I remember hearing an interview with the renowned political theologian Oliver O’Donovan where he claimed that the problem with contemporary Western politics isn’t that the government isn’t too Big or Small, or that it lacks ideas or has the wrong ideas. The problem is that governments lack authority.

He immediately responded to the reaction you might be feeling. Our governments are perhaps more powerful than at any time in human history. Even the absolute despots of the past didn’t have the effective reach or surveillance powers of a modern state. But power isn’t the same thing as authority. Power is the raw capacity to get something done. Authority is the capacity to call on someone to agree to do something—the capacity for me to give you a compelling reason for action. Power is like electricity in the wires, when a switch is thrown it turns on the light. Authority is what happens when I ask you to leave a light on for me, and you do. You needed the power to do it, but you also needed the reason and the relationship.

‘Authority’ can sound threatening. But there’s nothing essentially hierarchical, coercive, violent, or oppressive about the exercise of authority. Sure, it can be all those things but think about a relationship like the one between housemates. I ask you to leave a light on for me on the verandah when you go to bed because I’m coming home late. You should (probably) do it. The request should carry some weight with you. Or if the position is reversed, I should do it when you ask me. Either housemate can exercise the authority to make the request. The stranger you met down the pub probably doesn’t have the authority to make the request. The combination of the relationship we share, the thing we are asking, and the reasons we give all give the request a kind of weight that we should consider—the significance of the should, is what we are trying to grasp by ‘authority’.

There are lots of names that people have come up with to describe that sense—duty, right, what we ‘owe’ each other morally—but when it comes to thinking about our political relationships, ‘authority’ is the traditional terminology.

Housemates have a lot of, mostly unspoken, agreements about light switches: it’s ok to turn on the light in the kitchen when you get up for a drink in the middle of the night BUT you can’t come into my bedroom at 5am and turn on all the lights there. You probably have the power to do it, i.e., electricity, mobility, intelligence, but you do not have the authority to do it. UNLESS… I said you could or unless the house is on fire or unless its a really brilliant multilevel practical joke… and so on. Authority is connected to a relationship, it’s about what we ask each other to do, and its about the reasons we draw on for asking and responding—having compelling reasons for action.

Ok, in light of that simplified explanation, could it be true that the central issue for contemporary Western politics is a lack of authority?

You should adopt a slightly skeptical posture to the claim, not least because monocausal explanations of things tend to be dodgy. But I think there is something to ponder here…

What would we mean by this?

At least these things:

A society that lacks robust political authority is one in which:

governments and the societies they govern are struggling with a lack of clarity and consensus about the nature of their relationship;
and that involves a lack of clarity and consensus around what we should ask each other to do or refrain from doing in government and politics;
and that involves a struggle to articulate genuinely compelling reasons for action that are relevant to government and political life.

None of these things are failing completely but none of them are going easily and well. The lack gives a tweak to the course of every specific political proposal, a flavour to every debate in parliament, an unacknowledged parameter to every party room meeting and every press conference.

Ok, keep all that in mind and come with me to a Galilean hill…

"[W]here Jesus had directed [his disciples]. When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”" —Matthew 28:16–20

All authority?

What could that mean for a contemporary society where political authority seems lacking?