In the Trump era, what defenses of religion are left?

When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Leviticus 19:33–34)

Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt. (Exodus 23:9)

The Bible has plenty to say about being good to immigrants and refugees, and for its most passionate proponents, it is supposed to be the supreme law of the universe. I am reminded of how Kim Davis said “God’s authority” prevented her from issuing marriage licenses to gay people, because to her, no law made by man compared to the laws passed down to us from God.

Luckily there’s a separation of church and state in this country, so we don’t follow laws laid out in novels people really like, so she went to jail. However, it would seem quite hypocritical that people who passionately supported her—the religious right—would shout about how they despise undocumented immigrants for committing the crime of walking past a border created by man when their book says to love those people.

I’ve previously laid out all of the reasons it’s absurd that Trump has been fully embraced by white evangelicals and other Christian groups, but today I come bringing a new question: What defenses of religion are left?

A recent Pew survey found nearly 70 percent of white evangelicals don’t think the U.S. should accept refugees from the most war-torn and desperate places in the world. These are people who invariably are facing death sentences if they do not escape their countries and who it has been shown time and time again are not a risk to our safety. Don’t believe me? How about the Pope? Still no? How about all of the studies that have been done?

When you ask your average person from the religious right why religion is so important, you will often be told that religion helps people be better to one another and more giving generally. If Trump has accomplished anything, it is to completely invalidate that argument. What this group has shown us is that many of them are self-serving, cruel and hypocritical. That is not to say all religious people are this way, but it is becoming increasingly clear far too many are this way. It has become increasingly clear that religion is not a silver bullet for defeating the greed and intolerance held by so many Americans.

What explanation can we come up with for why so many from the religious right show so much contempt for people who simply want to come to this country for safety? If it is simply ignorance, then we can say that their book has not conquered ignorance, and we know it’s not just ignorance. We know it is racism, it is xenophobia and it is many other things their book has also not been able to vanquish. These are things that can only be beaten down through other forms of education and conditioning.

This is not a strictly American problem, as we also see Christian bias against refugees in Europe. It would seem religion has been no match for hate and ignorance all over. In fact, we’ve seen it used as a shield to defend hate repeatedly over the past few years, and before then.

In the Pew survey I referenced earlier, it was found that people with no religious affiliation supported accepting refugees more than any religious group. Around 65 percent support it. Certainly there are non-religious people on both sides of this issue, but apparently even without religion, millions of Americans know to do the right thing. Without the slightest bit of duty to a guardian in the sky, they were able to make a magnanimous decision, while their religious counterparts often were not.

There are many American religious groups currently helping refugees, and they deserve credit where credit is due, but the idea that you’re more likely to be good or accepting in this way if you are religious appears to be fictitious. We are too often seeing religion used as a weapon, rather than a gift. Altruism is not the product of religion, it precedes religion, and often times religion is its enemy.