Get the Church Out of the Political Dump

Some piles of garbage are better than others. But if you asked me which one I’d like to lie down in, I’d say, “None of them.” The answer should be the same when answering about which sort of politics should influence Christianity.

William E. Wolfe, director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, an initiative of American Reformer, wants us to pick a particular pile: his lane of MAGA-infused Christian Nationalism. Throughout his many appearances in Evangelical and conservative circles, he casts his takes as necessary to save both the nation and the church from “liberal rot.”

Wolfe and those of like mind are right to suggest that much of the institutional church has suffered under decades of an unholy alliance. Much of that has been liberal, with left-leaning mainline Christians being the most politically active churchgoers. But the rot, the refuse, has not been liberalism specifically, but the church put in service of politics, full stop.

I’ve written on the problems of Christian Nationalism before, but a case from Wolfe this week is demonstrative. Wolfe attacked the Southern Baptist Convention’s church planting arm for wanting to prepare churches to minister to people living in the United States with H-1B temporary, specialized worker visas.

Plenty of people from different political alignments have criticized the H-1B program. It may be a bad program. But here are some simple, undeniable facts: it exists; those here on the visas are, by definition, not illegal; and, it does not appear to be going away. Like the program or not, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the country via the H-1B.

Given that, one would think it would be obvious Christians would want to minister to visa holders. After all, the Church believes it exists to baptize new followers of Jesus and teach people about Him. That is the very last thing Jesus told His disciples before ascending into Heaven.

But Wolfe and his allies don’t see ministering to these people as obvious, but instead a sign of “liberal rot.” He posted on X this week that caring for the souls of such people is tantamount to promoting and idolizing “[u]nlimited, unrestricted immigration that harms American citizens.”

I tweeted back, “Wolfe misunderstands the role of the church. The apostles didn’t question people’s citizenship status before ministering to them. Let the state deal with secular issues (as it should!). We serve a different Kingdom.”

Wolfe’s response to my post only confirmed how much he misunderstands the different purposes of the Church and the government. “Being a Christian means that you must support national suicide through unrestricted mass immigration,” he replied. “I must have missed that verse in the New Testament.”

The problem is the Christian Nationalism behind Wolfe’s viewpoint, a conflation of the distinct roles God has given the church and state. Here is a perfect demonstration of its harm: if we no longer see the Church as being focused on promoting God’s Kingdom and the government as maintaining a peaceable earthly “kingdom,” but see them as converging, to care as the Church is to permit as the government.

This idiosyncratic worldview does not allow those such as Wolfe to comprehend that wanting to minister to people here on a highly limited visa program — or even wanting to minister to those who are here illegally — does not require one to support any particular immigration policy. One can oppose sanctuary cities, open borders and a host of other liberal immigration viewpoints while recognizing that even the person here illegally is a person made in the image of God and in need of the Savior.

That is possible because the church and state have those two different, but God-given, tasks. We ignore the distinction to everyone’s detriment. But ignoring is what happens when congregants, and even pastors, are catechized by cable news and influencers rather than the Bible and solid theology.

Too often liberal pastors spout from the pulpit MSNBC’s latest outrage, not the Bible. Conservative pastors get no pat on the back in return, for plenty of them might as well be borrowing the Fox News teleprompter. Figures like William Wolfe only amplify the ill-advised partisan-church alliance, which as I said above with no hyperbole, is unholy.

When we race to the political silos of our preferences, we start to view those who disagree (or even happen to benefit from disfavored policies) as the enemy, not fellow individuals made by our God. Jesus wanted us to love even our enemies, but hating them is so much easier and lets us keep our silos tidy.

Christians of goodwill can differ on how many people should be allowed to immigrate, what proper reform of the immigration system should look like and whether those who came illegally should be allowed to remain or be humanely returned home.

Scripture offers no command on just how open borders should be. But it does command compassion for the “resident foreigner”. It offers no command on how many visas to dole out, but it does make it clear there are no “out” categories we can skip sharing Jesus with.

If the very heart of the Christian mission is to see people come to know Jesus, a political policy — even a wise one — should never take precedence over sharing the hope of salvation. From the earliest days, Christians believed that worldly success was never superior to eternal salvation for themselves or for those around them.

Jesus Himself shared the hope of salvation with a thief on the cross next to him and the Book of Acts shows the Apostles preaching to prisoners, captors and anyone who would possibly listen. Ministering to a group that is a beneficiary of a political policy we may dislike isn’t a sign of “liberal rot,” but faithfulness to the Lord.

And that’s the key spot where the real refuse is revealed. For the sake of the argument, what if Wolfe and friends were right in their blurring of church and government, and subsequent inability to, say, serve immigrants while simultaneously opposing current immigration policy? What if it really were a matter of “to preach the Gospel or protect the border”?

If forced to choose, would we choose people’s eternal salvation or temporary, worldly political victories?

For Wolfe, the latter clearly trumps the former. He believes he can’t support both here, so politics wins over the preaching the Gospel. When we choose things of the earth over the things God has called us to, there’s a word we use for that: idolatry.

How cruel do we have to be to say, “I’m so concerned about my present, worldly success, that I’m ok if you don’t hear the words pointing you to eternal salvation”? Somehow that hits differently than Paul writing, “But even if I am being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice together with all of you.”

Time and again, throughout history, whenever people have forgotten that the church’s mission is separate from that of the secular government, political success takes precedence. Leaders will opt for what gives them immediate power even if they do lip service to wanting to advance God’s Kingdom.

Not even the morals often used to justify the alliance survive when we make this Faustian bargain. A couple of years ago, Mere Orthodoxy’s Jake Meador epically documented the deep ties between the Center for Baptist Leadership’s parent organization and a neo-Nazi pornographer. One would think such a tie would be renounced, but in the calculus of politics, immorality that empowers crowing about morality must be excused.

We must ask what genuine victory is. What is refuse and what is treasure. For the Christian, even a wholesale accomplishment of whatever our political aims may be sure looks like garbage if we become callous to people’s eternal souls to accomplish it.

When we forget our central purpose and make the worldly powers indivisible from the Kingdom of Heaven’s purposes, we will compromise. We will trade the priceless for the worthless.

The Left and Right want us to choose which refuse we’d rather make our bed in. In the Great Commission, Jesus sent us to instead help others escape the dump entirely.

Update (August 21, 2025): Added a link detailing the connection between the Center for Baptist Leadership and American Reformer.