Book Review: Adios, America

While at times hard to read, Ann Coulter's 2015 bestseller Adios, America! is a powerful and thoroughly researched look at the immigration issue in America from a hardline position. Ann is in many ways the embodiment of Campaign Trump, not to be confused with President Trump. She daily posts a mocking tweet on the lack of progress on the border wall:

Today's BORDER WALL CONSTRUCTION UPDATE: Miles completed yesterday-Zero; Miles completed since Inauguration-- Zero. NEXT UPDATE TOMORROW.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) February 24, 2018

No one is going to be confused as to where she stands on the question of immigration but even if you don't agree with her, her research ought to give you pause.

Ann Coulter does her level best to make herself someone you dislike and someone you dislike is someone that is easy to ignore. She is sarcastic almost to a fault, said as someone who is pretty sarcastic, and sometimes says things that are so acerbic as to make even a hardened reader cringe. It is her schitick and I get it but it also means that it can be easy to not take her seriously. This book, even with the over-the-top title and subtitle ("The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole") absolutely demands to be taken seriously because the topic it covers is so very important.

The number one problem with this book is that it came out in June of 2015. It came out before Trump announced and therefore it looked for all the world like the Republican nominee was going to be just another empty suit, pro-amnesty at the bidding of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce GOP-bot. Things have changed in this country since 2016 but there is still a lot of concern that mirrors what Ann is writing about.

For Coulter in this book, immigration is everything and she rightly recognizes an inconvenient truth: Democrats only care about immigration for one reason....

The reason Democrats support immigration is because of how they vote.

Coulter, Ann. Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (Kindle Locations 174-175). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Democrats only care about the children of lawbreakers when it will get them 30 million new voters. Convicted felons are next.

Coulter, Ann. Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (Kindle Locations 187-188). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

That is the core of the immigration debate from legal immigrants to illegal aliens to amnesty for "Dreamers". It is all about electoral math. Democrats have abandoned the White vote and are relying mostly on minorities and immigrants to propel them to victory in the future. The GOP doesn't seem to get this but for Coulter every single other issue is secondary to immigration because once there are sufficient "new Americans" to reliably vote Democrat, states like Texas and Florida will become like California and never vote Republican again. That means no tax reform, no protection of 2nd Amendment rights, no conservative justices, no restrictions on abortion or the demands of the militant homosexual movement, no restraint on spending or the welfare state or job killing bureaucratic regulations. Lose on the immigration issue and you lose everything....

What happens with immigration will determine whether America continues to exist or becomes a Third World republic that will never elect another Republican—in other words, “California.” It’s more important than gun rights, right to life, taxes, or Iran’s nuclear program—or whatever other issue you care to cite, because immigration will decide all issues, once and for all, in favor of the Democrats.

Coulter, Ann. Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (Kindle Locations 4711-4715). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

It does seem a little callous to reduce people to electoral math but that is the reality of the immigration debate.

From liberal activists seeking new voters to rich Republicans that want cheap lawn care and nannies, there is a powerful cabal of people that want virtually limitless immigration. The Left needs new voters and the wealthy aren't impacted by mass immigration so we see what should be a weird alliance between Republican elites and far left loons. Left out of the equation are regular working Americans, especially minorities and low income workers that are displaced by an endless flow of workers that will do the same job for less and that turn around and send their wages out of the country, a massive outflow of at least $20 billion a year that in turn enriches the wealthiest in Mexico, like Carlos Slim, who in turn are incredibly influential over U.S. media sources like the New York Times. It seems odd but the only people that seem to care about the displaced workers in America are people like Ann Coulter. While "conservatives" like Bill Kristol casually advocate for the wholesale replacement of the current American workforce, people like Ann are not willing to go down without a fight. Perhaps it will be in vain, it probably will be, but at least some of us are trying and Ann, for all of her sometimes unpleasant rhetoric, is one of them.

A DACA Parable

A father and his three children live in a somewhat ramshackle home in a neighborhood that is crime ridden, has poor schools and few decent job prospects within reasonable commuting distance. The dad is a good guy and wants the best for his kids but doesn't feel as though he has the opportunities he might want in his neighborhood. He could relocate within his neighborhood and perhaps get into better schools for his kids and be closer to decent work but he can’t help but look to the suburbs to the north where the schools are much better, there is far less crime and there are good jobs a-plenty. It is pretty far away but they seem to have it better.

So this dad, in the interests of his kids, decides to break into the nice home of a person that lives in the northern suburbs and happens to be away on vacation. Perhaps the dad jimmies the lock or perhaps the door was left unlocked, either way they do not have permission to be in this house. The kids might not realize they are doing something wrong but the dad certainly does. They help themselves to the contents of the fridge, hook up to the wifi, watch some cable TV and crash on the couch. Let us even assume that they clean up their dishes and generally tidy up themselves, perhaps even doing some minor repairs around the house. They are not trashing the place or doing any lasting damage but they are without question breaking the law. This goes on for a week.

