Sermon in Response to Jeff Sessions’ use of Romans 13

Why We as Christians Cannot Ignore the Misuse of Romans 13

David Simmons
Preaching from the Rood Screen
8 min readJun 24, 2018

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You all know that I usually preach primarily from the lectionary text, but today is a little different as It appears I can’t go on vacation or the nation explodes. Yes, I’m apparently that important. I’m joking of course, but just as we were getting ready to head down to Kentucky to see family last week, the numbers were reported of the parents and children being separated by the border patrol under the administration’s zero tolerance policy.

Reaction was immediate from the Christian and greater religious community. All across the spectrum, from Franklin Graham to the Pope, to the President of the Mormon Church to our Presiding Bishop, to the National Council of Churches, the message was clear — separation of families by a policy that was initially articulated openly as a deterrent is immoral by almost any possible construction of ethics based on the teaching of Jesus.

But while this struggle continues to play itself out in conflicts of law and mercy, there was one moment that chilled me to the bone. On Thursday the 14th, the Attorney General made a speech to law enforcement officials in which he said,

I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes”

While it’s sometimes hard to discern as a religious leader when to talk about politics, it gets a lot easier when a politician crosses over into your own sacred texts. I wrote a tweet on this that obviously touched a nerve. It went viral — it got over 126 thousand likes and close to 43 thousand re-tweets. It was featured on CNN and I got interviewed and quoted extensively by the Israeli newspaper Ha Aretz. Andy Warhol once said we each get 15 minutes of fame. I think I’ve used them all up. I could read you the tweet, but that wouldn’t be sufficient length for a sermon, so I’ll just keep going!

For those of us who study Church history, our ears prick up when we hear someone, especially a government official, cite Romans 13. The first two verses of that chapter read in the Common English Bible

Every person should place themselves under the authority of the government. There isn’t any authority unless it comes from God, and the authorities that are there have been put in place by God. So anyone who opposes the authority is standing against what God has established. People who take this kind of stand will get punished.

In it’s original context, Paul is speaking to Christians under persecution in Rome during a time that there are armed revolts rising up and being brutally put down all over the empire. He’s concerned about church members being arrested, tortured and executed by the government. He doesn’t want Christians disobeying every law in some sort of gross misunderstanding of his teaching about the freedom of Christ. He’s saying to them, “Keep your heads down. Don’t be a rebel just for the sake of being a rebel.” He’s acknowledging that SOME sort of order is necessary for human beings to live together. By no means is he saying all law is just, or that unjust laws have to be supported. After all, Paul himself is eventually executed for violating Roman law, as was Jesus before him and thousands of Christian martyrs after him. Additionally, all of the text around Chapter 13 is about loving your neighbor. Chapter 12 says,

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

As people of faith, knowing our history is important, because there is a long, infamous interpretational history used by authoritarian governments to take Chapter 13 out of context. The situation I tweeted about was that of Germany in the 30s, when this text was used explicitly by the pro-Nazi German Christian movement as a polemic against the Confessing Church, which was resistant to the Nazification of the German church. Through a particular extreme interpretation of Luther’s theology, the German Christian movement asserted that the church’s role was to support the state, no matter how cruel or unjust its laws or practices appeared to be. A passage from the Ha Aretz article illustrates:

Members of the Sturmabteilung leaving a church service

In July 1933, during Hitler’s first summer in power, a young German pastor named Joachim Hossenfelder preached a sermon in the towering Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin’s most important church. He used the words of Romans 13 to remind worshippers of the importance of obedience to those in authority. The church was festooned with Nazi banners and … flags, its pews packed with the Nazi Party faithful — including men in the brown shirts of the [Stormtroopers], the Nazis’ paramilitary movement.

This is only one example of many misuses of Romans 13. In an American context, there have been two notable times this interpretation has been used. First, by the British Government and loyalists who were opposed to the American Revolution. Let that sink in — this same interpretation was used to oppose the Declaration of Independence. Second, by those upholding the Fugitive Slave Law in the 1840s and 1850s and insisting that escaped slaves be returned to their masters. In short, this line of interpretation takes a passage used in its original context to give pastoral advice to those being oppressed by a government, turns it around 180 degrees, and uses it to justify the actions of a government. It ignores the fact that just because something is legal, it does not mean it is moral. Sometimes law itself is immoral. Frederick Douglass, escaped slave and renowned orator during the civil war once said,

Frederick Douglass

I appear this evening as a thief and a robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master, and ran off with them.

