Christianity versus the "Church of Power"

Simon Barrow in his latest editorial on the Ekklesia website "Christianity versus the "church of Power" speaks for me when he says that the... approach we are seeking to develop, in other words, is neither a Christian gloss on a non-theologically derived secularism nor an attempt to revive ‘established religion’, but something quite distinct and different from both – namely, a recovery of the non- and anti-imperial heart of the Christian message in the midst of a plural world, in a way which emphasises and exemplifies its socially subversive, just and peaceful expression.

Much of the anxiety apparent in discussions on human rights by some of the churches betrays a hankering for a return to the privileged mode of the Christendom model of church society relationships. The record of the institutional church in terms of living out the gospel within the institutions that we have been running, in terms of protecting the vulnerable is not so good that we have got solid grounds for claiming a privileged position.