(RNS) — Longtime activist and anti-poverty advocate the Rev. William Barber is challenging House Speaker Mike Johnson to a theological debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, taking up the Republican congressman’s open-ended offer earlier this week to discuss the topic “with anybody at any time they want to.”
Barber made the challenge during a Thursday (Feb. 5) interview for “Complexified,” a Religion News Service podcast created in partnership with Iliff Institute for Religion, Politics & Culture. The episode will be released Monday.
“I want to have that debate with him,” Barber told “Complexified” host the Rev. Amanda Henderson.
Barber’s challenge came after Johnson was asked during a press scrum on Wednesday to respond to criticism of Trump’s immigration policies levied by Pope Leo. Like his predecessor, Pope Francis, Leo has directly criticized Trump’s immigration policies on multiple occasions: In November, he cited Matthew 25:35 while expressing concern about the president’s approach to immigration, noting that Jesus “says very clearly, at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, ‘how did you receive the foreigner?’”
However, Johnson, a Southern Baptist who spent years working for the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, offered a different interpretation on Wednesday. While acknowledging the Bible calls on believers to “welcome the sojourner,” he insisted the command is “an admonition to individuals, not to the civil authorities.” He argued that Romans 13 describes civil authorities as “agents of wrath to bring punishment upon the wrongdoer,” and that “assimilati …