Well a neighbor sees people in the house and she knows no one should be there as she was asked to keep an eye on the place. She calls the police and they show up at the house. There isn’t any sort of scuffle, the dad knows he is busted and is going away. His concern of course is for his kids. At the same time the home owners show up, having been contacted by the watchful neighbor. They are shaken up as anyone would be upon finding their home had been broken into. They watch as the police put the dad into the back of a patrol car to be taken to the station for processing. Another officer asks them to come inside to make a statement.

The shaken husband and wife bring their kids into the house and head for the living room so they can sit and make their statement but upon arriving in the living room they are shocked to see the three kids have been left behind after their father was arrested. The home owners are startled and look at the cop in dismay. “Why are the kids still here?” they demand?

The cop scowls at them. “Hey, they didn’t do anything wrong. Their dad is the one that brought them into your house. They have dreamed for years of living in this suburb and who are you to quash their dreams!”.

The owners look at each other. “When is someone coming to get them? Don’t they have family that can take them in?” The cop sneers back at them “Of course they have family back in their own neighborhood but now they are comfortable and like it here. You can’t make them leave now. So they are staying here from now on.”.

“Well who is going to care for them?”, cries the homeowner.

“You are of course. They will live here now. You will feed and clothe them. You need to provide them with health insurance. Some of your kids will have to double up in their bedrooms so there is room for these kids. Oh, and they want to go to the same private school as your kids so you will need to pony up tuition for all three of them. After all, they are dreaming of a better life and you are going to give it to them. Jerks.”.

Sure it is kind of a stretch and this is a complex issue but the substance is the same. Just as someone who steals a car with their kids doesn’t expect their kids to get to keep the car if they get arrested, someone who is brought here as a “child” should not get a free pass to avoid our laws.

Ultimately the blame here for the discomfort and possible dislocation of these “DREAMers” is not with President Trump or xenophobic and racist Americans. The fault is entirely with their parents that brought them to this country knowing full well that they put themselves and their kids in great risk to do so. The parents willfully broke the law and did so regardless of the risk to their children. 

If it seems unreasonable to allow 3 children to continue to live in a house that their father broke into and demand the lawful inhabitants of the home to pay their living expenses, why it is not likewise unreasonable for the United States to absorb the 800,000 teens and young adults that entered this country legally at the direction of their parents? What we choose to do about those impacted by DACA now is a complex issue but it is critical to keep perspective here. The wrongs inflicted on the DACA kids is entirely the fault of their parents, not on the citizens or government of the United States.

Book Review: The Strange Death Of Europe

Nothing is more telling regarding the state of affairs in Europe that author Douglas Murray, an open homosexual, laments the loss of Christendom in his new book The Strange Death Of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. This is one of the most powerful books on the topic of mass immigration and cultural cohesion and perhaps Murray's status as a member of one protected class gives him some cover to criticize Islam and Europe's suicidal immigration policy, although that didn't save the life of Pim Fortuyn, an early sacrificial victim on the altar of cultural enrichment. Or perhaps he is like so many others and just no longer cares. Either way The Strange Death of Europe is a piercing clarion call for the slumbering and apathetic people of Europe to wake up and at least start asking the hard questions.

The question Murray himself ponders repeatedly is this: can you continue to flood Europe with people that do not share European liberal values and don't seem interested in adopting them and expect Europe to remain the same? The answer is obvious except to the Angela Merkel's of this world.

Murray spends a great deal of time examining the mindset of Europe in the century since the end of World War II and describe what I saw as a broken, exhausted people that are tired of fighting and just waiting to die a death they think they somehow deserve because of past sins of dead people, real and imagined. There is some truth to the evils that have occurred in Europe but it is not true that these were unique to or especially worse in Europe. Other cultures may not have been as efficient as Europeans but their relative lack of "success" is not for the absence of trying. Europe's basic problem is that too many European elites see nothing in Europe worth preserving so why not hand the keys over to new people? As I mentioned, the big problem with that mindset is that there is absolutely no reason to think that the features of Europe that make it so enticing will continue on in perpetuity when Europeans are a minority or extinct. If you look at a list of nations dominated by Islam you would be hard pressed to find even one you would want to live in thanks to oppressive laws and cultural norms. When Islam replaces Christendom why would you expect a different result simply because of a change in address?

One of the most troubling and infuriating aspects of the book are those places where Murray ponders why so many "leaders" insist on a suicidal policy of mass immigration in spite of the widespread disapproval of the people and the evidence that it is proving to be a disaster. Murray posits two possible initial explanations. One that it is a complete surprise to people that had no idea what would happen because they lacked any foresight. The other is that it is a calculated effort to replace Europeans. I am not sure which is more troubling, but I tend to lean toward the latter as closer to the truth. The question of why no one wants to do anything about it raises the notion that political leaders know it is a disaster but that it is too late to do anything about it so they just seek to maximize the political benefits to themselves for as long as they can.

