As Tennessee pastors and politicians clash over Trump’s immigration agenda, their congregations are divided

The Sunday before the Tennessee legislature voted to pass a sweeping immigration law, state Sen. Brent Taylor, R-Memphis, walked out of his home church before the service began.

During the pre-service announcements at Trinity Baptist Church, Pastor Matt Crawford criticized the end of sanctuary policies for churches, which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make arrests inside places of worship.

“I hope that we can believe both in the rule of law and feel that we don’t want worship services disrupted by that. I hope that me saying that doesn’t anger you,” Crawford said. “Hopefully, we can talk about things with unity and nuance and even differences of opinion because it’s on the hearts of some of our people.”

Taylor walked out, he said, because he “didn’t show up to church that morning to hear a political speech.”

Taylor told WPLN News that he sees immigration as a secular issue. That sentiment was echoed by many Tennessee Republicans after they faced backlash from local faith leaders for a proposal that would’ve allowed K-12 schools to refuse to teach children without legal status.

Taylor, however, does see Biblical parallels to his approach.

“Heaven has an immigration policy, and hell does not,” Taylor said. “There’s a certain way you get to heaven. You can’t climb the wall. You can’t dig a hole and come in under the wall. You can’t present fake documents to Saint Peter at the gate … It’s a very strict immigration policy. Hell, on the other hand, you get there any number of ways, and you don’t have to have documentation to get in there.”

Taylor has sponsored a slew of bills ramping up immigration enforcement, including one that would hold churches and non-profits liable if they house someone who goes on to commit a crime.

“If they’re here illegally, they are a criminal in and of themselves. And I would ask the faith leaders, do you also see it as an act of your faith to aid child pornographers or murderers or rapists?” Taylor said. “They believe that helping somebody who is here illegally that, somehow, they’re going to get some credits to get into heaven. And I just don’t see it that way.”

Neither do a lot of evangelical Christians, Taylor said. He pointed to the number of congregants nationwide who voted for President Donald Trump.   

Research from LifeWay, a publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, paints a more complicated picture of how evangelicals view immigration.

“The vast majority of evangelical Christians, they support border security, but they also support pathways to citizenship. They support treating immigrants with dignity and respect,” said Galen Carey from the National Association of Evangelicals.

According to the survey, evangelicals who voted for Trump were more likely to rank the Bible as the highest authority for what they believe — but were less likely to rank the Bible as the biggest influence on their view of immigration.

Many told pollsters that they see the number of immigrants as a drain on resources, but that they also believe the nation has a responsibility to care for refugees and others fleeing hardship.

Marianna Bacallao WPLN News

Outside a House subcommittee, a woman holds a sign quoting scripture in protest of immigration legislation.

While support for Trump among white evangelicals has waned since February, the vast majority continue to back him at 72%, according to the Pew Research Center. That widespread support is creating tension between those in the pulpit and those in the pews, as national evangelical leaders oppose Trump’s approach to immigration.

The Southern Baptist Convention experienced backlash for sending a letter to Trump, criticizing the end of sanctuary policies for churches earlier this year. The Presbyterian Church in America gave advice to church members without citizenship on how to interact with ICE — something the PCA later retracted and apologized for, following outcry from some of its congregations.

But for one Nashville church, the issue isn’t as polarizing.

“Something that’s so very important is just having a place to be able to come together and talk,” said David Gaston. He hosts a Sunday night Bible study and dinner for the congregation of City Church in East Nashville.

Gaston’s church belongs to the PCA, a conservative, Calvinist denomination. But in the more artsy neighborhood of East Nashville, this particular congregation is more of a mixed bag.

On a Sunday night, they can be found sitting around a fire in Gaston’s backyard, eating dinner off of paper plates.

“Meals like this, people gathering from all different sides of life, all different parts of the political spectrums, and just talking together in some ways is a little bit of an act of resistance in our current climate,” Gaston said.

That kind of resistance is why Jeremiah Sunshine drives in from the next county over to attend City Church. As Gaston chops firewood for tonight’s bonfire, Sunshine is standing by as the church’s resident tree expert.

“When I started in the industry 25 years ago, we were tree surgeons,” Sunshine said. “Now, they call us arborists.”

Sunshine’s tree service employs a number of people, including immigrant workers.

“We need people to come into the country,” Sunshine said. “Not only are they a wonderful blessing, you know, socially and culturally, but they strengthen the workforce, you know, they do all kinds of wonderful things.”

Sunshine said he also believes in law and order and supports President Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement. He pointed to the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah, which stresses the importance of walls to protect Jerusalem. 

“Any country … needs a border, an actual border that functions as a border,” Sunshine said. “If you don’t have a border, you don’t really have a country.”

Other members of Sunshine’s church — like Alice and Matthew Smith — have a different outlook. 

“There are specific Old Testament passages about loving the foreigner and the widow and the orphan among you,” Alice Smith said. “Leaving the grains of your field unharvested on the edges, so that foreigners and people who are traveling, sojourners and the strangers can have food when they are in poverty.”

“It even says that if someone falls into poverty among the people of God, treat them as you would the foreigner and that means care for them,” Matthew Smith added. “That means help provide for them.”

Matthew said the Bible doesn’t specifically outline an immigration policy, so Christians can disagree about what reform should look like.

“Hopefully we can disagree kindly, even though I feel like America as a whole has lost the ability to have conversations in a civil manner,” Matthew said.

Those kinds of conversations are part of the reason Sunshine’s family makes the drive out to East Nashville every Sunday. He said churches closer to home were too afraid to talk about these issues. 

“It concerns me how little discussion there is about it, like, it grieves me how little discussion there is about it,” Sunshine said.

Around a bonfire, the Smiths and the Sunshines can have these conversations, even if they — like the rest of the church — never reach a true consensus.