For You Were Foreigners in Egypt

“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”

                                                                              Leviticus 19:34

                                                                                                  

Accordingto Pew Research, 69% of white Evangelicals support Donald Trump while 44% of white Catholics (my own demographic) and 36% of Catholics overall support him. (Pew shows no category for “black evangelicals,” but they list “black protestants” as giving Trump 12% support.)

To be clear, I myself detest Donald Trump and want nothing more for our country than his sound defeat at the polls in November. While I find some comfort in the fact that he finds considerably less support among my own denomination, it's disheartening to me that any serious Christian abides his racist, hateful and quite non-Christian worldview. (And that doesn't even begin to address the danger of his upsetting the Western order with his policies and behavior abroad.) While certainly those polled likely can be found across the spectrum in what may be called “seriousness” about their faith, it's surely true that many of the people polled are quite devout.

I live in a relatively wealthy parish whose church attendance I gather to be nearly 90% white. Every week at Mass I hear constant injunctions to treat refugees and foreigners with love, kindness and hospitality. And every week I do a slow burn in my pew as I reasonably suppose that roughly half my fellow parishioners support a president who is the poster boy for everything that flies in the face of that injunction.

So it especially pleased me to read this article in our diocesan newspaper (The Observer – Rockford, IL diocese.) It's heartening to know that at least some of my fellow Catholics take Jesus seriously.