Hospitality must be carefully measured out, lest the family or nation dissolve under the burden of too many guests, and those welcomed become dependent in a way that corrupts their characters. Why is the conclusion that we may (and perhaps must, given judgments of prudence) limit immigration so hard to voice in polite company? Why, in many churches, are arguments for enforcing borders greeted with an appalled gasp?
Speaking to a gymnasium full of high schoolers in 2015, Angela Merkel sought to explain why Germany needed to close its borders to the tide of Syrian refugees. She was brought up short by Reem Sahwil, a refugee girl facing deportation. The girl’s tears accomplished what no lobbyist or newspaper could: a volte-face in Germany’s immigration policy. Soon the country was welcoming 10,000 refugees per day, stoking a heated political debate that continues to roil much of Europe. The same influx of newcomers helped spur Trump to victory in 2016, and with nearly 300,000 migrants per month trying to cross our southern border, it may well do so again in 2024. The debate over immigration is also likely to continue tearing the Church apart, as mainline congregations post signs declaring “Love has no borders,” while evangelical Christians demand a wall, the national guard, secession—anything to stop the flow.
In Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, historian Tom Holland concludes his two-thousand-year narrative with Merkel’s encounter with Reem Sahwil. Nowhere is the impact of the Christian revolution so apparent, he argues. The willingness of Western nations to open their borders to the huddled masses at their doorsteps is imaginable only because of Christianity. Throughout human history, almost no one other than Christians has felt this way: Outsiders remain outside, and that is that. As a pastor’s daughter, however, Merkel internalized Jesus’s imperative: “‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ God loves not just German people. God loves everybody.” In this interpretation, Christianity has always offered a vision of radical hospitality; tearing down of ethnic boundaries was at the heart of St. Paul’s gospel.
Why then do so many evangelical Christians today intuit that something is wrong with Merkel’s reasoning? Is the call for control of the border simply a nativist reflex that we must stifle, a manifestation of sinful pride and selfishness that we must mortify? Or does the globalist war on borders constitute, rather, an idolatrous striving to transcend our finitude, to be as gods unbound in time or space?
In my estimation, secure borders, national sovereignty, and limited immigration are affirmed by traditional Christian moral theology. Of course, there is nothing sacred about lines on a map; they are human constructions, which serve human goods. But these goods—the goods of hearth and homeland—are not to be despised, for without them we would lose our humanity.
The language of “hospitality” is often invoked on the progressive side of the debate. Openness to immigrants, we are told, is a simple duty of Christian hospitality. We must welcome the stranger into our national home and see that he is clothed and fed. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares,” admonishes the Epistle to the Hebrews. The notion of hospitality has much to commend it, and indeed the analogy between the home and the polity is almost as old as politics itself.
But does the appeal to “hospitality” entail a call to abolish or open our borders? To show hospitality in my own home, I must have a home—that is, a house with four walls and doors that open, close, and (ideally) can be locked. To invite people into this home, I must maintain a clear distinction between residents and guests. If every passing drug addict can crash on the couch, I may be running a worthy ministry, but I am not maintaining a home. In fact, if I have children (and it is striking how many of the progressive advocates of open borders do not—Merkel included), I will know instinctively that I must sometimes put their needs above the practice of hospitality. Some strangers will be too dangerous to allow into my home. Others may be safe enough, but they will compete for the limited temporal and financial resources that I owe to my wife and children before all others. Of course, a residence totally closed to neighbors and strangers would likewise be a travesty; it might be a beautiful house, but we would rightly hesitate to call it a home.
Hospitality, then, is an essential function of a home, and yet an unlimited, revolving-door hospitality would quickly destroy most homes. The lesson is clear enough: a nation, likewise, ought to be open to strangers, but it will soon have little to offer either residents or visitors if it does not establish appropriate limits. A nation without borders is no better than a house without walls. Common sense, therefore, shows us that, like every creaturely good, hospitality (whether by household or nation) is made possible only by recognition of its limits.
This intuition is fortified by Scripture. Israel is called to be a separate, bounded nation among the nations, and yet a nation for the nations, offering hospitality to “the sojourner.” The Israelites are repeatedly reminded, “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Exod. 22:21).
The vision of hospitality made possible to a consolidated and bounded people is mirrored in the relationship of individual Israelite families to the land. Each family and tribe has its particular portion and inheritance, to be secured throughout the generations. Yet this possession serves a wider good. The surplus of each Israelite’s fields is “for the poor and the sojourner” (Lev. 19:10), as is the surplus of the whole nation (Deut. 26:12). Hospitality and charity are not boundless. Although naturalization is possible (for example, Ruth), ordinarily the sojourner remains a sojourner and does not receive a portion of the land. In his time of residence, the sojourner is expected to abide by Israel’s laws, both criminal (Lev. 24:22) and ceremonial (Num. 15:15).
Biblical Israel is an imperfect analogue for modern nation-states. Its national boundaries were defined above all by circumcision, not border checkpoints, and justice was administered by elders at the gate, not by centralized courts and bureaucracies. But the Bible’s account of Israel’s norms for treating strangers tells us at least that the call to hospitality does not abolish property lines or territorial distinctions.
What about the New Testament? Understandably, given that its contents were written by and for small and disempowered communities of believers, it provides little direction for the conduct of states. But the analogy between polity and household allows us to draw wisdom about statecraft from its teaching on private property.
Interpretation of the New Testament’s statements about property is famously vexed. Christian socialists have pointed to Christ’s direction to the rich young ruler, and to the sharing of goods within the Church in Acts 4, as evidence that believers are called to live without private property, giving in accord with capacity, taking in accord with need. However, much of the rest of the New Testament takes ongoing inequalities of property for granted (e.g., Acts 5:4; 1 Cor. 9:1–12; 1 Tim. 5:8). Possessing wealth is permitted, so long as property is ordered toward the goods of hospitality and charity.
As is the case with many questions in social ethics, we cannot resolve the biblical status of private property by exegesis alone; we must frame it with reference to basic theological categories. Is private property a necessary evil, a response to the Fall’s disordering of human affections, which the community of the redeemed is called to overcome? Or is it a God-given good, a natural feature of created humanity?
In our answer to this question about property, we will have our answer to the question of national borders. For the doctors of the Church and later medieval theologians, who debated the issue fiercely, recognized that private property and political authority evoke the same theological question: In a world made up of divine image-bearers, equally sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, by what right could some humans ever claim to limit, exclude, or command other humans? By what right could a householder say, “This is my property; if you want to use it, you may do so only on my terms”? And by what right could a king say, “This is my territory; if you want to live here or pass through, you may do so only under my laws”? The word for both kinds of authority is the same: dominium, lordship.
The Church Fathers, for the most part, took a more pessimistic line on dominium. In a world without sin, there would be no occasion for either private property or political authority. In the Garden of Eden, all the good gifts of creation were available to all in common, and, untainted by greed, each human being freely shared with one another as each had need. There was no distinction between meum and tuum. In Edenic innocence, no one would ask for anything unless he really needed it, and no one would withhold anything in the face of such need. Thus, there would have been no occasion for governments to apportion goods or mediate disputes.
The Fall destroyed this primordial harmony of affections, pitting men against one another. It also introduced scarcity into the equation. Man must toil, and the cursed ground fails to yield fruits sufficient for our ever-expanding wants.