Politics in twenty first century America operate vastly different than politics in first century Rome. These differences, I believe, are one of the biggest struggles for the modern church’s discernment of how to engage with the political power structures of our day The right of every citizen to vote and political issues such as health care and immigration are foreign to the world in which Jesus and the early church lived and the culture which produced the Christian scriptures. 

Therefore, it is a difficult hermeneutical task for modern Christians, church leaders, and scholars to draw applicable principles for contemporary engagement with American politics from the ancient documents which make up our rule of faith. How can the Bible address whether a Christian should vote when voting wasn’t an option for the biblical authors? What does the Bible say about health care when it was written in a world lacking modern medicine? 

I am not saying it is an impossible task to answer such questions, simply that there is a large gap that must be bridged to get from the biblical world to modern politics. However, I believe the most helpful biblical passages for this challenge are those that most people never turn to, the passages in the Gospels where Jesus speaks in Jewish synagogues. 

Based on historical and archeological evidence, we know a decent amount about the function of ancient Jewish synagogues. Synagogues, as most people assume, were religious centers for Jews where the Torah was read and studied. However, in areas of the ancient world where Jews were the majority, such as Galilee and Judea where Jesus’s ministry took place, synagogues were not merely Jewish religious centers; they were also Jewish political centers. In a city such as Nazareth, Jesus’s hometown and a town of mostly Jews, there was The Synagogue of Nazareth. The Synagogue of Nazareth was where the Jews of Nazareth would gather to hear Torah read but also were the Jewish leaders or elders of Nazareth would meet to make decisions on behalf of the town of Nazareth. In this way, The Synagogue of Nazareth functioned not just like a church but also like city hall or the local courthouse. 

Seeing synagogues as political centers changes the way we interpret Jesus’s words in places such as Luke 4 when he walks into the Nazareth synagogue and begins reading from Isaiah and claiming to be the fulfillment of scripture. When Jesus makes such proclamations, he is not only making a religious statement; he is making a political one. Additionally, since synagogues were where town leaders gathered, it would be the logical place to start preaching a new movement because if the town leaders are on board, the rest of the town will be quick to follow. 

Something else of interest are the Greek words used to refer to Jewish synagogues. We get our English word “synagogue” from the Greek word sunagógé (συναγωγή). However, there were a variety of other Greek words that were used to refer to Jewish synagogues, including the word ekklesia (ἐκκλησία), which is typically translated as “church.” So, when early followers of Jesus referred to their gatherings as an ekklesia, they had in mind not merely the political gatherings of the Greco-Roman world, but likely more so the religious and political gatherings of their fellow Jews in the synagogue. 

When all of this is brought together, it shows that Jesus’s actions in synagogues were not just religious but also political and that the early church saw their gatherings as a continuation of these religious and political actions of Jesus. Therefore, by looking at Jesus’s actions in synagogues, we can get a glimpse of Jesus’s politics. However, it must be noted that in doing so we are analyzing Jesus’s words to political leaders in a particular township, such as Nazareth, who were, in the grand scheme, a minority, not his words to the overarching political power of Rome. 

When we look at all of Jesus’s actions in synagogues that are recorded in the Gospels, the following points can be observed. These observations are far from exclusive and there is much discussion that must be had as to their modern application, though I think they provide a helpful starting point for considering the politics of Jesus. 

1. Jesus stood firm on the belief that a new world power, with a new king, and a new way of life was being established through his ministry and that such a declaration was “good news” (Matt 4:23; 9:35). 
2. Jesus believed that God’s way of life included implications for how people’s physical bodies, social positions, and financial situations were healed and uplifted (Matt 12:9; Mark 1:21–28; 3:1–6; Luke 4:16–19; 31–37; 6:6–11). 
3. The kingdom of God, with its social, political, physical, and spiritual implications, is not limited to one group or nationality but is for the benefit of all, particularly for the oppressed (Luke 4:16–30). 
4. Jesus practiced public, vocal teaching of the way of the kingdom, which was often opposed to the Roman and Jewish way of life (John 18:19–21). 

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