Strangers and Immigrants

Immigration is one of the most heated subjects in American life, and churches are not above the fight. In many congregations you can hear newcomers described as a threat: to jobs, to safety, to the country's character. Some of it comes from pulpits; more comes from the pews and the family table, often from people who would never turn away a stranger at their own door.

You're not imagining it. Many of the people most eager to call America a Christian country are the quickest to treat strangers as enemies. Their own Scriptures command the opposite, over and over, and the one they call Lord told a story in which the foreigner is the hero. Nobody has to stretch the text to find that; it is the plot.

Measured against the center