Evangelical leader says Trump's deportation policies are 'reshaping American Christianity'
Christian leaders in the United States warn that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown is hurting churches, noting that pastors are being detained or are self-deporting.
During a press call last week, Evangelical and Catholic leaders voiced concern about how the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies have placed strains on American churches.
The call comes a year after the National Association of Evangelicals and other Christian organizations published a joint report titled “One Part of the Body,” revealing that most of the immigrants vulnerable to deportation in the U.S. are Christians. Organizations represented on the call include the Evangelical refugee resettlement organization World Relief, the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity.
The call also coincided with the release of new data from Lifeway Research finding that the overwhelming majority of Protestant pastors in the United States support legal immigration and refugee resettlement, while opinions about deportations are mixed.
National Association of Evangelicals President Walter Kim was one of several speakers critical of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, stressing that immigrant communities have helped combat the rising religious secularism in parts of the country.
