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The Rev. Ben Cooke is a pastor at Emmanuel Lutheran Episcopal Church in Augusta. He moved to Maine from the United Kingdom in 2012 and proudly became an American citizen in 2019.
America is a nation of immigrants. People who have come from all over the world seeking to make a better life in this land, just like me. In a time when Christian nationalism increasingly raises its head in the political dialogue, the intersection of faith and migration policy has become a key question for me as a new pastor in Augusta.
In the past, I have been scared by the rhetoric that speaks out angrily against immigrants, villainizing us as people who are not willing to do good, and who are evil because we have chosen to come to America. Regardless of how people come to be in this nation, the goodness or badness of their lives should be defined by their actions rather than by their migration status.
But even more scary to me is how my Christian faith is being co-opted by those who speak hate against me. It is an abuse of the ideals and ethics of Christianity to promote injustice, intolerance and anger toward those who are from a different culture.
In Luke’s gospel, we hear of how Jesus responded when asked the question, “Who is my Neighbour?” In response, he tells the well-known story of the good Samaritan. The story in which a stranger, a foreigner from another land, a Samaritan, who was hated by those he helped, saves a man on the road who has been attacked.
The term good Samaritan has entered our vernacular to describe someone who acts altruistically for the good of another. While this is true, it obscures the fact that this is someone who is a foreigner and a despised foreigner at that. Jesus makes clear that to love our neighbors is to love those who are not like us. Those who are strangers in our land and those with whom we do not agree.
If politicians wish to take the mantle of Christian ethics upon themselves when talking about immigration, I think they must adopt the attitude of Christ. The attitude of one who regards those from another land is worthy of love, worthy of dignity, worthy of respect and worthy of a place within the land that they call home. Only when we are able to adopt the loving attitude of Christ toward those who are different from ourselves can we hope to say that we are seeking to build a nation that has liberty and justice for all.
Only when we seek to look after and care for the poorest, the most vulnerable, the widow, the orphan and the stranger in our land are we able to say that we are fulfilling the Christian call to make a nation that lives out the ethics of Jesus.
As a result, this Easter it is imperative for every Christian to stand with all those of goodwill who oppose the rhetoric of intolerance and injustice toward immigrants, even if this leads those in power to send us to jail or to a cross, for this is what our faith demands of us.
