Why do we have countries? Why do we mark this land and these people as distinct from that land and those people? What are countries for? Yii-Jan Lin (Associate Professor of New Testament, Yale Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse, which traces the development of distinctly American ideas about the meaning of a country, its borders, and crossing those borders through immigration—exploring how the biblical book of Revelation has influenced our modern geopolitical map. Together they discuss the eschatological vision of Christopher Columbus; the Puritanical founding of New Haven, Connecticut to be the New Jerusalem; Ronald Reagan’s America as “City on a Hill”; the politics of COVID; the experience of Asian American immigrants in the 19th century; and how scripture shapes the American imagination in surprising and sometimes troubling ways. About Yii-Jan Lin Yii-Jan Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. She specializes in immigration, textual criticism, the Revelation of John, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality. Her book *Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration* (Yale University Press 2024), focuses on the use of Revelation in political discourse surrounding American immigration—in conceptions of America as the New Jerusalem and of unwanted immigrants as the filthy, idolatrous horde outside the city walls. Her book The Erotic Life of Manuscripts (Oxford 2016), examines how metaphors of race, family, evolution, and genetic inheritance have shaped the goals and assumptions of New Testament textual criticism from the eighteenth century to the present. Professor Lin has been published in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Early Christianity, and TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism. She is co-chair of the Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation section of the Society of Biblical Literature, on the steering committee for the Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium, and on the steering committees for the New Testament Textual Criticism and the Bible in America sections of SBL. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Professor Lin is a member of the Society of Asian Biblical Studies, the European Association of Biblical Studies, and an elected member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Show Notes Get your copy of *Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration, by* Yii-Jan Lin Illustration: “John of Patmos watches the descent of New Jerusalem from God in a 14th-century tapestry”—modified and collaged by Evan Rosa Christopher Columbus’s eschatological vision The Book of Revelation and the heavenly city The meaning of “apocalypse” New Haven as New Jerusalem John Davenport (April 9, 1597 – May 30, 1670) was an English Puritan clergyman and co-founder of the American colony of New Haven. Ronald Reagan and America as a “shining city on a hill” America as God’s city Revelation 21, The New Jerusalem “A door that’s always open” 1983 as the “Year of the Bible” Exclusion, open gates, and America’s immigration policy Hospitality Outside the gates “For some reason, the seer doesn't see just an open landscape. He sees these definite walls and definite gates, even though they're open.” The book of deeds and the book of life Bureaucracy, and entry and exclusion into heaven The Good Place What was immigration like in the Greco-Roman world? Citizenship lists, registrations, and ways of keeping people out “If Heaven Has a Gate, a Wall, and Extreme Vetting, Why Can't America?“ Steve King's tweet in 2019, “Heaven Has a Wall, a Gate, and Strict Immigration Policy, Hell Has Open Borders.” Disease and exclusion (COVID-19) Disease came from colonizers “Disease as a divine act to clear the land” Chinese exclusion from America Mexican exclusion from America ICE was created to enforce laws explicitly excluding Chinese immigrants Film: An American Tail “The British Invasion” China, Enemy of the West, and the Dragon of Revelation 12 Buddha and the dragon vs the whore of Babylon riding a beast “Do American political ideas about immigration start to frame American theological imaginations about the world to come?” God’s kingdom and “Empire” Fears that feed from theological to political registers “What should a Christian posture towards contemporary questions of immigration be?” Xenophobia and fear of the stranger Finality and satisfaction The theological error of identifying America with the New Jerusalem Production Notes This podcast featured Yii-Jan Lin Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa Hosted by Evan Rosa Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Zoë Halaban, and Kacie Barrett A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give
Why do we have countries? Why do we mark this land and these people as distinct from that land and those people? What are countries for? Yii-Jan Lin (Associate Professor of New Testament, Yale Divinity School) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse, which traces the development of distinctly American ideas about the meaning of a country, its borders, and crossing those borders through immigration—exploring how the biblical book of Revelation has influenced our modern geopolitical map.
Together they discuss the eschatological vision of Christopher Columbus; the Puritanical founding of New Haven, Connecticut to be the New Jerusalem; Ronald Reagan’s America as “City on a Hill”; the politics of COVID; the experience of Asian American immigrants in the 19th century; and how scripture shapes the American imagination in surprising and sometimes troubling ways.
About Yii-Jan Lin
Yii-Jan Lin is Associate Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. She specializes in immigration, textual criticism, the Revelation of John, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality. Her book *Immigration and Apocalypse: How the Book of Revelation Shaped American Immigration* (Yale University Press 2024), focuses on the use of Revelation in political discourse surrounding American immigration—in conceptions of America as the New Jerusalem and of unwanted immigrants as the filthy, idolatrous horde outside the city walls.
Her book The Erotic Life of Manuscripts (Oxford 2016), examines how metaphors of race, family, evolution, and genetic inheritance have shaped the goals and assumptions of New Testament textual criticism from the eighteenth century to the present.
Professor Lin has been published in journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Early Christianity, and TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism. She is co-chair of the Minoritized Criticism and Biblical Interpretation section of the Society of Biblical Literature, on the steering committee for the Ethnic Chinese Biblical Colloquium, and on the steering committees for the New Testament Textual Criticism and the Bible in America sections of SBL. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature. Professor Lin is a member of the Society of Asian Biblical Studies, the European Association of Biblical Studies, and an elected member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas.
Show Notes
Production Notes
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu.
