"Where's the love in a lawsuit?" is the wrong question

A reflection on MCUSA’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and filtering out gnats and swallowing camels.

In a recent letter to Anabaptist World, a subscriber penned a letter that decried MCUSA’s joining of a multifaith coalition to sue DHS. He writes, “Where is the love of Jesus in a lawsuit? How are we modeling Jesus’ love for others when we hire attorneys and rely on government mechanisms to force others to conform to our wishes? Christ’s life, death, and resurrection model a love that transforms hearts rather than compels behavior through force. Without love, even the most righteous lawsuit becomes, as Paul says, a ‘noisy gong or clanging cymbal.’”

The writer agrees with the goals of the lawsuit, but disagrees with the method. They argue that it’s immoral to use force to change the policies of the state and prefer to love our neighbors as a way to change their hearts. In their mind, this is the Anabaptist ethic, and MCUSA should withdraw from the lawsuit. The force of a lawsuit amounts to violence, according to the commentator, and therefore violates our code of pacifism.

As someone who has written declarations in support of this lawsuit, I want to note that I am not an objective observer. I support the lawsuit and I hope MCUSA succeeds at gaining an injunction and that, when the lawsuit is settled, churches no longer fear ICE agents invading their churches.

I want to explain the importance and power of this lawsuit. Churches, formerly safe places and sanctuaries for migrants, are no longer protected under Trump’s immigration policy from ICE’s invasions. For a time, they were, but Trump did away with that. That ruling, on its own, has brought even more fear into the hearts and minds of migrants, to the point that many won’t even leave their homes to worship.

Worship, for Anabaptists, is a crucial part of our faith and discipleship. For us to practice our faith, the collective adoration of God is tantamount. When ICE agents invade our churches, or threaten to, the sanctity of worship is compromised. And enshrined in the U.S. Constitution are two First Amendment rights that this course of action violates: Freedom of Religion and the Separation of Church and State. Our lawsuit argues that what the Trump Administration is doing is unconstitutional.

As Anabaptists, it is in our very interest to preserve both rights, as they were formative reasons for us to rebel from the state churches in Europe 500 years ago. We take those rights seriously and when the state violates them, the state is acting as God. Our tradition has been actively resisting this type of overreach of the state for half a millennium. Our commitment to nonviolence is fundamentally rooted in not complying with the state when it comes to serving in the military.

Anabaptists have been resisting being compelled by the state to act for a long time, and this lawsuit is rooted in that very tradition. The commitment to nonviolence is, in fact, not a reason not to sue the government, but a reason we should and we must. It is thoroughly Anabaptist to resist the state interfering with our worship services.

Given the above logic, it can be argued that the Radical Reformation itself was a violation of Anabaptists' non-resistance. With that in mind, the commentator should actually take issue with the founders of Anaptism like Conrad Grebel, Feliz Manz, and Menno Simons, themselves!

The writer above argues that using force is not loving. And they aren’t wrong, which is why a loving response is to challenge the force of the state that is kidnapping, abducting, and trafficking migrants. If we are committed to loving our neighbor, then we must resist the state’s tyranny against them. Those of us with the power to speak up must at this precarious time. It is unreasonable and categorically legalistic, to look at a migrant child and tell them that our confession of faith keeps us from protecting them. No, it is our Christian duty to protect the least of these from harm and that is exactly what this lawsuit does. A confession of faith that interferes with that basic ethic is not a confession of faith at all.

If it is our theology that prevents us from loving our neighbors by forbidding us from challenging the state that threatens them, I think we have to reckon with Jesus’ call to take up our cross and follow him. The Anabaptist ethic of self-denial compels us to put aside our convictions, no matter how holy they are, for the sake of the most vulnerable. The lawsuit is quite a mild response to ICE’s illegal overreach. Not one of the plaintiffs is suggesting armed aggression or force to resist ICE, but rather, to use normative procedure and democratic processes to ensure that justice is done. At the heart of our lawsuit isn’t violence, but love: love for the church, love for worship, and love for the least of these.

When we don’t love the most vulnerable, we burden them with our theology. They are the ones who bear the ultimate weight of it, not the powerful. If our theology is a burden to these least of these, Jesus says, it would be better if a millstone were hung around our neck and we were thrown into the Sea of Galilee.

If our theology is that very millstone, as Jesus put it, then we have two options: reject our theology, or come to a deeper understanding of it. When we use our cherished history of resisting Christian Nationalism and state overreach, and it results in making children vulnerable to attack, we do exactly what Jesus rebukes his contemporaries from doing: we strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. In Matthew 23, Jesus laments this very thing:

“You give to God a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, but you forget about the more important matters of the Law: justice, peace, and faith. You ought to give a tenth but without forgetting about those more important matters. You blind guides! You filter out an ant but swallow a camel.”

Jesus isn’t calling Anabaptists to forget their commitment to nonviolence, but to hold on to it, without forgetting the weightier matters of the law. Justice, peace, and faith are crucial for Anabaptists, but when we say that fighting for the rights of migrants is not actually loving, we’ve lost the plot. We’ve filtered out a gnat (our commitment to being apolitical) and swallowed a camel (left the most vulnerable at risk of life-altering harm).

My call then is to take the core principles of our Anabaptist faith seriously: to pursue peace and justice by confronting state violence, to worship God earnestly, and to protect the most vulnerable, without compromising our commitment to nonviolence. The question we are asking shouldn’t be “where’s the love in a lawsuit?” but rather, “where’s the love in leaving the most vulnerable unprotected?”