The John Templeton Foundation, which announced the award on April 9, praised Bartholomew for “pioneering efforts to bridge scientific insight and spiritual wisdom in our relationship to the natural world.”
(ZENIT News / Washington, 04.13.2025).- A new report is asking American Christians to look not at the border, but at the pews beside them. Titled «One Body«, the report challenges churches across the United States to confront a deeply personal and often overlooked truth: millions of their fellow believers—fellow Christians—are at risk of being deported.
Far from abstract statistics or policy debates, this study reveals that over 10 million immigrants vulnerable to deportation in the U.S. today are themselves Christians, with nearly 7 million more American-born believers living in the same households. These aren’t just strangers; they are family, neighbors, parishioners—an inseparable part of the American church community.
The report, jointly released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, World Relief, and the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, doesn’t lobby for a particular political agenda. It offers something rarer: a pastoral reckoning. It asks Christian communities to reckon with what it means to be one body in Christ when that body is being torn apart by immigration enforcement.
The metaphor that frames the report is not new, but it is urgent: when one part of the body suffers, all suffer with it. Quoting 1 Corinthians and echoing the earliest traditions of Christian solidarity, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, a signatory of the report, urges congregations to move beyond passive sympathy and toward active compassion. “A wound to one member,” the report suggests, “is a wound to all.”
What makes this finding particularly jarring is the demographic profile it unveils. Four out of every five immigrants vulnerable to deportation in the U.S. are Christians, the report estimates—a detail that cuts through simplistic political narratives and reframes immigration not as an external issue, but as an internal crisis for the American church.
Even as the report acknowledges the biblical imperative to respect civil authority, it also appeals to Scripture’s call for justice and mercy. It critiques an overreliance on mass deportation as the default solution, pointing out that such approaches ignore the deeply rooted ties many immigrants have formed in their faith communities. These aren’t anonymous migrants—they are Sunday school teachers, choir members, deacons, and youth leaders.
The data backing the report isn’t theoretical. It draws on individual case studies from Catholic and Protestant churches across the country, revealing that one in every twelve Christians in the U.S. is either at risk of deportation or lives in close proximity to someone who is. These aren’t numbers on a page—they are stories in the sanctuary.
What the report calls for is a shift in moral imagination. It invites churches to recognize the spiritual consequences of immigration enforcement—not just the legal or economic ones. It insists that policy debates must be informed not only by laws, but by love.
There is, the report argues, a path forward—one that doesn’t ignore law and order, but neither ignores the dignity of the people caught in its gears. It urges the political sphere to explore alternatives to deportation that acknowledge both the human cost of expulsion and the Christian responsibility to protect the vulnerable.
Above all, it reminds believers of a foundational Christian truth: the command to love is not contingent upon status. Drawing from Genesis and the New Testament alike, the report roots its ethical argument in the idea that all people are created in the image of God, and that faith demands something deeper than silence in the face of suffering.
In this moment of legal uncertainty and rising fear, «One Body» doesn’t ask Christians to abandon their convictions. It asks them to deepen them—to consider what it means to be the Church not in isolation from national policy, but in prophetic dialogue with it. Citing John 13:35—“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another”—the report ends not with a demand, but with an invitation: to pray, to advocate, and most of all, to act.
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