Why hasn’t Trump’s refugee policy repelled his Christian supporters?

Intervening millennia have offered no shortage of opportunities to care for strangers who are hungry, thirsty, sick, or otherwise destitute, rather than turning them away. Christian charities are often at the forefront of such efforts. The UN Refugee Agency now estimates 68.5 million displaced people worldwide, including 25.4 million refugees—roughly half children—and 3.1 million asylum seekers.

If Trump’s coalition believes the U.S. cannot possibly absorb all of them—that even God would not want so many people welcomed into the life raft that it sank, to invoke an analogy oft-used by immigration restrictions—it seems equally clear that the levels of refugee absorption the U.S. sustained for decades were eminently sustainable. Yet Trump and his supporters—a coalition its churchgoers can make or break—have the distinction of planning to help tens of thousands fewer strangers in urgent need than any governing coalition in modern history.

To the question, “Why remain part of that particular coalition?” one suspects that Jesus would demand an answer better than “But Gorsuch.”