Warren Carter

“My reading perspective is that Matthew's gospel is a counternarrative. It is a work of resistance written from and for a minority community of disciples committed to Jesus, the agent of God's saving presence and empire. The gospel shapes their identity and lifestyle as an alternative community. It strengthens this community to resist the dominant Roman imperial and synagogal control. It anticipates Jesus’ return when Jesus will complete God's salvific purposes in establishing God's reign or empire over all, including Rome.”
― Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading / Warren Carter.

“Instead of emulating the exercise of power over others exhibited by the Gentiles and “their great men,” this community is to live as a community of slaves (20:20-28). 8. Instead of maintaining hierarchical, patriarchal households, this community is to embrace an alternative, more egalitarian household structure (chs. 19-20). 9. Instead of paying taxes as an act of submission to the empire, this community is to pay them as an act which recognizes God's sovereignty over the earth (17:24-27; 22:15-22). 10. Instead of using violence to retaliate, this community is to be committed to active, nonviolent resistance (5:43-48). 11. Instead of pretending the empire has brought health to the world (Aristides; Matt 4:24), this community is to be an inclusive community, adopting in the fragmented urban chaos and hardship of Antioch a praxis of indiscriminate mercy, actively responding to need regardless of social, gender, or ethnic boundaries (chs. 8-9; 9:13; 12:7; 25:31-46). 12. Instead of seeking wealth to establish status, this community is to seek God's reign and use wealth in alternative, lifegiving practices of loans and almsgiving to those in need (5:42; 6:19-34; 10:9-15; 19:16-30).”
― Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading: A Socio-Political and Religious Reading / Warren Carter.