Living Out of Control: Political and Personal Faith in Waning Christendom

Living Out of Control is an inviting exploration of how American Christians can respond most graciously, effectively, and faithfully to our political situation amid waning Christendom. This Christendom is diminished but not dead, and many Christians despair of that reality and dream of the reassertion of Christendom. Clapp argues that Christians (like Jews) have often lived out of control: in fact, the Bible largely pictures circumstances in which followers of the God of Israel were . Including a critical chapter on the most pressing and dramatic proponents of Christendom's reassertion (Christian nationalism), the book depicts how we may now best live as Christians--without the reassertion of Christendom. It attempts to spark and remold our imaginations, with hopeful chapters on prefigurative politics, the Christian anarchic tendency, friendship, and resonance. Short and eminently accessible, it aims to be widely read and reread, almost as a handbook to form and reform imagination.