Christianity Today, What the Bible’s Most Political Book Can Teach Us, by Michael J. Rhodes (Author, Reimagining Biblical Politics (2026):

Esther asks tough questions, offers no easy answers, and remains more vital than ever as Americans go to the polls.

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.

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. …

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 Does the story even suggest God has withdrawn from active involvement with his people? …

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.

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