Ep 78: The Biblical View of Immigrants

00:00What about us sending weapons and arms and training people in other countries to terrorize

00:06their own citizens and then they flee those places and come here?

00:11We create a lot of problems in the world and then we close our doors when we don't want

00:15to see the problems that we created.

00:17I love that we're proposing a you broke it, you bought it, you have a lot of immigration.

00:22Yeah, that's a great way to put it.

00:24I want to quote you on that.

00:30Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beecher and you are listening to the

00:35Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the

00:40Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:44How are things, Dan?

00:46Things are good, man.

00:47We've got some cool guests on the show today and I am eager to ask some questions.

00:54So I'm just going to dive in and introduce who we got here.

00:57All right, let's do it.

00:58These are the two gentlemen that make up the lawful assembly podcast.

01:03This is Cecil Cisarello and Craig Musin.

01:08That's Reverend Craig Musin JD if you want to get all kinds of crazy about it.

01:13These two guys are Cecil is like me, a ding dong with a bunch of other podcasts out here,

01:25an atheist, a secular humanist.

01:28And Craig, you are a professor at the Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at DePaul University,

01:37your assistant minister for immigrant justice and at the Wellington United Church of Christ.

01:44You got, how many more Appalachians and affiliations do you need before you're done?

01:50That's what I want to know.

01:53And hold on now, before Craig goes, you went to all the trouble to ask him,

01:58when you, here's what I want you to say, it's spelled P-O-D-C-A-S-T-R.

02:04That's what I do.

02:05You are a podcaster.

02:06That's right.

02:07It's pretty much the only thing I do.

02:10What I did was I found really smart people to talk to and that's what I got in Craig.

02:14And you're actually a wonderful podcaster.

02:16People should check out cognitive dissonance, which is an amazing show.

02:20And you're also on Citation Needed, which is a great show.

02:23Some really good content out there.

02:26But today, we're going to be diving into this show, which is the lawful assembly,

02:31and sort of talking about one point of crossover that your show and our show kind of have.

02:37Regardless of the atheist and the believer dynamic,

02:43which I don't know how you guys think that's going to work.

02:45Because honestly, what do you guys just yell at each other every episode? Is that all you do?

02:51I think our list says to want more of that, actually.

02:53Our listeners want more of that, to be honest.

02:55They want more yelling.

02:56Yeah, everybody that I tell about our show, they think,

03:00"Oh, it's going to be a debate show."

03:02And it's like, "No, I just defer to Dan on it."

03:04That's what I do, too.

03:06So, no, God, wait a second there.

03:10So, the reason that we wanted to have you guys on is because

03:15Craig, you have made a particular study of immigration, especially here in the United States.

03:21You are a lawyer. You are also a minister who specializes and focuses on issues of immigration.

03:29It seems to be a kind of a big deal these days.

03:32As we record this, we just had a couple of days ago the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald

03:41Trump, and this immigration was a really huge issue in that debate and continues to be politically,

03:49and I feel like, and I want to hear what your take on this with apologies to Cecil.

03:58I feel like there's a cognitive dissonance happening between the people on the far right

04:04who are largely composed of very, very devout Christians, and it feels to me like their take on

04:15immigration is at odds with what I have read Jesus said about immigration.

04:24So, I want Dan, I want Craig, I want you two to help us understand, first of all,

04:28what is the biblical take on the immigrant? I know that there are probably multiple takes,

04:35and they're probably conflicting because that's the Bible for you.

04:38But also, how do you guys think a Christian in the United States of America should apply those

04:50lessons to our current legal system slash how we deal with the immigration issue?

04:58I'd start with a good Samaritan story right from the beginning, and if your word is Jesus

05:06and responding to him, the lawyer said, "Who is my neighbor?"

05:12And Jesus pops up with this story about three people walking on a road from Jerusalem to Jericho,

05:19and the priest and the rabbi walk by, and the good Samaritan stops and helps heal.

05:26And we learned that the Samaritan was probably what some folks today, I hate the word, but might

05:33call an illegal alien in those places, didn't belong, and put himself at risk to even offer aid

05:40and comfort because the authorities might have thought that the Samaritan was the one that caused

05:46the crime, and he was trying to get out of it. That question, "Who is my neighbor?" That's

05:51the starting point, and the more you look at that story and study it, that you understand that we're

06:01all walking on that road, and we may be accosted, and who's going to be there for us? And if we

06:09start making rules about who takes care of whom, we get in trouble, and we've learned in a nation

06:16state scenario that we need certain rules to talk about borders, but we also then realize

06:23we learned in World War II and the Holocaust that if the rules are too strict, we turn ships like

06:28the St. Louis away and send 700 European Jews back to Europe to face the Holocaust, and therefore

06:35we need rules for refugees and asylum seekers, and we need to figure out how those all adjust.

06:41So that's a starting point. If that helps, it might help more if you need more out of that,

06:47but that's my starting point. But I'd also point out that I believe very strongly

06:51as a Christian that the sacred story contained both in the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian

06:57scriptures. Walter Bruggeman says that, "At the core of faith for Christians and Jews is the

07:07matrix of exile, that we have a story of we are forced into exile over generations. And therefore,

07:15thinking of that, if we are an exile people, we are people both a welcoming people, but also

07:21people in exile. And therefore, that should be the basis, the matrix of how we think about how to

07:27respond to immigrants in our midst." The exile thing's a very interesting thing because we don't

07:34think of European Americans as exiles, but part of the mythos of Europeans in America

07:43is that of the "pilgrims" coming and at least the story that I was told when I was a kid was,

07:53these were people seeking freedom, religious, a place to practice their religion freely,

08:03and they were exiled. That was their stories, that they were exiles fleeing to this land.

08:12Yeah, I always thought the same thing that they had to come here so they could draw their hand

08:16turkeys. Yes, absolutely. On a piece of paper, a little turkey with the five fingers. I think

08:22that that's what, no? Their outfits were looked much better than ours. They were pretty dope,

08:28to be honest. They were really good. I don't know if any of you have been to Plymouth,

08:32or Plymouth Plantation. I was there a few summers ago. It's just south of the town of Plymouth.

