A Theology of Immigration

"Still, there are moments when all the atomized outrage can condense and roll, together, in one direction. Such unifying events, these days, tend to require video that can be shared on social media. A horrifying act is caught on camera, and then, in the millions of posts that follow, we clumsily try to work out what feels like a consensus."

"In particular, I've been struck by a refrain that has been repeated, in some form, thousands of times on social media: that because "leftists" celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk, the right no longer has a responsibility to care when someone like Renee Good or Alex Pretti gets shot dead in the street. This is crude, reactive, and memetic, of course, but, what's more, it suggests that the fundamental belief that all human beings were created in the image of God"

American morality has become highly fractured, but moments of collective outrage still emerge when horrifying acts are captured on camera and widely shared on social media. Such videos often produce a shaky national consensus, as millions of posts attempt to interpret and judge what occurred. A common refrain holds that political enemies' celebratory rhetoric justifies indifference to violence against opponents, effectively making human worth conditional on partisan alignment. Screen-mediated, atomized interactions contribute to forgetting the inherent dignity of persons. A reconnection with religiously grounded principles that affirm every human as created in the image of God is presented as necessary to restore care and moral responsibility.

Read at The New Yorker