Immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a former Job Corps site that now houses them, on Wednesday, June 20, 2018, in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Thursday, June 21, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) US President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One as he departs for North Dakota at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2018. (CNN) — It’s been called one of the most important and most misunderstood passages in the Bible: Romans 13:1-7. “The most historically influential paragraph Paul ever wrote,” in the words of one scholar. Likely written by the Apostle Paul around 57 AD, Romans 13, including the snippet cited by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday, instructs Christians to submit to “God’s servants.” That is, the government. “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established,” the passage says. “The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.” Romans 13 has been cited by Nazi sympathizers and apartheid-enforcers, slave owners and loyalists opposed to the American Revolution. Modern Christians have wrestled with how to apply the passage to issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and taxes. Thursday, Sessions cited Romans 13 to defend the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” prosecution policy on illegal immigration. In a speech addressed to his “church friends,” Sessions said: “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Sessions, saying, “It is very biblical to enforce the law.” In some ways, Sessions’ citation of Romans 13 makes sense. Many of the “church friends” to whom the attorney general addressed his speech had quoted scripture to criticize current immigration policies, particularly the separation of children from their parents. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, passed a resolution Tuesday that cited Scripture six times to make the case for immigration reform. (Some Southern Baptists also cited Romans 13 in the controversial decision to allow Vice President Mike Pence to address their annual meeting.) But what did Paul really mean when he wrote his letter to the Romans? Should Christians be expected to obey all human laws and cooperate with all regimes? And why would Paul counsel submission to a state power that had executed his savior? Here are five ways Christians have tried to answer those questions: 1. The Bible is full of civil disobedience. In citing Romans, Sessions made a small but telling slip. He said Paul commanded Christians to “obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them.” But Romans doesn’t quite say that. It says obey the “governing authorities” – that is, the government, not the laws. You could argue that one implies the other, but the Bible teems with examples of heroes who disobey the law. Hulton Archive/Hulton Archive/Getty Images The Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans has been cited through the centuries. Take Daniel, for example, who was thrown to the lions because he wouldn’t obey an edict requiring all subjects of King Darius to pray only to him. Daniel went home, threw open the windows for all to see and got on his knees, defying the edict. It was a blatant act of civil disobedience. “Whenever laws are enacted which contradict God’s law, civil disobedience becomes a Christian duty,” the late evangelical eminence John Stott wrote in a Bible study on Romans 13. 2. Paul thought Roman spies were reading his letters. Big Brother wasn’t around in the first century, but life as a Christian, especially a Jewish Christian, wasn’t free from state surveillance. Just a few years before Paul wrote his letter to the Romans, the empire had expelled Jews from Rome for “rioting at the instigation of Chrestus,” according to the Roman historian Suetonius. Some scholars believe Chrestus is a misspelling of Christ. It’s not too big a stretch to imagine that Paul, writing to a small band of religious subversives in the capital of the empire, would suspect that his letters could fall into imperial hands. “Paul is probably writing to be read by government officials as well as by the church in Rome,” John Piper, an influential evangelical pastor, said in a sermon series on Romans 13. “He knows that this letter will find its way into Caesar’s household and into the hands of the civil authorities. He wants them to understand two truths. One is that Christians are not out to overthrow the empire politically by claiming Jesus, and not Caesar, is Lord.” The other thing Paul wants the Romans to know, Piper says, is that their authority is based on God’s. 3. Paul was talking about angels, not attorneys general. Who, exactly, are the “authorities” that Paul is urging Christians to submit to? Oscar Cullman, a New Testament scholar who died in 1999, posed an interesting theory: Paul was talking about cosmic authorities, not civil ones. Or rather, he was talking about both. As Cullman noted, some early Christians, like some first-century Jews, believed that guardian angels – “the angels of the nations” – sat above the earthly rulers, somewhere between God and man. In other parts of the New Testament, Paul sometimes using the same Greek word to describe earthly and angelic authorities. On a practical level, you could understand why Cullman, a Lutheran who lived in Europe during the rise of Hitler, would be attracted to this idea. It’s easier to counsel submission to angels than to Nazis. But many scholars have dismissed Cullman’s theory, saying the “authorities” in Romans 13 refer to the earthly government. Later in Romans 13, Paul notes that Christians pay taxes to “God’s servants” – and, as we all know, the taxman is no angel. 