08:38There is a Plymouth Plantate. You can go there as a tourist and sit down at a table with those

08:43folks and grab a drumstick and have some... Oh kidding. I'm not sure you can eat it,

08:48but they're sitting there putting the food out and you're watching them pull it out.

08:54Oh, okay. You get to watch them eat. It's a lot of fun.

08:59It's not just Plymouth, right? Catholics came to Maryland seeking religious freedom and

09:06we found others going to Georgia and who became the Methodist in many ways, but it's a greater

09:14issue of... a general issue of freedom. We have to forget or we can't forget that

09:20at that time there were religious wars racking Europe over all kinds of fights over things that

09:27today we look and say, "Really? You were fighting over that?" But people were dying.

09:31That was the cauldron where people started thinking about those very same Puritans that

09:40came to Massachusetts forced Roger Williams to flee because his brand of Puritanism was different

09:47than theirs. Roger Williams became one of the founding theoreticians of the Baptist religion

09:55and his understandings of religious freedom are totally different than others.

10:00So I don't like the pain. I don't like the harm, but out of that people start realizing,

10:09"Well, if I'm being persecuted because I have a certain understanding of the Puritan religion,

10:15I'm being forced to go to Rhode Island, maybe my theory should be a little more open and not

10:20to hurt others." I hope some of us learn from that. Well, you mentioned the Jewish tradition and

10:26something that they have in the Jewish tradition. There are a variety of ways in which Jewish folks

10:32are to remind themselves of that background. For remember, you were a girl, you were an immigrant,

10:40you were a migrant, you were an exile, you were a slave. That's a part of their tradition to

10:45constantly remind yourself of that background, which is something that a lot of Christians I think

10:50don't do. We don't have a lot of folks who know, "Well, this is the origin of this particular

10:56denomination split off because we were trying to escape from persecution from another denomination

11:03that itself was trying to escape from persecution from another denomination." That kind of history

11:08is kind of left in the dustbin for a lot of Christians. I don't think that is the kind

11:13of identity marker and a lot of Christian identities that it is within the Jewish identity.

11:20You've done a lot of work on precisely that kind of understanding of one's sacred past.

11:28Do you have any thoughts on why Christianity might be an awful lot of Christians anyway,

11:34might be a little loath to treat that as central to their identity, whereas within Judaism it is

11:40foundational? If I knew that answer, I'd really be successful in figuring out how to resolve it,

11:45but I do struggle with that because one of the articles I wrote I contrast. A student of mine had

11:53given me a photo of some graffiti she saw in Florence, Italy, and it showed Jesus Christ with

12:00a crown of thorns, and he had a little placard on his front and said, "Migrant for life,"

12:07and there that points out a Christian version of that is the central part of Christianity that

12:13Jesus was a migrant for life. A few weeks later as I was working on this story I saw a photo from

12:19January 6th, and there's this very traditional photo that's in probably every process in Sunday

12:25school of Jesus looking up and this relatively white Jesus looking up. But in the photo from

12:33January 6th he had a MAGA hat on, and the Smithsonian's actually called that MAGA Jesus,

12:39and that's the group that you're suggesting is not thinking of the founding principles of

12:44Christianity being in exile. Forgetting that Jesus was an illegal immigrant coming back

12:51after his parents took him to Egypt. Can you imagine Joseph trying to prove he was the biological

12:57father of this young baby when they're coming back from Egypt into Israel? I did another paper

13:03much earlier on every major protagonist in the Bible. If you used the current prism of American

13:11immigration law, every major figure from Adam and Eve to St. Paul would have violated US immigration

13:20law, every war woman deported, excluded, everyone. Noah, you know how Noah broke immigration law? One,

13:28he went to another land without a visa, right? So he ends up in Turkey. But the more important one,

13:33we have anti-smuggling laws, and the smuggling laws say you bring someone across the border,

13:38you're guilty of immigration violation, but we'll exempt your family. Oh, wait, wait, we'll only

13:44accept the children. The daughters-in-law made Noah's smuggler, which would have made him

13:51deportable, right? Wow. He didn't fill out the little strip of paper that they hand you when you're

13:56coming in. I don't know how to fill that out. To me, that whole history there is that foundational,

14:06but we forget it. We get caught up into that the other side of Christianity that we've been

14:14chosen by God as an exceptional people to be in this land and to hold onto this land as ours.

14:21And that was a debate in the Jewish and Christian Bible of what part whose

14:26King David was certainly monarchical. And then in one of the big debates I have with former

14:31attorney general sessions, he really liked Nehemiah. Why do you like Nehemiah? Because Nehemiah built

14:36a wall. Yeah. And as he was quoted saying, that wall wasn't to keep people in. It was to keep people.

14:42Well, I've done some research that Nehemiah had one version, but there were a lot of

14:47folks in Israel at that time that had a different version. And there's tension. So

14:52what happens is we start grabbing different parts of the Bible that we seem to like

14:58our part of, let's build that wall and wall ourselves in. Yeah, that's- We've never encountered

15:04people grabbing the same part of the Bible, but deploying it differently for their own.

15:08Yeah, I've never, we've never seen that on our show. This is news to me.

15:13And I point out just to- Okay, Dan.

15:16I was just going to say one of the things that I think this reminder that you were this way,

15:22this is about restricting the use of power. It's about suggesting that you need to keep that in mind

15:30in order to appropriately treat people who are marginalized, marginalized, oppressed. And we have

15:39that reminder throughout, particularly within the prophetic critique that we find in the prophetic

15:43literature, the orphan, the widow, and the immigrants. And these are intended to function as kind of

15:51caps on the abuse of power. Whereas when it comes to a lot of Christianity today that wants to focus

15:57on how we can maximize our power. And it always seems to reduce to structuring power and values

16:07and boundaries to serve our interests. I don't think an awful lot of Christians are interested

16:12in putting a governor on that power. Their primary goal seems to be to find ways to maximize it.

