February 9, 2017

Is the church biased against Trump's travel order?

This is a follow-up post to my last post on whether the church has been too political lately, especially in light of two recent statements published by our Bishops criticizing the President's travel restriction on people from 7 Muslim-majority countries.

So, you are thinking, Pastor, I can't take this anymore.  There's too much rancor on both sides, and I just don't want to think about it.  Well, I agree with you on that score.  All these issues are cutting to the core of our values as citizens.  And we can get very emotional thinking about it all.  But I encourage you to take heart!  These issues are also questioning our values as Christians, and the clarification we gain from thinking about these issues should help us in living out our baptismal covenants with God.

So, at the risk of turning off more people by addressing the church's criticism of the travel ban, I venture into one more side of it.  Some have wondered if it's true, as President Trump said, that the executive order is basically the same thing as an executive order by then President Obama in 2011.  If so, then the church is really showing it's partisan colors when it criticizes one order, but not the other, right?

Well, "basically the same as" is too imprecise to disqualify the church's response.  Reports have indicated that Trump's order is different from Obama's.  I'm not going to go into the details, but you can read a tidy review of the distinctions from this fact-checking website. The bottom line is that Obama's order was in response to credible threats, and simply slowed down the vetting process for Iraqi refugees alone.  Plus, the public didn't find out that Obama had done this until 2013.  Trump's order closes our border to all people, with exceptions for religious minorities, from the 7 countries, and is not based on any direct evidence that there may be past or future terrorists among those wanting to enter the US.  Also, in the case of Trump's travel ban, people have lost their visas, presumably for good.  And all of this with no warning to anybody that these changes in policy were about to take effect.

Bottom line: Obama's order caused some Iraqi refugees inconvenience, perhaps even frustration. Trump's order turns people away, and doesn't give any indication of what will happen to those turned away when (or if) the ban is lifted in three months.  It's pretty inhospitable.  Think of all the ways the administration could have mitigated the effects of such a temporary ban for those who already have received permission to enter the country.  That would have taken the wind out of all criticism.  But the church doesn't want refugees to suffer unfairly, and it believes that given the details of the case, the new order causes unjust suffering.  Our respectful care for foreigners is a command from God in the Bible, as in Exodus 22:21; "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were resident aliens in Egypt."  And yes, a 'resident alien' would be someone who has been through our vetting process and received a visa.  Hence the Bishops' letters.

If you've read this far, I honor your willingness to listen to your church, even if you disagree with its actions in this case.  I add here that even evangelical church leaders, (whose interpretations of the Bible are often different from ours) have recently voiced their concern over Trump's order.  That makes for a pretty comprehensive condemnation of the order from our country's religious leaders.

Other questions might be floating in your minds, such as whether the church fears enough for the safety of the country, or whether the church is gullible with regard to the threat of Islamic terrorism.  These are good questions, and the answers to these questions lie at the heart of our political disagreements right now.  Maybe these questions would be good topics for further blog posts.  I invite you to ask questions you have in the comments below.

Finally, you may be thinking that I don't seem to have a problem with the church's position on this.  Well, that may be true, but I've been trained in the same theological tradition that the church's leaders have been trained.  Needless to say there is a lot of agreement among Lutheran pastors on this issue. Nevertheless, I humbly ask you to separate in your mind what you know of my politics from the facts of the case as the church sees it.  The church feels called to stand up for those whom God looks out for, period.  I'm trying to represent this prophetic stand to you in a way that you will at least wrestle with it in your heart.  Thanks for reading!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your constructive comments are always welcome...

ELCA Sanctuary action 3: the protest at ICE offices in Milwaukee

The protest march to the ICE office on Aug 7, 2019, was not technically an ‘official’ ELCA  Churchwide  assembly action, since it was led b...