Hak Joon Lee offers God and Community Organizing to address the ‘deficiency of a coherent social philosophy’, which has resulted in Christian voices remaining ‘relatively silent about, embarrassingly irrelevant to, or downright destructive for contemporary social-political realities’ (p. xiv). In Lee's view, neoliberal economics, globalisation and technological advances have transformed the fabric of society, leading to four interrelated crises: (1) the erosion of community, (2) the weakening of moral agency, (3) the delegitimization of democracy and (4) a ‘dearth of global governance’ (p. 5). I write this in Atlanta, Georgia, at the beginning of 2021. Georgians organised successfully to overcome voter suppression in order to elect Georgia's first Black US senator, an ordained pastor. We watched horrified hours later as a mob of insurrectionists, under the direction of the country's sitting president, invaded the Capitol, threatening to execute elected officials. Thousands continue to die each day from COVID-19, in part because some Americans see mask-wearing as a threat to individual freedom. We need a theological-ethical response to our contemporary social-political realities.

In the face of such dire circumstances Lee asserts that ‘a good theory is the best solution to a problem’ (p. 6), and proceeds to develop this solution by tracing a theology of covenantal organising running through not only the Hebrew Bible and the ministry of Jesus Christ, but also through the theologies of the Puritans and Martin Luther King, Jr. With a clearly structured writing style, Lee makes a compelling case for drawing on the covenantal pattern as ‘an encompassing method of community organizing’ that entails a commitment to ‘free, egalitarian, reciprocal fellowship’ that honours diversity while also accepting the ‘moral obligations of mutual aid and care in a shared life’ that seeks the general welfare (p. 7). This biblical orientation works as a public theology for pluralistic democratic societies because, as Lee demonstrates, covenantal organising's value of both grassroots power and responsible governance, unity within diversity, the rule of law and democratic principles of free consent, equality, and communicative reciprocity have served as foundational ideas – however imperfectly embodied – valued by such societies. But more than this, covenantal organising can promote the urgently needed change such societies need because it follows God's organising pattern of liberation from oppression, judgement of oppressors and restoration of the liberated into an alternative society (p. 14). Covenantal organising not only speaks to our current moment, it provides the means to transform it.

Given the increasing interest in faith-based community organising in studies such as Jeffery Stout's Blessed are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America (2010), and Luke Bretherton's Resurrecting Democracy: Faith, Citizenship and the Politics of Common Life (2014), Lee appropriately puts his covenantal organising model in conversation with the ideas of Saul Alinsky, considered the founder of community organising. ln principle, Lee sees this conversation between the two models as mutually beneficial, complementing and correcting each other, although in practice the critique flows one way. In comparing the two, Lee notes that Alinsky's model does not have any a priori metaphysical or theological assumptions, and this weakens its capacity to inspire humans to the morally demanding work of love and self-sacrifice, which must accompany justice and self-interest to go beyond producing local political power to create broader cultural change (p. 175). While this may be so, Lee misses an opportunity to allow Alinsky's model to address a fundamental challenge within any theology of covenant: conquest.

Lee upholds the covenant at Sinai as the template for organising, insisting God's people are not truly liberated from Egypt until God organises them into a community at Sinai. The oppressed go free, and then form a new society based on free consent to a set of laws that promote unity within diversity, mutual aid, love and justice. But the Exodus story does not end at Sinai; it goes on to the Promised Land. From the burning bush, God tells Moses, ‘I've come down to rescue [my people] from the Egyptians in order to take them out of that land and bring them to a good and broad land, a land that's full of milk and honey, a place where the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites all live’ (Exod 3:8, CEB). As the Israelites prepare to enter this land, Joshua promises them that ‘the living God is among you and will completely remove the Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites, and Jebusites before you’ as they cross the Jordan carrying the ‘covenant chest of the ruler of the entire earth’ (Josh 3:10–11). They go on to Jericho, where they wipe out everything ‘without mercy’ (Josh 6:21). Though Lee acknowledges that ‘Christians have often used covenant to exclude others and stooped to violence to achieve their goals’, he nonetheless insists that ‘covenant, as a general principle, advocates a nonviolent means of political change’ (pp. 164–5). Given the well-documented use of covenantal theologies to justify colonisation and conquest in Ireland, Southern Africa, Palestine and the New World (as documented, for example, in Donald Harman Akenson, God's Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster, 1992), Lee's proposal for putting covenant at the centre of a justice-seeking project requires more robust attention to resisting the pull towards conquest that seems so inextricably caught up with Exodus and covenant – and so deadly when co-opted by those in power. It is here where Lee might draw more deeply from Alinsky's practical wisdom: ‘The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice’ (Rules for Radicals, 1971, p. 4).

Lee plans to write a second volume to develop his project further. Because it is so important, I hope it will address the dark side of the covenantal model, so that Christians can offer an alternative to neoliberalism capable of promoting the general welfare.