Supporting Trump, supporting refugees — evangelicals are doing both

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes a mix of guest commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

It’s relatively easy to make a pragmatic case for President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. After all, almost no one believes that the U.S. could or should sustain unlimited migration, and most people agree with the president that deportations will have to take place to uphold the rule of law.

But Vice President JD Vance’s recent comments on the moral case for “America first” border policies struck a chord with numerous evangelical Christians. Speaking in a recent interview, Vance referenced the Christian concept of “ordo amoris,” or rightly ordered love:

“... As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. It doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders. But there’s this old-school — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world."

One of the Christians who responded to Vance’s remarks is Abigail Dodds, one of Minnesota’s most prominent Christian writers. While agreeing with the thrust of Vance’s remarks, she points out that the love of God is the highest form of love, shaping and ordering all subsidiary loves. With this divine love, our love for our children, our neighbors, and the strangers in our midst is transformed and made holy. It’s very important, in other words, to get this right.

Evangelicals are cautiously optimistic about Trump’s desire to bring immigration numbers under control, and exasperated that his predecessors have failed to do so despite, as one local pastor reminded me, always promising to be “tough” on this issue.

But evangelicals, in Minnesota and elsewhere, are not going to stop their efforts to love and serve the strangers in our midst — the ones God has commanded us to serve. Is there a conflict between supporting Trump’s immigration policies on a national level, and supporting efforts to “adopt” refugee families in our neighborhoods, something that brings together conservative women in my Minneapolis church and their much more liberal neighbors?

Not at all — if our loves are rightly ordered. Andy Naselli, a pastor at Christ the King Church in Stillwater and professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary, summarized it this way: “Christians can simultaneously be law-abiding citizens and merciful.”

One example of that mercy is my friend “Leticia” who came to the U.S. from West Africa as a refugee with her young daughter to escape religious persecution. Unlike other refugees, Leticia does not have a green card. At various points on her journey, Christians and Christian organizations have been the only ones who have been able to help her. She now has a work permit and stable housing and schooling for her daughter. I asked her what she felt about the developments of the last few weeks. She wrote, “What is going on is so sad, but my trust and faith is in the Lord. In everything I give God the praise.”

Evangelical Christians will show love to Leticia and work to help her thrive. They will help allay her fears. They will do this while continuing to support President Trump’s efforts nationally to get our house in order — to stop illegal border crossings and to deport criminals. When ICE agents arrested and deported three child sex predators in St. Paul, after new guidance from the Trump administration, like many others I wondered why on earth this hadn’t happened sooner.

To support people like Leticia, and to deport people like those three sex predators: These are the priorities for many evangelical Christians who support Trump’s energetic reassertion of America’s sovereignty over its borders. Not one or the other, but both. This is a reasonable and coherent position, not the reflexive nativism evangelicals are accused of, nor the “let them all in” mentality of some mainline churches.

If you’ve ever heard an evangelical sermon, you’ve probably heard the analogy of walking straight down the road, avoiding the ditch on either side. This is what evangelical Christians are trying to do right now — on immigration, and on the many other critical issues facing our nation.

Moses Bratrud is a St. Paul-based writer. He is an elder at University Lutheran Chapel (LCMS) in Minneapolis. Connect with him at mosesbratrud.substack.com.