726: Reimagining Biblical Politics With Michael Rhodes  🔗 **Source:** [726: Reimagining Biblical Politics With Michael Rhodes](https://share.snipd.com/episode/19cdfa1d-0e48-42a6-90e9-a3a65a3ebb39) ## Highlights - **Let Scripture Expand Your Political Options** - Let Scripture shape your political imagination rather than searching only for partisan blueprints. - Michael Rhodes formed his political theology by living in communities of concentrated poverty and asking what discipleship requires there. Transcript: Michael Rhodes Yeah, that's a great question, Caitlin. And your listeners should know that you had a significant hand in this book because we have talked about it regularly during the writing and there's little gems that have your fingerprints On them. So thank you so much for your help with writing it and now having me on to talk about it. Basically, like I was raised at like a deeply in a deeply devout family in church, like the sort of the best kind of evangelical in my mind and quickly learned to love Jesus and to believe That life worth living was with him. And that the way you figured out how to live that life worth living was from scripture. So I love the Bible. I love Jesus. Our church had a broken history with racial and economic issues in the American South. And our church was aware of that. And so they were trying to confront that. And so I was introduced to people like Ron Sider and John Perkins, who basically just said, you love Jesus? Great. You love his word? Great. Look at all this stuff about the orphan, the widow, the immigrant, and the poor. And that was like a second conversion to me. And so my wife Rebecca and I, our kind of sense of calling has been to help God's people embody God's heart for the poor. And because of the influence of John Perkins and the Christian Community Development Association, for us that meant living in communities of concentrated poverty. And so my academic career, what I write on the Bible is driven by the questions that emerged from living in those contexts, living, being a part of a church plant in those contexts and Going, oh my goodness, my discipleship did not prepare me for this. So I kind of have a trio of books that I've realized is a trio. Each one addresses an area of discipleship that I felt an adequate one in. Practicing the King's economy is about economic life. Just discipleship is about justice and the faithful exercise of power. And then this book, Reimagining Biblical Politics, is when we got started living in community, we thought that what we were doing had nothing to do with politics. We wanted it to be something other than politics. But living in the neighborhood that we lived in alongside neighbors, neighbors experiencing what they were experiencing in the time in American history that we were in, it just forced Us to go, oh, discipleship has to involve politics and we're not prepared for this. So what I do as a Bible scholar is I'm interested in what resources does scripture offer for our discipleship? ([Time 1:00:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cebeceb0-7495-495b-a258-7dd10d0c347f)) - **Living In Poverty Sparked Rhodes's Political Theology** - Michael Rhodes's commitment to political theology grew after living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty with his wife Rebecca. - That lived experience revealed discipleship required political learning they hadn't been taught in church. Transcript: Michael Rhodes Basically, like I was raised at like a deeply in a deeply devout family in church, like the sort of the best kind of evangelical in my mind and quickly learned to love Jesus and to believe That life worth living was with him. And that the way you figured out how to live that life worth living was from scripture. So I love the Bible. I love Jesus. Our church had a broken history with racial and economic issues in the American South. And our church was aware of that. And so they were trying to confront that. And so I was introduced to people like Ron Sider and John Perkins, who basically just said, you love Jesus? Great. You love his word? Great. Look at all this stuff about the orphan, the widow, the immigrant, and the poor. And that was like a second conversion to me. And so my wife Rebecca and I, our kind of sense of calling has been to help God's people embody God's heart for the poor. And because of the influence of John Perkins and the Christian Community Development Association, for us that meant living in communities of concentrated poverty. And so my academic career, what I write on the Bible is driven by the questions that emerged from living in those contexts, living, being a part of a church plant in those contexts and Going, oh my goodness, my discipleship did not prepare me for this. So I kind of have a trio of books that I've realized is a trio. Each one addresses an area of discipleship that I felt an adequate one in. Practicing the King's economy is about economic life. Just discipleship is about justice and the faithful exercise of power. And then this book, Reimagining Biblical Politics, is when we got started living in community, we thought that what we were doing had nothing to do with politics. We wanted it to be something other than politics. But living in the neighborhood that we lived in alongside neighbors, neighbors experiencing what they were experiencing in the time in American history that we were in, it just forced Us to go, oh, discipleship has to involve politics and we're not prepared for this. ([Time 1:00:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/58c5b59f-5b14-4e37-9680-91ff574f43ef)) - **Bring Church Practices Into