Discovering Kenarchy

This book is a bold attempt to present a love-based personal and corporate politics fit for the coming decades of the twenty-first century. Taking as its starting point the love for friends, neighbors, and enemies embodied in the life of Jesus and recognized both inside and outside the church, this book sets out a contemporary practical politics called kenarchy that has already positively impacted many lives. Its contributors set out the key components of kenarchy, challenging the reader to confront the norms of personal rights, security, and economic gain with a love for "the other" that restores a female world perspective lost over generations of patriarchal dominance.

Discovering Kenarchy is the promised response to the inevitable disintegration of the partnership of church and sovereign power outlined in its companion volume, The Fall of the Church. It is an inspirational resource for all those who desire to fill the emerging new political space with a loving, just, and practical alternative to the devaluation of human life by global capitalism and the reactionary religious and racist behavior that threatens the common good.

"The authors of Discovering Kenarchy, in combining the concept of kenotic love with the '-archy' of order and relation in socio-political structures, have succeeded in both opening and enlarging the familiar radical inversions and apparent paradoxes of Jesus' teaching. Dismantling the conventionally understood exercise of sovereign power as the only means to peace, the book explores the self-emptying love expressed in the command to love your enemy, and its potential in our own troubled and violent times for transforming the inherently conflictual into a new politics of peace. That is an appeal which reaches far beyond the Christian and the theologian."
--Jill Segger, Associate Director, Ekklesia, London, UK

"Discovering Kenarchy is a challenging and thought-provoking book destined to inspire and unsettle. The authors unfold the implications of a politics of radical love in a call to reconfigure relationships and institutions shaped around self-giving, non-violence, the renunciation of power, and sacrifice. The impact of the book lies in the clear commitment of each writer to live out this vision in concrete ways, working for the empowerment and human flourishing of those who are traditionally on the margins. The dedication to the formation of Christ-like relationships of self-giving and peace comes as a tough, but deeply hopeful challenge."
--Lucy Peppiatt, Principal, Westminster Theological Centre, Cheltenham, UK

Roger Haydon Mitchell is an honorary research fellow and partnerships coordinator for the Richardson Institute for Peace Studies in the Politics, Philosophy, and Religion Department at Lancaster University. He has worked as an international consultant to the church for forty years and currently co-directs 2MT, a charity offering help negotiating change at www.2mt.org.uk. He and his wife Sue have two sons ...