Politics in the Kingdom of God: Immigration
- Max Tyrrell
- Jun 18
- 40 min read
Updated: Jul 9
Rev. John Roop, Assisting Priest at Apostles Anglican Church in
Knoxville, Tennessee. Edited by Max Tyrrell, parishioner
Foreword
Drawing from and building on the work of New Testament scholar Richard B. Hayes (see especially “The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, New Creation” (MVNT) San Francisco, California: Harper San Francisco, ISBN 978-0-0606-3796-8), this document explores how Christians can develop and live a Christian ethic in a fallen world, particularly concerning political issues like immigration.
The author notes three primary sources of ethical authority for Christians: Scripture, Tradition, and the Christian Community, with Scripture being the ultimate authority. It then details four modes in which Scripture provides moral instruction: rules, principles, paradigms (examples), and a symbolic world (ethos/worldview). To aid in interpreting Scripture, six "focal images" are introduced: Creation, Covenant, Exodus (from the Old Testament), and Cross, Community, and Coming Kingdom (from the New Testament as presented by Hays).
The document argues that Christianity is inherently political because it seeks to embody the just and righteous rule of God. It addresses the difficulty of discussing political issues within the church and emphasizes the need to approach them as moral and ethical issues. The author suggests that the Church's engagement with social and political issues should be guided by worship, prayer, theology, and prophetic witness. It also highlights the importance of gifted and trained lay Christians to apply Gospel-informed expertise to worldly problems, rather than relying solely on clergy for specific policy solutions.
Using immigration as a case study, the document examines two sets of principles for addressing the crisis: those from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT). Both emphasize the dignity of the human person and the common good, drawing from a holistic understanding of Scripture and the Church's worship and prayer. The document concludes that while the Church cannot solve the immigration crisis systemically, it has a role in prophetic witness, presenting moral principles, forming godly laity, and holding politicians accountable for just solutions.
Editor's Note:
An instructional series, developed and led by Fr. Roop, was presented in advance of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, which I attended. Our congregation comprises a significant number of staunch conservatives, alongside a smaller faction of politically left-leaning / centrists. The clergy and attendees alike recognized the contentious nature of the topic, yet commendably, they embraced the challenge.
I have edited the original lesson notes by removing some of the parish specific remarks. I have also renamed some of the section headings in an effort to make this a unified document.
The only question that remains unanswered is did these lessons change hearts and minds? Neither Fr. Roop nor I can answer that question. But there is no disputing the fact that this is a position built on a biblically solid foundation.
Author’s Note:
The following material expresses my convictions as a Christian and as an Anglican priest, convictions based on Scripture and the great tradition of the Church. I am certain that neither all Christians nor all Anglican priests (or bishops) would agree with my conclusions. I speak therefore, for myself, and ask others to test carefully against Scripture what I have written. I have drawn heavily from the work and writing of New Testament scholar richard B. Hayes, and I highly commend his book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics.
The material is political in the sense of forming a people for the Kingdom of God, but is decidedly non-partisan. It is intended for Christians across the political spectrum as a call to repentance, as a call to reorientation to Christ and to the way of the Kingdom of Heaven lived out in the midst of the kingdoms of the world. It may also serve to explain a Christian approach to social ethics to those of other faiths or of no religious faith at all.
Lastly I mention one final goal of the paper: to remind all Christians that the water of baptism is thicker and more powerful by far than the blood of tribalism in all its form, not least national and political tribalism.
We have an enemy who uses discord and distrust as weapons against us, but the love of Christ is infinitely more powerful.
Lesson 1 - The Standards of Ethical Authority
The first step in developing and living a Christian ethic is actually wanting to do so. Many of us like the idea of it, but we are a bit afraid of the reality of it, and a bit hesitant to engage in the hard work necessary for it. Old habits engendered by the Fall and the false, rival stories that have formed us, die hard. But, we are called to it, and Christian faithfulness and obedience require it. And, we pray for it: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We will take two steps toward developing a Christian ethic by examining the sources of authority for that ethical standard. How do we find right and wrong in a fallen world, which, of course, includes the fallen political system that governs us? What are the standards of authority?
The Standards of Ethical Authority
Let's start with two basic questions.
1. How does a Christian determine right and wrong?
2. What are the authoritative sources of Christian ethics?
Let's begin with the second question: What are the authoritative sources of Christian ethics?
Where do we look for Christian standards of right and wrong?
Scripture
Historically the Church has considered Scripture to be the ultimate authority for faith and practice, for what to believe and for how to live out that belief in the world. Scripture is the governing ethical authority for the Christian; that is the historical and ecumenical conviction of the Church, and it is the conviction that Anglicans hold, or should hold. Our first and last appeals are always to Scripture. But, Scripture does not always speak directly or unambiguously to each moral issue we encounter. Are there other sources of ethical authority to which we might look in such cases?
Tradition
We do not have to draw solely upon our own limited resources, or even our own reading of Scripture.
The Church embodies an unbroken tradition from the calling of Abram until today. This tradition expresses the mind of the Church - formed by the Holy Spirit - on many moral issues. When Scripture seems silent or perhaps unclear, we may ask if the Church has spoken on the issue. Of course, the Church itself is not always of one mind and voice. What if the Church is divided? Then, we might consider the Vincentian Canon, a method proposed by St. Vincent of Lerins (d. 455) for discerning Christian truth. He proposed that we accept as true "that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all." Essentially, the hallmarks of truth are ubiquity, antiquity, and unanimity. How does this work? If an ethical standard is isolated to a small region and is not widespread throughout the church, it is suspect. If it is novel, appearing only recently in time, and not found throughout Church history, it is suspect. If it is embraced only by the few and not by the many, it is suspect. We look for tenets that have been believed throughout the Christian world, throughout the Christian age, and throughout the Christian body. This isn't a perfect test, but it is helpful.