Public Advocacy** - Do not separate church responsibilities from civic advocacy; scripture models both communal care and pleading with pagan states. - Rhodes cites Proverbs and Daniel as examples where God's people advocate to rulers for justice for the poor. Transcript: Michael Rhodes I think because of that, I kind of want to say everything the Bible says affects us in every area of our lives. There's kind of two big bucket areas that I see where people want to make a distinction. One of those is like when we talk about sort of poverty economic issues, sometimes people want to say that's the church's job. It's not the state's job. There's just no biblical evidence anywhere for that kind of dichotomy. It's just not a biblical distinction. And in fact, as I point out in the book, in places like Proverbs and Daniel, we have God's people specifically advocating to a pagan state for justice to the poor. So that kind of distinction really doesn't work. On the other hand, I don't think God's people have any business advocating to the state an ethos that they're not fully living out, in fact, more fully living out in the outposts of God's Kingdom. So we don't really have anything to offer the common good unless we're becoming the uncommonly good people of Jesus. ([Time 1:09:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ca651e18-8b5b-4c62-8365-a2b6155ef61b)) - **Expand Your Political Toolkit From Scripture** - Expand your political toolkit rather than accepting only two polarized options. - Rhodes emphasizes scripture offers diverse strategies from prophetic confrontation to polite resistance and covert subversion. Transcript: Michael Rhodes But then so often the way we read the Bible, it like closes down. We read it as it's closing down our options. I have to be doing X, like either just like quietly submitting or like out in the street. These are my options. Whereas actually, I think scripture expands our political options. Everything from that kind of public prophetic confrontation to that kind of like polite, you know, polite resistance, as some people read, 1 Peter, to the kind of subversion of the Midwives. So I want to say scripture expands our political options and then entrusts to us the task of discerning together what our options are in our present circumstances. ([Time 1:13:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/24897c1a-ad5b-40b0-b389-7ff7b4c45a00)) - **Esther Shows Political Ambiguity As A Gift** - Esther is intentionally ambiguous to force readers to wrestle with political uncertainty and moral complexity. - Michael Rhodes argues Esther models multiple strategies: protest, subversion, direct state participation, and costly ambiguous choices without clear divine answers. Transcript: Michael Rhodes Yeah. So, I mean, it's interesting because if you read books on the Bible and politics, which sometimes are quite thin and focus on the New Testament, and then they kind of go, oh, we want to Be able to say that Christians should be involved. So we quickly go. And they did that in the Old Testament. Daniel, Joseph, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, move on. I'm deeply fascinated by all those characters and talk about all of them in the book. But I think they're more interesting and complicated. And when I was doing the research for my last book, Just Discipleship, I got really into Joseph and Daniel. I was talking about them all the time. I was at an event. I gave a talk. A really good, sharp scholar stood up in the back and said, I really like that. Now do Esther. And I was like, I don't know. I don't get it. So when I was going to work on this book, one of the things I was like, I have no idea what to do with is the book of Esther. So some things to maybe notice. I was talking to Ellen Davis, another scholar at Duke about this. And she said when she talks to Duke students, the first thing she says is read the book from beginning to end. And that often students will come back and say, I don't think I've ever read this book. Like I thought I knew it was. So Esther is so weird. It's not just that there's no mention of God. It's that there's no mention of anything remotely religious. Even when it says they fast, I think it goes out of its way to not say they prayed, which is exactly what you'd expect. The book is, people don't even know what it is. Is it hilarious? It feels like a comedy. People have often read it that way. But it's also like a horror show. It's so dark. It's so dark. If you read The Gathering of the Women, one scholar has pointed out recently, this is like trafficking. This is like trafficking. And sometimes people wake up to that, oh, this is terrible for these women. But don't miss the violence at the end. Not only do the Jews defend themselves, but then Esther goes back to this ridiculous emperor and asks for an extra day of slaughter. 