton: I think that question actually highlights one of the deficiencies I have found in Evangelicalism. When it comes to issues like the problem of evil, we get stuck in our head, and we divorce the content in our head from our heart. Dr. Hindson at Liberty has actually been very influential in my life because he talks about the importance of the head, heart, and hands. We have the theological framework of Scripture in our head, but we also need to leverage our heart. We have separated our God-given emotions from our interactions. We are multifaceted beings, and part of the reality of the non-material gifts that God has given us are our emotions. One of the reasons we forget the value of emotions is because of the temptation for extreme emotionalism. But in guarding against emotionalism, we disconnect heart from our head. In conversations where we do not have an answer, we don't have to tense up and shut down. We may think, “Okay let me just give them the Scripture, and then I've done the job.” In those moments, we need to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, not in the thirdwave sense, but in an honest posture of submission to the leading of the Spirit. This often requires grieving with those who are in grief. When we do not have the answers, faithful presence is apologetic itself.