Blessed Are The White Refugees

A red carpet is rolled out on an airport tarmac, ending at a doormat that reads "WHITE REFUGEES ONLY." A red MAGA-style hat lies nearby. — DALL-E

Welcome to America, Where Whiteness is a Visa

Congratulations, white South Africans — your MAGA cosplay has earned you a one-way ticket to the land of exceptionalism, expletives, and ex-president worship. While actual refugees—fleeing war, famine, and real persecution—sit in bureaucratic purgatory, Trump’s America has rolled out the red (white) carpet for a very specific group: Afrikaners. Yes, the descendants of apartheid architects are now being classified as “persecuted,” and no, this isn’t satire. Not yet, anyway.

In a move that managed to be both predictable and appalling, the Trump administration’s refugee priorities have shifted from “the huddled masses yearning to breathe free” to “the pale ones who already had all the land.” An executive order fast-tracked white South African refugees into the U.S. on government-chartered flights, citing their supposed victimhood in post-apartheid South Africa. If you’re wondering when victimhood became such a white-hot commodity, the answer is: whenever it started polling well in conservative media circles.

But amidst all this nonsense, something miraculous happened.

The Episcopal Church — yes, that bastion of well-heeled liturgy and genteel theology — did something ballsy. They said no.

Let me say that again for the evangelicals in the back:
They. Said. No.

And not the kind of “no” that hides behind committee reports or softly-worded press releases. They publicly cut ties with the federal faith-based refugee resettlement program rather than be complicit in this racist rebranding of humanitarianism. They gave up the money. They walked away from power. They chose integrity over influence. It’s almost… Christlike? (Let’s not get carried away.)

According to Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, the request to resettle Afrikaners “crossed a moral line” — especially given the church’s long-standing ties with Desmond Tutu and the anti-apartheid Anglican movement. In other words, the Episcopal Church remembered its history, its theology, and its spine. In this political moment, that counts as a miracle.

Meanwhile, evangelicals are either silent or squirming. Their beloved strongman is weaponizing refugee policy as a delivery system for white grievance, and they can’t even muster a sanctified shrug. The same people who weep for persecuted Christians in the Middle East have nothing to say about the administration ghosting brown and Black asylum seekers. Why? Because those refugees don’t vote Republican. Or look good on a Fox News chyron.

It’s telling that Trump’s administration, which otherwise froze refugee resettlement and cut payments to faith-based aid groups, is suddenly able to move mountains when it comes to white South African refugees. Turns out the system isn’t broken — it’s just selectively efficient. For the right people. With the right skin tone. Supporting the right politics.

This isn’t about compassion. It’s about laundering white nationalism through the baptismal font. It’s about using the language of religious freedom to prop up racialized immigration policy. It’s about asking the Church to be complicit in a lie — and finally, one church said “hell no.”

This is what it looks like when deconstruction goes institutional. When a denomination decides that complicity with injustice — even if it’s federally funded — is too high a price to pay. When the Church stops enabling fascism and starts asking, “What would Jesus actually do?”

And sure, the Episcopal Church isn’t perfect. They’re still figuring it out like the rest of us. But walking away from state-sponsored refugee whitewashing? That’s not performative allyship. That’s ethics.

In a faith-industrial complex addicted to influence, it’s refreshing to see a church say no — not just in prayer, but in practice. Because sometimes the most Christlike thing a church can do is walk away from Caesar’s table and remember it was never theirs to begin with.