Various systems or worldviews fight for power and authority.  Yet Christianity offers a radically different approach.  Christ opens up the idea of a system that seeks always to find those who are excluded from the system that is in power.  The Christian “worldview” is thus manifested as always seeking out those who have been rejected from the worldviews that have authority.  The way this works itself out in practice is that whatever political or religious idea is dominating the society at any given time, Christianity seeks out those who are excluded by it, the one sheep who is not in the pen, the one coin not in the purse, those who have not been invited to the party, the nobodies, the nothings.  The Christian “system” can thus never take power for, by definition, it is always that which stands against power, seeking to identify with the powerless and the voiceless.  It is a system in the sense that it systematically seeks out those who do not fit into the system offered by the currently prevailing political and religious authorities.

What we see being worked out within Christianity can thus be said to be a prejudice toward those who are excluded and marginalized, those who are oppressed by our religious and political systems.  This means that every time a “Christian” system is created, the Christian is the one who seeks out those who are excluded from it.  Christianity affirms a system that undermines every system of power by seeking those who are oppressed.  The Christian critique is not then directed at the people in power so much as at the place of power itself.  When a system of thought, however great, is given authority over all, it becomes oppressive and undermines its own liberative elements.  The point then is not to find the “right” way of thinking and then give it a place of power and influence, but rather to question the place of power and influence itself.

–Peter Rollins; an excerpt from The Fidelity of Betrayal