This is another book produced as part of the celebration of 400 years of the King James Bible (KJV). Its subject matter, however, is strictly political. Peter Hennessy states: “For anyone freshly curious to understand that jagged and sometimes bloodstained terrain between religion and politics, Church and state in these islands, this is the book for you. Nick Spencer is an ace historical cartographer of that landscape; a guide of fluency and judgement for those who wish to cross it from the seventh century to the present day.”

Spencer postulates that English politics, and thus those of all its dominions, was shaped by two themes that occur regularly in the KJV – freedom and order: both the negative freedom from political constraints and the positive freedom to enable the fulfillment of inherent human potential; order drawn from the respectful way in which both Old and New Testaments spoke about order as being ordained by God.

He traces the interplay of both these somewhat conflicting concepts within the political order of the day. Christians are constantly found both inside and outside government calling for greater attention to be paid to either of these principles, based on their reading of the KJV, and sometimes seeking the persecution of those who hold the other view.

He concludes his work by saying: “Throughout British political history the Bible has both been a hierarchical book and a leveling book, a royal book and a Jacobin book, a text for royalists and a text for radicals. The Jubilee movement around the year 2000 show how, even in the pluralised politics of our age, biblical language and logic can still speak to millions, shaping our political landscape, on the one hand helping to generate public order and stability and, on the other, the moral energy always needed in politics.”

By Nick Spencer
Hodder & Stoughton
London, 2011
ISBN 978 0 340 99623 2

– David McLeod-Jones