Definition. In Unification theology, the providential task placed on ordinary people of faith — both on earth and in heaven — to defeat Satan and complete the work of restoration in the era of the Second Coming, after God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit have each taken their turn as the primary agent of providence.
Expanded. The term derives from Exposition of the Divine Principle p. 186 (per divine-principles-support-for-the-populist-approach, citing EDP): “The period after the Second Coming of Christ … is called the age of the providence based on the believers’ responsibility.”
Tyler Hendricks builds his book The Believer’s Responsibility: A Populist Approach to Church Growth (2010) on this concept, arguing that the providential elevation of ordinary believers as the primary actors implies a populist organizational form for the church — decentralized, member-empowering, oriented toward direct experience of God rather than mediation through hierarchy.
Distinct from related concepts:
- Restoration through indemnity — the mechanism of providential history
- Believers’ responsibility — the agent assigned to that mechanism in the current era
Referenced by
- believers-responsibility-as-third-providential-phase (atomic)
- uc-began-on-populist-organizational-model (atomic)
- evangelism-as-root-of-peace-building (atomic)
- dp-popular-acclaim-conditional-on-fulfilled-responsibility (atomic)
- blessing (glossary)
- home-church (glossary)
- populist-church (glossary)
- grounds-for-the-uc-messianic-claim (thread)