Engaging Politics?: The Tensions of Christian Political Involvement

This world or the next? In the world but not of it? Prophetic vision or grubby engagement with the world as it is?

These are the tensions Nigel Oakley grapples with as he shows how Christians can, indeed must, engage with politics and with political debate. He shows, in chapters on Augustine, Liberation theology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Stanley Hauerwas, how these tensions exist in every strand of Christian political thinking, and then he applies those tensions to case studies varying from todays highly charged debates on sexuality to the war on terrorism. In every case, he demonstrates that noninvolvement is a nonoption. This book is both an intelligent introduction to the difficult world of Christian political theology and to some of the key debates that are shaping our times.

Nigel Oakley is World Development Officer for the Anglican Diocese of Durham, UK. He has a PhD from the University of Durham in political theology.