The ACLU has released a shocking report on immigrant
detention centres and in particular the state of children kept in these
facilities. The media is covering this story but given the nature of the
accusations one would think this would be a major scandal.*
Many Christians will dismiss the story because it finds it
origins in an ACLU project, in this case with the University of Chicago.
It's true the ACLU is generally speaking no friend to
Christians but as an organisation it is committed to human rights and free
speech. This can work in favour of Christians or in other cases against them.
Perhaps one of the most famous and early examples of ACLU and Christian
antagonism was the Scopes Trial. John Scopes was defended by Clarence Darrow an
ACLU lawyer.
I think a lot of Christians need to reckon with their own
attitudes on these points. This is not to say the ACLU is right, not in the
least, but rather it is to point out the confusion on the part of many
Christians when it comes to democratic values and so-called human rights. The
Theonomists are happy to point this out but as I continually contend, the
Biblical path is one that rejects both the Judaized-Theonomic framework as well
as the thinking that equates or at the very least conflates modern
Enlightenment categories with Biblical doctrine. There is another way,
something I consistently write about.
The ACLU certainly defends a lot of perceived Leftist causes
and yet they have also defended the extreme Right in the form of the Klan and
their right to speak and march. I'm no fan of the ACLU but I will say this,
were I to come under attack from the secular public education system (for
example) and I were in need of a legal defense I would turn to the ACLU before
I would the ACLJ, Alliance Defending Freedom, HSLDA or any of the other
Christian Right legal/lobbying organisations. I would rather turn to the
sodomites of the ACLU for secular help in a secular court than I would the
Sacralist heretics of the Christian Right. More likely I would turn to none of
them.
The ACLU may (or may not) harm America but the Dominionist
ideology of the Christian Right and especially their anti-New Testament
approach to law and government work to undermine the Kingdom of Christ. I care
far more about that than the bestial empire that is the United States.
All that said, the ACLU report needs consideration. Some will
dismiss it because it's the ACLU, but many others will simply because they
don't want to hear it. Their nationalism has pushed them to the point that they
no longer care about what happens to others. Criminals are reckoned as
sub-human and immigrants are counted as criminals. It's not too hard to work
out the conclusion. In many cases there is clearly a racist element at work and
for many America is thought of in tribalist as opposed to idealist terms.
That's another debate worthy of consideration but one I will leave aside for
the sake of brevity.
Some Christians will argue it is the job of the state to
promote law and order and since immigration is illegal, these people deserve
punitive action. I think that's what Attorney General Jeff Sessions was trying
to say recently, albeit in the most rankly hypocritical fashion. Well, maybe he
has a point, though he certainly wouldn't argue the same were the other party
in power would he? The government exists to maintain order. I'm also familiar
with the arguments about how a state with no borders has no future.
A lot of things could be said about these arguments. We could
talk about the nature of the modern nation state and modern borders. We could
talk about the inconsistency of some on this point with their understanding of
free markets and the restriction of commercial activity.
Morally I would appeal to the fact that in many cases the
people coming from Latin America are escaping chaos and violence that all too
often has resulted from decades of US intervention and manipulation. Washington
has repeatedly overthrown governments, backed fascistic military dictatorships
and aided said governments in campaigns of genocide, repression, torture and
the like. The US has waged proxy wars and has through its drug policy and phony
drug war fomented chaos and social degradation. The Empire has been unkind to
the peoples of Latin America. Economically the US has waged war on their
economies. Through so-called Free Trade it has decimated various agricultural
sectors and forced people into impossible financial situations. Collaborating
with corrupt state and corporate proxies the US has sought to turn many of
these nations into exploitative cheap labour platforms and sources for resource
extraction.
The instability continues to generate violence and the US has
played no small part in feeding the fires and has on more than one occasion
been caught directly supporting and collaborating with drug cartels and death
squads.
Many of these people end up fleeing and ironically seek the
relative peace found beyond the borders of El Norte as the United States is
called.
To no one's surprise the report cites Mexico as being one of
the chief sources of immigration. The nation has become one of the bloodiest
battlefields in the phony and disingenuous War on Drugs. Guatemala saw decades
of US backed dictatorship and civil war. American Evangelicals backed genocidal
dictators who were armed and supported by the Pentagon and State Department. El
Salvador saw a vicious civil war which spanned the 1980's in which tens of
thousands died. The government and military were supported by the United
States. Honduras was the staging ground for the Contra War in Nicaragua and
home to more US backed death squads. Hundreds of thousands died in these wars,
societies were ripped apart and the wounds have not healed. The globalisation
of the 1990's poured fuel on the fire and people are fleeing what has become
for them a dystopian nightmare of slavery, paramilitary and gang violence, fear
and despair.