75,000 people. People are pretending to be Jewish at the end the way Esther had to pretend not to be. And at the end, Mordecai, almost nobody remembers chapter 10. Almost the last thing that the emperor is doing is putting labor. It's kind of an unusual word. It's the same word you get from the forced labor in Egypt in Exodus. And standing next to him is Mordecai. So it's a bizarre book. We don't even know if it's funny or horrifying. And, you know, Bible scholars, we can be obnoxious and we can try to make everything complicated. And, you know, so some people are going to go, they're already tuned out. But if you're still listening, you should know people have been arguing about Esther since the ink dried on the scroll. So here's what's interesting about Esther and what I argue in the book. And I actually think these two claims aren't that controversial. One, Esther is the most political book in the Bible. It is the book that is most concerned about politics in many ways. And it shows us all different kinds of strategies, right? So you get kind of public protest, right? Even with Vashti, she's sort of like the conscientious objector. But also Mordecai is like lamenting in the streets at one stage. You get sort of subversive stuff. And then you get kind of direct participation with Esther and Mordecai, both working in the state. So it's a deeply political book and it's the most ambiguous book in the Bible. So here's my argument in the book. I think the book is intentionally ambiguous because it's the most political book. So you've got a book people have been arguing about for 2,500 years or something like that. You're really faced with an option. Either the author didn't know what they were doing and screwed up and was so unclear that nobody can decide what's up or the ambiguity is intentional. That's part of the point. I don't know if you know this, Caitlin, but the Bible is the bestselling book in history. I tend to think the authors knew what they were doing. So I think the author of Esther knew what they're doing. I think it's intentionally ambiguous. And I think that is a gift to us in our political lives. It's a book that forces us to go, what would I have done? Should they have done that? What does it mean? And what are the results of that? What will the results be in the short term? What will the results be in the long term? And you kind of have to go, oh my goodness, maybe my life is that ambiguous. And it's a book that raises this ambiguity to the surface and then says, and sometimes often actually you still have to choose. You still have to decide. You have to act and maybe there will be no answer from God. Like I love Exodus, but most of the time our lives feel more like Esther than Exodus. God's coming down and dropping any new word from any mountains to me of late for the most part. And I don't always know what he thought. So I think Esther, it's the last chapter in the book, but I think it's a great one. It was the most transformative one for me because you go, oh my goodness, what if the Bible is trying to tell us you have to act, you have to engage, you have to get involved, and you're not Going to know fully what I think about it. And you're not going to be able to be self-righteous about that. And you're going to have to stay open to knowing that, you know, there were other options. Yeah. So I get really excited about Esther, but that's my kind of fly overview. And if you think that's crazy Bible scholar talk, please buy the book and read that chapter. Because I really do think this is what the Bible is doing. ([Time 1:15:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e424d407-be3e-4f5d-af85-e7ae6055d6ec)) - **Act Humbly Amid Political Uncertainty** - Political ambiguity requires humility: act without full divine assurance and stay open to correction. - Rhodes contrasts Exodus-style divine clarity with Esther's ordinary-life ambiguity where God may not give clear instructions. Transcript: Michael Rhodes And I actually think these two claims aren't that controversial. One, Esther is the most political book in the Bible. It is the book that is most concerned about politics in many ways. And it shows us all different kinds of strategies, right? So you get kind of public protest, right? Even with Vashti, she's sort of like the conscientious objector. But also Mordecai is like lamenting in the streets at one stage. You get sort of subversive stuff. And then you get kind of direct participation with Esther and Mordecai, both working in the state. So it's a deeply political book and it's the most ambiguous book in the Bible. So here's my argument in the book. I think the book is intentionally ambiguous because it's the most political book. So you've got a book people have been arguing about for 2,500 years or something like that. You're really faced with an option. Either the author didn't know what they were doing and screwed up and was so unclear that nobody can decide what's up or the ambiguity is intentional. That's part of the point. I don't know if you know this, Caitlin, but the Bible is the bestselling book in history. I tend to think the authors knew what they were doing. So I think the author of Esther knew what they're doing. I think it's intentionally ambiguous. And I think that is a gift to us in our political lives. It's a book that forces us to go, what would I have done? Should they have done that? What does it mean? And what are the results of that? What will the results be in the short term? What will the results be in the long term? And you kind of have to go, oh my goodness, maybe my life is that ambiguous. And it's a book that raises this ambiguity to the surface and then says, and sometimes often actually you still have to choose. You still have to decide. You have to act and maybe there will be no answer from God. Like I love Exodus, but most of the time our lives feel more like Esther than Exodus. God's coming down and dropping any new word from any mountains to me of late for the most part. And I don't always know what he thought. So I think Esther, it's the last chapter in the book, but I think it's a great one. It was the most transformative one for me because you go, oh my goodness, what if the Bible is trying to tell us you have to act, you have to engage, you have to get involved, and you're not Going to know fully what I think about it. ([Time 1:18:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cb7eff92-0499-4ec2-ba03-a6712bce28d9)) - **Prophets