POLITICAL CHURCH
By Jonathan Leeman
IVP Apollos. 403 pages. £24.99
ISBN 978 1 783 594 160
The linkage of ‘Church’ with ‘Political’ in a book title may not be the kind of word association that sits well with evangelical readers. It suggests a church that is embroiled in the murky world of party politics. But this is not what this book seeks to promote. Instead it sets out to challenge key misper-ceptions of church that pervade the vast majority of churches today.
Jonathan Leeman states his twin goals as being, first,‘to replace the map of politics and religion that many Christians have been using since the democratic revolutions of the 18th century with a more biblical one’. And, second, ‘to explain where the local church fits onto this redrawn map as a political institution or embassy of Christ’s rule’. He explores both against the backdrop of post-Enlightenment individualism that has come to define the mindset of Western culture.
