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Render to God What Belongs to God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Christopher Rowland
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The forms for my Poll Tax registration are sitting in my kitchen as I procrastinate about how to deal with them. The whole process of registration and the tax to which it is a prelude seem so despicable that I would gladly decide at this point not to fill in the form and begin the process of non-compliance. When Ministers say that this tax is fairer than the present system I feel anger and also a sense of powerlessness. There seems to be little doubt about the injustice of a tax which charges the richest person in a locality the same as the poorest. Yet another part of me recognizes what a fruitless gesture non-compliance would be, seeing that the mechanism exists to sequester my resources: I will have to pay it whether I like it or not. Is there room for manoeuvre in responding to this injustice? How best can I work constructively to remedy this injustice when there seems to be little space for any alternative action?

In situations like this there are two important tasks for me as a Christian. Firstly, I am determined to join with those who feel similar revulsion to this piece of legislation, with its regressive attitude to taxation and alarming implications for civil liberties. Secondly, while I have to renounce my desire for ready-made answers to my problem, whether in Scripture or Tradition, I must attend to what the Spirit is saying to the churches today, but use the necessary discernment to enable my path of discipleship to be in continuity with our ancestors in the faith. What I want to attempt in this article is to put on paper some of the clearing of the Biblical ground that enables me to continue the journey of faith and take into account this new challenge to our contemporary witness.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 70 , Issue 830 , September 1989 , pp. 365 - 371
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Rensberger, D., Johannine Community and Liberating Faith, Philadelphia 1989Google Scholar, (to be published in Britain as Overcoming the World).

2 Rensberger, op. tit. p. 100.

3 K. Wengst, Pax Romano and the Peace of Jesus Christ, p. 133f.

4 See N. Lash, Easter in Ordinary and F. Kerr, Theology after Wittgenstein, concisely expressed by R. McAfee Brown, Spirituality and Liberation.

5 See Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol 2 Part 1.

6 There is a survey of research in Bruce's article in Bammel and Moule, Jesus and the Politics of his Day, pp. 250ff.

7 J.D. M Derrett, Law in the New Testament, p. 335f.

8 Bruce, op. cit. p. 259.

9 See further M. Borg, Conflict Politics and Holiness in the Teaching of Jesus and G.B. Caird, Jesus and the Jewish Nation.

10 Bruce, op. cit. p. 260.

11 R. Eisler, The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist, pp. 332ff and cf. Bammel, op. cit. pp. 32ff.

12 R. Bauckham, The Bible and Political Debate, p. 75.

13 M. Clevenot, Materialist Approaches to the Bible, p. 93.

14 This article is based on material for a forthcoming Jubilee pamphlet on disestablishment and from C. Rowland and Mark Comer, Liberating Exegesis, SPCK 1989.