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

by N.T. Wright

One danger is the slow and steady accession of a soft authoritarianism under the guise of being ‘progressive’.40 We have in mind what happens when a state seeks to regulate as much of the individual’s beliefs, convictions, conscience and religion as possible. A system where non-state-centric forms of life are corroded by constant surveillance and deliberate over-regulation.41 What alerts us to this danger is several things: 1 emphases on a hierarchy of ‘identities’ rather than the rule of law and equality before the law to negotiate relationships between citizens; 2 adoption of a mode of moral reasoning that assigns all people into the binary slots of either ‘oppressor’ or ‘oppressed’; 3 legal preference for bespoke notions of ‘equality’ rather than accommodating religious and cultural differences; 4 the State conceived no longer as an instrumental good, but as an ultimate power with jurisdiction over every facet of life, in order to achieve a comprehensive renovation of society according to the State’s progressive vision. In other words, we are concerned about a progressive post-liberal order that does not value the right to dissent, the value of ideological diversity or the necessity of public debate, and that does not tolerate religions it cannot dictate to.