Murray is a masterful story teller, even in places like late in the book where he discusses the sorry state of European art and culture by referencing stuff I haven't a clue about and where he tends to get a little esoteric. He weaves together the story from the end of the Second World War to today and puts a lot of the pieces together than I was unaware of. Along with lengthy expositions he also has a ton of quotable tidbits including these two exactly 300 pages apart at the beginning and near the end of the book.

Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument. Pg. 2

A continent which imports the world's people will also import the world's problems. Pg 302

Those two quotes pretty well sum up the issue. Europe has no sense of self-preservation even to the simplest degree of reproducing themselves and yet is engaged in a course which is importing the world's problems without a thought for what that will mean for the continent.

Douglas Murray has created an important work with The Strange Death of Europe. I just hope it is read by enough people in time to save Europe from herself. While Murray proposes a few possible scenarios for the future, I think there are only two. One that he suggests is that future Europe looks like a massive United Nations meeting and native Europeans retreat to enclaves and rural areas that immigrants shun. The other is something far worse rising up in response to mass immigration. Sooner or later I am afraid something really major is going to happen and terrorists in Europe will get their own "home run" like 9/11. The slow, almost daily, trickle of terror is easier to shrug off but what happens if the death toll is not in the dozens but the thousands? What will happen then? One way or the other Europe is going to be very different in the next ten years. Hopefully voices of reason like Murray will lead the way. The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray is one of those rare absolute must-read books, especially for those concerned about the big questions of culture and civilization.

Christianity Today Throws Wet Leaves On The Smoldering Mess That Is The Immigration Debate

Of the questions of the day that generate mostly a lot of smoke and confusion, not to mention anger, the immigration policy and enforcement of said policy in the United States is right at the top. This is especially true in the church. A few weeks ago Christianity Today posted something that I found to be extraordinarily unhelpful, even by CT standards.

The headline reads: Most White Evangelicals Don’t Believe Muslims Belong in America

Wow, that is powerful! Except the article doesn't make the case for that. I believe we call that "click bait".

I can have serious concerns over increasing Muslim migration to the U.S. and Europe and what that means for our liberal democracies, and I do, and I can believe that theologically, historically and empirically what Islam teaches is not compatible with liberal democracy, which is true and I do believe, without saying "Muslims don't belong in America". The First Amendment absolutely applies to Islam and I am not advocating we round up and deport legal U.S. citizens who practice Islam.

That isn't really the point of the article anyway which makes the headline doubly misleading. Here is the money quote I came away with, from the "missions experts":

As CT reported in March, missions experts worry that evangelicals’ views of Muslims are sabotaging a long-dreamed-of moment. Previous research by Pew found that only 35 percent of white evangelicals say they have a personal connection to a Muslim, compared to about 40 percent of mainline Protestants and Catholics, 50 percent of unaffiliated Americans, and 73 percent of Jews.

“This is the best chance we’ve had in human history to share the love of Christ with Muslims,” said David Cashin, intercultural studies professor at Columbia International University and an expert in Muslim-Christian relations. “Because of these attitudes, we could miss the opportunity.”

Let me provide a nuanced and theologically rich response: Baloney.

There are several reasons why I say that. First is the nature of the Great Commission. As a reminder, here it is, emphasis added:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”Matthew 28: 16-20

The Great Commission is a sending command. Obviously we evangelize where we are but the model in the Scriptures also includes the sending of those called to evangelize the nations. It absolutely does not imply having Caesar form immigration policies so we can bring the lost to where we are without the slightest concern over the impact on civil society. It reminds me of people who think that having the government confiscate the earnings of some people and transferring those earnings to people that did earn them somehow is fulfilling our obligation as the church to care for the poor. I agree the church needs to do more to reach the people of the world with Christ and that our spending priorities as the church ought to reflect that. It doesn't follow that we should encourage people to leave their own lands, lands that are indeed often a mess thanks to foreign policy intervention by the U.S. cheered on by American evangelicals, in order for us to "reach" them. That brings me to my second point.

The second point is simple pragmatism together with a dose of reality.

The United States contains some 325,000,000 people. Reports of religious affiliation vary widely so I just had to choose one for a very rough estimate. Here is a chart from Wikipedia because :visual:.

OK, so let's look at some basics up front. I am going to say that 100% of people in the following groups are not Christian to any degree: Mormon, none/atheist/agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Other non-Christian and no response given. That totals 28% of all Americans. I am going to gently say that 95% of Roman Catholics are not Christian as the Bible defines it and round that up slightly to another 22% of all Americans. I am going to VERY generously assume that 50% of Protestants/Other Christians are actually Christians, which means another 24% of all Americans are not. So adding together flat out not Christians (28%) plus Roman Catholics (22%) and unregenerate Protestants (24%) comes to 74% of all Americans are not Christians in any meaningful sense. Let me show that in a raw number based on a U.S. population of 325 million.

