One of the most admirable trends I’ve observed in American evangelicalism over the last several years is a renewed interest in adoption and foster care.

Adoption should be a no-brainer for Christians: the biblical mandate to care for the fatherless is clear and repeated, as is God’s judgment on those who fail to do so (Ex. 22:21-22, Deut. 10:18, Deut. 14:29, Deut. 24:17, Deut. 27:19, Job 29:12-16, Ps 94:6, Ps 146:9, Jer 7:6, Jer 22:3, Ezek 22:7, Zech 7:10, Mal 3:5, and many more. This is not a proof-texted idea).  Not only that, but, as authors like Russell Moore, Tony Merida, Rick Morton, and David Platt have helped to highlight, the Bible uses adoption as one of the central metaphors for what it means to be a Christian. By Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we who were once spiritual orphans can be adopted by our Heavenly Father and brought into his family (Rom 8:15-17, Gal 4:4-7, Eph 1:3-7).  Thousands of American Christians have an opportunity to extend a small taste of the grace we have received by adopting those waiting in foster care for a healthy home. Those not in a position or who do not feel called to adopt can find other ways to support those who do.

Tragically, according to a new report out last week, even as families within local churches are helping to clear the backlogs of kids waiting in foster care for a safe home, U.S. immigrant detention and deportation policies are adding many more to the foster care system. This often results in removing kids from healthy, supportive parents to do so.  5.5 million kids living in the U.S.  have at least one undocumented parent, and as the Obama Administration has stepped up deportations in recent years—to a record 396,906 people last year—that has left many kids without their parents. They either wait for deportation hearings in detention facilities or have already been deported.  5,100 kids are currently in the foster care system as a result of detained or deported parents, according to a report last week (and that covered just 22 states).  In some parts of the country, children of the detained and deported account for as much as 7% or 8% of the total number of kids in foster care.

That would be an unfortunate necessity if these kids’ parents were neglectful, abusive, or criminals who had to be jailed, but what’s even worse is that most of them are probably not. Only about one half of those deported last year had a criminal conviction of any kind, and many of those “criminals’” only offense was driving without a license (for which they were usually ineligible to apply) or an immigration violation. They were not deported because of violent offenses that would put children at risk.  Beyond the 5,100 kids sent to foster care, many, many more whose parents have been deported are now being raised with a single parent or by relatives.  I’ve known a few of these in my neighborhood, and it breaks my heart to see these kids growing up without the blessing of the healthy, intact families, that they had before my government got involved (spending billions of taxpayer dollars in the process, because detaining and deporting about 400,000 people per year costs a lot of money).

This is important because, beyond our biblical mandate to care for children and do nothing that would cause them to stumble (Mark 9:42), each of the many verses that I cited above that call us to care for the fatherless also reference another vulnerable group: the immigrant (or alien, sojourner, or foreigner, depending upon your English translation).  Immigrant kids (and the children of immigrants, most of whom are actually US citizens) are vulnerable on multiple counts, and the Scripture directs us to care for and seek justice for them.  Ministering to kids in foster care is a vital way to do so, but when kids are being placed there because, as Focus on the Family president Jim Daly has said “families are being torn apart” by deportation, we must also “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” (Pr 31:8), insisting that our representative government not divide safe and healthy families in the first place—and especially not in our name.

We also ought to remember that, alongside adoption, another metaphor the Apostle Paul uses to describe the gospel regards naturalization: I who was once “excluded from citizenship… without hope and without God in the world…have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:12-13). As Gentiles, we who were shut out of God’s promise to Israel, are now “no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household” (Eph 2:19). The role of the U.S. government may differ than that of the individual Christian. It is to say that, in the government’s responsibility to uphold the rule of law, it may be necessary to require a penalty (such as a fine) to allow undocumented parents to earn legal status and eventual U.S. citizenship. However, we who have been so graciously included into God’s Kingdom should not be so quick to insist that others be excluded from this much less valuable, temporary country in which we were privileged to be born.

Matthew Soerens is the co-author of Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate (InterVarsity Press, 2009) and the US Church Training Specialist at World Relief.  This blog originally appeared at UnDocumented.tv.  

Blog by Matthew Soerens

A few months ago, The New York Times ran a front-page story about the strong support coming from evangelical leaders like Richard Land, Bill Hybels, Mat Staver, and Samuel Rodriguez for a comprehensive reform of our nation’s immigration laws. While I appreciated the article as a whole, I thought one particular paragraph was misleading: the article implied that the majority of evangelical leaders, who support immigration reform, do so because of Scripture’s command to love and ensure equal treatment for the immigrant (Lev. 19:33-34 and elsewhere), while those evangelicals who oppose reform heed Romans 13, where Paul instructs the Church to be subject to the governing authorities.

