Editor’s Note: In the Evangelical Covenant Church, we embrace a diversity of views around faith and politics. This series aims to reflect that variety, acknowledging that no single perspective captures the full truth. As Scripture reminds us, we see only in part—each voice adds to our understanding as we seek to navigate these important conversations together.
For further exploration, the Covenant has curated a list of recommended resources for this season: Christian Faith and Politics.
I was a pastor and church-planter in Washington DC for more than seventeen years. In that town, the United States government is always in the foreground. I interacted with more lawyers, political analysts, and legislative assistants than you can imagine! Some attendees of the congregations I served worked in think tanks that focused on government policies. I have been part of many conversations about the church and government. Consequently, I have heard varying views on what it means for Christians to relate to politics in the US. Additionally, I want to note that North Park Theological Seminary’s Symposium on Theological Interpretation of Scripture focused on politics in 2021.* What follows here are my own thoughts shaped by my study of Scripture and my experience. I hope that Christians will vote and otherwise engage in the political process with a solid love for God and genuine compassion for their neighbors.
The Importance of Context
Before we hasten to explore how the Bible speaks to our country’s politics, we need to respect the reality that the Bible emerged from worlds different from our own. The Ancient Near East (the Old Testament context) and Ancient Rome (the New Testament context) were geopolitically different from each other, and both settings were different from 21st-century United States. Furthermore, Christianity’s history started long before 1776, even though many of our imaginations, practices, and opinions about our faith naturally focus on the USA during our own lifetimes. Being a New Testament scholar, I will always emphasize the importance of respecting contexts. Not only must we pay attention to the literary context of a passage of Scripture; we ought never devalue the historical context in which these biblical writings developed. While we affirm the centrality of the Bible, the Word of God, as “the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct” (a Covenant Affirmation), it is critical to respect the original hearers of the biblical texts and to honor their situations in life. Their political realities were different from ours. Therefore, simply reading Bible verses and drawing contemporary applications is reductionistic and potentially dangerous.
Should Politics Matter for Christians?
During my years of ministry in our nation’s capital, I came to understand that it is better to think about how policy matters for Christians rather than politics. Since politics refers to the activities of the government or people who try to influence the way a country is governed, we might tend to get bogged down in the mechanism rather than the products of the mechanism. The products are policies, meaning the actions and rules that governments put in place.
To illustrate, consider that Ancient Rome was an empire with a supreme leader (Caesar) while the US rejected a monarchy and aspired to be a democratic republic. Yet while Ancient Rome and the US had different politics—different ways of organizing the government—there were similar policies. Both political entities had policies that advanced enslaving other humans, limited the rights of women, exploited children, and discriminated against immigrants. Christians should be primarily concerned about policy because the decisions of a government directly influence the quality of life for its citizens and other residents. And because Christians bear witness to Christ in a world that can be indifferent or even hostile to him, we have a responsibility to advance and support policies that help and do not harm God’s creation—neither the people nor the planet.
Christians and Public Policy
The teachings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, along with admonitions in several epistles, emphasize care for those we might call “the least of these” as in Matthew 25:31-46. Following the Torah’s admonition to care for the widow, orphan, and stranger (e.g., Exodus 22:22; Deuteronomy 10:18), the New Testament likewise presses believers to uplift the vulnerable. For instance, James 1:27 says, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (NRSVue). Christian compassion certainly focuses on sisters and brothers in the faith but also extends to all who bear the imago Dei and to the rest of creation.
Some of my friends might agree with my previous paragraph but would quickly add that the care I am calling for is not the government’s job but the church’s job. Yet the inequities in society—in our present time just as in the ancient world—are typically the result of government policies, so the government must help rectify inequities. Besides, in the US, the government is “by the people” and Christians are among those people. As in the case of my people—African Americans—discrimination in housing, employment, education, and other areas was the result of government policies, not merely individual bigotry. Consequently, we needed government intervention, such as the Civil Rights Act, to ameliorate some of the oppression my people endured.
Observations from Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:12-17; Acts 16:35-40
I often hear Christians cite Romans 13:1-7 to support US government policies, provided that those policies uphold their personal perspectives. I have rarely heard Christians cite Romans 13 to support China’s policies, North Korea’s, or any other nation’s policies even though there are Christians in those countries too (an exception might be South Africa, as many evangelicals in the 1980s supported the Apartheid regime). Once again, I note context, in that the apostle Paul wrote Romans 13 at a specific time to address particular concerns for Christians in Rome. One chief concern was likely the reluctance of Jews (and Jewish Christians) to pay taxes to Rome as a way of expressing their discontent (see Romans 13:6-7 and Michael J. Gorman, Romans, pp. 254-59), thereby incurring Rome’s fury. Furthermore, in Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley argues persuasively that Romans 13:1-7 represents an ideal “without directly addressing the problem of evil rulers” (p. 40). This is to say that all governments exist by God’s permission (Romans 13:1), and ideally, the Roman government had the right to police its people and to receive taxes. However, the government did not have the right to instill fear in innocent people (Romans 13:3-5).
We do well to keep in mind that Paul is not the only New Testament author to address how Christians might relate to the Empire. First Peter is written to Christians harassed and even persecuted by their neighbors and the local government. Peter’s admonition for respect and honor seems primarily geared to keeping the Christians safe. Since many in gentile society viewed the Jesus followers with suspicion, Peter’s instructions are designed to get the target off the backs of the Christians (1 Peter 2:12). Peter recognizes that enslaved people suffer “unjustly” (1 Peter 2:19), but he also knows that the small, beleaguered community cannot actively resist the Roman juggernaut. The Christians are encouraged not to be like the Romans, but instead to demonstrate Christlike humility and develop loving communities as strategies to subvert Rome’s violent, hierarchical, and oppressive policies.
Also, an important counterbalance to the way some people read Romans 13 is to note the fuss that the apostles Paul and Silas make in Acts 16:35-40. The warden of the prison tells Paul and Silas that they are free to go in peace, but instead of leaving right away the apostles protest their unjust imprisonment. They had been victims of police brutality and blamed the magistrates for violating their rights as Roman citizens. Holding the government accountable for its actions—its policies—happened in Ancient Rome and can happen in the US also.
What About Right Now?
When it comes to policy, my hope is that Christians will focus on the least, lost, lonely, and left out in our neighborhoods, and as much as possible throughout the world. Issues such as health care and environmental stewardship have long-term implications for all of us on the planet, but the negative impact of failing to deal with such issues falls mostly on marginalized people. For example, we all know that rich people get the best health care and legal representation even if they are despicable. That bothers me because I am a Christian and believe such favoritism is wrong. Financially impoverished neighborhoods are most likely to suffer environmental injustice, making those areas the unhealthiest places to live. Immigrants are among the most vulnerable people on the planet, yet some political rhetoric demonizes them even though many are Christians. I want policies that protect the most vulnerable and require the most powerful in society to be held accountable for how they use their wealth and influence.
My hope is that Christians will grow less enchanted with pledging allegiance to particular parties but be all the more eager to see vulnerable people be treated with dignity and equity.
* The essays presented at the symposium (held online that year) are published in the journal Ex Auditu, volume 36. Videos of the sessions are archived here. You might find some of those essays helpful in thinking about the church’s engagement in the political process in the US.
