immigration

The Bible on immigrants

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged ethics immigration religion on by

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)

“You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 24:22)

“You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land.” (Deuteronomy 23:7)

Exhortations like these occur repeatedly in the Pentateuch. The idea was clearly important: People from other countries who have come to Israel and Judah should be treated by the same standards as natives. They shouldn’t be oppressed. Christian nationalists think otherwise, though I’ve never heard them explain why.
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Yearning to Breathe Free

This entry was posted in History Music and tagged history immigration music YouTube on by

In my latest YouTube video, Yearning to Breathe Free, I try something new. Rather than accompanying an existing silent film, I’ve created a ten-minute history of immigration to the US in still images and added my improvised accompaniment. It’s been a learning experience in a lot of ways. First was the selection of images to combine into a coherent story. It consists of several sequences, each covering a different historical period from 1607 to the present. The first version didn’t make the structure nearly clear enough. Thanks to Virginia Taylor for catching this problem. I thought about inserting a summary before each segment and adding captions and ended up doing both. Then there was the timing. Before adding the music, the pacing felt slow, yet some images hold a lot of text, and test viewers didn’t always spot the important parts in time. I lengthened the time for some images and drew visual attention to the important text in one image.
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