Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies
Authors: Michael Bird and N.T. Wright

I’m not sure if the books release was intentionally planned to coincide with America’s upcoming election, but Jesus and the Powers, the newest collaboration and joint effort by Wright and Bird, feels like it’s designed to navigate that rather precarious terrain.

Which bears noting one possible critique of the book. It seems equally obvious to say, given that the book reflects the shared voices of an Aussie and a Brit, that the books emphasis would be on the broad shape of global politics. And I do think it is. Thus the book does feel like it has a bit of an identity crisis to overcome, even if this is at least partly due to what we as readers are bringing to the text. It’s difficult to set aside an American centric focus in favor of a broader reaching viewpoint and discussion, and I’m not convinced, even if it feels a but ironic, that the book does enough to help us get there.

A second critique. While the NT In Its World was Bird working with Wright’s material, this book is a clearer reflection of both voices sharing equal space. Meaning, you can tell that there are two distinct voices attempting to coexist. While there is a degree to which this is a positive, it also has some drawbacks. It is easy to see some of the individual quirks and sensibilities of each author being polished out in favor of a more cohesive flow, and at points this creates frustration, as it left me feeling like the particular authors voices were getting somewhat buried in the mix. Given that I have different relationships to both authors on theological and philosophical grounds, it made it difficult to know how to embrace and push back on different portions effectively.

A third critique, which is more a confession- I am a critic and a cynic when it comes to the idea of democracy. Particularly liberal democracy, which is what this book is ultimately championing and upholding. I fully understand this is not the book’s issue, it is mine. But it did play into how I heard and responded to its essential arguments. I found it difficult, for example, to fully reconcile the fact that it tiptoes into suggestions that democracy is in many ways a corruptible idea both in theory and practice, or that democracy is a bit of a fallacy, meaning it reflects an assumed ideal that can never be actualized or realized in practice, and that it mirrors many of the same issues and problems of the political systems it is meant to buffer and oppose.

It tiptoes into these sentiments, but never in a way that allows it to fully commit to the implications of these statements. If one of its central tenants is a critique of the enlightenment, challenging the assertion that it reflects the pinnacle of humanities social and political evolution and offers the promise of a new world remade in its image (all one needs to do is look at the atrocities it has birthed to know this belief represents a fallacy), it plays both sides of the coin by upholding a firm conviction that the western narrative and its commitment to liberal democracy is the best one, albeit one that they tailor by infusing a necessary commitment to pluralism. In truth, if the book wants to dismantle things like Christian nationalism, the sort of thing that emerges when Christians have a poor understanding of their relationship to politics, the book stands in danger of giving fuel to the fire that is its source- individualism with its commitment to individual freedoms as the highest order.

Similar feelings when it comes to the books chapter on fascism and communism. It makes the strange assertion that the West has tended to note the evils of fascism while ignoring the evils of communism, a fact that it finds emerging from the course of western history. I found this puzzling, and one of the dangers here is that the book is simply going to feed one of the other main components of western exceptionalism, which is demonizing socialism under the guise that the evils of communism are hiding under every rock. It does go on to admit that fascism has been the primary political power portions of Christianity has tended to tie itself to, but it avoids connecting this truth to a clear and concise deconstruction of the tendency towards creating this version of fascisms necessary enemy.

Anyone familiar with Wright will recognize the chapter on the Powers, which draws this concept out as a nuanced portrait that speaks of the spiritual and political powers all at once. These two convictions operate together in the ancient mindset, and thus, to be good readers of scripture and its world we need to understand how these two ideas, earthly Empires and the Powers of Sin and Death, are often used interchangeably, breaking down our modern western penchant of dividing these two things into spirit and flesh, heaven and earth, material and spiritual. This to me was by far the strongest element of the book, as it shows how we need to begin here if we are to see and recognize the reason and the way Christianity’s relationship to politics became so messed up. Both authors argue that we need to push back against the idea that politics is the enemy and/or something we need to oppose or stay away from, and the idea that power in politics is the end goal of Christian participation and commitment. And the main way we can combat this is recovering a theology of God’s good creation, a theology that has been lost in the west’s emphasis on depravity and binaries.

Overall I would recommend this, even with my above critiques. I do fear that this book is going to feed certain tendencies and ideologies that I personally would want to deconstruct, but hopefully the ideas here can at least help tailor and grow a better version of those ideas. I think if it can do this, then perhaps it can help awaken some of the limitations and issues with liberal democracy, particularly the kind that upholds the West as an ideal, even over and against these authors ultimate conclusions and convictions.