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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/918040

Title: Resistance versus accommodation: what to do with Romans 13?
Author/Creator: Boer, Roland
Institution: The University of Newcastle. Faculty of Education & Arts, Education & Arts (School)
Description: In Romans 13.1 Paul writes, ‘Let every person be subject to the governing authorities … anyone who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed’. Romans 13.1-7 is the starting point for the essay, for it raises an acute problem: for every text of resistance and liberation, we can also find at least one of accommodation and oppression. My exploration of this problem has three stages: I begin with the questions Romans 13 poses for those readings that interpret the New Testament as an anti-imperial and anti-colonial collection of texts. From there I consider the full run of political ambivalences and contradictions in Paul’s letters. I close by asking what we can do with these contradictions. I suggest a more materialist position in which Paul’s contradictions are signals of deeper socio-economic ones.
Relation: Postcolonial Interventions: Essays in Honor of R. S. Sugirtharajah p. 109-122
Relation: The Bible in the Modern World 23
Relation: http://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=137
Date: 2009
Publisher: Sheffield Phoenix Press
Keyword(s): Romans 13; resistance; oppression; New Testament
Resource Type: book chapter
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/918040
Identifier: ISBN:9781906055707

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