Every Nation

Yet another blog! I know, it’s enough to make the heart sigh, and the eyeballs glaze over. But this one has been brewing for a long time, and has a set purpose, to be limited to a range of related topics in theology and mission. Let me explain what I am trying to do.

Three years ago I embarked on an M.Th. with Edinburgh Theological Seminary, funded by the Mission I work for, Grace Baptist Mission. I submitted my thesis at the end of November, and it has just been accepted. My subject was ‘Every Nation Under Heaven: The Importance of the Biblical Concept of Nations for Contemporary Evangelical Mission Practice.’ This blog will be a means of putting some of that research out there for your consideration. As I have worked, preached and studied my way through the past three years, I’ve noticed how little understanding there is of the biblical understanding of nationhood in the West. Our thinking about ourselves is shaped so extensively by post-Enlightenment individualism. Systematic theologies deal with anthropology at a purely individual level, without discussing marriage, let alone nationhood. It is absent from most confessions of faith. Yet if we are to be serious about the work of mission, understanding nationhood is crucial to the task of working out how to take the gospel into that nation and express it in a way that speaks to that nation and can be owned by that nation.

I want to challenge the secular presuppositions that shape so much of our thinking when it comes to nationhood. I am disturbed to see Christians around me in Britain discussing the Brexit referendum purely in terms of economics and the pragmatics of raw power.