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

by N.T. Wright

We talk about economic ‘pressures’ or political ‘forces’, which seem to mean more than simply ‘the markets won’t let us do that’ or ‘policies like that won’t win many votes’. We might talk about ‘the spirit of the age’ or about ‘collective delusions’ or worse. Some who lived through the horrors of mid-twentieth-century Europe spoke of the dark mood that gripped Germany in the 1930s, making it easy for a great many people to believe certain things, however untrue and wicked they were, and almost impossible for them to think or believe certain other things, however wise and healthy they were. Perhaps such questions only become fully clear with hindsight. Perhaps the widespread lies of any particular generation are ignored because, like the mountain outside the back door, they are simply part of the regular horizon, and so fail to register.