Christian First

The church that lives by politics, dies by politics.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops rarely speaks in a unified, public way about political policy; the last time they did was 2013. Last week, the group issued what it called a Special Message “addressing their concern for the evolving situation impacting immigrants in the United States.” The bishops wrote, simply, “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”

The bishops wrote they are “concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care,” and “troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.” Who isn’t troubled about those things, when the media has highlighted some real abuses?

Who doesn’t oppose truly indiscriminate mass deportation of people? I think the answer is a really small group whose influence is likely dismissed. The key here is the word “indiscriminate”. The Trump administration is not completely indiscriminate in its actions. ICE is targeting illegal immigrants, and of that group, mostly those who were subject to detainers or other deportation orders in the past. Its execution has been sloppy, leading to a number of ugly incidents. That part is unacceptable.

But why are the bishops speaking out? As part of a worldwide communion of Roman Catholics, does it really hinder the cause of Christ and the mission of the church because some people living in America are now being deported to other countries, many of which are culturally steeped in Roman Catholicism?

But let’s look at it from another angle. Immigration is a practical function of the USCCB (the above-mentioned U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops). Within the federal government, an agency called the Office of Refugee Resettlement disburses billions in aid and grants to various organizations, known as “VOLAGS” or Voluntary Agencies, or Resettlement Agencies, that work with the government to help refugees in the U.S. VOLAGS include the International Rescue Committee, the Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Ethiopian Community Development Council, and the USCCB Migration & Refugee Service.

HHS, the parent agency of ORR, disbursed about $22.6 billion between 2020 to 2024, according to a New York Post report. The chief of OpenTheBooks, a small Substack dedicated to the tagline, “transparency changes everything,” told the Post, “ORR is part of a troubling trend of using nonprofit groups as ideological proxies.” He called the lax immigration system in the Biden years an “immoral, exploitive system that is hurtful to both American citizens and people in other countries who are longing for a better life.”

So the question here is how much money did the bishops receive in federal tax dollars from 2020 to 2024? According to USASpending online records, in the pre-Biden years, the annual baseline for USCCB receipts from ORR was about $14.6 million. During the Biden administration, the grants multiplied greatly.

• 2019 revenue: $14.6 million

• 2020 revenue: $20.2 million

• 2021 revenue: $67.5 million

• 2022 revenue: $122.6 million

In 2023, the New York Post reported USCCB 2023 revenues at around $129.6 million, all from ORR. Then Trump took office. In April, 2025, the USCCB announced the end of its participation in the VOLAG network due to funding cuts, which happened at the end of the fiscal year, September 30. And in November, while the shutdown was ending, the bishops released their Special Message.

I am not claiming that the bishops aren’t genuinely concerned. Many of the most ardent Roman Catholics in the U.S. are immigrants who brought with them their faith. However, the bishops also hear from their parishes, and from organizations that span the country, like the Migration & Refugee Service. The MRS, having been greatly built up over the last five years, is now devastated by funding cuts. This, I believe, influenced the bishops, to make their foray into the public political arena.

By making a political statement, citing the Bible and Christian precepts, while also having a long history of accepting federal money (greatly increased in recent years), the bishops have weakened the message of Christ, not amplified it.

I was praying about all this and I believe the word of the Lord in the matter is: “The church that lives by politics, dies by politics.”

A number of years ago, I served with a man at the Assembly of God church I attended in Warner Robins, Georgia. He was a psychiatrist, and a godly man. I believe he immigrated to the U.S. from Nigeria. I asked him, with all the medical and science-based theories and methods dealing with the human mind, and with the cases he has to take daily, how does he maintain his faith?

Now this man did a lot of work with veterans, and I am sure he dealt with the range of problems our vets suffer: drug abuse, PTSD, depression, and the like. I also imagine that in the field of psychiatry, reliance on prayer and supernatural, divine aid is frowned upon, if not outright mocked. I remember his simple answer. “I was a Christian before I was a doctor.”

In essence, the psychiatrist was a Christian first, then a doctor. Last Wednesday, my friend Erick Erickson posted a short monologue from his radio show about how too many pastors are mixing politics with Jesus, and that is damaging the local church.

…many Americans abhor American politics right now. And you could give them the path to eternity and you can give them the kingdom of God but you decided that you have Caesar and God together. People don’t want Caesar. They need God in their lives.

This goes to pastors and churches who defend the thrice-married, wife-cheating, serial liar in the White House. It goes to churches that host organizations that play cozy games with antisemites like Nick Fuentes. It goes to Christian ministries and online influencers who circle the wagons around Tucker Carlson.

What Erick didn’t say is that it also applies to the Roman Catholic bishops who are moved to compassion only by the fact that their funding from taxpayers has dried up as the Trump administration, with its lame duck president who rules like Caesar, has decided to single-handedly empty the country of anyone who isn’t 100 percent legal to be here, and even then go beyond that definition in pursuit of some cockamamie concept of blood and soil Americanism.