16:19And that's troubling for me. Folks who try to leverage Christianity, try to maximize their power,

16:26have lost the plot. And I think that's something you talk about in some of the papers that you've

16:33published that this the central gospel message, even when we go back into the Hebrew Bible and

16:39those figures who are unrelated to the Christian message, it's about the fact that we're in a land

16:45that is not our own, even within the Christian gospel, you know, we're here on earth, which is

16:51not our home, we're supposed to be elsewhere. And to to kind of sideline the concern for the

16:59other for the neighbor doing exactly what the lawyer in Luke 10 is doing. Why did he ask who's

17:05my neighbor? Because he wanted to justify himself. He wanted to rationalize his reduction of that

17:13population of people who might be his neighbor. Whereas Jesus is one identifies it as kind of a

17:19behavioral vector rather than anything else. But but two is is trying to expand the boundaries of

17:28that population. But I'm sorry, I interrupted you. What where were you headed? Well, I was going to

17:34get back to your earlier point about forgetting about being an exile. But I was going to cite

17:39perhaps a very particular American story about a man named Joseph Smith, who finds some documents

17:45and material in upstate New York and then decides that he's not welcome in that community and starts

17:51to head west and gets to Navu Illinois and all of a sudden gets a little persecuted there because

17:55he's not really welcome and then gets the Missouri and loses more people and eventually finds a home

18:00in in Salt Lake City, Utah. And I've been to Salt Lake. I've been to the temple and I've watched this

18:07wonderful film about that trip. And if I urge people just it's worth watching this beautiful

18:14presentation. And I sit there as a asylum lawyer a refugee lawyer watching a people being persecuted

18:21as they pursue their ways across this country and totally the American experience right at the time

18:27of the States. And very important to that faith tradition and very important to where they are. But

18:34I sit there and think have have how do they reconcile that with the current folks who are

18:42being persecuted coming to our border that they had that tradition and they fortunately made it

18:47to a place. It's especially poignant that the Mormons when they made their way here to Salt Lake City,

18:55which is where Dan and I are based, they were fleeing the country. They were coming to Mexico.

19:01This was all part of Mexico at that time. And you know, one year later, it was suddenly not

19:06Mexico anymore. But like to me, that reversal where you can you can know that part of your history,

19:13part of your lore is fleeing one country to go and seek refuge in another country. And then

19:21as you know, as you point out, so many current Mormons want are build the wall,

19:29mega, you know, people. And it's, you know, that was, that was 150 years ago. That wasn't that long

19:37ago. When I was watching the, when on January 6, I was watching footage live. And I spotted

19:49what seemed to me to be Captain Moroni with his title of Liberty in the crowd. And I was like,

19:57that's a damn, Mormon cut right there. So I had, I was like, I was watching this on my computer,

20:03I CNN or something. And I went back and I got a screenshot and I was like, holy crap. And this

20:10is, this is a hero from the book of Mormon who tears down some fabric and writes on it. And for

20:16basically this, um, Patriot kind of quote, and, and waves this flag around called the title of Liberty.

20:25And this person was dressed more like a Roman centurion, but caring. It wasn't good cosplay,

20:31but it was cosplay. But this was, and there are an awful lot of Latter-day Saints who, as Dan said,

20:37are, are all in on the MAGA worldview, which just is, is all kinds of depressing. But

20:47that's another, that's another part of our own history, which is not very old, that we also

20:53tend to overlook because, uh, and this is something I am wont to say frequently. Everyone's negotiating

20:59with the Bible, with their history, with their identities, with their, uh, their

21:06exigencies and their goals for the future. Everybody's negotiating. So it's not a question of whether or not

21:10any of these things can find representation in the text. You can find all of that in the text.

21:16You can find, uh, rationalization for, uh, kicking the Mormons out in the history. I mean,

21:22there were some, some odd things going on, uh, within Mormonism as well. So for me, the interesting

21:28question is why are people prioritizing the parts of their history that they're prioritizing?

21:35Why are they centering in giving priority to certain things and then marginalizing or reinterpreting

21:40away other things? And, and I think the, the reminder is, uh, like I said, about limiting power. And for

21:49a lot of people, that's a non-starter. We're not here to, uh, to try to, uh, to limit power. And even

21:55Latter-day Saints, I think have been, I think we hitched our wagon in a lot of ways to an evangelical,

22:01um, American worldview in an effort to try to access the power and the resources that are

22:08available through evangelicalism. Uh, and then a lot of ways have, have adopted a worldview that

22:15is more concerned with power than it is for, uh, what most Latter-day Saints every, every

22:20Sunday and church are hearing is our duty, uh, as a follower of Jesus. And I, I, I, I have worked

22:26with a number of Latter-day Saints who I have, I am very proud to call my friends. And I know

22:31there's generosity and kindness and outreach as well. And I've had this debate with them as well,

22:38and, and been invited even to Provo to put forth some of my immigration views and been very kindly

22:43welcomed there. And I'm very grateful for that. But I make you right. Let me add another element

22:47to the power because I've really struggled as you have with trying to, uh, talk to family members or

22:53neighbors who disagree with me. And, uh, obviously one of the things that Cecil and I, one of the

22:59arguments we've had debates, debates we've had, the 10 commandments, right? What's the place of

23:06the 10 commandments and, and one, and one of the issues of religion is to help give us some order

23:13out of chaos. And we see that even in the creation story in Genesis and try to, and then people

23:20gather and, and in my tradition have a covenant with a God that says, if you live this way,

23:25there'll be more order. And that God says, Oh, by the way, part of that covenant is to be kind to

23:30the widow, the orphan, the stranger and to show justice and mercy. He should have wrote that down

23:35then instead of the time commandment. Well, let's go back to Genesis. Let's go back to Leviticus.

23:40I can point them out. If you want that lesson, see. Put that in style. It seems like a great idea

23:46to be honest. I would put that in stone. Danny, maybe you correct me, but I, I think, uh, Jim Wallace

23:51has counted what 62 times to welcome the stranger or the, the, it's, it is written in the language.

