.. his contention that power is unavoidable; we must exercise it. Indeed, Christians are to transform it. But power relations are also complex, coming to play in all our roles. Just as no one exercises it absolutely, so no one is totally without power. This account of power allows Hunter to accept its reality in human life and name its temptations. There is no question that gross disparities can quickly arise as power is allocated. The Christian is to name such disparities and ameliorate them...This I like because, while I have many sympathies with the anabaptists, I have tended to feel that the mys-engagement with issues of power in, for example, the Post Christendom series of books is a shame and disallows cultural and political engagement in such a way as to make it unlikely that people outside of the churches might take them seriously as agents of change. I look forward to engaging with this book in due course, hopefully before I next teach Engaging Culture.
This vision of transformed power provides a support for Hunter’s call to Christians to be faithfully involved in their culture and its institutions. While the Christian Right and Left have mistakenly adopted worldly power as an end in itself, the Neo-Anabaptists have mistakenly attempted to have nothing to do with power.
James Hunter, Neo-Anabaptists, and the Ekklesia Project | Ekklesia Project:
1 comment:
This is a cracking book to engage with as, for once, a Christian author has the bottle to disagree with and back up the incorrect idea that we can radically change culture! His academic credentials substatiate his prosition and Hunter's voice should be heard.
His argument is rather than worrying about what we cannot change, we should engage with what we can change and be happy that our influence may only be miniscule in the greater scheme of things.
Those that think they can change the world in one generation are sadly misguided. We would be better to get on with what God calls us to do - rather than bemoan our lack of influence.
Post a Comment