Assessing Alabama's "Anti-Immigration" Act

After several disjointed conversations about what Christians should think and do about Alabama's new immigration law via Facebook wall comments, I've decided that a more sustained and focused explication of the various arguments is needed (as much for my own benefit of writing and thinking this through somewhat systematically as for anyone else's).

A major cause of the problem is that the issue is simply totally complicated from the very start. Even if one goes straight to the crucial point — whether Christians should approve of and support or disapprove and oppose the new law — one is still starting in the center of an ancient theological quagmire: the ontological relationship between church and the world. Some of the deepest thinkers and tallest giants in the world of theology — such as Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther — have spent gallons of ink and reams of paper writing towering tomes of tight theology on this very subject.

Paul (a political rabble rouser who was finally executed by Cesar) suggests that the world and the church simply operate by different rules and are a bit like oil and water. Augustine (a high ranking official in the Roman Empire) and Luther (a wanted man hiding out under the sanctuary of the Prussian prince) declare that God created secular governments to muzzle the dark toothy beast of human nature, and therefore the State is an ordained arm of God's will on earth (hello "divine right of kings" much). Aquinas (probably the Church's best damn theologian ever, writing in the academic void of the "dark ages" *ugh) synthesizes Paul and Augustine and argues that the State is only legitimately an agent of divine will if it is in fact doing God's will; so if the king does something that isn't in line with God's will then not only is the king not a legitimate king, but it is also every Christians duty to actively oppose the king! (And Aquinas wrote this in the middle of the 13th century France; can you imagine the ire of poor King Louis? BTW, if this sounds A LOT like Thomas Jefferson, then you're paying attention :)

Soo much could be said in comparing and contrasting the various theories of these saints (and how their various political interests and positions shaped what they wrote), but such a project is waay beyond the scope of a blog written in my spare moments. Nonetheless, here are a couple of open personal reflections (in the good ole fashion form of the catechism and Aquinas) that may help you to think through this spaghetti-like skein of theology.

Q: What should Christians think about the immigration law? 
A: A useful way to think about questions like this one is to put things in more general terms. So I think the starting question should really be: "What should Christians think about any law that the State creates?" The answer to this then is that the first thing the Church should do is to determine if the law in question is contrary to the Gospel. If it is, then the Church should work against it in appropriate ways, and if it isn't, then it's a happy accident that the State has passed either a morally neutral or a congruent law vis a vis the Gospel and the Church should either *shrug* or celebrate accordingly.

Q: So is this particular law contrary to the Gospel? 
A: Defining what "contrary to the Gospel" means, much less figuring out how one goes about evaluating if something is in fact contrary to the Gospel, and then actually analyzing it along the agreed upon terms are whole (and very involved) conversations in themselves, but for the sake of argument let's just say that "yes" it is.

{For the sake of full-disclosure though, I will say that in my estimation the immigration law is in fact contrary to the whole spirit of the Gospel. But that's not why I think the State should oppose the law; I think to convince the secular State of anything you have to make the argument based on the fact that the law is contrary its own self interest. This law will cost the State so much money, increase the cost of so many commodities, and put so many farmers out of business that passing it will be total folly.}

Q: "So I guess now the question becomes: What should the Church do when the World does something contrary to the Gospel?" 
A:  Firstly, the Church shouldn't be surprised that the World is acting worldly. The World is ruled by superpowers, market forces, conflicting self-interests, and other nefarious things and will always eventually work against the realization of the Gospel; even in "Christian nations" (wherever those things are; I've never actually seen a country baptized!).
      Secondly, the Church should preach the Gospel and prophetically speak the truth to the oppressive powers of the World. Basically the Church should shake it's long pointy finger and say to the World, "if you believed what we believe then you wouldn't do such-and-such." (But of course the World is simply going to respond, "We don't believe what you believe so why should we act they way you say?" At which point the impasse is realized.)
     Thirdly, the church should stand with the victims and work to help them even at drastic cost to itself.

Q: Shouldn't the Church also work to legally undo the immoral action and put a better law in it's place? 
A: Here's where I step out of the marching mob of Aquinas/Jefferson/MLK and hitch a ride on Mino Simons horse drawn cart. The whole project of working within the legal system to bring about faith-based convictions is a dangerous slippery slope and an inherently/ultimately violent endeavor. This is going to take a couple of sentences to explain, so hang with me here..

Let's approach this by way of example: Nation A passes a law which a religious body finds to be morally bankrupt according to their religious convictions. The religious group then works to undo the law and to replace it with a new and "better" law by voting and demonstrating and are eventually successful. What has happened here philosophically inside this rather innocuous looking exchange is actually quite profound.

First, speaking purely secularly, how would you like it if the above "religious body" were not your religion? For example, how would you like Islam, through the power of democracy, to legislate that everyone must pray 5 times a day?

Second, by using the State's legal system to impose it's own view of things and to legislate mandatory moral action the "religious body," has in fact participated in a very violent event. The State's legal system is based in violence and gets its authority from the fact that it can punish violators, take away their money, freedom, or even life. Therefore using this system to get your way is tantamount to threatening people with these things.  That doesn't sound very Christ like. The Kingdom of Heaven can't be built with the blood soaked bricks of Caesar.

Thirdly, more problems with this exchange emerge if the senario is carried out to it's ultimate logical conclusion. What if the Church was able to become a "super-lobbyer" and every piece of legislation it wanted passed got passed and everything it wanted shot down was defeated. What good would it do if a whole nation acted within the bounds of Christian morality under compulsion and under threat of legal action? Would people really be acting moral? (I think it was Roger Williams who once said that "forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God.") Intentionality has always been a center piece of moral dialogue, but beyond that, how Christian is it to violently impose behaviors on someone else? God didn't create puppets so why should the Church try and turn people into moral automatons?

Q: You seem to be drawing a pretty hard line between the State and the Church. But what if the public leaders of the State are Christian? Can't they be held accountable to the values of the Church? 
A: Firstly, we will all be held to account for the way we conduct our lives; perhaps especially public officials :)
Secondly, I don't think it much matters what religion a public official is, the Church, including Christian public officials, shouldn't participate in inherently violent social engineering.


I hope these thoughts have been helpful; comment below if you have questions, consternations, or ameliorations.