Christian Community
Because a moral worldview is best discerned and lived out in community, the Christian community itself - the parish, the diocese, the province - serves as an important source of ethical insight, formation, and embodiment. The Holy Spirit works collectively as well as individually. We can take this a step further. In our particular tradition, the parish is governed by a rector, the diocese by a bishop, and the province by the college of bishops. We have a hierarchy of authority within our community that speaks - as necessary - to moral issues. Though we must always act in accordance with our own understanding and conscience, we also submit ourselves to the formative power of the community and its leaders to inform our understanding and to shape our conscience.
● We might add other sources of ethical standards to our list, but these three are of first importance: Scripture, Tradition, and Community. In primary position among the three is Scripture.
● If Scripture speaks directly and unambiguously to a moral issue, it also speaks authoritatively.
As an aside, in Anglicanism we sometimes hear "the three-legged stool" proposed as an authoritative ethical standard: Scripture, Reason, and Tradition. Some even go further and offer the Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience. While there is some validity to both of these suggestions, in modern practice they have typically been misapplied to pit Reason, Tradition, and Experience against the clear teaching of Scripture. "Yes, I know what Scripture says...but my reason (or my experience) leads me to a different conclusion." While we do acknowledge the need for other authorities to inform our ethical discernment, Scripture, if it speaks to the issue, is always the prime authority. We may never negate the teaching of Scripture based upon these other sources of authority.
This conviction leads us to consider two essential questions:
1. How does Scripture speak ethically? What modes of instruction does it employ?
2. How do we read, interpret, and apply the ethical content of Scripture faithfully and effectively?
We begin with the various ways Scripture provides moral instruction.
Modes of Appeal to Scripture (adapted from The Moral Vision of the New Testament)
Richard Hays, in his book “The Moral Vision of the New Testament” , identifies four modes in which Scripture speaks to us (instructs us) ethically:
● Rules: direct commandments or prohibitions of specific behaviors
● Principles: general frameworks of moral consideration by which particular decisions about action are to be governed
● Paradigms (examples): stories or summary accounts of characters who model exemplary conduct (or negative paradigms: characters who model reprehensible conduct)
● A Symbolic World (ethos/worldview): an overarching framework of thought and practice that represents the character of God, the human condition, and the narrative or worldview in which God's people live and move and have their being; the general understanding and "spirit" of the community
Let's very briefly consider examples of each of these modes.
Rules
"You shall not commit adultery" is a rule; it is a clear prohibition of a specific behavior. We might extend the concept of adultery to include many forms of marital unfaithfulness, but it must include the basic notion of illicit sexual relations. If a married man comes to me for pastoral counseling and tells me God has spoken to him and endorsed his extramarital affair, I am certain - beyond any doubt - that he is wrong and is either deluded or self-serving. I can point him to this rule.
Principles
"Love your neighbor as you love yourself," is a principle; it does not command or prohibit a specific behavior, but rather gives a general responsibility that has to be fleshed out in detail. When I examine or consider a particular behavior I must ask myself: Is this allowed or compelled under the principle of loving my neighbor? My neighbor's dog has been using my lawn as his toilet and I have complained several times to no avail. So one day I decide that the next time this happens I will simply take the neighbor's dog to the pound. After all, the Bible gives no rule against taking a dog to the pound. But, this would certainly violate the principle of love for neighbors. The principle covers many specific behaviors without specifying each one as a rule does.
Paradigms/Examples
There is another question we could have asked about loving one's neighbor: Who is my neighbor? You know that Jesus was asked that question. To answer it he didn't give a specific commandment about everyone who falls into the category of neighbor, nor did he state a principle of neighborly identity. Instead, he gave a paradigm, an example of someone who acted as a neighbor: the Good Samaritan. Rather than restrict the category of neighbor by commandment, he broadened it by example. This is often the case with paradigms; they open outward instead of collapsing inward.
Ethos
Ethos is just the way of being of a people, the cultural standards that govern their life together. Christian theologian Stanley Hauerwas was asked to testify before congress about Christian ethics and abortion. He said this — not an exact quote: We Christians do not murder our children. Here he was speaking not from rules or principles or paradigms, though he probably could have. He was speaking about the Christian ethos in which children are a gift from the Lord, image bearers of God. He was speaking about a way of being and a culture in which the murder of babies is simply unthinkable.
Summary
So, Scripture speaks to us, provides ethical instruction, in several modes/ways: rules, principles, paradigms, and ethos. To say that Scripture is silent on a moral issue simply because it does not contain an explicit positive commandment or a negative prohibition regarding the issue is to ignore the many ways that Scripture can and does address moral issues. We, perhaps, tend to put the greatest weight on rules because they are explicit and clear. But, Richard Hays actually argues that, of the four modes of Scriptural authority we have mentioned, rules constitute the weakest type because they are typically so precise and limited in scope. Principles, paradigms, and ethos broaden outward to encompass many more behaviors and are therefore more broadly applicable.
Lesson 2 - The Nature of the Problem
We are going to explore Politics in the Kingdom of God, which is a clear violation of the old adage about the two things you must never discuss in polite company — religion and politics. And some might consider it an intersection, or collision, of two spheres that should remain separate: church and state, faith and politics. But, that won't do. Christianity is by nature political because it is about the creation of a polis — a place, a city, a kingdom and the people who dwell in it — both of whom, place and people, embody the just and righteous rule of God. That's not really controversial among Christians, is it? We pray for it each day in the Lord's Prayer. And yet, discussions about politics and the Kingdom of God are fraught with tension, and often produce more heat than light. Why is that?
