The Dignity of Strangers
It appears that 2025 may see the third mass deportation of illegal immigrants who have crossed our southern border, after the Mexican Repatriation during the Great Depression and Operation Wetback in 1954. In both cases, over a million undocumented Mexicans were forcibly removed. Laws sanctioned the removal but what was legal too often generated excessive fear and mistreatment.
A majority of Americans believe in God. A recent forum in Charlottesville, Virginia explored what religion expects in our behavior toward the strangers among us. “Welcoming the Stranger” was sponsored by Welcoming Greater Charlottesville which began in 2017 to support local immigrants and refugees and to educate the community about their contributions and challenges. While this session was not designed to deal with the looming removal of the undocumented, the observations of the men of faith who spoke apply to all the strangers in our midst.
Pastor Walter Kim, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, noted that “within the Hebrew scriptures and the new Christian tradition there's a profound commitment that we've all been created in the image of God that affords to each individual a sense of universal dignity.” “Jesus talks about people from east and west, north and south gathering together at a table of hospitality and salvation.” The early Christians thought of themselves and were often treated as strangers where they lived, he noted.
Khizr Khan, a Muslim, Pakistani immigrant and member of the Supreme Court Bar, noted the Quran tells us we were created “from a single pair of male and female and we have made you into Nations and tribes in order that you may know one another and not despise each other.” In 622 A.D. after migrating from Meccah to Medina to form a new community “the prophet of Islam drafted a declaration known as the Declaration of Medina,” still in force, telling us “regardless of our faith, regardless of what we worship, how we worship - we must treat one another with equal dignity.”
Senior Rabbi Tom Gutherz of Charlottesville’s Congregation Beth Israel noted that the book of Exodus “says you shall not oppress a stranger since you yourself know the feelings of a stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The Book of Leviticus says “when a stranger resides in your land you shall do him no wrong.” Leviticus 19 says “the stranger who resides among you shall be to you as the native born and you shall love him as yourself.” The Torah he said insists “we have obligations towards the stranger not just to love the stranger but to create the systems that enable a stranger to live in our midst with dignity . . . that they have rights and “that we are called upon to uphold those rights and our obligations to them.”
While many Americans, through their houses of worship, local organizations and/or personal behavior honor these faith traditions for both legal and undocumented immigrants, many others do not. False assumptions, such as that most immigrants are here illegally and are criminals are used to rationalize their forcible removal. In any case, there is no rationale for mistreatment of undocumented immigrants while they are here or in the process of their removal. Immoral means must never be used to achieve legal ends.
It would be easy to minimize the message of these speakers by claiming illegal immigration is a special case. Yet the demand to honor human dignity of these three faith traditions does not admit exceptions. Strangers in our midst must still be treated with dignity however long they are here if people of faith are to honor their religion.
Nor are immigrants, legal or otherwise, the only strangers among us. America is full of people who are strangers to each other. They may be neighbors we’ve never welcomed, those suffering from loneliness or those who are simply different by race, ethnicity, political, cultural or religious beliefs. We often know them vaguely if at all or only through stereotypes. The increasing incidence of hate crimes against Muslims and Jews, for example, illustrates that the problem goes well beyond undocumented immigrants.
Rabbi Gutherz observed that the Ten Commandments tell us to honor our father and mother but do not require us to love them. “Love is very difficult to command,” he said, “and yet we're commanded to love the stranger.” Martin Luther King, Jr. drew upon the ancient Greeks to confront the question of how he could possibly love segregationists. There is philia, which is the love we exhibit to close friends and relations. There is eros, or romantic love. Neither of these applied for him, but the most important for building his dream of a “beloved community” is agape or love of other human beings because God loves them.
There is not enough agape in our angry society today. Whether the stranger among us is from another country or just those in our community we’ve yet to meet, treating them with dignity is our duty.
Photo Credit: jifunze.solidaridanetwork.org
