Through the years, political thinkers and theorists have looked to religious thought to validate their specific models of human governance. In regards to Christianity, whereas many theologians have denounced specific attempts to isolate a "Christian" type of earthly governance (most notably St. Augustine), this has in no way deterred claims that Christ was a communist, capitalist, libertarian, anarchist, secularist, and theocrat, among others. There is no political theory or position which does not have its own set of Christian apologists, and with the ability for government to exercise more and more control over the individual with the assistance of modern technology, the question of proper governance remains just as important to the Christian.

Within the Christian tradition, the question of political governance is central to the development of the Lutheran tradition. At a time when institutional hierarchy and the church were one and the same, the Lutheran Reformation radically changed the way people viewed government. Luther found himself the unsuspecting instigator of a peasant revolt as a result of his preaching that "[a] Christian is a perfectly free lord, subject to none", and that was only the beginning. Entire new ways of viewing politics and governance developed out of the same ideas that restructured our church and our theology. Lutheran ethicists now uphold this heritage by responding en force to the way Lutheran heritage and beliefs inform the thought on modern politics.