TEXT: Romans 13:1-7
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 judgement. 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 to them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honour to whom honour is due.
The New Revised Standard Version (Anglicized Edition), copyright ©1989, 1995 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
On January 21, 2025, the day after Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president, he travelled to the Washington National Cathedral to attend the interfaith prayer service which is held following each presidential inauguration. It included a homily delivered by the Episcopal bishop of Washington, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you’ve surely heard something about the fallout from this event.
In her sermon, Budde addressed Trump, who was sitting in the first pew, urging him to show mercy and compassion to vulnerable people. She said, “Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”*
Budde specifically cited the LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants, and refugees fleeing from war in their countries.
After the service, the president disparaged Budde as a “so-called Bishop” and “Radical Left hard-line Trump-hater” on his social media website Truth Social. Trump declared the service “very boring” and demanded an apology from Budde, calling her “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”
Trump’s allies also attacked Budde. Evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress condemned the bishop for having “insulted rather than encouraged our great president” while Republican congressman Mike Collins said that Budde (who is a U.S. citizen, born in New Jersey) “should be added to the deportation list.” According to Baptist News Global, Megan Basham and other far-right religious figures used the incident to press their views against the ordination of women as pastors.
However, Budde’s remarks were welcomed by civil rights advocate (and youngest daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.) Bernice King, Pope Francis’s biographer Austen Ivereigh and other public figures, including the Episcopal Church’s senior bishop, Sean Rowe, who said that “a plea for mercy, a recognition of the stranger in our midst, is core to the faith.”
For her part, Budde declined to apologize, and told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that, while she can accept people disagreeing with her perspective, she would ask that “we as Americans and fellow children of God speak to one another with respect.”
By February 2nd, D.C. Police were investigating threatening phone calls made to Budde in the aftermath of the service, and—all too predictably—numerous critical posts on social media called the bishop to task for allegedly ignoring the scriptural injunction in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” (Rom. 13:1)
Alas. It is no secret that, too often, this passage has been used to legitimize atrocities and perpetuate injustice in the name of God. In the past—and in the present—it has been dragged out to validate systems and structures of oppression that dehumanize entire communities by blessing injustice and giving it a new name: “God’s will.”
Call me a heretic, but somehow I don’t believe this is what the apostle had in mind. In verse seven, he writes: “Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.”
For me, that raises the question: is every earthly leader worthy of “honour”?
On March 24, 1980, Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador was assassinated while celebrating Mass in the chapel of a church-run hospital specializing in oncology and care for the terminally ill. Romero had become the voice of the voiceless under a regime characterized by death squads, tortures, rapes, disappearances, and killings. In his sermons, he called upon soldiers, the police, and the National Guard to disobey the State’s orders to kill civilians, arguing that “No one has to obey an immoral law.”
By 1992, 75,000 civilians had been murdered by the State. Was Archbishop Romero out of the bounds of Romans 13:1-7?
I believe this passage has to be understood in light of the whole Bible. Consider, for example, the behaviour of Shiphrah and Puah after Pharaoh had decreed infanticide for male newborns of the Hebrew slaves: “But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live … So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong.” (Exodus 1:17, 20)
Or consider the reaction of the apostles after they had been forbidden to preach the good news about Jesus. They stood up to the high priest himself, saying: “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (Acts 5:29)
But look … I know Donald Trump is not a high priest. Or Pharaoh. Or Caesar. He is the president of the United States, and as such he surely qualifies as the “governing authority” of the American people. He was elected, after all.
Mind you, so was Adolf Hitler, before he decided that there didn’t need to be any more elections. As he told an audience one time, at a rally: “Get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”
Oh. Wait a minute.
I’m wrong. That wasn’t Hitler, was it?
But Donald Trump is nothing like Adolf Hitler, is he? I mean, for one thing, Hitler paid no attention to treaties or international agreements, and he had no respect for the sovereignty of other nations. On March 11–13, 1938, Nazi Germany annexed the neighbouring country of Austria, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain, both of which expressly forbade the unification of Austria and Germany.
Of course, Hitler asserted that the people of Austria would be better off as part of Germany, and he said that this was in fact what most of the people of Austria really wanted. To describe this annexation, he used the friendly-sounding German word Anschluss, which means “connection” or “joining.”
Certainly, Donald Trump would never propose annexing his neighbours.
Oh. Wait a minute.
I forgot. I remember he did say something about making my country, Canada, the “51st state.” Oops. And then there’s his proposal to annex Greenland and take back the Panama Canal, even by using military force, if necessary.
But surely there aren’t any other parallels between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. After all, Trump said he only wanted to be a dictator for one day.
Well, there might be a few, actually. Here’s one. Donald Trump has the support of a huge chunk of the American evangelical community, whose members he has called “My beautiful Christians.” Ah, bless the “American Christians”.
On October 27, 1928, Adolf Hitler, during a speech in the German city of Passau, said: “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity. Our movement is Christian.”
Ah, bless the “German Christians”—the Deutsche Christen. They were a pressure group and a movement within the German Evangelical Church, aligned towards the racist and anti-immigrant ideological principles of Nazism. Their goal was to align German Protestantism with those same principles. And they largely succeeded. In April of 1933, they effectively seized control of the German Evangelical Church Confederation, transforming it into a brand new, unitary, “national” church, which would be called the German Evangelical Church (Deutsche Evangelische Kirche, or DEK).
Hmm. I wonder. Dare I point out that Hitler also routinely condemned Christian leaders who disagreed with his policies? (Think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Think of Martin Niemöller. Google ‘em if you don’t know who they were.)
As Christians, we are not called to blind submission. On this earth, we are always dual-citizens: of our country, yes; but also of the Kingdom of Heaven. We honour God and those around us by submitting to authority and cultivating an environment conducive to human flourishing. However, when there is a clash of kingdoms, we are called to be faithful first and foremost to the King of kings.
As a follower of Jesus living on the north side of the 49th parallel, I pray for my sisters and brothers to the south of it. I pray they will pause for more than just a moment to reconsider the path upon which they are being led, and look more closely at just who it is that leads them.
During his Farewell Address to the Nation in 1989, President Ronald Reagan put forth his vision of the United States of America. In doing so—and building on a phrase from the Puritan pilgrim John Winthrop—Reagan defined his vision of “the shining city upon a hill.”
“In my mind,” Reagan said, “it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
I love that image of America as a “shining city upon a hill.” As I said, President Reagan was echoing the Puritan minister John Winthrop. In 1630, while still aboard a ship bound for Massachusetts Bay, Winthrop delivered his sermon “A Model of Christian Charity.” Referencing Matthew 5:14-16, he said this:
“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”
America, today the eyes of all people are indeed upon you. Today the eyes of your God are upon you. Take care what decisions you make next. Take care of your city upon a hill, lest one day it be said of you:
“Alas, alas, the great city … the mighty city! For in one hour your judgement has come.” (Rev. 18:10)
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