Yes, Pastors Can Work For ICE Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws

On Sunday, leftist protesters disrupted a Minneapolis-area Baptist church service due to allegations one of the church’s pastors has a day job enforcing federal immigration law. Former CNN host Don Lemon accompanied the protesters and claimed they have constitutional speech rights to disrupt other Americans’ constitutionally protected rights to freely worship and to private church property. Top federal legal officers disagreed.

“I’m a Christian,” Lemon told Cities Church Lead Pastor Jonathan Parnell to excuse himself while turning the church service into a circus, as frightened children and their families fled their house of worship. That’s between him and God, but his theology on this issue is a mess.

There’s zero biblical support for swapping activist politics for weekly corporate worship. There is, however, strong and explicit support in the Bible for borders, border enforcement, law and order, Christians not intermarrying nor otherwise culturally intertwining with pagans and demon-worshippers, and the use of government force to punish and repel evildoing.

That is why it is perfectly legitimate for a pastor to help enforce his nation’s morally permissible requirements for would-be immigrants, including by working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There are a lot of phony pastors in the world, and a lot of people who think they are Christians despite a very low theological IQ or even professing fervent beliefs that contradict clear scripture. But working for ICE doesn’t necessarily place a person in either of those categories.

Christians Are Free to Support Zero Immigration

There is a lot of trash theology floating around on this, claiming Christians are theologically bound to support open borders or even expansive “refugee” programs. But in fact Christians are not bound by our faith to support either. We may even freely support the opposite: completely closed borders and no refugee programs.

The Bible — which defines what Christians must believe — does not explicitly lay out what every nation’s immigration laws must be. It doesn’t say nations must have open borders. It doesn’t say nations must not have open borders. So Christians are free to hold a variety of positions about these and reason from the Bible and other sources to come to our conclusions, and to lawfully work within our available political processes to advocate our views.

It’s notable that the exact same camp of self-identified Christians who browbeat the rest of us with Romans 13’s exhortation to “obey the governing authorities” when governments were violating our Constitution and the Bible to ban Christian worship during lockdowns now seem to have forgotten Romans 13 exists when it comes to U.S. border laws.

Is it still true for immigration crimes that “whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves?” Look, either Romans 13 commands exact obedience to every government edict or it does not, but it can’t be both.

Foreign Rulers Are a Judgment from God

So yes, the Bible does not lay down an explicit, detailed, full account of what prudent immigration laws would be. (Perhaps that’s because it depends on the circumstances!) But it does offer wisdom that should inform Christians’ thinking about these issues.

Christians thinking through this topic should search the whole scriptures for what it has to say about foreigners, pagans, strangers, and the like. They might be surprised what they find — partly because the Bible both commands kindness to people detached from their homes and forbids intermixing with those who won’t assimilate to Christianity.

It’s popular for spiritual manipulators to ply Christians with the Bible’s generosity to “sojourners,” but none also mention that the same Bible sections require executing “sojourners” for blaspheming the Christian God, ban them from worship unless they adopt Christianity, require them to follow Christian religious customs, require them to follow Christian and civil law on exactly the same basis as citizens, and require them to read the Bible.

They also fail to mention the many times the Bible warns against pagans and foreigners, frequently calling it a curse, shame, and a judgment for God’s people to be ruled by foreigners with anti-Christian customs. Here’s Deuteronomy 17:15: “One from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.” Here’s Lamentations 5:1-2: “Remember, O Lord, what has come upon us; Look, and behold our reproach! Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens, And our houses to foreigners.”

Isaiah 2:6 says: “For You have forsaken Your people, the house of Jacob, Because they are filled with eastern ways; They are soothsayers like the Philistines, And they are pleased with the children of foreigners.” Here’s Psalm 144:7-8: “Rescue me and deliver me out of great waters, From the hand of foreigners, Whose mouth speaks lying words, And whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.” In Proverbs 5, King Solomon warns his son to learn wisdom, “Lest aliens be filled with your wealth, And your labors go to the house of a foreigner.”

As Pastor Adam Koontz explains in a fuller discussion of this subject, what Christians call the Great Commission — the command we tell everyone on earth about Jesus Christ — also does not require open borders or lax immigration laws.

The mandate of Jesus to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15) is not a political mandate rearranging the world’s borders or nations or languages. It is a mandate for the Church to translate that gospel, as at Pentecost, into the world’s languages so that all the nations may hear. The nations need not come to a central place, whether Jerusalem or some American suburb with a higher standard of living than where they were born. The Church needs to go out to the nations and preach the gospel to them wherever they live. It has no requirement to bring as many people into an ostensibly wealthy place. The Church’s ministers travel with the gospel.

In short, the Bible seems to support the classic American position: Immigrants are welcome when they come lawfully and assimilate. And assimilation to a Christian culture includes embracing the Christian religion. These are arguments Christians can and should make from the Bible. Our Christian brothers and sisters are welcome to make other ones from the Bible (if they can).

Love Your Neighbor Means Put Christians First

Other parts of the Bible play into this topic, too, of course. Open borders facilitate child and sex trafficking, among other grave evils. Supporting a situation that enslaves women and children and encourages their sexual torture is obviously anti-Christian. Open borders enrich international drug cartels that also rape, torture, murder, and enslave. It’s obviously immoral to support not only such outcomes but also the policies that encourage such outcomes.

Faithful lay Christians understand and believe this. Yet many of the prominent people who claim to speak in Christians’ name browbeat their people with false and spiritually manipulative claims that it’s immoral to oppose open borders. Let me be plain: Speaking where the Bible has not spoken is blasphemy. It violates the first and second of the Ten Commandments. Doing this without repenting quickly should strip a leader of his office.

Indeed, Jesus himself said the second greatest command, after loving God with all our being, is that we love our neighbor. Neighbors are the people closest to us physically — starting with our families, churches, and streets. This is very old and very basic theology.

It is complemented by Bible verses such as Saint Paul commanding Christians to put fellow believers first, before pagans: “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.” And 1 Timothy 5:8: “If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

We cannot say, “God directly says you must support open borders” when he has not said that. But we can argue, “These verses from the Bible give good counsel that, together with practical knowledge, indicate open borders are evil and assimilation for newcomers into Christian culture is mandatory.” Indeed, the Bible also says spiritual leaders who abuse their authority will be judged harshly by God. It would be better if Christians could see that our pastors advocate for their flock both before God’s throne and in the public square more strenuously than they do for unknown masses of mostly unrepentant pagans.

Enforcing Just Laws Is a Righteous Work

All this is why it is perfectly moral and even good for a pastor to take a day job supporting border enforcement. Like every Christian, he is free to perform any honest work. And supporting the moral laws of one’s nation, enforcing justice on evildoers, is honest work.

It can of course be performed in bad ways, such as abusive use of force, but Christians (and everyone) can and should avoid that, and perform such an inherently honest vocation justly. Just as mothers don’t stop being mothers when they ignore their kids too much to stare at their phones, so law enforcement doesn’t become inherently evil because a few abuse the position.

Indeed, Christians can righteously participate in the lawful use of force, as Romans 13 itself says: A civil authority “does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”

This is all very basic, Christian theology 101. Christians who attend churches with a decent pastor learn all this. People who claim to be Christians and who are theologically illiterate should at the very least stop shouting their ignorance on camera and calling their stupid and immoral ideas sanctioned by God. They’re only bringing down judgment on themselves with those blasphemies.