Christianity Against Power-Worship
Ephraim Radner’s new book offers an antidote to ideologies that seek power for its own sake or to coerce “virtue.” Look to the Holy Family.
All modern politics is a clash of totalizing ideologies seeking absolute power. Or at least it seems that way. Christians sometimes find themselves caught in the middle of these culture wars, stuck trying to find compromises between competing goods. Of late, though, increasing numbers of young and restless believers have sought to turn their religion into yet another ideology, itself a tool of war.
Ephraim Radner’s latest book, Mortal Goods: Reimaging Christian Political Duty, offers a truly radical alternative to this kind of power politics. Already one of the Anglican Communion’s most important theologians, Radner is well-positioned as a kind of spiritual elder statesman to offer advice to the church’s youth in these times of trouble. At its heart, Mortal Goods is a plea to remember the limits of power and even the human person. In short, man cannot save himself—only God can. Radner reminds us that any politics that loses sight of this will inevitably fail.
Radner’s starting point is scriptural wisdom about human nature and the fallenness of the world. Citing both the Old and the New Testament, he maintains that “evil days” are simply a fact of human existence this side of the eschaton. Politics can never solve this problem, because the people it empowers are inherently imperfect and even incomplete. His is a tragic understanding of the human person, yes, but nonetheless leavened by hope for a time when all things will be made new by a force higher than earthly power.
In many respects, the modest position Radner stakes out in Mortal Goods is reminiscent of earlier, 20th-century Christian humanist ideas about the limits of politics and power. C.S. Lewis, for instance, titled one of his glowing reviews of The Lord of the Rings “The Dethronement of Power.” The heroes of that novel certainly use a certain kind of strength to fight evil, Lewis noted, “but the text itself teaches us that Sauron is eternal; the war of the Ring is only one of a thousand wars against him. … Every time we win, we shall know that our victory is impermanent.” Utopian schemes or “end of history” politics, whatever partisan colors they wear, can never provide the kind of permanent social happiness they falsely promise.
Read more in Religion & Liberty Online.
