Scripture offers much material for arguments about dividing families

By ERASMUS

AMERICAN commentators both religious and secular have been digging deep into the Bible over the past week. They have been searching for answers to the claim by Jeff Sessions, the attorney-general, that a new practice of separating parents and children at the Mexican border is founded in holy writ. Mr Sessions defended the policy of placing minors and their parents in separate detention facilities by referring to a passage in Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans. As he put it, this verse gave the “clear and wise command” that people should obey the law. The passage he mentioned reads:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.

Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, backed up Mr Sessions when she was challenged to say how taking children from their mothers could possibly be biblical. “I can say it is very biblical to enforce the law, that is repeated throughout the Bible,” she insisted.

As many people pointed out, the use for political purposes of those opening lines from Romans chapter 13 has a grim history in America. It was cited by those who opposed the American Revolution, and also by those who defended slavery. In particular it was used to support the practice of sending back any slaves who had escaped northwards from servitude in one of the southern states.

Many leading American Christians, both evangelical and Catholic, read the Bible quite differently. The statement by Mr Sessions was prompted, in part, by a letter to the White House from prominent evangelicals, saying that:

....One of our core convictions is that God has established the family as the fundamental building block of society. The state should separate families only in the rarest of instances...[We] urge law enforcement entities to exercise discretion to protect the unity of families.

Even Franklin Graham, an evangelical champion who in other contexts is close to Donald Trump, has declared that it is “disgraceful [and] terrible to see families ripped apart”. Still, he placed the blame not on the current president but on politicians over the past 20 or 30 years who had, in his view, allowed tensions on the Mexican border to escalate.

In their rejoinders to Mr Sessions, many commentators cited passages in the Old and New Testament which emphasise hospitality to the outsider. One example is a verse in Exodus chapter 22 which tells the children of Israel:

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Stephen Colbert, a talk-show host, said the attorney-general should simply continue reading his favourite chapter in the Epistle to the Romans, right down to the final bit which suggests that the ideal of love supercedes the letter of the law.

Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law...Love does no harm to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilment of the law.

People who really want to raise the stakes in this scriptural to-and-fro might consider turning to a verse in Matthew’s Gospel which warns of the dire consequences that may befall anybody who does spiritual harm to children.

If anyone causes one of these little ones...to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

The onus would then be on anyone who advocates confining hundreds of children in sweltering, makeshift facilities, separate from their parents, to explain how this could be for their spiritual benefit.