Then when they arrive here, they can 'make it' but they'll
work themselves ragged, live in poor conditions and virtually sacrifice their
families in order to make a living and send the money back home. Some through
hard work and austerity save some money and eventually bring their families north
and try to blend into American society. Some have undoubtedly benefitted from
amnesty programs. Well do I remember the Reagan era amnesty which affected
people connected to my own family.
Others completely sell out and actually join with the US
state, enlisting in the military, working for the very corporations, police
agencies and penal institutions which crush their people.
I am consistently amazed at how few Americans even know the
history of the American Southwest and how the region was 'acquired' by the
United States. Much more could be said with regard to the history of Texas.
Ironically the Mexicans who lived there once referred to the White Texans as
squatters, illegal aliens, vicious and uncultured. Mexico was the offspring of
the Spanish Empire and today's American Southwest was stolen at gunpoint by the
American Empire in the mid 19th century. Who has a legitimate claim?
At the end of the day it's the side with the biggest army. Might does not make
right. These lands now belong to the United States but no American has a right
or some kind of solemn ancestral blood-tie to the land that allows them to denounce
people settling from below the border or to harangue them about speaking
English.
We can argue all day about what's best for a nation, how
foreign policy should or should not be taken into consideration. We can talk
about the economics and problems of crime etc...
But as Christians I do not understand the embrace of
nationalist rhetoric and categories of thought. I understand the state is going
to guard its borders and in some cases pursue illegal immigrants. It's not
surprising and yet I do not understand the Christians who champion these
causes. Not only are they not Christian concerns or moral imperatives, even in
terms of worldly natural law-type considerations and historical reflection,
these sentiments are unjustifiable and the arguments are less than compelling.
Only within the framework of rank tribalism do such attitudes make sense. Such
a mindset is not an option for Christ's followers, pilgrims and strangers on
this Earth and in this age.
Let Babylon do what Babylon will do. We answer to a higher
law and in the Kingdom of Christ, borders mean very little. What we see are not
people from another 'country' but people that are exiles, strangers and
wanderers of the earthly variety. I do not mean to equate their status with the
heavenly call to be pilgrims in this age. Rather what I mean to suggest is that
since we don't really 'belong' here either, what is it to us that these people
would want to come here?
It's all the more true when we consider their circumstances
and how the land and society in which we live has grown fat, feeding on the
resources and populations of other lands. We could not live the way we do were
it not for the empire. I suggest this is to our shame. Others will acknowledge
this, vindicate it and celebrate it in a spirit of hubris and triumph.
I'm not suggesting we need to be actively trying to help
migrants, that we need to be stockpiling water in the desert... though I would
hardly fault someone for doing that. And yet the Christian attitude all too
often seems to be one of anger and vengeance, a willingness and even a desire
to set the police onto these people or let them suffer and die.
This didn't start with Trump. For Christians this is a
multi-generational intellectual struggle. Socially and politically the real (recent)
crackdown came under Obama though the Right would never stoop to praising him,
even though he was aggressively pursuing a policy they would endorse. Instead
they focused on attacking the bone he threw to the left... DACA, the so called 'Dreamer'
programme.
Of course ironically and perhaps it could even be noted in a
somewhat sickening fashion the Democrats who were largely silent in the face of
Obama's draconian deportation policies are now seeking to capitalise on a
growing public sympathy for immigrants and now in light of the 2018 mid-term
elections they are suddenly showing 'great concern'.
Of course under Trump things have gotten worse and he most
certainly has promoted a culture of thuggishness, violence and brutality.
Sadly, Christians have supported this and I believe they to some degree must
answer for the rapes, murders, torture and other abominations that are taking
place within our borders. These are not pro-life, pro-family policies. These
concentration camps (for that is effectively what they are) are a shame and
disgrace. They are in keeping with America's long history of such but it is
monstrous that Christians support these policies. Do they support the rapes and
murders? Of course not and yet they nevertheless put their ignorance on
display. Having sanitised war and policing they have little understanding of
human nature and what power does to people... especially when mixed with a lack
of accountability and the viciousness of nationalism.
If there ever is an investigation it will expose some 'rogue
bad apples' and yet like Abu Ghraib there's a deliberate culture and even a
policy at work here that encourages this behaviour, looks the other way and
facilitates the covering-up of misdeeds.
Of course any professing Christians at work in these prisons
or for the border services need to re-think their lives and what it means to
follow Christ.
