Book Review - Jean Bethke Elshtain's Who Are We?

In Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities, Jean Bethke Elshtain suggests a way for Christians to interact with culture.  She identifies two mistakes people make when answering, “Who are we?”  First, people use the word “prophetic” as a rhetorical device.  Elshtain instead proposes that being prophetic means asking where current conditions and values may lead.  Second, people do not ask enough questions.  Liberals too often focus on possible good from social reform without considering potential pitfalls.  Conservatives look at the pitfalls without considering potential good.  Elshtain is critical of both mistakes because they indicate an unwillingness to be faithful to anything except self.  She is hopeful that it is still possible to be faithful to something more.  Such faithfulness means that we see cultures as ethical entities.

Who Are We? is a path to hopeful possibilities that begins with a question: “How far have we fallen?”  Elshtain looks to two of the 20^th Century’s great theologians, Dietrich Bonheoffer and Pope John Paul II, to define human.  Humans are created.  Therefore, we must be available to God and acknowledge God’s lordship.  It also means that God gives life as a gift.  God provides the further gift of grace, which repairs the damage people did to the initial gift of life.  Finally, humans are relational.  Being available to God means being available to others.

Elshtain uses this definition to contrast with what she sees in contemporary culture.  We are not relationally available to one another.  Instead, we are consumers focused on our own wants.  People are not under the lordship of God.  They are under the lordship of themselves.  Life is something to grasp rather than share.  This contrasting definition of human is dangerous because we don’t realize that something wrong.  In essence, we “forget that we are fallen.”  Our forgetfulness is evident by both pride and sloth.

Currently, pride is not considered sinful because we confuse pride for freedom.  Freedom embraces and values other people.  Pride sees embrace as something that prevents me from getting what I want because no one has the right to stop me.  Freedom has self-imposed limits that do not allow harm to others.  Pride does not recognize limits.  Pride changes the definition of human.  Pride makes humans “consumerist-commodifiable.”  Adam Smith’s idea of the market includes moral limits on what it can encompass.  These limits no longer exist.  The market encompasses practically everything.  Human is now a being with a want that fills that want.  

This stands in contrast to Christian teaching.  Christianity extols relationship and claims that people are primarily community-oriented, rather than self-interested.  Our approach to society should therefore address social concerns.  Pride makes it impossible to love one another.  Being consumerist-commodifiable trusts the market, a human institution corrupted by sin, absolutely.  Our current market system commodifies everything.  This separates winners from losers and neglects people in the name of productivity.

Elshtain’s other evidence that we have forgotten that we are fallen is sloth.  Sloth is not inactivity.  Sloth is taking for granted the same things that contemporary culture takes for granted.  Sloth avoids self-reflection.  Slothfulness and busyness co-exist.  Like pride, sloth refuses to acknowledge the standard beyond us.  Sloth lets me ignore where external things (good and bad) control my life.

Freedom exists in real-life situations.  Freedom is good and people are acutely aware of its absence.  Christianity broadens the definition of freedom by noting that what is good may exist outside of cultural norms.  Christianity can add critical thought to the cultural conversation by explaining that good and functionality are not synonymous.  Christians are slothful by refusing to acknowledge this teaching when discussing what is good.

To conclude Who Are We?, Elshtain asks how Christians can use the hope they claim to help build cultural institutions that allow for a collective well-being.  She makes four suggestions for how Christians can help to show who our culture is.

First, Christians need to insist that language has meaning.  This means being careful with our language.  Language can embrace freedom or it can create oppression.  Language is necessary for cultural debates.  Language is the medium of ideas.  It is therefore a powerful, dangerous, and essential tool.  

Second, Christians should be ready both to share opinions in cultural discussions and to explain why people should listen to us.  It is our responsibility to demonstrate that our faith allows us to be reasonable.

Third, Christians must exemplify living as part of creation.  This means that we do not willingly enter social groups.  Instead, we are societal by default.  We cannot claim that everyone made a mess of creation without demonstrating creation’s ideal.

Fourth, the church’s engagement with society should be close enough to allow us to explain the culture to the culture.  This means acknowledging both cultural failures and triumphs.  To say that a culture is beyond hope is to claim that the good that God created is dead.  This makes redemption impossible.

In my senior year of university, I read Who Are We? for the first time.  I hated the book.  I was rather ungracious in my book review.  It was a simple summary and the line “Not worth reading.”  I deservedly did not get a good grade on the review.  When I started considering books about Christianity and politics, I reluctantly added this to the list.  Perhaps early 30s Tony sees something that early 20s Tony did not.  Perhaps my opinions have changed to a point where I’m open to what Elshtain has to say.  Perhaps I’ve matured.* Regardless, I’m glad I re-read the book.  There are bits that frustrate me, but there are also things I learned about justice.

First, Elshtain taught me to put pride and freedom on the same spectrum.  I like that freedom has self-contained limits.  Elshtain is not arguing that our rights should be limited, but instead argues that freedom is focused on community and love of neighbour.  Whether I am allowed to do something is almost irrelevant to whether I will.  Pride, on the other hand, is focused entirely on me.  Community and love of neighbour aren’t part of the discussion.  Pride tells me to do something simply because I have the right to, everyone else be damned.

Second – and building on something I started thinking about when reading Red Letter Christians – I am certain that language and justice are inseparable.  I’m a writer and have a degree in Communication Studies, so I don’t need to be convinced about the power of words.  Still, Elshtain’s discussion about the ability language has to create or destroy freedom made an impression.  

Third, Elshtain’s discussion about the inherent community that is part of functional societies makes it obvious that social justice cannot exist with exclusion.  The discussion becomes nuanced when considering Elshtain’s challenge to Christians that community is not something we willingly enter, but is instead something that we inherently are.  I want to ask (and welcome input in the comment section below): If the church removes itself from the surrounding culture, is it being unjust?  Further, who are the victims of the injustice – the culture or the church itself?  Part of community dies and exclusion happens, so I can’t help but wonder.  Who Are We? is certainly woth reading.

*I know that my hair has gotten grayer.

This post originally appeared on my former blog ajdickinson.blogspot.ca. The date stamp is for the date of the original posting.