What Does God Say? Border Crossing, Political Asylum, and the Constitution by Rubén Rosario Rodríguez

Since the beginning of the school year, I have been greeted by a gigantic highway billboard of Franklin Graham on my way to and from the Saint Louis University campus. On September 21, 2021, Franklin Graham brought the “Route 66 God Loves You Tour” to St. Louis, promising an evening of hope amidst the pandemic: “There are a lot of people who are afraid. People have lost their jobs. Many people have been sick and loved ones have died. I just want people to know that God hasn’t forgotten them.” Setting aside the obvious elephant in the room—is it wise to host a stadium event in St. Louis at a time when COVID cases are surging due to the Delta variant and St. Louis County has had to reinstate a face covering order?—I have longstanding issues with Franklin Graham’s ability to read and interpret the good news of Jesus Christ, and question whether or not he is able to recognize the love of God. The Bible is explicit about how we as Christians ought to treat political exiles and refugees, as evident from Jesus’s admonition to care for “the least of these” (Matthew 25), grounded in the Torah teaching about foreigners living in our midst: “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21, NRSV).

Yet, early in 2017, after one of President Trump’s first executive orders imposing a travel ban on seven majority Muslim nations, Franklin Graham told The Huffington Post: “It’s not a biblical command for the country to let everyone in who wants to come, that’s not a Bible issue” (January 25, 2017). The irony that a Christian evangelist whose not-for-profit ministry is named Samaritan’s Purse after the despised foreigner in one of Jesus’s parables who went out of his way to help a stranger who’d been left for dead by the side of the road is clearly lost on Graham. Samaritan’s Purse is an internationally recognized and widely applauded humanitarian relief agency that provides relief to victims of war, poverty, and persecution in over 100 countries. And yet, when asked directly by The Huffington Post “whether it’s possible to reconcile Trump’s temporary ban on refugees with the Christian commandment to welcome, clothe and feed the stranger, and to be a Good Samaritan to those in need,” Graham responded: “We want to love people, we want to be kind to people, we want to be considerate, but we have a country and a country should have order and there are laws that relate to immigration and I think we should follow those laws. Because of the dangers we see today in this world, we need to be very careful.” To put these comments in their proper context, they were made during President Trump’s nationwide tour thanking the conservative voter base for his electoral victory.

Exit polls in 2016 showed 81 percent of white evangelical Christians voted for Trump believing they were doing God’s will by supporting a “conservative” candidate promising to outlaw abortion, even when their candidate acted in ways contrary to the teachings of the Gospel (i.e., Donald Trump’s dalliance with a porn star). By undermining the very notion of truth Trump sought political gains, using social media to draw attention away from real news. Unfortunately, far too many Christians were complicit in this propaganda war, setting aside their commitment to truth for what they perceived to be a political victory on abortion. On January 6, 2021, a day when Christians around the world celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany, armed subversives wearing camouflage, carrying Confederate flags, and brandishing the symbols and colors of white nationalism, stormed the Capitol building accompanied by the hymn “How Great is Our God” while waving “JESUS 2020” placards, flags brandishing the Christian fish symbol, “In God we Trust” banners, and everywhere posters and flags with the motto: “Jesus is My Savior, Trump is My President.” Lost amidst the day’s many atrocities, which included the deaths of four rioters and one police officer, the nation witnessed the raising of a large cross on the Capitol steps: “The conflation of Trump and Jesus was a common theme at the rally.” The political theater centered around a “Jericho March,” an imitation of the biblical account of the Israelites laying siege to the city of Jericho in the book of Joshua, complete with the blowing of shofars as they circled the Capitol building. Defying all logic, a majority of Evangelical Christians continued to support Trump after the Capitol Riot.

By embracing the nativist discourse of the Trump administration, conservative Christians have abandoned their core beliefs in order to excuse the dehumanizing treatment of fellow human beings created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). So why are so many Christians silent—and by extension complicit—in Trump’s media manipulations? Especially in light of what the Bible has to say about foreigners and refugees.

Jesus told a parable about God’s eternal judgment in which God is compared to a shepherd who separates his flock into sheep and goats (Matthew 25:31-46). Among the many moral duties left undone for which the “goats” are condemned Jesus explicitly mentions: “I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in.” Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew; his Bible was in Hebrew; he worshiped in the Temple and synagogue; and his cultural identity as a Jew was indelibly marked by the Passover from Egypt, which is why a central message of the Torah is welcoming the stranger: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33-34). Furthermore, when King Herod threatened to kill the newborn Messiah, God led Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus back into Egypt to live as strangers in a foreign land (Matthew 2:13-15). Given all this, how can anyone who calls him or herself “Christian,” and strives to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, condone the race-baiting and xenophobic tactics espoused by the country’s right wing?

If these conservative Christians won’t listen to the Bible, will they heed the US Constitution? The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect the constitutional right of an undocumented foreigner to seek asylum in this country; the majority Supreme Court decision in Yick Wo v. Hopkins clearly states: “The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is not confined to the protection of citizens. It says: ‘Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’ These provisions are universal in their application, to all persons within the territorial jurisdiction, without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality…” In other words, the constitutional protections that state “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” applies to ALL people in the United States—regardless of how they got here—not just to US citizens.

As a native-born US citizen from Puerto Rico, I have endured racist taunts to “go back where I came from” my whole life. Confronted with President Trump’s role in perpetuating the “birther” conspiracy questioning Barack Obama’s US citizenship, or his mocking on Twitter of four Congressional Representatives, all women of color: Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, because of their race and ethnicity, I am most troubled by the unquestioned support from Trump’s conservative Christian electoral base as an affront to foundational Christian truths. US Christians need to retain control of the national narrative on immigration by embodying the Biblical mandate to welcome the stranger and daring to speak truth when confronted with hate speech and propaganda. Why does such hateful speech and political manipulation work? Why, despite losing the Presidential election in 2020, is Trump still setting the political agenda for US conservatives? The answer is obvious. It isn’t just President Trump who has a racism problem; the entire nation—including a frighteningly large number of “Christians”—have a racism problem. Trump has simply given such views mainstream acceptance on the biggest possible stage.

N.B. The “Missouri Welcomes You” image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. You are free to copy, distribute, and transmit the work so long as you give proper attribution. The photographer is identified as: Thomas R Machnitzki (thomas@machnitzki.com). The image of the crowd storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license; the photographer is identified as: Tyler Merbler. The image has been enlarged and cropped to highlight the “Jesus is My Savior, Trump is My President” sign.

The Rev. Dr. Rubén Rosario Rodríguez, a graduate of both Union Theological Seminary in New York and Princeton Theological Seminary, is a Professor of Systematic Theology in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. His work bridges systematic/constructive theology, theological ethics, and political theology, and he is currently working on a monograph entitled Theological Fragments for a Fractured World (forthcoming from Westminster John Knox Press). He is the author of Racism and God Talk: A Latino/a Perspective (New York University Press, 2008), Christian Martyrdom and Political Violence: A Comparative Theology with Judaism and Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Dogmatics After Babel: Beyond the Theologies of Word and Culture, and editor of the T&T Clark Handbook of Political Theology (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2019).