23:59We just tend to find tens a nice number to rally around. But I, but I want to be fair that, uh, I mean,

24:07I'm a parent and I live in a, I live in Chicago, which has a lot of wonderful, beautiful

24:12elements. And we have some violence. And so I have the worries that most parents have when my

24:17children go out on the street. Um, and so religion helps give me that order and helps give a sense.

24:23And so then I have some rules. And, and then how do you keep people following the rules unless

24:30there's an enforcement mechanism? And then, uh, I think Dan, you mentioned earlier that word stewardship,

24:35God gave us the earth to be stewards of. And sometimes we overdo the stewardship, right? Well,

24:42if I'm supposed to be a steward, I better keep out people who will take too much. Right. So I,

24:47I do think there is that tension that we all, um, I have people ask me, well, Craig, do you lock

24:54your doors at night? Right. So how is that different than locking our borders? And I think that's a

24:59good question. Let's talk about how vulnerable I want to be as an individual to welcome the other.

25:05But I, I do want to talk to folks who have that fear, right? And, and then

25:12that gets back to the education on our most of the people who are fleeing violence

25:17really coming to take from us. Are they just trying to escape the harm and that our ancestors

25:24had escaped also? Well, Craig, I'm going to guess that you have some numbers at your fingertip that

25:29could give a, that could shed some light on that question, the question of, because I think,

25:37you know, I've looked at figures of like criminality in the immigrant population versus criminality

25:44in the, uh, you know, the, the citizen population here in the US and, uh, it doesn't seem to shake out

25:52the way Trump would have us believe it shakes out. Not even close. Not even close. So talk to us a

25:59little bit about what your vision for, uh, for it. I mean, I, look, let's, let's not do a whole,

26:08you know, Craig Musin project 2025 here, but like, what, what, what does, what do you think a, a, a,

26:17an informed, you know, as someone who's legally informed and sort of informed by your religious,

26:24uh, uh, leanings, what, how, what would, what would a good, uh, policy look like for you?

26:30Well, let me, um, ask one quick question, little quiz here. I think Cecil may know the answer,

26:35because I probably asked him before, how many people lawfully immigrate to the United States

26:39every year? Do we ever hear that in the debate? Right. That's a great question. How many lawfully

26:43come in and enter our society? What do we have 300 million in the United States? Yeah.

26:48I have no idea. I don't want to put you on the spot. Well, that's, that's a fair answer. It's

26:53right. I often want to do public speaking. I do an auction. What do I hear there? I hear 10,000.

26:57I hear a hundred. Um, I mean, we hear, we hear numbers about him about, uh, unlawful immigration,

27:05and it's, and they're, you know, they're spouting numbers in the 20 million or whatever. And it's,

27:10which sounds absurd to me. And I, I don't think is correct, but so that's why I asked the question,

27:14because we, we forget that, uh, we immigrants have fueled this country from our very beginning

27:21days. Right. So up to recently almost a million people come in a year lawfully. Wow. About 600,000

27:28family oriented, about 125,000 through employment, another 100,000 or so refugees. And it all adds

27:36up in, in good years, 700,000 a million or something. But that's a big number that a lot of people don't

27:42know that we have had the capacity to accept and absorb and welcome and become fruitful members

27:52of our society. Yeah. I think that's even a low number of what we could do. Several years ago,

27:57I was working with refuge Syrian refugees in Jordan. And Jordan had over a million refugees in Jordan

28:04itself. Oh, wow. And someone commented to me, gosh, if America took per capita, the same number of

28:10refugees. Yeah. Because Jordan's a tiny, I mean, compared to us, that they're a very small country.

28:16And yeah, obviously many were living very poorly and camps and in overburden departments. But

28:24the fact that that country could even welcome and try to deal with the food and care of a million,

28:31we could do probably 50 or 60 million and not even feel the same pain was being felt in Jordan.

28:36So starting point for me is we have the capacity to be more generous. I'm also enough of a realist

28:44that we can't take in everyone. And part of what Cecil and I have been trying to do in our

28:50lawful assembly podcast is talk about kid, we, you're very questioned, work with the other nations of

28:56the world to say, how do we have a system that works for everybody? Part of that is helping folks

29:02in the where the climate change, you know, we put 90% of the 60% of the carbon that's causing climate

29:08change. And where's the impact being felt in a lot of the sending nations, Guatemalan farms

29:13that are getting drought or floods in other countries or rising sea levels in Bangladesh.

29:17We have some moral and just practical obligation to help those folks. So part of the immigration

29:24issues, can we help solve some of the problems that are sending? All right. What about us sending

29:29weapons and arms and training people in other countries to terrorize their own citizens? And

29:34then they they flee those places and come here. We create a lot of problems in the world. And then

29:39we close our doors when we don't want to see the problems that we created. I love that we're

29:44proposing a you broke it, you bought it. I like immigration. That's a great way to put it. I want

29:50to quote you on that. I love that. You know, when I was I'm kind of getting around here. So

29:57partly I use those numbers before we are fast approaching the problems of Italy and Japan that

30:04we don't have enough children being born in our nation to solve Social Security or even

30:11I'm a baby boomer and I'm part of that generation that's going to be expecting people to keep working

30:19to keep the retired folks working. We need more immigrants period, let alone refugees.

30:26Yes. So I think first we could up some of those numbers of family immigrants coming in.

