How Some Evangelical Leaders Are Fighting for Refugees

The United States is a land of immigrants and always has been. Immigrants have made numerous positive contributions to America’s evolving culture from the beginning, and they are continuing to do so. Yet, many radical right-wing Christians are loudly demanding that the U.S. send today’s immigrants home. Given this outcry, it’s refreshing to see that some evangelical leaders are fighting for refugees and making significant contributions to help them.

These evangelical leaders have the right idea. When Christ told us, “Love thy neighbor,” he didn’t qualify his command by saying “Love thy neighbor if it doesn’t inconvenience you” or “Love thy neighbor if it’s easy.”

Christians should treat the immigrants at our borders with dignity and compassion, as Christ would have us do.

Refugees from central America, in particular, face problems that have no easy solutions. They are fleeing violence, crushing poverty, limited educational opportunities and little access to good healthcare in their native countries.

America’s white settlers left Europe several centuries ago because they also faced serious problems. They sought religious freedom, political autonomy and greater economic opportunities, among other things.

When today’s self-satisfied American Christians place immigrants in cages or coldly turn them away at the border, it makes me wonder….

• What if Native Americans had turned away the ancestors of these Christians?
• How are these so-called Christians’ attitudes Christ-like?
• Is there a ray of hope regarding immigration given the blatant hatred of some people who claim to follow Christ? Actually, there is.

Some Evangelical Leaders are Fighting for Refugees

Hatred is obvious when people who claim to be Christians disregard Christ’s teachings about treating our neighbors as ourselves. (Remember Jesus’ story about the Good Samaritan? The Samaritan and the Jew weren’t neighbors in the usual sense of the word, but Christ said they were neighbors nonetheless.)

Nor are “Christians” Christ-like when they treat other humans like animals, label them “rapists” and “predators” and put them in cages. (Remember Trump and the caged children?)

Yet, a ray of hope regarding immigration was reported in an article posted this week by The Conversation. The media outlet says American faith leaders – including some evangelicals – are central to a movement to protect immigrants’ rights.

I consider it newsworthy that some evangelical leaders are fighting for refugees. We will get to their work and a new book that describes it shortly, but first, let’s take a closer look at the situation.

The Conversation says “…opinion surveys consistently show that white Christians, especially evangelicals, are among the most likely groups in the U.S. to hold anti-immigration sentiments.”

Christ must be quite unhappy that we don’t love our neighbors as ourselves. Rather than loving others, many of us demonize all Muslims because of 9/11 and dehumanize all Hispanics because of their skin color.

The truth is that most Muslims and Hispanics are like most Christians (in fact, many Hispanics are Christians). Like most human beings, we want to live in a nice home, have a good family, and put food on the table and clothes on our backs.

Blatant Bigotry

The blatant bigotry in the U.S. is at odds with the radical right’s insistence that America is a great nation. We have no right to consider ourselves “great” in view of our bloody history regarding African Americans and Native Americans.

We haven’t, as a nation, admitted our sins and atoned for them in any real way. We need forgiveness for…

• Harassing immigrants
• Using demeaning language to depict immigrants or anyone else
• Convincing gullible Americans that a “cabal of Western elites and Jews are promoting migration in order to replace white people and their political power with nonwhite immigrants” (per The Conversation).
• Supporting governors who used taxpayer money to ship more than 10,000 immigrants to New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C., since 2022.
• And citing the Bible to justify their hatred.

Christians & Un-Christian Behavior

Is it fair to target radical right-wing Christians for their bigotry? Yes. Many – if not most — have earned it.

James Dobson, for example, is a well-known Christian leader and author who says he cares about the immigrants at the U.S.-Mexican border. Yet he’s ready to send them to uncertain futures at home.

Dobson says in a Relevant online magazine article that his heart cries for them. Yet, he gives no evidence of being heartbroken. And after he finishes “crying,” he fails to mention that “the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., which began dropping in 2010, is currently at a 25-year low.” He also fails to mention that the decrease began during Democrat Barack Obama’s administration.

The Relevant article points out that Dobson’s stance on immigration is “one of naked terror and, yes, bigotry. When Jesus called us to the radical attitude of loving our neighbor, He did not specify that this neighbor must be literate, healthy and have marketable skills.

