Jesus’s message was revolutionary for his time. When he taught his followers to treat everyone as a neighbor, he was fighting a prevailing norm in which almost everyone was an outsider to almost everyone else in the world.

Jesus’s parable of the Samaritan was shocking for the time. Nor was it his only teaching about loving the outsider, a theme central to his ministry.

In a world where citizenship was typically limited to the city where you were born, and restricted at that, Jesus’s message of radical inclusion and brotherhood may be what made it so appealing to so many.

It’s startling to see American Christian Trump supporters cheering on anti-immigrant, anti-refugee policies that Jesus would have reviled.

They are exactly what he was teaching against.

I’m saddened and horrified that most American Christian leaders aren’t teaching this. It’s as if in their thrall for Trump, they have forgotten everything Jesus stood for.

Thank you for an excellent article.