30:32Think of all the new jobs that have been created by the inspiration of new ideas of both in the

30:42Silicon Valley but in the other areas that are trying to replicate the electronic knowledge and

30:49I bringing people in. So 125,000 when they try to fill that quota for employment visas in this

30:55country that gets filled almost immediately. There are people wanting to come. We're losing

31:00some of the best and brightest minds. We're going to Canada or going to New Zealand because they're

31:05more open. I want to sense we can up that. Now the big issue is the refugee issue. And depending

31:13what numbers you look at there can be close to 80 million to 100 million. Both displaced persons

31:20which in the legal definition is people who are still in their nation but they're not able to

31:24live in their home. They're in a camp at the other side of the country. And refugees who are

31:28technically people outside of their nation seeking a new safe place. But if you put them all together

31:33the UN and UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees can get up to 100 million. It could be

31:4160 to 100 depending on the displaced persons. Does anyone in the world? Yes. So we're talking

31:47about people crossing the Mediterranean. We're talking about people crossing the South China Sea

31:54going over to Australia or New Zealand or finding places like that. And then people coming across to

32:00our land bridge with Mexico. And as you mentioned earlier, a lot of those folks are coming to what

32:06used to be Mexico. Right. Now we call it Arizona, Utah, New Mexico. We have this mentality of

32:17the only way to fix it is to build a bigger wall, to build more detention camps,

32:22and exclude and make barriers out of any kind of barrier, both a physical and a legal barrier.

32:30And Cecil and I have been discussing, instead of putting a lot of money, what's it, a million

32:38dollars a mile or a million dollars a foot to build the border wall and disrupt wilderness areas.

32:47We could do better processing with much more expeditious discernment if someone is of true

32:54refugee, if we had the right place to train lawyers to be available to help people explain

33:00why they're fleeing. Yeah, it does seem like the system is so wildly overburdened and wildly

33:09underfunded that it's designed. And I think this is true. I think we can say it is designed

33:15to be a disaster that then politicians can run on, look at the disaster there,

33:23not run on fixing it, like not proposing any way to actually fix it, just saying,

33:29look at how bad that is. All you have to do is just keep pulling away toothpicks until it falls

33:34down. Yeah. Yeah. And then pointed out how terrible it is. Yeah. Well, this is one of the

33:38decades back to our starting, my premise at least is my faith calls me to become an advocate for

33:45welcoming the stranger, as Dan had mentioned in the Levitical and other parts of the Hebrew

33:52scriptures and even the New Testament. But how do we do that in a way that doesn't put all this

33:59money to the, what are they calling the immigration industrial complex? Project 2025 wants to expand

34:06the detention facilities from 30,000 beds to over 100,000 beds. Yeah. All that money going into

34:12bidding facilities up with barbed wire and buildings and guards and 24 and locking human capital

34:19and buildings that they can't express their lives. And isn't it funny that if we didn't,

34:26if they didn't take that approach, like, you know, they consider, they love to tout that they're

34:31the, the side of fiscal responsibility. But if they just let these people in and let them work

34:37while they were waiting, they would be adding to our economy. They would be building our economy.

34:43We wouldn't be paying for their housing. We wouldn't be paying for their, for, you know,

34:47for their food and everything. We, it would literally be the opposite rather than a net

34:53suck on our economy. We would be building our economy while they're waiting to be processed,

34:58while they're waiting to be, to be dealt, you know, to whatever. And they want to work, like,

35:04almost everyone that comes through, they're ready to work. They want that to, you know,

35:10they want to be productive members of society. Well, one, one thing,

35:13a percent of our building trades or immigrants are undocumented. And we have a housing shortage.

35:18If they were working there, the other key you didn't mention is social security. They'd be

35:22putting money into social security for all those people in millennial generation worried that

35:26there won't be a social security system out there. We have some ways to fix it. And never

35:31having the opportunity to draw it out. That just goes in. That's, that's an input. That's free

35:36money for us. And they don't even get to keep any of it. Now that's, well, if we do have a

35:41lawful process that eventually they would, but that's still three or four decades down the road.

35:45Right. I think one thing that is, is being leveraged by the folks who want to continue to

35:52be able to wave undocumented immigrants as a, as a boogeyman in the face of other Americans,

36:02you, you mentioned earlier that we have birth rates are going down. And there's an awful lot of

36:09push on the part of Christian nationalists and particularly white nationalist leaning folks

36:16to get white families to have more kids because they would like that to be the means of overcoming

36:22this declining birth rate rather than bringing in non white citizens. I think there's an awful lot

36:28of white supremacy underlying a lot of the, the, the utility of this anti immigration rhetoric

36:35because a lot of the immigrants are coming from the global south. And the great replacement theory

36:41is very widely deployed by, by the folks who are fighting against immigration. In my previous

36:47employment, I was a scripture translation supervisor for the LDS church. I spent plenty of time

36:52working on language associated languages associated with refugee communities. I worked on a language

36:59called Karen, which is spoken by refugees from Myanmar. And I've spent time on the islands of

37:06Kiribas, which are some of the lowest line islands in the world, the places where the sea level

37:13changes has already entirely deleted some of the islands from that nation. And these are folks

37:21coming from the global south who are already taking up space in the US and people are not

37:27even aware that there are millions of, of immigrants from these places who are contributing members

37:33of society who are living among them. They, I don't think they pay attention and realize that

37:39they're there until they have someone come and, and lay concrete in their backyard or something.

37:44And they're like, I don't know that language is person speaking. And they're not, sometimes they

37:50are, they grow an appreciation for some of these folks who are coming here and have skills that

37:55they don't have. But one of the things that frustrates me, particularly from the point of view of,

38:00of Christianity is, is the fact that white supremacy and this fear of non white populations coming

38:08into the States is so popular, you know, particularly with, with Donald Trump and the rhetoric that

38:14he's used, what kind of immigrants are good immigrants versus what kind of immigrants are

38:18bad immigrants. There's, there's a very conspicuous color line that, that divides that for, for so

38:24many folks, which is, for me, one of the most aggravating parts of all of this.

