Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited

“Luke Bretherton’s new book is a tour de force: with clarity, empathy, and impressive learning he maps out the many current forces that threaten the future of Western democracy, then turns to defend it once more from the perspective of the demanding Christian teaching on mutual love. Perhaps the most distinctive achievement of this volume is its capacity to straddle the debates on both sides of the Atlantic and to draw them into illuminating contrast. Written with incisive clarity and remarkable accessibility, this book is not only a scholarly achievement of great note, but it also is a useful tool for teaching and discussion in universities, seminaries, and churches.”
— Sarah Coakley
University of Cambridge and Australian Catholic University, Melbourne

“Christ and the Common Life is a monumental achievement in Christian political theology. Demonstrating mastery of a huge literature and multiple, diverse sub-traditions of Christian political thought, and offering a disciplined constructive theological vision of his own, Luke Bretherton offers important, often breakthrough reflections on the most significant issues in this field. In the end, the book offers hope for the renewal of Christian engagement with democratic politics, all over the world. An indispensable contribution.”
— David P. Gushee
Mercer University

“Luke Bretherton has written an impressively expansive, smart, and sophisticated introduction to Christian political theology. Each chapter offers refreshing new perspectives on important topics. Moreover, Bretherton brings together and guides us through a wide array of scholarly literatures, from secular political theory to the sociology of Pentecostalism to Hebrew Bible scholarship, while also developing his own distinctive, persuasive theological voice. Christ and the Common Life will surely set the agenda in the field for a generation to come, orienting Christian political theology in the direction of justice.”
— Vincent Lloyd
Villanova University

“Luke Bretherton has been thinking hard about the polis, plurality/pluralism, and democratic citizenship for a long time. This erudite synthesis and expansion of [Bretherton’s work over the last two decades brims with insights into essential and interrelated topics, such as secularity, toleration, economy, sovereignty, and populism. This book makes the case for democracy and establishes the framework for discussions in Christian political theology for the next quarter century.”
— Amos Yong
Fuller Theological Seminary

“Breaking the spell long cast over political theology by Augustine’s vision of the two cities, Luke Bretherton reads faithful pilgrimage to the heavenly city through the lens of a different journey, that of a certain man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and the one who was his neighbor. Politics is neighboring, negotiating a common life between friends, strangers, enemies, and the friendless, and political theology requires a kaleidoscopic approach, brilliantly instantiated in this book, that disrupts canon, shifts geography, and eschews sovereign placement in favor of active listening. A transformative contribution!”
— Jennifer A. Herdt
Yale Divinity School

“Part of the intellectual achievement of this book is rendering political theology more understandable for everyday Christians. For the theological academy, it does something greater. . . . [Bretherton avoids the ‘sin’ of most political theologians and political philosophers in the Western academy who egregiously only legitimize forms of knowledge coming from their narrow enclaves and marginalize others to the benefit of Western hegemony or (unconscious) white supremacy. . . . His brilliant scholarship, on display in this book, his deliberate choice of interlocutors, and his astute selection of spheres of social life for analysis are a demonstration of what the common life in Christ looks like in theologizing. . . . Bretherton opens things up to multiple voices not as a politically correct ploy, but as a genuine and rigorous engagement with others.”
— Nimi Wariboko
Boston University

“Luke Bretherton has written a solid textbook on political theology. He refreshingly explicates a range of historical and contemporary political theologies (humanitarianism, black power, Catholic social teaching, Pentecostalism, Anglicanism) as he makes a case for democratic politics as a work of love. Amid twenty-first-century political strife, Bretherton offers Christians a map for traversing the terrain.”
— Marcia Y. Riggs
Columbia Theological Seminary

“Christ a