Christianity and politics
‘Bringing together theology and politics (or faith and public life, or religion and society…) still seems to many people a kind of category mistake.’ Thus Bishop Tom Wright in the foreword to my book ‘Engaging Politics?’ He doesn’t think, and neither do I, that religion and politics should, or could, be kept separate.
As far as I am concerned, Christianity and Politics are inextricably intertwined: what you believe determines how you act – and that includes the public arena as well as the private space. The only questions are around how Christians should be politically engaged. ‘There is no way back to the comfortable divided world [not that it ever existed!] in which Christians can pursue their private way to heaven untroubled by the harsh realities all around them.’
What I aim to do in all my writing is to show that this is the case: ‘Engaging Politics?’ is already published (click here to buy it on amazon.com, or here to buy it on amazon.co.uk) and discusses the tensions involved in Christian political engagement. On this site, I have provided short extracts from some of the chapters, so that you can sample the work. You can download a free study guide to the second half of the book, which examines five contemporary and contentious issues.
I have also written several short articles, from when I was World Development Officer for Durham diocese (UK) – these are also available in Articles.
The tensions I deal with in ‘Engaging Politics?’ come under three categories:
- This world or the next?
- How can we be in the world but not of it?
- Should we be into prophetic vision or engagement with the world as it is?
The book shows that Christians can, indeed must, engage with politics and with political debate.
As the blurb on the book says: ‘he demonstrates, in chapters on Augustine, Liberation theology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas how these tensions exist in every strand of Christian political thinking; and then he applies those tensions to case studies varying from today’s highly charged debates on sexuality to the war on terrorism. In every case, he demonstrates that non-involvement is a non-option. This book is both an intelligent introduction to the difficult world of Christian political theology and to some of the key debates that are shaping our times.’
Once you’ve read ‘Engaging Politics?’, use the forum to engage in conversation with me about it. As Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham says: ‘This is the kind of book that everyone will disagree with at some point, but everyone will learn from at a great many other points. What nobody should do is to ignore it.’