Christ in Crisis? by Jim Wallis

Author:Jim Wallis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

A Wall of Fear

As Christians all over the world were preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus in December 2018, the president of the United States shut down a big chunk of the federal government, forcing eight hundred thousand public servants to work without pay or putting them on essentially involuntary unpaid leave, just in time for Christmas. The shutdown was entirely a function of a debate over funding President Trump was seeking to build his promised border wall.

The president’s wall was the signature issue of his political campaign and administration, and people on both sides of the aisle have long recognized that the wall has almost nothing to do with border security. Instead, the wall has everything to do with Trump’s central message: You should fear people who aren’t white. If built as Trump pitched it during the 2016 campaign, the wall would be a twenty-two-hundred-mile monument to fear and to hate, which is what naturally grows from fear. Both parties believe in border security, despite what the White House says. But Donald Trump has made his campaign, his presidency, his central message, and his vision for America about one thing: his wall.

Of course, the proposed wall for sealing off the southern border would do nothing to increase border security. The wall would not protect the United States from terrorism; according to our own government’s State Department, terrorists don’t come into America by crossing the southern border. A 2015 government study indicated that the bulk of illegal drugs that enter the United States comes hidden in trucks through established border checkpoints, so a wall wouldn’t keep drugs out of the country, as the White House claims.5 The wall fantasy will not stop criminality from coming into America, as Trump claims; immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens.

Yet, despite the facts, the fear of the “other” is raised and manipulated, with fear leading to hate. What the wall is entirely about is a racially divisive message that appeals to an angry and fearful white political base. The wall says we must be afraid of nonwhite people coming to America, and this will keep them out of “our” country. Hate can lead to violence. The wall is just a symbol, a monument, a testimony to the worst of American fear, hate, and white racism.

A rough estimate of the total cost of the wall and the number of miles of wall that would be built suggests that Trump’s wall would cost about $30 million per mile. A top government official who knows the budget line by line detailed to faith leaders in late 2018 all the programs that effectively assist low-income families that would need to be cut to pay for Trump’s wall.

The communities most impacted by border crossings—those closest to the border—understand that the wall makes no practical or moral sense: there isn’t a single member of Congress that represents a district on the US-Mexico border who supports building a wall.

In seeking the presidency in 2016, candidate Trump became the chief tempter

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