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It goes without saying that Jerry here is a craven, power-thirsty shill who reps for religious authoritarianism and doesn’t care what the founder of his ostensible faith actually taught, but this particular example deserves a deep dive.
One of the significant B-plots of the New Testament is the Roman occupation. Israel had been conquered, invaded, occupied, and taxed by a pagan dictator who claimed — literally — to be a god.
Lots of people remember "The Pharisees" from Sunday School as the group of hypocritical religious leaders Jesus often locked horns with. They had a lot of cultural power, and had come to accept Roman occupation because it allowed them to retain that power.
A recurring theme of Jesus' interactions with those religious leaders was their attempts to play word games and trap him in blasphemy (denying Caesar's godhood) or sedition. In short, he was a religious kook and they wanted the cops to take care of it so they wouldn't lose power.
The other recurring theme is Jesus jujitsu-ing it up and turning those traps back on his religious critics, avoiding the gotcha and leaving THEM with a troubling dilemma to resolve. (Obvs, this could be "Socrates was a genius" post-hoc narrative, but the text is what it is.)
The final theme here is the controversial issue of taxes. Rome's expanding empire was profitable, because it taxed the territories it conquered. Israel was no different, and they hated it — one accusation leveled against Jesus was "he hangs out with tax collectors."
These threads come together in the story Jerry referenced. Religious leaders approach Jesus in front of a crowd and asked him if Jews should pay taxes to Rome. If he said "yes," the crowd would be pissed. If he said "no," it'd be sedition and they could get him arrested.
Instead, he asked to see a coin, and showed it to the crowd. It had Caesar's face on it. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's." Lots of ways to interpret that, but to me the key idea is that he centered a different question: "Who do YOU think is in charge?"
So now, two thousand years later, it's rich to hear a religious leader who's clinging to influence by allying himself with an authoritarian politician say that Jesus' words mean we should just shut up and increase our charitable giving while the government abuses the powerless.
