I couldn't believe my eyes while people here I respect suggested in their comments in another diary the wingnut idea that Jesus' instruction to Jews to pay Roman taxes was the reason for our separation of church and state, and therefore, that the government has no authority to use our tax dollars to care for the needy, but rather that's the responsibility of the church.
Oh, yes, I'm sure that if the Roman government had insisted on caring for the poor, Jesus would have raised HOLY hell, and would have inveighed against rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
I can see it now. Jesus to Caesar: "You bastard! How DARE you intrude on our ability to watch people starve in the streets and rot from leprosy! Go mind your own business and let us suffer in our moral superiority. And just for that we're not going to support your damned government anymore. You want us to render unto Caesar, you better stick to increasing the Defense budget and stop this socialist pandering."
What utter CRAP! The Jews would have welcomed such a government and in fact had there been such a government that also respected their religious differences from the dominant culture, there would have been no oppression from which a messiah would need to rescue the jews in the first place. They were not in the least concerned that government might be too "socialistic."
How so? During those periods in their history when the Jews were not under foreign domination, they had their own government. What was their government? It was a theocracy that made it a civic AND religious requirement to aid the poor. Not only did the Temple provide for the poor, but individuals were required by law to help the poor as a matter of course in their daily lives. There was no separation of church and state and that was not only accepted by the Jews, it was embraced. The reason a messiah was expected was to free the Jews from those who had usurped their theocratic government and replaced it with their own theocracy.
Jesus' advice to pay taxes was not in any way advocation of separation between church and state per se, as if somehow he imagined that somehow some unheard of fantasy secular government that didn't even exist was better than a theocracy. It was a practical matter that was necessary for survival. He might as well have said, "If you know what is good for you, you will pay your Roman taxes, and yes, that's okay with me, because you're not going to be able to accomplish anything on my behalf hanging from a cross. I'm not here to sacrifice you on the altar of piety."
We have separation of Church and State because the writers of the constitution formed a secular government, separate and apart from the religious culture within which it uneasily co-existed. It has nothing to do with what Jesus said about the Roman government in 1 C.E. It had everything to do with what King George had to say in the 18th century.
You cannot superimpose the Roman government and ancient Jewish society onto the United States of America. The reason we in the United States separate church and state is because we, the governed - without regard to our respective religions or absence thereof - decided to do so.
Jesus had nothing whatsoever to do with it, no matter how many times a single sentence he uttered is interpreted to the contrary, and even if the founders believed Jesus' words supported the secular government they created. They certainly did not interpret those words to mean they could not create a government that provided for the same general welfare that more autocratic governments had left to the penury of religious benevolence. They were deep thinkers, not sound bite con artists.