“Dual Citizenship: The Common Good”
A Sermon by Blake Bradford
February 8, 2026, at Fort Smith First United Methodist Church
In this Sunday’s sermon, Dr. Bradford references a book titled The City of God,
written after the sack of Rome in 410 by Bishop St. Augustine of Hippo.
The text of the book can be found online and is free in the public domain.
Dr. Bradford’s five “P”s in the sermon are Pray, Provide, Protest, Protect, and Presence.
The World Methodist Social Affirmation #886
Jeremiah 22:1-3
Matthew 25:31-36
Early in my ministry, my first few years in Texarkana First, I had already planned a sermon on just war theory. It was announced in the newsletter. Sermon printed. And then, between announcing it on Monday and stepping to the pulpit on Sunday, the United States invaded Iraq on a Thursday… which is not ideal sermon timing.
I heard later about one group of parishioners who saw the title and had already pre-planned a walk-out before I preached a word, which is always “encouraging feedback” for a young pastor. (They didn’t do it, by the way. They actually loved the sermon.)
Back then, I didn’t try to approach that moment with a partisan viewpoint, from the left or from the right. I didn’t try to keep up with the headlines. And I didn’t pretend to have answers I didn’t have.
Instead, I leaned into the deep wisdom of our faith, the long conversation of the church, and the story of God’s people told in Scripture and tradition.
And that’s the posture I want to invite us into today.
Now, I know that mixing politics and church makes people nervous, and for good reason. Often, that combination hasn’t served the church or the public well. My personal belief is that the pulpit should never be a place for partisanship or endorsing candidates.
But politics… politics at its core is about how “we the people” make decisions together in the public square. Those decisions matter. They have moral weight. Is there a “word from the Lord” about politics and living in our world? I would hope so.
Facebook algorithms and TV ads shape our politics, so I think our faith and our moral and ethical principles should get an opportunity to shape our politics too.
So let’s do this. Imagine the world’s sole superpower in decline, strained by enemies from outside and unrest from within. The economy is not what it used to be. Prices are rising. Social and political life feels unstable and disorienting. Sounds familiar?
This was the Roman Empire in the year 410.
In 410, for the first time in 800 years, barbarians entered the gates of Rome. For people across the Mediterranean world, it was a shock beyond words. Rome, the eternal city, the source of political order, was sacked by the Visigoths. For nearly a century, many believers had come to assume that Rome’s stability and God’s purposes were somehow bound together.
So when Rome fell, people panicked, blamed, and started grasping for security. It was into that moment that Augustine, a bishop in North Africa, began to write. Not a press release. Not a “hot take” on Twitter. He wrote a book titled The City of God.
For more than a thousand years, Augustine’s The City of God has shaped how Christians think about public life, power, and politics. It is still quoted today by bishops, believers, and leaders across the spectrum.
Augustine said there are two “cities” shaping the world, and as Christians, we live as people of dual citizenship.
We are citizens of what Augustine called Civitas Terrena, the City of Man, the Earthly City. But we are also citizens of the Civitas Dei, the City of God. Our dual citizenship is a calling, and it is also a responsibility.
In the City of Man, human institutions are shaped by fears and longings. It is where we vote and make decisions about laws and policies. Augustine was clear that the City of Man can do real good. It can protect the vulnerable, restrain chaos, and provide order and safety. But he was just as clear that it is also capable of profound corruption, because it is governed by human beings, and human beings are not as wise or as pure as we often imagine ourselves to be. Augustine, after all, is the theologian who first articulated the doctrine of original sin.
And we Christians understand sin. We know there are consequences when the love of power replaces the love of neighbor.
But as Christians, we are also citizens of the City of God, and that citizenship demands an additional perspective. It calls us to commitments that run deeper than party, ideology, or national identity. It calls us to a way of life shaped by the gospel of Jesus Christ: love of God and love for neighbor.
The City of God presses against the City of Man, not to dominate as a theocracy, but to hold the City of Man accountable to what protects life, defends human dignity, restrains harm, and seeks peace.
For Augustine, these two forms of citizenship do not cancel each other out. They overlap. And the place where the City of God and the City of Man meet is what Augustine called the commonwealth, or the common good.
Living in a teetering Roman Empire with barbarians literally at the gates, Augustine understood the common good not simply as the absence of conflict, but as a proactive commitment to justice and care for neighbor. As citizens of the City of God, we engage the City of Man not by winning arguments or fighting on Facebook, but by guarding human dignity and seeking the common good wherever power is used.
There is a clear through-line in Scripture, from the Torah and the prophets to the red-printed words of Jesus. These are not policy arguments. They are the calling, the vocation, of citizens of the City of God.
Four hundred years before Augustine, Jesus offered the same vision in Matthew 25, in what we often call the Judgment of the Nations (Matthew 25:31–46). In that passage, entire societies are measured not by slogans or intentions, not by GDP or inflation rates, but by how they treated the hungry, the foreigner, the sick, the imprisoned, and the vulnerable. In that holy moment, the City of Man stands before the throne of God, and the question is not, “Were your policies legally defensible?” The question Jesus asks is, “Did you recognize me in the lives of those with the least power?”
