Scholarly guidance on Christian political witness

N.T. Wright, a world-renowned Biblical scholar, is joining the call for Christians to actively resist trends towards autocracy and Christian nationalism and work for healthier democracies. That is the strategic significance of this book at this time. Co-author Michael Bird, a highly-respected theologian in Australia, broadens the international perspective of their analysis. Their reading of this historical moment, more than any new substantive theological insights, makes this book a valuable resource for Christians who find themselves in fear-filled, polarized and challenging political contexts.

In a Christianity Today interview with the authors about their book, N.T. Wright said he and Bird “both had the sense that most Christians today have not really been taught very much about a Christian view of politics. Until the 18th century, there was a lot of Christian political thought, which we’ve kind of ignored the last 200-300 years – and it’s time to get back to it.” In Jesus and the Powers, they base their call for public Christian witness on solid Biblical and historical teachings about the Kingdom of God. For Christians of today, it requires their highest loyalty and active engagement in culture and political life, but the book goes to great lengths to caution against seeing it as a utopia on earth. It grounds their call to resist empire-building and the slippage from democracy into autocracy in many countries, including a call to actively resist the forces of Christian nationalism in North America. “Christian nationalism,” they write, “acclaims God’s love of power rather than the power of God’s love.”

More specific Biblical teachings about the relationship between followers of Jesus and governing authorities ground their careful reflection on obedience. They help readers discern when Christians need to obey governments that are a gift from God and when higher loyalty to the Kingdom of God requires a range of actions from dissent to civil disobedience and, only in very extreme circumstances, uncivil disobedience. Their guidance includes a rich summary of how Christians have acted throughout history. That can inform more robust thinking by Christians and demonstrate the courageous, bold practice of public witness based on intentional, conscientious decision-making.

Most controversial is the book’s defense of liberal democracy as the best or least bad form of government for our times. The book calls on Christians to actively work for stronger democracies with an ethos of “confident pluralism.” They use that term to describe various ways to respect the wide diversity of basic beliefs within a modern democracy. They present a top-down case for liberal democracy, from God’s supreme authority through delegated authority of the state to the active exercise of citizenship.

The authors also briefly reference human rights and the central command to love one’s neighbour as elements of a Christian approach. In my view, this is an underdeveloped area in the book. A stronger, positive case for democracy and pluralism, from the bottom-up, can be built on the implications of core teachings about humans being created as image-bearers of God with active agency, mandated to care for creation from the beginning, and then re-mandated by Jesus to follow the central law of love for God and love for every neighbour as oneself. For public policy, that translates into creating conditions for the flourishing of all created beings, using a comprehensive framework of human rights and responsibilities, as a more positive mandate for governing bodies at all levels of society. That approach would better address the book’s assertion that “no democracy can survive without a narrative that is something beyond itself.”

More than the middle ground

A more expansive approach to human rights and responsibilities might also strengthen one of the weakest sections of the book, its treatment of progressive movements and the danger of civic totalism. Although the authors note the Christian roots of the UN declarations on human rights, for example, subsequent analysis is limited to civic rights, with inadequate attention to the equally Biblically-based right to food and other economic and social rights, communal rights such as the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and corollary responsibilities toward our neighbours.

In the book’s chapter that cautions against civic totalism, there is a tendency to lump all progressive movements together and dismiss them as too statist. This seems to be motivated by a desire to position a Christian response as neither extreme right nor radical left. Some progressive movements warrant support as part of working for the Kingdom of God, while others may not. The same can be said for some policies that are labelled “right-wing.” The challenge for Christians is to discern what to conserve and what might need radical change, more than finding the middle ground between left and right. A more comprehensive approach to human rights and responsibilities, including communal rights, could provide clearer guidance for Christians trying to navigate and balance the various claims for justice in our current context.

The authors of Jesus and the Powers smartly avoid taking specific positions on specific issues or using language that might alienate anyone. Readers across the political spectrum, borders and levels of education will find helpful content to refresh their thinking about how to exercise their roles as citizens and faith communities in the current troubling context.