Op-Ed: What Does the Bible Say About Settler Colonialism in Springfield, Ohio?
“Foreigners who live in your land will gain more and more power, while you gradually lose yours.”– An imprecation to Israel, a punishment for their sin (Deuteronomy 28:43A)
In Deuteronomy 28, God promised his covenant people blessings if they would obey him. These blessings would include blessing both urban and rural centers (towns and fields), their harvests, victory in battle, their savings (corn in their barns), and the respect of other nations. However, if his covenant people did not obey him, God promised an imprecation, or curse. Among generalized curses for disobedience, like “confusion, disaster, and trouble in everything,” God gives one additional and curious promise. Their land would be overrun by foreigners who would take away their power.
The term for this is not immigration. The term is Settler Colonialism, and it is generally frowned upon by America’s left, and indeed almost all cultural anthropologists, as a curse -whether divine or natural – upon any land that suffers under its consequences.
In fact, the theme of a nation being overrun by foreigners as a sign of divine judgment is repeated frequently in Scripture. In Judges 6, God raised up Midian as a curse to Israel, who crowded out Israel from their own homes and farms. The same goes for the Philistines in Judges 15 and, in fact, most of the broad historical narration of Judges contains this motif, of foreign invaders serving as God’s instrument of wrath on account of disobedience. Joel likens invaders to locusts, who come and devour town, fields, crops, livestock, and the health of God’s people.
In fact, Settler Colonialism has earned an almost universal condemnation in modern Christian circles throughout Western Civilization. From characterizing explorers like Columbus as petty warlords to castigating the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock as invading hordes bringing destruction upon Native American populations, or castigating post-WWI iterations like French or English colonizing efforts in Africa, it is hard to find anyone of the theological caste to speak well of colonialism. This, of course, is despite the blessings of literacy, Christianity, medicine, and culture being brought through the mass migration and colonial settlements of the First World.
Google’s AI has a good (but predictably biased) explanation for the difference between immigration and settler colonialism.
To recap the above graphic, it’s pretty clear that what is happening in places like Springfield, Ohio is not immigration, but Settler Colonialism.
Since 2018, more than 20 thousand Haitians have fled the violence and poverty of Haiti and Port-au-Prince, in particular, and flocked to Springfield, a town of roughly 50 thousand, pre-invasion. Thanks to the Biden Administration, a potentially unlimited number of Haitians are eligible to flee their war-torn, impoverished nation without any kind of meaningful vetting, as they were extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS). This status was extended even further by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on August 4, 2024 until February of 2026.
TPS was a designation created in Congress in 1990 to absorb refugees from nations currently at war, but it is being used now for nations at civil unrest or suffering the affects of poverty. The designation allows Haitians to move anywhere they want within the United States, travel outside the United States and return unhindered, and obtain work permits not ordinarily given automatically to aliens who come through conventional immigration channels. In addition, they receive financial assistance including housing vouchers, food assistance, and cash payments for “incidentals.”
In other words, a small town has been colonized by a Third World nation, which has brought with it increased unemployment, as the indigenous residents of Springfield have to compete with lower wages and more job scarcity. Many Springfield residents have been removed from their rental homes, as landlords have a financial incentive to raise the rent because Haitians have the federal government subsidize their housing. Because the government even pays for Haitian childcare, many Springfield residents can’t get their children into daycare facilities, meaning that they are unable to work and provide. Public services, and even the medical system, has been overwhelmed by the needs of Haitians who, according to the locals, are able to skip to the front of the line. The solution for many in the indigenous Ohio population has been to move away from their ancestral homes and become sojourners themselves.
In the echo chamber of Big Evangelicalism, we are told that the Bible requires us to be kind to the “alien and sojourner.” And, of course, this is for good reason and there are many Scriptural proofs of the claim, although conflating terms like “alien” and “sojourner” with 21st Century notions of legal and illegal immigrants creates a profundity of category errors. The term גֵּר (ger), most often used for “foreigner” in the Old Testament, means guest. And, we are told in places like Deuteronomy 27:19 that even the foreigner is entitled to justice, which makes sense if human rights are Creator-given. In other words, it’s pretty repugnant to invite people into your nation as guests, only to mistreat them. The Biblical ethic is that hospitality and kindness be bestowed to the occasional foreigner who has permission to set up residence in the land, or to the sojourner who is only passing through. However, nothing in Biblical ethics extends this generosity to multitudes of foreigners replacing people in their homes or employment.
Nonetheless, finger-wagging scoldmudgeons lecture evangelicals repeatedly about coddling those who, by no biblical definition, can be categorized as guests, but as invaders. The Bible has much to say about invaders, also. In fact, the Scriptures have even more to say about foreign invaders than it does sojourners or guests. It was God, after all, who instructed Jerusalem to build and protect a border wall and dedicated two books of the Bible to its construction (Ezra and Nehemiah). The narrative is simple; when Israel sinned, God replaced Israel in the Promised Land and carried them off to another nation. When God was prepared to bless them again, his first act was to expel the foreigners and protect them behind walls.
If we fast-forward to today’s invasion of Springfield, Ohio (and a hundred other small towns across America), the lecture-hounds are busy warning Christians that it is our duty to not only tolerate the Settler Colonialism of our cities, but to celebrate the displacement of native Ohioans as a Christian duty.
For example, Marxist minister and “Evangelical for Harris,” Dwight McKissic, recently praised Christianity Today editor, Russell Moore, for defending Haitian settler colonialists from criticism and demanding that American citizens be displaced and replaced in the name of Jesus.
Of course, Moore also famously claimed that Jesus was an illegal alien, a talking point of Liberation Theology. It should be no surprise that Democrats like Moore and McKissic are declaring that justice, love, and mercy requires evangelicals to sacrifice our homes, livelihoods, and children on the altar of Christ for the sake of a nation whose inhabitants adhere to voodoo at a rate upwards of 90% (according to the New York Times). Never in modern history have the sides between good and evil been so clear.
One could hardly imagine a scenario in the Holy Scriptures in which a tribe of ancient Israel was being displaced by thousands of devil-worshipping barbarians from Canaan only to be lectured by its prophets to give up their homes, fields, and livestock in the name of peace, love, and fuzziness. And yet, that is what America’s evangelical leaders want from us.
Immigration can indeed be good, so long as the Old Testament definition of foreigner remains as guest. Guests come in at an invitation, stay so long as they are welcome, and don’t put their feet on the furniture. But what we are seeing in Springfield and towns all across America are not guests, but our replacements.
As these same evangelical leaders lament Settler Colonialism all over the world, which historically has served as a vehicle for gospel proclamation and an increased quality of life, they champion Settler Colonialism in America, which only leads to the type of violence and poverty these invaders often bring with them from the Third World.
It’s almost as though our evangelical leaders demonstrate a pattern of wanting what is not good for us, all while telling us it’s Jesus’ will that we accept the unacceptable.
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