Randall Balmer: Politicians and the Bible Have Conflicting Message on Immigrants
Randall Balmer
For the Valley News
Sunday, August 3, 2014
(Published in print: Sunday, August 3, 2014)
The images are searing, the sto¬ries nothing short of tragic. Thousands of women and children have been detained at the border between Texas and Mexico.
They tell harrowing stories of harassment by gangs, of family members killed or simply “missing.” Assault. Grinding poverty. The condi¬tions in such places as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are so unbearable that these immigrants, including unaccompanied children, many of them orphans, have left everything behind for a perilous journey north across Mexico to the United States. Some have acted on a rumor that the American government has offered a brief window for asylum. They were apprehended at the border and are now confined in facilities across the Southwest, from Texas to California. Some are living in dog kennels, waiting. Waiting for what? Provisions. Rest. Safety. Reuniting with family. A glimmer of hope. The dread of deportation.
The Obama administration has asked Congress for several billion dol¬lars to deal with the problem, which apparently means little more than accelerating the deportation process. The governor of Texas has deployed National Guard troops to the border and surveyed the area from a helicop¬ter.
This humanitarian crisis has brought out the best in many Americans. Various religious and relief organizations have provided food and medical supplies. Glenn Beck has dis¬patched truckloads of teddy bears and soccer balls to detention centers.
But the crisis has also provided politicians ample opportunity for demagoguery. When Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, asked Americans to recognize “the spark of divinity” in these displaced children, reminding us that “we are all God’s children,” Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, mocked Pelosi. Palin later expressed compassion for immigrants in “horrendous condi¬tions,” although her solution was to ramp up deportation; she suggested that President Obama had orchestrat¬ed the crisis and used the issue once
But the crisis has also provided politicians ample opportunity for demagoguery.
Texas Congressman Louis Gohmert compared the influx of immigrant children to D-Day at Normandy and demanded that the administration “use whatever means,” including troops and military hard¬ware, to stanch the invasion. “Our continued existence is at risk with what’s going on at the southern bor¬der,” Gohmert declared in a speech on the House floor. He pegged this “vast invasion” of immigrants at “hundreds of thousands.”
Like Palin, Gohmert is a darling of both the Tea Party and the Religious Right. In 2011, Gohmert introduced a resolution that would designate the first weekend in May as “Ten Commandments Weekend.” The measure would encourage “citizens of all faiths and religious persuasions to reflect on the important impact that the Ten Commandments have had on the people and national character of the United States.” Last November, Gohmert declared that American foreign policy should be based on the Bible.
Similarly, in an appearance on Fox News, Palin said: “Go back to what our founders and our founding docu¬ments meant — they’re quite clear — that we would create law based on the God of the Bible and the Ten Commandments.”
I wonder what the “God of the Bible” would have to say about the immigration crisis at our border. Let’s start with the Hebrew Bible. “Do not oppress a foreigner,” we read in Exodus 23. “You yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” The Hebrew Bible often instructs the Israelites to treat strangers with kind¬ness and compassion precisely because they were once aliens themselves. The corollary here is that United States has often been described as a nation of immigrants, which suggests that all of us (Native Americans excepted) once were foreigners.
Leviticus (one of the Religious Right’s favorite sources because of its apparent condemnation of homo¬sexuality) contains plenty of advice for dealing with aliens. “And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him,” Leviticus 19 reads: “The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strang¬ers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Further along, we find guidance for feeding strangers in our midst: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest,” we read in Leviticus 23. “Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner resid-ing among you.” Still later, Leviticus
suggests that aliens should be treated equally: “You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born.”
In the New Testament, Jesus beck¬oned his followers to care for “the least of these,” a description that I suspect would apply to the refugees at detention centers on the border. Jesus later described those who would be admitted into the kingdom of heaven as those who demonstrated acts of kindness toward people in need. Those gestures would be reck¬oned as though they were directed to Jesus himself: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”
The masses huddled at our south¬ern border represent a humanitarian crisis as well as a formidable political conundrum, especially during a time of partisan rancor, a hobbled presi¬dent and a dysfunctional Congress. Should these youthful immigrants be considered intruders or refugees? Will massive deportation solve the crisis and discourage others from attempt¬ing such a hazardous and uncertain journey? Is a return to violence and gang-infested nations akin to turning away Jewish refugees from the hor¬rors of Nazi Germany? Finally, and most fundamentally, are Americans prepared to welcome foreigners at our southern borders as the Israelites were enjoined to welcome strangers and as Jesus called on his followers to show hospitality to “the least of these”?
We hear a lot of talk these days about the United States as a “Christian nation,” a time when politicians rant about placing the Bible at the center of our public life, even to the point of explicitly guiding our policies. As Palin said, we should “create law based on the God of the Bible.”Maybe, just maybe, before politi¬cians make such declarations, they should take a moment to consider just what the God of the Bible has to say.
Randall Balmer, chair of the Religion Department at Dartmouth College, is working on a documentary about Orthodoxy in Alaska. His most recent book is Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter.
A stranger you shall not do harm, neither shall you violently oppress, for you are no strangers to oppression. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Mitzrayim. Lev. 19:33-34; Ex. 22:20
