Steven Carr

In http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...942386,00.html
Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, claims that the early Christians would have regarded the Emperor as a 'usurper' and Jesus as the rightful king, and that 'empires are called to account'.

Paul writes in Romans 13 'Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God... This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing.'

Where does the Bishop of Durham get the idea that early Christians regarded 'God's servants' as 'regents and usurpers'?

Surely Paul is not claiming that empires are being called to account.

Toto

Can't read that link without subscribing to the Timesonline

But even since the Bishop of Durham accused Bush and Blair of acing like "white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug dealing," and accused religious conservatives surrounding the US president, George Bush, of espousing "a very strange distortion of Christianity", I've felt like I might want to learn more about his particular theology.

Perhaps the good Bishop has been reading William Walker's book on Interpolations in the Pauline Letters, pp 221-231, and agrees with critics that that particular passage is "an alien body in Paul's exhortation."