SBC addresses immigration, rejects amnesty

First Baptist Church in Owasso, Okla., is a Southern Baptist Convention congregation that offers free English language classes to members of its community. According to pastor Chris Wall, many of the class attendees are immigrants and refugees.

Last week, Wall attended the SBC’s annual meeting in Orlando, Fla. There, he voted in favor of a proposed resolution that some evangelical immigration experts told USA Today marked a departure from previous SBC leaders’ “compassionate, Bible-driven immigration policy” toward a harsher immigration stance.

But Wall saw no contradiction. “The way I interpreted that [resolution] is, ‘Hey, it’s a good way to be a good citizen,’” he said. “I don’t really have a problem with a country having rules—that’s just a wise society.”

At last week’s meeting, SBC delegates adopted a resolution called “On Immigration, Human Dignity, and the Rule of Law.” Attendees told WORLD that representatives of the country’s largest Protestant denomination did their best to articulate a balanced position on immigration. SBC leaders said they tried to affirm both the dignity and humanity of immigrants in the United States and the need for clear immigration rules—and real consequences for those who break them.

The SBC has only rarely addressed the topic of immigration in the proposed resolutions circulated at its annual meetings. The convention has historically maintained an appreciation for the rule of law while also acknowledging the need for compassionate and humane treatment of immigrants.

Much of this year’s resolution did the same: It affirmed that immigrants and refugees are made in the image of God and that the government may enforce immigration laws it deems necessary. The resolution also condemned any racist or ethno-nationalist rhetoric.

But one sentence on the second page of this year’s resolution drew significant attention from outside voices for seemingly signaling a more hard-line approach to immigration policy. “We reject amnesty, understood as forgiveness of legal violations without accountability,” reads the amendment.

Hunter Baker, a WORLD Opinions columnist, chaired the committee that drafted the text of the proposed resolutions for the SBC’s annual meeting this year. He said the committee tried to reflect a consensus among Southern Baptists.

“We needed to not come down in an excessively harsh way or an uncaring or unfeeling way regarding people who are in the country illegally,” Baker said. “We have these people in our churches. And so we needed to be able to kind of address that. And at the same time, we had to address the sense that many Americans have that the situation has been overly chaotic and disruptive.”

Baker added that the committee believed that promoting amnesty would undermine efforts to change the immigration system. “We thought that the system needed to be rationalized and that amnesty basically undercuts every legal immigrant,” Baker told WORLD. “Amnesty is actually a disincentive to follow the existing rules.”

The provision drew some proposed amendments on the convention floor. One stated that any illegal immigrants already in the country must go through the ordinary process of becoming legal immigrants—which, due to recent Trump administration announcements, could mean returning to one’s homeland and trying to reenter the United States legally. The other amendment sought to recognize that individuals brought to the United States illegally as children did not bear the same moral culpability as the adults who brought them.

Matthew Soerens, vice president for advocacy and policy at World Relief, a Christian organization dedicated to assisting refugees, said he approved of and agreed with the SBC’s resolution on immigration and the way delegates worded the final version.

“We’ve always opposed amnesty at World Relief,” Soerens said. The organization primarily advocates for and works to assist refugees—individuals coming into the United States legally. But it has also argued that some individuals who entered the country illegally should be allowed to stay if they pay a heavy fine as a penalty for their unlawful entry, Soerens explained.

“Again, we think there’s some people who need to be deported,” Soerens explained. “If you committed a violent criminal offense, or there’s a public safety concern, that absolutely is appropriate.”

But for some families, deportation might create more problems than it solves—problems that other penalties wouldn’t create.

World Relief and the National Association of Evangelicals last month released a report that found that if the U.S. government deported 1 million illegal immigrants per year for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term, then by early 2029 hundreds of thousands of Americans would see their family units shattered. As many as 910,000 U.S. citizen children could lose one or both of their parents, and 272,000 U.S. citizen spouses could lose their husband or wife.

“When you have families who’ve been here for a really long time and you have mixed-status families—so deporting the father and husband of a family means separating a family—there are just additional consequences to that governmental policy that I think we have to reckon with in terms of the impact on children and then the impact on our economy as well,” Soerens said.

And many Christians, including many Southern Baptists, seem to share the belief that deportation isn’t the only way to address violations of immigration law, Soerens explained. He pointed to research that the SBC’s polling arm, Lifeway Research, conducted last year. The polling, conducted in coordination with World Relief and other Christian organizations, showed that a majority of evangelicals supported allowing individuals who entered the country illegally to stay in the country if they passed a background check, paid a fine, and completed other probationary requirements.

While the SBC’s resolutions are nonbinding—meaning pastors and congregations in the denomination don’t need to affirm them or agree with them to preserve their SBC membership—they do serve as guiding lights for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the SBC’s public policy arm. The ERLC explained that the resolutions passed by the messengers in Orlando would guide its conversations with officials in Washington and elsewhere.

“Scripture teaches that every person is made in the image of God and therefore must be treated with the worth and dignity bestowed by our Creator. At the same time, God has entrusted governing authorities with the responsibility to uphold peace and order, which includes establishing and enforcing just immigration laws,” said Evan Lenow, the president of the ERLC, in a statement provided to WORLD. “We will continue advocating for policies that reflect the heartbeat of Southern Baptists and calling people to take the gospel to people of every ethnicity, both across the street and around the world.”

Daniel Darling, a WORLD Opinions contributor who attended the Orlando convention as a messenger from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, is a fellow at the ERLC. He explained that the SBC’s immigration resolution is, in part, a call to Congress and the White House to craft compassionate immigration policies.

“I think the SBC is saying—most Southern Baptists are saying—that you can love immigrants and be for immigrants, but also understand the government has to have a prudent policy,” Darling said. “And I think it’s also an appeal to Congress, to the White House, to say, hey, let’s create a system that is fair and humane and just, balances the rule of law and compassion.”

Chris Wall from First Baptist Church Owasso said the resolution’s wording isn’t the ultimate measure of his congregation’s—or the SBC’s—views on immigration. He noted that at his church, congregants helping with English classes don’t ask for immigrants’ legal status. “We’re going to help whoever’s in front of us,” Wall said. He added that many other SBC congregations across the country do the same thing.

“Look at the work we do with immigration,” Wall said. “Rather than just a resolution that maybe can be dissected and interpreted in different ways.”