SocraticGadfly: ICE in churches and Wilkes and Dunn Xn nationalist hypocrisy

February 10, 2025

ICE in churches and Wilkes and Dunn Xn nationalist hypocrisy

The Observer rhetorically asks the Wilks and Dunn folks how ICE agents invading churches is not a First Amendment violation. In an interview, David Brockman, a TCU prof who is also an outside scholar at Rice's Baker Institute, notes this in spades:

I’ve been studying Christian nationalism for the past 10 years, and one of the common claims by Christian nationalists about church-state separation—if they’re not outright denying that it exists at all—is they will call back to the idea that the wall of separation is a one-way wall that is meant only to keep the government out of the church, not to keep the church out of government. It’s a common claim that they make. With this change of policy, the president they support is potentially sending government agents into the churches, synagogues, mosques, and so forth to seize and arrest worshippers. That’s not keeping the government out of the church. I found that very ironic, to say the least.

There you go.

Brockman goes better, though, and this is important because these raids are generally in urban areas. He notes that liberal Christian leadership needs to reach beyond Christianity, and he's not just talking Jews — he means Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. Sadly, he doesn't list secularists.

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