The land of the free?
An outcry for immigrants
I’m writing as a Southern Californian at a loss for words.
This weekend was LA Pride. It was a time for the city to come together in deep joy and celebration. I got to witness Christians and churches, many who weren’t always affirming, openly celebrating. How sweet it is to see people awaken to the queer love of God!
And then, in the same city just miles away, it was also a time of terror.
As ICE raids continue to increase, so does the fear across our neighborhoods. Families are being torn apart. People are being targeted and detained. Protests for basic dignity are being met with violence and violation.
How is this the land of the free?
The violence we’re seeing is not new. It’s part of a long line of inhumane treatment that stretches across generations and continues to crack open our hearts.
As I think about these two public events in my city, I ask myself: Why is it that so many of the people enforcing or defending these deportations call themselves “Christian”? What kind of convictions or theologies have led to the justification of this inhumane treatment?
Talking about theology at a time like this might seem like a remote conversation for an ivory tower, and yet it is exactly in these times that we see on full display the life-and-death nature of our theology:
At our core, what do we believe God wants for the “foreigner”?
What do we believe God thinks about us and the land we are on?
These are not abstract questions. They are spiritual questions. Political questions. Survival questions. And we must ask them, again and again, if we want to be people who follow the way of Jesus.
For hundreds of years, Christians have used the Bible to justify war and violence as divinely sanctioned. It might not always be as explicit as, “God wants us to be violent warmongers.” No, it usually sounds more like, “God has called us to usher in the kingdom to this land,” or, “It is our sacred responsibility to Christianize this part of the world, whatever it takes.” So much of colonization is rooted in religious superiority: When someone says aloud, “We are the people of God,” it is hard not to also hear, “…and we are therefore better than everyone else.”
This mindset still infiltrates our country today. Nationalists continue to cling to the idea the United States is the land of the free, the best country in the world. And that nationalism comes entangled with a theology that says God is with us, not them—that we are to have dominion over them, which in practice means exploiting, controlling, colonizing, and exercising power over.
As you might imagine, this ideology by its nature views diversity as a threat. Because at its core diversity suggests that people across many wide spectrums have the sacredness of God in them. People who are different from us have something to teach us about who God is. Power is shared. If left unchecked, the logic and growth of diversity will topple the very system the Christian colonizer works so hard to keep intact.
So when difference arrives—when people come bringing their cultures, languages, colors, songs, theologies, and bodies—how does the Christian colonizer respond?
The only way they know how: with superiority and violence. They purge. They dismantle. They attack anyone different, anyone who does not fit into their vision of God and God’s people. They villainize the other. They build campaigns on this villainization.
This is the backdrop for the stories of those who migrate to the so-called “land of the free.” It also helps us make sense of the history of settlers’ treatment of Indigenous peoples in this land, whose ancestors belonged here long before it was ever called the United States of America.
All this reminds me of a dear friend of mine, a pastor named Arelis, who once sang for a group of us pastors the song “Don’t Call Me Foreigner.” The song carried raw vulnerability and the affirmation that God is always always being with the oppressed.
In these times, I hear Arelis’s words “don’t call me foreigner” and in solidarity cry out for God’s justice, for people to mobilize, for the Christian colonizer to repent.
God is not on the side of empire. God is not behind masked agents or raids or tear gas. God is always, always with the oppressed.
This week, rage and lament and continue to mobilize. Here are a few things we can do:
Learn what’s happening in your city. Who’s organizing? What’s needed?
Give to a local immigrant justice group or bail fund.
Investigate your theology. Where have we inherited frameworks that dehumanize?
As despairing as these times are, may we stay awake, not look away, not numb out, and not be swallowed in desolation.
May we see the face of God in the migrant, the protestor, the neighbor trying to breathe free.
