By Galen Holley
Guest Columnist
Jews, Catholics, Evangelicals and most mainline Protestant denominations have issued
statements sympathetic to the plight of immigrants. Ministers, if they broach the subject at all,
usually reiterate the broad, mostly benign language used in official public pronouncements.
During the election, President Trump promised aggressive immigration reform and widespread
deportation of illegals. The vehemence of Trump’s rhetoric sounded incompatible with public
statements issued by many religious groups in the U.S.
Despite this seeming incongruity, as compared to his 2020 campaign, Trump made gains in
nearly every category of self-identified Christians in 2024.
He won the Catholic vote by a double-digit margin, including a surprising 43 percent of the
Latino Catholic vote. (Biden won the Catholic vote in 2020). Sixty-three percent of those
identifying as “Protestant or other Christian” voted for Trump. Among the Jewish community, 32
percent voted for Trump, also an increase, although a small one.
Numerous polls show that the majority of Christians of all ilks, along with the majority of Jewish
people, believe there are too many illegal residents in the United States.
Stephen Steinlight, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, described the
phenomenon this way: “What we have found is a gigantic gulf between the pulpit and the pew
and this is true of every religion in America, including Jews.”
Christians and Jews are people of compassion and justice. We must prayerfully find a way to
harmonize our personal convictions with the best of our theological traditions. This means
resisting the seductions of extremism and virulent individualism on one hand, and irresponsible,
unpatriotic civic relativism on the other.
We teeter on the brink of institutional sin, both in our demonization of immigrants, as well as in
our naive preference for them all to be Mary and Joseph. Nativist populism is fueled by anxieties
about globalization. Flaccid compromise that dishonors the robust national exceptionalism of
our Founding Fathers is just as poisonous.

We cannot embrace a politics of exclusion, nor can we accept those who break the law in order
to share our blessings. Prayer, compassion, and justice is the American way. Let’s all pray that
God leads us in the right direction.