Hello, this is Russell Moore, and this is a Russell Moore show.

Occasionally, what we like to do is an audio version of the More to the Point newsletter.

You can get this newsletter every week in your inbox by clicking on the

link in the show notes, but sometimes we want to talk about what is in there, and this is one of

those weeks. Today I wanted to talk about why Christians ignore what the Bible says about

immigrants. And the reason I'm thinking about this is it struck me earlier this week that nothing can

provoke people to anger quicker than mercy, as long as it's the mercy that's directed to the wrong

kind of people.

And I was thinking about that because of the way that Pope Leo, marking the year of Jubilee

in the church's calendar, as well as his Christmas sermon a few weeks ago, talked about

specifically kindness to migrants as human beings made in the image of God. That is not the least

bit controversial in terms of what the scripture says or what the

Christian tradition teaches or what official Catholic teaching makes explicit. The Pope did not

call for countries to stop enforcing their borders. He didn't give any specific policy proposals

about how a nation ought to balance security and mercy. He just called

on Christians to refuse harshness, to refuse mistreatment of vulnerable people, and to recognize

migrants as neighbors. Some people didn't like this. And the blowback that the Pope were received, it wasn't from bishops or clergy

that I know of. It even wasn't from large numbers of churchgoing Roman Catholics, but political

activists and social media conflict entrepreneurs don't like this. And some of them are saying

Pope Leo is worse than Pope Francis,

which they, of course, do not mean as a compliment.

And it's because he spoke to the issue at all.

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