Preface to Jesus and the Powers

Below is the preface to Jesus and the Power, which explains why we wrote this book and why we think it’s needed NOW! Check out the book’s webpage or else the SPCK page. Only $23.00, so pre-order now to get the bonus material!

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The aim of this book is not to be like most publications on Christianity and politics. We are not going to tell Christians what they should think about abortion, gun control, Brexit, Trump, climate change, racial justice and other hot-button issues. But neither are we offering an abstract theory of statecraft and faithcraft that never quite comes in to land in real life.

Jesus and the Powers has one objective: to say that, in an age of ascending autocracies, in a time of fear and fragmentation, amid carnage and crises, Jesus is King, and Jesus’ kingdom remains the object of the Church’s witness and work. That is true today, tomorrow, the next day, until death and despots are no more, until such a time when ‘he has put all his enemies under his feet’ (1 Corinthians 15:25). Such a conviction means that the Church needs to understand how it relates to empires biblical and burgeoning, how to build for the kingdom in our cities and suburbs; to understand the time for obedience to the State and the time for disobedience to the State.

We need to grasp where the Church sits between presidents and principalities. We must think deeply as disciples, without partisan prejudice, unbeguiled by the deceptions of demagogues, in order to attain ‘every good thing that is at work in us to lead us into the Messiah’ (Philemon 6). We want people to consider how we can pursue human flourishing, how we might work towards a common good, and how we can pursue the things that make for peace in a time of political turmoil such as has not been seen since the 1930s.

We hope that such a book will help Christians begin to discern how to respond with wisdom to the situations in places such as Ukraine, Nigeria, Gaza, Myanmar and Taiwan. Help them to discern how to think about constitutional monarchy and democratic republics. Teach them to fear the seduction of political power. Call them to seek to build something that carries over into the new creation, as well as to rest in the goodness and faithfulness of the one who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

To such ends, our book begins by noting the political upheaval and emerging empires of our own day. It then describes how Jesus and his followers came on to the scene at the height of the Roman Empire and had to negotiate their own way around various imperial horrors (chapter 1). Thereafter, we point out that the Church had to pivot from being under the threat of the empire to enjoying its many benefactions. The Church’s relationship with emperors, and then with kings and princes in the Middle Ages, fashioned a host of complications about Church and State relations with which we are still living today. Christianity brought about a revolution in European civilisations and is now part of the political and moral DNA of the West. But the Church was also party to unholy alliances with Western rulers, not least in its complicity with European empires that wrought colonial violence all over the world. Yet whatever the good, bad and ugly of history, the Church cannot retreat from politics. If we are to speak truth to power and stand up to the powers, then we must do kingdom-business with the business of political power (chapter 2).

On the topic of the ‘powers’, these loom large in the scriptural narrative, with spiritual and political forces intersecting across the tapestry of history. Looking at Paul’s letter to the Colossians and especially at John’s Gospel, we see that the powers of this age will be pacified by Jesus and then reconciled through him. The back story here is that God had always intended humans to be partners in his dominion. Yet the powers of the age fomented rebellion and wreaked havoc so that creation itself now groans for deliverance. God’s solution is to telescope authority into one human being, one child of Abraham, one Israelite, one son of David – the Messiah. His death makes atonement for sins and brings a victory that results in the ruler of the world being cast out and the powers of darkness being disarmed.

In the here and now, governments might have power; but they are merely granted power, and they will be held to account for how that power is exercised.

The Christian vocation is neither pious longing for heaven nor scheming to make Jesus king by exerting force over unwilling subjects. Instead, Christians should be ready to speak truth to power, being concerned with the righteous exercise of government, seeing it bent towards the arc of justice and fulfilling the service that God expects of governing authorities (chapter 3).

Following naturally on from that point, we must address more concretely the topic of how to build for the kingdom in what is becoming a frightening and fraught world. The kingdom might not be from this world, but it is most certainly for this world, so we cannot retreat from the world with our kingdom-mission. So, we proffer some suggestions as to what building for the kingdom looks like in actual practice (chapter 4).

We next discuss the topic of submission to governing authorities (chapter 5) and when Christian witness requires us actively to disobey them (chapter 6). These are difficult and complicated subjects, and we are concerned to affirm the goodness of government as much as to explain what we might do if governments revert from public service to predatory tyranny.

Finally, we set forth the case for a liberal democracy. It is the ‘liberal’ in ‘liberal democracy’ that enables us to live with political and cultural differences, not despite being a Christian but precisely as a Christian. Nothing is straightforward, diversity breeds conflict, but we are called to love our left-wing and right-wing neighbours, and to build a better world for people of all faiths and none (chapter 7).

That is the journey that lies ahead of readers. It is something of a short pilgrimage in political theology, undertaking a mixture of biblical overview, zooming in on church history highlights, centring on Jesus among the powers, offering reflections on Church–State relations, and wrestling with knotty topics such as ‘secularism’ and ‘civil disobedience’. The task is about trying to think and pray through the missional vocation and kingdom witness of the Church in our contested political theatres. The Church carries a gospel which is not reducible to this-worldly political activism, nor so heavenly minded as to live aloof from the trials and terrors of our times. If the gospel announces that ‘Jesus is King’, then we must wrestle with what Jesus’ kingship means in Tiananmen Square, on the floor of the US Congress, in the lunchroom of Tesco or Walmart, or in choices we make at the ballot box. There will be a day when politics is no more, when all things are subject to ‘the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah’

(Revelation 12:10). Before then, we need wisdom, for the Church has much work to do to prepare for such a day.