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Christianity and Liberal Society
By Robert Song
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997. 250 pp. $65.00.
Christianity and Civil Society: The Contemporary Debate
By Robert Wuthnow
Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996. 103 pp. $15.00.
Both of these works are driven by the same underlying sense that public life is becoming ever more sullied and unfulfilling, and that liberalism, the dominant way of understanding public life, is implicated in this state of affairs. For both authors, many of the most problematic features of modern society (the rise of technology, postmodern forms of analysis and critique, and ever-expanding religious and metaphysical pluralism) all derive from, or are at least abetted by, liberal presuppositions. Moreover, Wuthnow and Song agree that these circumstances require a Christian response. Modern changes have rendered established forms of accommodation and engagement obsolete. Hence, for both authors, Christianity must endeavor to find new ways of addressing and ameliorating our contemporary problems.
Yet precisely because the basic concerns of Song and Wuthnow are so similar, the points of distinction are all the more interesting and important.
Wuthnow's work derives from a lecture series. It is short and accessible with many engaging examples. Song's is a revised dissertation, and it bears the mark of a man out to prove his academic bona fides. More importantly, Wuthnow is a sociologist and Song a theologian. For the former, the problems are social, and the requisite form of analysis, empirical. As for the putative Christian response, that, too, is understood in social, even institutional terms. When Wuthnow talks about Christianity, he is talking about churches, soup kitchens, Bible study groups and the like. For Song, our problems are fundamentally intellectual. Our liberal worldview has created our contemporary condition, and stands woefully ill-prepared to address it. We need a new way of thinking. And when he looks for Christian resources, he looks to theologians, not parishioners.
Wuthnow begins his short book by getting the lay of...