At Our Best

Through America’s deeply problematic history with immigrants, there are glimmers of hope. In fact, one of the moments in which our nation came closest to expressing the heart of Jesus involved immigrants of a sort, albeit those who did not choose to be here. 

In December 1865, the United States celebrated an incredible occasion. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, Americans finally agreed to abolish slavery. This meant that at least four million former slaves—the number provided by the 1860 census—were finally legally recognized as what they had always been: not property, but people. 

Amidst this jubilation, however, a problem emerged. What fate would now befall these millions of newly freed African Americans? They were no longer property, but they had also been denied almost any opportunities for education, and had been provided only the most menial of job training. Living as another’s possession, they had next to no chance of owning land or businesses of their own, and had been incapable of accruing any generational wealth since they or their ancestors were forcibly brought to American shores. Yes, they were free, but what came next? 

This concern was punctuated by the fact that former slaves lacked a crucial legal status: they were not citizens. These four million liberated souls existed in a strange legal limbo: they were free, but lacked any of the protections of the Constitution to help ensure that new freedom was not infringed upon by those who so recently owned them. Further, lack of citizenship would have made it difficult for some former slaves to travel, acquire property, or find employment. Thus, something had to be done in order to complete the promise of the Thirteenth Amendment. Our nation needed to do more than just free former slaves; we needed to make them full members of American society. 

Here we find the genius—and graciousness—of the Fourteenth Amendment. This amendment declared that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The true beauty of this amendment, though, comes in how we chose to apply it at the moment of its creation. Slaves generally lacked any ability to prove where they were born. While their masters might have kept meticulous records of their birth—though only to note the acquisition of new property—these former owners were unlikely to lift a finger to help their former captives escape bondage. In the face of this uncertainty, America chose a course quite close to the heart of God. We did not make African American prove their citizenship. Instead—echoing the law and heart of God—we chose to treat those we had once considered foreigners residing amongst us as native-born. 

We might have stopped there. The U.S. Constitution already provides a host of protections to its citizens that would have transformed the lives of former slaves for the better. Yet something compelled American lawmakers to go even further—perhaps the Holy Spirit driving them to more fully repent of centuries of abuse and mistreatment. The second portion of the Fourteenth Amendment—the equal protection clause—did more than just provide rights to African Americans; it fully transformed the legal character of our nation. Essentially, this later portion of the amendment holds that any law that is found to treat one group of Americans differently than another group has violated the Constitutional rights of the harmed party. In short, all laws must apply equally to all citizens. 

While this might seem an obvious point, at the time it was revolutionary. Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, the Constitution had no mechanism to legally see what everyone knew to be true: millions of Americans lived under constant subjugation and persecution. The Constitution did not, in fact, recognize the presence of non-white Americans in any way, except to tangentially reference them by declaring that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining political representation. The equal protection clause changed this. It gave the Constitution—and those who enforced it—the ability and obligation to acknowledge that laws throughout our nation were prejudiced against certain groups, and it demanded that the people behind those laws be punished. This portion of the Fourteenth Amendment paired the new reality of freedom with the opportunity for actual justice. 

More than just legally important, the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment marks a spiritual high point for the United States. In this correction to the Constitution, we came startlingly close to embracing the fullness of biblical justice. Godly justice is, after all, restorative. It does not merely seek to punish a wrongdoer; it demands that the wounded party be made whole. Similarly, Americans chose not to merely free former slaves, but make them citizens and fully invest them with the rights and protections that came with that citizenship. 

Or, at least, we meant to. To fully tell this story, I would have to unpack the catastrophic failure that was Reconstruction. Americans’ unwillingness to fulfill the promises of these amendments inspired the birth of the Jim Crow South, which allowed for segregation, brutality, and persecution that went unchallenged well into the 1960s. 

For now, though, I am choosing to remember a moment of hope. I choose to remember a time when my nation seemed to listen to the Holy Spirit, and actually tried to repent of its generational sin of slavery. Even America—ungodly as it often is—can seek to follow the example of Jesus. Thankfully, we had the wisdom to build this moment of godliness into the very foundation of our nation. By enshrining these glimpses of godly justice in our Constitution, 19th-century Americans laid a foundation for more and greater equality in the centuries to come. 

It seems, however, that the current administration wants to walk our nation away from one of the moments where we most neared the heart of God. While President Trump and his advisors can haggle over what portions of the Fourteenth Amendment they wish to gut, the effect is essentially the same: to lead Americans further from Jesus, who calls us to welcome those foreigners we find in our midst, and to treat them as our own. 

We American Christians find ourselves, then, in a familiar place: invited to follow the will of our Lord; tempted to give in to selfishness and fear. Thankfully, we do not have to heed this call to ungodliness. After all, we are to follow Jesus over anyone else—including our current president. Even our nation’s history shows us how close we can come to godliness when we are at our best. The choice, however, is ours to make. 

As in all things, I think we should choose Jesus.