By Paul Coulter - Posted at Evangelical Focus:
Published February 12, 2026
Seven lessons for Christian leaders in the use of power.
Rarely does a single news story dominate the headlines to such a degree as the ongoing revelations from the Epstein files. As I write this post, the top three most read news stories on the BBC website relate to different aspects of the story: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor moving out of Royal Lodge [1], Melinda French Gates commenting on her ex-husband [2], and the ‘scandal’ concerning Peter Mandelson [3].Royalty, politicians and billionaire businessmen. The rich, famous and powerful are in the spotlight.
Appearing in the files relating to Epstein released by the US government does not imply wrongdoing, but the files do show just how connected many people with wealth and position were, and, presumably, still are. Epstein was able to get close to important people and many important people wanted to be close to him too. We cannot know how much they knew or suspected about the sordid sexual crimes he was guilty of.
As I have reflected on these stories, I have been thinking about how power works and what that means for Christian leadership. In this post I want to propose seven principles for Christian leaders. First, however, we need to set the issue in a historical and biblical framework.
“Power tends to corrupt”
British historian and politician, Lord Acton (1834-1902), famously said:Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority. [4]This may seem like a rather pessimistic assessment of human nature, but it certainly seems apt in the present moment.
Acton wrote these words to Anglican bishop Mandell Creighton as part of a correspondence about historical method – specifically the standards by which the medieval papacy should be judged for its sponsorship of religious persecution and the Inquisition. Acton believed everyone’s actions should be judged by the same uncompromising moral standard and those who hold power should be judged more strictly without making excuses based on institutional or doctrinal reasons or contextual factors.