David E. Fitch’s Reckoning with Power offers Christians a purer model of power but misreads how power operates in the ministry of the church.
Imagine yourself at any church service you wish. Imagine the music, the preaching, the reading of Scripture. Hear the voices of others next to you in welcome or in questions or in laughter. Feel yourself bumping against strangers and friends. Observe the movements of others in this scene as they jostle, listen, squirm. Listen to the message proclaimed; watch the administration of the bread and the cup.
Now, some questions: Where was power in this picture? How did it work? What was power doing? From where was power coming? Did you even see power in this picture before now?
Asking about how power functions in unseen ways only highlights how, for many, power goes unnoticed until there has been an egregious breach of trust. And in recent years, there have been innumerable breaches in church contexts, both infamous and obscure, and frequently centered on the abuse of persons: the manipulative sermon, the self-serving or even predatory pastoral figure, the overreach of the pulpit into politics.
This is the context—of pastoral failures, political alliances, and confusion about what power means for the church—in which David E. Fitch offers his newest book, Reckoning with Power: Why the Church Fails When It’s on the Wrong Side of Power.
From the onset, Fitch has in view the various high-profile cases in which the wrong kind of power has been found operating within the church. His examples include Christian nationalism, moral failures, sexual abuse, and other forms of damage. In summing up the current situation, Fitch proposes that there are “really two kinds of power at work in the world”:
There is worldly power, which is exerted over persons, and there is godly power, which works ...