240,500,000

Almost a quarter of a billion people. That is perhaps the richest and ripest mission field in the history of the church and it is literally within walking distance of virtually every Christian in America RIGHT NOW.

Over two hundred and forty million people in this country that are lost and hell-bound no less than a man in Somalia or a woman in Afghanistan. The middle-class guy who belongs to the Rotary Club and loves his kids but doesn't know Jesus goes to the same hell as the ISIS fighter in Iraq raping and killing Christians.

The top four states in the U.S. in population combined (California, Texas, Florida and New York) have about 107 million people in them. By my crude calculations those four states alone have 80,000,000 people that are lost.

I am not saying we don't have an obligation to reach the Muslims with Christ or to send and support missionaries and native evangelists in their homelands. I am saying that while it is less sexy, we have plenty of lost people right here, right now.

The lost in America ought to be low hanging fruit and give us the most evangelism bang for the buck. They are already here. They speak the language. The vast majority of them already have connections with Christians. They have a shared cultural understanding of things like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. They have or can get their hands on a Bible with absolutely no effort in hundreds of formats for free. I can't imagine that there are a significant number of people in this country that are not in easy commuting distance of a church.

I would hate to think that the idea of evangelizing an exotic people like Middle Eastern Muslims is more appealing to us than evangelizing our neighbors and that we get more street cred or, dare I suggest, fund-raising power by talking about evangelizing Muslims than evangelizing Roman Catholics in Boston or people in Appalachia. Doesn't it seem to make more sense to support mission work by natives in their native land to Muslims, working with people where they are in the language they speak in the cultural setting they are comfortable with?

Bringing in people with the intent of evangelizing them when they arrive when we already don't effectively evangelize the people that are here seems naive at best. What exactly are Muslims going to find when they come here?

We obviously are not evangelizing the people that live across the street from us but Muslims are going to magically be reached with the Gospel. Are they going to become Christian by osmosis? I would suggest that the very worst evangelism tool we have is the state of American cultural Christianity. A Muslim coming to America is going to see a "church" made up of the unregenerate with a blind eye turned toward sexual immorality and divorce, with many "churches" embracing homosexuality. That isn't appealing to me and I am already a devout Christian, why would a Muslim from Syria find that something to abandon her native faith for?

Let's look at some other info buried at the bottom of the story

Conversion and interfaith marriage among US Muslims have remained relatively stable: 1 in 5 Muslims in America is a convert, with 53 percent joining the faith from a Protestant background and 20 percent from a Catholic background, according to Pew.

Meanwhile, 1 in 10 American Muslims have a Christian spouse, as do 1 in 5 of those whose Islamic faith is less important to them.

So 20% of current Muslims in America are converts, mostly from a "Protestant background" or Catholicism. Not to mention a bunch of Muslims with a "Christian spouse" who apparently skipped the sermon on being unequally yoked. It sounds to me like someone is reaching the other faith for converts but not the way that CT seems to dream will happen. That isn't a reason by itself to not encourage mass migration but I am not sure that we are reaching more Muslim immigrants for Christ than they are reaching Americans with Islam.

Here is the "Big Idea" of this post:

We need to get our own house into some semblance of order before we even consider mass immigration to be a logical step in the Great Commission.

When we start to effectively reach even a fraction of the people that already live in this country, when we run out of people to evangelize, maybe that would be something to talk about.

This article from Christianity Today is pure nonsense. It creates straw-men, starting with a click-bait headline, and goes downhill, completely ignoring facts and reason in favor of clumsy appeals to guilt and emotion. We need to have serious conversations about reaching the lost and issues like the church's response to the immigration crisis but this is not even close to being serious. Unfortunately it is kind of what I have come to expect from Christianity Today.

The Curious Case Of Russell Moore

The firestorm of controversy over the on-going employment of Russell Moore has sort of died down. After a media blitz from some of the major media outlets like the Washington Post, NPR, Fox News, the Atlantic and many others, a quiet meeting was held and peace seems to have been made. Make no mistake, the same media outlets that reported on this internal issue with the SBC with such "concern" are not interested in the long-term health of the Southern Baptist Convention and in fact would like nothing more than to see the SBC and every other Biblically faithful manifestation of the Christian faith exterminated. They don't care if Russell Moore gets fired or not, they are just attracted to a controversy like a vulture is drawn to carrion.

I wanted to look at another angle to this story that I thought was interesting. The generally accepted narrative is that principled Russell Moore took a noble stance against the prevailing opinion and was a prophetic voice speaking truth to power in marked contrast to crude and vulgar Donald Trump and his cartoonish supporters in the "Religious Right".

What if it is not quite that cut-and-dried?

While individual Southern Baptists and SBC churches provide all of the funding for the various ministries of the SBC, they exert very little direct control over the ministries they fund. So who did appoint Dr. Moore as the new head of the ERLC? The board of trustees of the ERLC did.

