Zoom Book Discussion: Jesus and the Powers
Beginning Sunday, November 3rd at 5pm
Rev. Beverly Bartlett will lead a book discussion on the 2024 book, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies by N.T. Wright, one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, and Michael F. Bird, professor of theology at Ridley College in Melbourne and author/editor of more than a dozen books on theology, the New Testament, and religious freedom. Wright and Bird look at what it means to be politically engaged as Christians.
From the preface: “Jesus and the Powers has one objective: to say that, in an age of ascending autocracies, in a time of fear and fragmentation, amid carnage and crises, Jesus is King, and Jesus’ Kingdom remains the object of the Church’s witness and work. . . Such a conviction means that the Church needs to understand how it relates to empires biblical and burgeoning, how to build for the kingdom in our cities and suburbs; to understand the time for obedience to the State and the time for disobedience to the State. We need to grasp where the Church sits between presidents and principalities. . . We want people to consider how we can pursue human flourishing, how we might work towards a common good, and how we can pursue the things that make for peace in a time of political turmoil such as has not been seen since the 1930s.”
We will begin on Sunday, November 3 (the day the time changes) at 5 pm, and plan to meet for one hour on Zoom. We will continue for as long as it takes to get through the book (there are seven chapters plus the intro and conclusion), taking breaks as needed for concerts at the church and holidays. You can order the book on Amazon or Bookshop. If you use Kindle, it is available for a limited time for $2.99.
If you would like to participate, email Beverly at bab@mapc.com, and she will send a zoom link out next week. Please come engage in this timely conversation as we wrestle together with the role our faith plays in our lives as citizens.