Quotes from Jonathan Bartley

In the future, the churches will focus less on gaining political control of the levers of power and more on subverting power and the systems through which it is exercised, holding the powerful to account and shaping the contexts in which they operate. Drawing on the idea of 'the powers' that lie behind systems, institutions, and governments, the church will involve itself in identifying, examining, and exposing the 'idols' of the political system.

Post-Christendom allows the church to rediscover itself as agents of God's justice…[as] a community that 'does justice' in a different way to the state and can witness prophetically to the state about injustice. The church can say: 'Give us your prisoners, give us your poor, give us your homeless children and we will look after them.' The law tells us only what has gone wrong, not how to put it right. In this respect, the biblical concept of justice is far more empowering.

Post-Christendom churches will be untidy communities where belonging, believing and behaving are all in flux rather than neatly fixed and integrated. Churches are likely to be defined less by what they believe and more by the values they hold and the way they behave. The communities that thrive will be the ones with core values or guiding principles - and many of these will be unmistakably political.

In Christendom, Jesus as a political figure was often sidelined. In post-Christendom, the church is rediscovering the political Jesus and exploring anew the political dimension of what he had to say. In Christendom, the behaviour of those who began to recognise this dimension were often referred to as 'radical discipleship', but post-Christendom suggests that we are moving towards the abolition of such distinctions as the ideas of 'radical discipleship' enter the mainstream.