Russell D. Moore has been elected as the next president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. 

The ERLC's board of trustees approved Moore, currently dean of the school of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in a special, called meeting Tuesday (March 26) at a Nashville hotel.

So who is on this board? Well the current chairman of the ERLC board is one Ken Barbic (same article, emphasis mine)....

In addition to Creamer, other ERLC trustees on the presidential search committee -- all members of Southern Baptist churches -- were Kenda Bartlett, executive director of Concerned Women for America in Washington, D.C.; Kenneth Barbic, a lobbyist with the Western Growers Association in Washington, D.C.; Lynne Fruechting, a pediatrician in Newton, Kan.; Ray Newman, executive director of Georgia Citizens Action Project in Atlanta; and Bernard Snowden, family life pastor at Antioch Baptist Church in Bowie, Md. ERLC trustee chairman Richard Piles, who appointed the search committee, was an ex officio member. Piles is pastor of First Baptist Church in Camden, Ark.

He was not chairman at the time Moore was appointed as far as I can tell.

What does Ken Barbic do for the Western Growers Association? His title is "Sr. Director, Federal Government Affairs". That sounds innocuous enough but what it means is he is basically a lobbyist as noted in the story above. Back in the day I thought about working for lobbying groups and all of the muckety mucks had "government affairs" in their job title. Like a lot of lobbyists he used to work in Congress where he made contacts in government that he then in turned cashed in by becoming a lobbyist.

Now that is his business and it is legal so no harm there. But what exactly is the "Western Growers Association"? Well they represent produce growers in the West. Again, perfectly legal and proper. Virtually every industry has a lobbying arm to represent their interests before the government.

One of their signature issues is immigration. They sponsor workshops on topics like “What to Do during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Visit”. So who benefits from cheap (and often illegal) immigrants to work fields tending and harvesting produce which is very difficult and labor intensive? That's right, people who grow produce and that is who makes up the Western Growers Association. Again, nothing necessarily wrong here.

What else do we know about the ERLC? Another initiative they are involved in is the so-called Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), a somewhat amorphous group. What is their deal? From their webpage we read: "The Evangelical Immigration Table is a broad coalition of evangelical organizations and leaders advocating for immigration reform consistent with biblical values." Well that seems innocent enough, right? Maybe not. The EIT is sort of a clearinghouse for different groups involved in "immigration reform". It is kind of a hard group to get a handle on as it is apparently not even a registered political entity or non-profit, which seems to allow it to be kind of opaque. What we do know is this. EIT is deeply tied to the National Immigration Forum (NIF), another immigration "reform" advocacy group. OK, so who is NIF and why does it matter? The NIF receives funds from the Open Societies Institute. That group is a front for George Soros, the same George Soros who once said: "The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.". The same George Soros who made a billion dollars off of currency speculation. The same George Soros who is widely considered to be an "open borders" advocate. This is the same George Soros who is a billionaire atheist that has no interest in seeing the Kingdom of God advance. Another member of the EIT is Sojourners, the far left group headed by Jim Wallis. Shocker, Sojourners has also received funding from George Soros even though Jim Wallis initially denied it and called Marvin Olasky a liar. Then he backpedaled and said that they did get money from Soros but it was a long time ago. Ironically Wallis said: "So, no, we don't receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners. That's where it comes from." before a staffer admitted that yes they actually did get money from Soros but of course they were not beholden to him. That was in 2010. In 2011 Olasky reported that Wallis admitted that they took another $150,000 from Soros. Again he claimed to not be beholden to him but if you think that getting nearly half a million in donations (that we know of) from a far-left figure doesn't impact the decision making of an organization, you are naive. George Soros doesn't give money to conservative groups after all.

So what? That is a lot of information about a lot of groups you might never have heard from with acronyms and vague sounding names. What does that have to do with Russell Moore? Maybe nothing but then again maybe a lot. At a minimum it looks like ERLC under Dr. Moore is unequally yoked with a number of far left groups including a man, George Soros, who is using his billions to try to overturn abortion laws in Europe, starting with Ireland and in doing so the ERLC seems to be working at odds with what the rank and file SBC member probably thinks they are doing.

Please hear this. I am not saying that George Soros is the marionette pulling the strings of Russell Moore. What I am saying is that it seems to me that ERLC is making some poor decisions and is involved in some questionable partnerships and that based on information like the role of George Soros behind the scenes of EIT (and Soros is no dummy, he knows that direct involvement would cause a stink so he hides his influence behind layers of innocuous sounding organizations) and the oversight of Moore being carried out by a lobbyist for a group that relies on ample, cheap immigrant labor, the lines are getting blurry between the stated mission of a group, the ERLC, that is supposed to be a ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention, and being a quasi-lobbying organization that is pushing for pet projects of Russell Moore in partnership, however shadowy, with George Soros and Jim Wallis, that I would be willing to bet the majority of Southern Baptists would oppose.