38:31Absolutely. And Dan, I, my church, we had, we would call it the grace of God, but we had an old

38:39building in Chicago and a lot of deferred maintenance and the boiler was hardly working in the winter

38:45time. And we, by the grace of God, sold it in March of 2020. And we didn't have to take care of that

38:53after that. And we've sort of been a church in exile. So every six months, we've been renting a

38:58different space to try to figure out where we want to end up locating. But our current place on

39:03the north side of Chicago, we have a our worship space. There's a current congregation on the floor

39:11above us in the chapel above us. There is an Hispanic congregation that's worshiping in the

39:16fellowship hall. And there's the Baptist congregation worshiping in the main. And when I go in on a

39:21Sunday morning to help prepare for worship, it's glorious that there's different music, different

39:26sounds, different praise. And I just get so filled with different groups of folks being that same

39:33building, but making a joyful noise. And it just is like, this is what flourishing could be like

39:41when we allow that to happen. And just so the fact that you mentioned the current community that

39:45they're vibrant and participating in Chicago. And just wanted to share that because, and I also

39:54agree with you, the race line is just really the the mentioned the mentioned about the debate this

40:00week about the Haitians in our treatment of Haiti from the very not people don't realize that when

40:07the Haitian Revolution happened at the time of Thomas Jefferson president, the slave owners in

40:12Haiti fled to this country for safety and from the person that the perceived persecution that

40:18the slaves were going to have against them. And we welcome the slave owners into here to give

40:22protection. And then immediately set about to try to undermine the government of Haiti. And we forget

40:28that's again, we forget that that tradeoff that's happened in our history. And it's just

40:33tragicing on every decade against how this country has tried to make Haiti a weaker country. And now

40:39we say, why are you coming here? Yeah, interesting thing that we talked about on our show. Craig often

40:46will say that the people who are afraid are afraid that someone's going to take a piece of their

40:51pie, right? So there's a there's sort of a limited pie. And people who are afraid of immigrants are

40:58afraid, they're going to take their section, they're going to take my piece. And what we talk about

41:02on our show is not the great replacement theory, but the great inspiration theory, right? So we

41:07should be inspired by migrants, we should be inspired because they bring they bring innovation,

41:12they bring like Craig was saying, they bring energy, a different culture. And I told Craig once I said,

41:17you know, we shouldn't think of it like everybody trying to take a piece, one single piece of one

41:22pie. Instead, we should think of this more like a potluck. So everybody brings something to the

41:27table. And we all share in that new cultural experience, instead of all just saying, we just

41:32want to protect this one sliver of pie. And I got news for you, they have better pie.

41:38Dude, 100%. Our pie is not as good as their pot. We're not even close. Hey, my mother made a pretty

41:45mean apple pie with the mill away for some pretty solid.

41:50And that brings up the the issue of assimilation. A lot of folks are hammering the assimilation

42:01issue. It's like, I don't want to live in the kind of America that has no contributions from

42:06a lot of the cultures that have have come in to our our nation. And there's a I don't remember,

42:13I don't know if the studies have been done recently in the season. You may know better than I do,

42:18but from what I understand within three generations, from coming into a nation generally, the food,

42:26the clothing and the language, all tend to be lost. Three of the most central markers of ethnic

42:32identity tend to be lost within three generations of an immigrant coming into a country, just because

42:40that's what's required to survive, particularly in the US. And there are an awful lot of people

42:45who wish that were probably one generation or less these days, which which I don't think is,

42:52I don't think it's fair to people who are trying to look for a better life. I don't think that's

42:56the American dream, but I also think that that is a liability to us as well. I would love to see

43:04more I my experience as an American in this country has only been enriched by my encountering

43:11other cultures around me. And unfortunately, I think geographically, linguistically,

43:18in so many different ways, we're so isolated in the US, we tend to think that's the best way

43:23or the way it should be. And there's so much out there for folks to learn by coming into the

43:27green fight, both of you to come Chicago. My my wife teaches in a local elementary school and

43:32it's probably 40 different refugee groups that she has to teach. And she's a music teacher. She

43:37teaches anti global anti racism global curriculum through music and has written a couple songs that

43:43she has translated into like 30 different languages. So when someone comes in from Myanmar, she's able

43:48to welcome them with their song and their eyes get like this that the teachers singing a song and

43:53their language or the same song and Bosnia or whatever. But it's really and then she puts on a show at

43:58the end of the year where the kids get up and sing from their cultures. And so come on,

44:03come on out here next March and we'll invite you to go to that show because it really is

44:07inspiring and she comes home and night with story tears in her eyes with stories about

44:11what one little person was scared to death. And then the kids talk back in their language.

44:16Wow, I love that. I think I want to just just quickly, I want to invite you guys to also come

44:21to Salt Lake City sometime because I saw a black guy just the other day.

44:28We have diversity too. It hit with me, bro. It hit with me. I think of that in contrast,

44:34though, I was just going to mention, you know, you talk about their eyes opening up and how excited

44:38they are and how that that changes them. Think of that in contrast to the people who you see these

44:43videos of these people getting yelled at for speaking another language, right? You see these

44:48videos of someone being accosted because they're speaking a different language than someone else.

44:52And they're saying speak English while you're here, even though there, there's no actual national

44:57language in the United States. We don't, English is not our national language.

45:01Don't be giving them ideas. They tried. They're trying. I guess maybe we shouldn't mention it,

45:06death. That way we don't give them ideas. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I won't

45:10do that again. Well, this is something that when I worked as a scripture translation supervisor,

45:13one of the things that that I tried to emphasize when it came to, well, one,

45:18for a bizarre reason, we sometimes found ourselves having to justify our existence

45:25because a lot of people thought everybody should be learning English. But a message that I found

45:30inspiring and very useful was that the entire, for returning to the concept of the scriptures and

45:39the Bible's message, the whole Christian gospel is a message of translation because the New Testament

45:48only originally existed in Greek. It is translated from, or at least the message as it originally

45:56circulated was being circulated in Aramaic had to be translated into Greek so that it could be

46:03proliferated more widely than the Aramaic speaking community. The message is about expanding the

46:09borders beyond linguistic boundaries and beyond national boundaries as well to every nation,

46:16kindred tongue and people as the great commission says. And so folks who want to try to

46:21reel all that back in and say, no, we all need to be isolated to our different ethnic groups,

46:29our different national groups, our different linguistic identities are counteracting the

46:35work that the wheel that has began in motion with the New Testament. So for folks who are committed

46:43to the Christian gospel, it just strikes me as just radically hypocritical to try to

46:52follow someone whose message was overcoming those boundaries by trying to tighten those boundaries

46:58down. I mean, I do think now you guys can correct me on this. I think that there was the moment on

47:04the Sermon on the Mount when he said, blessed are the guys who put down the razor wire.

