Continuing with my read through Bretherton and came across a fascinating concept he is calling impatient endurance. It's an essay where he is talking about how we exist in the space where certain systemic or structural injustices prevail. Rather than tolerate these injustices, we "endure them impatiently" as we attempt to tear them down. He calls this

"A concrete form of hope. Impatient endurance entails 'cold' or 'righteous' anger, which points to God's anger for sin and idolatry. Such anger is born out of grief for the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be and hope that things can change."

Of course, the tension is in determining what qualifies as this sort of evil. Certainly different groups will have opposing answers to this. This tension seems to be core to Bretherton's whole argument, we must seek to build a common life across diverse groups with different views on what practices or beliefs are objectionable. This is where he offers hospitality as a way forward.

One of the first major books I'm reading for my Directed Reading course is a book by Luke Bretherton called 'Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy.' It's basically an overview of political theology, which is the stream that the rest of my readings and writings will fall within.

Anyways, I came across this interesting idea while reading this morning; Bretherton makes a distinction between politics and war, suggesting that war and violence signals the end of politics and the start of something else.

"The bullet and the ballot box are mutually exclusive routes to solving shared problems."

He gets there because his view of politics is based in relational power with others rather than power over others. It is an understanding of power that requires a commitment to listening and negotiating rather than coercing and dominating.

It also requires a commitment to non-violence, something that is largely lacking in our society these days.