Dr. Danny Carroll from Wheaton College joins Mark and Rex to discuss his book The Bible and Borders: Hearing God's Word on Immigration in preparation for his lecture at Jessup's Faculty of Theology Annual Spring Lecture.

TRANSCRIPT

0:02

Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore, and your co host Rex Gurney. And on the show today we have Dr. Danny Carroll. Dr. Danny Carroll is the scripture press ministries professor of biblical studies and pedagogy at Wheaton College. He's the author of numerous books, and the one we'll be focusing on in this episode is the Bible and borders, hearing God's Word on immigration.

0:26

I hope you all appreciate the fact that we're going directly to the evangelical mecca for our podcast. Now we're upping our game.

0:33

That's right. And we're excited about this topic, because it's so important. And Dr. Carroll is also going to be our special guest lecturer this year for our faculty theologies annual spring lecture series. You can join us Thursday, February 11, for the virtual lecture, check out jessup.edu for more information, hope you enjoy the show.

1:00

Fun, Danny, and thank you so much for joining us on the show. And for being our special guest lecturer this spring, we're really excited for the lecture. Even if it is virtual, we're kind of getting used to the virtual part of it. But we're really excited because it's such such an important topic. And I love the kind of the new book we're going to be looking at with yours is the Bible and borders, and I love the subtitle, hearing God's Word on immigration. That's how we can maybe start with that broad question that could lead us and maybe a lot of different directions. But what does the Bible have to say about immigration?

1:44

Well, a lot. I mean, that's why I wrote the book. Yes, so you want this in 25 words or less.

1:53

But actually, there's more in the Bible and what's in the book, I mean, so there's a lot. And when I first got into this over a decade ago, I didn't know what I was going to find. I didn't go in with any particular agenda. I'm half Guatemalan, and there's a story behind how I got into the whole immigration piece. But I went to the Bible, I'm an old testament Prof. To see what the Bible might have to say. And the more I got into it, the more I began to see that it was all over the place. Really, in both testaments. Beginning in Genesis chapter one, all the way through the New Testament and the epistles and how the church was, was birthed and grown. And even some of the epistles are responding to those kinds of issues. And, of course, you know, even Revelation, this isn't really in the book, but revelation. I mean, John's on Patmos, I mean, he's displaced, from beginning to end, it just it it covers the whole waterfront, so to speak. So getting people to see it as a challenge. And then once they see it, you know, getting them to kind of maybe reorient their thinking about it is the is the next challenge.

3:15

Right. Yeah. Because I wanted, what's interesting is that, I think, especially in American politics, we talk a lot about how the Bible should influence our policies and legislation. But in in some of these areas, it seems like we like you were saying that the harder part is actually getting people to see that scripture does have something to say, say about this, and, and speaks to it and kind of helping them hear that and really dive into that.

3:45

Yeah, what I found is that most people in the how they understand their faith, it's very individualistic and personal. And of course, the culture tries to push you that way anyway, right, keep the public square. But what that does is, oftentimes, is that when people get to the bigger social issues, because they're not used to thinking about their faith, or the Bible, along those lines, their positions, whether left or right, I see both are actually determined by their party affiliation, instead of the other way aro