A lot of Christians wrestle with the issue of immigration in a way that pits love and mercy on one side with law and justice on the other—and then feel conflicted. In a theological context, we’re promised that “mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13), and a few Christians do advocate amnesty for undocumented immigrants precisely because we who could not be saved by fulfilling God’s law are saved by God’s grace (just a synonym for amnesty) rather than through any of our own merit (Eph. 2:8-9). Advocates of amnesty for undocumented immigrants say that, as recipients of grace, they do not want to be stingy in extending it to others and risk the judgment that Jesus told of in his parable of the unmerciful servant (Matt. 18:21-35).

While I respect that view—and agree that there ought to be a place for mercy in our policies—I don’t share it entirely. Having interacted with many of the evangelical leaders who have advocated reform, I am confident that they do not affirm this view, either.  The role of the state, they would note (and I would agree), is different than that of the church. While they would likely agree that grace is central to our theology and affirm the importance of forgiveness in interpersonal relationships, they do not endorse amnesty as the best public policy. None of them has come to their position by elevating Leviticus 19 over Romans 13.

To the contrary, most evangelical leaders (including each of those mentioned above) have stressed the importance of both showing kindness to undocumented immigrants while also respecting the ideal of the rule of law that we find in Romans 13. Evangelical support for Comprehensive Immigration Reform is built around the idea of restoring the rule of law to a system where, after decades of selectively ignoring the law, it has begun to lose its meaning.

You see, our current system is set up in a way that would be destructive to the American economy if fully enforced. Our employment-based immigration system—the basic structure of which has not been altered in decades—provides just 5,000 permanent resident visas per year for low-skilled workers, meeting just a tiny fraction of the demand for employees created by our market economy. Because of political pressure from groups whose stated mission is to limit population growth in the U.S.—who have successfully convinced many Americans that, contrary to established economic theory, immigrants are harmful, rather than beneficial, to the American economy—our Congress has not seen fit to adapt the legal immigration system to provide the additional labor flow necessary for sustained economic growth.

But the alternative—strict enforcement of these outmoded laws—has never been a reasonable option either: no politician wants to preside over an era of skyrocketing prices for the basic goods and services that immigrant laborers make possible. So, for decades now—under the leadership of both major political parties—we simply do not fully enforce the law, either against immigrants or against the employers who hire them unlawfully. The law says that the estimated 11 million immigrants currently present unlawfully should be deported, but almost no one in Washington is really serious about that possibility, because they know that the economic consequences would be disastrous ($2.6 trillion in lost Gross Domestic Product over a decade, according to one economist).

Instead, as a society, we have looked the other way as desperate migrants—many of them fleeing conditions of poverty beyond what most Americans can fathom—violate the law by entering or overstaying a visa and then accepting employment without authorization. It is illegal under the law—no doubt—but just as many of us presume that a 55 mile-per-hour speed limit doesn’t really mean it is wrong to go 58 or 59 (or, in some parts of the country, much faster), immigrants have understood the consistent lack of enforcement as a winking signal that our society did not really mean those laws.

There is nothing inherently unjust about having borders and controlling the number of immigrants who are allowed to enter: that is a legitimate function of the state. This becomes an issue of injustice when we avert our eyes as the law is violated, then subsequently deny those who have broken the law any rights, refusing any responsibility to treat them as we would want to be treated (Luke 6:31). We require them to pay Social Security taxes—$12 billion, cumulatively, in 2007—but deny them any benefits. If they are a victim of crime, in some parts of the country they could be asked about their legal status, detained, and deported if they notify the police, making them open targets for criminals. So long as they work quietly and for low wages, sometimes in conditions that fail to meet minimum safety requirements, they will probably be okay, but if they raise their voice against these abuses they risk arrest, detention, and deportation. After all, the common sentiment goes, they broke the law.

Evangelical leaders realize that this status quo is a broken mess; they are not advocating that mercy for immigrants should trump the law, but that we must restore the rule of law, prescribing a punishment for unlawful entry and unauthorized work that fits the crime (think: the equivalent of a fine for speeding down the highway, rather than having your driver’s license revoked). The Comprehensive Immigration Reform that evangelical leaders have advocated would require those here unlawfully to pay a monetary penalty and earn the right to become lawful permanent residents, but it would also insist that in the future we put into place a reasonable number of visas, tied to the priorities of economic growth and family unity, and that from here on out we strictly enforce the law, both against immigrants and employers who break the law.

