(RNS) — Longtime activist and anti-poverty advocate the Rev. William Barber is challenging House Speaker Mike Johnson to a theological debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, taking up the Republican congressman’s open-ended offer earlier this week to discuss the topic “with anybody at any time they want to.”
Barber made the challenge during a Thursday (Feb. 5) interview for “Complexified,” a Religion News Service podcast created in partnership with Iliff Institute for Religion, Politics & Culture. The episode will be released Monday.
“I want to have that debate with him,” Barber told “Complexified” host the Rev. Amanda Henderson.
Barber’s challenge came after Johnson was asked during a press scrum on Wednesday to respond to criticism of Trump’s immigration policies levied by Pope Leo. Like his predecessor, Pope Francis, Leo has directly criticized Trump’s immigration policies on multiple occasions: In November, he cited Matthew 25:35 while expressing concern about the president’s approach to immigration, noting that Jesus “says very clearly, at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, ‘how did you receive the foreigner?’”
However, Johnson, a Southern Baptist who spent years working for the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, offered a different interpretation on Wednesday. While acknowledging the Bible calls on believers to “welcome the sojourner,” he insisted the command is “an admonition to individuals, not to the civil authorities.” He argued that Romans 13 describes civil authorities as “agents of wrath to bring punishment upon the wrongdoer,” and that “assimilation” of immigrants “is expected and anticipated.”
“Sovereign borders are biblical and right, and they’re just,” Johnson said. “It’s not because we hate the people on the outside, it’s because we love the people on the inside.”
The speaker then added: “I’m happy to have this lengthy debate with anybody any time they want to.”
Later that day, Johnson posted a longer version of the argument to his X account.
But Johnson’s argument is at odds with a rising number of religious leaders who have grown increasingly vocal in their criticism of Trump’s mass deportation effort. That includes Barber, who derided on the “Complexified” podcast the speaker’s position.
“He reveals that he doesn’t know the Bible,” Barber said, referring to Johnson. “He reveals that he certainly doesn’t know Jesus. There’s no Jesus in anything he just said.”
Barber, who is also known for his leadership of the Poor People’s Campaign and support for a wide range of policies primarily embraced by Democrats, pointed out that Johnson’s position appears to focus on the interpretation of Hebrew Bible passages, instead of what he was initially asked about: words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament.
“Let’s talk about what Jesus said: Welcome the stranger. End of story. Case one. Drop the mic,” said Barber, a Disciples of Christ minister. “And he didn’t say it to individuals — he said it to the nations.”
Barber later added: “Why would the state have killed Jesus if Jesus wasn’t challenging the state?”
Representatives for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Barber’s challenge, but the pastor has been floated as a potential debate opponent for prominent conservative religious thinkers before. In 2017, Barber, along with longtime collaborator the Rev. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and others, published an open letter challenging leaders of Liberty University, a conservative evangelical school, to a “peaceful debate” over differences in political theology. In late 2019, the school’s newly established Falkirk Center challenged Barber and Wilson-Hartgrove to a debate on the topic “Was Jesus a Socialist?” Barber and Wilson-Hartgrove rejected the premise of the debate and argued it should focus on a broader topic, but the effort ultimately fizzled.
Trump’s mass deportation effort has sparked an unusually robust response from faith communities over the past year, with religious leaders across the country organizing to resist the administration’s efforts. In addition to outcry from Pope Leo, pastors in the U.S. have been shot with pepper balls and pepper rounds by federal agents while protesting Trump’s immigration policies, and around 100 clergy and faith leaders were arrested in Minneapolis last month while protesting the influx of Department of Homeland Security agents into the city. Hundreds more flocked to the city to be trained on how to resist the president’s immigration agenda, and dozens of religious denominations and groups have filed lawsuits over the past year against various aspects of the president’s policies.
