From Warriors to Servants: Romans 13 and a Theology of Policing

Abstract In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to white clergy members who had urged him to cease demonstrating against segregation laws, follow the standards of law and order, and pursue change through official governmental channels. These remonstrations mirror arguments invoked to delegitimize dissent and provide support for legal but immoral governmental policies such as American slavery, Nazi atrocities, and apartheid. At the heart of religious justifications for such arguments is Romans 13:1–7, which endorses human government as God ordained but can be interpreted to require unqualified obedience to law. It is also the go to passage used by Christians to describe the role and authority of police officers in their law enforcement capacity. The way Romans 13 has often been interpreted and applied, however, is exegetically and theologically problematic. Most importantly, the passage is not describing the role of individual police officers as is often argued, but rather the operation of human government as an institution. This flawed starting point has led to a cascade of other interpretive errors, which include describing police officers as agents of God’s wrath and delegitimizing dissent against unjust laws. It also promotes some of the most pernicious features of American law enforcement, including the alienating idea of police as the thin blue line , the we-they mentality that demeans those being policed, the use of warrior to describe the policing role, the militarization of law enforcement, and the systemic racism that plagues U.S. policing. In this article, the author offers a more exegetically and theologically accurate reading of Romans 13, with very different implications for role of law enforcement, and gestures toward a much-needed Christian theology of policing.