There is more political power in the gospel and in being the church than there is in electing a president, installing a Supreme Court justice, or even changing a constitution.

Here’s the most important statement in this book: “Everyone is a theonomist.” (Who could have predicted at the beginning of this century that by now baptists, of all people, will begin to talk about theonomy?) Jonathan Leeman left a career in the DC political world to become a pastor, and his goal in this book is “to make sure we are thinking rightly, acting rightly, loving rightly, even worshipping rightly in our political lives” (13).

The thesis of the book is that all politics is religious in nature, theocratic by definition, with the only difference being the identity of the god at the center of the system. He does his best to stick to that principle, declaring politics to be the arena where our gods wage war. There is no neutrality. The inevitable outcome of such thinking for a Christian is, of course, the endorsing of a formal declaration of submission to Jesus Christ from the civil magistrate.

Not all of his developments of this doctrine are persuasive, he doesn’t give ready-to-go answers to many questions of policy, but surely this is already a vast improvement over typical Christian approaches to politics (separationism, R2K, etc.)

Other reviews: Jordan Ballor at TGC.