***News Release***
Dr. Richard Land: How Should Christians Respond to the Immigration Crisis?
Southern Evangelical Seminary President Says Prayer, Resources, Closed Loopholes and Improved Policies Will Preserve the Ideal That Anyone Can Become American by Embracing Our Founding Principles
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Rarely a morning or evening goes by when immigration isn’t a top headline for both cable and network news. While the facts may be the same, the opinions regarding what should be done greatly vary.
But what about Christians? How should Christ-followers do what Jesus would do, while at the same time defending their faith and standing up for their nation?
Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES, www.ses.edu) President and Evangelical leader Dr. Richard Land, who serves on President Donald Trump’s advisory board for faith issues, explored this controversial topic in three installments of his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive.”
“The immigration crisis President Trump predicted is now upon us, despite the secular media mocking his predictions,” Land said. “Many thousands of immigrants have now massed along our border with Mexico, turning down asylum and work permits in that country, and are now trying to invade the United States illegally. These migrants are overwhelmingly young and male, and the majority will not qualify for political asylum. They are economic migrants seeking a better life, not victims of political and religious persecution. In the past decade, 90 percent of such asylum seekers have been denied asylum by a federal judge for just that reason. In fact, if they were offered asylum in Mexico and turned it down, then they don’t qualify for asylum in the United States. That’s the law.
“At least 600 of these people had been identified by either the Mexican and/or the U.S. government as known criminals,” Land continued, “and when border agents fulfilled their sworn duty to protect the borders of the United States by using the least violent method available to them—tear gas—the media strongly condemned the Trump administration’s ‘brutality’ when, in fact, the Obama administration employed tear gas at least once a month between 2013 and 2017—with not a whimper from the press. The hypocrisy is appalling.”
So what are Christians to do? Land says the faithful can take four actions:
- Pray for the migrants.
- Encourage the government to make sure they are treated as humanely as possible, and in doing so, religious groups should offer to help by providing resources and aid.
- Insist that the government change immigration laws to close loopholes that are being exploited shamelessly.
- Urge that the country have secure borders so no one can enter without the government’s approval.
“A nation without secure borders will not be the same nation much longer,” Land said. “There are now more foreign-born residents in the United States than any time in over a century. Our nation’s motto is ‘e pluribus unum’—‘out of many, one,’ literally. That has always been our national aspiration and goal, but that motto’s goal is eventually national unity or common purpose, no matter our ethnic origin. That means we would be unified in our common allegiance to the American ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In other words, while people contribute their own cultural identities to the rich tapestry of American culture, whether you are Irish-, Italian-, Indian- or African-American, the emphasis must ultimately be on the ‘American’ part of that hyphenated term, and that means the American ideal, not multiculturalism—and it means the ability to read, write and speak English.
“No country in the world has ever experienced peace when there hasn’t been a common language to hold them together,” he continued. “There is obviously some limit to how many people our society can assimilate over a limited period of time without fundamentally altering the society that drew them to America in the first place. The great melting pot means that people from various cultures assimilate to the American culture as embodied in our founding documents. We must insist that the emphasis must always be on the right syllable: Anglo-American, Irish-American, Asian-American, African-American, Indian-American. That preserves the invaluable American ideal that anyone can become an American by embracing our founding principles, regardless of culture or origin.”
For 25 years, SES has existed to equip students and ministry leaders to share the Gospel from an intelligent, informed and rational biblical worldview. Courses, conferences, seminars, guest speakers and more seek to accomplish this longstanding mission. Central to this purpose is the provision of a biblical basis and an academic understanding of believers’ commitment to Christ. Therefore, SES seeks to provide an educational opportunity where the Christian world view is both a framework for thinking and a dynamic for living.
Read more about Southern Evangelical Seminary and SES President Dr. Richard Land and his radio feature here. For more information on SES, visit its website at www.ses.edu or its Facebook page, follow the SES Twitter feed, @sesapologetics, or call (800) 77-TRUTH.
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