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

by N.T. Wright

Whatever its failings, which are obviously many, Christendom gave us schools, academies, universities, hospitals, the Enlightenment, the rise of science, and notions of universal human rights, things that are impossible without Christianity being hardwired into the moral and intellectual DNA of the West. Christianity is the reason why the gladiatorial games ended and slave-markets were shut down. The pope’s Christendom was preferable to Caesar’s paganism. Western civilisation is still preferable to Communism and a caliphate.21 Yet within the West there is a tension. The Christians of the West were supposed by many to be building Jerusalem on earth. While some shards of heavenly light did shine through, on other occasions the construction seemed instead to resemble a cathedral of human depravity. Christendom often looked like a city of perdition rather than the city of God. Sad to say, with a few exceptions, it was empire rather than evangelism that made Christianity a global religion. Do we regard the Church’s association with empire as a marriage of providential convenience or an act of spiritual adultery? Did Christ defeat Caesar