U.S. Evangelicals Divided Over What Faith Demands as Immigration Tensions Deepen

The Banner has a subscription to republish articles from Religion News Service. This story by Bob Smietana was published Jan. 30, 2026 on religionnews.com. It has been edited for length and Banner style. The Banner added related links and paragraph nine to provide context for the Christian Reformed Church.

For years, leaders of the Evangelical Immigration Table have summed up the Bible’s view of immigration in three words: Welcome the stranger.

In Bible studies, sermons, videos, and other resources, the coalition of denominational and nonprofit leaders has sought to remind churchgoers to see immigrants as their neighbors and people worthy of love and support. They’ve advocated for reforms that ensure America’s borders are secure, keep immigrant families intact, and provide a pathway for undocumented immigrants to gain legal status.

Zach Szmara, an Indiana pastor and longtime supporter of EIT, said the Bible, not politics, should shape how evangelicals see the issue of immigration.

“Evangelicals may have room for disagreement, but we have to start with the fact that we are called to love and welcome immigrants, not view immigrants as threats or burdens,” Szmara told RNS in a recent interview at a church conference in Chicago.

When Szmara founded Immigrant Connection, a church-based network of legal clinics that assist immigrants, in 2014, some churches wanted to get involved, others said it was a good idea, and there was little resistance, he said.

Now, he said, critics treat his work as anathema and ask him if he’s lost his faith.

Support for immigration reform has become a flashpoint among evangelicals in recent years. Last fall, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, known as the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, broke ties with EIT, due in part to pushback in the denomination that the group had become too liberal on immigration. The break was notable because Richard Land, a prominent Southern Baptist figure who led the ethics and liberty commission for decades, had been one of Evangelical Immigration Tables’s founders and had long promoted immigration reform. That split highlights tensions among evangelicals over immigration that have grown in recent months, including in Minneapolis, the current epicenter of immigration enforcement.

Related: Faith and Immigration: Getting Beyond the Rhetoric (Nov. 22, 2019); Holland Church Hosts Pray4Reform (Nov. 1, 2013); CRC Urged to Seek Better Treatment for Undocumented Immigrants (May 2010)

Public polling shows that U.S. evangelicals, in general, support reforms that would lead to secure borders and provide legal pathways to citizenship. But a 2025 study from Lifeway Research, an evangelical firm, showed evangelicals are deeply divided in how they view immigrants. According to the study, 44% of evangelicals said they see recent immigrants as a drain on the country’s resources, while 43% see those immigrants as a threat to the safety of Americans. Over a third (37%) said Christians have an opportunity to show love to immigrants, while the same percentage said recent immigrants are a threat to law and order. Most (80%) wanted Congress to pass immigration reforms last year.

A study report of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, approved by Synod 2010, calls for its members to advocate for immigration reform, but a reminder of that in a Jan. 30 published Statement and Prayer on Immigration showed a similar divide among readers of the statement. Some Facebook commenters said “denominational statements should be rare and should not call the churches to advocate for specific political policies that are not clearly set forth in the scriptures” and “If you haven’t condemned ‘Sanctuary’ status, which means thumbing your nose at Federal law and causes all the raids, you should have nothing else to say.” Another: “I pray people see more Christ in us and less party preferences.”

Evangelical Immigration Table’s members include organizations like World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian group that resettles refugees, and the National Association of Evangelicals (an ecumenical organization to which the Christian Reformed Church in North America belongs). Meanwhile, critics argue that Christians are called to love immigrants but that call to compassion and love has been misused.

“What we’re learning now is that illegal immigration is not compassionate. In fact, it’s not only bad for Americans, but it’s bad for people who are migrating illegally,” said the Rev. Willy Rice, a Florida pastor who is running for SBC president, during a recent podcast from the Center for Baptist Leadership, a group that believes the SBC and other evangelical groups have become too liberal.

Carl Nelson, president of Transform Minnesota, an evangelical church network, said he’s seen support for ministry to immigrants and refugees decline in recent years. “I see a moving away from being generally compassionate and favorable towards immigration—immigration that’s done lawfully and orderly, and particularly refugee resettlement—towards much, much more suspicion and resistance,” he said.

Within Transform Minnesota’s network is Arrive Ministries, a Minneapolis-area refugee resettlement agency affiliated with World Relief. Nelson said that to outsiders, the Twin Cities might look chaotic, while inside the cities, people are worried about their neighbors.

“The dissonance between those two viewpoints, I think, has deepened,” Nelson said, adding that he also sees a divide between Christians in rural areas and those in urban areas.

Related: Faith in the Midst of Fear, Jan. 29, 2026, Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals interviews two Minnesota ministry leaders “walking closely with congregations and neighborhoods carrying the weight of this moment.”

Nelson said he has heard some Christians talk about what’s known as the “sin of empathy,” which views having compassion for others as suspect. That suspicion is meant to put a firewall between compassion and action, he said. As an evangelical, he said he was raised to believe that the role of the church is to be salt and light in the world, a reference to the Sermon on the Mount, a well-known New Testament passage.

Related: Is the ‘Sin of Empathy’ a Biblical Teaching? (April 25, 2025); CRC Pastor Visits Detention Centers (Feb 4, 2026, from CRC Communications)

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