● Why is it so difficult to talk with one another - peaceably - about political issues, which are often really moral/ethical issues lived out in the public sphere? Why is it so difficult to bring together the Kingdom of God and the politics of man, not least to do so in the church?
● Why is it so difficult to find and agree on what the Kingdom of God looks like in the very practical matters of the political and social landscape?
Political issues are at their heart moral and ethical issues. For example, a Christian cannot deal with immigration — a hot topic political issue — without facing Jesus' summary of the Law, the command to love our neighbors as ourselves, and the Parable of the Good
Samaritan which tells us who our neighbor is. We cannot address wars in Ukraine and Gaza — or anywhere — without first bending the knee to Jesus the Prince of Peace. We cannot address the politics of climate change without engaging creational theology. We cannot rightly vote so long as the blood of partisanship is thicker than the water of baptism. So, we have to deal with moral/ethical issues — faith issues — as we approach politics.
That means we must and will consider:
● the sources of Christian moral/ethical authority (where we look for answers)
● the methods of appealing to those authorities (how we rightly understand them)
● the application of the Church's understanding of the sources of authority to the pressing, practical affairs of life in the public sector
You may hear things that challenge you, that make you uncomfortable - things you may initially (and even finally) disagree with. We will not always agree on these complex issues.
That is not what we should expect or hope for. Here are the real goals:
● to promote the ability to discuss complex moral and political issues in the
Christian community without rancor or division
● to encourage commitment to the Christian moral worldview
● to provide tools and resources for thinking through these moral and political issues
If we can do this, that is a significant accomplishment.
The Nature of the Problem
If you live in Maryville, Tennessee, the chances are good that you are white, Republican, Protestant, educated, employed, and active in (addicted to) sports - particularly to Maryville High School football. Each Friday night home game, the football stadium - complete with blinding lights, artificial turf, and a jumbotron - is packed to overflowing and the surrounding streets are clogged with parked cars. It's a fun place to be, but an intense place; people take their football very seriously - particularly the rivalry between Maryville and Alcoa. Both schools have outstanding programs, players, coaches, and records. Both communities come out in force for this rivalry game.
A few years ago, while I was still teaching at Maryville High School, ESPN offered to highlight this rivalry by broadcasting the game between Maryville and Alcoa: a big deal for both cities and schools. There was only one catch; ESPN wanted the game played and broadcast live on Sunday morning during prime time church hours. Now, the community found two of its deeply held values - faith and football - in tension, in conflict with one another. There was much public deliberation and hand-wringing as the administrators, coaches, pastors, and parents appeared to wrestle with this dilemma. For those of us who had been at Maryville for any length of time at all, this was good theater but nothing more; the outcome was a foregone conclusion: nothing trumps Maryville High School football. And, indeed, the decision was finally made to play and broadcast the game on Sunday. But what to do about the conflict with church attendance, with the exercise of faith? Many of the area churches held one-off Saturday evening services by way of compromise. Or was it by way of capitulation and accommodation to the sports culture? It depends on your viewpoint.
Suppose you had been the parent of a player or the pastor of a church or the administrator of a school? What would you have decided? As a parent, would you have let your child play? As a pastor, would you have accommodated the decision by holding a special, one-off Saturday evening service? As a member of the community, would you have attended the game and supported the schools' decision or would you have gone to church as usual? Upon what would you have based your decisions? There was a clash of values happening there on many levels, and playing out on a very public stage. It is not a stretch to see that as a moral/ethical issue because it deals with deeply held values. To the school board members it was also certainly a political matter. It may seem like a minor issue, but I still wonder if it really was minor.
The determination of whether this actually is a moral issue and, if so, whether it is trivial and easily decided or more complex and fraught, is itself part of the moral discussion and context. Determining whether an issue contains a moral element itself depends upon a certain understanding of morals and a framework for making moral decisions. How do we know? How do we decide? What informs us?
In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election - the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump - I was - here I struggle for the right word: Concerned? Worried? Terrified? - that some parishoners might come to me as a new priest to ask for pastoral guidance in making the complex political and moral decision of which candidate to support. Both candidates had some good ideas and both had some very bad ones. Both candidates were deeply flawed and morally compromised. Neither candidate was running on the Kingdom of God platform. So I prayed and I thought and I read and I worried.
You can imagine my relief in the aftermath of the election; no one - not one single person - asked for my pastoral guidance in my vocation as priest. The same held true for the 2020 election. Some of my friends and family wanted to know what I thought, but only as a citizen. No one seemed to care what I thought as a priest and as a student of Scripture. Yes, I was greatly relieved by that...but only for a brief time. Then the questions started:
● Why did no one seek pastoral counsel from me on this issue?
● Was it just me (my personal insecurity showing) or were all priests deemed irrelevant in this matter (my vocational insecurity showing)?
● Had the Church really nothing of value to say on that matter, or was it simply that we have actually accepted as appropriate the strange notion of the separation of church and state?
● Has the Church given the impression - unintentionally or otherwise - that some issues are simply off the table for discussion, somehow inappropriate, perhaps too divisive?
If people are not making moral — and, yes, political — decisions in the context of the church and the people of God, with the pastoral guidance of the church, how are people making such decisions? Around that time, a dear friend sent me a G. K. Chesterton quote:
I do not need the church to tell me I am wrong when I know I am wrong. I need a church to tell me I am wrong when I think I am right.
If not the church, then who? If not in the community of God's people, then where?
If the Church is relevant and has truth to speak to moral issues, then how do we bring moral decision-making back into the context of the Christian community - where it belongs - and equip people to think Christianly and ethically?