I am neither pro- nor anti- immigration. It's a historical
norm and present reality and it's understandable and so are some of the
responses. But what this report reveals is beyond the pale and as Christians we
should not support the state on this score. The bottom line is if immigrants
were passing through my yard, the woods on the edge of town or I saw them on
the highway, what should I as a Christian do?
I can ignore them of course. Or, I can help them as fellow
human beings. I can give them food and water and I can do this with a clear
conscience regardless of whatever man-made law has been passed. I am not bound
by it in such cases.
But what I would never do is what the majority of the
Christian Right would advocate. Call the police, hold them at gunpoint and/or
follow them and harass them. Such responses are wrong and portray an ugliness
unknown to New Testament Christianity.
Read the report, open your eyes and re-think these issues.
There are horrible things taking place and the larger society is associating
them with Conservative Christianity. We must speak even if it's just to the
people we know and I think we need to speak up when we encounter people in the
aisles after Church. I feel like for too long I've let people get away with
saying outrageous things and just for the sake of charity.... letting it slide.
In some cases the men in pulpits need to be challenged. There's a way to go
about this of course. I'm not suggesting we need make a scene, though I wonder
sometimes if it isn't called for.
What I hope is this... Biblically minded people will wake up
and realise what they're up against in the institutional 'Church', a Church overcome
by idolatry and for the most part no longer reflecting the Kingdom of Heaven. I
hope people will begin to leave and if the Spirit wills a vibrant and very
different type of Church can arise, one that will not only be counter-cultural vis-à-vis
the world but equally counter-cultural when it comes to the governing attitudes
and norms of many so-called Conservative Churches... bodies which have
succumbed to worldliness thinking they do God service. There are many who speak
of Biblical Worldview that abandoned the Scriptures long ago. They have a form
of godliness at best.
The theologically liberal churches that speak out have
nothing to say. They abandoned the Kingdom generations ago. They have no
gospel. Their Christ is a Gandhi figure. Salvation is making the world a better
place. Heaven and Hell are just idealised constructs. What a shame that these
apostates who have denied the essence of the faith nevertheless in some cases
retain more of a gospel ethic than the teachers and denominations that have
stood for historical orthodoxy and yet have fallen into the same syncretistic
traps. The 'conservatives' may retain more in the way of doctrinal formulation
but in their case their embrace of nation, power, wealth and war has all but
decimated any ethical compass they might have possessed. In the end, they have
a form of godliness but end up in essentially the same place as the liberals
who openly deny Scripture. Both camps claim to follow Christ and yet both have
abandoned His teaching and that of His Apostles.
There is another way.
See also:
Here's the full report:
And an excellent summary:
*The liberal media is bent on obsessing over Russia and other
McCarthyite campaigns even while it seems to give the Obama and Trump
administrations a virtual pass on immigration. Additionally for months we've
known the death toll in Puerto Rico resulting from Hurricane Maria was going to
be significant and that the reports of a few dozen deaths were inaccurate. For
George Bush, Katrina was a turning point and yet the Trump administration's
lackluster and even disdainful response to the US territory has received
coverage but there's been little outrage or scandal akin to what happened in
New Orleans, even though this story is by all accounts exponentially worse.
The partisanship on this issue, among many others, is astounding among so-called Christian pundits. While there are many as you describe, who've now lined up behind Trump and his faction, hell or high-water, there is a contingent of the Never-Trump GOP types as well. They decry Trump, attack his policies, and generally echo the mainstream talking points that condemn him. They attack this immigration policy as savage and bestial and unbecoming of a Christian society, citing NT ethics and neighbor love.
ReplyDeleteBut that's the kicker, because these people are equally about power. They assume the migrants are coming because the US is just innately better, and that even the Reagan years were trying to make Latin America a better place. They swoon over the Bush II years, and the likes of Rubio, Sasse, and McMullin. These people get praise from main-stream new outlets as "sane" conservatives. They also promote the warfare state and its finance-intelligence complex, but it's playing a different set of cards.
I'm more upset with these Kellerite upstarts than the Trump crowd, but that may have more to do with where I live and who I'm interacting with. The kind of praise these Trump Evangelicals give him is sick, but it's almost a parody of itself. I highly doubt that the paranoid fantasies of the US becoming "fascist". In the long run, this embrace will only leave most Evangelicals high-and-dry, possibly discredited. I'm worried about these shills who cuddle up to mainstream causes so as to siphon legitimacy. They stain Christ's Kingdom with their equally vain politicking, but seek a thicker cloak of legitimacy. They seem the grosser hypocrites.