Religion and politics

Source: Crossings

Sunday 18 October 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Isaiah 45:1-6 Psalm 96 (95) 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5 Matthew 22:15-21

(See also Mark 12:13-17 and Luke 20:20-26)

 

Meditatio:

“When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away” (Matthew 22:22)

Commentary:

Passages of Scripture, especially from the Gospels, that deal with poverty, wealth, taxes or politics are often ‘spiritualised’ or ‘individualised’ in order to avoid controversy. By spiritualising, I mean turning a challenging Gospel encounter into a simple moral tale. By individualising, I mean reducing it to a question of my personal behaviour and private relationship with God.

Of course, personal conversion matters. We are each accountable for our lives before God. Yet the Gospel is never confined to the private sphere. It speaks to relationships, communities, institutions and societies. Nevertheless, we are frequently told that Jesus was not interested in politics and that religion and politics should never meet.

I protest. Let me explain.

A Trap for Jesus

The context of this Sunday's Gospel is another attempt to trap Jesus. Some disciples of the Pharisees, accompanied by Herodians, approach him with a seemingly simple question about paying taxes to Caesar. The Herodians supported the Herodian ruling house and its accommodation with Roman power. Their question was carefully designed. If Jesus rejected the tax, he could be accused of sedition. If he supported it, he risked alienating a population already resentful of Roman rule.

Tax collectors themselves were generally regarded as collaborators and public sinners. The question was therefore politically charged.

Jesus refuses the trap. Instead of choosing a side, he asks a deeper question: ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ He shifts the discussion from political slogans to the deeper issue of allegiance.

His audience lived under imperial occupation. Violence and unrest were never far away. Yet Jesus did not come to lead a nationalist revolt. Nor did he come merely to endorse the status quo. He proclaimed the Kingdom of God, first among the people of Israel and ultimately for the whole world. Through him, a new way to the Father was opened to all.

Beyond Political Labels

Jesus was not promoting a party manifesto. Attempts to enlist him as a socialist, nationalist, fascist, colonialist or ideological revolutionary miss the point. Equally misguided are efforts to recruit him for crusades against particular political movements.

Jesus offered neither a theory of government nor a programme of political liberation. What he did offer was a radically different way of living and relating to one another. That vision remains profoundly challenging because it questions many of the assumptions that govern our personal lives, our economics, our politics and even our church communities.

Christians in the twenty-first century cannot avoid political questions because the Gospel itself has social consequences.

At the centre of this Sunday's story is taxation. People in first-century Palestine faced obligations both to the Roman authorities and to the Temple. These included levies on land (tributum soli), taxes on persons (tributum capitis), and the annual Temple tax which supported the Temple and its services. Questions about taxation, authority and justice were everyday realities.

God Is Not Aloof

What we believe about Jesus should affect how we live not only in our homes but also in our communities, workplaces and public life.

The Scriptures repeatedly reveal a God who hears the cry of the poor, the excluded and the oppressed. God is not a distant spectator observing human suffering from afar. The mystery of the Incarnation and Cross reveals a God who enters deeply into the human condition. His power is revealed in weakness. He identifies himself with the suffering and calls us to become his eyes, ears and hands in the world.

That conviction has implications for how we view contemporary society.

We live amid deep social and economic inequalities. We witness attacks on human dignity at various stages of life. We see environmental degradation treated as an acceptable cost of economic growth. We encounter systems of power that leave many people excluded or voiceless.

The Gospel does not permit us to ignore these realities. Nor does it allow us to pursue our own salvation while remaining indifferent to the suffering of others. Likewise, we cannot claim to love God while ignoring the cry of creation itself.

Rendering to Caesar

God has come to set his people free through Christ, beginning the renewal of all creation. That means Christians cannot remain aloof from public life.

Yes, we must render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. The obligations of citizenship are not the same as the obligations of faith. Yet there are times when discipleship requires resistance to Caesar. History is full of believers who paid a high price for refusing to surrender conscience to power. Religion cannot be reduced to a purely private affair.

One practical example is taxation itself. Churches are often vocal on questions of sexuality and personal morality, but how often do we hear serious discussion of tax evasion? Paying lawful taxes is not simply a legal obligation; it is also a moral one because taxes support goods and services that sustain society as a whole.

Certainly taxation should be fair. Public administration should be efficient and accountable. But deceitfully avoiding tax obligations, whether through undeclared cash payments or other means, is not cleverness. It is dishonesty.

Paying tax, voting, serving in public office, and participating in peaceful democratic activity are all ways of contributing to the common good.

The Gospel is good news, but it is also challenging news. It calls us beyond private piety into responsible citizenship. It does not require allegiance to a particular ideology or party. It does require courage: the courage to speak, act and stand for truth, justice, life, human dignity and the integrity of creation, even when doing so is inconvenient or costly.