What do critics of refugee ban really think about America?

Numerous Christian groups have denounced the new moratorium on refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including a coalition of mostly liberal Protestants, of Evangelicals, and the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. As humanitarians, they object to any hindrance in the flow of suffering refugees from troubled areas. Their empathy and aspirations are admirable.

But there is one important section of the refugee executive order on which they do not directly comment and which merits serious Christian reflection:

In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

{mosads}Here is stated what America generally has always expected of persons who come to America to stay: that they will uphold American democratic principles about legal equality and liberty for all. Across American history there have sometimes been unjust immigration restrictions based on ethnicity. There have also been justified restrictions against persons who reject America’s democratic ethos. Anarchists, Bolsheviks, Fascists, Nazis, with other totalitarian sympathizers and persecutors have been blocked from entry to the U.S.

The U.S. naturalization process specifies that applicants must be “attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.” An applicant “who is hostile to the basic form of government of the United States, or who does not believe in the principles of the Constitution, is not eligible for naturalization.” Applicants may not have “advocated communism or the establishment in the United States of a totalitarian dictatorship,” supported Naziism, “engaged in persecution or genocide,” or affiliated with a terrorist group.

The language from the executive order reiterates these points, not naming radical Islam, but obviously having in mind theocratic Islam’s second class regard for women and religious minorities, plus its torments for homosexuals.

Religious critics of the executive order insist current screening of refugee applicants is sufficient. And many point out that few refugees historically have become violent. Yet these critics typically don’t address the imperative of upholding America’s democratic ethos.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if critics of the executive order, while denouncing its problems from their perspective, also affirmed the utmost importance that all who come to America must affirm American core principles?

There was a time when American religious elites cross the theological spectrum would have unabashedly declared their expectation that all immigrants and refugees must conform to what once was called “Americanism.” In our current era of multiculturalism and identity politics, such a declaration is now unlikely. The word “Americanism” would offend many religious elites of today as chauvinistic and presumptuous. Expectations that persons of different cultures and religions should conform to an American ethos would be derided by many as oppressive and dangerously nationalistic.

But nations, especially a nation of immigrants, cannot pursue the common good absent a shared political and cultural ethos. America is defined by liberty, democracy, legal equality, free speech, religious freedom and rule of law, as the Constitution stipulates, and our historic mores assume. Our national health and public order require that aspiring new Americans share these commitments.  

Religious institutions in America, especially during the era of high immigration early in the last century, enthusiastically promoted Americanism as the bond that unified new Americans with the descendants of older Americans. Protestant traditions, Catholics and Jews might fiercely disagree on other issues but for generations they shared common commitment to a citizenship rooted in America’s founding documents. Today many religious elites would dismiss this understanding as an archaic form of civil religion.

America’s various religious traditions, starting with the early Protestants and later joined by Catholics and Jews, were creators and ardent stewards of America’s unique ethos of democracy and liberty. Persons of other faiths and no faith have faithfully melded into this ethos.

But this ethos must always be articulated and defended if it is to persevere for the common good of all.

Mark Tooley, author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century, is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and editor of Providence: A Journal of Christianity & American Foreign Policy.

The views of contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.