The professor of theology at Cambridge University says silent attention to God is the anchor of leadership.
Q: How would you tell institutional leaders who want to be guided by their faith that they ought to think differently about power?
The presumption about power in the world is that there are two alternatives: either top-down authority, or powerlessness in which we are pushed to the edges. But some of the best social science work on power, such as that of the late Michel Foucault, shows that is not actually how institutions work. There are always circuits of power even among people who feel themselves to be powerless institutionally. Their effect on people around them is still enormously significant.Much of my work has been about the power that comes through transparency to the divine. Often even ministers don’t think enough about how Christian life is magnetized and electrified by being lived prayerfully. When you meet a priest or a minister who is living prayer, you never forget that person. That person may be bumblingly inefficient on the budget, useless about remembering to come to appointments, all other kinds of things that they’re meant to do right, and yet have the most fantastic impact on people’s lives.
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