Christianity Today October 19, 2026 9 min signal 2026-10-19

What the Bible's most political book can teach us

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Christianity Today

October 19, 2026

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Even when Americans disagree vehemently on just about everything else, most agree on this: American politics is broken. In one study, nearly 6 out of 10 respondents refused to name a single strength in America’s political system, and only 4 percent of respondents said that system was working very well.

We’re not just skeptical of the system. We’re deeply skeptical of one another. Eighty-two percent of Americans worry others might be basing their “values and opinions on false or inaccurate information.” Unfortunately, studies show we’re much better at identifying how other people’s views have been biased by the echo chamber than we are at identifying our own biases.

Faced with a toxic, increasingly partisan political moment, some Christians opt for an all-or-nothing political certainty that paints every political issue in black and white. At its worst, such certainty can lead Christians to confidently identify their political opponents as the enemies of God and to claim to know exactly how God is at work on the political scene.

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Others, though, are overwhelmed by ongoing uncertainty. Even after we cast our votes in the upcoming midterms, we’ll be confronted with a seemingly endless stream of political questions. Should we join this protest? How about that march? Should we call our representatives or publicly support a specific policy? Should we donate to a political campaign, post about a political issue on social media, or bring that awkward political conversation up with our extended family and friends?

If overconfidence can lead us in dark, demonizing directions, uncertainty can leave us with a crippling paralysis. What’s an aspiring political disciple to do?

Enter the Book of Esther.

Biblical scholars—including me, in my book Reimagining Biblical Politics—have argued Esther might be the most political book in the Bible. The story revolves around matters of state, and in terms of political action, the book has it all. By the time credits roll, we’ve watched Vashti practice civil disobedience by refusing to obey King Ahasuerus’s command (1:12). We’ve seen Mordechai stage a public protest—lamenting in sackcloth and ashes at the very gate of the king (4:1–2)—and serve that same regime by snitching on courtiers caught planning an assassination (2:21–22).

Esther’s political career begins when she makes the best of an awful situation, hiding her ethnicity and winning favor on the way to becoming queen. She acts subversively to ensure Haman gets what’s coming to him. By the end, Esther and Mordecai effectively hold public office, writing law from within the empire itself (8:1–2; 7–8).

If Esther is arguably the Bible’s most political book, it’s also the most ambiguous. It’s not just that God goes unmentioned; it’s as if the narrator has systematically erased every possible reference to Israel’s faith. There is no mention of temple, Torah, or even prayer.

Readers have been arguing about how to interpret this ambiguity for millennia. Is God’s absence the narrator’s clever way of winking at divine providence at work behind the scenes? Or does God’s absence from the story serve to highlight what the human characters do? Does the story even suggest God has withdrawn from active involvement with his people?

Nor is the absence of God-talk the only ambiguity. Readers can’t decide what this book even is. A comedy? The journey from near annihilation to “feasting and gladness” gives it a kind of happily-ever-after vibe (9:22, NRSVue). Bits of the book are almost laugh-out-loud funny. We can’t help but chuckle when the king of the gargantuanly large Persian empire calls a cabinet meeting to sort out his sex life.

But other parts of the story feel more like a horror film. After all, there is no “beauty pageant” here. There’s an empire-wide abduction of young women that the king uses sexually and then discards, one after another. There’s nothing funny about an empire willing to annihilate a people for cash or a queen who has to fear for her life if she enters her husband’s presence unannounced.

The book raises questions of how we evaluate the actions of our heroes as well. Does Scripture really hold up the absence of prayer in the face of disaster as a model to be emulated? We celebrate that Mordecai and Esther save their people by ensuring they can defend themselves against horrific, genocidal violence. But what are we to make of Esther’s request for a second day of slaughter, in which tens of thousands are killed? Is that a tragic necessity given the real threat? The kind of hyperbole you expect in a dark comedy that has undeniably supported people facing genocidal violence in the long centuries since this book was written? Or do God’s people go too far? Given that we shuddered while Esther was forced to pretend not to be a Jew to save her life, should we rejoice when, later in the book, other people “professed to be Jews” to save theirs (8:17, NRSVue)?

And what about the ending? The wicked ruler who abducted countless young virgins in what Ericka Shawndricka Dunbar refers to as international sex trafficking and agrees to annihilate a people for a bribe remains fully in charge. Only now, he’s got Mordecai as his right-hand man. Nearly the last lines of the book tell us that this Persian dictator put forced labor on the entire empire (10:1). Though rendered here by many English translations as a “tribute” or “tax” imposed, the Hebrew word is mas, which is the very same word used for the “forced labor” Pharaoh put on the Israelites in Egypt (Ex. 1:11).

The book definitely does not vilify Esther and Mordecai, whose heroism and political savvy save their people. But it does raise ethical questions about some of their actions, invites us to wonder whether there may have been alternatives, and worry about what new dangers the future may hold. This is exactly what we should expect from biblical narratives! Nearly all biblical characters are mixed bags, morally speaking. But that doesn’t solve the ambiguities that haunt this story’s pages.

But what if the book’s ambiguity isn’t a problem to be solved but a gift to be received? After all, if readers have both loved and puzzled over Esther for more than two millennia, maybe provoking questions was part of the storyteller’s purpose. What if Esther is so ambiguous precisely because it’s so political—a politically ambiguous book to help us in our own politically ambiguous lives, an Old Testament political head-scratcher to make sure we don’t stop scratching our heads when faced with the complexities of our own political moment?

By showing us a diverse range of ways to engage politically, from civil disobedience to public protest, from collaborating with the state to serving in public office, the book helps broaden our imagination as to how we might engage politically without pretending that there is any one right answer to that question.

By forcing us to grapple with where the characters got it right, where they might have done differently, and where they may even have gotten it wrong, Esther invites us to consider the complexities of our own political engagement, including where we may have gone wrong or failed to consider possible alternatives.

At the same time, by showing us how Esther and Mordecai’s ambiguous political action saved the lives of God’s people, the text reminds us that the ambiguity we face in our lives does not justify inaction. Just like the characters in Esther, we often must act, even when we don’t know all the answers.

Reading Esther as a politically ambiguous book to help us in our politically ambiguous lives can help us avoid the kind of God-on-our-political-side certainty that has motivated some of Christianity’s darkest failures. But it also demands that we reject a throw-your-hands-in-the-air, what-can-you-really-do posture that hides behind platitudes about “leaving it in God’s hands.” Because, as Esther reminds us, leaving it in God’s hands might not mean avoiding the messy world of politics; it might mean risking your life to stand up for the innocent in the middle of that messy political world.

If the book helps us cultivate the ability to act politically with courage, rather than with certainty, it might also help us cultivate charity toward fellow believers who make different decisions than we do.

Finally, because Esther stands alongside the rest of Scripture, the book’s ambiguous posture helps us embrace the Bible’s peculiar political hope. We remain deeply conflicted about what faithfulness requires. We will discover along the way that our attempts at political faithfulness were fraught with sin and haunted by ignorance. Nevertheless, we can act in hope, not out of confidence in our own actions but out of confidence in Christ’s. One day, Jesus will return to renew and reclaim his world. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords will forgive us for our political failures even as he fulfills our deepest political hopes.

If the Book of Esther can help us place our trust in Christ even as we embrace courageous political action amid deep uncertainty, that would be a political gift, indeed.

Michael J. Rhodes is the lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College and the author of several books, including Reimagining Biblical Politics;Reading the Pentateuch as Christian Scripture (with David J. H. Beldman); and Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World.

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