The blessings of borders

Few political questions today have proven as combustible as immigration. This tension has now spilled into the sanctuary. Anti-ICE activists recently disrupted a worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., forcing its suspension and leaving congregants—including young children—visibly shaken.

Many Christians would prefer to avoid the topic of immigration and border restrictions altogether. Scripture’s command to show hospitality to the stranger has led many to assume that firm borders, enforcement, or limits must therefore be unchristian. Eager to avoid even the appearance of xenophobia or indifference to suffering, Christians often find themselves without an adequate moral vocabulary to address these realities.

Yet the scale and speed of contemporary migration will not permit such avoidance. Western nations have been absorbing unprecedented levels of newcomers, generating a widespread anxiety about the durability of a shared way of life. The basic goods of political life—order, identity, and the capacity to offer genuine welcome—are all under strain. Many Christians, unsure how to speak of nations and borders without apologizing for them, are searching for an answer that is both compassionate and sane.

What follows is a brief Christian case for the blessing of borders (not a defense of every policy of this administration or action by ICE agents). National borders help define a people, secure the common good, preserve inherited forms of life, and sustain a genuinely plural international order.

As Steven Grosby demonstrates in his important work on nations in Scripture, for ancient Israel the nation (goy) was a people (am) bound to a defined and bounded land. Territory was not incidental but integral to Israel’s identity—people and land together. This land marked the jurisdiction of Israel’s common life under the Law. Without it, Israel’s national life was incomplete (Deuteronomy 30:19–20). When the people returned from exile, one of their first tasks was to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls (Nehemiah). These boundaries were meant to protect the integrity of their common life against foreign threat.

Israel’s ordered national life was intended not merely for self-preservation, but as a witness to surrounding nations (Deuteronomy 4:5–8; Isaiah 2:1-4; 51:4; Micah 4:1-3). Bounded political life was part of Israel’s vocation, and nations today can learn from this example.

Thomas Aquinas thought so. In his discussion of the Mosaic Law, Aquinas commended prudence in the admission of foreigners. In Israel, he notes, no newcomer was counted a citizen until two or three generations had passed. The reasoning is straightforward: Newcomers may not yet have the common good of the nation firmly at heart, and if entrusted with political power too quickly, they could harm the community. This is not xenophobia but responsible stewardship of a shared political inheritance.

Aquinas also distinguished among newcomers. Peoples with historically close relations could eventually be admitted; peoples with a history of enmity were not. The Law thus recognized that historical hostility, cultural distance, and the plausibility of integration are legitimate prudential considerations. Whether a group can be incorporated into a nation’s common good is not merely a matter of goodwill but of political judgment.

As Nigel Biggar observes, nations “incarnate a particular, perhaps distinctive grasp of the universal forms of flourishing suitable to human nature.” They are not mere aggregations of individuals but intergenerational communities that preserve and transmit a “shared inheritance” of law, language, and moral habit. “Borders exist,” Biggar writes, “primarily to define the territory within which a people is free to develop its own way of life as best it can.” Political boundaries define the space within which this inheritance can flourish, and political authority is, in part, responsible for its protection. As Oliver O’Donovan adds, political authority is defined by its charge to ensure the “perpetuation of tradition” within the community. This shared way of life is a fragile good—one threatened by unrestricted, rapid, and unvetted mobility.

The most common Christian objection to borders arises from a confusion about universalism. Yes, the church welcomes all, but this welcome cannot be uncritically extended to the nation, which is a territorial, bounded community. Political authority must secure justice and welfare within a defined space and with limited resources. As Matthew Schmitz notes, much “immigration idealism” that promotes open borders amounts to a vague hope that we can live in a world free of conflict and restraint. It confuses the heavenly city with the earthly one.

A just immigration policy, therefore, must recognize that while the church welcomes all comers, no nation can. The nation’s mandate is the local, responsible stewardship of a particular people and place; its duty to its own citizens requires prudence.

To defend borders is not to grant nations an absolute moral license. Scripture consistently teaches that all gifts are entrusted for stewardship (Genesis 2:15; Psalm 24:1; 1 Corinthians 4:7; Matthew 25:14-30; Luke 19:11-27; 1 Peter 4:10-11; etc.). This includes balancing obligations to citizens with responsibilities to outsiders. As Biggar argues, a nation has no right to hoard its resources or ignore suffering. Where a nation has surplus capacity, it ought to help—by receiving refugees or providing foreign aid.

Christians can and should affirm the right to migrate. But that right is not absolute. It must be weighed against a nation’s ability to receive, integrate, and sustain newcomers without eroding the social and political conditions that make welcome possible in the first place. Responsible governance requires limits grounded in economic reality, security concerns, and social stability. To deny those limits is not compassion but negligence.

The Israeli-American scholar Yoram Hazony has recently defended the nation and its borders against the homogenizing pressures of empire. Oliver O’Donovan makes a similar case in The Desire of the Nations, where he argues that Scripture critiques imperial “unifying constraints” and commends instead an “internationally plural order” of distinct peoples. Borders sustain that plurality. They are not merely barriers but blessings, protecting the conditions in which peoples, cultures, and ordered communities can endure and flourish.