As an evangelical myself, I'm concerned that the trend within the demographic is to be vulnerable to getting yanked around by the heartstrings and thus be vulnerable to manipulation. I do not believe that the U.S. government should be bringing in Syrian refugees and have identified five misunderstandings that I think are leading Christians to be drawn in by the compassionate-sounding rhetoric of the President and evangelical leaders calling for a welcoming response.
Misunderstanding 1: This is going to end happily
The parallels being made to the parable of the good Samaritan and many other arguments for how Christians should welcome in refugees, show them love and healing, and allow them to become productive members of American society all tend to assume that easy, happy ending.
You'll notice that in one breath, people will talk about how the refugees will become grateful people who love this country and its values. In the next breath, they'll dismiss concerns about refugees by noting that most of the Paris attackers were French Nationals.
In other words, the attackers were people who had already been settled in the West and rather than embracing the culture ended up becoming radicalized and determined to try and destroy it.
Given all of America's struggles with race relations even amongst the diverse groups of people already living in the country, to assume that these people are all going to integrate happily, come to love the West and it's various values, and not be any more likely to shoot up locals then Joe Schmoe is frankly ridiculous. Wasn't that already made clear in the Boston Marathon bombings?
Importing Muslims from areas where radical Islam is popular is dangerous. Period. We shouldn't be having this debate without considering how these migrants are likely to integrate within the U.S. There's a reason people across France and Europe weren't shocked that some of the Muslims in their midst would prove to have murderous intentions.
Misunderstanding 2: The state of the union
Evangelicals are often accused of trying to impose religion on the state and force the state to make decisions based on their religion, which is probably a fair charge overall. Of course, everyone tends to vote and seek to influence the state and culture based on their most deeply held beliefs.
The real problem with many evangelical proposals is obfuscation between the role of the state and the role of the Church. Just as many Christians will readily agree that the job of a minister is not to prosecute criminals, the role of the state is not to serve as the good Samaritan for the foreigner.
In fact, this is the very opposite role of the state, which is to make sure that its own people are not beat up and left for dead in the streets.
What's more, this role of the state cannot be transformed by the wishful thinking of Christians or anyone else. A state that does not protect its citizens will cease to exist.
The state already has a major crises of legitimacy for its failure to protect the border, serve the interests of the non-rich, maintain economic growth that provides jobs, or maintain financial responsibility. It's not a wise decision to stack more burdens on that house of cards.
I wrote about this recently.
Misunderstanding 3: The state of the Church
It's not like the U.S. government is the only entity with a lot on its plate right now. The struggle for controlling influence over Western culture and politics is a major one for evangelicals right now and it's far from an established victory.
It'd be a dream if evangelicals could shape the West into a series of states that could be united, multicultural, and work well together with alliances, trade, and shared underlying values. Right now that's a goal of white Western liberals and it's going rather poorly because bringing in foreigners who don't share those same values tends to muck up the works.
What has happened is that we have a largely post-Christian society across the West that is increasingly decadent, mistrustful, and unequal. While it is appealing to think of the Western Church as being this entity that can be a beacon that absorbs all these problems and welcomes new challenges, it's simply not realistic at this time and attempting to proceed as though it were is not loving towards our current, actual neighbors.
If the parable of the good Samaritan was retold to accurately depict what's going on with the Syrian refugee crises it would be that the Samaritan has been slowly trying to summon up the courage and raise the funds to finally help the man who's been beaten and robbed when he hears that other people have been beaten and robbed elsewhere. So he runs, finds them, and then tosses them in the ditch with the robber's victim.
There's a lot of good intentions here without the capacity or will to actually understand or take on the issue.
Misunderstanding 4: How we got here
Assad's regime is a terrible one. Maintaining law and order in today's Middle East generally requires some very unpleasant policies quite different from what we see in the West. From the article linked just above:
"In Arab countries, except sometimes during the Arab Spring, disorganized street crime is surprisingly rare. That’s because Arabs know how to police Arabs. It’s not a pleasant subject to look into, but they don’t achieve law and order purely through police brutality. Besides using torture, police forces in Arab countries target criminals’ elders. When the senior members of the clan stand to lose from their grandsons’ viciousness, they find ways to keep them in line."
Oh...
So yes, Assad is a brutal dictator, but those are types that are generally capable of maintaining the kind of law and order needed in the region for people to have a hope of building productive lives. You'll notice that the apparent alternative to his regime is ISIS, hardly a peaceful and Western group of folks.
So why has the West been seeking to take down Assad? Even (probably) arming ISIS before it was realized that they aren't "al-qaeda's JV team"?
Because Assad was blocking the building of oil pipelines into Europe that would have made Europe less dependent on buying oil from Russia, the West's geo-political rival.
Without really involving the American people, the U.S. government has been acting to destabilize the Middle East in order to win an economic war against the Russians. When the result is disaster, civil war, and refugees, the American people are asked to pick up a bill they weren't aware they were accumulating. If they aren't interested in doing so they are guilt-tripped with evangelical Christians as a primary target.
Misunderstanding 5: How to beat ISIS and radical Islam
The overlap between today's issues and the Crusades of the past are numerous and stark.
The first classical error of both Christians and Western states in trying to figure out how to deal with violent, expansionist Islam is to go invade the region and try to establish a state there. This has never been done successfully unless you count Israel, which required importing millions of colonists and has been fraught with difficulty, tension, and expense.
In either instance, the West has been seduced by the valuable resources in the Middle East (either the Holy Land or the oil) and attempted to do something which it hasn't had the stomach, will, or knowhow to do. Just re-read the above section on how law and order is typically maintained in Arab states, it isn't accomplished through educating women, establishing Western-style democracies, and trying to re-make the culture in our own image.
The second classical error has been to compete and try to overthrow our Eastern Orthodox brothers (then Byzantium, now Russia) who should be considered a valuable ally and shield.
There were two sides to the Crusades, which represents the first time the West encountered violent, expansionist Islam. The first was to produce the mistakes mentioned above, the other side of the Crusades was what happened on the home front.
The West slowly pushed Islamist regimes out of traditionally Western nations and defended the eastern border carefully, diligently, and to the best of their ability. Knighthoods and hospitals were established to protect people and offer care across Europe.
Defensive warfare and cultural change has typically been what Christians have been able to effectively argue are "righteous causes" and not coincidentally that's also where Christians have tended to see the most success.
The answer to beating ISIS is not to invade the Middle East but to stop destabilizing the region as part of geo-political games, to stop welcoming the invaders into the West, to start protecting borders, to stop undermining our allies, and to re-shape our society around Crusader-values (chivalry) where men make it a priority to protect and care for the poor and helpless in our midst.
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