By Mark Wingfield
Most Baptist pastors I know would rather preach a month of sermons on stewardship than give even the appearance of making a political statement. But who determines what’s political and what’s theological?
These days, it seems to be the politically motivated who have drawn the lines. Try to make a theological point about an issue of the day, and you’ll likely get called out by someone with political motivations — unless, of course, your theology matches their politics.
Because of our Baptist belief in religious liberty for all and the importance of separating church and state, most pastors work hard to leave politics out of the pulpit. Sometimes, that results in leaving theology out of the pulpit, too.
Those on the far left and far right seem to have fewer qualms about these distinctions. Our most conservative brothers and sisters have felt compelled to address what they perceive to be fundamental moral issues around abortion and homosexuality, saying their sanctity-of-life theology should inform political choices. Our more liberal brothers and sisters have felt compelled to address what they perceive to be fundamental moral issues around civil rights, saying sanctity-of-life theology should motivate political choices.
And those of us in the middle have worked hard to avoid looking like those on the right and the left who we believe may have crossed the line. The result: Silence on anything that might be construed by someone somewhere as political.
But now we as a nation face a line between biblical teaching and political platforms that has the potential to put Christian centrists on the horns of a dilemma. That issue, of course, is immigration.
Even Pope Francis — who is accused of being a liberal by conservative Catholics and accused of being too conservative by liberal Catholics — has waded in forcefully to the immigration debate. In his address to a joint session of Congress last week, he urged Americans to remember the Golden Rule and to “avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome.”
Never in most of our lifetimes has there been such anxiety about immigrants. And yet most pulpits are silent.
Those who claim to read the Bible most faithfully and believe it most strictly cannot escape the truth that both Jewish and Christian Scriptures have quite a lot to say about welcoming immigrants. Dozens of Bible passages admonish us to treat immigrants with kindness. These range from Exodus (“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt”) to Romans (“Extend hospitality to strangers”).
Despite the biblical witness, national polls tell us that evangelical Christians are among the chief supporters of candidates who want to take the hardest line against immigrants. This is happening not just in the United States but around the world. Walls both physical and philosophical are being built or designed to keep people out. But these walls cannot be built with Bible verses.
Granted, modern-day immigration is a complex problem. And it’s not a problem we can just pray away. There are real reasons people are fleeing Syria, just as there are real reasons people have been leaving Mexico and Central American countries. Addressing the worldwide immigration crisis requires political and social willpower. But it also requires theological honesty.
We recently visited the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. Although I’ve visited there multiple times before, each visit reveals new and startling reminders of the atrocities committed and the seeming indifference the rest of the world showed.
Here’s what one of the story boards in this memorial reminds us: “Between 1933 and 1938, about 40,000 German Jews found sanctuary in America — a fraction of those who sought to enter. The United States could have absorbed many more, but it did not. Bound by immigration quotas, influenced by popular anti-immigration sentiment, and hampered by the anti-Semitism at the State Department, the United States government remained callous in its unwillingness to help.”
Who among us today would not want to travel back in time and make a case for saving more innocent victims from the gas chambers? Who among us today would not want to go back and join Dietrich Bonhoeffer in saving human lives?
We can’t go back in time, but we can make sure our great-grandchildren won’t wish they, too, could come back in time and do what we were unwilling to do. We can make a difference in our time. We’ve just got to figure out where the line is, what is theological and what is political, when to exercise caution and when to be prophetic.
For some pastors I know, that line came into bright focus with the now-famous photo published around the world (but not in most U.S. publications) of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi washed up dead on an ocean beach while fleeing violence in Syria with his family. In that photo, the dead Kurdish preschooler is seen wearing the kind of Velcro-strap shoes every American parent of preschoolers knows. To which one pastor friend wrote with anguish: “My son wears Velcro shoes.”
Just maybe, there’s the line, and it is a Golden Rule: Let us speak up for the children of others, as we would have others speak up for our children.