“In fact, Jesus said in Matthew 25 that He himself identified with just such people and told his disciples that ‘whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Make no mistake: when Dobson claims this ‘worldwide wave of poverty’ will take us down, he is laying the blame at the feet of Jesus.’”

Biblical Stories of Immigration

The Bible is filled with stories about immigrants:

• Jesus, Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt to escape King Herod, who wanted to kill the Christ Child (Matthew 2:13-23).
• Lot and his family fled Sodom when God destroyed it (Genesis 19)
• Abraham migrated to Canaan at God’s command (Genesis 23).
• Jacob and his family traveled to Egypt to escape a famine (Genesis 46).
• Ruth migrated to Judah with her mother-in-law Naomi.
• And the list goes on.

God’s Resistance: A Ray of Hope Regarding Immigration

Despite the ugly pictures that some Christians paint of refugees, the co-authors of God’s Resistance say, “Our work with faith-based, pro-immigration advocacy groups points toward a different reality.”

They describe how some evangelical leaders are fighting for refugees. In fact, faith-based, pro-immigration advocacy groups – including some evangelicals – have been active for more than 100 years.

(God’s Resistance: Mobilizing Faith to Defend Immigrants is co-authored by sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen; sociology professor Brad Christerson of Biola University; dean and associate professor of mission and global transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary, Rev. Alexia Salvatierra; and historian and immigration lawyer Robert Chao Romero, UCLA.)

It’s unfortunate that haters are much better known than people who are trying to make a positive difference.

Hispanic Christians’ Efforts

“Historically, Latinx Christian leaders have been at the forefront of immigrants’ rights in the U.S.,” the co-authors wrote in The Conversation post.

“For example, Mexican-America Catholic leaders Alonso Perales and Cleofax Calleros applied Catholic social teaching, such as the inherent equality of all human beings, to civil rights struggles.”

Inherent equality of all human beings is a phrase worth remembering, especially if you consider yourself a Christian. Perhaps we should tell ourselves that God makes no distinctions until we accept it.

The God’s Resistance co-authors explain how Perales and Calleros have been a ray of hope regarding immigration. One major achievement was their work toward founding several “leading organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Catholic Welfare Conference, which played key roles in the landmark civil rights cases, such as Mendez v. Westminster and Hernandez v. Texas.”

Hispanic Christians also played key roles in “the immigrant-led farmworkers movement in the 1960s,” the co-authors say. Two of the leaders – Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta – incorporated Catholic social teaching in the successful campaign to unionize farmworkers.

In the 1980s, faith leaders from the U.S. and central America successfully challenged Ronald Reagan’s asylum policies toward people fleeing civil wars in central America. The faith leaders also were “partially responsible for the termination of U.S. military funding for wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.”

The co-authors of God’s Resistance add that Hispanic Christians also founded “some of the largest and most influential immigrant rights organizations that exist today” including the Southern California-based:

• Central American Resource Center
• Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights
• National Day Laborers Organizing Network

A Ray of Hope Regarding Immigration

“This religiously inspired vision can provide motivation, clarity, hope and endurance in the long and often discouraging task of mobilizing for social change.

“Religious or spiritual practices provide strength in particular to marginalized communities, which an emerging group of scholars is calling ‘spiritual capital.’” Spiritual capital means that religious beliefs and spirituality can give people strength when they need to fight injustice.

Pro-immigrant faith-based groups help refugees by bringing them into contact with non-immigrants, churchgoers into contact with activists, and activists into contact with politicians who have faith commitments. These connections are crucial.

Additionally, faith leaders personally connect with people seeking asylum, as well as detainees and their families. They provide:

• Help with basics such as housing, jobs, transportation and legal support
• Share immigrants’ stories with decision-makers
• Develop ministerial and discipleship relationships with ICE officials who are Christian and government officials.

The co-authors of God’s Resistance say that “faith-rooted organizing has unique strengths that add significant power to movements for social change.”

Scripture to Remember

Christians who support the inhumane treatment of immigrants need to remember Old and New Testaments commands to treat immigrants and other strangers as neighbors. And most importantly, they need to remember these biblical directives:

• “You shall love… your neighbor as yourself.”
• “I was an immigrant and you welcomed me.”
• “Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me.” – Jesus Christ