Opinion

During the presidential debate in September, then-Republican candidate and now President-elect Donald J. Trump propagated a Facebook rumor that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were stealing neighbors’ pets and eating them. While the rumor has since been debunked, anti-immigrant rhetoric like this makes it easier for lawmakers to drum up support for laws such as Florida’s SB 1718, a law that is meant to address illegal immigration.

When Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed SB 1718 last year, he declared it “the strongest legislation against illegal immigration anywhere in the country.” When the bill was first proposed, it included some particularly cruel policies that would discourage immigrants from seeking access to basic services such as rides to church or medical care.

I’ll admit I struggle to face the reality that many in our country — roughly 51 percent of the popular vote, according to current estimates — are feeling some combination of elation, pride, and excitement that their chosen candidate has won. Even in my pain and grief, I know that as a follower of Jesus, I am called to pray for the incoming Trump administration and the people who voted for it. I’m committed to doing that work, but I confess: It feels hard right now.

Many of us have been working hard for months to shore up the freedom to vote for all citizens. We have knocked on doors, made calls to strangers, signed petitions, watched the news, created content, and equipped leaders on civic engagement strategies, hoping we will get the opportunity to rest after Election Day. For months, we have given our energy, sweat, and tears to ensure our communities are informed and equipped for this election. It seems like it will never end. But here’s the good part: We don’t have to wait until it’s over to get some rest.

Gutierrez had systematized a living, collaborative, community movement in his ground-breaking work, A Theology of Liberation, published in 1971 in Spanish and two years later in English. Over decades, clerics and community leaders, men and women, across cultures, identities, and denominations, all had contributed, in the smallest way, to the construction of this new way of thinking about — and acting toward — God and God’s glorious creation.

As an adult, I’ve been in many so-called “diverse communities” where there is a lot of racial diversity, but culturally and experientially, it felt very similar to the predominately white church I grew up attending for Sunday school. From the way we worshiped to the food we ate together afterward, these interracial churches seemed to only work because they were comfortable places for white people. In these integrated congregations, white people would often say to me, an Asian American, that they felt so grateful to have so many different experiences and viewpoints reflected in the congregation (“We’re learning so much from different communities”). But those viewpoints were never reflected on the leadership team.

God’s first house — the tabernacle — is movable, following the Israelites as they wander from Egypt to Canaan (Exodus 40:34; Numbers 1:47-53). The theme of migration continues into Jesus’ life, where Matthew’s gospel tells us that he fled political violence and spent much of his childhood in Egypt (Matthew 2:13-23). Even when he is back in his own country, he is unwelcome in his hometown and “has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).

For several years, I pastored a small church in the Northwest Bronx. In the summer of 2022, the church leadership decided to dedicate one Sunday a month to do a service project where we engaged in direct political action. It was the summer when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and we focused our attention on reproductive justice. Instead of simply looking at reproductive justice as a pregnant person’s right to receive an abortion, we started thinking of it in broader terms: a better family welfare system in the U.S., honoring the bodily autonomy of birthing people, and taking steps toward improving the material conditions of Black and brown children in the Bronx through mutual aid, collective care, political education, and political solidarity.

Last week, as I attended the fourth Lausanne Congress in Incheon, South Korea, I was struck with how much the global evangelical movement has evolved in the past half century, including the advent of new technologies and the explosive growth of Christianity in the Global South, which has reversed the mission field and shifted the epicenter of Christianity increasingly to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I was also reminded how much global evangelicalism remains stymied by old debates, including overly narrow conceptions of evangelism. The reputation and witness of the church itself plays a major role in evangelism. Doing justice is integral to the cause of evangelization — a conviction and commitment I wish Christians and churches in the U.S. and around the world more strongly embraced. 

All magazines have an assumed sense of “we” and “us,” a shared purpose that unites the writers, editors, artists, and readers. Who am I, who are all of you, and what do we have in common as we stare at these words on glossy pages or screens?