The verse that radicalized me will be a familiar one to Sojourners readers. It can be found in Matthew 25: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”
“Radicalization” is a popular topic. When I say I have been radicalized, I don’t mean that I’ve been shaped by a rigid set of beliefs that draws hard lines between who’s in and who’s out. I mean that I’ve been transformed by the teachings of Jesus, which challenge me to practice a radical form of love for others.
A question has been trending across TikTok: “What radicalized you?” Users’ answers expose the irony of conservative critics’ attempts to re-brand Christian teachings as “woke” or “sinful” by conservative critics. Throughout scripture, Christians are commanded to love their neighbors as themselves, to welcome the stranger, and to care for “the least of these.” Yet President Donald Trump, who has promised to restore our nation to some former Christian glory, has spent the entirety of his political career working with lawmakers to create policies that hurt the most vulnerable.
In Trump’s latest string of cruelty, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have kidnapped and dragged immigrants out of workplaces. These immigrants have been ripped from their families and their communities, deported, and imprisoned abroad without due process. To add insult to injury, some conservative Christians are celebrating these inhumane policies.
READ MORE: ICE Quotes the Bible in a New Propaganda Video
Having grown up charismatic and conservative, I’m grateful for the radicalization (that is, the process of learning) that saved me from the trap of idol-worship and nationalism. The way I see it, my radicalization happened at three different stages: In the classroom, through studying scripture, and learning from my community.
The classroom
During my freshman year of college, a film professor assigned the documentary Which Way Home. Watching that film was the first time my beliefs about immigration were challenged. The documentary follows the story of several unaccompanied minors as they make their way from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border. For these children, the decision to migrate was one of desperation; the journey was dangerous, and the chances of a successful entry were slim.
I couldn’t get their faces out of my head, so I made immigration the focus of a research paper for my sociology class. That’s when I learned that nearly every story I’d grown up hearing about undocumented people was fictitious. As it turned out, immigrants paid billions in taxes, committed fewer crimes than citizens, and didn’t so much “steal” jobs as much as they filled the ones Americans refused to take.
Through my research, I also learned the uncomfortable truth about the United States’ role in destabilizing countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In the name of stopping Communism or monopolizing agricultural industries, we funded coups, trained soldiers in scorched earth tactics, and drove native farmers off their land — all while creating the conditions that force people to migrate in the first place. Though it might be inaccurate to say the U.S. is completely responsible for the border crisis (other countries played a part as well), it’s irresponsible and dishonest to pretend our hands are clean.
READ MORE: This Oscar Romero Podcast Is the True Crime Binge You've Been Waiting For
Perhaps the most significant myth that was busted for me during my time in college was this: That there was a “right way” to immigrate to the United States.
I’d heard that phrase my whole life. My family came to the United States “the right way” so that my siblings and cousins could inherit the blessings of my parents’ conscientious choices. But when I studied further, I discovered a backlogged immigration system that hadn’t been updated since 1990. I learned that some groups were welcomed to the U.S. through politically motivated decisions, while others were not. I found that our immigration system is not only broken but comically difficult to navigate. One legal pathway to citizenship allows a Mexican-American U.S. citizen to sponsor their adult sibling. But the estimated wait time for that family-sponsored visa is about 224 years under our current immigration system, according to data from U.S. State Department and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
My black-and-white narratives about who came to the U.S. “the right way” crumbled. It became clear that the tension about accepting immigrants into the U.S. wasn’t really rooted in distinctions between patriotic, law-abiding immigrants and criminal, undocumented immigrants. The tension was between the fortunate and the unfortunate, between those who came from the right place at the right time and those who did not.
Scripture
My radicalization continued when I joined a college campus ministry that taught me how to contextually read the Bible. Despite growing up in the church, I gained a deeper understanding of Jesus for the first time and learned that the circumstances surrounding his birth, life, and death ought to inform the way his followers view and treat others today.
Jesus was born in a stable to a mother fleeing an oppressive government; he aligned himself with tax collectors, sex workers, fishermen, lepers, and ethnic enemies; he was executed by the state, and he identified most closely with those on the margins. He disrupted systems of power as he reserved his harshest criticism for the wealthy and religious elite. To many in his time, he was considered a “radical” because everything he did challenged the status quo. Jesus’ upside-down kingdom was scandalous, beautiful, and to this day, extremely threatening to anyone who hoards power and sews division.
With this fuller understanding of Christ, it became impossible to see him in the dangerous rhetoric of politicians who cloak their agendas in Christian language. I realized that religious justification for inhumane polices was often rooted in isolationism and nationalism — concepts not supported by the teachings of Jesus. Through studying the historical context of scripture, I learned about a different version of Jesus than the one I had been taught to accept growing up. Jesus was not a cowboy-gunslinger riding a horse, shooting the bad guys, and justifying violence in God’s name. Jesus was riding a donkey, bringing a message of peace and hope to the poor and powerless. He was a striking departure from the militaristic conqueror so many expected.
Jesus was not a cowboy-gunslinger riding a horse, shooting the bad guys, and justifying violence in God’s name. Jesus was riding a donkey, bringing a message of peace and hope to the poor and powerless.
Community
After graduating from college, I felt as though my education had been completed. But through relationships, I realized I still had so much more to learn.
In 2017, I spent a summer volunteering at a local church with a large Congolese refugee congregation. During that time, I witnessed a faith community truly live out its calling as the body of Christ as they welcomed the stranger and cared for families fleeing violence. Later that same year, I started working for an organization that supported migrant farmworkers and asylum seekers. On one occasion, an immigrant mother welcomed me into her home and fed me. She spoke proudly of her love for her children, and even more proudly of her love for Jesus. By the end of our conversation, she was in tears. It was 2018, and the Trump administration’s inhumane immigration policies were just beginning to take shape.
I don’t recount these experiences to boast, but to reflect on a humbling and illuminating time in my life. Without meaningfully engaging with those impacted by injustice, our commitment to justice can grow anemic, and we risk forgetting what “radicalized” us in the first place.
There’s a real human cost, for example, to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which Congress passed on July 4. It will pump billions of dollars into disturbing immigration policies that criminalize desperation and stoke xenophobia. The more merciful and fiscally responsible choice, according to a study by the Christian humanitarian aid organization World Relief, would be to assist immigrant families with “legal services, resettlement and holistic care.”
When I say I believe more Christians should embrace a radical faith, I envision something entirely different from the radicalization we’re seeing on the far right. Instead of retreating into echo chambers that defend political leaders unconditionally, we should avoid authoritarianism, practice principled dissent, and remember that our ultimate loyalty is to Christ alone. And instead of allowing media outlets to misinform us and profit from our outrage, we should step away from the noise and seek real connections with immigrants, with refugees, and with anyone who we’re told isn’t worthy of our time and care.
The radicalization I long for is not a return to hierarchies or some nostalgic ideal of America, but a return to the resurrection power of Christ, which sets us free and awakens our imagination for an infinitely better world.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!