The Maryville-Alcoa game was (perhaps) a trivial example of moral questions; the presidential election was more substantive. There are many other issues that are generally - though not universally - recognized as moral/ethical matters, and political issues, as well - weighty matters: abortion; homosexuality, transsexuality and gender identity, wokeness in all its manifestations; same-sex marriage; racism and sexism; capital punishment; euthanasia and end of life issues; redemptive violence (just war, self-defense, armed protection of others); immigration; social welfare, and now artificial intelligence. The list goes on. My conviction is that God cares deeply about these matters, that they are Kingdom of God matters, and that he has equipped his Church to deal with them effectively. And, it is not my conviction only; it is the conviction of Scripture and the Tradition of the Church. My further conviction is that we have an enemy who is the father of lies and deception and discord, and that he will use these same issues to confuse and neutralize the witness of the church and to divide and conquer the church, if possible.
To avoid such confusion and division, it is good to focus first not on what divides us, but on what unites us, with a re-commitment to those unitive essentials.Paul writes this to the Church at Ephesus:
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call - one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Eph 4:1 -6, ESV throughout).
This is what unites us. With all of this to unite us, why are we still so often divided by moral/ethical issues, by political/social issues?
Perhaps more than any other New Testament writer, Paul was concerned with unity in the Church. He writes this in Romans:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2) .
The essence of error, the essence of discord is this: we have been conformed to this world and we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Let's begin with this: we are - all of us - children of the Fall. With a gracious nod toward our very Reformed brothers and sisters, that means that we are all subject to total depravity: not that we are as bad as we can possibly be - completely evil - but rather that we have been adversely affected by the fall in every part of our being - body, soul, and spirit. Our bodies are clearly subject to aging, sickness, and death. But, perhaps even more relevant, our bodily needs have become disordered bodily demands/passions. We need to eat, but we don't need a continual feast while much of the rest of the world goes hungry. We need clothing, but, really, $1000 jeans? Our species needs sex to procreate, but not lust and perversity. Our souls - our will, our conscience, our emotions, our thinking - have become disordered. We listen to our "gut" - we act without thought - when we should listen to our renewed mind. Even if we engage our minds our thinking has been so conditioned by the fallen world and its cultures that it no longer reasons as God reasons. The Second Song of Isaiah (Is 55:6-11) expresses this dark truth poetically.
Our consciences have been de-calibrated, misdirected so that they no longer point toward true moral north. Our wills are weak. Our spirits, that part of man that can know God directly and can be in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit are dead, unless they have been born again in baptism. Man - apart from God - is totally depraved. And the corporate and individual effects of the Fall linger after baptism. The process of renewal into the true image-bearers of God is long and difficult.
Not only are we children of the Fall, we are also the products of cultural and personal stories that stand as rivals to the Gospel. We are all formed by the stories we hear, by the stories we inhabit; they shape us in thought, word, and deed in ways large and small, in ways we don't even notice, just as we never notice the air we walk through and breathe. Sometimes air becomes polluted and even toxic; sometimes our stories do too. This article will invite (challenge) you to examine your stories, to see how they have formed you, and in many cases deformed you. And it will challenge you to listen closely - with a view toward ethics and politics - to the Christian story, which is, in very many cases, quite different from our personal stories and from the prevailing cultural stories. Start with the most salient points of your identity, because each of those carries with it a story that has formed you. I'll use myself as an example; you may well identify with several of my stories; some of yours may well be different. Consider how these might shape my moral understanding/leanings.
● White (I experienced the great civil rights movements of the 1960s and the transition from segregated to integrated schools.)
● Western
● 20 th Century: Enlightenment, Modernism, Postmodernism
● Affluent by global standards and middle-class by American standards
● Educated ● American
● Southern Appalachian
● Knoxvillian
● Husband and father
● Retired engineer and teacher
● Anglican Priest
We could go on, but perhaps the point is clear. I have been shaped by all these factors/stories in ways that are not always obvious to me, and certainly not obvious without reflection. And they have shaped my moral and political worldviews in ways that do not always align with the Christian moral and political worldview. The trouble is, I make moral/ethical judgments reflexively/automatically, based, without much thought, upon the stories that have formed me. My judgments feel right, because they accord with the stories that have formed me. Challenge my stories and you challenge me, my identity, and l get defensive. This is why we have conflicts and divisions over moral/ethical/political matters.
But this is just what the Gospel does; it challenges me and my stories, you and your stories.
It demands and creates a new identity by incorporating us into a different, larger, true story. That is key: we must not let any of these other stories take priority over the Gospel story. We cannot let the blood of ethnicity or party or family or cause or anything else run deeper than the water of baptism. And that transition between stories, that absolute commitment to the Gospel and our baptismal identity isn't easy. It will be accomplished bit-by-bit through the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. Remember what St. Paul wrote:
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2).
Our minds must be renewed, and we must learn to test and to discern what is the true will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. That is the challenge ahead of us. And, it is not an easy challenge; it is a battle. In 2 Corinthians Paul writes:
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:3-5).
Did you get that last part? "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ." Usually the arguments that must be destroyed and the lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God are our own - the results of our fallen nature and our rival stories. The thoughts that must be taken captive to obey Christ are our own. Next week we will begin to look at how to do just that, how we take these thoughts captive.
Lesson 3 - Focal Images
My eyes are not very good. When I want to read Scripture — or anything for that matter — I need my glasses, these lenses that provide focus and clarity. Even with my glasses, some things in Scripture are still not clear, still not in focus. St. Peter felt the same way as his comment on St. Paul's writings shows:
There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability (2 Pe 3:166-17).
This brief verse and a half is remarkable in what it says.
● Peter finds Paul difficult to understand, or at least Peter knows that others find Paul difficult to understand.
● Peter includes the writings of Paul as Scripture. Even at this very early stage, the Apostles and other contributors to the New Testament were conscious of the weight of their words.
