In the New Statesman Rowan Williams reviews Nick Spencer’s new book about how power has used (and abused) the famous Good Samaritan parable.

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“After the gunman had slaughtered his victims at the church in Sutherland Springs in Texas, he was himself shot by an armed member of the public determined to prevent his escape. The multiple horrors of the event don’t need rehearsing here; but one startling moment came when a local commentator described this intervention as the action of a “Good Samaritan”. It brings into sharp focus the subject of this brief but thoroughly researched and thoughtful book. Nick Spencer sets out to examine not only the specific question of how the story of the Good Samaritan has been used by left and right alike as a convenient form of moral shorthand (though for rather different ends), but also the wider issues of why and how we research for certain kinds of religiously charged symbolic language even in a pervasively secular culture – and how far this has the effect of distorting the central challenges of that language.”

Lord Rowan Williams reviews Nick Spencer’s new book, The Political Samaritan: How Power Hijacked a Parable. 

Read the full article at the New Statesman.