On Wednesday I wrote about how the religious left has responded to the Trump administration’s attempt to provoke martial law by sending the National Guard, ICE, and BCP across the country and especially concentrated in red states.

But the religious right has responded to the fascist overreach too, mainly with Christian Nationalists fervently supporting it and blaming undocumented immigrants as evildoers and criminals. If you frequent online spaces where CNs show up, you may have seen a bunch of references to “Romans 13” as biblical justification for what the administration is doing.

And on Wednesday one of the leaders of conservative Christianity, Russell Moore, wrote a column for Christianity Today where he counseled his fellow conservative Christians about incorrectly using that New Testament book to justify what the administration is doing.

Here’s Moore’s summary of what he’s concerned about:

An ICE agent shot protester Renee Good through the head this week and killed her. Videos record one of the agents cursing her as she died. I knew immediately that many Christians would be morally shaken by this, and rightfully so. And I knew many of them would soothe their troubled consciences with a predictable passage of Scripture, and it isn’t “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Instead, whenever an agent of the state kills a person in morally questionable circumstances, many Christians go right to Romans 13, quoting it before the blood is even cleaned up from the ground.

What people reference when they say “Romans 13” is the argument the apostle Paul makes in that chapter: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed” (vv. 1–2, ESV throughout). What some Christians draw from this, then, is that whatever the state does in using lethal force (or bearing “the sword” as Paul put it in verse 4) is morally legitimate and those who question it are wrong.

He then goes on to put the use of this passage in the same context that the religious left leaders I wrote about on Wednesday did and this is also part of what set people off:

Some Christians quoted Romans 13 to oppose the American Revolution. Some cited it to oppose efforts at civil disobedience, such as the Montgomery bus boycott or the nonviolent resistance to police forces in Birmingham or Selma. And certainly people pull out this passage as a kind of moral trump card to silence questioning when they see the protester as not on their side or the person in power as on their side. That Romans 13 is most often invoked not when the state is acting justly but when Christians feel the urge to quiet their consciences ought to trouble us—not because this habit puts too much weight on biblical authority but because it attacks it.

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The powers that be, Paul argues, have a real and legitimate authority, and obeying that authority is not a break from obeying God but an extension of it. That authority exists for something: restraining wrongdoing, protecting the vulnerable.

That neither Paul nor Peter was giving moral carte blanche to the state is obvious not just in other Scriptures but also in their very lives. After all, both were later killed by the sword of Caesar (figuratively in Peter’s case, literally in Paul’s). Was the decree to behead Paul or to crucify Peter therefore morally right? No. Were the Christians who refused to say “Caesar is Lord” and were thus hounded, marginalized, or beheaded sinful in their refusal? Jesus said that, in that case, those who obeyed earthly powers were the ones bringing judgment on themselves (Rev. 14:11–12).

Moreover, the use of Romans 13 as a refusal to question the morality of a use of force is, ironically enough, a violation of the passage. We might well ask, what would Paul have written if Romans 13 were addressed to the authorities rather than to those under their rule?

It’s hard to understate how shocking this was within the religious right. Moore is a pillar of the Southern Baptist Convention and served in some high profile, high impact roles which had meaningful policy outcomes for evangelical Christians. And then he became editor-in-chief at Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical Christian publication which was started by Billy Graham, later becoming an editor-at-large and a columnist, his current position.

Now while Christianity Today has carried a conservative theological slant, it did support Nixon’s resignation and Trump’s first impeachment. But it didn’t publish editorial support for Trump’s second impeachment and that led CNs to believe that Christianity Today, and by association Moore, aligned with them.

That was a false hope and it should have been evident from the start. Moore has always spoken against all of the trappings of Christian Nationalism and has consistently articulated the need for Christians to take care of the poor and the vulnerable, including advocating that conservative Christians support refugee resettlement programs.

Moore also referenced Romans 13 when he called for conservative Christians to follow the basic, commonsense public health Covid precautions in order to protect everyone, but especially the vulnerable. This tracks completely with what he published on Wednesday.

But the crux of what set people off was this:

Romans 13 is about refusing to become what oppresses you, not about baptizing whatever the oppressor does.

This of course is a direct challenge to the CN’s love of being oppressors. And so now we are seeing the earthquake and its fallout. I would compare this as similar to what happened with Rob Bell published Love Wins and when Pope Leo began contradicting right wing Catholics. The secular comparison is Marjorie Taylor Greene breaking with the president and the larger MAGA movement.

I’ll leave you with some music from someone who escaped her right wing Christian upbringing.