The Kingdom and the Power Quotes

“Orthodox Christians must stop thinking of ourselves as the temporarily exiled rulers of America who can be restored to power if only an election or two would go our way. We must start accepting the truth that, sociologically speaking, we are a minority subculture. If this accurately describes the current state of American Christianity, the task before the church is not to “take back the levers of power,” but rather to convert a pagan world.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

“Christians fail to recognize that, though their numbers are great in America, the United States is in no sense guided by Christian norms and cannot be understood as a Christian nation. Christian America and Christian Europe are things of the past. They were in many ways wonderful while they lasted, and we can hope that future generations will see a rebirth of Christian civilization in a more mature form. In the West, that prospect is, to all appearances, a distant one.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

“What I have been describing is in fact not the United States of America, but the church, the priestly kingdom and holy nation of God (1 Peter 2:9). Men and women find true liberty, peace, and joy only in the church. She is the original melting pot. Only citizens of heaven have access to true riches and enjoy true security. The kingdom of God is the cosmic tree in which the nations find shelter. It is the church against which even the gates of hell shall not prevail.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

“When the church is set aside as the primary institution of the kingdom, Christians find a substitute to serve as the communal form and chief instrument of the kingdom of God. In American history, this substitute has generally been found in the “Redeemer Nation.” What is called “American civil religion” is the product of a failure of ecclesiology.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

“The church is the heart of the world, and the liturgy of Word and Sacrament is the heart of the church. Which means the central cultural and political work of the church is to hear and do the word of the Lord and to eat, drink, sing, and rejoice at His table. Every other “agenda,” no matter how thought-out, well-funded, cunningly implemented, will fall short, because every other agenda fails to put first things first.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church