God’s Defenders Vs. God’s Defenseless In Montana

By Darrell Ehrlick, Daily Montanan

February 4, 2021

Why is it that the people who are so quick to rush to God’s defense in politics seem like the last ones to stand up for his most basic and often-repeated commands?

I’ve heard so much from our lawmakers and elected officials about the need for prayer in schools and keeping God in the public conversation. You know, “Keep Christ in Christmas?”

Many conservatives espouse deeply held Christian beliefs, and they’re often quick to remind us of all the places “In God We Trust” or other references to the deity is invoked in America’s founding documents and mottoes.

I wish to quibble with none of those ideas now, even though I contend that believing our country’s Founders clung to a notion of a streamlined Christian nation is historically suspect.

Instead, I will take at face value that many of our elected officials, including Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, are people of deep Christian convictions and beliefs. And, I will also trust that so many of them, who’ve spoken about the need to return to values and religion, won’t mind if I take them at their word.

Yet, as I read through the Bible, I cannot help but be struck by the legion references of strangers and how to treat those who are different. Let’s even for a moment set aside the great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself, as if one could even set aside the true meaning of the church.

As Montana lawmakers contemplate banning sanctuary cities in Montana — not a hard task to do because there are exactly zero — it’s not only a solution in search of a non-existent problem, it’s also hard to imagine a more un-Christian bill. Again, there may be a better conversation to be had discussing the difference between a secular state and a religious one, but since Republicans insist on bringing God into our schools and conversation, I believe we should employ theology to help solve this vexing problem which absolutely no city in Montana is dealing with.

Rep. Ed Stafman, D-Bozeman, who knows a thing or two about theology as a rabbi, pointed out on the House floor Tuesday that there are more than 36 passages in the Bible that deal with how to treat a stranger. I, for one, could have listened to Stafman all day talk about nearly 1,000 Jews who were sent to their death after not being granted sanctuary in America during World War II, but he was cut off by fellow Rep. Derek Skees, R-Kalispell, who said Nazis don’t have anything to do with sanctuary cities.

I don’t know what kind of karma — mixing theological concepts for a moment — you invite when you silence a rabbi from speaking about the Holocaust, but let’s just say: The Montana Legislature never fails to impress me by devising new ways of reaching rhetorical low-points.

Yet, the Bible is replete with examples of strangers traveling to different foreign lands and being comforted, protected and given shelter in times of duress, famine, war and strife. That we have to reference foreigners in the Bible is shocking, especially since so many Anglo settlers fled to places like Montana as strangers seeking some kind of better, more secure life. Many of us have first-hand experience knowing family members who were indeed once strangers in this now familiar land.

Nevertheless, the book of Exodus puts it beautifully and plainly: “You shall not oppress a stranger nor torment him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21).

Just to prove this wasn’t some Biblical fluke, Leviticus 19:33 is also unambiguous: “When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him.”

If kicking the stranger or foreigner out of the country, building walls, and sending many back to face violence or death isn’t oppression or torment, quite frankly, I don’t know what is.

Maybe the most sobering story for Christians is recounted in the Gospel of Matthew when Joseph and Mary take the young Jesus, fleeing to Egypt. The reason given in the Bible was that King Herod understood from wise men that Jesus was going to be a king, and feeling threatened, he killed his own people.

If not for sanctuary and the ability to seek refuge elsewhere, what would have become of Jesus Christ? I can put it in no simpler terms: Without sanctuary cities and refuge, there is no Christ and therefore no Christianity.

What happens to those who stay in a homeland, torn apart by violence, is also recorded in the same incredible passage in Matthew (2:18):

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted
because they are no more.”

We know why people are leaving their countries, family — all they’ve ever known — to come to America. They were the same stories I heard from my great-grandparents as a kid.

What I don’t know is why we’ve changed, abandoning a faith that has so much to say about the issue.

And I pray — and I mean that word — that we don’t have to answer for how we mistreat the strangers in our midst, because the Bible is clear on that subject as well.

The Daily Montanan is a nonprofit, nonpartisan source for trusted news, commentary and insight into statewide policy and politics beneath the Big Sky.