In the hands of coercive power, the Bible is a weapon.
It is one of the strangest assertions in the Bible. By the time Paul writes this he has experienced hostility from all sorts of authorities. He has been threatened and imprisoned for breaking the law. Eventually he will die for these legal transgressions.
.. perhaps we should give attention to a popular Mennonite theological claim that Romans 13 is to be read in conjunction with Romans 12. This previous chapter speaks to the character of the beloved community, the forms life will take within God’s life in Jesus. The call in Romans 13 is to live this Romans 12 life in “submission,” but never in obedience. It may be incumbent upon our witness to the gospel to participate in a sit-in protesting unjust laws, but we submit to the arrest we know will take place.
.. the Bible is a weapon in the hands of coercive power. Jeff Sessions, like other tyrants before him, utilizes scripture for the good of the empire, to keep people silent, in line, submissive.
The ’Splainer: Why is Jeff Sessions quoting Romans 13 and why is it so often invoked?
The Apostle Paul wrote that passage while living under the brutal Roman Empire. Paul, a convert to Christianity who went around evangelizing people, was a known troublemaker, said Douglas Campbell, a professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School. His preaching had caused riots in Ephesus and Jerusalem. These public disturbances earned Paul disfavor with Roman administrators who greatly feared any incitement to revolution.
“He was in legal trouble so he had to cover himself,” Campbell said.
.. “He’s framing all of this in their context of, ‘We want you to be a good citizen as much as you are able. You’re not going to be able to offer sacrifices to the emperor. … If that’s the law then you’re just going to break the law and go to jail. In terms of the government raising funds through taxes, that’s just what you do,” Cohick said.
That’s where that plug for taxes comes in.
.. But the fact Paul himself was imprisoned by governing authorities several times and eventually executed shows “You don’t follow the government at all costs,” she said.
“That’s not what Paul was saying.”
Sessions’s Use of Bible Passage to Defend Immigration Policy Draws Fire
Many were concerned that Mr. Sessions’s chosen chapter, Romans 13, had been commonly used to defend slavery and oppose the American Revolution.
.. The directive has led to the fracturing of hundreds of migrant families, funneling children into shelters and foster homes.
Mr. Sessions 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.”
He added: “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent and fair application of the law is in itself a good and moral thing, and that protects the weak, it protects the lawful.”
.. “The founding fathers created the criminal justice system to be a largely secular criminal justice system,” he said. “They didn’t have in mind punishing criminals and condemning them using Bible verses.”
.. Before the nation’s founding, it was frequently used by Loyalists to oppose the American Revolution, Dr. Fea said. And in the 19th century, pro-slavery Southerners often cited the chapter’s opening verses to defend slavery — in particular, adherence to the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the seizure and return of runaway slaves.
.. Outside the United States, the passage was used by Christians in Europe to defend Nazi rule and by white religious conservatives in South Africa to defend apartheid.. “It’s an endorsement of empire,” Gay L. Byron, a professor of the New Testament and early Christianity at the Howard University School of Divinity, said of the passage on Friday. “Whenever governments need to try to gain leverage in a debate, they say something like that.”.. Mr. Sessions cited the Bible in his speech because he was responding to religious leaders’ criticism of the zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration... Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, addressed the issue on Thursday in response to a reporter who asked, “Where does it say in the Bible that it’s moral to take children away from their mothers?”Ms. Sanders responded that she was not aware of what Mr. Sessions was referring to but added that it is “biblical” for a government to enforce the law. “That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible,” she said.
.. Dr. Byron, the divinity school professor, said Mr. Sessions’s use of the passage is a classic case of a politician “cherry-picking” the Bible for statements that match their policy. “What’s missing is the fact that there are so many other biblical statements and mandates to take care of children and take care of those who are marginalized,” she said. “We don’t hear Sessions referencing those texts.”
This isn’t religion. It’s perversion.
“It’s becoming a cultish thing, isn’t it?” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) mused this week about his Republican Party under President Trump.
As if to prove Corker’s point, the Trump administration the very next day claimed that it had the divine right to rip children from their parents’ arms at the border.
.. “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 them for the purpose of order,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday. “I am not going to apologize for carrying out our laws.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, asked about Sessions’s remarks, said: “It is very biblical to enforce the law.”
This isn’t religion. It’s perversion. It is not the creed of a democratic government or political party but of an authoritarian cult.
The attorney general’s tortured reading of Romans is exactly the strained interpretation that others have used before to justify slavery, segregation, apartheid and Nazism.
.. Romans 13 does indeed say to “submit to the authorities,” because they “are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” But this is in the context of what comes before it (“share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality”) and after (“owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law”) – and, indeed, admonitions to care for the poor and the oppressed that come from Isaiah, Leviticus, Matthew and many more.
.. They swallowed their heretofore pro-life, pro-family and pro-faith views to embrace Trump’s travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries (“Such blatant religious discrimination is repugnant,” said the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops)
.. House Republicans drafted legislation allowing children to be detained with their parents. But Trump on Friday signaled that he would veto the bill, and, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said this week, the “last thing I want to do is bring a bill out of here that I know the president won’t support.”
This is the way of the cult.