The newly-inaugurated president and vice-president participated this week in the tradition of attending a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. The event is one that has followed Inauguration Days for decades and mostly transpires without much attention.
Notable at this event, though, a local Episcopal Bishopess spent a portion of her 15-minute “sermon” to implore the president directly to show “mercy” to “LGBTQ+ people” and to immigrants illegally present in the country during his new administration. In what seemed like an odd and demeaning argument to me, she reminded the new executive branch leaders that these people, migrants, “pick our crops, clean our office buildings, labor in poultry farms,” and “wash our dishes after we eat.” But, I digress.
As part of her entreaty, the Bishopess loosely quoted from Leviticus 19, saying, “God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger.” I had several – unrelated – reactions this event and proceeding debate. Those reactions follow.
A BLATANT HYPOCRISY
Generationally, I’m an elder millennial. I was formed in a time where just about everyone left-of-center had a hypersensitive, negative reflex against any proposal or policy that even hinted at being motivated by Biblical values. The entire secular, progressive regime of my lifetime demanded a strict “separation of church and state,” and vigorously demanded we all keep our faith out of politics.
I’ll re-visit another time why that demand is incoherent. For now, worthy of note is that the same subsets of people who have spent their lives demanding that Biblical commands play no role in public policy are now lauding what they perceive as a pastor encouraging a politician to “do what the Bible says.”
In what other scenario does the secular left encourage a pastor to invoke God’s law as a demand on a politician? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question – and one that lays bare a gross hypocrisy.
BUT WAS SHE RIGHT?
Brazen hypocrisy aside, I do find it worth while to at least ask, “but does she have a point?” That answer is interesting, complicated, and requires precision.
Take the passage in Leviticus mentioned in the sermon. In verses 33-34, God’s people are enjoined not to do the stranger wrong and to treat him as a neighbor. We have good truth here for the individual Christian citizen: treat all your neighbors with honor.
However, a directive for individual behavior does not inveigh for a particular policy from a government. The citizen has his role (treat your neighbor well), and the government has a different role (enforce laws – Romans 13, I Peter 2:13-14).
The Bible is well balanced here: to individuals, don’t mistreat your neighbor. To governments, take care of your responsibility and love your citizens by being orderly and enforcing laws. Further wisdom on this would also suggest that sometimes, with wisdom, a government will seek out and admit foreigners for the benefit of that country’s own citizens.
CONCLUSION
In the coming months, to varying degrees, the citizens of the US will wrestle with what to do with millions of people present in the country illegally. I want Christians to be free from the guilt trips like the one laid out by this bishopess (who would, by the way, despise and reject almost every other command in the book from which she quoted). I also want to encourage Christians to let their attitudes be charitable and kind toward fellow human beings, all the while seeing the sense and justice of laws and good order being enforced.
