Christian Leaders To Jeff Sessions: The Bible Does Not Justify Separating Families; HuffPost, June 15, 2018

Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost; Christian Leaders To Jeff Sessions: The Bible Does Not Justify Separating Families

"“It makes my blood boil,” said Matthew Schlimm, a professor of the Old Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary in Iowa. “Sessions has taken the passage from Romans 13 completely out of context. Immediately beforehand and afterwards, Paul urges readers to love others, including their enemies. Anyone with half an ounce of moral conviction knows that tearing children away from parents has nothing to do with love.”

Schlimm noted that people often misuse the Bible. In fact, the same passage Sessions cited has been used to justify slavery and Nazism.

“So, it’s not surprising that slave traders tore children away from their parents and tried to justify it with the Bible. Or that Nazis tore children away from their parents and tried to justify it with the Bible. Sessions follows the pattern of history,” he said. “What’s chilling is to think that we again live in such morally deranged times.”

Leave the Bible out of it, child separation is not ‘Christian’; The Washington Post, June 15, 2018

Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post; Leave the Bible out of it, child separation is not ‘Christian’

"We should point out that invoking this Biblical passage has a long and sordid history in Sessions’s native South. It was oft-quoted by slave-owners and later segregationists to insist on following existing law institutionalizing slavery (“read as an unequivocal order for Christians to obey state authority, a reading that not only justified southern slavery but authoritarian rule in Nazi Germany and South African apartheid”).

I’m no expert in Christianity, but the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was when he drafted his letter from the Birmingham jail:

Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Sessions perfectly exemplifies how religion should not be used. Pulling out a Bible or any other religious text to say it supports one’s view on a matter of public policy is rarely going to be effective, for it defines political opponents as heretics."

Sessions cites Bible passage used to defend slavery in defense of separating immigrant families; The Washington Post, June 15, 2018

Julie Zauzmer and Keith McMillan, The Washington Post; Sessions cites Bible passage used to defend slavery in defense of separating immigrant families

"“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” Sessions said during a speech to law enforcement officers in Fort Wayne, Ind. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent and fair application of the law is in itself a good and moral thing, and that protects the weak and protects the lawful.”

Government officials occasionally refer to the Bible as a line of argument — take, for instance, the Republicans who have quoted 2 Thessalonians (“if a man will not work, he shall not eat”) to justify more stringent food stamps requirements.

But the verse that Sessions cited, Romans 13, is an unusual choice.

“There are two dominant places in American history when Romans 13 is invoked,” said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. “One is during the American Revolution [when] it was invoked by loyalists, those who opposed the American Revolution.”

The other, Fea said, “is in the 1840s and 1850s, when Romans 13 is invoked by defenders of the South or defenders of slavery to ward off abolitionists who believed that slavery is wrong. I mean, this is the same argument that Southern slaveholders and the advocates of a Southern way of life made.”"

Sanders says it's 'biblical to enforce the law' when asked about separating families at the border; The Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2018

Colleen Shalby, The Los Angeles Times; Sanders says it's 'biblical to enforce the law' when asked about separating families at the border

"Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions cited the Bible on Thursday in defense of the Trump administration's criminal prosecution of adults who cross the border illegally, effectively separating them from their migrant children. 

 

“Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order," he said.

 

When CNN’s Jim Acosta asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to elaborate on the attorney general’s comments, the conversation turned tense.

 

“Where does it say in the Bible that it’s moral to take children away from their mothers?” Acosta asked.

 

Sanders said she wasn’t aware of Sessions’ comments, but said, “I can say that it is very biblical to enforce the law."