Principalities and Powers: Social Structures and the Reign of God
A Workshop by Rick Elgendy (Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology, Wesley Theological Seminary)
About this Workshop
Protestant understandings of the gospel have often focused either on a change in God's disposition toward sinful humanity or on the moral transformation enabled in the person by Christ's enlightening and sanctifying grace. This workshop considers what is added by another perspective on the gospel that focuses on the "principalities and powers," which recent theologians have used to understand social and political structures. In this view, humans are subjected to fallen powers that structure our world, and Christ's life, death, and resurrection expose and defeat those powers. This view reminds especially Protestants of what's political in the deepest sense about the gospel itself, and may inform a broader public witness.
