Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 35:3 (Summer 2021)
Article: Book Review "Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority And Abuse In The Church" By Diane Langberg (Brazos, 2020)
Author: Sue Bailey

Book Review
Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority And Abuse In The Church
By Diane Langberg (Brazos, 2020)

Sue Bailey

Rev. Dr. Sue Bailey is a graduate of the University of Michigan and of Denver Seminary where she received an MDiv in 2010 and a DMin in 2021. After being ordained as a Teacher Elder/Pastor with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church she served the local church. Later, she felt called to use her gifts of exhortation through creative enterprises under the initiative of Sue Bailey Ministries, LLC. Her passion for Christ and her desire to encourage and promote all believers to use their God-given gifts toward kingdom-building is further realized in her affiliation with CBE International. For the last five years, Sue has served as Director of the CBE Denver Chapter. Sue uses her voice to promote mutuality/gender equality across racial, ethnic, and gender lines by raising awareness about mutuality and inviting those with divergent views to gather, talk about their differences, and reason together through “dignified dialogue.” Sue and her supportive husband, Dr. Brent Bailey, live in Littleton, Colorado, where they remain committed to and involved in ministries both in the US and abroad.

Diane Langberg’s newest book, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church, is an important, emotionally challenging, and convicting read. The book focuses on the dynamics of power—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Although power is “inherent in being human,” given by God so that male and female in union could rule and subdue the earth and “not each other,” its abuse has “produced outcomes that have rolled down from generation to generation, infecting us all” (7). Langberg expounds on the concept of power in three distinct but interconnected sections: Power Defined, Power Abused, and Power Redeemed.

In the first section, Langberg describes the many types of power, yet clarifies that all power is from God and given to humans as a trust. Power is always to be expressed in humility in order to bless and serve; it is not to be exploited to dominate, harm, and hurt. While this is the ideal, Langberg affirms that humanity is easily deceived and that it is this deception of power that leads to and perpetuates abuse. The author nuances how people rationalize the misuse of power to justify sinful actions. Her chapter on the Power in Human Systems is especially enlightening. In it she examines how “systemic abuse occurs when a system, such as a family, a government entity, a school, a church or religious organization, a political group, or a social service organization enables the abuse of the people it purports to protect” in order to protect the system rather than persons (75). Her challenge to not be “anesthetized by so-called good systems, controlled by bad ones, or complicit b...