Having read the article, I notice a profound lack of serious efforts by these supporters of legalizing illegal immigrants to explain their position biblically. That may be unavoidable in an interview with a secular financial newspaper; I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until I see what they have to say in the church media where they will be (or should be) asked some hard questions on that issue.
What is more problematic is that this isn’t just a few local pastors. The National Association of Evangelicals is pushing this. I was already aware of the NAE’s position from internal church circles, but up until now I had treated it as an irrelevant position statement that wouldn’t do much in the actual world of politics.
However, if the NAE is going to aggressively push this issue, they are going to have a big problem with a number of their major supporting denominations.
It’s one thing for an individual church or denomination to take a stance on immigration if its leaders believes American immigration law is unjust and unbiblical. It is a very different thing for an interdenominational organization to claim to represent the “evangelical consensus” on an issue where no consensus actually exists.
Is this a moral position or is it a position motivated by the prospect of greenbacks? Are these men of the cloth or are they entrepreneurs looking to restock their diminishing flocks at the expense of the livelihoods of existing parishioners and ex-parishioners? Call me a cynic, but I suspect some of their motivations are less than divinely inspired.