47:10I'm not sure. It's something about that. Didn't he? Or am I wrong?

47:15My understanding is, well, and you're going to hear, I mean, somebody just, I think it was in

47:21response to the debate. I heard someone say that we love people by keeping them out or something

47:29like that. And that that's an expression of love to, you know, put buoys with razor wire wrapped

47:37around them in the river so that anyone who does try to cross will be made.

47:42I push back a little bit on this idea as an atheist for a second to the two religious guys.

47:47We're going to do shirts versus skins. You guys are sure you guys are skins. So the religious

47:52guys have to take the shirt off. But you know, it sounds like you and Craig are kind of doing a

47:58little logical fallacy here called no true Scotsman, right? You're saying that the people who don't

48:04really believe or really follow the Bible are getting it wrong. They're choosing to get it wrong.

48:10But they're following the same book you guys are. So what would you say to someone? I mean,

48:16would you say they're less? I don't think they're less of a Christian. I don't think Jeff Sessions

48:20is less of a Christian than other people are. But I think like, in some ways, by saying they're

48:26getting, I mean, they are factually getting it wrong, right? Because if you look at the traditions

48:30and the way in which it should be interpreted, they're factually getting it wrong. But they're

48:34interpretation of it is, I mean, isn't that just as valid as your guys's interpretation of it?

48:38Well, I think that's why I mentioned earlier, you can find all of this in the Bible and even

48:43in the New Testament, particularly in the book of Revelation and other places where there's an

48:48awful lot of us versus them rhetoric. But what I pointed out was what the question that interests

48:53me is why are certain features being centered and given priority and other features are being

48:59marginalized or reinterpreted away? Because everybody has no other choice but to negotiate with it.

49:05And so my concern is, what are the goals? What are the rhetorical goals of the particular

49:10negotiation that you're asserting? Is it to expand the Christian message gospel identity?

49:18Or is it to expand your power? I think when people are prioritizing power over people,

49:25yes, you can make the case that that is there in the Bible. And so it's not inaccurate. It's not

49:31wrong. It's a particular configuration, though, and it's a configuration that is aimed at for

49:38the purpose of increasing power. And so I would just say, well, you're using Christianity to

49:43structure power. I'm more, I think, a person who is using Christianity to expand their capacity for

49:51love and to help other people is it's a Christianity that I appreciate more.

49:57And so it's not a wrong Christianity from from an objective point of view, but it is certainly

50:02one that I think has a better case to make for continued existence.

50:08I have a little bit of different approach to the just simply the power issue. There's no doubt

50:14that's part of it. And I believe there are certain folks who certainly would ascribe to

50:18completely that, yes, that's the or at least admit themselves that that's what they're trying to do.

50:23I want to get back to what I said earlier about trying to raise a family in a community and having

50:29a set of guidelines and rules and trying to figure out how to do that. And there is a whole school

50:35of Christianity that takes the understanding that because we are not perfectible human beings

50:42that we are going to either sin or we are going through through weakness or fatigue or sickness.

50:48We can't perfectly be that perfect Christian. We are striving to get there. But in doing that,

50:55we also have to recognize that there are others who aren't striving. There are others who just

51:01don't want to be religious at all. And there are others who want only power powers or soul mechanism.

51:08And we need to be to be stewards of our family. We have to protect against them. So it's a whole

51:13school of religious thought that deals with my inability to be perfect. Therefore, I've got to

51:19live in the real world and be more pregnant. Leads claim more pregnant or realistic. Christian

51:24realism is what they would put that extra word on there. And I have friends and colleagues that

51:29believe strongly on that. And I believe they would claim the perfect Christian is a Christian

51:34realist. And Dan and Craig here are a little bit too much over on that utopian side of the religion

51:40and they're having that hope for people being better than they are. And they're willing to risk

51:45that. And they would even accuse me of, I let them do the dirty work like build the army and

51:50build the board of a troll and the police force. And they're the ones protecting society. And I'm

51:56over here able to spout my idealistic versions. And so we get in that debate whether they live

52:03in my world even. So part of that's power. Dan, I don't deny you're part of it. But I think that

52:09other side of once you start understanding what's your anthropology, what's your understanding of

52:16human nature, then you kind of read your scripture through that. I see it as I see those religious

52:22people as using the Bible to do something immoral. That's what I see it as. They're saying they're

52:26hiding behind those those scriptures in a way to say, well, I'm allowed to do certain things. And

52:33then I can point it to the Bible. And then I'm using that as a sort of a moral shorthand to say,

52:37I am still moral. I am following the Bible because I pick and choose those particular

52:42passages in which to enforce. We'll have to keep having that conversation, Craig. We're taking it

52:48off. Craig, one of the things that I wanted to just sort of along these lines, it just seems like,

52:53you know, when and I'm not as up on the numbers as you are certainly, but I, you know, every time I

53:00read, you know, I hear the, you know, these politicians spouting all of these numbers about, you know,

53:08or Trump talking about their, they're all criminals and they're all violent and, you know,

53:13Hannibal Lecter is coming across the border to get us. And, and I feel like most of their

53:22arguments are based on a falsified view of what's actually happening at our borders, like who these

53:30people actually are, how they're actually, what their impact on our society actually is.

53:36And it seems to me like one of the great tells as to who's being, because you're right, Cecil,

53:44there's like, there's absolutely a case to make that they're just being Christians,

53:51and it's just a different mode of Christianity. But it seems like a tell to me that they have to use

53:56lies to front, to forward their version of this when lying is, you know, one of your favorite,

54:04one of your top 10. That's, that's one of your nuts right in there. You're not supposed to do that.

54:08Is that, is that a fair assessment, Craig?

54:12I'm still struggling with who they are. Okay. I'm talking about, I'm talking about Trump.

54:18I'm talking about the far right cohort that are trying to talk about all of those. Yeah.

