The many contexts of immigrants—and evangelicals

Last week, evangelical congregations across America began screening a documentary called The Stranger: Immigration, Scripture and the American Dream, produced by a group called the Evangelical Immigration Table. Among EIT’s advocates are a host of uncommon bedfellows: Mathew Staver of the Liberty University School of Law and Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Leith Anderson of the National Association of Evangelicals and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and popular pastors Max Lucado and Wilfredo de Jesús. 

Immigration reform has attracted such a spectrum of advocates that it shows how, in a way, it is a fortuitous issue for American Protestants. Christianity has always been political, because by its nature it makes claims upon how people should live. Yet today the word "Christian" seems less political than partisan. 

There is an assumption by many on the American left that Christianity is shorthand for the Republican party platform, and far too many Christians hasten to confirm the suspicion. Thus, it is refreshing that The Stranger works so hard to break down polarizing rhetoric in a genuine attempt to understand the problem in terms other than those of contemporary American politics.