The Fall of the Church

by Roger Haydon Mitchell

About the Contributor(s): Roger Haydon Mitchell co-directs 2MT, a charitable trust that helps manage change. He is an honorary research fellow in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion in the University of Lancaster and the external partnerships coordinator of the Richardson Institute for Peace Studies. He is a member of the Society for the Study of Theology and the author of the book Church, Gospel and Empire: How the Politics of Sovereignty Impregnated the West (2011).

124 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 2013

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Fall of the Church" is a short (104 pgs,) rather dense book which, in the words of its author, "examines the roots of this tension between the loving Jesus and the often oppressive behavior of the church." The author names and describes the cause of that bad behavior as "the subsuming of the transcendent by sovereignty." By this he means humans, often Christians if we look at church history, are devoted to cultivating and protecting their own sovereignty rather than yielding to the transcendent love and presence of God as modeled by Jesus Christ. The author coins the world "kenarchy" to describe the Philippians 2 "kenosis/self-emptying" of Christ who did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped on to but humbled himself..." and the "-archy" of rulership; pointing out that the reign of Christ is in the mode of "kenarchy," self-giving love rather than any familiar worldy pattern of rule. This is a topic and a book that could use a much higher profile among Christians in this election season.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, Roger Mitchell traces what he calls the fall of the church right back to its legitimation by the Roman Empire in 300.

Describing what he calls the "subsuming of the transcendent by sovereignty" (or God's agenda being taken over by the world's agenda) Mitchell traces the ways in which the church through the ages has chosen power rather than the way of love. This manifests through the Crusades, the Inquisition, the murder of the Anabaptists during the Reformation, right through to the tele-evangelists and the religious patriotism of today.

The key to all of this is learning to die to ourselves and follow the Way of Jesus, that is through self-emptying and living for the sake of others.

This is a rather difficult book to read as Mitchell is an academic, but it is worth the effort for everyone struggling with how to engage the gospel in our culture.

[Pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent academic book, short but really dense and full of challenging ideas, both theoretically and practically, that also felt like they shouldn't be challenging at all, but should be a 'but of course' for any serious follower of Jesus.

I kept having to go back to basic definitions to remind myself of what sovereignty looks like in the church - which tells you all you need to know about how completely embedded the concept is. I struggle to picture what 'church' might look like if the concept of continual self-emptying love (kenarchy) systematically replaced the existing structures of church life. Now I want to see examples of such successful long-lasting experiments!

Even as I struggle with the basic concepts, it's hard to deny that the church's attempts to be counter-cultural look a bit half-assed in most of their current forms, and this goes a long way in explaining why.

[Ryan Shelton]

I may write a longer review later, but this is a deeply flawed book, filled with circular arguments, laughably reductionist historiography, and abysmal exegesis.