Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.17UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.17UNLIKELY
Fear
0.1UNLIKELY
Joy
0.2UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.53LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.79LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.19UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.95LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.79LIKELY
Extraversion
0.5UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.45UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.75LIKELY

Tone of specific sentences

Tones
Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Emotional Range
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
Direction: The Christian Community and Political Responsibility: Romans 13:1-7
Information
About Us
Site Guide
Contact Us
Subscribe
Publications
Current Issue
Back Issues
Indexes
Search
Spring 2003 · Vol.
32 No. 1 · 32-46Previous Next
Categories: Bible: New Testament, Ethics,
Peace~/Justice~/Nonresistance, Politics~/State and Church, Theology:
Biblical and Systematic
The Christian Community and Political Responsibility: Romans 13:1-7
Jon Isaak
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for
there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that
exist have been instituted by God (Romans 13:1 NRSV).
Paul’s counsel in Romans 13:1-7 has had a significant impact on
Christian communities who are sorting out their political
responsibility (see Dick; Neufeld).
Global and local crises continue
to cause much suffering and keep current the question, What is the
Christian community’s political responsibility?
The dominant western reading of Romans 12 and 13 promotes a
business-as-usual understanding of the relationship between the
government and the Christian community.
Interpretations of Romans 13:1-7 have varied through its history of
informing Christian reflection on political responsibility (Toews,
51-53).
Initially the text was received as an exhortation urging
Christian communities not to resist the state’s efforts to govern,
without any endorsement of the state or its policies.
However, by
the fifth century, it was read quite differently.
Paul’s exhortation
originally aimed at Christians was reversed to make two rather
exalted claims about the state: (1) the state is justified in its
use of force (and even violence) to protect its interests (which are
argued to be derivative of God’s interests), and (2) the church is
responsible to lend full support to the state’s execution of justice
(which is argued to be derivative of God’s justice).
After the church’s rise to political power beginning in the fourth
{33} century, it was Augustine in response to the fall of Rome in
the year 410 that clearly set out a vision for a worldwide society
where the church played a major role.
In his view the church was
part of the anticipated “Heavenly City” that used the means of the
“earthly city” in its “pilgrimage” toward “heavenly peace” (see City
of God, Book XIX, Chapter 17).
Augustine’s vision for church-state
relations continues to inform contemporary western thinking.
The transformation of Romans 13:1-7 has been remarkable.
A text that
initially said very little about the state was eventually read to
say much about the state and about the Christian community’s
political responsibility to align itself with the state.
Many today
would argue that the contemporary western appropriation of Romans
13:1-7 with its strong endorsement of the state still resonates with
the thrust of Paul’s vision for Christian political responsibility.
Is this tenable?
Perhaps the cultural and contextual factors that
led to the transformation of the interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 are
more significant than many allow.
In this essay I will again explore Paul’s much-debated exhortation
in Romans 13:1-7 in order to recover a sense of the early Christian
vision for political responsibility that drove Paul to write these
words in the first place.
I will show that the contemporary western
interpretation cannot be accepted as a valid contextualization, but
must be seen as a significant reversal of the thrust of Paul’s
vision for Christian political responsibility.
My aim is to clarify
Paul’s vision for Christian political responsibility by paying close
attention both to the social world from which the text emerged and
to the western social context within which this text has taken root.
The fruit of this enterprise will be to set out an alternative
reading for contemporary appropriation, one which resonates more
deeply with the vision for Christian political engagement that
characterized Paul and the early Christians.
In our increasingly
post-Christian western world, I suggest that such an alliance with
early Christian communities may be increasingly more comprehensible.
THE DOMINANT WESTERN READING OF ROMANS 12 AND 13
Before beginning a close reading of Romans 13, it is helpful to be
reminded how Romans 12 and 13 are typically interpreted by
Christians in the western world.
In the quote below, Skillen and
Pavlischek, respected Christian political analysts, articulate a
Protestant interpretation of Romans 12 and 13 (see Luther, 163-65;
Calvin, 280-81).
In this view the government is understood to be
instituted by God and mandated to execute God’s judgments (note the
continuity with Augustine’s {34} Christian theology of the state).
While the paragraph is short, it gives a clear sense of what might
be called the dominant western reading of Romans 12 and 13.
To put the issues in sharp relief, I suggest that the paragraph be
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9