Reverend Mel McGinnis’ guest essay, “Jesus, Razor Wire, and Border Policy” is disturbing on many levels. His facts are dubious, his rhetoric frightening, and most of all, his argument underscores why we have–and should continue to have–a clear separation of church and state in this country.

I won’t attempt a rebuttal to McGinnis’ argument on a factual basis. That would be a fool’s errand because he relies heavily on the “alternative facts” and propaganda that have become alarmingly common in MAGA circles. For example, his assertion that “Chinese nationals streaming over the border now outnumber Mexicans entering illegally” was drawn from Fox News, a highly skewed source that has little credibility for those who recognize responsible journalism.

McGinnis also laments the Biden administration’s failure “to simply restore the effective border policies of the previous administration.” Effective Trump border policies? Like separating young children from their families and putting them in cages? Like dumping taxpayer money into a white elephant of a border wall which he promised repeatedly would be paid for by Mexico?

McGinnis’ rhetoric is even more disturbing. He conflates immigrants (in a country of immigrants) and “illegals” in a deliberate slippage of definitions. Worse, he characterizes this ill-defined group as “our enemies,” leeches, and “parasites sucking the life out of their hosts.” The echoes of Trump’s Nazi-inspired “poisoning the blood of our country” are strong.

In the McGinnis-Trump view, the Christian doctrine to love one’s neighbor as oneself is virtually abandoned. Trump said of immigrants, “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases. They’re not people, in my opinion,” echoing his blunt condemnation of them as “rapists” at the launch of his first campaign in 2016. Good Christians point out that he said a terrible thing (which he did). But later in his 2024 remarks, he referred to hypothetical criminal migrants as “animals.”

If Christians are dedicated to love, they should repent the transgressions that snare “the stranger…the alien who resides with you [who] shall be to you as the citizen among you,” in razor wire. I don’t recognize this brand of Christianity.

But the real problem with Rev. McGinnis’ screed lies in how it underscores how permeable the fundamental wall between church and state has become. His essay is rooted in a conflation of Old Testament justice and our current political reality. To McGinnis, the United States, apparently, is heaven, a gated community “guarded so securely that absolutely no one gets in illegally.”

I agree with McGinnis on one thing: our immigration policy requires remediation–the sort of revision hammered out in a bipartisan border bill, backed by the Biden administration…and torpedoed by Donald Trump, MAGA’s de facto Jesus and its “retribution.”

We–Christians and non-Christians–must reject the Christo-Fascist state envisioned in McGinnis’ essay. And we should expect greater compassion, intelligence, and humanity from our politicians and clergy alike.

Eric Jackson-Forsberg is a Jamestown resident.