That is why Christians of all political stripes can, in good faith, debate fiscal policy, foreign policy, and the status of our current immigration laws. Those are important conversations. I have opinions, and I bet you do too. We can disagree and compromise on those questions. But laws can and should be enforced in a way that respects human dignity. The how matters.
Jeremiah reminds us of this clearly (Jeremiah 22:3).
“This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.”
Looking at this wider moment, as a dual citizen of the City of Man and the City of God, I firmly believe that some of the methods we are witnessing do not merely fall short of treasuring human dignity. They violate it.
In recent days, many of us have watched images and reports that are hard to forget. We have heard accounts of court orders violated, of inhumane detention conditions that strip people of dignity and hope. We have seen power deployed aggressively and violently on neighborhood streets. We have seen citizens shot. Killed. I did not expect to see that before my morning coffee.
Yes, immigration is complex. Laws are complex. That is a different conversation. But whatever policy debates we may have, whatever laws are being enforced, this is not what treasuring human dignity looks like. How laws are enforced, and how the vulnerable are treated in the process, are moral questions, not merely policy questions. When state power is exercised through fear, intentional neglect, and unaccountable violence, something has gone morally wrong.
It is corrosive to the City of God and to the City of Man. It eats away at the common good.
Immigrants. Citizens. Journalists. Police. Protesters. ICE agents. We are one human family. We are all children of God. When violence becomes familiar, it wounds all of our souls.
So what can we do? It is easy to feel overwhelmed. Helpless.
And that brings me to what disciples do next. Not as a single strategy. Not as a purity test. But as a shared set of callings.
United Methodist Bishop Bickerton of New York and New England offered a pastoral letter to his conferences. I was struck by his tone and his wisdom, and I have adapted some of his thinking here. As I read it, it helped me see what faithful engagement can look like for dual citizens of the City of Man and the City of God.
Not all of us are called to respond in the same way. But all of us are called to stretch our compassion and to live into our baptismal vow to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
These callings can be described with five Ps: Pray. Provide. Protest. Protect. Presence.
Some of us are called to pray. Intentional prayer for victims and families, for leaders and civil servants, for a nation whose nerves are frayed. Some are especially gifted in intercessory prayer. But really, aren’t all of us called, in some way, to pray?
Some of us are called to provide. To show up. To be present with neighbors who are afraid to be seen. We do not ask people to show identification papers when we serve Last Sunday Breakfast. We feed folks. Fifty years ago, members of this church took leadership roles in South Asian refugee resettlement. Fort Smith still has one of the largest Asian populations in the region because neighbors were welcomed. Our calling is simple: provide neighborly love.
Some of us are called to protest. And when that is our calling, it must be nonviolent and rooted in love. Our own Rev. Dr. Dawn Chesser joined an ecumenical clergy protest in Minneapolis. One thing she shared deeply moved me: alongside public witness for human dignity, clergy also served as chaplains, offering prayer and Holy Communion for protesters, for police, and for ICE and border patrol agents. Why all of them? Because we are one human family, and every soul matters.
Christian protest is about peacefully bearing witness in ways that honor human dignity. And it does not always mean standing on a street corner with a sign. Sometimes it looks like having hard, compassionate conversations with friends or family when dignity is being harmed.
Some are called to protect. Attorneys, journalists, public servants, and everyday citizens who work to safeguard constitutional, legal, and human rights (Proverbs 31:8–9).
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy".
Isn’t that sacred? To offer a voice for the voiceless.
And in some way, all of us are called to presence. To stay engaged. To listen. Even when it would be easier to turn off the news and look away. Presence means refusing to abandon one another when things get complicated. Church unity comes from choosing Christ, not creating common enemies. When we stay in our political and information bubbles, it becomes easy to see each other as enemies instead of children of God.
Presence is not passive. It is the slow, faithful work of walking together, guarding human dignity, and keeping community from tearing itself apart.
That camp song many of us know by heart, “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love,” reminds us of that calling. The third verse says:
♫We will work with each other, we will work side by side,
And we’ll guard human dignity and save human pride:
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, …♫
None of these callings cancels out the others. None gives us permission to look down on those with different callings. These five Ps are how the church remains the church in anxious times.
Some of you may remember that when I came here about 18 months ago, I said that when we move into more delicate territory, I don’t love doing all of that from the pulpit alone. I would rather be around tables, eye to eye, I and Thou, Scripture open, sacred space to listen to one another. I think that best honors one another’s voices and discernment.
That is why I am grateful we already have a conversation scheduled for this Wednesday night in the Welcome Center after the meal. It is framed around Christian ethical thinking and historical just war theory, and I am looking forward to being and learning together. Wednesday evening is not about winning arguments or settling every question. Faith is not about having all the answers. I sure don’t.
It is about practicing discernment and Christian ethics, trusting that God meets us as we walk the road together.
Friends, I do not know what the next months will bring for our nation or our neighbors. But I do know this: we do not only belong to the City of Man.
Our deepest citizenship is in the City of God, a city shaped not by fear or favor, not by power, but by sacrifice and compassion.
That citizenship does not pull us out of the world. It sends us into the world with a different posture and a different hope.
That is what it means to live faithfully as dual citizens between these two cities. Not withdrawing. Not dominating. But bearing witness, guarding human dignity, and living humbly, courageously, and compassionately… in the City of Man… and in the City of God.
Amen.
