98% of Pastors Agree
Dear friends,
What do almost all pastors agree on?
Hopefully, as we walk together through this Holy Week, all pastors would at least agree – and find hope in the reality – that Christ was crucified for our sins, He is risen, and He will come again.
But beyond the most essential truths of our faith, there are also a lot of theological, political, and practical questions that divide pastors. What else would 98% of pastors agree upon?
Not whether infants should be baptized or only those old enough to choose for themselves to publicly declare their faith in Christ. Not whether worship music should be “contemporary,” “traditional” or some hybrid thereof. We’d not be able to find consensus around either a Calvinist Reformed view nor the Wesleyan Arminian perspective.
But 98% of Protestant pastors (including 97% of evangelical pastors) believe that legal immigration has been helpful to the United States, according to a brand new poll of U.S. Protestant pastors (including both evangelicals and Mainline Protestants) from Lifeway Research. Most pastors would like to see legal immigration levels increased.
That’s notable at a moment when U.S. population growth has dramatically declined, in significant part because of significant reductions in legal immigration levels over the past year, including the suspension of refugee resettlement and bans on family reunification visas for many countries around the world.
Almost no Protestant pastors (just 2%) support the idea of halting refugee resettlement altogether. Eighty-two percent of all Protestant pastors, including 78% of evangelicals, believe that the U.S. has a moral responsibility to receive refugees. While most pastors cited multiple categories of refugees whom they believe should be a priority for resettlement, the top category was Christians who have fled religious persecution, whom 87% of evangelical pastors believe should be a priority.
This year, however, the ceiling for refugee admissions has been set at the lowest point in the nearly half-century history of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, and the only group prioritized for resettlement are Afrikaners from South Africa. That population was cited as a priority concern by fewer than one-fifth of Protestant pastors; meanwhile, the Christians persecuted for their faith who most cite as a priority have been shut out of refugee resettlement this year.
When it comes to deportation policy, Protestant pastors are more divided: 42% believe that deportation levels are currently too high, but an equal number believe that deportation numbers are about right or even too low. However, pastors are mostly on the same page in terms of who should be prioritized for deportation: 89% believe that those convicted of a violent crime should be a priority for deportation, but only 8% or fewer said the same about those who came to the U.S. as children, those who have a US citizen spouse or child or those would be willing to pay a fine as restitution for their violation of an immigration law.
All told, 82% of Protestant pastors (with no significant difference between evangelicals and Mainline Protestants) say they would support legislation that would pair border security improvements with an earned legalization process for immigrants in the country unlawfully that would include passing a criminal background check and paying a fine. That’s not quite unanimous, but pretty close – and it’s also consistent with what more than three-quarters of evangelical lay people said they’d support in a separate Lifeway Research survey last year.
Even though there’s a bipartisan bill already introduced that would do just what a supermajority of both evangelical pastors and evangelical laypeople say they want, it seems pretty unlikely, in the current state of partisan gridlock, that Congress would pass and the president sign such a proposal in the near-term. Immigration reform has been declared dead more times than I can count.
But this is a week when we celebrate resurrection, and the Risen Lord Jesus invites us to boldly bring our requests to Him. So I’d invite you to pray with me this week that, if it’s His will:
- The Congress would finally pass and the president would sign immigration reform legislation consistent with biblical values this year
- Those persecuted for their faith in Jesus, along with others persecuted for other reasons such as their political opinions or their ethnicity, would once again be able to find refuge in our country
- Immigrants within our congregations who are living with anxiety and fear in light of immigration enforcement surges would experience God’s presence with them and be encouraged by the solidarity of many brothers and sisters in Christ who stand with them
In hope, because of Jesus,
Matthew Soerens
National Coordinator, Evangelical Immigration Table
