A Guide to Christian Ambition: Using Career, Politics, and Culture to Influence the World

By Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt has worked for and with people in some of the most powerful and influential positions in the country. He knows what is required to reach and thrive in such positions, and in this book he shares some of that valuable, hard-won knowledge.

A Guide to Christian Ambition provides readers with valuable insights, wisdom, personal experiences, and advice on how to rise in the world and achieve the kind of radical success that honors God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Dec 3, 2006
• ISBN: 9781418579692

Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt hosts a nationally syndicated radio program heard daily in more than one hundred cities. Hewitt is a professor of law at Chapman University and a partner in the law firm Hewitt Wolensky McNulty & Hickson LLP. He is the author of more than a dozen books and is a columnist for theWashington Examiner and Townhall.com and blogs daily at HughHewitt.com. Hewitt is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School.

Book preview

Bullet PART I Bullet

THE CRISIS AND THE CALL

HISTORY HAS KNOWN PERIODS OF GREATER AND LESSER human energy, and those periods of greater energy have been periods when ambition was a passion in good standing. In The Century of Louis XIV, Voltaire remarks on the four most admired historical epochs: Periclean Athens, Augustan Rome, Italy under the Medicis, and France under Louis XIV. Since Voltaire’s day, one might wish to add to the list the United States of America from presidents Washington through Jefferson and England under Queen Victoria. But what all these periods have in common is their lack of equivocal feeling about ambition. Not that ambition in any of these periods failed to produce its usual perversities, from the Athenian Alcibiades to the American Aaron Burr. But whatever its excesses, ambition has at all times been the passion that best releases the energies that make civilization possible . . .

In the Christian view, the pendulum has swung back and forth, from the doctrine that the meek shall inherit the earth to Max Weber’s perception (set forth in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) that, among the Calvinists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a sign of being among God’s elect is success on earth. As a general statement it seems unexceptional to say that Christianity has not necessarily despised ambition, although it has tended to view excessive preoccupation with ambition for worldly things as misguided.

—Joseph Epstein

Ambition

Bullet CHAPTER 1 Bullet

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHERE YOU ARE

GOING, OR WHEN THE TRIP WILL BEGIN

AMONG MEN ALIVE AT THE TIME I WROTE THIS BOOK, three had done more to shape our world than any others: a Russian, a Pole, and an American.

It is hard to imagine a more unlikely trio, given their early careers.

The Russian took correspondence courses in literature, spent his twenties in the army, his early thirties in a prison camp, and was teaching math when he turned forty.

The Pole is the son of a tailor, who at twenty was working in a stone quarry, was still studying for the priesthood at twenty-five, and only at forty published his dissertation, an appropriately obscure work for an obscure auxiliary bishop in a Warsaw Pact country.

The American was a sports announcer in Des Moines at the age of twenty-five, and by forty his career as an actor had peaked and fallen.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn would use words to strike at the heart of Soviet communism; Karol Wojtyla—later John Paul II—would inspire the first lasting resistance to the Soviets in one of their vassal states and later encourage freedom throughout the East; and Ronald Reagan would rally the West to face down every intimidation and to call upon the desperate leaders of the last modern empire, the Evil Empire, Reagan called it, to tear down this wall.

Even as late as 1988 it seemed impossible that the Soviets would simply dissolve their empire and walk away from seven decades of ideologically fueled expansion. Even then the KGB and the Red Army seemed impossibly strong. No one realistically believed that the USSR could be defeated.

Yes, yes, of course, wrote Solzhenitsyn, we all know you cannot poke a stick through the walls of a concrete tower, but here’s something to think about: what if the walls are only a painted backdrop? He wrote those words in 1975, a decade and a half before the painted backdrop would be pierced. Solzhenitsyn was never a short-term thinker.

None of these three giants was a quick-fix schemer. Each was patient and purposeful, and each followed his ambitions as those ambitions developed. They could not have known their paths, so unlikely did those paths turn out to be. But neither did they rule out anything for themselves at any step of the way—even when scrambling among rocks in a stone quarry, shuffling in prison camp food lines in the Siberian winter or battling near fatal throat cancer, or idling away years behind microphones or awaiting the scripts that stopped coming.

And you should not dismiss what your future might hold, for you have no idea where you are going. This is a book about Christian ambition—about the desire to help shape the world in large ways, and to do so in conformance to Christ’s teaching. Your circumstances today may or may not be particularly promising, but circumstances change, sometimes slowly and sometimes in the space of a day.

This generation and the next may not be blessed with giants, and even if they are, they will need—absolutely, positively need—hundreds of thousands of leaders of character, purpose, and ability. Even if you have not shown such traits to date, and even if you have spent half a lifetime discouraged by the flow of events, there are decades ahead and opportunities stacked up to the sky. The obstacles you face cannot possibly be as formidable as those that confronted these three men.

