Christian Subjection to Government Authorities - Misquoting Paul to Serve Caesar

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions quoted Romans 13 in his justification of the Trump Administration's border policy of separating migrant children from their parents. This passage seems to be a favorite of Christianists who use Christian scriptures in service of the American government. It is a distortion of what Paul likely meant in his exhortation to the Roman Christians. But what did Paul mean and why does his context matter?

First, let's look at Romans 13:1-7 from the New Revised Standard translation:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them-- taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

On the surface, this passage seems to say Christians are to obey anything the governing authorities tell them to do. On the surface reading, Jeff Sessions' using this passage to justify migrant separations at the border seems to be supported. Of course, this passage was also used by those who upheld the institution of slavery in the 19th century. It seems this is the "go to" cover for any act of governing authorities, even when those authorities are acting in ways which violate "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" - or even God's commandments in other parts of the Bible. The problem is these verses are being taken out of their original context and distorted in a process we call "proof-texting" - that is, looking for scriptures to justify our ways instead of letting the scriptures move us towards God's ways. If that's the case, what was Paul talking about??

First remember this: being a Christian in 1st century Rome automatically made you a criminal in the eyes of Caesar and the government authorities. That's something we forget in America because Christianity has held a place of privilege in Western Civilization since the Emperor Constantine converted in 313 CE. Christianity became the official religion of the Empire and was co-opted by it even to this day (a good read on this is Meg Gorzycki's Caesar Ate My Jesus: A Baby Boomer's Reflection on Spirituality in the American Empire). In order to really understand Paul, you have to start from the place of being a criminal. Paul was an outlaw follower of a criminal enterprise founded by a convicted Palestinian Jew named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans in collusion with the local religious authorities. Following this movement meant you were against the governing authorities by virtue of your faith and nothing more. If Paul was giving blanket approval to government authorities as one who was branded a criminal by those same authorities, well that just doesn't make much sense, right?

Paul, a Roman citizen who is a criminal by the Empire's definition, is writing this letter to fellow criminals in Rome. Since that's the case, Paul is not saying that the governing authorities are necessarily doing God's will. He is saying God has allowed them to be appointed and whatever they do to you, do not resist. This is a call to radical non-violence. If the governing authorities arrest you and put you to death for being a Christian, so be it and do not resist. Americans have a hard time wrapping their heads around the radical call to submission and non-violence. I once heard Stanley Hauerwas give a lecture on "Luther and War" wherein he said, "American Christians are more American than they are Christian." (Ouch! True but ouch). Living in a place where Christianity is nominally practiced and privileged if it conforms to the government, we struggle to understand Paul in his own context of being a criminal subject to persecution by the governing authorities.

There is also an historical context to these verses having to do with his exhortation to the Romans to pay their taxes. His comments on submission to the governmental authorities is directly tied to the matter of paying taxes. For Jews and early Christians, paying taxes was a troublesome thing because taxes supported the Roman religious cult of Caesar - whom the Romans were to worship as a living, incarnation of the Roman god Zeus. If the Romans worshiped a "god incarnate" in Caesar and Christians proclaimed the Jewish God incarnate was Jesus of Nazareth, we have competing belief systems, don't we? Belief in Jesus was a direct contradiction to worship of Caesar. If Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not. Therefore, to pay taxes to Rome was to commit blasphemy in the eyes of both Jews and early Christians. So questions of paying taxes were fraught with both theological and political implications - something we Americans do not understand.

Tacitus

Because of the tension around paying taxes being blasphemous, Jewish tax protests and riots broke out sporadically. The Roman historian Tacitus (b. 54 CE, d. 120 CE) wrote the history of the Empire in his work The Annals. In it, he spoke of the Emperor Nero putting down tax riots in Puteoli by the dispatch of Roman troops and "a few executions." Paul, writing to the neighboring Romans whom he had never met personally, had the matter of these Puteoli riots on his heart as he crafted his letter. At this stage of Christian history, Jews and Christians often worked closely together and, in the Holy Land, Christianity was known as "The Way of the Nazarene", a fringe sect of Judaism. Paul would have been quite concerned that the Roman Christians would be tempted to get involved in these tax protests because of a shared theological view the taxes were blasphemous.

With this event on Paul's mind, it is likely he wrote these opening lines to Romans 13 to essentially exhort the Roman Christians to stay out of these particular tax protests and riots. After all, if just being Christians makes you outlaws and criminals in the eyes of the government, why bring down Caesar's wrath if you don't have to? Taxes are not the theological hill Paul thinks the Roman Christians should die on so submit to the governmental authorities, pay your taxes, and otherwise keep your nose clean. After all, there is more important work to do for the Kingdom of God.

So the next time someone tells you that Romans 13 instructs Christians to blindly and unquestioningly obey government authorities, even when they are doing ungodly acts, share this with them. It's too bad Jeff Sessions, a member of Ashland United Methodist Church in Mobile, Alabama, didn't do the deep dive into the meaning of this scripture before misusing it.