Disavowing Constantine

Book excerpt: 'Disavowing Constantine' draws upon the work of two highly influential modern theologians, Jÿrgen Moltmann and John Howard Yoder, to develop an independent and constructive understanding of the relation of the church to the state. Its aim is to restate for modern understanding the insights of the Believers Church tradition and to work out their implications for Christian participation in the civil order. In this complex realm, positive insights are located in traditions usually regarded as incompatible, but the thesis of the book concerns disavowing Constantine, renouncing the reliance of the church upon coercive power to further its mission in order to rediscover how a faithful church might nonetheless participate as a witness within the power structures of human society.