28 June 2026

The Bible on Government

1 Samuel 8:1-9

From the 1950s through the 1970s, Americans had no doubt which form of government was God’s favorite. The Cold War had divided the world between Democracy (that’s us) and Communism, which was generally referred to as godless Communism. Those two words almost always came as a pair. Kind of like my seminary professor – from the Deep South – who told me that he was in college before he learned you could say the word “Yankee” all by itself. Well, if Communism is godless, then Democracy must be godful, right? QED. But that’s not so clear-cut today. Our world has changed. Godless Communism has either disappeared or moderated. The atheist Soviet Union has been replaced by Russia, a dictatorship that strongly supports and is supported by the Russian Orthodox Church. Nearby Hungary has just been through sixteen years of what its own dictator, Victor Orban, called “Christian Liberalism,” in which alliances with church leaders made up much of his support, at least until he was voted out of office for corruption earlier this year. Meanwhile, the formerly “Christian” west has become much less so. Ten years ago, a conservative Christian writer named Rod Dreher was so disappointed in the growing secularism in America that he wrote a book called The Benedict Option, calling for Christians to shut themselves up in monastic seclusion until our secular culture destroyed itself. A few years later, though, he changed his mind and moved to Victor Orban’s Hungary, where true Christianity was upheld. So, Dreher preferred an autocracy that he thought was Christian to a democracy that he thought wasn’t. He’s not the only one. Putin’s Russia has its admirers among many American churches. The old consensus on Democracy is gone. Does the Bible have anything to say about God’s preferred form of government?

Well, probably not. We have to be careful not to make scripture do more than it intends. There are places where the Bible lays out clearly the way things should be, but there are other places that just describe the way things were. We should not take the latter as instructions for us. For instance, through much of Israel’s history in the Bible it was ruled by kings. But that does not necessarily mean that God prefers monarchy. That’s simply the way things were, not only in Israel but everywhere in the ancient world. It was the social norm, and as we’ve said repeatedly through this sermon series, we do not have to take ancient social norms as eternal rules for us today. But, having said that, there was one period in Israel’s history when it stood out as starkly different from the social norms of its day, when it was governed in a way that was frankly weird for its time and place, and that was the period of the judges: right after the Israelites returned to Canaan after the Exodus. It’s always worth noting when the Bible differs from the surrounding culture, so let’s take a look at that. What was government like during the judges?

First of all, it was a very limited, decentralized government. Israel was divided into twelve tribes, and the tribes were largely autonomous. Most decisions were made at the local level by village elders, and if there were more difficult issues to deal with, there were regional magistrates – the judges – who heard cases and passed judgment. At least one of those magistrates noted in the book was female, Deborah. There was no king, no centralized government at all. So you might be wondering, how was it all one nation? Well, they were loosely connected, to be sure, but they had defense treaties stating that when one tribe was threatened, they would all come together against the enemy, and most important of all, they shared a God, as represented by the Tabernacle, the tent shrine that traveled from tribe to tribe and united them in worship. In passing, I might point out here that this sounds a lot like Reagan Republicanism: limited government, local control, states’ rights, unified defense. 

There was one more unifying element, though. They may not have had a centralized government, but there was a centralized authority, the Law of Moses. This, presumably, was what those regional judges used for their decisions. So what did the law say? Well, the most consistent, most frequently repeated instruction in the law is the command to care for the vulnerable. Widows, orphans, immigrants, and poor people in general are to be cared for, or God will know the reason why. The Book of Ruth, set during this time, shows us some of the ways this worked. Rich people, like Boaz in that story, were not permitted to reap all their fields at harvest time. They had to leave the margins of their field uncut and were not permitted to go back and pick up stalks of grain that they had missed the first time. Those were to be left for those who had no fields to work. In other words, it was the responsibility of those who had much care for those who had little. This part sounds less Ronald Reagan and more Bernie Sanders. So that’s our answer: a Reagan-Sanders hybrid. Something there to irritate everybody!

I think this biblical model is interesting and worth considering, but I’m still hesitant to take the leap of saying that this is what God wanted. Again, the fact that Israel had that form of government for a while doesn’t mean that everything should. It is how things were, but that doesn’t necessarily mean how things should be. Besides, it didn’t last. After maybe 250 years it began to fall apart. The tribes stopped honoring their defense treaties. In fact, they started making war with each other. They began to abandon the worship of their God at the Tabernacle. Things got bad. There was a brief period of unity and stability, when Israel was led by the last of the judges, named Samuel, but when Samuel got old, the people of Israel began to worry. We now read from the book of 1 Samuel 8:1-9.

8 When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. 2The name of his firstborn son was Joel, and the name of his second, Abijah; they were judges in Beer-sheba. 3Yet his sons did not follow in his ways, but turned aside after gain; they took bribes and perverted justice.

4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5and said to him, ‘You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.’ 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to govern us.’ Samuel prayed to the Lord, 7and the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.’

Let me quickly summarize the rest of the story. Samuel did what God told him to do. He went to the people and painted a bleak picture of what a king would be like: “You think a king will go fight your battles for you? Where do think he’ll get his soldiers? It’s your sons he will draft for his armies. And your daughters he will take to work in his kitchens, and your fields and vineyards he will take to give as favors to his courtiers. Still want a king?” Samuel told them what having a king was like, and while he was hardly an impartial reporter – his feelings were hurt – everything he said was accurate. That was exactly how kings behaved, and exactly how future kings of Israel would behave. But it didn’t matter. They wanted a king. Sometimes people are just set on having the very thing that will be worst for them. So the people replied, ‘We are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles’ (vv. 19-20). 

So here’s a question. If having a king was such a bad idea, why did God tell Samuel to go ahead and give them one? Free will is part of it. Letting us choose our own path means letting us make bonehead choices if we want. But, in the context of today’s question, I think there’s something more here. God is not tied to any one form of government. Yes, there may be some systems of government that are more friendly to religion than others – and those of us who live under such governments have much to be thankful for – but that does not mean that we own God. Or to put it another way: there is no such thing as “godless Communism” or godless anything else. God was every bit as present in, say, Communist China as God was in the United States. Maybe more so, in fact. During the Mao years in China, when Christianity was banned entirely and punishable by death or imprisonment, Christianity flourished. When those restrictions were at last lifted and Christians were allowed to show themselves, the world discovered that Christianity had grown way more under persecution than it had in the “Christian” west. What God was telling Samuel was, “Yeah, it’s not ideal. I wish they weren’t set on a king. But I can work with it.”

And so he did. He worked to inspire kings to follow his law, the same law that had guided the judges, sending priests and prophets to prompt the kings when they erred. Earlier in the service we read the first part of Psalm 72, a psalm written for the coronation of a king. Let me read some of those verses again. Give the king your justice, O God, / and your righteousness to a king’s son. / May he judge your people with righteousness, / and your poor with justice … May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, / give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor. Systems of government come and go; God and God’s requirements don’t. 

So back to our own day. It is an interesting time in America right now, and there are people of all political persuasions who are talking about alternatives to democracy – whether that be Communism or right-wing dictatorship – both of which I find scary. None of us know how the next few years will go. A lot of us are hoping to keep democracy, but whatever happens, know this: God will still be here. No system of government can banish God, and God will still have the same expectations of us: treat all people with dignity, as children of God, and in particular, care for the vulnerable. We already have that assignment, and that’s not going to change.