On Citizenship
TL;DR
Christian citizenship is not partisan politics — it is the obligation of a governed man to participate in the governance of his community. Romans 13:1-7 establishes civic duty as a spiritual responsibility. Matthew 22:21 orders the obligations of God and community, not separates them. Men of the Republic's chapter on Citizenship addresses the specific ways Christian men have abdicated their civic responsibilities — from local institutions to school boards to community governance — and what it looks like to reengage.
Romans 13:1-7 is the New Testament's most extended treatment of civic responsibility, and it does not frame civic engagement as optional. "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." Paul goes further: he instructs the payment of taxes, the rendering of respect, and the fulfillment of civic obligations — not as a concession to earthly power but as an act of faith in the God who ordered human governance. Civic duty in Paul's framing is a form of obedience to God.
Matthew 22:21 is often misread as a clean separation of the spiritual from the civic: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." But the more careful reading is an ordering of obligations, not a separation. The Christian citizen owes Caesar specific things — taxes, participation in the ordered life of the community — and owes God everything else. The man who uses the spiritual to excuse the civic has not understood either obligation. And in a republic — where the citizen is, in fact, the governor — the civic obligation is weightier than it was under the Caesar Jesus was addressing.
Jeremiah 29:7 gives the older picture: "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Written to exiles — people with no political power and no guarantee of permanence — the instruction is still to seek the welfare of the city. The Christian man does not have the option of civic disengagement, regardless of how he feels about his community's current direction.
Most Christian men have failed at citizenship not through malice but through a theology of withdrawal that has been building for decades. They have decided — explicitly or by habit — that civic engagement is either too political, too dirty, or too unlikely to change anything to be worth their investment. They vote occasionally and disengage otherwise. They have handed over the school boards, the city councils, the local institutions, and the community organizations to people who do not share their values, and then they are surprised when those institutions reflect values they cannot endorse.
The irony is that the withdrawal is framed as a virtue — as a refusal to be contaminated by the political — when it is actually an abdication of responsibility. A republic requires participation to function as designed. When the men who understand ordered liberty, household governance, and civic virtue remove themselves from public life, the republic does not remain neutral. It moves in the direction of whoever stays. The chapter on Citizenship in Men of the Republic is an accounting of what that abdication has cost — and a direct call to reengage.
The Citizenship chapter places civic engagement within the broader argument of the book: a man who has built the disciplines of self-governance and household governance now has the capacity to engage public life well. The chapter argues that the sequence matters. The man who goes directly to civic engagement without the prior disciplines of silence, truth, discipline, courage, and sacrifice brings undisciplined energy into public life — which produces heat without governance. Citizenship is the outward expression of the interior work that precedes it.
The chapter covers the specific arenas of civic life where Christian men have abdicated — local government, school boards, civic associations, community institutions — and what re-engagement looks like at each level. It is not a political program. It is a framework for understanding civic responsibility as an extension of the Christian man's obligation to govern what he has been given charge of. The reflection questions ask the reader to account for his current level of civic participation and to name the specific excuse he has used to justify his absence from the governance of his community.
What does the Bible say about civic duty?
Romans 13:1-7 is the central New Testament text on civic responsibility: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." Paul instructs payment of taxes, respect for authorities, and fulfillment of civic obligations. Matthew 22:21 — "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" — orders dual obligations rather than separating them. The Christian man owes his community specific things, and Scripture does not permit him to use spirituality as an excuse for civic abdication.
Is political engagement a Christian responsibility?
Yes — though not partisan political engagement in the sense of party loyalty or ideological alignment. The Christian man's civic responsibility is rooted in the nature of self-governance: in a republic, the citizen is the governor, and abdication from civic life is abdication from a God-given responsibility. Men of the Republic's chapter on Citizenship argues that Christian men have largely stepped back from civic life — from local governance, from school boards, from community institutions — and that the cost of that abdication is visible in the communities around them.
Best books on Christian citizenship?
Men of the Republic by Carlos Reyes III addresses citizenship as one of ten disciplines of Christian manhood, placing civic engagement within the larger framework of household and community governance. Other recommended titles include "God and Government" by Charles Colson and "Politics According to the Bible" by Wayne Grudem. Men of the Republic is distinctive in treating citizenship as a virtue of manhood rather than a political topic — rooted in the man's obligation to govern well at every level he is given responsibility.
Read the Chapter
Ten disciplines. Ten chapters. Citizenship addresses what Christian men owe their communities — and why so many are currently failing to pay it.