The ministries are known by their effects; when we see the effects we may discern that the Spirit is giving the church its authentic shape. What impact, then, will these effects have on the politics society in which the church lives? If a political society has in its midst a church that is taught by the episcopate not to confine its deliberations to the local, national, linguistic, or racial sphere, but to explore contested issues in a catholic manner, not only attending to Christians from every present source, but also from every past age, it must have a profound effect. A society influenced by a such a church will be restrained from universalizing its own local experiences and perspectives. The narrow and culture-bound spirit which expects to exports its local assumptions and values en masse and makes no effort to learn from others, meets a roadblock when it comes face to face with a church support by a functioning episcopal ministry.
An effective church with an effective ministry, in holding out word of life, than which there is no other human good within the world or outside it, will render assistance to the political functions in society by forwarding the social good which they exist to defend… In holding out the word life, an effective church with an effective ministry issued, the call ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand!’ and so in the short, medium and even penultimate term the presence of the church in political society can be a disturbing factor, as those who first thought Christianity worth persecuting understood quite well. It presents a counter-movement in social existence; it restrains the thirst for judgment; it points beyond the boundaries of political ideology; it undermines received traditions of representation; it utters truths that question unchallenged public doctrines’.
Oliver O’Donovan The Ways of Judgment 291-92