Erick concluded:

If you preclude it from making God accessible by insisting it also comes with a political mission—it doesn’t come with a political mission. Saving souls is the business of the church. Saving the country is the business of politics. And too many have decided you can do both.

The country does need saving. But we are a nation of people, who are imperfect, fall short of the glory of God, are prone to sin, selfishness, and deception. We are also a people of faith, charity, and compassion, but we are losing the plot on those things when we put them aside for purely political reasons.

David French posted on X a week ago:

The postliberals absolutely helped blaze the trail for the Groyper moment. It wasn’t just the attack on liberal democracy and the principles of the founding, it was also the way in which they attacked -- hysterical rhetoric, deeply personal attacks.

They taught the groypers that the classical liberalism of the founding was a fool’s game, and that the way forward is through punching and attacking, through insults, derision, and mockery.

Trump was the most powerful force in transforming vice into virtue in G.O.P. circles, but the postliberals treated their own vices as virtues by so often and so relentlessly abandoning decency in the public square.

Once you’ve demolished respect for liberal democracy and demolished any real value in rectitude and character in public life, it’s a short trip to nihilism and fascism.

I won’t get into the full definitions of what is a postliberal, as Jonah Goldberg has paved that road pretty well. Suffice to say, it’s someone who believes that the classical liberalism our government was founded upon, which sets guardrails and divisions of power so that all viewpoints can be discussed, but the benighted ones discarded, is fit for the trash bin. What replaces it is what separates communists from fascists from monarchists, etc. But the gist of it is that the liberal order does not serve the “greater good” and therefore we must be made to agree with the will of the people, which is represented by the state, or the church, or whatever -ism is the talk of the town.

The flaw in our classical liberal democracy is that it is only fit for a moral people. As David French points out, when the value in rectitude and character in public life is demolished, you’re left with either nihilism—self-will to power—or fascism, which is the purest expression of the state as the unified will of the people. Neither of those terminus positions leave room for robust discussion, moral discernment, or the peaceful handoff of change.

The cure for the flaw is the same cure as my psychiatrist friend stated so simply. Be a Christian first—or a Jew, or whatever moral framework of upright devotion of the individual to the betterment of others—then be a political animal.

Christianity works not because God has the power to subject all governments and nations to His will. God has that power regardless of our worship, devotion, or sacrifice. God could have wiped us out of the universe at any time (He still can). The only thing separating us from eternal damnation or our complete destruction is God’s good grace and the truth in His character. God promised us many things, in the Bible at least, and God will not ignore or break His promises, no matter what we do to grieve Him. Christianity works because the Christian is a disciple of Christ, Yeshua the Messiah, who voluntarily gave up His power to walk among us, teach us the Way, and then substitute his perfect self for our imperfect sinful souls.

This means that Christians should seek the betterment of society by love, charity, faith, and kindness. It means that political power is an outcome of many of those character elements, not the source of our doctrine. Being a political animal first, then a Christian second leads to the destruction of both.

The evidence of this destruction is clear. The current political climate of power, lies, and money speaks volumes. It has weakened the voices of even those we most associate with “religion,” the Catholic bishops. For too many years, churches, including the Roman Catholics, ignored venal sin in their midst, from sexual predators (not just Catholics, but also Baptists and others), hucksters and con men (the “prosperity gospel” is rife with these), and outright frauds who exist for their own comfort and power.

As the political and spiritual inverted, the political informed the church, not the other way around. Money mattered more than souls. Message mattered more than signs and wonders leading to faith. These things are the reason we are not seeing revival in America, but only sparks of discontent among the young who don’t know what to do with themselves but know the world is wrong in a very foundational way.

If you want a canary in a coal mine sign: it’s the public rise of antisemitism. Show me a society that mistreats Jews, and also mistreats women, and I’ll show you a spiritually and morally sick society. The far right, the groypers and paleos, and the far left, the progressive libertines, furries, and other aberrants, represent far too much of America right now. Though they are in reality a small minority, just like dealing with vaccinations and immunity, the herd can be vulnerable when the unprotected are left to their own sickness. Or as the Bible says, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” (Galatians 5:9, NKJV.)

I write political posts. But before I was a political writer, I was a Christian. I am a Christian first. That means I can agree with the bishops that indiscriminate mass deportations are immoral and bad policy. It also means that I know why they are saying this now. It means that I can understand the nature of our president, who above all values his own power. I can understand the horrible danger of that arrangement.

Regardless of the outcome of our current political situation, the answer remains the same. Be a Christian first, and the rest will follow in the same way goodness and mercy follow us out of the valley of the shadow of death. Any other way leads to irreconcilable ends.

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