Context, Context, Context…

As a teacher of biblical hermeneutics at a seminary, one of my signature refrains to beginning students is “context, context, context.” Biblical interpretation needs to attend to historical and literary contexts of biblical books as well as the contexts of the interpreter.

This refrain is particular apt when coming to a conversation about evangelicalism and politics. I was most drawn to the question posed this month about citizenship. Is it possible for one’s role as citizen and as Christian to come into conflict?

My initial response is that, if we think about citizenship in terms of allegiance, it would be virtually impossible for “one’s role as citizen and as Christian” not to come into conflict. Allegiances are tricky things, as Jesus’ ultimatum about either loving God or Mammon suggests (Matthew 6:24). It is all too easy to forfeit our loyalty to God in pursuit of national identity and personal security.

But this warning about allegiance does not yet answer the question of whether or how Christians should be involved politically. Because competing allegiances draw such a fine line for walking in this world, it doesn’t surprise me that the New Testament authors provide different responses depending on their social and political locations. This suggests that we too should look long and hard at our own social locations as we think about political engagement.

Two interesting case studies are provided in 1 Peter and Philippians. I start with 1 Peter because its themes were the prevalent explanation for social location in my years growing up in evangelicalism. The context of the letter is the church, spread among a number of beleaguered communities in Asia Minor in the latter part of the first century, being slandered for their allegiance to Christ (1:6; 2:12; 3:13-17; 4:4, 14-16). Crucial for understanding this persecution is that their godly behavior is somehow being perceived as anti-social, that is, behavior that is working against fundamental cultural values that uphold the household and state. We get a sense of what this involves by the centrality of the Petrine household code in the letter (2:13-3:7) and the explicit references to what non-believers are questioning in 4:3-4. Participating in temple activities is an important way of supporting the social (religious, cultural, political) life of the polis. Yet this set of activities is no longer an option for believers (3:15; 4:3). There are also points of tension reflected in the household code—a standard literary form in the Greco-Roman world of the first century, which the author adapts to conform to Christian expectations and allegiance. For example, one such adaptation occurs in the exhortation to wives to submit to their unbelieving husbands so that, without a word spoken, they might be won to the faith. The cultural expectation was for wives to submit, even to the point of taking on the gods of their husbands and leaving behind their own. As Plutarch commends,

 “[a] wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husbands’ friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in” (“Advice to Bride and Groom,” 19, Moralia 140D).

The author of 1 Peter doesn’t allow for such capitulation to culture; instead, he calls Christian wives to live missionally in a way that doesn’t ‘rock the boat’ excessively—through silent witness. By following cultural mores as much as possible, though not in a way that compromises allegiance to Christ, these wives will be more likely to win their husbands (Brown). A similar tension is present in the call to submit to governing authorities, the chief of which is the emperor, while considering their primary allegiance to God who offers a unique kind of freedom (2:13-17). By obeying the governing authorities and household expectations, believers may lessen the slander they are experiencing.

Living in this tension well involves what Miroslav Volf calls a “soft difference” in relation to society. In the first-century context in Asia Minor, soft difference looks like wives of unbelieving husbands living missionally but submissively; it looks like believers living submissively to governing authorities while also living as free slaves of God. Living in this tension—between full allegiance to Jesus as Lord (3:15) and cultural expectations upon which the mission of the church hinges—provides a context for the theological offering of Christian identity as exiles and sojourners (1:1, 17; 2:11-12).

Yet we ought to be cautious about simply putting on this sojourning identity without pausing to reflect upon our own location in our cultural context. It is commonplace to hear Christians in the U.S. express their outsider status as a persecuted minority. While Christians in first century Asia Minor were a minority with little or no political recourse, we fool ourselves if we think that this is our own social situation. Whether we live in a post-Christian or nominally Christian society, Christian norms still form the basic fabric of our society. For example, patterns of work and school continue to be shaped around Christian holy days (Sunday, Christmas). And the majority of our political figures identify themselves as Christians (e.g., rather than identifying as Jewish, Muslim, or atheist). Our form of democratic government allows for individual citizens to vote, speak out, and run for public office—unlike our first-century Christian predecessors.

We would do well to reflect upon the “soft difference” that 1 Peter invites Christian readers to pursue. But we need to conceive of this difference from a place of much greater political advantage and opportunity.

We might take our cue from another New Testament letter, one written to the church located in the Roman colony of Philippi. To Christians who enjoy Roman citizenship, Paul writes of pressing into allegiance to their kingdom citizenship (politeuma; Philippians 3:20). In fact, Paul’s first exhortation in the letter is a call to these Christians to living as citizens of the gospel (1:27; politeuō). As Monya Stubbs indicates, “The term [politeuō] means more than simply to live out one’s life. It also carries the connotation… ‘to take an active part in the affairs of the state’”(369). This citizenry language is unique to Philippians in all of Paul’s letters and suggests that the Philippians are to pay particular attention to their advantages of Roman citizenship through the lens of their far greater allegiance to Jesus. Although Caesar might be considered “Lord” of the first-century world, Jesus is, in reality, Lord of all (2:5-11). So the Philippian church is to examine their citizenship and its privileges in a way that the audience of 1 Peter is not able to do. The former might live a different kind of difference in relation to the state, because they have a different level of influence and advantage.

Of the two scenarios, the situation of Philippians seems more analogous to contemporary evangelicals. If so, then we should take a close look at our political allegiances, asking ourselves if we’ve capitulated to our advantages and privileges as U.S. citizens instead of reflecting theological (Christological) on our loyalties. Yet, even the Philippians could not have imagined the political freedoms and involvements that U.S. citizens enjoy. In this sense, full analogies are lacking for us as we seek to think about and live out our lives as political beings in contemporary society.

This might be why the church throughout history has so variously interpreted New Testament texts like 1 Peter 2:13-17 and Romans 13:1-7. It’s telling that Origen, writing in a time of persecution more akin to the first-century church, interpreted Romans 13 quite differently than Luther, who used this text to demand silence and obedience from those involved in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525 (Reasoner, Romans in Full Circle, 136). Origen, by contrast “almost assumes that believers will have to disobey the government. The question is simply whether the disobedience is for a cause that would bring reward in God’s eyes rather than some trivially amoral breach of civil law” (Reasoner, 130). Origen, it seems, hears the tension in the NT texts themselves that commends submission to the ruling authorities, particularly for the purpose of the survival of the church and its mission, as well as full allegiance to Jesus as Lord even when this makes submission to the state impossible.

We live with these tensions today, albeit in a different context and with different points of balance. Yet I believe we would do well to follow Paul’s admonish to reflect Christologically on our political privileges. The latter must not compete with our allegiance to Jesus as Lord. And instead of harsh rhetoric and an inflated sense of “us against the world,” we would do well to consider what a “soft difference” (à la 1 Peter) in relation to society might look like for us today.

Works Cited: 

Mark Reasoner, Romans in Full Circle (Westminster/John Knox, 2005). 

Monya A. Stubbs, “Philippians,” in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary (Fortress, 2007).