Paul Gallagher

Citizens of Heaven, Residents of the Earth: the Politics of the Sermon on the Mount Paul Gallagher

Much of the language of the church--messiah, kingdom, lord--belongs to the realm of politics as much as itdoes that of religion. Yet, given the tendency inWestern society to treat politics as the business ofgovernment and moral instruction as the prerogativeof the church, the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon onthe Mount is habitually regarded as an example of thelatter to the neglect of its political content. Thisbook challenges this limitation of politics tostatecraft as it identifies Christian socialpractices, such as nonviolence, enemy-love, andunlimited generosity, as laying the foundation for acommunity that is more truly political, that is, moreproperly ordered, than are its secular alternatives. The close exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount unfoldsthrough an engagement with the theologies of GustavoGutierrez and John Howard Yoder. Indeed, this studybrings together the work of these two importanttwentieth-century theologians for the first time. NewTestament and theological scholars and students aswell as those interested in the relation of religionand politics will learn from and be challenged bythis important book.