Beloved, I hope that as Christians we can all agree that the life of Jesus is one of freedom in Christ, not servitude to human powers. I hope we as Americans can agree that no particular iteration of our government is such a bearer of God’s will that its actions cannot be questioned. When an official of any government uses Romans 13 in this way, they claim divine authority in a way that is incompatible with both our freedom in Christ and the proper functioning of democracy. When this interpretation goes unchallenged, human tragedy always follows.

Doris Bergen, a professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto, notes that explicit exhortations (from Christian authority) were rarely necessary (in the Third Reich), because woven into the very fabric of the German Christian belief was the idea that state rule was supreme and not to be questioned. (Ha Aretz Article)

Citizens of Namering are told of their guilt, May 17, 1945

Large civilian populations lived near many of the concentration camps, and went about their day-to-day business despite obvious signs of what was going on inside. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, it became standard practice by American military authorities to make nearby Germans enter the camps and confront the reality of what was going on.

“In the book ‘The Hitler Virus,’ it’s noted that a few of the Dachau notables, who were forced to view the corpses, fainted. Some cried and many shook their heads. Most of them turned away. Afterwards, they were heard to whisper, ‘Unglaublich!’ (Unbelievable.)” (Dachau Liberation Scrapbook Page)

Here’s the thing. Germans of the 1930s were not immoral or stupid. They were highly educated, creative, and diverse by the standards of the time. They went to church in greater numbers than Americans do today. And yet, they allowed the unthinkable to happen to their neighbors. The sad reality is that the Church largely stood by, at best ignoring, at worst abetting, due to a cherry-picked interpretation of Romans 13.

Much of German history since that time has been the work of trying to come to terms with how such things were allowed to happen. Much of Christian theology since that time has been wrestling with the failure of Christian institutions worldwide to respond adequately to what in retrospect was one of the most unmitigated evils in human history.

And this, beloved, is why I continue to worry about an official of the American government — any official of any party — using this scripture in a speech to law enforcement officials. As Americans, it should concern us because it implicitly breaches separation of Church and State, which protects both from theocracy or tyranny. As Christians, it should concern us because some of the worst atrocities perpetrated falsely in the name of Christ have been justified using this exact same language.

We are a long way from resolving the humanitarian situation at the border. My prayer is that we can arrive at a resolution that honors our Christian belief that every person is made in the image of God. I’m not an expert on immigration policy and procedure. But I am a trained theologian and Church historian. It is therefore on that basis that I utterly refute any interpretation of this scripture taken out of its historical context. And, it is on that basis that I offer a warning.

If we allow any human government of any party or political persuasion to represent that obedience to its dictates are the will of God, then we will stand under the judgement of history and of God. There will be a real-world reckoning ending in tragedy for all.

I am heartened by seeing so many in the broader Christian, Jewish and interfaith communities step forward to criticize this improper use of scripture. But I am also disturbed by the silence or even approval I see among other people who claim Jesus as their Lord.

As dual citizens of the Kingdom of God and of the United States, you and I are called to be vigilant. To be critical thinkers. To raise our voices against any idols placed in front of us by any human authority. Because we do not believe that human leaders are the ones who we ultimately answer to.

And because in the end, we are not ultimately responsible to our leaders, our ultimate faith is also not meant to be in them. In the gospel today, Jesus calms a storm and rebukes the disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” They had every reason to be afraid! They were in the middle of a storm. His rebuke is because they forgot whom they were in the presence of. We are in a storm, and we shouldn’t forget that we are in his presence. We are today and every day in the presence of the living God who is compassion and justice and judgement and mercy. This should both challenge us and remind us that we’re not in charge of everything. We are to keep our eyes open, be vigilant, take action as we can, and to pray for the day when things are indeed on earth as they are in heaven. Amen.

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