White evangelicals are least likely to say U.S. should accept refugees: How would Jesus respond?

A Pew Research Center survey found that only 25% of white evangelicals say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees.
Meanwhile, people with no religious affiliation were most likely to say the U.S. does have that responsibility.
The results show the divide between the principles and practices of right-wing Christians in the U.S.

It might seem like non-religious people would be most likely to say the U.S. doesn't have a responsibility to accept refugees. After all, nonbelievers don't follow a unified doctrine that explicitly tells followers to offer love, shelter and compassion to foreigners — you know, like Christians do. For example, the Bible states:

Leviticus 19:34 — "The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the foreigner as yourself, for you were foreign in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."

Matthew 25:35 — "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me."

Jeremiah 22:3 — "Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place."

Exodus 22:21 — "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt."

It's not difficult to decipher the main moral message here: Be kind to foreigners. But that directive seems to be lost or ignored by a particular group of modern American Christians: white evangelicals.

A Pew Research Center survey found that only 25 percent of white evangelicals in the U.S. said that the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country. The center first published the study last year, but recently tweeted a breakdown showing how answers vary along lines of race, age, education and religion.

"By more than two-to-one (68% to 25%), white evangelical Protestants say the U.S. does not have a responsibility to accept refugees," the center wrote. "Other religious groups are more likely to say the U.S. does have this responsibility. And opinions among religiously unaffiliated adults are nearly the reverse of those of white evangelical Protestants: 65% say the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees into the country, while just 31% say it does not."

Do these sentiments help explain support for recent anti-refugee policies in the U.S.? Or are these views, in some way, a product of the Trump Administration's strategy of weaponizing the Bible and Christianity to push policy — such as when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders "appeared to use Romans 13 — a verse in which the Apostle Paul cautions an early Christian group against rising up against the Roman Empire — to argue that the Trump administration has the biblical authority to make its own rules, and that Christians have a duty to submit to them," as Vox notes?

It's hard to say which came first. After all, white evangelicals — many of them, at least — have a history of racism and xenophobia. But the Trump presidency is notable for receiving such strong support from white evangelicals and, more broadly, Christian nationalists. That support was undoubtedly pushed along by prominent evangelical leaders with ties to the president.

For example, take Paula White — President Donald Trump's spiritual adviser and popular prosperity gospel preacher. Last year, White told the Christian Broadcasting Network that the government had "amazing" detention camps in which migrant children who'd been separated from their families were being held. She also tried to use the Bible to justify anti-immigration policies.

"I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like, 'Well, Jesus was a refugee,'" White told the network, adding: "Yes, [Jesus] did live in Egypt for three-and-a-half years. But it was not illegal. If He had broken the law then He would have been sinful and He would not have been our Messiah."

(To sum up her logic: Breaking the law is a sin, because the law is always right. Therefore, to be Christ-like, we should always follow the orders of the government, no matter what the order, no matter the president. Of course, this viewpoint is by no means endorsed by mainstream Christians, and it sounds far more totalitarian than American. After all, the U.S. would've never been founded if colonists hadn't repeatedly broken British law. Does that mean the U.S. was founded on a sin?)

In any case, examples like this show how some evangelical leaders combine spurious logic with half-baked biblical notions to obfuscate a very simple message the Bible tells us: Be kind to foreigners. Of course, this doesn't mean Christians are hypocrites unless they support a radical open-borders policy. But rather, it shows how some groups of right-wing Christians have for decades been drifting away from their source text — so far away that sometimes they seem completely unmoored to it.

The Bible is very clear - Israel was not to let foreigners OR residents who disobeyed religious laws remain.

There were multiple times where WIVES AND CHILDREN were kicked out the country - ideology and morality were more important.

We have a moral obligation to say no, we aren’t letting you in if we don’t know if you’re a member of MS-13, going to commit Islamic terrorism or infect us with tuberculosis.

I say every country has every right to determine immigration policy, and illegal aliens are lawbreakers and are not welcomed, lefal immigrants that respect our laws.

Who is gappy to welcome into their home people who show no respect for the rules of the homeowners?

Pelosi and all demtards have their gates and security systems and armed personnel to prevent lawbreaking trespassers breaking in and entering their land and homes.

1. Resident aliens are the equivalent of green card holders not illegal immigrants.
2. Christians are not harming green card holders or for that matter illegal immigrants.
3. We do not live in a theocracy. Christ refused to try to take over the government, which is what many assumed prophecy said that the Messiah would do. He was crucified in part for that reason, so this is important.
4. We live in an imperfect world with limited resources and laws that carry unintended consequences.
5. We have to use our brains.
6. To that end, the United States is, bar NONE, the most generous country in the world for taking in the dispossessed and the downtrodden, but we have limits.
7. Doing stupid things to try to please an insatiable audience always pushing for more, is vanity. Vanity is a form of pride. Pride goeth before a fall. It is also a sin.

God said to arm yourselves and build the wall.

“When our enemies heard that we knew of their plans and that God had frustrated them, we all returned to our work on the wall. 16 But from then on, only half my men worked while the other half stood guard with spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. The leaders stationed themselves behind the people of Judah 17 who were building the wall. The laborers carried on their work with one hand supporting their load and one hand holding a weapon. 18 All the builders had a sword belted to their side. The trumpeter stayed with me to sound the alarm.”

—Nehemiah 4:15-18

seems like they had cities and countries(lands) in the bible.

and define “refugees” & “asylum”.

Therein lies the problem. Are we supposed to take in people that just can’t seem to manage a civilized society?

Countries/Peoples/Cultures that have had hundreds, if not thousands of years to get their shit together.

They all need to have their own Great Awakening.

OK then. Explain to me how they were to completely remove all those nations within Canaan and take it by force...some by utterly destruction-that meant everything.

You know the answer to that one.

As for Egypt, they were welcomed into Egypt and after years, Joseph was forgotten by the rulers and they (the Hebrews) became oppressed.

BTW, they told the Hebrews to leave and what did the Hebrews do? They plundered.

Illegal aliens are not refugees, economic migrants are not refugees, hostile invaders are not refugees. Also, for actual refugees the ideal situation should be that they return home when their home country’s situation has normalized, not that they produce anchor babies while they are here and then then never return home. Only children of citizens ought to be born as citizens. Refugees and legal immigrants and their children should have the right to pursue earning citizenship, if they wish to become Americans, but it shouldn’t simply be given.

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