The signature policy issue of Donald Trump is immigration reform. On a number of fronts it appears that Russell Moore, his boss and his co-laborers in different groups, are politically opposed to Trump's plans. At the very minimum it raises in my mind questions about the real source of Moore's opposition to Trump. I have little doubt that many of the objections Moore has raised are legitimate issues but you cannot help but wonder just how much of his vitriolic rhetoric is fueled by pragmatic concerns. At a very minimum, for the sake of transparency and to ease the minds of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Russell Moore should speak up directly about the questions I and many others have raised. Sometimes silence only serves to fuel speculation and right now all of the talk is asking questions that could and should raise serious red flags for many in the SBC. Perhaps some of those associations should be raising red flags for Dr. Moore as well. It can be easy to get caught up in our work and not see the shoals that are dead ahead.

Trump-styeria And Immigration

DID YOU SEE WHAT TRUMP DID!!!!HE IS EVIL!!!! HE IS BANNING MUSLIMS!!! ANYONE WHO DOES NOT UN-CATEGORICALLY CONDEMN HIM AND EMBRACE ALL "IMMIGRANTS" IS ANTI-CHRISTIAN!!!! OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!!!!

Can we take a deep breath or three?

I really thought that some of the knee-jerk hysteria over the election would calm down at some point but that clearly is not the case. With Trump being elected we have entered a new period of time that is marked by hysteria, hyperbole and hypocrisy. He is pretty much the perfect President for 2017, a petty man following the administration of another petty man dealing with a largely petty culture. Lots of people are apparently in a race to see who can lower the level of public discourse to match Trump the quickest. 

Can we look somewhat dispassionately at some of the facts about this falsely labelled "Muslim ban"? 

First, it is not a "Muslim Ban". Just putting something behind a hashtag doesn't make it true. What Trump has enacted is not a #muslimban just like saying #handsupdontshoot doesn't negate the fact that his hands were not up.

The countries impacted by the ban are: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia. While it is true that these are all majority Muslim countries, they are also places where there are deep ties to terrorism or places with a great deal of political instability. If this was an actual ban on Muslims you would see Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria on the list as they are the top five countries in terms of Muslims in their population. Assuming the numbers from Wikipedia are accurate, that means that just from those five countries alone there are nearly 800,000,000 Muslims which is almost half of the total Muslim population in the world. The temporary ban covers seven countries which have a lot of people but are not the only or the largest Muslim populated nations. The ban is aimed at states that are generally agreed to be places where terrorism flourishes, and that agreement is based on actual facts even if you don't agree with the conclusions. 

Second, the "ban" is temporary, four months, during which time the administration is reviewing the vetting process for "refugees". As I show below, this is not without precedent because even as recently as 2011 under the benevolent Obama administration we enacted a similar temporary freeze on refugees from a specific, Muslim country. Many people, including the duly and lawfully elected President of the United States, think there are serious issues with our refugee/immigration programs. If you think something is broken on your car, you don't keep driving until the car stops, you take it in to have it checked out. This is based on something we call "common sense", a decidedly uncommon trait in our world today.

Third, there is nothing in the Constitution that requires the United States to take anyone from anywhere. From National Review: Refugee Madness: Trump Is Wrong, But His Liberal Critics Are Crazy

Even more ridiculous and blinkered is the suggestion that there may be something unconstitutional about refusing entry to refugees or discriminating among them on religious or other bases (a reaction that was shared at first by some Republicans, including Mike Pence, when Trump’s plan was announced in December 2015). There are plenty of moral and political arguments on these points, but foreigners have no right under our Constitution to demand entry to the United States or to challenge any reason we might have to refuse them entry, even blatant religious discrimination. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress’s powers in this area are plenary, and the president’s powers are as broad as the Congress chooses to give him. If liberals are baffled as to why even the invocation of the historically problematic “America First” slogan by Trump is popular with almost two-thirds of the American public, they should look no further than people arguing that foreigners should be treated by the law as if they were American citizens with all the rights and protections we give Americans.

Certainly there are some aspects of the Constitution that provide protection to "people" rather than "citizens" but that doesn't mean that anyone who wants to come here is automatically extended the rights and privileges of citizenship.                                                                                         
Fourth, there are very real reasons to be concerned about the impact on our culture and our society from massive immigration. This isn't jumping at shadows or looking for the boogeyman under our beds.

Exhibit A from last August: German intelligence warns of ISIL ‘hit squads’ among refugees

German intelligence services have evidence that “hit squads” from the Islamic State terror group have infiltrated the country disguised as refugees, the deputy head of Bavaria’s spy agency told the BBC Thursday.

“We have to accept that we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany,” Manfred Hauser, the vice president of the Bavaria region’s intelligence gathering agency, BayLfV, told the Today program.

“We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads. There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves. We are still following up on these, and we haven’t investigated all of them fully,” said Hauser.

