Earlier this month, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on "Fraud and Misuse of Federal Funds in Minnesota." Among those called to testify was Rev. Mariah Tollgaard, senior pastor of Hamline United Methodist Church in St. Paul, who testified about "the fear and harm" that the Trump administration's brutal deportation efforts have "inflicted on our state."
During her testimony, Tollgaard noted that "Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25, 'Whatever you do for the least of these, you do unto me.'" That biblical reference apparently irked Rep. Michael Cloud, a Republican from Texas, who proceeded to spend five minutes lecturing Tollgaard that the scripture she cited involved a lesson Jesus was teaching directly to his disciples and was not something that was intended to be applied to the government.
"Who is the 'you' in that passage?" Cloud asked Tollgaard, to which she replied that it was directed at "the followers of Christ."
"The followers of Christ," Cloud replied. "Right. In Matthew 24:3, it says after Jesus was sitting on the Mountain of Olives and the disciples came to him privately, and then they asked him and that began this whole chapter. Now, what Christ didn't say is to lobby your government. He said if you have, you give. That's the general biblical principle here."
"Scripture is replete with there's different institutions that each have a different [role]," Cloud declared.
A few days after that hearing, Cloud appeared on "Washington Watch with Tony Perkins" to explain what prompted him to make these comments during the hearing.
"You often see Matthew 25 thrown about, never in context," Cloud said. "Sometimes it seems to be the only half scripture the left would seem to know and they use it to justify all kinds of spending. I thought it was important to go through and kind of put this in context about what was really being talked about in that chapter and who Christ was talking to. He was talking to his disciples and it was actually a private meeting with his disciples—it wasn't one of his open air arena speeches, so to speak—and he was talking to us about what we should be doing, how we should be taking care of our neighbors and those different kinds of things. So many times, this gets used to justify every kind of social program that the government is doing."
"Scripture talks about what the role of the government is to be doing," he added. "It's a different role than the family, it's a different role than the church in the community, and so it's important that we put all these things in context as we begin to weigh scripture in the context of government policy."
This is a pretty remarkable statement for a Christian nationalist member of Congress to make considering that the core message from Christian nationalists for the last decade has been that their right-wing interpretation of Jesus' teachings are to serve as the very foundation of our government and its policies.
Cloud himself is an acolyte of Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton who endlessly uses the Bible—particularly Matthew 25—to assert that Jesus opposes everything from the income tax to the minimum wage to government regulation.
If Cloud were consistent, he would have to apply his argument that Jesus was talking only to individual Christians, not to the government, to every argument that Barton makes. But Cloud won't do that, primarily because he routinely argues exactly the opposite, insisting that "the basic core principles" of how the government should operate are to be found in the Bible.
In 2023, Cloud spoke at a Christians Engaged conference where he openly asserted that Christians are commanded to use Christ's teachings to establish his kingdom in the government.
"We as the church of God have got to stand up and understand that we have the authority. We should look to Christ. What did he say? For all of human history, we're waiting, like, ‘What does God really care about?' And the thing that Christ talked about over and over, [like] in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, ‘The Kingdom, the Kingdom, the Kingdom, the Kingdom, the Kingdom.’”
"Christ came to establish a kingdom on Earth that would operate under different principles than all the kingdoms of the Earth would operate, and he asked us to be a part of it," Cloud said. "He asked us to be ambassadors of that kingdom, to help establish it here on Earth. So everybody say, 'I'm in the government.' You're in the government!"
"You know, people say, 'Well, the Bible is not a political book, and we shouldn't be involved,' and I'm just like, 'Have you ever read it?'" Cloud asserted. "It's like every single chapter is like dripping in it!"
