Americans use the Book of Revelation to talk about immigration, and always have

During a campaign speech in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on October 19, 2024, Donald Trump promised to save the country from immigrants: “I will rescue every people in America that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these cruel, bloodthirsty criminals . to a prison or expel them from our country”.

Portraying immigrants as a threat has been a mainstay of Trump’s message since 2015. And the kinds of terms he uses aren’t just derogatory. It may not seem like it, but Trump continues a long tradition in American politics: using language modeled on the Bible.

When the former president says that those on the border are “poisoning the blood of our country,” “animals” and “rapists,” his vocabulary reflects verses from the New Testament. The Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, says that those who stand outside the city of God are “unclean”; they are “dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood”.

In fact, Americans have been using the Bible for centuries to talk about immigrants, especially those they want to keep out. As a scholar of the Bible and politics, I have studied how the language of Revelation shaped American ideas about who belongs in America, the focus of my book, “Immigration and Apocalypse.”

The shining city

The Book of Revelation describes a vision of the end of the world, when the wicked are punished and the good are rewarded. It tells the story of God’s enemies, who worship the evil sea beast, bear its mark on their bodies and threaten God’s people. Because of their wickedness, they suffer disease, catastrophe, and war until they are finally destroyed in the lake of fire.

God’s followers, however, enter through the gates of the walls that surround the New Jerusalem, a holy city that descends from heaven. God’s chosen people enter through the gates and live in the shining city for eternity.

Throughout the history of the United States, many of its Christian citizens have imagined themselves as God’s saints in the New Jerusalem. Puritan settlers believed they were establishing God’s kingdom, both metaphorically and literally. Ronald Reagan compared the nation to the New Jerusalem, describing America as a “shining city…built on rocks stronger than the oceans, swept by the wind, blessed by God, and filled with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace” , but with city. walls and doors.

Reagan was specifically citing Puritan John Winthrop, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose use of the phrase “city on a hill” cites Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But Reagan’s detailed description closely matches that of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21. Like God’s heavenly city, Reagan’s picture of America also has solid foundations, walls and gates, and people from all nations bring tribute .

Closing the doors

If people imagine the USA as the city of God, it is also easy to imagine enemies who want to invade this city. And this is how unwanted immigrants have been portrayed throughout American history: as enemies of God.

In the 19th century, when virtually all politicians were Protestant, anti-Catholic politicians accused Irish immigrants of bearing the “mark of the beast” and of being loyal to the “Antichrist”: the Pope. They claimed that Irish immigrants could form an unholy army against the nation.

At the turn of the century, “yellow peril” novels against Chinese immigration imagined a heathen horde taking over the United States. At the end of one of these books, China itself is depicted as a satanic “Black Dragon”, forcing its way through the “Duration”. Door” of America.

And all immigrant groups that were unwanted at one time or another have been accused of being “dirty” and diseased, like God’s enemies in Revelation. Italians, Jews, Irish, Chinese and Mexicans were, at some point, considered sick and disease carriers.

In political cartoons of the early 20th century, Eastern European immigrants and Jews were depicted as rats, while Chinese immigrants were depicted as a horde of locusts, echoing images of the ‘Apocalypse, where locusts with human faces swarm the Earth. During COVID-19, an event considered apocalyptic and xenophobic has focused on Asian Americans and migrants at the US-Mexico border.

This constellation of Apocalypse labels (plague, bestial, invasive, sexually corrupt, murderous) has been reused and recycled throughout American history.

“heaven has a wall”

Trump himself has described immigrants as sick, “non-human”, sex offenders, violent and those “who don’t like our religion”.

Others have more explicitly used images from the Apocalypse to talk about immigration. Pastor Robert Jeffress, who preached at Trump’s 2017 inauguration church service, told viewers on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” “God is not against walls, walls are not ‘no Christians’, the Bible says that even heaven will have a wall around it.” The Conservative Political Action Conference held a panel in 2017 titled “If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall, and Extreme Research, Why Can’t America?” There are even bumper stickers that say, “Heaven has a wall and a strict immigration policy / Hell has open borders.”

In fact, Revelation 21 describes the heavenly New Jerusalem with a massive shining wall, “clear as crystal,” with pearls for gates. Trump, similarly, talks about his “big, beautiful door,” set in a “beautiful” massive wall that must also be “transparent.”

The City of God metaphor has long been a tool for American leaders, both to idealize the nation and to warn against immigration. But the concept of a walled city seems increasingly obsolete in a digitally connected global world.

As migration continues to increase around the world due to climate change and conflict, I would argue that these metaphors and the attitudes they drive are not only outdated, but exacerbate the crisis.