The Romans 13 Problem in a Parish Study Guide
A seven-member adult-education committee at a 180-member suburban congregation must produce a four-week study guide titled 'Christians and the State.' The committee is split. Two members want Romans 13:1–7 taught as a straightforward obligation to obey governing authorities. Two others argue that Revelation 13's beast imagery requires reading Romans 13 prophetically, against the state when it overreaches. The remaining three want to avoid the topic. The minister has asked you, as a religious studies consultant, to write a short methodological note the committee can adopt at its next meeting in ten days. Constraints: four sessions, 350 words of participant notes per session, and a congregation that includes a police officer, a retired senior civil servant, and a family that arrived as refugees eighteen months ago. Last year a similar guide on wealth generated a public disagreement and eleven people stopped attending. The chair insists, 'We don't want politics - just good Bible study.'
1. The chair wants a method that avoids conflict. Draft the core of the methodological note: what hermeneutical options should the committee see, and what criterion should govern the choice?
Read the worked answer
Frame the choice as a choice. The committee cannot avoid hermeneutics; it can only make it explicit. Present three options and what each does to the congregation's lived questions.
- Plain-sense obedience: Romans 13 is a direct mandate. This yields a civics lesson that the police officer will find flattering and the refugee family may find frightening, since the text's own context is a minority community under imperial power.
- Historical-critical contextual reading: Paul addresses Christians in Rome, not modern democratic citizens. This is accurate but, used alone, can dissolve present-day application into 'that was then.'
- Canonical-prophetic reading: Romans 13 is read alongside Revelation 13, Jeremiah 29 and 1 Peter 2. The state is both instituted by God and judged by God; obedience is normative but not absolute.
Criterion. Ask: does the reading allow the text to judge the reader as well as the reader to judge the text? Option 3 best satisfies this because it keeps the tension rather than resolving it prematurely. It also gives the committee a defensible position: civil disobedience is warranted when the state claims what belongs to God.
Judgement. Adopt option 3 and state the criteria in the participant notes. Point out that 'avoiding politics' is itself a decision to preserve the status quo, so it is not neutral. The note should be one page, with the three options in a table and a single recommended criterion.
2. The chair wants to drop the Revelation material because it is 'too political.' Advise the committee, weighing the chair's pastoral concern against the educational aim.
Read the worked answer
Separate two meanings of 'political.' Partisan politics names parties, leaders and policies. Prophetic politics names the criteria by which any state is judged. Revelation is resistance literature written under imperial cult pressure; omitting it does not make the guide apolitical, it makes it one-sided. It also creates a canon within a canon, in which the texts that comfort the comfortable are retained and the texts that unsettle them are removed.
Take the chair's concern seriously. The concern is not foolish: last year eleven people left. A guide that handles Revelation badly could repeat that. So the safeguard is not omission but framing: no contemporary government or party is named; the Roman imperial cult is the historical analogue; the sessions teach criteria (when is obedience due? who defines the common good?) rather than conclusions.
Weigh authority. The chair has procedural authority; the committee has responsibility for content. The consultant's role is advisory. Put the recommendation in writing: retain Revelation, pair it with a session on how to disagree well, and pre-agree that members may state conscientious disagreement without being told they are disloyal.
Judgement. Keep Revelation. If the chair still objects, ask them to state the criterion by which a scriptural text is excluded from a Bible study. Making that criterion public is more honest than a quiet omission, and it lets the committee decide with its eyes open.
3. How should the committee manage the pastoral risk of another walkout without trading away the substance of the study?
Read the worked answer
Diagnose last year's failure. Eleven departures out of 180 is about six per cent. That is significant but not fatal. The likely failure was procedural, not doctrinal: members probably felt ambushed, or that the guide had a conclusion before it had a conversation. A study guide that says nothing controversial would avoid the walkout and fail the educational aim.
Propose structure, not silence. Four measures fit the four-week constraint:
- a written covenant for the four weeks: confidentiality, no persuasion, and a rule that each position must be stated in its strongest form before it is criticised;
- small groups of six to eight rather than a single large forum, so that the police officer, the civil servant and the refugee family are not performing for an audience;
- a closing session that names what is held in common (for example, the lordship of Christ) before naming what is disputed;
- an anonymous feedback sheet, reviewed by the committee, so the next guide can learn.
Weigh the trade-off. Structured disagreement may still cause some people to leave; unstructured avoidance will cause the congregation to conclude that the Bible is irrelevant to public life. The first risk is bearable and can be pastored; the second is corrosive.
Judgement. Proceed with the canonical reading and the covenant. The consultant should recommend, in writing, that the committee not choose peace over truth or truth over pastoral care, and should note that the final decision belongs to the committee and the minister.