Introduction

The introduction outlines how American evangelical Christians have responded to refugees and immigrants to the United States since the early 1960s and into the twenty-first century. It sketches the evangelical theology of hospitality, which drove this activism into the late 1980s, and notes the significant shift which took place in evangelical immigration attitudes in the 1990s. While political leanings have always shaped evangelicals’ practical responses and political positions on immigration, mainstream evangelicals’ alliance with the Republican Party profoundly impacted their theology of hospitality as the Grand Old Party shifted toward a hard-line position on immigration. The introduction provides historical context for this activism and introduces the main question which drives the book: Why did evangelicals for many years embrace an immigrant- and refugee-friendly theology, only to replace their scriptural convictions with a more skeptical interpretation of the biblical record once the issue became subject to a deeply polarized political debate?

Finding “Angels” for the Boat People

This chapter covers evangelical resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees from 1975 to the early 1980s. During this time, a number of evangelical organizations ran resettlement ministries and refugee service programs. This chapter describes the professionalization of evangelical refugee resettlement, including the founding of the first evangelical resettlement agency, World Relief Refugee Services. Evangelical volunteers and former missionaries to Vietnam played a significant role in running recreational and educational activities in the refugee resettlement camps in the mid-1970s. These “missionaries without a country” became an important resource for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which relied on their interpreting and translating services. By differentiating between mainstream evangelical and progressive evangelical responses to the government’s appeal for evangelical sponsors, this chapter shows that evangelicals’ political stances on the US involvement in Vietnam fundamentally shaped their response to the refugees.

An Evangelical Theology of Hospitality

This chapter analyzes the theological arguments put forward by evangelical refugee and immigration activists, which is subsumed under the term “evangelical theology of hospitality.” Evangelical leaders drew on a myriad of commands, parables, narratives, and verses from both the Old and the New Testaments to argue that, as Christians, they were called to welcome all immigrants and refugees with open arms. This chapter makes the case that evangelicals—mainstream and progressives alike—made no distinction between refugees and legal immigrants on the one hand and undocumented immigrants on the other in their theology of hospitality, which they fleshed out during the Southeast Asian refugee crisis in the 1970s and applied to refugees and undocumented immigrants alike in the 1980s. All were viewed as the modern-day equivalent of the biblical “sojourners” or “strangers” whom they were called to love, provide for, and protect.

Addressing Illegal Immigration

This chapter introduces the varying evangelical responses to undocumented immigrants in the 1980s. Evangelicals’ views of the Reagan administration impacted their responses to the issue of undocumented immigration. Progressive evangelicals expressed their opposition to President Reagan’s Central America policies by supporting the movement to provide church sanctuary to people who fled the civil wars in Central America. In contrast, conservative evangelicals emphasized the need to act within the confines of the law. They became part of the legalization program provided by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the Evangelical Task Force on Legalization, run by World Relief. At the same time, they closely followed the fate of Pentecostal Christians in the Soviet Union and sponsored Soviet refugees. Apart from legal concerns, what differentiated mainstream evangelicals’ and progressive evangelicals’ responses to undocumented immigrants in the 1980s was their willingness to take a public position against the Reagan administration’s foreign policy.

Breaking Down the Walls

This chapter traces the results of evangelical immigration activism, covering the years between 2009 and 2014. By proposing a concept based both on justice and on compassion, evangelical immigration activists resurrected the biblical teachings to care for the “stranger” and reshaped the theology of hospitality in order to meet evangelical concerns about the rule of law. The chapter highlights the crucial role that Latinx evangelical leaders played in placing immigration on the evangelical agenda. They were joined by evangelical leaders who brought a renewed focus on social justice into their organizations. They came together in the Evangelical Immigration Table, a group founded in 2012, which hoped to change both evangelical immigration attitudes and immigration policy at the national level. The results of their activism are mixed: while surveys showed increasing evangelical support for immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship, this support failed to translate into electoral choices.

Sponsoring Castro’s Refugees

This chapter covers evangelical churches’ responses to Cuban refugees between 1959 and 1965, which constituted the first large-scale refugee resettlement initiative by a large evangelical denomination, as well as a well-established public-private partnership between the US government and evangelical churches. Evangelicals, particularly Southern Baptists, provided relief for and sponsored Cuban refugees as an outgrowth of their anticommunism as much as out of their religiously motivated missionary zeal. The Southern Baptist Convention—the nation’s largest Protestant denomination—resettled more than a thousand Cuban refugees. Southern Baptist refugee sponsors provided a roof to sleep under, furnished refugees’ new homes with blankets and kitchen appliances, secured employment for the families’ breadwinners, and enrolled Cuban children in school and the adults in English language classes. While not involved in resettlement, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God shared the Southern Baptists’ missionary zeal and catered to Cuban refugees’ material and spiritual needs.

Icy Walls Appear

This chapter explores evangelical responses to undocumented immigrants from the 1990s to the first decade of the twenty-first century. It argues that most mainstream evangelicals adopted the Republican Party’s hard-line stances on immigration (as exemplified by California’s Proposition 187) and introduced them into their theology by emphasizing biblical passages like Romans 13, which underlines the need to obey the government. Reflecting their strengthening ties to the GOP, evangelical leaders brought their theology in line with their politics. They argued that the Bible verses about welcoming the “stranger” were only applicable to legal immigrants, not to undocumented immigrants. This new differentiation between legal and undocumented immigrants marked much of the evangelical discourse on immigration in the next two decades. The competing interpretations of the biblical record translated into deep divisions within the evangelical movement, as Latinx and progressive evangelical leaders urged their evangelical coreligionists to speak out for undocumented immigrants.

Epilogue

The epilogue addresses the contradictions in evangelicals’ current attitudes about refugees and immigrants. It explores diverging attitudes and responses to the 2015 refugee crisis as well as to the travel ban and the separation of families at the southern US border in the first years of the Trump presidency. Applying the book’s argument that politics has shaped evangelicals’ theology in their views on immigration, these divisions on immigration are placed in the context of other issues that have produced cracks in the evangelical movement, such as gun control or LGBTQ rights.