Saturday, December 02, 2006

What Is the Biblical Approach to the Immigration Controversy?

I'd like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded and socially concerned Evangelical. Many socially concious Evangelicals find themselves defending the Open Borders lobby and accusing dissenting Evangelicals of promoting injustice and tyranny. Looking at all the evidence, I think such Evangelicals are well intentioned but dead wrong. Here is my latest piece from Vdare that argues that the restrictionist position itself certainly is not anti-Biblical, and may even be more Biblical than the alternative.

Read the full column here. Feel free to comment.
Posted by Bill Barnwell at 9:38 PM

3 comments:

Ryan S. said...

Please pray for this little baby Abigail

3:59 PM
Anonymous said...

As a "secular" person of Jewish background, you might not welcome my reading of the Bible. However, the word "Hebrew" (ivri) does seem to derive from the root ayin-beth-rosh which produces words related to "crossing over". It probably was some sort of equivalent term to "border jumper" or "immigrant".

"Hebrew" probably does mean something different from "Israelite". Mainstream people have instructed me that "Hebrew" was just the word for an Israelite who was in Egypt - yet the Hebrew language itself is known from archeology to have been written by other neighboring peoples. I'd guess that "Hebrew" was a generic term for immigrant workers in Egypt, of whom the Israelites were a substantial subgroup.

So being a "stranger in the land of Egypt" might well refer to much the same concept as being a Mexican in the United States. And the sympathetic position the Bible takes is quite understandable, from that point of view.

On the other hand - Pharoah seems to have accepted the Israelites as LEGAL immigrants.

6:15 PM
Anonymous said...

"the Israelites were supposed to welcome foreigners who believed in their spiritual ideals and wanted to freely become a part of the Israelite community. To speak anachronistically, they were not supposed to welcome foreigners who would come in and burn their flags and sing the national anthem of the Canaanites."

Although I sympathize with your feeling of offense at the actions of certain illegal immigrants with respect to the American flag or anthem, I nevertheless do not feel like the Bible could support this argument. Simply stated, America is not somehow analogous with Israel and Mexico is not analogous with Canaan. It would be something more like a Canaanite burning a Philistine flag and singing the Canaanite anthem. It seems somewhat out of line with valid scriptural interpretation to frame the argument in such a way that America always gets to be Israel and everyone else is, well, just that.

I agree with your statement here: "The appeal here in the Old Testament is not one of racial purity, but spiritual purity." If the distinction is spiritual, then I simply can't see how American culture or identity is somehow tied in with that, because I don't believe our culture is somehow a part of the Biblical spirituality mentioned above.

If the distinction truly is spiritual, then I believe the final result is that non-Christian Americans should also be expelled from our country and Christian non-Americans should be allowed in en masse.

Although I find some of your arguments compelling, I simply don't see them expounded in the Bible, at least as far as preserving our culture (as opposed to our spirituality) goes.

I'm not usually a WWJD Christian (by that I mean I don't try to shut down arguments by simple conjecture about what Jesus would do), but nevertheless I would find it hard to imagine Jesus deporting someone for not adhering to spiritually neutral cultural norms (except from the temple perhaps).

- R.N.M.

9:45 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)