Why Christians Ignore What The Bible Says About Immigration
(ANALYSIS) Nothing can provoke anger quicker than mercy, when it’s directed to the wrong kind of people.
Marking the church’s Year of Jubilee, Pope Leo XIV invoked biblical language calling for kindness to migrants as human beings made in the image of God. There’s nothing the least bit controversial about this. It’s what the Bible says, what Christians have always believed, what official Catholic teaching makes explicit.
The pope did not call for countries to stop enforcing their borders, nor did he give any specific policy proposals for how a nation should best balance security and mercy. He simply called on Christians to refuse harshness or mistreatment of vulnerable people.
Some people didn’t like this.
The blowback the pope received was not from fellow bishops or clergy or, as far as I know, from any large numbers of churchgoing Roman Catholics. Instead, political activists and social media conflict entrepreneurs blasted him, not so much for what he said as for the fact that he spoke to the issue at all.
Difficulty speaking to immigration is not a specifically Catholic problem — in fact, it may be more of a problem for other Christian groups. After all, every pope in recent years and many bishops have spoken consistently to this point.
And, of course, the pope is the pope. He can’t be fired the way the pastor of a storefront Bible church in Aurora, Illinois, or Athens, Alabama, can. Some of these pastors are trying to figure out how to care for people in their communities who want to hear the gospel but are fearful of being arrested by immigration officials on their way to church.
This is not a simple matter of “Well, people who broke the law should be accountable.” Some of these people are following the right process — but may be unable to show up for court to adjudicate their cases for fear of being arrested in line.
Some of them have broken no laws at all; they are Americans but have someone in their household, maybe a mother or a father, who is not. And some of them were doing everything right — filling out the right documents, working to provide for their families—when their asylum claims or refugee status was abruptly withdrawn.
You can read the rest of this piece at Christianity Today.
Russell Moore is editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.