● We must take care not to be led astray in our reading of Scripture, which implies that there are ways to read Scripture well and truly: "to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life," as the first archbishop of the Church of England, Thomas Cranmer has us pray.
What we need are some lenses that better focus our reading of Scripture, particularly when we are reading Scripture for ethical formation. Richard Hays has identified three set of such lenses that the New Testament authors offer us; he calls them focal images because they bring the New Testament images into better focus: Community, Cross, and New Creation. Because I also want to include the Old Testament as a source of ethical authority, I have expanded his list to include three Old Testament images as well: Creation, Covenant, and Exodus.
Any ethical reading of Scripture is enhanced and clarified by engaging with and honoring these focal images.
Creation
"We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible," we say in Nicene Creed. All things come from God and are subject to him. Creation prior to the fall expressed his will perfectly. Creation after the fall is subject to futility and longs for its freedom from corruption (cf Rom 8). Creation will be restored in the new heavens and the new earth. Recall how Jesus appealed to the focal image of creation in his discussion of divorce: Moses permitted divorce - because of the hardness of your hearts (fall) - but from the beginning (creation) it was not so. When considering the issue of same-sex marriage, we might use this focal image of creation. What does God's original creation tell us about human relationships, complementarity of the sexes, and the purpose of marriage?
One other important note about the focal image of creation: it implies that all the world with its cultures and governments - belong to God. The question is sometimes posed to Christians, "What right do you have to insist that your morals be reflected in the laws that govern those who don't believe as you believe?" Our answer is simply that God is the Creator of the universe and that all authority - certainly in moral matters belongs to him. Our appeal is to creation and to the Creator.
Covenant
God called Abram and made a covenant with him, that through Abram and his offspring God might redeem and renew the world and bless all peoples. God chose to work through a people made holy by his presence among them. The chief human responsibilities in the covenant were faithfulness to God and obedience, which implies holiness. So, as we look at any moral issue there are covenant questions to ask: Along which path lies the greatest faithfulness to God? Along which path lies obedience? Along which path lies holiness?
Exodus
More than by anything else, Israel was shaped by the experience of slavery and Exodus. The Exodus event formed Israel's ethos and Law. One example is particularly significant, that of Sabbath observance. God gives Israel two reasons for Sabbath- keeping; one reason draws upon the focal image of Creation, and the other upon the focal image of Exodus. Let's look at each.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Ex 20:8-11).
Notice here the appeal to creation. God, by his own actions and by his blessing, built the Sabbath day observance into the fabric of creation. The Sabbath reminds man that he is the image bearer of God: not a human doing but a human being. And, because that is true for all creation, no one among God's people works on the Sabbath: male, female, servants, sojourners, livestock. Servants are given the Sabbath because they too are part of creation.
This is the appeal to the focal image of creation. Now, let's consider the second account of the
Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy.
Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that you male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD you God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day (Dt 5:12-15).
This reasoning for Sabbath observance appeals to the focal image of the Exodus. Why do you keep the Sabbath? Because, as free people, as people God delivered from slavery, you can and you must keep the Sabbath, in honor and memory of God's saving action on your behalf. In Egypt you couldn't keep the Sabbath; in freedom you must. But there is more here. You must give your children, your slaves, the sojourner, and even the animals the Sabbath, because you know what it was like to be a slave, to be treated like an animal (or worse), and to have no time to rest and worship. Sabbath- keeping is an issue of justice, compassion, and worship. So, an appeal to the focal image of the Exodus must include matters of freedom, justice, compassion, and worship.
In summary, the three Old Testament focal images I propose are Creation, Covenant, and Exodus. The New Testament focal images proposed by Richard Hays are Cross, Community, and Coming kingdom.
Cross
Here I will let Richard Hays speak:
Jesus' death on a cross is the paradigm for faithfulness to God in this world. The community expresses and experiences the presence of the kingdom of God by participating in "the koinonia of his sufferings" (Phil. 3:10). Jesus' death is consistently interpreted in the New Testament as an act of self-giving love, and the community is consistently called to take up the cross and follow in the way that his death defines.... The death of Jesus carries with it the promise of the resurrection, but the power of the resurrection is in God's hands, not ours. Our actions are therefore to be judged not by their calculable efficacy in producing desirable results but by their correspondence to Jesus' example {MVNT, p. 197).
That last sentence is particularly important: we do not base our moral decisions upon practicality (what is most likely to work), but upon how nearly they image the cross of Christ.
Hays continues:
The New Testament writers consistently employ the pattern of the cross precisely to call those who possess power and privilege to surrender it for the sake of the weak (see, e.g., Mark 10:42-45, Rom. 15:1-3,1 Cor. 8:1-11:1).
He concludes by saying:
It is precisely the focal image of the cross that ensures that the followers of Jesus - men and women alike - must read the New Testament as a call to renounce violence and coercion (MVNT, p. 197).
So, the focal image of the cross leads to these types of questions: Is this the way of self-giving and self-sacrifice?
Is there any element or threat of violence or coercion in this moral action?
Community/Family/Koinonia
In this focal image, Hays shifts the focus from the individual to the community (the church, not as a hierarchical organization, but as the visible, incarnational body of Christ):
The church is a countercultural community of discipleship, and this community is the primary addressee of God's imperatives. The biblical story focuses on God's design for forming a covenant people [a clear reference to the OT focal image of covenant]. Thus, the primary sphere of moral concern is not the character of the individual but the corporate obedience of the church.... The community, in its corporate life, is called to embody an alternative order that stands as a sign of God's redemptive purposes in the world.... The coherence of the New Testament's ethical mandate will come into focus only when we understand that mandate in ecclesial terms, when we seek God's will not by asking first, "What should / do," but "What should we do?" {MVNT, pp. 196-197)
The church may sometimes do together what the individual cannot do alone. And, when I ask what the church's response to a moral issue should be, that initially removes the pressure from me and allows me to see the issue more clearly. Then, I can consider what my role is in corporate obedience. Importantly, the church provides the necessary spiritual, emotional, and physical support necessary for individual obedience.