Critique Insider Idolatry Not Outsider Opponents** - Prophets are grieving insiders not angry outsiders, calling God's people to repentance within their community. - Rhodes highlights Amos confronting the belief that 'God is on our side' which enables injustice when conflated with national identity. Transcript: Michael Rhodes Yeah. And then when I got the job at Cary, I had to teach the prophets. And you go, oh my gosh, should I ever actually read these books? Like, have I ever actually sat with these? Really? Yeah. And I think there's a couple things that we get deeply wrong about the prophets. One is that we think they're angry outsiders and they're really grieving insiders. And so if you are trying to be prophetic and you hate the people you're talking to, you just bear no resemblance to the people who are in scripture. Jeremiah tells the people, don't resist against Babylon, give up, surrender, don't go to Egypt. But where does he go when they go to Egypt? He goes with them. He suffers with them. So the prophets are always in the position of saying, I'm a man of unclean lips amidst a people of unclean lips. So some of the just like sort of angry, you know, being a prophet is an excuse to be a jerk. That's not what these people are doing. So that's one thing. Another thing, and this isn't really something I focus on in the book, but it's just something I say to students every time I teach the prophets. People come to prophets. I named kids after the prophets because I was excited about the justice stuff, the nation stuff. When I teach the prophets, when I go back to them, what I walk away thinking about is God. So we think the prophets are obsessed with politics only because they are obsessed with God. And they're obsessed with God and what God's up to in the world. Politics, the thing that I focus on is Amos in particular is deeply concerned about the way God's people have fallen for the lie that God is on their side, that God is their mascot. Everybody knows about the let justice roll down like water stuff from Amos. That's beautiful. It's there on the surface. But what we may have missed is that that kind of injustice is funded by this conviction that God is on the side of the nation. And nobody, almost nobody had more legitimate reason to think that. I mean, God had made huge promises to these people. But in chapter seven, Amos has this conflict with the priest and the priest says to Amos, you can't talk like that here. Why? Because this is the temple of the kingdom. This is the king's sanctuary. God as on the side of the political community, we've just lost completely. Because when God's people are simply on the side of a political community, and they believe God is simply on the side of their political community, then there's no room for critique, Especially when it comes to politics. ([Time 1:24:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5bf29466-650d-4824-a3dd-71abade9c21c)) - **Psalms Form Political Imagination Through Worship** - The Psalms function as the kingdom's liturgy, forming citizens able to resist political idolatry. - Rhodes says repeated Psalms prayers embed 'The Lord reigns' so believers act as outposts of God's reign in public life. Transcript: Michael Rhodes Well, ages ago, Walter Brueggemann said that the Psalms are well-loved and well-neglected mostly. Yeah. Right? There's a few snippets that are deep in our Christian psyche, but most of the stuff that's in there, we haven't really paid attention to. I mean, on the one hand, the Psalms, if you give them time, are obviously political. The Lord reigns is arguably the theological center of this altar. Political enemies are one of the most frequent characters. And God is constantly being celebrated and praised for how he runs the world as king and lamented and protested to when it does not appear that he is delivering the goods that he's promised To deliver as the king. And so the Psalms are obviously political if we read them with that lens. The reason why I think they're such a gift though, is because the Psalms aren't just about God's reign. They are, as somebody has put it, the liturgy of the kingdom of God. They are a hymn book and a prayer book. They are scripts that are given to us by God to shape the way we relate to him. So God says, if you believe the Bible is the word of God, Psalms are manifestly human words to God. But if you believe the Bible is the word of God, it's like God has said, I want a relationship with you. That means we need to interact. Here's some words to get you started, which if you follow that insight, it will, it will, it is just the most beautiful miracle to realize that God who does not slumber or sleep has nevertheless Given us words to shout, rouse yourself. Why, oh Lord, do you sleep? Because he apparently knows we need to. But the point, I guess the point is, if we're going to live as citizens in God's kingdom, that's not something that you can just like identify in your brain one day and then walk away and Do. Because our hearts are idol factories, as John Calvin said, because we live in a world where other gods and other lords and other powers are constantly trying to co-opt our allegiances. The only way we have a chance of approaching faithful political action is by becoming disciples. Yes. And one of the ways that we become disciples is by coming together again and again and singing and praying and going out and singing and praying. And the Psalms are the liturgy of the kingdom of God. So each ([Time 1:30:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e63fada9-420a-4b00-b7ef-f9fac7d69b1d))