American Nehemiads

When asked about Pope Francis’s call to America for a welcoming immigration policy, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) responded,

It’s all right for him to call on us to establish an immigration law that serves the national interest and assists people, but how that’s done, I think he probably is not sufficiently informed, and I would say that despite some of the biblical things, Nehemiah went back to Jerusalem and the Lord commanded him to build a wall.

In his response, Sessions (perhaps unwittingly) invoked a biblical trope used countless times in American Protestant churches. I call it the “American Nehemiad.”