Madeleine Pennington takes a look at our current, power–crazed political moment in light of our new report with Christian Aid. In all this, does power have the potential for good? 29/01/2025

In a 2016 interview with The Washington Post, the then–presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked if he agreed with Barack Obama’s observation that “real power means you can get what you want without having to exert violence”. Trump’s response was telling, as he (not so) subtly drifted from a reflection on soft power to the military:

I think there’s a certain truth to that. Real power is through respect. Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, fear. But you know, our military is very sadly depleted… Hey, as a real estate person, all the time I’m getting listings of bases, Army bases, Marine bases, naval bases. I keep saying, how many bases do they have? … do we want to buy a base in Virginia? … And I see it all the time. We have to strengthen our military.

Trump’s electoral success since that interview – and moreover, his totemic representation of a certain kind of politics sweeping across the West – has only entrenched a view of power as a close relative of fear. From Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, to Trump’s own divisive rhetoric on Greenland and military intervention in Venezuela, strongman leadership is back in fashion – and it is precisely the way such leaders talk about, and wield, their own military, financial, and political power that is now challenging historical norms so profoundly. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently observed in a viral speech at the World Economic Forum, “It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry – that the rules–based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”

It’s ironic, then, that our society is also increasingly suspicious of ‘the powerful’. Political movements such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have drawn attention to the devastating ways in which power can be misused to harm or control others. Core institutions – the government, legislature, police, army, and, yes, churches – face crises of trust and legitimacy as their potential as vehicles for structural injustice, corruption, and bullying is increasingly recognised. So too, waning colonialism has left many with an instinctive scepticism towards the way in which the Global North has (and continues to) exercise economic, military and cultural power at the expense of the Global South.

Power harnessed through fear, corruption, and the threat of violence has never been more scrutinised, just as it is making a comeback on the world stage. Yet the postures described above – domination and despair – both understand power fundamentally as coercive and self–interested: they differ only on whether that is a good thing.

Carney’s intervention at Davos was striking because it emphasised a different sort of power at play alongside strength alone. Here, he drew on Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, asking how the communist system prevailed for so long:

[Havel’s] answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world unite”. He doesn’t believe it, no–one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false… When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. 

For Carney, this is a call to action for global leaders in 2026 to recognise this other power as their own, faced with increasingly flagrant violations of the rules–based order: “Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.”

Together, all these reflections on power triangulate the historical moment in which we find ourselves. Many of our political differences are shaped foundationally by what we think (and say) about power, and many of our greatest challenges reflect the outworkings of these different ideas in practice.

But if the powerful should aspire to more than control over others – and if those of us who seek justice are not to lose total hope in the potential of power for good – where might we find resources to construct a broader and more hopeful understanding?

Our latest report A Theology of Power, produced in partnership with Christian Aid, unpacks what the Bible has to say about power.

For the biblical authors, power is fundamentally creative, God–given, and pervasive. Yes, humans too often subvert its positive potential for their own, destructive ends: the Bible tells this story of rebellion and injustice time and time again. But this is not what power is. In fact, the first demonstration of power in the Bible is creation, spoken by Word alone: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Flowing from this first creative act, God then actively distributes his power, delegating authority over aspects of creation to others – and he will ultimately judge whether its use aligns with good – divine good – or not.

Consequently, those with particular power now (not only those in the highest office, but those “placing their signs out”) have a responsibility to use it for the flourishing of all. They are not finally accountable to themselves for their use of this power, but to a higher power whose purposes are always just. Nor have we yet seen the full outworking of this power: it is by nature creative, hopeful, generative, borrowed, distributed.

Here, then, is a corrective to the tendencies both to dominate and to despair. True power is not fear – nor even mere respect. In the words of author Andy Crouch,

“What if the Western intellectual tradition at least since Nietzsche (but further back… to the ancient Greeks) is mistaken about power? What if there is another way? If the gospel really is good news for all creation, is it possible that the gospel is good news about power?”

Not for a long time has this good news felt so sorely, or so urgently, needed.

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