We also have to add this note, which was vitally important in the first century and is perhaps even more so now. The Christian Community — the Church, the Koinonia — is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic global body defined solely by our unity in Christ.
Matthew 12:46-50 (ESV): 46 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. 48 But he replied to the man who told him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
For St. Paul this notion of unity — for him it was unity of Jews and Gentiles — was the litmus test of the Gospel. If Jews and Gentiles could not accept one another in Christ, could not sit at the Lord's Table or any table together, then they put lie to the Gospel; they stripped it of its power. As long as we think of the Church only in local terms — only in terms of people like us — we have failed to view life through this focal lens. That means that we must consider seriously what our responsibilities are to the global church, to all our brothers and sisters in Christ. The Christian migrants massed at our Southern border are my brothers and sisters. The Christians being bombed in Gaza are my brothers and sisters. The Christian children in sweat shops around the world working in inhumane and dangerous conditions so that I can have cheap products are my brothers and sisters. And so on. This focal lens broadens our views; it keeps us from becoming myopic.
Coming Kingdom / New Creation
In the Lord's prayer we say, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
The people of God are to live in the Kingdom of God proleptically - bringing the fullness of the Kingdom of God backwards from the future into our present. N. T. Wright summarizes this approach with a question and a challenge.
Question: What would it look like if God were in charge of this situation/decision/ activity, etc.?
Challenge: Now, live that way, because, in the ascension, Jesus has been enthroned and is now Lord over all creation.
In and through Jesus, God became King. The Kingdom has come, though not yet fully. This puts us in conflict with the kingdoms of this world which are still in rebellion against the rule of God. Many of our moral dilemmas can be clarified by this focal image by considering how this dilemma would be addressed in God's coming kingdom, i.e., in God's righteous rule. How would immigration be handled in God's kingdom? Would there even be borders or immigrants at all, and, if not, what does that say about Christian response to governmental policies?
What about a living wage in the Kingdom? What about redemptive violence in the Kingdom? And so forth. This is a particularly powerful focal images because it moves us from how things are, to how things will be, and how we should strive for them and exemplify them even now.
Summary
So here we have six focal images which help us focus our reading and understanding of Scripture: Creation, Covenant, Exodus, Cross, Community, and Coming Kingdom. Taken together with the fullness of Scripture (in all the modes it speaks), tradition and the Vincentian Canon, and the Church as the Spirit-filled community, these focal images move the discussion beyond our own cultural stories, beyond our nationalism, beyond our narrow self-interest, toward faithfulness and obedience to God in moral matters. These are the things that will renew our minds so that we are not conformed to this world but transformed into the likeness of Christ.
Questions for Discussion
1. What is the nature of the immigration problem? What are the real concerns that must be addressed?
2. Looking first at Scripture, what are the rules, principles, and paradigms (examples, parables, narratives) that speak to this issue and that must form our understanding of and approach to it? What does the Christian ethos offer to our formation? You might consider some of the texts listed at the end of this document.
3. Consider the focal lenses that we discussed: creation, covenant, Exodus, cross, community, and coming kingdom. How do these focus on the problem and the Scriptures? How must the whole biblical metanarrative from creation to coming kingdom shape our approach to immigration?
4. How does prayer — not least with the Psalms — shape our approach?
5. How do the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) speak to this issue?
6. What is the most powerful witness to the Gospel that the Church can offer the world in this area? What approach would be evangelistic?
7. Catholic Social Teaching emphasizes such principles as the dignity of all people, the dedication to the common good, subsidiarity (making decisions and solving problems at the appropriate level of involvement and responsibility), and solidarity with the weak and the poor. What do these principles suggest/mandate as we approach the immigration crisis?
8. How does our worship address this issue?
9. Finally, how would you summarize the essential Christian principles that any immigration proposal must be based on and must incorporate?
Lesson 4 - Engagement
We have been laying the groundwork, laying out the principles of a Christian engagement with politics and a Christian engagement with one another about potentially divisive political issues. We've looked at sources of authority: Scripture, Tradition, and the Christian Community. We've considered the several ways in which Scripture speaks to moral and political issues: rules, principles, paradigms/ examples, and the Christian ethos. We've examined the lenses through which we read Scripture: creation, covenant, Exodus, cross, community, and coming kingdom. We've mentioned praying our ethics, not least in the Psalms and in the Sermon on the Mount. We have considered our call to martyrdom, to bear witness in a modern democracy. We have mentioned Catholic Social Teaching with its emphasis on the dignity of all people, the importance of the common good, and the call to solidarity with the least, the last, the lost, the forgotten.
I want to propose some additional modes of Christian engagement with social and political issues. What do we do? How do we do it?
If you go to any large city — New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, London — you will find there a scattering of self-contained, ethnic communities: China Town, Little Italy, Little Havana, Korea Town. There will be Polish neighborhoods, Indian streets and blocks, Irish quarters, Hispanic/Latino barrios.
The people who live in these communities may well be citizens of the United States, but they are also in some real sense resident aliens; they have another, unique cultural identity which they try to preserve and pass down to their children and grandchildren in spite of the many pressures to conform and assimilate. Resident aliens live double lives: they are in one world but not of it; they are of one world, but no longer in it.
So it is with Christians; we are resident aliens in all the nations of the world, sojourners and exiles:
I Peter 2:9-12 (ESV): 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
II Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Sojourners and exiles — resident aliens. As Christians, are like the ethnic communities in this: we have a culture that we strive to preserve and pass down. But, we are different in this respect: we are not insular. Rather, we are evangelistic; we want to export and expand our culture throughout the world, not to replace other cultures but to fulfill them.
