There is a Christian movement to welcome the stranger

(RNS) — There is a movement afoot all across America.  A growing number of very diverse Christians are confronting the white Christian nationalism that is supporting Donald Trump. The message is clear: This distorted false religion vs. Jesus. So many of the attacks on others made by Trump and his enthusiastic white evangelical and charismatic supporters are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.

Earlier this month I was in North Carolina, where we had four days and nights of local town meetings on faith and democracy, in both urban and rural communities. They were all multiracial — something the organizers noted was often hard to accomplish in North Carolina. 

I remember our night in Rocky Mount, in eastern North Carolina, where there is a railroad track that separates two counties — one side is nearly all Black and the other almost all white. We crossed those tracks a dozen times in one day. 

There are not always railroad tracks wherever we go but sometimes highways, rivers or carefully segregated neighborhoods that keep Christians and other people from coming to know each other as neighbors. Instead, these lines of separation are making them into enemies, as the Trump campaign is trying to do.

Our event was held at Truth Tabernacle, on the Black side of the tracks, so white Christians had to cross over the tracks — and many did. Given our hosting place, I quoted John 8:32, with Jesus saying, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I have come to understand that the opposite of truth is more than just lies, it’s captivity. Truth and freedom are indivisible. I see so many Christians who are captive to lies. Instead of labeling people as good or bad, we need to ask how to set our people free.

I then found myself in Tucson, Arizona, where many of the people of faith gathered together share a “ministry of the border” where they are trying to apply the teachings of Jesus to “welcome the stranger.”

In Phoenix, I spent many hours with young pastors across many denominations who lamented how their churches were so bitterly divided across political lines. In a very interesting lunch conversation, a former neo-Nazi skinhead, as Caleb Campbell describes himself, told me about how investigating the white Christian nationalist movement led him to become a young white evangelical pastor who now speaks against it. 

Two weeks ago, I compared Trump’s false and ugly accusations that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating the beloved dogs and cats of their new neighbors with Jesus’ Matthew 25 teachings about welcoming the “stranger” — the word literally meaning immigrant.

Usually, a news story is over after a few days, but not this one. Even after the Republican governor of Ohio and the Republican mayor of Springfield both said those lies were completely untrue, Trump and JD Vance doubled down with their demeaning and demonizing of nonwhite immigrants now core to their political campaign. 

The results, stoking fear and hatred, often lead to violence. Springfield schools and hospitals closed down amid more than 30 hoax bomb threats. These are not just lies but racial lies as the people Trump most lies about are immigrants of color.

After watching his rallies for the last six months, New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker said immigration has become “everything” to Trump’s campaign. It’s what “motivates” and “animates” Trump as he reaches out to his angry white base, according to Baker.

Immigration is indeed a very complex and broken system that both parties are responsible for. We need to find comprehensive, legal, humane and compassionate policy changes. Policy changes exactly like those that Trump just killed in the last bipartisan effort to reform the system — a political decision he made to keep immigration as an issue he could campaign on. Now Trump says he will enact the largest deportation in American history, which would have untold cost in breaking up families, losing essential workers and turning the National Guard and local police into communities that will threaten the security of us all.

Therefore, many Christians around the country now are saying it’s time to bring Jesus into this conversation, and they are doing so. In his last teaching before his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus said, “As you have done to the least of these — the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, imprisoned and stranger — you have done to me.” 

Some good news I just heard is that the Ohio Council of Churches has now called for a gathering for pastors all over the state to deal with the Springfield lies about dogs and cats and the resulting crisis for so many people in their state. Today, in Atlanta, top civic leaders and former elected officials — both Republican and Democrat— are convening for a “Democracy at Risk” panel in a downtown church. This weekend, the town meetings go to Dallas, where churches are trying to overcome their “bubbles” and talk to each other.

We just finished a national summit with amazing panelists and participants convening at Georgetown for “Test of Faith: A Summit to Defend Democracy,” where we launched a statement, “Christian Faith and Democracy,” signed by a very broad cross-section of 200 Black, Hispanic, Asian American, Catholic, Protestant, evangelical and Orthodox faith leaders. Already, the statement has 2,000 signatures, and it continues to grow. And now I am hearing stories of pastors signing the statement and deciding to preach on it to their congregations.

A movement is afoot. And that brings me hope.

(The Rev. Jim Wallis is director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice and the author, most recently, of “The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)