• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

DONATE
  • Home
  • About Us
    • About Our Bloggers
    • Commenting Policy
  • Reading Lists
  • Scholar’s Compass
    • Scholar’s Compass Booklet
    • View Recent Posts
  • Connect
    • Membership
    • Events
    • Donate
    • Contact Us
You are here: Home / The University / Life in the Academy / Faithful Presence: Faithful Presence in the Midst of Pluralism: Introduction

Faithful Presence: Faithful Presence in the Midst of Pluralism: Introduction

July 29, 2022 by Emily G. Wenneborg 1 Comment

Robert Stokoe at Pexels

This is Part 1 in a five-part essay series. A version of this essay was originally published online and in print as part of “Faithful Presence in the Midst of Pluralism: Three Tensions” at Ad Fontes.

How should we as Christians, with our distinctive beliefs, practices, and values, live faithfully in an increasingly pluralistic age? In his widely influential work To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, Christian sociologist of religion James Davison Hunter calls Christians to reject the dominant paradigms of defense, relevance, and withdrawal and instead embrace lives of faithful presence in their various callings and places, including higher education.[1] Hunter provides an inviting picture of what faithful presence looks like in both theory and practice.

The realities of pluralism and the “cross-pressures”[2] that we all experience as we seek to live faithfully while loving others mean that certain tensions characterize our attempts to be faithfully present. Christians who recognize the inevitability of these tensions are not necessarily unwilling to make hard choices, nor have they succumbed to compromise – accusations that may be raised by those who do not themselves feel the weight of the tensions. Rather, to live in the midst of these tensions means to recognize that we are not God, but serve One Who sees the bigger picture and is able both to forgive and to redeem all our failings. According to Hunter,

the call “to be in the world but not of it” is a call to abide in the will and purposes of God in the present world disorder with integrity, and the only way to reach for that integrity is to recognize the tension and to reside within it knowing that failure is inevitable, forgiveness is ever available, and the work of the Holy Spirit to transform and sanctify our efforts is always inscrutably at work.[3]

Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith concurs that living with tension is an inescapable aspect of Christian faithfulness: “the call to bear Christ’s image complicates our lives because it comes to us in the midst of our environments without releasing us from them. The call to discipleship complicates our lives precisely because it introduces a tension that will only be resolved eschatologically [that is, when Christ returns].”[4]

Smith further observes, “Faithful witness is a precarious dance.”[5] That is, faithfulness in the midst of pluralism is never a settled thing, but looks different in different times and places and for different individuals, families, schools, and churches. Any step of faithfulness in the present, any attempt to correct the excesses of the previous generation, may itself prove in hindsight to be an overstep in the other direction, itself in need of correction. Yet faithfulness resists the search for settled positions and final solutions. So we cannot avoid the dance, but can only seek to dance more wisely and more faithfully, in full recognition of its precarity.

This essay series describes some of the steps of the dance. In the next three essays, I identify three tensions that are characteristic of Christian faithfulness in the midst of pluralism: affirmation and antithesis, engagement and distinctness, and humility and hope. Christian faithful presence tries to live in the midst of these tensions, rather than accepting easy resolutions of them that result in an abdication of faithfulness. In the final essay, I consider what it might look like to live in the midst of these three tensions in the context of higher education.


[1] James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

[2] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007); see also James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014).

[3] Hunter, To Change the World, 183–184.

[4] James K. A. Smith, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2017), 192.

[5] Smith, Awaiting the King, xiii.

About the author:

Emily G. Wenneborg
Posts

Emily G. Wenneborg is Director of Pascal Study Center and Assistant Professor at Urbana Theological Seminary. She has a PhD. in Philosophy of Education and Religious Studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Emily is interested in the possibilities and tensions of formation for Christian faithfulness in the midst of deep pluralism.

  • Emily G. Wenneborg
    https://blog.emergingscholars.org/author/emily-wenneborg/
    Faithful Presence: Three Tensions of Faithful Presence in the Midst of Pluralism: Affirmation and Antithesis
  • Emily G. Wenneborg
    https://blog.emergingscholars.org/author/emily-wenneborg/
    Faithful Presence: Three Tensions of Faithful Presence in the Midst of Pluralism: Engagement and Distinctness
  • Emily G. Wenneborg
    https://blog.emergingscholars.org/author/emily-wenneborg/
    Faithful Presence: Three Tensions of Faithful Presence in the Midst of Pluralism: Humility and Hope
  • Emily G. Wenneborg
    https://blog.emergingscholars.org/author/emily-wenneborg/
    Faithful Presence: Conclusion: The Dance of Faithful Presence in Higher Education

Share this:

  • Email
  • Print
  • Facebook
  • More
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: Life in the Academy Tagged With: Faithful Presence

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dawn Wessel says

    August 10, 2022 at 11:34 am

    I cannot find that verse “be in the world but not of the world”?

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Become a Member

Membership is Free. Sign up and receive our monthly newsletter and access ESN member benefits.

Join ESN Today

Scholar’s Compass Booklet

Scholar's Compass Booklet

Click here to get your copy

Top Posts

  • The Mechanism of Creation - The View from Science, Pt. 2
  • Faith and Reason, Part 2: Augustine
  • The Message of Genesis 1
  • A Prayer for Those Finishing a Semester
  • Faith and Reason, Part 3: Aquinas

Facebook Posts

Facebook Posts

Footer

About Us

The Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) is a national network within InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministries which supports those on the academic pathway as they work out how their academic vocation serves God and others. We encourage and equip undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty as they navigate each stage of their academic vocation and transition to the next step in or beyond the academy.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

Recent Posts

  • “Agony”
  • Forgiveness
  • Confession

Article Categories

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Contact Us
Member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
Copyright © 2023 - InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA ®. All rights reserved.

InterVarsity, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, and the InterVarsity logo are trademarks of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and its affiliated companies.