4. Paul was worried about a Jewish uprising. Much of Paul’s letter to the Romans is about Jewish/Gentile relationships. This was a time when Christians were divided about whether “true” Christians had to be one or the other. Some Bible scholars theorize that Paul feared Jewish Christians would rebel against the Roman authorities. He had good reason to be worried. Jewish Christians had just been allowed back into Rome after being expelled. A governmental crackdown could have crushed the small and fractious Christian community. “Paul was not attempting in Romans 13:1-7 to write out a manifesto for Church-State relations for the next two or three millennia,” writes Matthew Neufeld, a Mennonite scholar. “His concern was pastoral and local. … Paul was advising against anti-Roman and Palestinian nationalist sentiments among the Jewish Christians in Rome.” 5. Paul was being ironic. At first glance, writes British scholar T.L. Carter, Romans 13 may look like “an embarrassingly unqualified endorsement of the political status quo.” But Paul was likely aware of the Jewish expulsion from Rome, as well as other persecutions, Carter argues. So it’s hard to fathom why he would portray the government as divinely sanctioned. Paul’s praise for government authority so over the top, it’s possible that he meant to be ironic, Carter says. In other words, Romans 13 is not praise, it’s a cleverly disguised critique. “By using the technique of irony, Paul was able to express his criticism without fear of repercussions from the authorities, who may have been oblivious to the disparity between the ideal he portrays and the reality of their government.” Carter acknowledges that his interpretation is somewhat idiosyncratic. Many Christians take a more straightforward reading of Romans 13, even as they struggle to apply to modern life. “It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the history of the interpretation of Romans 13:1-7,” says New Testament scholar Douglas Moo, “is the history of attempts to avoid what seems to be its plain meaning.”<doc-sep>Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the Trump administration’s family separation policy for asylum seekers by invoking a controversial passage in the Bible that’s rarely been cited since the Civil War because it was used by Southerners to defend slavery. This is what Sessions said at a speech to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Thursday, according to NBC News: Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful. The historical context spread across Twitter. Yoni Appelbaum, a historian and editor at the Atlantic, showed the passage was cited during key moments in the American debate over slavery: 2. Whatever one thinks of the exegetical merits of this argument, it’s quite surprising in one particular way—Romans 13 was widely quoted in political debates of the 1840s and 1850s, but rarely thereafter. (Via https://t.co/zs4wZX13G7) pic.twitter.com/KLCQLIGSHt — Yoni Appelbaum (@YAppelbaum) June 14, 2018 The Washington Post’s Julie Zauzmer and Keith McMillan spoke with experts for a piece that ran Friday morning and concluded that Sessions’s decision to cite Romans 13 is an unusual one, given how the passage has been used historically. “This is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made,” John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, told the Post. Abolitionists argued that slavery was unconscionably cruel and pointed, specifically, to separating families as a violation of religious principles, Appelbaum explained. Slavery defenders said the duty to abide by law was part of the Bible and specifically cited Romans 13. Abolitionists, ultimately, won the argument over slavery. Fea told the Post that after the Civil War, there haven’t been as many references to Romans 13 because the passage’s message about submitting to authority is regarded as un-American. “Whenever Romans 13 was used in the 18th and 19th century — and Sessions seems to be doing the same thing, so in this sense there is some continuity — it’s a way of manipulating the scriptures to justify your own political agenda,” Fea said. Sarah Huckabee Sanders made the same “the Bible says follow the law” argument on Thursday White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Thursday was asked about Sessions’s invocation of the Bible to defend the administration’s family separation policy. She said she wasn’t “aware” of the attorney general’s specific comments but sided with him on the Bible part. “I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law,” Sanders said. “That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible.” When CNN’s Jim Acosta asked whether she believes the practice is moral, Sanders replied, “It’s a moral policy to follow and enforce the law.” President Donald Trump in a surprise appearance on Fox & Friends on Friday defended the policy as well, but he didn’t mention the Bible. “That’s the law,” he said. Family separation isn’t the law The Trump administration has recently implemented a policy of separating children from their parents as they attempt to enter the United States seeking asylum at the US border. They’re typically splitting up families by charging parents with illegal entry into the US and sending them into criminal custody and treating their children as if they were “unaccompanied alien children” who had tried to enter the United States alone. The policy has sent shock waves across the country, igniting outrage on the part of immigration advocates, human rights groups, and citizens across the political spectrum. Multiple reports of uniquely aggressive or inhumane treatment have added fuel to the fire, including a Honduran man who died by suicide less than a day after being separated from his wife and 3-year-old child by Border Patrol agents, and a Honduran woman who says officials took her daughter away while she was breastfeeding her in a detention center. The White House is arguing that what it’s doing is just what the legal code says. “We’re a country of law and order, and we’re enforcing the law and protecting our borders,” Sanders said. Except that’s not the case. As Vox’s Dara Lind points out, there is no law that requires immigrant families to be separated:<doc-sep>Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday offered a full-throated defense of the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border, saying that having kids does not give migrants immunity from prosecution — and found justification for his policies in the Bible. Sessions — who last month announced a "zero tolerance policy" to criminally prosecute people crossing the border illegally — made his latest remarks in a speech to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, telling the group that the migrant families were to blame for their own break-ups and that his department's separation of families was not "unusual or unjustified." "If you cross the Southwest border unlawfully, then the Department of Homeland Security will arrest you and the Department of Justice will prosecute you. That is what the law calls for — and that is what we are going to do," Sessions said. "Having children does not give you immunity from arrest and prosecution." "However, we are not sending children to jail with their parents,” he said, adding that the policy "can result in short-term separation." "Noncitizens who cross our borders unlawfully, between our ports of entry, with children are not an exception," the attorney general said. "They are the ones who broke the law, they are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek. The United States, on the other hand, goes to extraordinary lengths to protect them while the parents go through a short detention period." Current law does not prohibit separating children from their parents. Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor for the first offense, and when parents are charged they end up in federal and separated from their children— an increasingly dire situation that has drawn criticism from lawmakers in both major parties, as well as Christian groups, including the Rev. Franklin Graham, a supporter of President Donald Trump. Graham said this week that the administration's efforts that led to families being "ripped apart" were “disgraceful.” In addition, several evangelical groups sent a letter to the White House this month, asking Trump to protect families at the border that were fleeing violence. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a evangelical pastor and Christian camp director, tweeted Thursday morning that he was personally asking the White House "to keep families together as much as we can." In his remarks, Sessions hit back at the "concerns raised by our church friends about separating families," calling the criticism "not fair or logical" and quoting Scripture in his defense of the administration's tough policies. "Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution ... I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes," Sessions said. "Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves ... and protect the weak and it protects the lawful." He called on religious leaders to "speak up strongly to urge anyone who would come here to apply lawfully, to wait their turn and not violate the law." Later Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders doubled down on Sessions' comments, saying it is "very biblical to enforce the law." "That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible," she said, responding to a question about Sessions' comments about Scripture's supporting the administration's policies. Many of the children separated from their parents have ended up in enormous facilities that more closely resemble prisons, where they spend 22 hours per day during the week locked inside overcrowded buildings. Sessions, however, said the U.S. government facilities, which are run by the Department of Health and Human Services, "care for the children in a good and decent and proper way" and blamed the parents of the children for subjecting them to "such a treacherous journey." "It's not as if we just want to see if we can be mean to children," Sessions added. The attorney general also defended his ruling this week that fear of domestic abuse or gang violence is not an acceptable basis for granting asylum. He claimed that he had not made new law and that he had "simply restated and implemented what Congress has passed: Asylum is generally not for those who have suffered a private act of violence." "I am not going to apologize for carrying out our laws," he added.<doc-sep>
Immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a former Job Corps site that now houses them, on Wednesday, June 20, 2018, in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson) US President Donald Trump walks to board Marine One as he departs for North Dakota at the White House in Washington, DC, on June 27, 2018. (CNN) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the Bible on Thursday in defending the Trump administration’s immigration policies – especially those that result in the separation of families – directing his remarks in particular to “church friends.” “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent, fair application of law is in itself a good and moral thing and that protects the weak, it protects the lawful. Our policies that can result in short-term separation of families are not unusual or unjustified.” The Catholic Church and other religious leaders have voiced strong criticism of policies resulting in family separations and recent moves Sessions has made to restrict asylum. On Wednesday, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized the administration, declaring that separating mothers and children at the US border is “immoral.” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the president of the organization, said in a statement, “Families are the foundational element of our society and they must be able to stay together. While protecting our borders is important, we can and must do better as a government, and as a society, to find other ways to ensure that safety. Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.” Sessions said Thursday that recent criticisms are “not fair, not logical and some are contrary to plain law.” “It’s not as if we just want to see if we can be mean to children. That’s not what this is about,” he said, saying he’s thought about this issue for years. God told Nehemiah to build a wall when he got back to Jerusalem, Sessions said, once again referencing the Bible. “That’s the first thing he told him to do,” Sessions said. “It wasn’t to keep people in. It was to keep bad people out. I don’t think there is a scriptural basis that justifies any idea that we must have open borders in the world today.” Sessions repeated many of his recent comments that any separation from children is the fault of the parents who choose to bring them into the country illegally, and repeatedly said immigrants should “wait your turn” and try to come to the US legally. He disputed that he’s restricting asylum, saying he is merely restoring his view of what the law always has been. He was referring to his recent use of a power of the attorney general, a political appointee, to overrule a board of immigration judges in their interpretation of the law. Sessions earlier this week announced a new interpretation of asylum law that reversed an earlier decision in declaring that victims of domestic violence and other crimes and violence are generally not eligible for asylum in the US. “Noncitizens who cross our borders unlawfully, between our ports of entry, with children, are no exception to this principle,” Sessions said. “They are the ones who broke the law. They are the ones who endangered their children with this trek.” He said the US goes through “extraordinarily lengths” to care for the children. “I have considered the thoughts of church leaders over that time. And I am sympathetic to them. But I am a law officer. A law officer for a nation-state. A secular nation-state. Not a theocracy. It’s not a church. If we have laws – and I believe we have reasonable immigration laws – they should be enforced,” Sessions said. “My request to our religious leaders and friends who have criticized the carrying out of our laws: I ask them to speak up forcefully, strongly, to urge anyone who would come here to only come lawfully.” CNN’s Clare Foran and David Siegel contributed to this report.