Exodus 1:8–2:10
The great liberation narrative of the Exodus begins with immigrants unjustly oppressed.
The Israelites, foreigners to the land of Egypt, have been living there peacefully until they are seen as a threat by a new pharaoh who fears that they are too numerous and powerful.
This language resonates precisely with what we hear in political arguments about immigration today. Foreigners are seen as a “threat” to our culture. Their loyalty is seen as suspect (perhaps, Pharaoh says, “they will join our enemies and fight against us”). As we see our government use the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants, this language feels relevant. But the fears of Pharaoh have been a longstanding influence on immigration policy, not only restricted to one administration.
How many of the concerns about immigration over the past few decades have really been about the fear that “they” will outnumber “us”? Whether this is phrased in explicitly racial terms, in terms of fears about “assimilation” or “culture,” or in terms of economic risk (“they’re taking jobs from Americans”), the same logic is at play.
This is the logic of fear that Pharaoh is operating from: what if “they” outnumber “us” and threaten “us”? It is for this reason that he “deals shrewdly” with the Israelite people by oppressing and enslaving them.
The Exodus narrative shows us clearly that God is on the side of the oppressed, the stranger and foreigner in the land, the migrant. Whether the fear is expressed in the words of Pharaoh or in the anti-immigrant arguments of our own time, God rejects that fearful way of being and always, always, upholds the dignity of the oppressed stranger.
Hannah Bowman is a member of the Episcopal Migration Caucus who lives in Los Angeles, the founder of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, and the author of Abolition Ecclesiology: A Spatial Theology for a Church Against Prisons (forthcoming from Fortress Press in November 2026)