Chaos or Control?

Western society is in the process of undergoing profound changes in moral ethos and in the structure of relationships as more and more areas of life are commodified. The Church is now having to grapple with the challenges to its authority-patterns posed by contemporary individualism, reductionism, consumerism and moral relativism, as the fierce debates over issues of abortion and sexuality show.

This book seeks to address theologically the question of authority in terms of the poles of freedom and form. The tendency of each pole is to dominate. When freedom dominates we have chaos but when form dominates we have control (as exemplified in Islamic societies). Thus the choice facing the West looks like one between chaos and control.

Bradshaw argues that this is a false choice. He suggests that Christ is the form for human freedom and diversity, and that the Church has sufficient apostolic guides and practices to chart its way ahead in faith. The book maintains that Western, liberal, capitalist democracy needs to recover a Christian ethical basis to avoid the dangers of both chaos and of control.