But rising in the world does take will. A French writer on the subject remarked upon the example of a retired colonel on a farm: The colonel who retires on a farm in the country would have liked to have become a general; but if I could examine his life, I would find some little thing that he neglected to do, that he did not want to do. I could prove to him that he did not want to become a general. In other words, the colonel did not want to be a general badly enough.

I came across that quote in a book I read in 1980, Ambition by Joseph Epstein, one of the country’s finest essayists. I have placed that anecdote on the table many, many times in front of many, many successful people. Eventually almost everyone comes around to this point of view. Success in the world is pretty much a function of disciplined effort.

Which, of course, raises the stakes quite high for Christians. Given the condition of the world, and given the stakes that ride on the outcome of individuals’ choices, believers do not really have the option of declining to become generals.

Had Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II, or Reagan chosen different paths—easier paths—the Soviet Union might well still be where it was, or its dissolution, as painful as it was, might not have been so relatively quiet for the rest of the world.

The reality for all Christians is the obligation to equip themselves for their greatest impact and to seek every opportunity to increase that impact.

And never to suspect that they are not called or that their time has passed them by.

Bullet CHAPTER 2 Bullet

THE SPECTRUM OF

CHRISTIAN AMBITION

IF I SEE A MADMAN DRIVING A CAR INTO A GROUP OF innocent bystanders, Dietrich Bonhoeffer explained to his sister, then I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try and wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.

The German theologian, a pacifist, was attempting to convey why he had joined with others to plot an unsuccessful assassination of Adolf Hitler. The most extreme ambition is to attempt revolution. Bonhoeffer tried and failed and was executed on April 9, 1945, as a result.

At the other end of worldly ambition is Francis of Assisi (1181–1226). Although a young man of wealth and position, Francis went through a religious transformation that saw him renounce all his goods, honors, and privileges in exchange for a life of ruthless poverty and service to the poor. He fashioned his rules for his followers from Christ’s command to the rich young man to sell everything and follow Him. His ambition became limited to the conversion of souls. Francis’s extraordinary gentleness and humility and his all embracing sympathy defined him. Saintlier than any saint, wrote one biographer, among sinners he was as one of themselves. Francis’s estimate of the world’s opinion was embedded in his famous phrase: What a man is in the sight of God, so much he is and no more.

Between a would-be assassin-theologian and history’s standard for self-denial, there are tens of thousands of degrees of involvement with the temporal world.

There was Pope Julius II, the warrior pope, born to be first a soldier in, and then the chief general of, the effort to repair and extend the worldly power of the papacy. Though a builder and benefactor of the arts (including his patronage of the careers of Michelangelo and Raphael), he was a far greater warrior than a churchman or a patron.

Thomas More (1478–1535), a remarkable jurist and adviser to King Henry VIII, also moved easily in the world. His capacity on the law bench was so great that although he inherited a huge backlog of legal disputes, every case before his court was at one point decided:

When More some time had Chancellor been

No More suits did remain

The like will never more be seen

Till More be there again.

But More lived in the age of Henry, and More paid for his loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church with his head.

William Wilberforce entered Great Britain’s Parliament in 1780. He experienced a profound conversion in 1786, and wrote in his diary, My walk is a public one. My business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men.

In 1789, Wilberforce launched a campaign against the British slave trade. Eighteen years later, in 1807, he succeeded in outlawing it and then began to campaign against slavery across the globe.

Henrietta Mears was a woman of vast ambition. She took charge of Christian education programs at First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood in 1928, and Sunday school attendance rose from four hundred to four thousand in three years. Hundreds of her students committed themselves to full-time ministry. One of them, Bill Bright, founded Campus Crusade for Christ in 1951, and that organization now spans the globe and is a model for reaching the unchurched. Mears also was the force behind the development of Forest Home, one of the most famous American retreat centers.

In 1938, in Gainesville, Texas, a young youth pastor was pointed by his boss toward unchurched high school students. Jim Rayburn went after those kids, and he institutionalized his approach and method in the organization Young Life, which Rayburn founded in 1941. Some sixty years later, this parachurch group has deeply touched the lives of millions of teenagers across the country and around the world, and its more than 2,500-member staff and 28 properties continue to do so today. (There’s a lot of stuff about Young Life in this book. It is the organization I primarily support outside my own church because I am so impressed by its inclusiveness, effectiveness, and commitment to excellence. You can investigate it for yourself at www.younglife.org.)