Exhibit B showing this is not a uniquely Trump move: The Obama Administration Stopped Processing Iraq RefugeeRequests For 6 Months In 2011

Although the Obama administration currently refuses to temporarily pause its Syrian refugee resettlement program in the United States, the State Department in 2011 stopped processing Iraq refugee requests for six months after the Federal Bureau of Investigation uncovered evidence that several dozen terrorists from Iraq had infiltrated the United States via the refugee program.

After two terrorists were discovered in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 2009, the FBI began reviewing reams of evidence taken from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that had been used against American troops in Iraq.

Read the whole article including the part about finding that "refugee" Waad Ramadan Alwan who claimed to be a persecuted refugee but who had his fingerprints on an IED discovered in Iraq that was intended to maim and kill U.S. soldiers. The Obama administration paused resttlement for six months, two months longer than Trump is proposing. Where were the hashtags and the outraged celebrities? It is almost like the hysteria is politically motivated rather than based in actual facts and reasoning. 

Exhibit C, European counties which are much smaller than the U.S. individually are having a very difficult time assimilating these "refugees" as many of them don't want to me assimilated: SWEDEN AT BREAKING POINT: Police make urgent plea for help as violent crime spirals

Officers in the city of Malmö have struggled to cope with a surge of serious crimes including dozens of attempted murders, beatings, rapes and other offences – and have now been forced to admit: “We cannot do it on our own”.

Malmö police chief Stefan Sinteus called for locals to come forward with testimonies testimonies in a bid to help police catch suspects.

In an open letter, a desperate Mr Sinteus wrote: “I can assure you that the police in Malmö are doing everything we can for suspected perpetrators to be held accountable. But we cannot do it on our own.

“We depend on you, and your witness statements, to solve these violent crimes.

“Therefore I appeal now to you: Help us.”

In many European countries, violent crime has spiked and it is directly related to "refugees" who are unemployed, un-assimilated and resentful. We are able to suppress this in America because our country is so much larger but bringing in hundreds of thousands of people, especially when we aren't sure they have been properly vetted (or even if proper vetting is possible) is clearly problematic at best. The stories are almost overwhelming and the statistics are pretty clear. For example:

Trump's ban makes sense in human capital terms: people from the banned nations tend to be over-represented in crime & unemployment stats. pic.twitter.com/EAyzrXp8El

— Adam Perkins (@AdamPerkinsPhD) January 29, 2017

In Germany something like 99%+ of "refugees" are unemployed, or about one out of every 10,000 has an actual job. Since the U.S. is already $20,000,000,000,000 in debt and millions of current citizens out of the workforce, do we really have the resources to absorb hundreds of thousands of people who likely will have extreme difficulty in finding employment, don't speak our language and will have a tough time becoming comfortable in a land that is alien to them in almost every respect? Governing is pretty much always a series of choices that are based on scarce resources. We only have so much money to go around so we need to prioritize where those funds go. I saw one statistic, one I have not confirmed but can easily believe, that it costs over ten thousand dollars to resettle one refugee. Do we have the resources to do that on a massive scale. Yes I know you can argue that we spend hundreds of billions on the military and other programs but it doesn't negate the real cost of refugee resettlement in America.

Wouldn't it make more sense and be far more economical to help these refugees from Middle Eastern, majority Muslim countries to be resettled locally in other Middle Eastern, majority Muslim countries? How much easier will it be to have them return home to Syria from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait when you can drive home rather than from the United States? Unless of course they never really intended to return home in the first place. If we are going to spend money, and I am not convinced we should, to deal with refugees, with poverty, etc. around the world, let's be smart about it. Give this brief video a watch (only six minutes but powerful)

Immigration policy and the question of refugees is a complicated, thorny mess of competing priorities. When you try to discuss the question in light of Christian faith it really gets messy. The temptation to use the coercive power of the state to carry out Kingdom priorities is ever present in a free society. As Christians we are to love all people, including our enemies. Love, compassion, justice should inform our decisions but that doesn't necessarily mean advocating for or opposing a specific policy or program from the secular government. Some may say that it is compassionate to provide people with food stamps and welfare payments. I would say, as would many other Christians, that this tends to create a dependency on the government that steals self-worth and dignity from people and uses the threat of Caesar's sword to take from some to give to others. Welfare dependency is not compassionate, it is the opposite of compassion because it enslaves people, but that doesn't stop people from claiming that reducing welfare benefits is "draconian" and "lacking compassion" and throwing out the "least of these" card. 

Likewise with immigration policy. There is simply not a position that is the only "Christian" position, the only "loving" or "compassionate" position. Simply quoting Matthew 25: 31-46 as if that is a rational argument is dumb and intellectually lazy. The same is true for clumsy appeals that take into account none of the very real concerns of a nation-state to maintain border integrity. Of course just saying "Build a wall and keep 'em all out" is not a well reasoned position either. What we need are common sense, theologically informed positions that don't rely on either fear or misplaced sentimentality. What we especially need is a recognition that the church and the government are not interchangeable and what God calls the Kingdom to do is not what God expect Caesar to do.

