God's Federal Republic: Reconstructing Our Governing Symbol

Biblical religion is driven by a longing for God’s ultimate order of justice and peace. Most of this longing is steeped in the patriarchal symbols of kingship, monarchs, lords, fathers, and princes. This symbolism came to bind European churches to the legitimation of monarchies and empires for over a millennium. The American and now global experiment separated the churches, with their kingdom language, from government dedicated to democratic, republican, and federal constitutional order. Religious efforts to guide and critique government have subsequently suffered from political irrelevance or theocratic nationalism. Everett lifts up the biblical and classical origins of our present republican experiment to construct a theological position and religious symbolism that can imaginatively engage our present public life with a contemporary language permeated with a transcendent vision.

William Johnson Everett is the Herbert Gezork Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Emeritus, at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of Religion, Federalism, and the Struggle for Public Life as well as many other books about the interface between religion and public life. He journals regularly at www.WilliamEverett.com.