xenophobia

Jesus’ love in action is clearly documented in the New Testament, providing us with a clear script to follow. Unfortunately, his “love-your-neighbor-as-yourself” way of living is contradictory to the cultural norms of craving power and security above all else. To follow Jesus means making — and staying loyal to — an allegiance to the kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of men.

The vote could put Trump's fellow Republicans in an awkward position, forcing them either to vote against their leader, who has strong support among conservative voters, or effectively defend his statements, widely described as racist.

American Christianity brought us to this point. It preached nationalism and sanctified American imperialism — promoting Manifest Destiny as ordained by God. The prosperity gospel baptized capitalistic greed, it’s preachers vilified the poor, and it’s theologians manipulated scripture to rationalize global colonialism. Salvation was no longer personified through Jesus, but was redesigned to be a political machine, fueled by its ability to control branches of government. This methodology was packaged as “Christianity,” and the gospel became a message of gaining social power and control rather than a call to follow Jesus’ life of selfless service and sacrifice.

THROUGH MOST OF my career at World Relief, welcoming refugees has been a fairly easy “sell” to local churches: Refugees have sympathetic stories of fleeing persecution and legal status. I spent most of my energy persuading Christians that the same scripture passages that compel us to welcome refugees also apply to undocumented immigrants.

In recent years, I have observed a shift. The questions after I speak to church groups increasingly focus on Muslims. Aren’t I concerned that Muslims will “take over” America? What percentage of refugees harbor terrorist sympathies? Was I aware, one man asked, that New York City was already under sharia law? (Fact check: It’s not.)

We may have reached the point where refugees are as controversial as undocumented immigrants. Certainly, many local churches do welcome refugees—and this relational proximity has disabused many Christians of misconceptions that all refugees are Muslim (among those resettled to the U.S., more are Christians) or that Muslims immigrants want to establish sharia as U.S. law. But evangelical churches that actively welcome refugees are in the minority. A Public Religion Research Institute poll finds that 74 percent of white evangelicals believe “the values of Islam are at odds with American values”—essentially, that Muslims cannot possibly become Americans. Six in 10 white mainline Protestants and white Catholics agree.

Most often Pentecost comes to us as a momentous Christian occasion of spiritual power, ethnic unity, gender equality, multi-generational comradery, and immigrant hospitality. But when the moment has passed, it gives way to the more ignoble features of life and community, like spiritual apathy, sexism, racial prejudice, ageism, xenophobia, etc.

The history of America is the story of the great struggle between the dream of equality and the nightmare of how equality is defined. All men are created equal, but not poor men, or men of color, or women. Send me the “wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me” … but not if they are Irish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, or Muslim.

The call of the prophet is to call one’s nation to repentance, to courageously expose the hypocrisies and contradictions between dreams and reality. America has to be awoken from the stupor of false dreams. 

The reporter asked President Trump about the rise of anti-Semitism in America. His answer — or seeming lack of one — angered many prominent Jewish Americans.

“Donald Trump’s inability to simply condemn antisemitism boggles the mind,” said Stosh Cotler, CEO of Bend the Arc Jewish Action.

Washington National Cathedral was founded in 1907 and envisioned as a “Westminster Abbey for America,” which, in part, is why it finds itself at the center of controversy about its role in President-elect Donald J. Trump’s impending inauguration.

For more than a century, the cathedral has tried to stand in two worlds at once, attempting to be both a practicing Christian church and a gathering place for American civic expression. As the cathedral’s former dean, I believe that fidelity to the former role now requires rejecting the latter.

Though Jews remain the most frequent victims in America of hate crimes based on religion, the number of incidents against Muslims surged in 2015, according to newly released data from the FBI.

Hate crimes against Muslims spiked 67 percent from 2014 to 2015. That represents 257 anti-Muslim incidents.

Robert McCaw, government affairs director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the jump in anti-Muslim incidents continues to rise and even accelerated after the Nov. 8 election.