Authority: How Godly Rule Protects the Vulnerable, Strengthens Communities, and Promotes Human Flourishing is Jonathan Leeman’s attempt to make a Christian case for authority at a moment when most people’s instinct about it is suspicion. Crossway published it in September 2023. The edition linked here includes study questions.
The question the book is answering
Leeman starts from the observation that we have all watched authority go wrong. Pastors who bullied people. Bosses who took what they wanted. Fathers who ruled by fear. The reasonable conclusion many have drawn is that authority itself is the problem and the less of it the better.
His argument runs the other way. Authority exercised as Scripture describes it is not a threat to the weak, it is the main thing that protects them. Remove it and you do not get freedom, you get whoever is strongest doing as they please. The abuses are real, and they are abuses of a good thing rather than proof it was never good.
He works this out through what he calls the attributes of godly authority, with submission, accountability, and authority understood as a commission to serve rather than a licence to take.
Where CalledToBetter stands, and where this book goes further
Worth saying clearly since the book covers authority in the home and the church as well as in society.
Our position is that men and women have different but equal roles. Equal in worth and dignity before God, with distinct callings that Scripture describes. We hold that, and we deliberately stop there. We do not publish rulings on the contested specifics, including who may hold church office or exactly how submission works inside a marriage.
Leeman writes from a confessional Reformed Baptist position and is the editorial director of 9Marks, a stream in which several of those questions have settled answers. Where the book applies its framework to church office and household order, it is more specific than CalledToBetter is willing to be in its own voice. That is not a criticism of Leeman, who is arguing a considered position carefully. It means you are reading a book with a definite view, and you should weigh its conclusions against Scripture rather than receiving them as the only faithful reading. Serious Christians who hold the Bible as authoritative disagree here.
What we removed
The old version carried a sentence in quotation marks attributed to Leeman and a second quotation attributed to an unnamed reviewer. Neither could be verified and both are gone. The metadata for this page also described the book oddly as an “Accessible Guide from 9Marks,” which is not what it is. This is a Crossway book by an author who works at 9Marks.
The study questions are real and are included in this edition, which is the one thing the old page got right about the format.
Who should read it
Someone who has to exercise authority and is uneasy about it. That covers a lot of men: new managers, fathers, small-group leaders, anyone recently handed responsibility over other people who has seen enough bad examples to be wary of becoming one.
It is also worth reading for someone on the other side of it, who has been under authority that was misused and is trying to work out whether the whole category is rotten. Leeman takes that experience seriously rather than waving it away.
The study questions make it workable for a group, and the subject is one that benefits from being discussed out loud rather than absorbed alone.