Immigration

The Election, Your Spirituality, & the Soul of our Nation #15

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At first blush, the Bible is entirely pro-immigration. We can pile up dozens of verses about the embrace of the foreigner, the sojourner. “The alien who lives near you shall be to you as the native born; you shall love him as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34) – or think of the way Jesus described the way those who will be saved treat aliens: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). After all, Mary and Joseph, with the child Jesus in tow, were refugees themselves. Welcome everyone! seems clearly to be the Bible standard.

But then the Bible also exhibits a wariness of strangers, people just across the border: a deep distrust of the Edomites, Philistines, Syrians, on and on. King Solomon brought in an immigrant wife, the Pharaoh’s daughter – and she brought her foreign gods and priests with her, a toxic presence condemned by the Bible. And there’s simple law and order: we believe laws are to be obeyed – so all illegal immigrants, on Christian principles, should be sent home immediately, right? “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities” (Romans 13:1).

What is a Christian to think? How is a Christian to vote on this issue? This is a maddeningly bipartisan issue, as both parties have, when in power, failed miserably to achieve a sensible, fair and workable policy on our borders and immigration. We the Church aren’t in charge of or responsible for national borders anyhow. We (as Churches) might have a policy to welcome any stranger and help anyone from wherever (and we should!) – which is very different from a nation’s responsibility to make decisions about who enters our country from other countries and gets to stay.

So I do not have a foggiest idea what our immigration policy should be, or whom to vote for who might be wisest on this question. I am positive though, as a pastor, that God still wants us to care about the issue – or, as always, remembering what an “issue” really is: simply people. Hitler and the Nazis spewed propaganda saying the Jews – all Jews! – were thieves, kidnappers, cheats and rapists. But virtually none were. As Christians, our predisposition is to see the image of God in everyone, and we refuse to denigrate a mass of foreigners. As I type, an immigrant is cutting the grass next door. An immigrant kindly handed me my dry cleaning a few minutes ago. Immigrants worship with us.

We also (as Christians in the Churches that stick close to Jesus) strive to and go out of our way to show kindness and welcome to strangers of all kinds, many of whom are immigrants. I am very proud that members of our church have met immigrants (very legal immigrants! There is such a thing) at the uptown bus station to offer snacks, water, sweaters, and kindness; all I’ve spoken with are literally running for their lives, risking life and limb, and enduring immense hardship, to save and give hope to their families – which is precisely what you or I would do.

I am proud that our church has hosted events for imperiled people in our world who’ve fled their homelands and wound up in Charlotte: Ukrainians, Montagnards, Venezuelans, Hondurans, Mexicans, and more. Churches all over America are engaging in significant ministries of welcome and aid – something that pleases the heart of God. Conservative evangelicals and mainline progressives are increasingly united in their determination to welcome refugees and press for immigration reform.

This is all in the spirit of all Jesus and the early Christians were about. There’s another wrinkle that applies to us as Americans as much as it did for the Israelites – whom God told repeatedly, “The stranger shall be to you as the native; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers once” (Leviticus 19:34). “Love the sojourner, for you once were sojourners” (Deuteronomy 10:19); “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you were strangers once” (Exodus 22:21). Israel entered the Promised Land as immigrants from another place – so God urges them to be kind and welcoming to immigrants.

America itself is a nation of immigrants. Way back, we all came from somewhere. The records from Ellis Island are free online; I’ve found quite a few Howells there. While there has always been nagging prejudice against the Irish or Italians or Middle Eastern people and now Hispanics or Arabs, we never evade the eloquence of the poem Emma Lazarus composed for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, which so many immigrants passed as they arrived on our shores: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Isn’t that at the core of the Soul of our Nation, at least at its noblest?

Again, our default mood, our holy spiritual disposition as Christians doesn’t settle policy. Security matters. Israel must have had the occasional immigrant who proved to be a criminal.  But the baseline way we look at them, feel about them, and treat them is to be Christlike. Good policy might just follow.

The Rev. James C. Howell is senior pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. This post is republished with permission from the author's blog.