No, Russell Moore, Jesus Was Not a Refugee

Leftists love them some Jesus—so long as He can be twisted into a progressive mascot for their latest political crusade. But the moment He starts talking about sin, repentance, or judgment, they promptly shove Him back into the box labeled "outdated religious figure."

But when it comes to open borders and mass immigration, suddenly, Jesus is a refugee, an illegal alien, an undocumented migrant, and—if you buy the tortured logic—an advocate for dismantling national sovereignty altogether.

Enter Russell Moore, a man who abandoned his post at the ERLC, because, get this, the Southern Baptist Convention wasn’t woke enough, only to take up residence at the thoroughly apostate Christianity Today, a publication that long ago exchanged theological fidelity for 30 pieces of leftist activism.

Earlier this week, Moore penned a screed titled Yes, Jesus Was a Refugee, in which he not only trots out this tired trope but does so with the smug condescension of a man who has spent too much time at elitist cocktail parties lobbying government leaders to approve the construction of Islamic mosques in small, conservative suburbs and not enough time in serious biblical study.

Moore begins his argument with a lament about the U.S. State Department halting refugee-related grants, mourning the plight of groups like World Relief—because, apparently, funneling tax dollars to NGOs masquerading as ministries is a sacred duty.

Then, in classic fashion, he leaps to the claim that rejecting the refugee-industrial complex is akin to rejecting Christ Himself. "The glee with which some anti-refugee figures celebrate their rejection" is, he warns, a dangerous sign. Indeed, because refusing to let bureaucrats dictate our national immigration policy is gleeful rejection rather than rational governance.

Then comes his central claim: "The question of whether Jesus was ever a refugee is straightforward and without any ambiguity." He then cites the UN's definition of a refugee—because, of course, what better authority on biblical matters than a globalist organization obsessed with dismantling national borders? He attempts to square this definition with Matthew 2, where Joseph takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod’s massacre.

What Moore and his ilk don’t seem to grasp is that fleeing temporarily to another province within the Roman Empire at the direction of divine revelation is not the same thing as breaching a sovereign nation’s borders in defiance of the law.