The Jesus You’d Deport

How the Church Lost the Refugee Christ and Found Empire Instead

“I was a stranger and you did not welcome me…”
— Matthew 25:43

There is a dangerous forgetfulness infecting the Church today.

In the swirling tides of nationalism, anti-immigrant policy, and the worship of border security, many Christians—particularly in the West—have amputated the refugee identity of Jesus from their theology. We preach the manger, but ignore the migration. We celebrate the Incarnation, but sanitize its implications. And in so doing, we betray not only the Gospel, but Christ Himself.

The U.S. administration's renewed posture toward removing immigrants is not a matter of policy alone—it is a theological crisis, an epistemological rupture that demands the Church’s attention and repentance.

The Christ We Forgot: A Theology of Exile

In recent months, the rhetoric emerging from the U.S. political landscape has resurfaced long-standing anxieties about immigration, border security, and the removal of so-called "illegal" immigrants. In an age where policies are increasingly shaped by nationalism, xenophobia, and populist power plays, a theological and epistemological reckoning is in order, especially among those who claim fidelity to the Christian Gospel.

At the heart of the Christian narrative lies a paradox often overlooked by empire: Jesus of Nazareth was a refugee.

Born into a colonized context under Roman occupation, Jesus’ entry into human history did not come through the channels of empire, wealth, or security. Instead, His first breath was drawn under the threat of political violence. Herod’s genocidal edict in Matthew 2 was not merely a historical footnote—it was a mirror of the oppressive state logic that still governs many immigration policies today. To escape certain death, the holy family fled to Egypt. Jesus, the Christ, became what many governments today would label as “an illegal alien.”

Epistemological Amnesia: Who Gets to Tell the Story of Jesus?

“The dominant powers do not want the refugee Christ. They want a sanitized Christ—a chaplain to empire, not a threat to it.”
— Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination

The crisis is not merely political; it is epistemological. That is, it concerns how we know what we know, and who controls the narrative.

Western Christian thought, forged in the fires of colonialism and Enlightenment rationalism, has produced a theological framework that privileges whiteness, Westernness, and empire. It has elevated a Christ who is respectable, safe, and loyal to Caesar.

But the true Christ—the contextual Christ—was none of these things.

“Colonialism did not only colonize lands. It colonized imaginations.”
— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind

A decolonial epistemology forces us to read Scripture not from the seat of the conqueror but from the sandals of the displaced. Jesus was not a Roman citizen. He was a Galilean Jew. Brown-skinned. Poor. A child of diaspora. Theologically, His identity was formed in tension not triumph.

“Theological education must return to the margins if it wants to meet Jesus again.”
— Kwok Pui-lan, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology

If theology is shaped only in seminaries divorced from suffering, then we will produce doctrines that perpetuate injustice rather than disrupt it.

The Moral Failure of the Modern Church

Here lies the tragedy: in nations that loudly proclaim their Christian identity, the policies enacted often betray the very Christ they profess. The same Jesus who fled to Egypt would today be met with razor wire, border patrol, and political suspicion. He would be detained at the border. Mary would be interrogated. Joseph’s story would be disbelieved. And baby Jesus would be labeled a national threat.

This is not hyperbole; it is historical repetition. Herod’s spirit lives on wherever power seeks to eliminate the vulnerable in order to preserve its dominance. And the Church, by its silence, often functions not as a prophetic witness but as a complicit chaplain to empire.

Let us be clear: when the Church endorses or excuses policies that cage children, deny asylum, and demonize the foreigner, it ceases to be the Church. It becomes a religious institution hollowed of Christ.

The Pastoral Weight of a Political Gospel

As a pastor, I am constantly aware that theology must touch the ground. I look into the eyes of families in my congregation who live under the shadow of deportation, undocumented status, or forced migration. They do not need a Christ of theory. They need a Christ who has been there, who knows what it means to flee, to be unwanted, to cross borders in the dark of night.

And so I must proclaim that Jesus is not the property of America, nor the mascot of empire. He is the incarnate God whose earliest years were shaped by forced displacement.

The pastoral challenge, then, is to resist the false binary between faith and justice. To follow Christ is to walk alongside the foreigner, to speak truth to power, and to resist any theology that abstracts Jesus from the lived realities of the oppressed.

The Refugee Christ and the Witness of the Church

In Matthew 25, Jesus identifies Himself not with kings or Caesars but with the hungry, the imprisoned, and the stranger. “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” If we read this in light of Matthew 2, we understand that Jesus does not just identify with refugees—He is one.

The church must repent of complicity with anti-immigrant ideologies and rediscover a cruciform, border-crossing Christ. We must dismantle epistemologies that produce a white-washed Gospel and instead embrace an incarnational ethic that makes space for the “other.”

In a moment where children are separated from their families, where detention centers cage the image of God, and where policies masquerade as protection while perpetuating harm, we must declare with theological conviction: The Gospel has no border wall.

Let it be known: the Christ who fled to Egypt still walks alongside refugees today. And every time we reject the foreigner, we reject Him.

Toward a Borderless Gospel

In Matthew 25, Jesus does not ask about our theology exams or denominational affiliations. He asks: “Did you welcome the stranger?” This is the litmus test of our discipleship.

The Church must become again what it was always meant to be: a sanctuary for the displaced, a people without borders, a holy community shaped not by empire but by the Exodus—by the God who liberates.

We must rebuild our epistemology. We must teach our children that Jesus was not a Roman citizen but a Galilean Jew under occupation. That He was not white but brown. That He did not align with Caesar, but was executed by him. That the Cross is not merely a symbol of personal salvation, but of political resistance against systems that crucify the innocent.

A Call to the Church: Repent. Resist. Reimagine.

“We are called to be the Church of the outcast, the marginalized, the foreigner—not the chaplain of the state.”
— Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation

If Jesus were born today, He would not be born in a cathedral. He would be born in a refugee camp in Gaza. Or in a tent on the U.S.-Mexico border. He would not be welcomed by politicians, but hunted by them.

So, Church, what will we do with this Jesus?

Repent for the ways we have erased His story.
Resist theologies that sanitize suffering and normalize exclusion.
Reimagine the Gospel not as an abstract doctrine, but as a concrete call to justice.

“The Gospel always begins at the margins.”
— Allan Boesak

We must decolonize our theology. Rediscover the Christ of flight, not just the Christ of light. Preach not only salvation from sin, but salvation from systems.

We must train our pulpits to name Herod when we see him; whether he wears a crown or a congressional pin. We must teach our children that the Christ they follow was undocumented, brown, and border-crossing. We must build churches that welcome the stranger, not churches that vote to keep them out.

Conclusion

If Christ came today, as He came then, would He be welcomed or deported?

Would He be baptized or banned?

Would He be cradled by the Church or caged by the state?

This is the question that haunts our Christianity. And until the Church can say with truth and courage, “Yes, we would welcome Him,” then we must admit: we have more in common with Rome than with Bethlehem.

This is a call not just to believe differently, but to remember, repent, and resist.

Because Jesus was a refugee.

And the Gospel has always been on the move.