Church, Gospel, and Empire

"Ambitious, confident in controlling the argument and the evidence, Mitchell's genealogy of church and empire, sovereignty and transcendence, is as important as it is controversial. A radical Christianity announces itself as a subaltern project of resistance and hope. The book lays down a challenge of enormous audacity to previous accounts of secularism as the product of modernity, offering a new political conception of the genesis of modernity. It is a major contribution to contemporary Christian political theology, in fact to Christian dogmatics that takes the incarnation of a loving God seriously. Read it, and you'll see why."

-Graham Ward

University of Manchester, England



"Roger Mitchell has provided the reader with an original, wide-ranging, thoroughly researched and very well-written critical study of the emergence of Western Christendom as the expression of the theologically perverse assimilation of imperial sovereignty. In close dialogue with the major theologians and thinkers of past and present, Mitchell develops a powerful argument for the Christian praxis of 'kenarchy,' a proposal that passes beyond both imperial theology and the reduced Christology of kenosis. Moreover, this important book is underlaid by a lifetime of pioneer Christian ministry."

-Richard H. Roberts

University of Stirling, Scotland



"What is the relationship between Christian theology and political sovereignty? Why has the Church consistently allied itself with temporal political power from the Roman Empire to contemporary capitalism? And how might we imagine a different kind of theological politics that resists the lure of empire, sovereignty, and power? In this powerful, controversial, and passionately argued book, Roger Haydon Mitchell offers a genealogy of political theology--its past, its present, and, most importantly, its future. It is a study that will be of interest to anyone working in the fields of theology and politics."

-Arthur Bradley

Lancaster University, England



"This is a disturbing book. To reach the end is to discover that Mitchell has brought you to a crossroads and that business as usual is no longer an option for the twenty-first-century church. What is impressive is not simply the quantity and diversity of historical and theological material that is assembled but the masterful way in which it is analyzed, integrated, and synthesized to postulate a radically kenotic way forward for a church locked in a death embrace with theopolitical constructs of empire that continue to ravage and dehumanize contemporary life. 'Take and eat . . . it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.'"

-Ray Mayhew

Dubai Centre for Prayer and Biblical Studies