English Professor and Director of The Core Nancy Enright revealed an essay in At present’s American Catholic. The piece, “Welcoming the Stranger,” appears at up to date tradition and the plight of migrants and refugees by the
lens of empirical analysis and scripture.
Enright opens the essay with context, tying collectively a lot of totally different id
threads in up to date tradition because it relates to what’s seen because the menace from migrants.
We’re Christians, we’re Individuals, we’re patriots. We have now compassion for these migrants.
We love individuals however we simply need to make certain our youngsters are protected.” These have been the
phrases of a protestor towards migrants being housed in a former Catholic college in
Staten Island as quoted on ABC’s Eyewitness Information on Saturday, August 26, 2023. The three sentences hyperlink to a number of linked concepts
in America immediately: Christian id as being necessary; American id and patriotism
as being someway intricately linked to it, nearly subsuming it; and the concept
compassion for migrants, even when acknowledged as it’s right here, should give place to
the aim of “defending” our borders, our youngsters, our nation from the “menace” at
the border.
Dealing in details, Enright examines the thought of “menace” and the necessity to “shield our
kids” from the notion of immigrant criminality.
…is it true that migrants usually tend to commit crimes, or are extra harmful
than native-born Individuals? Quite the opposite. In a December 2020 article in Scientific American, Melinda Wenner Moyer notes that ‘a research revealed within the Proceedings of the Nationwide
Academy of Sciences USA . . . experiences that between 2012 and 2018, in contrast with their
U.S.-born neighbors, undocumented immigrants in Texas have been lower than half as more likely to be arrested for violent crimes or drug offenses and fewer than 1 / 4 as more likely to be arrested
for property crimes.’
In mild of the analysis that reveals that “undocumented immigrants have decrease felony
arrest charges than each authorized immigrants and, particularly, native-born U.S. residents,”
Enright concludes:
Subsequently, worry, as an excuse for lack of compassion for immigrants, isn’t a respectable
clarification. In actual fact, a theological exploration starting with Scripture is a crucial
starting for a re-examination of those attitudes.
The Theological Exploration
Inside the essay Enright works her method by each the Outdated and New Testomony and
delivers a wealth of scriptural proscription towards treating immigrants poorly as
effectively as a lot of calls for that they be handled effectively. She begins:
…the Israelites have been enjoined by God to have compassion on the stranger amongst them.
In actual fact, the command is given twice within the Lord’s sequence of injunctions to his individuals,
even earlier than they enter the land of Canaan (Israel): “You shall not unsuitable a stranger
or oppress him, for you have been strangers within the land of Egypt,” in Exodus 22:21, and
“You shall not oppress a stranger, because you yourselves know the sentiments of a stranger,
for you additionally have been strangers within the land of Egypt,” in Exodus 23:9. In Leviticus, the
Lord goes even additional and instructions love for the alien: “The stranger who resides
with you shall be to you because the native amongst you, and also you shall love him as your self,
for you have been aliens within the land of Egypt; I’m the Lord your God” (Lev 19:33-34).
She continues,
This concept of welcoming the alien is echoed all through the Bible. The e-book of Ruth
is a narrative of refugees being welcomed: first Elimelech, Naomi, and their household are
welcomed in Moab, after which Ruth, the Moabite, accompanying her mother-in-law again
to Israel, is welcomed by Boaz, who finally marries her. In a number of locations, the
look after the alien is linked to an analogous concern Israel was to point out to the poor as
effectively as orphans and widows. Ruth’s gathering the gleanings within the subject of Boaz is
an instance of an alien and a widow (each of which she was) benefiting from these compassionate
legal guidelines: “Once you reap your harvest in your subject and have forgotten a sheaf within the
subject, you shall not return to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan,
and for the widow, so that the Lord your God might bless you in all of the work of
your arms” (Deut 24:19). In actual fact, hurt to aliens (together with different marginalized teams—once more,
the orphans and widows) isn’t solely forbidden however proven to result in God’s curse. In
a sequence of warnings to be given by the Levites to the individuals, we hear: “Cursed is
he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow” (Deut 27:19).
Not solely are these stipulations given within the Legislation, however the Prophets additionally prolong the
idea of compassion to the alien. In Jeremiah, we’re instructed: “Thus says the Lord,
‘Do justice and righteousness, and ship the one who has been robbed from the ability
of his oppressor. Additionally don’t mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan,
or the widow; and don’t shed harmless blood on this place’” (Jer 22:3). The compassionate
therapy of the stranger, the sojourner, is once more a part of a basic environment of
righteousness linked to how Israel is to deal with all of the marginalized. Equally, the
prophet Zechariah says, “Don’t oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the
poor; and don’t devise evil in your hearts towards each other” (Zech 7:10). Really,
the message of how you can deal with the alien is all through the Hebrew Scriptures. Subsequently,
it mustn’t come as a shock when Jesus, the incarnation of the God talking these
issues to his individuals, reinforces them in his personal teachings.
In Matthew 25, as Jesus tells the story of the sheep and the goats, representing the
good and the evil nations within the ultimate judgment, he consists of how they deal with the “stranger”
as one of many standards on which they are going to be judged. “I used to be a stranger, and also you welcomed
me” (Matt 25:35), he says to the sheep on his proper hand, however to the goats on his
left, “I used to be a stranger, and also you didn’t welcome me” (Matt 25:43). As within the Hebrew
Scriptures, Jesus additionally connects the therapy of the stranger with how one treats
the hungry, the bare, the homeless, the imprisoned. And the message couldn’t be
clearer: “Really I say to you, to the extent that you just did it to one in every of these brothers
of mine, even the least of them, you probably did it to me” (Matt 25:40). Chillingly, to these
on his left, he says, “Really I say to you, to the extent that you just didn’t do it to
one of many least of those, you didn’t do it to me,” warning additional, “These will
go away into everlasting punishment, however the righteous into everlasting life” (Matt 25:45-46).
Additional reinforcing her level with passages and evaluation of Luke 4:22-8, Gen. 19:9
and Ezek. 16:49-50, Enright concludes:
Delight, selfishness, and lack of concern for these in want, particularly the aliens and
others most marginalized, are grave sins within the eyes of God. What we should worry is
not the struggling migrants coming to our cities, however the lack of compassion that’s
dangerously being cultivated each day even within the hearts of those that declare
to know Christ.
Learn the complete essay, “Welcoming the Stranger,” in At present’s American Catholic.
Classes:
Arts and Tradition, Religion and Service