Christians who ask about their political responsibility often find themselves bound somehow to make sense of the New Testament dictum “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's” (Mark 12:17; cf. Matthew 22:21). In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus gave this response when asked whether Jews were obligated to pay the taxes levied by their Roman rulers, and the dictum is relevant to our question if we take “Caesar” to symbolize political rule in general and the payment or withholding of taxes, each in its own way, to symbolize proper response to the rulers. The answer Jesus gave may then seem relevant to how contemporary Christians should understand their relation to politics.

It is probable that Roman taxes were deeply resented by many Jewish people, much as American colonists in the eighteenth century were offended by taxes levied by Parliament. In Mark's story, the question was put to Jesus by certain Pharisees and Herodians who sought to trap him. If he replied in the affirmative, the Jewish people generally would think him a traitor; if in the negative, he would suffer the disfavor and suspicion of the Roman rulers. His cryptic response served to confound the inquisitors, since Jesus did not specify which things belong to Caesar and which to God. Henry David Thoreau said that Jesus left his inquisitors “no wiser than before as to which was which, for they did not wish to know” (cited in Buttrick: 519).