Trump's immigration policies, his approach to refugees, etc. is not the Christian position. Neither was Obama's. Nor were any policies from any Presidents we have had or that have been proposed by anyone who ever ran for President. The tax policies of Trump, of Obama, of W. Bush, of Bill Clinton or the proposed tax policies of people like Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or even of devout professed Christians like Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz are not "Christian tax policies" because there simply is no such thing. There is no "Christian" position on most governmental questions. For every cut and dried issue like legalized abortion or theft, there are dozens of more complicated issues like voter ID laws or immigration or tax policy or environmental regulations or....you get the point. 

The Kingdom priorities we have are not transferable to the unbelieving government of the world. As a Christian I am called, obligated and privilege to care for the sick and the widow and the hungry and the orphan. I am not called to use Caesar and the national policy of a secular state to accomplish a goal particularly when the issue is more complex than simply "Trump is for it so it musty be wrong". Just as I cannot say "I care about the poor because I voted for more welfare" or "I am pro-life because I voted for a Republican" neither can I say "I care about the stranger and the widow and the orphan because I opposed a four month temporary pause in immigration from seven very specifically chosen countries". 

If you think that pausing immigration and refugee resettlement from seven nations for 120 days is immoral or just bad policy, and you have done some actual research beyond re-Tweeting and liking Facebook posts, that is great. If you have studied the same question and looked at the data and agree that a temporary cessation makes sense and stricter border protections and immigration laws are in the best interest of the maximum number of people then that is great as well. What is not great is to resort of histrionics, hyperbole and hypocrisy that are based in partisan politics and claim you are just being the bigger Christian. 

I believe that there are very valid and even reasonably compassionate reasons to more strictly restrict in-coming immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States. I also think that President Trump is often wrong on his policy prescriptions, whether his "rebuild the military" rhetoric or his proposed funding mechanism for a southern border wall. What I am simply asking is that we do some research and ask some real questions before we leap onto social media to rail against something that is far more complicated than can be explained in 144 characters. Just because the world is content with sound bytes, tweets and memes it doesn't mean the church should be content with that as well.

Was baby Jesus an illegal immigrant in Egypt?

That is part of the argument made by Russell Moore in an essay this morning about the Southern Baptist Convention resolution on illegal immigrants, Immigration and the Gospel. Here is part of what Dr. Moore had to say.

Um. When you say that "First of all" and then claim an equivalnce between Jesus being whisked away to Egypt to avoid the assassins sent after Him and the economic and legal issues surrounding illegal immigrants in America, you are making a very shaky argument.

First, I question whether the bulk of illegal immigrants in this country are here fleeing the political situation in their country or if they are here because there are much better job prospects in America. Second, what was going on with Herod and the birth of Christ was not a political situation per se, it was an attempt by the Enemy to stop Christ in infancy from going to the cross. Third, is that even an accurate representation. I don’t think that it is. The rest of his argument is much better although ultimately weakened by that statement. Here is what I posted as a comment:

This would have been a better post without the Jim Wallis-esque claim that Jesus was an illegal immigrant in Egypt, an argument along the same lines of claiming that Joseph and Mary were homeless. I am not sure what the immigration laws of Egypt were in the first century or if they even had them. I do question the comparison between Mary and Joseph taking the promised Messiah and fleeing from the executioners hand versus those who come to the United States, knowingly breaking the laws of this land, for better job opportunities. That is not to discount the rest of your argument based on a proper recognition of our duty to see each person as an image bearer of God deserving of love and respect or to reject the very real reasons that people sneak into this country. It is to say that the “Baby Jesus was an illegal immigrant” is a flawed and emotion driven attempt to draw an erroneous equivalence between two completely unrelated situations separated by fact as well as 2000 years of history.

This is a serious question that demands a serious discussion. Illegal immigration is going to be an increasingly polarizing issue in America and Christians need to be thinking “Christianly” about it. That doesn’t mean aiding and abetting people breaking the law to sneak into America. Nor does it mean advocating for razor wire and machine guns on the border and rounding people up. We need to be careful to avoid mixing political positions with Gospel priorities. We are called to love all people, even our enemies, and illegal immigrants are far from our enemies. We are also called to submit to the governing authorities and those authorities have made it a crime to be in America without following the proper legal process. We need to find a proper balance here and that is not helped by reinterpreting the historical events of the Bible or hiding behind politically correct titles like “undocumented worker” or in making over the top statements about image bearers who have broken the law.

This is a gospel issue. First of all, our Lord Jesus himself was a so-called “illegal immigrant.” Fleeing, like many of those in our country right now, a brutal political situation, our Lord’s parents sojourned with him in Egypt (Matt. 2:113-23). Jesus, who lived out his life for us, spent his childhood years in a foreign land away from his relatives among people speaking a different language with strange customs.