FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

News

What a rabbi, an imam and a bishop think about Jeff Sessions' zero tolerance policy

"In each of our faith traditions and all faith traditions the goal is not to blindly follow but to search and to really explore, and think, and wrestle, and come up with answers."

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is facing mounting criticism from an unexpected group: fellow members of his church.

More than 600 members of United Methodist Church issued a formal complaint against Sessions three days after he used a passage from the Bible to justify the Trump administration's controversial "zero tolerance" policy against immigrants arriving at the border. Sessions has been an adamant defender of the policy, which has resulted in over 2,000 children being separated from their parents since early May.

Advertisement

Specifically, his fellow church members are charging him with "the misuse of Romans 13 to indicate the necessity of obedience to secular law," among other offenses.

They're far from the only ones criticizing Sessions' use of religion to defend his policy on the border.

VICE News sat down with a bishop, an imam, and a rabbi to discuss Sessions' controversial use of religious text — and how religious doctrine is often abused to advance political interests.

"In each of our faith traditions and all faith traditions, the goal is not to blindly follow but to search and to really explore, and think, and wrestle, and come up with answers," said Rabbi Yael Rapport when asked about the attorney general's use of Romans 13. "I imagine that Sessions used that quote in order to reinforce this idea of hierarchy: that the text is teaching you must follow who's above you."

This segment originally aired June 21, 2018 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.