Should Christians be politically withdrawn, avoiding participation in politics to maintain their prophetic voice and keep from being used as political pawns? Or should Christians be actively involved, seeking to control and utilize political systems to control the levers of power? In Jesus and the Powers, N.T. Wright and Michael Bird argue that Christians should pursue active involvement in ways that encourage and sustain liberal democratic systems while opposing both totalitarianism and nationalism. They argue that Christians should faithfully and earnestly contribute to free democratic societies and vigorously oppose political schemes based on autocracy and nationalism. Wright and Bird outline a Christian approach to political engagement with reflections on their relevance to current events, including the Russian-Ukraine conflict, China-Taiwan tension, political turmoil in the USA, UK, and Australia, as well as to the problem of white Christian nationalism.
Authors
N. T. Wright is the former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England (2003-2010) and one of the world's leading Bible scholars. He is now serving as the chair of New Testament and Early Christianity at the School of Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. He has been featured on ABC News, Dateline NBC, The Colbert Report, and Fresh Air, and he has taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, McGill, and Oxford universities. Wright is the award-winning author of Surprised by Hope, Simply Christian, The Last Word, The Challenge of Jesus, The Meaning of Jesus (coauthored with Marcus Borg), as well as the much heralded series Christian Origins and the Question of God. He also publishes under Tom Wright.