The burning bush is the proper image; we want to set the world on fire with the glory of God without consuming it. We want Chinese Christians, Italian Christians, Cuban Christians, Korean Christians.
We are unlike these ethnic cultures in another crucial way. None of them would claim that the president, prime minister, chancellor, or monarch of its home country has any authority in the United States. On the other hand, we Christians claim that our ruler is the Lord of all Creation, and that all authorities are called to, and one day will, bow the knee before him. So, we work, not coercively but persuasively to bring all things into subjection to him even now, starting with ourselves. We insist that our culture offers a true corrective for the problems of the world, that it speaks authoritatively to all areas of human culture — personal relationships, politics, art, science, economics, medicine, architecture, agriculture, education, you name it — and offers the way to put to rights what has gone wrong with each. And that makes us — that makes the Church — political in the same way that Joseph was political; in the same way Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel were political; in the say way the prophets, John the Baptist, Jesus and the Apostles were political. The Church is political in almost the same way Israel was political: as a light to the nations, as a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. Again, the difference is the evangelistic purpose of the Church — to incorporate all the kingdoms of the earth under the rule of Christ, not by coercion but by persuasion and participation. Israel witnessed but did not incorporate. The Church must do both.
The point here is simply that the Church is inherently political; to separate Church and State is to sever the Church from a crucial part of its identity and mission. The question is not whether the Church should engage in politics, but rather how the Church should do so faithfully. I want to suggest a few fundamental principles and then apply them to the particular political issue of immigration.
Fundamental Methods of Engagement
What are the fundamental means/modes by which the Church engages the world politically?
What do we do? How do we do it?
Worship
The most fundamental and powerful political act of the Church is worship; worship is political action. Just consider the opening acclamation of an Anglican service:
Blessed be God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And blessed be his kingdom, now and forever. Amen (emphasis added).
Worship begins with the proclamation of God's kingdom, and it progresses with a rehearsal of what that means and of how God became king through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Then we come to the Eucharist (Holy Communion) which lies at the heart of Kingdom politics: our sacramental re-membering of our God who became flesh to enter into the darkest places of suffering in the human condition, to take that suffering upon himself even unto death, to transform the suffering into life through the power of resurrection. Any political Christian engagement that doesn't look like that isn't truly Christian. Worship models this for us, calls us back to it again and again, and it empowers us for it through the grace of the Holy Spirit. So, when the Church is asked, "What good are you? How are you contributing to the solution of the world's political problems?" we start with this response: we are worshipping. It is a countercultural proclamation of and participation in the in-breaking of an eternal kingdom that relativizes and judges all temporal kingdoms. Our worship also forms us, equips us, and strengthens us to live as citizens of that eternal kingdom even while we live here as resident aliens. Then our worship sends us out into those other kingdoms to do the work that God has given us to do in and for them.
Prayer
Closely related to worship is prayer. We may be tempted to jump immediately to intercessory prayer in which we tell God how best to run our country and the world, whom to have elected, whom to cast down. I say that only about half jokingly. But before we tell God how to order the world in intercessory prayer, we need to let God impress upon us his vision of justice and righteousness, of mercy and morality, of work and witness in our prayers of examen (Ps 139:23-24) and confession (Ps 51:1-4). We do that also in prayers that extol the justice, righteousness, and mercy of God. We do that in prayers that paint a vivid picture of the Kingdom of God.
We do that by praying Scripture, not least the Gospels. We do this by praying the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer, like the Great Litany, and the prayers of the saints. When we have been formed by this type of prayer, we will have some better idea of how to intercede for the world. Whenever and however we pray, we are engaging in politics.
Theology
Listen to St. Paul:
Romans 12:1-2 (ESV): 12 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
There is much more to these verses that we can consider today, but they point to the necessity of right thinking, of having a mind renewed in/by the truth and knowledge of God. We need good — deep and broad — theology. I've said before — and I believe it more every day — that bad theology makes for bad politics. We cannot rightly analyze and respond to current issues/crises without a firm grounding in the ancient truths of Christian theology. In the Middle Ages, the classical liberal arts included grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Over all these, integrating them and providing holistic meaning, was the Queen of Sciences, Theology. The world has long since abandoned this integral and overarching value of theology; the Church can't afford to do so.
Witness (Prophetic Speech/Action)
There is a great history in Israel of God's prophets speaking God's truth — not their own ideas, but God's truth — to the powers: Moses, Daniel, Isaiah, John the Baptist. That pattern continued in the Church, from its earliest days to the present: Peter, James, and John; Paul;
William Wilberforce; the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany; Martin Luther King, Jr.; John Paul II, and countless others. We are, all of us, called to witness, to prophetic speech/action: some in very public ways and some in less visible/vocal means, but all of us nonetheless, "not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to God's service and by walking before him in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives" (BCP 2019, p. 25, adapted).
Gifting and Training
Catholic Social Teaching speaks prophetically against Socialism, Communism, and even hyper-Capitalism as viable economic systems. They simply do not instantiate the economic principles of the Kingdom of God. So, the Church, in its prophetic role proclaims and insists on the fundamentals of a Christian economic ethos. But it is not the role of the Church - and certainly not of individual clergy - to develop or promote specific economic policies: a new detailed tax code, a plan for reaching a living wage, a means for providing health insurance for all, or a method for ending homelessness. Doing so lies outside the nature and purpose of the Church.