That sort of a plan brings together the biblical mandates to be subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13) and to show love and kindness to the immigrant (Leviticus 19), rather than pitting two biblical commands against one another.  As pastor and theologian John Piper has said, “it gives honor to the law and it gives mercy to the immigrants.”

This blog originally appeared on UnDocumented.tv on February 28, 2011

Blog by Matthew Soerens

Recently, my wife and I went to see the movie The Help.  Based on a popular 2009 novel written by Kathryn Stockett, The Help tells the story of a Skeeter Phelan, an ambitious white woman fresh out of college in Jim Crow-era Mississippi, as she seeks to chronicle the lives of African-American maids.  The real heroines of the story are two black domestic workers, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, who courageously share their own lives’ experiences in print, exposing the lie of the “separate but equal” mentality that white folks in power used to justify mistreatment and oppression.

In hindsight, even just fifty years removed from the reality of Jim Crow, the injustice perpetrated against African-Americans is appalling.  At the time, though, as the film portrays accurately, most white people of the region either were blinded to the sinful systems at work around them or actively defended them—because their own economic and social interests were closely tied to the maintenance of the status quo.  The church was, for the most part, complicit as well: while the African-American church led a biblically-grounded struggle for justice (we get a glimpse of this in the film as Aibileen references God as her source of courage and strength), most white churches—particularly the white evangelical churches—refused to speak out on behalf of their African-American brothers and sisters.  In some cases, white people even twisted Scripture to justify oppressive treatment of people made in God’s image; The Help illustrates this reality, as well, in a character named Hilly, whose treats her own maids cruelly while proudly calling herself a Christian.

It’s easy to condemn the sins of our past and repent of our parents’ and grandparents’ tolerance of injustice, but harder to recognize where we might be complicit with systemic injustice today.  There are many broken systems in our society, but at least one area that I think we would do well to look at would be our immigration system.  In many cases, the “help” today is an undocumented Mexican, Central American, Polish, or Filipino maid, who keeps the house clean and raises the children of those who can afford help, even while their own children raise themselves or are cared for by a relative in a less affluent part of town or, in some cases, back in the country of origin.  Likewise, it is often undocumented immigrant workers who pick the crops that the rest of us eat, care for our elderly in nursing homes, mow our loans, cook our food at restaurants, and clean our hotel rooms.  When those workers are mistreated—many employers treat their undocumented workers well, but exploitation is sadly common amongst others—they are often afraid to complain because they fear that speaking up could lose them their job or lead to their deportation.  These undocumented workers play such an important part of our economy, though, that our society as a whole has been unwilling to shake up the system.  In Texas, for example, a proposed law to tighten penalties on employers of undocumented immigrants specifically excepted those who employ undocumented maids, caretakers, lawnworkers, or other household help  from penalties because, as a Republican legislator said in explaining the law, without the exception “a large segment of the Texas population [would be] in prison.”

This begs the question: how does the Church in the United States respond to issues of systemic injustice?  As Peter Goodwin Heltzel notes in Jesus & Justice: Evangelicals, Race, & American Politics, white evangelical churches mostly sat out on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.  Many white evangelical leaders feared that affirming the biblically-grounded call for justice issued by our African-American brothers and sisters might upset some of the folks in our congregations, who might stop tithing or leave the church altogether.  Unfortunately, we were so focused on “nickels and noses” that we hid behind unjust laws and, in the words of Jesus, “neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23).

As a film like The Help causes us to reflect on the Civil Rights Movement, we would do well to ask if we have learned the lesson of this embarrassing period of our history.  I worry that—while national evangelical institutions such as the National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention are actively speaking out for justice for immigrants, in positive contrast to their responses to the Civil Rights Movement—fear of upsetting complicit constituencies at the local level has led many white evangelical pastors to keep silent on the issue of immigration, which African-American leader John Lewis, who risked his life in the Freedom Rides through the South in 1961, now says is the newest frontier of the Civil Rights Movement.

One of the moist poignant scenes in The Help occurs when Skeeter’s mother, who fired the long-time maid who had raised Skeeter in order to save face with her high-society friends, commends her daughter for elevating the voices of African-American maids like Aibileen and Minny: “Courage sometimes skips a generation,” she says.  My prayer for the Church in the United States—particularly the evangelical corner of the Church with which I identify—is that our generation would listen to the stories of “the help” of our day—undocumented workers—and have the courage to stand with them for justice.

This blog originally appeared on UnDocumented.tv on August 29, 2011.