Politics After Christendom (Paperback)

A reflection on the status and responsibilities of Christians in their contemporary pluralistic political communities, presenting a biblical-theological model of political engagement and exploring themes such as race, religious liberty, justice, authority, and civil resistance.

For more than a millennium, most Western Christians lived in societies that sought to be comprehensively Christian--ecclesiastically, economically, legally, and politically. That is to say, most Western Christians lived in Christendom. But in a gradual over the last few centuries, Christendom began weakening and fracturing. Today, most Christians live in pluralistic political communities and have different opinions about their status and responsibilities in a post-Christendom world.

Politics After Christendom argues that living faithfully as a Christian is possible--even assumed--even in a world that is indifferent or hostile to the Christian faith. Drawing from Augustine's Two-Cities concept, Reformational Two-Kingdoms categories, natural law, and a theology of the biblical covenants--author David VanDrunen brings these ideas together in a distinctive way to present a comprehensive model for Christian political engagement.

Part 1 presents a political theology through a careful study of the biblical story, giving special attention to the covenants God has established with his creation and how these covenants inform a proper view of political community. Part 2 reflects on how the political theology developed in Part 1 provides Christians with a framework for thinking about perennial issues of political and legal theory. Throughout, VanDrunen interacts with secular political theorists like Rawls, Hayek, and Dworkin, as well as contemporary political theologians and cultural commentators like Hauerwas, O'Donovan, MacIntyre, and Hunter.

Politics after Christendom is a significant contribution to political theology that offers a unique blend of biblical, theological, and political reflection on perennial questions about the basis and authority of civil society and the relationship of God's people to the nations and governments of this world.