What the Church must do - what clergy must do - is to form christians by worship, prayer, theology and witness who will then use their gifts, training and calling in a host of fields - economics, politics, sociology, business, science, communications, city planning, law, medicine, technology, and a thousand other fields 0 who will go out into the world to engage the world’s problems with technical expertise informed and formed by the Gospel. It is not the role of the Church or the clergy to solve the world’s problems directly, but rather to raise up and equip lay Chrristian leaders and servants in, and who can offer better solutions. I cannot tell you how to implement a peace plan in Gaza or Ukraine, for example, but I can tell you what true peace/shalom and Godly justice looks like, what a peace plan must accomplish. And the Church can help form people with that vision who might then also master the political and technical skills necessary to pursue peace with justice throughout the world.
Now let’s see how we might apply all these principles to a particular political issue: immigration.
Case Study
Currently, one of the few points of bipartisan agreement in our country is this: our immigration policy is ineffective and our southern border is in crisis. That is, however, where bipartisanship ceases; our politicians are, to date, unable and/or unwilling to work together in compromise to improve matters.
The Church has a role to play here: not in crafting or proposing specific legislation, but in prophetic witness to God's demands for justice and mercy and in establishing the moral criteria by which any proposal must be judged. This is where we draw upon all the principles we have discussed. I would like us to be able to start from those principles and work forward toward the moral criteria and positions, but time won't allow. Instead, we will start with two sets of criteria — one from the USCCB, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a second from the Evangelical Immigration Table which was endorsed by Robert Duncan, the first Archbishop of the Anglican Church of North America. We will try to read these statements "backwards" to see what principles were used to develop them.
Catholic Social Teaching
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has summarized Catholic Social Teaching on immigration in three basic principles:
1. People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families.
2. A country has the right to regulate its borders and to control immigration.
3. A country must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.
Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT)
Bishop Robert Duncan, during his tenure as the first Archbishop of the ACNA, became a signatory of a statement of principles espoused by the Evangelical Immigration Table outlining what criteria a bipartisan solution to the immigration crisis must meet. This organization is "a national movement of Christians committed to learning more about what the Bible says about 'welcoming the stranger,' and living out these biblical principles in our churches, our communities and our nation." Their statement began with this prophetic word:
Our national immigration laws have created a moral, economic and political crisis in America. Initiatives to remedy this crisis have led to polarization and name calling in which opponents have misrepresented each other's positions as open borders and amnesty versus deportations of millions. This false choice has led to an unacceptable political stalemate at the federal level at a tragic human cost. We urge our nation's leaders to work together with the American people to pass immigration reform that embodies these key principles and that will make our nation proud.
The statement continued to call for an immigration policy that:
● Respects the God-given dignity of every person
● Protects the unity of the immediate family
● Respects the rule of law
● Guarantees secure national borders
● Ensures fairness to taxpayers
● Establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents (https:// evanaelicalimmigrationtable.eom/#PRINCIPLES)
NOTES ON USCCB AND EIT PRINCIPLES
1. Both statements are based upon commitments to (1) the dignity of the human person (a theology of creational anthropology) and (2) the common good (the need for individuals to exist within relational communities — the Holy Trinity as our social program).
2. Both statements are based on an engagement with the whole of Scripture in the various modes in which it speaks (rule, principle, paradigm, ethos) and the focal lenses through which it is read (creation, covenant, Exodus, cross, community, coming Kingdom).
3. Both statements are rooted in the prayer and worship of the Church, particularly in the vision of one, multi-cultural body of believers — formerly at enmity but now reconciled by the cross — gathered together, worshiping Christ with one voice and yet bringing the distinctive best that each culture has to offer.
CONCLUSION
The Church, as Church, cannot solve the immigration crisis systemically, though we do have obligations to strangers and neighbors. But, it can speak prophetically to the need for a systemic solution, present the principles of that solution, form godly laity who will then train to acquire the expertise necessary to develop and implement a solution, and hold politicians accountable under God for creating and implementing a solution that exemplifies godly justice. We worship, read our Bibles, say our prayers, learn our theology, form our people, speak the truth to power, and work in our areas of expertise and influence. And we do not lose hope, because we are a resurrection people.
Additional Resources
https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/immiaration/catholic- teaching-on-immigration-and-the-movement-of-peoples https://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com/ https://anqlicanchurch.net/anqlican-immiqrant-initiative/
U.S. College of Catholic Bishops
1. People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families.
2. A country has the right to regulate its borders and to control immigration.
3. A country must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.
Evangelical Immigration Table
● Respects the God- given dignity of every person
● Protects the unity of the immediate family
● Respects the rule of law
● Guarantees secure national borders
● Ensures fairness to taxpayers
● Establishes a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents
Scriptures
1. Genesis 1:27~28
2. Exodus 12:49
3. Exodus 22:21
4. Exodus 23:9
5. Exodus 23:12
6. Leviticus 19:9-10
7. Leviticus 19:33-34
8. Leviticus 23:22
9. Leviticus 24:22
10. Numbers 15:15-16
11. Deuteronomy 1:16
12. Deuteronomy 10:18-19
13. Deuteronomy 24:14
14. Deuteronomy 24:17-18
15. Deuteronomy 24:19
16. Deuteronomy 26:12
17. Deuteronomy 27:19
18. Job 29:16
19. Psalm 94:6-7
20. Psalm 146:9
21. Jeremiah 7:5-7
22. Jeremiah 22:3
23. Ezekiel 22:6-7
24. Ezekiel 22:29
25. Zechariah 7:10
26. Malachi 3:5
27. Matthew 2:13-14
28. Matthew 25:35
29. Mark 2:27
30. Luke 10:36-37
31. Acts 16:37
32. Acts 17:26-27
33. Romans 12:13
34. Romans 13:1-2
35. Ephesians 2:14-18
36. Philippians 3:20
37. Hebrews 13:2
38. 1 Peter 2:11-12
39. 1 Peter 2:13-14
40. Revelation 7:9-10
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