One Christian leader is calling out the Department of Homeland Security for using Bible verses to promote the operations and tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, joining other faith leaders who have opposed the Trump administration’s use of Christianity to promote policies that have caused harm to communities.
Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance and an ordained Baptist minister, has used his platform to call on Congress to stop funding ICE. His organization consists of a network of people of diverse faiths, with the mission to “build a resilient democracy and fulfill America’s promise of religious freedom and civil rights not just for some, but for all,” its website states. He said that DHS posting Bible verses as recruitment ads on social media is “blasphemous” and a “betrayal.”
“That is a terrible betrayal of the faith,” he told HuffPost. (Raushenbush was formerly the executive editor for HuffPost’s Religion section.)
Raushenbush believes President Donald Trump’s administration attacks people, of any faith, who don’t align with their political agenda — and when the administration advocates for religious freedom, “they don’t mean it.”
Instead, Raushenbush argued that the administration uses faith to “legitimize” violence.
Raushenbush had recently visited Minneapolis this month to join both local and national efforts to stand with the community amid ICE’s violent raids and clashes with demonstrators — and after an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good.
He was invited to the city by a local group called MARCH (Multifaith Antiracism, Change & Healing), who put a callout to clergy and faith leaders across the country to travel to Minneapolis in a show of solidarity. On the group’s list of demands are calls for ICE to leave Minnesota and for Congress to deny ICE any additional funding.
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Demonstrators participate in an “ICE Out” rally on Jan. 23 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Raushenbush emphasized that there’s a lot of diverse faith organizing happening in Minnesota among Muslim, Christian, Jewish and other faith groups that have been on the ground and showing up for the community in ways that are “meaningful.”
Some of the organizing has included documenting arrests, hosting sing-ins and pray-ins and delivering food to people afraid to leave their homes due to the administration’s violent and deadly immigration crackdown.
Raushenbush pointed out that faith communities in Minneapolis have had to “respond to trauma and state-sponsored violence before.” During his visit, he joined a group that went on a pilgrimage from George Floyd Square — the site where George Floyd was murdered by former police officer Derek Chauvin — to the location where Good was killed. He learned that a violent clash between federal officers and observers had even occurred during the time of the pilgrimage.
“The violence is really around every corner, and it’s unconscionable,” he said. Raushenbush left Minneapolis just hours before federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti.
It was “terrible” to hear what happened to Pretti, but “not surprising,” he said, adding that he was “moved” by the slain nurse’s “last act” before his death.
“He saw a woman who had been charged by ICE and she had fallen down, and he reached down and used his body to pull her up, and I think that’s the enduring image of him,” Raushenbush said. (Pretti was killed by Border Patrol agents.)
While the Trump administration uses the Christian faith to promote DHS operations and tactics, Raushenbush emphasizes that his work in helping to rally against ICE and to fight for the protection of immigrant communities is “rooted” in the mandates of his Christian faith.
The Trump administration uses scripture as a “perfume to cover the stench of their policies,” Raushenbush says.
“The foundational mandates of Christianity is to love your neighbor,” Raushenbush said. “Loving your neighbor is ultimately about how you’re committed to their well-being. It’s something you have to embody. And I actually think loving your neighbor is a foundation of democracy.”
“For me, my work in democracy, and my work in protecting and being in community with my neighbor, is rooted in the mandates of my faith,” he later continued.
Raushenbush believes that the Trump administration has a “white Christian nationalist agenda” that targets Black and brown people.
“It is targeted against non-Christians. We saw the Somali Muslim community specifically targeted,” he said. “We have to recognize that this is part of an agenda that is driving this administration. And it’s extremely dangerous and should be called out for what it is.”
“Not only is it a betrayal for me of my faith, but it’s also a betrayal for me of my understanding of America as a country,” he added.
Bryan Adamson, a law professor who teaches First Amendment law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said that DHS using Bible verses to promote ICE tactics is “sadly” nothing new.
“Since slavery in America, scripture has been misused to justify the most horrific injustices,” he told HuffPost. He said what the DHS is “articulating is no less abhorrent and distorted than what those invested in continuing the institution of slavery said.”
“Not one thing they [DHS] are doing reflects the admonition to love the foreigner with us, to show hospitality to strangers, to administer true justice, and show mercy and compassion to one another,” he said. “They’ve excised the Bible’s timeless moral commands from their narratives.”
“And in doing so, they revive the white supremacist Christo-nationalist ideology that marked the ugliest part of American history,” he added.
“They want to use scripture as a perfume to cover the stench of their policies,” Raushenbush said about the Trump administration.
But in his opinion, Raushenbush believes that more and more Christians and people of different faith traditions are becoming increasingly “uncomfortable” with the current administration’s immigration crackdown.
“I think people are looking at these videos and saying, ‘Wait, what? What’s happening? Is this us? … Where is the gospel in this?’”
