(RNS) — When President Donald Trump returned to workplace in January 2025, certainly one of his first actions was to abruptly block migrants from in search of asylum in the USA via the southern border. Instantly, a whole lot of 1000’s of individuals in search of refuge misplaced a authorized pathway ahead.
However as despair flooded via the border metropolis of Juarez, Mexico, the place beforehand scheduled asylum appointments have been canceled, some Christians cheered.
“We needed to discover that stress,” historian and writer Jemar Tisby instructed RNS on Wednesday (April 8). “How can individuals who declare to observe a migrant, Jesus, additionally have fun when migrants are shut out from in search of security?”
Tisby is one thing of an knowledgeable on contradictions inside Christianity. As soon as an evangelical insider, he grew to become a controversial determine amongst conservative evangelicals after the 2019 publication of his bestselling guide “The Colour of Compromise,” which examined U.S. Christians’ historic complicity with racism. Since then, he’s authored two different books about religion and resisting racism. And now, he’s taking his evaluation of white Christian nationalism a step additional via movie.
“Jesus Was a Migrant,” which premiered in Los Angeles on Thursday, is the primary official manufacturing of Tisby Studios, the filmmaking division of Tisby Media. It follows Tisby to the U.S.-Mexico border, the place, in partnership with the Christian nonprofit FaithWorks, he encounters households discovering hope via religion regardless of the hardships they’ve endured. From there, the documentary explores the connection between Christian theology and U.S. immigration coverage.
Others can signal as much as host a screening of the movie on its web site. RNS spoke with Tisby, government producer of the documentary, concerning the movie and its hoped-for influence. The interview has been edited for size and readability.
What have been a few of your greatest takeaways throughout your pilgrimage to the border with FaithWorks?
Once we went to the primary migrant shelter and we heard from two of the households, their completely gut-wrenching tales, I knew immediately that this was going to be greater than a two- or three-minute recap video. I mentioned, this wants a extra sturdy therapy, as a result of we have to honor their tales, and we have been very cautious about centering the migrants on the journey. We requested them, as People, as Christians, what can we do to assist? They usually mentioned, inform our tales. And I may consider no extra highly effective method to try this than via a documentary movie.
How does this have a look at immigration join together with your work about Christian complicity in racism?
I typically consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote that we’re caught in an inescapable community of mutuality. There was, to me, a really disappointing narrative amongst some Black folks that mentioned, this isn’t our battle. And the fact is, a whole lot of these ways have been used on Black folks in the USA earlier than, and they are going to be used once more. Much more broadly, we as folks of religion and as neighbors ought to stand in solidarity with anybody who’s marginalized or oppressed due to injustice. And so it dovetails with all of my work, despite the fact that it’s U.S.-centric and tends to deal with Black and white race relations.
The documentary highlights evangelicals’ legacy of being pro-immigrant, pro-refugee. When did that start to shift in a major method?
You’re completely proper, there’s a lengthy legacy of evangelicals being champions of immigration, and significantly refugees and asylum-seekers. I feel that the poison tablet was at all times embedded inside white evangelicalism, and it confirmed up in pro-America language, significantly throughout the top of the Chilly Struggle, when the USA was arrange as not solely democratic versus communist, but in addition Christian versus atheist. You begin to get these concepts of nationalism and America’s superiority, which is at all times going to then have the impact, even when unintended, of wanting down on folks from different nations.
Then, within the twenty first century, it actually picks up with the present president’s rhetoric about immigrants. He got here to the fore politically questioning Obama’s beginning and whether or not he was actually American. We additionally bear in mind his notorious statements about Haiti and different international locations being ‘s—gap international locations.’ That solely continued as the perimeter far proper grew to become extra mainstream, they usually began speaking about issues like the good substitute idea and saying, white folks in the USA, their bloodlines are being diluted. That traditionally has at all times led to xenophobia and far harsher immigration insurance policies.
Nowadays, I’m listening to some conservative Christians speak about assimilation. They argue that the Bible teaches to welcome immigrants solely on the situation that they assimilate to Western, Christian tradition. What are your ideas on this attitude?
It’s a defective theology and a foul hermeneutic. You might be importing Previous Testomony concepts onto modern-day geopolitics, for one, and secondly, you’re importing concepts from or legal guidelines that apply throughout the Previous Covenant, earlier than Jesus, to the New Covenant. After Jesus and below the New Covenant, we see that you’ve unity with out uniformity. You have got variety throughout the physique of Christ, one physique, many elements, there isn’t a longer slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or feminine. All are one. However that doesn’t erase variations. What unites us is stronger than what’s totally different about us. We will retain these variations, and that’s a part of the great thing about the household of God. We don’t all should be alike, and there’s a spot for everybody with their cultures as nicely.
The title of this movie is “Jesus Was a Migrant.” How ought to that premise, that Jesus was a migrant and a brown, Center Jap man, form how Christians view immigration coverage?
It begs the query, if Jesus was on the border, would Christians let him in? All too typically, it appears as if, not solely would they not let him in, they might have fun blocking him out. Leviticus says that it’s best to deal with the foreigner amongst you as your native-born. So that is greater than a film. This can be a assertion. This isn’t a movie that’s making an attempt to steer the white Christian nationalists, adherents or sympathizers. This can be a movie for a coalition of the prepared, the people who find themselves already empathetic, however they want, they wish to take motion. It questions programs and legal guidelines and insurance policies and says what wants to alter with the intention to convey concerning the kingdom of God. That’s the place we hope folks will land and finally use what they’ve discovered from the movie and apply it in their very own context and towards the disaster of immigration coverage.
How do the filmmakers hope viewers reply?
No. 1, asking that query, what ought to we do? As a result of that’s the start of motion. No. 2, now we have designed the distribution mannequin to foster and facilitate dialogue and collaboration. So we’re not simply slapping the movie up on YouTube or Vimeo and hoping folks watch. We’re encouraging folks to host a screening and collect a bunch of individuals. There’s a free downloadable dialogue information to guide the dialog. And there’s additionally a useful resource web page that has extra organizations and motion steps. FaithWorks is encouraging folks to go on a border pilgrimage themselves, in the event that they’re ready. So the fact is, despite the fact that the borders are specifically geographic areas, the sorts of actions we will take are nearly limitless as soon as we ask the query and start collaborating with others.
Are you able to speak concerning the timing of this movie launch?
We’ve been engaged on this movie for half a yr, and all through the making of the movie, immigration has been on the forefront of the strain, each politically and religiously. So persons are seeing movies of ICE brokers brutalizing folks, whether or not they’re U.S. residents or undocumented, and we’re appalled, and we’re saying, “What can we do?” We needed this movie out as quickly as we may do it in a method that honored the tales of the migrants as a result of it’s an pressing problem proper now, and for a lot of the second time period of this administration, it has been the coverage that has garnered probably the most consideration and probably the most division amongst folks within the nation and within the church.
