Weaponizing the Bible

Many thanks to Katherine for drawing our attention to the (im)morality of the Trump Administration's policy of separating immigrant parents claiming asylum status from their children, sometimes for months at a time, with no visible process for ensuring they would ever be reunited.  United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions piqued some interest, and also raised some eyebrows, when he recently defended that policy by citing a biblical passage.

As reported by Religion News Service (RNS) reporters Emily McFarlan Miller and Yonat Shimron in a 'Splainer article, Sessions turned to St. Paul:

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

McFarlan Miller and Shimron note that this citation was later echoed by White House Press Secretary (and minister's daughter) Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The passage in question is St. Paul's Letter to the Romans 13:1-2,  Here it is in the New American Bible (NAB) translation which is proclaimed in Catholic churches:

Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God.  Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves.

The key term there is "higher authorities".  In the NAB  version, who those "higher authorities" are, is not clear at first glance. But the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), widely used by the United Methodist Church of which Sessions is a member, translates the first phrase as, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities."  The Common English Bible (CEB) translation, also widely used by Methodists, puts it even more simply: "Every person should place themselves under the authority of the government."

So Sessions' and Sanders' exegesis is pretty straightforward:

• We're the government
• The government was established by God
• The Bible says you should place yourself under the authority of the government
• Therefore, you must accept whatever we say and do

Now, this is a somewhat surprising claim: one would think that we Americans, whose charter statement, the Declaration of Independence, takes as self-evident the right of a people to dissolve their allegiance to an unjust government and replace it with another, would not be likely to accept such a claim as Sessions' without some scrutiny and consideration.  And in fact, Sessions himself was not known for uncritical acceptance of the federal government's policies when he was a member of the Senate, at least during the Clinton and Obama years.

As for the Catholic church, its views on the matter of governing authority, as stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, are a bit more complicated than Sessions' gloss.  After noting that human society must be governed (1898), and - citing that same passage from Romans - that the authority to govern human society comes from God (1899), the Catechism includes this important qualifier in 1903:

Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, "authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse." (John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 51)

The Rev. James Martin, SJ, in an America article with the headline "Blindly following the law is not 'biblical'", continues in this social-teaching vein:

It is not biblical to treat migrants and refugees like animals. It is not biblical to take children away from their parents. It is not biblical to ignore the needs of the stranger. It is not biblical to enforce unjust laws. The Bible should not be used to justify sin.  It should also be clear where Jesus stands on these questions. Jesus stands where he always stands and where we should stand: with the poor and marginalized.

McFarlan Miller and Shimron of RNS note that this is not the first time this passage has been invoked to defend government policy:

Romans 13 played a critical role in the American Revolution, writes George Mason University historian Lincoln Mullen. For obvious reasons, loyalists who favored obedience to King George III of England liked to quote Romans 13; revolutionaries also used it to argue that Paul never meant to justify despotic rulers.  Prior to the Civil War, after Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, the passage was cited again. The act, which allowed slaves who had escaped to freedom in the North to be forcibly returned to their owners in the South, was employed this time to rein in anyone who would challenge the lawfulness of slavery.  The passage was used once again in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously made a point about it in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” as he explained that Christians should subject themselves to the governing authorities as they do good, not evil: "One may well ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?'  The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust.  I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws.  One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.  Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

Martin gets to the heart of what is troubling about Sessions' and Sanders' biblical invocation to defend a policy that seems indefensible:

Mr. Sessions is engaging in what is known as “proof-texting” that is, cherry-picking Bible passages to prove a point without referring to (or even understanding) the overall context of the quote. Often, especially in political battles, this technique is used to weaponize the Bible.