The Myth of Christian Values
On Immigration and Lessons from the Civil War
We are repeatedly told by politicians and church leaders in the US that our culture and society are grounded on Judeo-Christian values. When asked what this means, Christians posit the easily-identifiable axiom of loving others and make reference to obeying the ten commandments. The question of Christian values does not create anything like a consensus, however, when applied to any relevant moral topic today, including actions around climate change, the Iran War, and the Gaza conflict, among others. Perhaps no other current topic highlights this point more obviously than the Christian response to Trump’s immigration policies. There are vast differences of opinion about immigration among Christian denominations and among believers within those denominations. As with any other topic that seeks to define Christian values, each group with an opinion on the topic claims that the Bible justifies their particular views.
Although not all denominations have been outspoken about their views, there is sufficient data in the media since Trumps’s re-election to highlight that immigration is an extremely divisive topic within Christianity. Many Evangelical groups, including the Southern Baptist Coalition, stand in staunch support of Trump’s immigration policies. Pro-immigration Christians typically reference Romans 13:1-7, a passage written by Paul indicating that Christians should submit to the ruling establishment under which they live. Groups opposed to the current immigration policies, including many Catholic clergy, cite Old Testament verses such as Leviticus 19:33-34, in which God’s chosen people are commanded to treat strangers well, and New Testament verses such as Matthew 25:35,40, in which Jesus tells his followers to treat strangers as well as they would treat him. As with any dispute over Biblical interpretation, both sides have rebuttals against the other’s interpretation, and both sides frequently claim that the particular Bible verses being used by the opposing side are being taken out of context. Most notable of these arguments involves the Pope himself, as rebutted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, an outspoken Southern Baptist.
Given that there are over 200 denominations of Christianity in the US alone and well-over a thousand sects—nearly all claiming to have the exclusively-correct interpretation of the Bible—it is not a surprise that a moral hot potato such as immigration will lead to conflicting views among Christians. This is nothing new in the US, as exemplified by the topic of slavery at the time of the Civil War. Prior to the Civil War, religious groups, primarily from the South, advocated for the continuation of slavery and correctly pointed out that slavery is very clearly and frequently described in the Bible in both Old and New Testaments (Leviticus 25:44-46 and Romans 6: 15-23) and is nowhere condemned. Anti-slavery religious groups, mostly in the North, could not deny that slavery was considered acceptable in the Bible. Rather, they countered that the Southern religious groups were missing the point entirely. More important than the discussion of slavery in the Bible was to understand the ‘spirit’ of the Bible, specifically the love of your fellow man (John 15:12) and treating one another equally (Mark 12:31). As such, slavery could be considered something that does not match that spirit. Interestingly, perhaps the most persuasive and Biblically accurate argument against slavery from that era was to highlight that the Bible did not distinguish slaves on racial makeup alone, and that if slavery were okay for blacks, then it should be equally okay for whites. After the war, neither side gave up on the previous justifications for their positions on slavery. Pro-slavery pastors told their flocks from the pulpit that the loss of the Civil War was the result of God chastising them for not treating their slaves well enough rather than evidence that God was against slavery. Others resorted to the old Christian standby when things in life do not go according to plan: in this case, losing the Civil War, and thereby the slavery debate, was simply a ‘test of faith’ of Southern Christians whose interpretation of the Bible was nonetheless correct. The anti-slavery religious groups pointed to the winning of the war as God’s validation of their cause. (The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll is an excellent resource for more information on this topic.)
The question arises then, what exactly do we make of Christian values when Christian groups have polar opposite definitions and each lay claim to the truth? It seems that, if the Bible were the absolute source of morality and truth, as many Christians claim, its words would lead to agreement among its readers. Given that this does not happen, a far more likely scenario is that humans rely on their own judgment to define the moral answers to questions, and as such are influenced by rationality, emotions, and external incentives. After all, there is no theological reason for the coincidence that the pro-slavery pastors happened to be in the south and vice versa. There is an all-too-human quality to the supposedly divine question of ‘Christian values.’
For the Christians whose rebuttal will be that I misrepresented their particular interpretation of a Bible verse or failed to mention a different Bible verse or passage that applies here, the argument does not change. For any given moral or ethical question of modernity, there is no definition of Christian values that will provide consistent answers from believers across the spectrum of Christianity. It is simply evidence of human beings using the name of their belief system to justify their own particular feelings about a topic, conscious or unconscious.
Given the fervor surrounding the current immigration policies themselves as well as the often-inhumane ways that they are being carried out, in conjunction with a president clearly motivated by his desire for his name to end up in the history books, it is unclear what Christians in the future will think about this particular topic. What is almost guaranteed, however, is that Christians of the future will join Christians today and Christians from the past in the spectacle of voicing entirely contradictory opinions about any given moral question and use the Bible to justify their interpretation. As such, there really is no coherency or substance to ‘Christian Values.’ It is a myth.