El Cucuy Scores Big For Immigrants
It looks like El Diablo scared some sense into the conservative Southern Baptist congregation.
Some background: The Southern Baptists had a two-day convention in Phoenix where they talked about their core beliefs and elected new leadership. They elected a black pastor to their number two position, they reaffirmed the nastiness of hell and they called for support of a path to citizenship for undocumented workers.
By way of explanation, the Southern Baptist’s reaffirmed take on hell makes good sense.
I’ve got my own ideas about the fires of hell, real or not, everlasting or temporary, but for the Southern Baptists it’s pretty logical: Hell is a real place and its fires burn for eternity.
According to the Houston Chronicle the Southern Baptist congregation is a mostly white denomination, which traces its roots to Civil War-era defense of slavery; a real fire and brimstone group of people. So when they have a meeting and declare that hell is for real, it’s pretty significant.
Here’s what they said by way of an official resolution about the whole hell-is-for-real thing: they urged the congregates
…to proclaim faithfully the depth and gravity of sin against a holy God, the reality of hell, and the salvation of sinners by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.
Heavy stuff. But see, it holds them to a pretty high standard. They established the punishment but the law, they believe, was handed down by Moses – the whole love thy neighbor thing. So the next thing they did at their convention was to hedge their bet. They approved another resolution that called for comprehensive immigration reform.
The resolution…calls on Southern Baptists to minister to all people and to reject bigotry and harassment, regardless of a person’s country of origin or immigration status. A motion to strike the reference to immigrants’ path to legal status was narrowly defeated by a vote of 766 to 723. An amendment saying that the resolution was “not to be construed as support for amnesty for any undocumented immigrant” passed by a wide margin.
They found themselves stuck between faith and reality.
On the one hand their faith tells them to be charitable toward strangers, but their conservative politics runs athwart. So they went for the middle ground: immigrants should be given a path to citizenship but they must pay fines and restitution in the process. And they were quick to say that it didn’t amount to amnesty – something technical about the fines and whatnot.
In the end they may have painted themselves into a corner. They believe hell and the devil are for real, so they better make sure they give the undocumented a break. Just don’t call it amnesty, because that goes against their politics.
The truth is that they can call things whatever they want; it’s their religion and it’s their politics. But the Southern Baptists are a major force among right wing Americans so a shift like this is important. We’ll be watching to see if this leads to a significant policy change.
Do I hear an Amen to that?
Follow Victor Landa onTwitter: @vlanda
[Photo by nmarritz]
