What is the proper relationship between the Christian and the state? Thinkers have not provided a shortage of answers to that question throughout the church’s history. Christians have (and do in different parts of the world) existed as outlaw sects uneasy with the state, as members of the official religion of the state, and everything in between. At this present moment of increasing partisan polarization within the socio-cultural context of the United States,[1] I believe that evangelicals must wrestle with this question once more. They are wrestling with it already.
I see two rather vocal sides of the debate. On the one hand, some evangelicals—some call them “wokevangelicals”—are skeptical of any form of patriotism and seek to conform Christian doctrine to the prevailing culture and leftist/progressive politics. On the other hand, some evangelicals veer too far in the opposite direction, marrying church and state beyond what responsible biblical political ethics teaches. I think both sides are off the mark. In this and subsequent posts, I propose a more balanced and biblical perspective on citizenship—a perspective that affirms the propriety of both while maintaining the need to offer prophetic voice when it is appropriate.
Membership in God’s Kingdom
First, Christians must pledge their primary, eternal, and ultimate allegiance, before any other identity, to Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, which is presently visible in His church. Strikingly, the apostle Peter calls the church of Christ “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).[2] Peter is directly citing God’s promise to make the Israelites into a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6); but, through Peter, God reveals that His promise extends beyond the ethnic community of Israel to encompass people from all ethnicities who repent and believe the gospel of the Kingdom. The church is a nation—an ethnos in Greek—made up of people from many nations. Regardless of one’s current socio-political membership, a disciple of Jesus belongs now to one new nation that incorporates, transforms, and glorifies all earthly connections.
Peter’s teaching is consistent with the remainder of the New Testament. Take, for instance, Philippians 3:20 where the apostle Paul explains that the Christian’s “citizenship is in heaven.” Or take Jesus’ words to the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world” (John 18:36). Christians must not, therefore, conflate their primary citizenship in the Kingdom of God with their earthly citizenships, or else make idols of their earthly citizenships. Still, as I will examine below, our socio-political and cultural identities are not unimportant to life in the Kingdom of God.
On the day of judgment, our identity in Christ will matter before all other allegiances. The famous British journalist Malcom Muggeridge observed that earthly nations are not self-existent and all-powerful. Rather they will rise and fall in this world before giving account to Christ for their stewardship of His authority:
We look back on history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon. I look back on my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of that still favorite song, that ‘God who made us mighty will make us mightier yet.’ I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin with his own accession to power. I’ve heard a murderous Gregorian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Asoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelias. I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry more powerful than all the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they wished to do so, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests. All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind.[3]
However, the Kingdom of God over which Christ reigns supreme will never fall. Despite the message of news media that the nations and politics of this world are “really . . . what life is about,” life in the kingdoms of this world is not separate from our life in Christ’s Kingdom. “As Christians,” continues Muggeridge, “we know that here we have no continuing city, that crowns roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom must sometime flounder, whereas we acknowledge a King men did not crown and cannot dethrone, as we are citizens of a city of God they did not build and cannot destroy.”[4] To this Kingdom we must pledge our primary allegiance.
Obedience to God’s Law over National Law
Second, Christians may properly pledge secondary, temporal, and conditional allegiance to their political states. Some Christian groups such as the Anabaptists totally renounce citizenship in earthly states, and others abstain from formally pledging their allegiance to their nation of residence. However, Scripture explains that Paul was “born a citizen” of the Roman Empire and never renounced that citizenship even after becoming a disciple of Jesus (Acts 22:22–29). Obviously, a certain degree of allegiance must be pledged if one is to be a citizen of an empire or nation.
Moreover, Peter, who would himself be executed by the decree of Nero around 64 A.D., exhorted Christians to act with some level of allegiance to the Roman Empire when he wrote: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Peter 2:13–14). Therefore, American Christians fittingly pledge allegiance to the United States of America and obey its government (I suggest the same principle for Canadians in Canada, Mexicans in Mexico, etc.).
However, one may notice that, whereas I described allegiance to Christ and His Kingdom as primary, eternal, and ultimate, I have described allegiance to the state as secondary, temporal, and conditional. Indeed, two important caveats are worth noting for our allegiance to the state.
To begin, where no conflict exists between Christ’s Kingdom and the government of the United States, we must submit to the authority and laws of the latter. Both Peter and Paul command their readers to “be subject” to a government much more hostile towards Christians than the government of our land (1 Peter 2:13; Romans 13:1), and Jesus Himself said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Mark 12:17).
Nevertheless, we must say, secondly, that, where conflict exists between Christ’s Kingdom and the earthly kingdoms, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Peter and John gave that very reply to the council of Jewish leaders prosecuting them for proclaiming the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name after they had placed a ban on such speech (Acts 4:18). As Robert Smith Jr. so eloquently put it,
When it comes to Capitol Hill and a hill far away and there is a collision, I’m going with the hill far away. When it comes to the flag or the cross and there’s a collision, I’m going with the cross. When it comes to government or God, and there’s a collision, I’m going with God because the government shall be upon His shoulders and the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of our God and He shall reign forever. When it comes to the White House or the right house, I’m going with the right house in my Father’s house . . . .[5]
Our allegiance to the state ends where Caesar calls for us to render to himself that which is God’s.
Conclusion
In this initial post, I have endeavored to explain where and how, according to the Bible, a Christian’s allegiance ought to lie. In a coming post, I will unpack what the Christian’s allegiance and responsibility to the state looks like more concretely through a biblical lens.
[1]See, “As Partisan Hostility Grows, Signs of Frustration with the Two-Party System,” Pew Research Center, 9 August 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-hostility-grows-signs-of-frustration-with-the-two-party-system/.
[2]All references to Scripture will be from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted. Italics added for emphasis.
[3]Malcom Muggeridge, “But not of Christ,” in Seeing through the Eye, ed. Cecil Kuhne (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 41–42. Google Books.
[4]Ibid.
[5]Robert B. Smith Jr, “I Don’t Want no Trouble at the River” (sermon, Racial Reconciliation and the National Covenant Conference, Beeson Divinity School, 13 February 2019).
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