54:23Stephen Miller was just on TV the other day talking about how they're going,

54:28they're sending Venezuelan gangs to take over apartment buildings and which is, which is 100,

54:33like my family lives in Denver. That's not happening. Yeah. I know it's not, it's 100%

54:38a lie. But Stephen Miller is, I don't know if he's, he's an out Christian, but he definitely

54:44worked on Project 2025. So he's one of those people. I know he's had family in the Holocaust,

54:49uncles, or previous generation. And that's why I'm not sure of his,

54:54but certainly his view. So that's the one that's being imported to Trump.

54:58I mean, even just the whole insane they're eating our cats and dogs thing is like,

55:04this is, they're trying to paint a false picture of who the immigrant population is.

55:11And then I think one of the things that that's so telling to me,

55:15I think one of the things that Craig is trying to get across is also that it's not a binary.

55:21And I think when we, when we use the most conspicuous representatives of a given worldview

55:28to kind of delineate what we think that worldview encapsulates, I think that sometimes distorts

55:34as well. It is a spectrum. And, and while I'm trying to, my cognitive science of religion

55:40approach to this is, is usually focused on what kind of power asymmetries are going on,

55:47who's interested in structuring power. I think that is accounting for things that are closer to

55:51the ends of the spectrum. But certainly there are, there are folks who are engaging this in a more

55:57thoughtful way, maybe not in a way that is as thoughtful as, as Craig and I would like,

56:01but certainly in a more thoughtful way. And so I think, you know, nobody's immune from reducing

56:08the other to their worst representatives. And I, I think sometimes when we frame it that way,

56:13we're just as guilty of, of trying to, um, trying to see a binary where, where there's more of a

56:20spectrum. And that's why I ask those families, I mean, I've had some very, very powerful conversations

56:26with, uh, school teachers who feel burdened that there are too many immigrants coming to their

56:33classroom and they have limited resources already. And it's a very practical problem of,

56:37I'm asked to teach a class of 25. Oh, no, it's 35 and the same resources. And where's the problem?

56:43The problem must be, oh, I hear that politician saying the border is out of control. And that

56:50makes it easy for me to think, well, one, there are a number of Christian arguments, right? That

56:57theoretically, someone coming across without papers is taking a resource that they don't own.

57:05They're stealing a resource there. Uh, and so people start getting then their head and they say,

57:11okay, that's wrong. Therefore, I want to go back to that 25 classroom and the resources that this

57:18town is paying for. That makes it ripe for the politicians who use the rhetoric to make them

57:25think they're still being good Christians, but they just want to teach your class of 25 students.

57:31And we've got to do a better job of like we're trying to do to call them on those statistics in

57:37those facts. If we don't, I also asked people, if you come to Chicago and drive to Sabo Lakeshore

57:44Drive and the speed limits 40, and if you go less than 55, you're a safety hazard. It's just non-stop.

57:51Do we call those illegal drivers? How many times have people jaywalked? Do we call them

57:56illegal walkers? Or just illegals altogether? Yeah, right. Yeah, they're all, but they're all,

58:02we all adjudicate them being wrong before they've been to an immigration court and had an adjudication.

58:08I do asylum law. When I go into court and represent someone, the first thing I have to do is admit

58:13they broke the law that they came in and they're here without papers, but they're seeking the remedy,

58:19which Congress has given them if they prove it of getting asylum. The refugee convention,

58:24at its very inception said, because of what happened in World War II, and we saw Jews turned away at

58:31borders, sent back to Germany from Switzerland or the US sending this St. Louis back, people

58:37can't do the proper paperwork if they're being persecuted. But what does that mean? I have to

58:42admit in court, yes, I'm a native of ex-country. I came in this time. I don't have paperwork to be

58:49here, but your honor, I'm going to show you all these elements that I'm able for some,

58:55but the people get stopped in the first part. Oh, they admitted they're wrong, but that's how the

59:00system works. We have to do a better job of educating. And I really want to engage with other

59:06Christians to understand that why that rhetoric works when it shouldn't.

59:12This is such a fascinating conversation. We could probably go on for hours, but

59:18we won't. I do want to tantalize our listeners and let them know that Cecil and Craig will be

59:27joining us on our after party. If you are a patron of the show, you can hear more of this

59:33fascinating conversation. If you're not, we're going to call it. Thank you so much,

59:38Cecil and Craig for joining us on the show. Tell us about the lawful assembly podcast,

59:44where people can find it, all of that sort of fun stuff. Sure. You can go to lawfulpod.com,

59:49and you can find us. We have, we've been recording since the beginning of the year,

59:53so we have a nice backlog. We have tons of great episodes. A lot of times we're talking about

59:58law stuff, so it's, it's law things that are happening. The things that are happening in the

60:02Supreme Court immigrate whenever anything large happens with immigration, we almost always certainly

60:08talk about it. So there's lots of things that we, that we cover sort of a broad spectrum of topics

60:13that have to do with election interference trials all the way to immigration changes and, and the way

60:19in which say project 2025 is going to change has a face, has a way to change the face of immigration.

60:26So we cover all kinds of things like that, and you can find us at lawfulpod.com.

60:29That's awesome. And come to Chicago and enjoy some of our restaurants.

60:32Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're coming out. We're missing the son or the street fairs.

60:36We're going to stay in your place. I hope you're ready. All good.

60:39The door is open. Did you guys not consider Bob LaBlah's law pod? Is that, was that off the table

60:45when you got started? And then also I would say, you want to go toe to toe on bird law?

60:50Because that's, that's an even more inside joke. Never mind.

60:54Dan is a flowing font of, of cultural references. So please, please ignore me.

61:01Friends at home, if you would like to become a patron of the show and perhaps listen in on as,

61:08as we talk more with Cecil and Craig, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma.

61:15If you want to reach out to us about anything that you've heard, you can write to us

61:19contact at dataoverdogmapod.com. And we will talk to you again next week.

61:25Bye everybody. Thank you for your hospitality. Thanks for having us, guys.

61:33Data Over Dogma is a member of the AirWave Media Podcast Network. It is a production of Data Over Dogma

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