There it is, in black and white. Thirteen ethnic fellowships within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have officially declared what many of us have been saying all along. When it comes to our nation’s borders, they think enforcement is mean, deportation is cruel, and illegal immigration is basically just a minor paperwork error away from sainthood.

The statement, signed by a parade of SBC “ethnic leaders” and heralded like the eleventh commandment, is a stupendous exercise in leftist jargon dressed up in Southern Baptist Sunday best.

Its central premise? Law and order are fine—provided they don’t actually inconvenience anybody.

“Enforcement must be accompanied with compassion that doesn’t demonize those fleeing oppression, violence, and persecution,” the statement whimpers, careful to avoid the plain truth that not everyone who sneaks across the border is a doe-eyed refugee fleeing the cartel. Some people, brace yourself, just want free stuff.

But don’t worry—the statement makes sure to clarify that they “share the federal government’s desire to protect citizens, promote legal immigration and refugee policies, and robustly safeguard the country’s borders.”

Translation: they support border security like a fox supports henhouse security.

The list of signatories reads like a Who’s Who of Baptist Bureaucratic Bloat. Bruno Molina of the National Hispanic Baptist Network. Victor Chayasirisobhon of the SBC Asian Collective. Gregory Perkins of the National African American Fellowship. Keny Felix of the SBC National Haitian Fellowship. The list goes on, each one tripping over themselves to show how much they love America—provided America doesn’t actually enforce its own laws.

The statement wails about the “threats of mass deportation by the Trump administration” and laments that ICE might (gasp) enforce immigration law near (gasp) a church. This, we’re told, has caused “fear to rise among both the guilty and the innocent.”

Both the guilty and the innocent.

Read that again. Slowly. Let it marinate in your mind like bad guacamole at a Baptist potluck. The guilty are afraid because they broke the law. The innocent are afraid because…they didn’t?

If you’re here legally, what exactly are you afraid of? The statement never says. And how could it? The logic collapses faster than Beth Moore at the Shepherd’s Conference.

Yet, this statement isn’t just whining—it’s a wishlist. It asks that illegal aliens be allowed to “pay a fine and/or other penalty in lieu of deportation.” In other words, turn the border into a toll booth. Pay up, and you too can stay forever.

Now enter Brent Leatherwood, the ever-soft, ever-evasive president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), who couldn’t resist adding his own warm glass of milk to this lukewarm bowl of oatmeal.

“I am grateful these pastors and leaders have put into words the experiences that so many of our fellow Southern Baptist brothers and sisters are living through right now,” Leatherwood coos, as if enforcing federal law is somehow an act of aggression against the faith.

He praises Trump for wanting “people to come to America in the largest numbers ever,” provided they do so legally—while conveniently ignoring that illegally crossing the border is, in fact, a federal crime.

But that’s the genius of this entire charade. It pretends to champion religious liberty while actually championing lawlessness. It wraps border anarchy in the language of evangelism. It recasts deportation—a lawful act of a sovereign nation—as an assault on the church itself.

How fragile is the faith of these people if their congregations are vaporized the moment the law is enforced? How pathetic is this vision of Christianity that it survives only in the shadows of broken borders and unenforced laws?

This is not compassion. It’s cowardice masquerading as courage. It’s pragmatism dressed up as piety. It’s open-borders theology by another name.

And what’s the inevitable result of all this? What happens when America turns a blind eye to its own laws in the name of “compassion”? The very thing these SBC leaders never admit… you don’t turn America into a mission field—you turn it into the very third-world chaos so many of these illegals were supposedly fleeing.

Because a nation without borders isn’t a nation. It’s a bus station. And right now, the SBC leadership looks less like a band of spiritual shepherds and more like the world’s most gullible Uber drivers, shuttling lawbreakers straight into the heart of a nation they seem determined to dismantle.

But hey, at least attendance might go back up.