In 1942, William Cameron Townsend went to Guatemala to sell Bibles to the indigenous people there. He found himself among one tribe that did not speak Spanish and discovered that the Scriptures had never been translated into the tribe’s language. So Townsend stayed a decade, learned the language, and translated the Scripture into it. He also founded Wycliffe Bible Translators, and that organization has translated the Bible into more than five hundred different languages that had never before been open to the gospel. Along the way, the Wycliffe organization became one of the great linguistic research institutions in the history of the study of languages. Another fifteen hundred translations are under way today.

There are millions of stories of Christians involved with the world but not conforming their values to the values commonly associated with success. This record of innovation and engagement continues through to this day. Close to me in southern California are three extraordinary pioneers of new methods to spread the old gospel. Chuck Smith founded the Calvary Chapel movement and made perhaps the greatest impact on the Protestant church in America in the past fifty years. One of his students, Greg Laurie, took Chuck’s work into the crusade field and launched the Harvest Crusades, to which nearly three million people have been drawn in a little over a decade (www.harvestcrusades.org). And Pastor Rick Warren founded Saddleback Valley Community Church and became a pastor to thousands of pastors as well as tens of thousands of his own congregants (www.pastors.org).

Twenty-five years before the writing of this book, Dr. James Dobson left the faculty of the medical school at the University of Southern California with a mission to help save American families. As 2002 ended, he had a daily audience of more than 200 million in more than one hundred countries, and the organization he founded, Focus on the Family, had become a preeminent teaching, research, and leadership institution in America.

This baker’s dozen of thumbnail sketches cannot even begin to tell the record of Christian involvement with the world. From the time Christ ascended to the present, His church has mixed in the assemblies of men.

There have always been ups and downs in this process, and controversies and debates. Some who have worn the title of Christian have embarrassed their fellow believers, and others have cowered at the prospect of taking the gospel into the world. But history’s record is a silencer of those who argue that Christians are to live apart from the world.

This roll call of inspirational examples, however, could easily be a eulogy for a tradition rather than an encouragement to even greater urgency to be salt and light in the world. In a very practical way, Christians seem to be losing the ability to penetrate the culture. Some have lost their drive. Still others simply lack the skills. Even as political forces gather to effectively expel people of faith from public life, the abilities of those who would gladly fight for their right to remain in the public square are strikingly diminished. Though a treasure of examples is laid up—the gentleness of Francis, the determination of Bonhoeffer, the warrior spirit of Julius, the learning of More, the persistence of Wilberforce, the vision and energy of Mears, Rayburn, Townsend, and Bright, and the modern capabilities of Smith, Laurie, Warren, and Dobson—the church is

Reviews for A Guide to Christian Ambition

[megamommy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent book which calls for Christians to do all they can to reach their potential and mazximize their influence

[pascale1812 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hewitt is thought-provoking and uncompromising. My two main take-aways: the list of history books, and the reminder that I am not ambitious.

[bonni208_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Hewitt is an excellent writer and an intelligent person. I first picked up this book a few years ago, based on the title, but didn’t actually get around to reading it until now (2008). I teach at a university and thought that Hewitt would have some excellent advice for people just starting their career – and he does. Some of the chapter names that were standouts for me include:• Master at least one are of at least passing interest to powerful people• Fill the gratitude gap• Choose the people you will work for• Know what you don’t know• Tatoos: Don’t• A message about Visa/MasterCard: Don’t• Assemble the right credentials• Find interesting people• Choose a church and joing it – Genuinely• Keep only the important stuff: Clutter is an anchor on ambition• Be slow to be offendedAfter reviewing those chapter titles, you might wonder why this book only earned three stars in my review. Hewitt makes one big assumption about his readers: that they are Christian (no problem with that; it is clear in the title) and that they are politically conservative. He writes as if the only way to truly be a follower of Christ would be if you held Hewitt’s same political views. This book was published in 2003 and does provide a unique before and after glimpse into how those who call themselves Christian viewed Bush’s policies and how that is now (2008) starting to evolve. Hewitt doesn’t provide the after perspective, but a read of today’s headlines will show that many object to the Bush administration’s past and present decisions. If you are Christian and hold a conservative political view, this book will likely meet your needs. However, I think we should read books that also stretch our perspectives and would recommend you also pick up God’s Politics by Wallis at the same time you check this one out. Those who hold a more liberal political view can find some great nuggets of advice, but might need to start by reading his chapter on being slow to be offended before perusing the book in its entirety.

[morgangmac · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

 A how-to for Christians who want to influence the secular world, covering basics, from make sure you go to a top-ranking college, to internships, to how to treat colleagues. Somewhat useful, I suppose, but very common sensical. Although, I do appreciate a recommended reading list for general history of Western civilization.