Yii-Jan Lin: So Ronald Reagan picks up famously the phrase shining city on a hill, and then really starts using it a lot in his political speeches. He's invoking a few things. One is this origin myth of the Puritans that taps into an American understanding of itself. And he uses himself as a pilgrimage, as holy place, as a new start for those who are in exile.
But he also uses Shining City on a Hill from those roots to depict America as God's city. In his farewell speech to the nation in 1989, he's describing what he sees when he has used the term Shining City on a Hill. And he basically gives a description that is parallel to Revelation 21 of the New Jerusalem.
And he talks about strong foundations. There's a wall, but there's a door that's always open, just like the gates are always open. Teaming with people and commerce, like the kings of the earth coming in and the people coming in bringing the glory of the nations like tribute and wealth, almost exactly parallel to what's being described in Revelation 21.
Matt Croasmun: This is For the Life of the World. I’m Matt Croasmun with the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. My family and I were traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday, visiting family in Southern California, which involved some time across the border in Mexico. And in our more than three hour wait at the border coming back to the United States, our daughter asked a really stark question.
Why do we have countries? Like, why do we mark this land and these people as distinct from that land and those people? Like, what's it for? I think you might like chuckle at that question, but It's actually pretty hard to answer. How would you actually answer it, right? I mean, her questions took me back to a conversation that I had recently with my Yale colleague, Yii-Jan Lin.
Her new book, Immigration and Apocalypse, traces the development of distinctly American ideas about immigration and borders and the ways that those ideas weave in and out of themes from the biblical book. I don't know about you, but revelation isn't the first thing I think about when I think about immigration, or for that matter, our geopolitical map.
But the book makes a good case that these are more connected than we might think at first. My conversation with Professor Lin, who I know as JanJan, Ranges from Christopher Columbus to Puritans who believed they were founding the new Jerusalem, to Ronald Reagan, to the politics of COVID, to the experience of Asian American, particularly Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.
She raises important questions about who we are as Americans and how scripture shapes our imaginations in surprising and sometimes troubling ways. Thanks for listening today.
JanJan, it's so great to have you with us.
Yii-Jan Lin: Thanks for having me.
Matt Croasmun: This book tells a really important story about the ways that, that the American imagination about immigration has been formed by maybe at first, like what struck me as a sort of surprising text of the apocalypse, the apocalypse of John, the book of revelation.
And so you tell this long story about how the imagery of the book of revelation shapes American ideas about immigration. And I suppose that story, as you tell it, seems to begin with America imagining itself. as the New Jerusalem. I wonder if you could just tell us a bit, like, how did that come about?
There's a role for Christopher Columbus, if I remember correctly, right?
Yii-Jan Lin: Right. So that is a, just a wild part of the story in that Columbus, when he set sail, had this idea that he was going to be in Catalyst IV, the eschaton for the end of the world in that he could find paradise or the original lands that he believed lay in the far east.
So he's going to circle the globe and bring back the treasures he found there in order to fund a crusade to take back Jerusalem. And once that was fulfilled, he also would reach different lands that had peoples that needed to be converted, which was the other part of the prophecy. And so, you know, to have people of all languages and nations.
convert. And so he, I mean, in the strangest, most catastrophic and also coincidental thing, he found land, right? So because it appeared at that moment, it just had this apocalyptic, momentous feeling. Also, of course, for the rest of Europe and the explorers as well of this, what is this land and understanding it in that theological sense led to a lot of the ideation of what this land would be.
Matt Croasmun: You used the word apocalyptic, and I suppose I used the word apocalypse even in, in, in framing the question that, that word gets thrown around maybe in like blockbuster movies or something like that, or it is when we think about that, but how do you mean the term? Um, when, when you think about this work,
Yii-Jan Lin: I think about it in both senses.
Oh, I mean, there are multiple senses, but in the two main senses I think of is one and a popular level and thinking about something disastrous or catastrophic, the way we think about zombie apocalypse, but also in the term, Though we understand in the ancient Greek of thinking of revelation of something this divine that is revealed and specifically in the Apocalypse of John, the revelation of that particular vision for overthrowing of enemies of God.
And then the realization of God's kingdom, which is, you know, the heaven, heavenly city descending and a new world really coming into
Matt Croasmun: So are the, for Columbus, then are, are these lands literally unveiled, I guess, as a sort of apocalypsis? Yeah, I mean, he
Yii-Jan Lin: really thought he was reaching the far East and the highest point of paradise.
And then that, of course, paradise gets conflated in. This sort of otherworldly way with understanding of, you know, heavenly city, um, heaven and those sorts of ideas and utopia, which were all part of, you know, in the mix for thinking about what becomes America as its history grows from there.
Matt Croasmun: And you tell the story of New Haven, which of course, for those of us at Yale is of particular interest.
How does New Haven imagine itself? Or how do the, how does Davenport imagine New Haven as a, as this new Jerusalem?
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah. So when Davenport was urged to come to colonies and to establish a place there, uh, he was told that it was going to be like God's kingdom. I mean, it was seen as a way for these Puritans to establish church governance and civic governance, really an understanding of what would be holy and what would be set apart.
And that was really Davenport's goal as he and other city founders were establishing New Haven and thinking about it. as a place that could replicate God's kingdom and particularly the New Jerusalem. So he uses New Jerusalem as a metaphor to think about congregational purity and who can be allowed in and not, who are the on the outside seem like the elect.
And then also on a very practical level, I call it apocalyptic urban planning, where he builds this nine square city and an imitation, I believe, to the measurements of Ezekiel's temple and also in the same scheme that we find for different Israelite encampments. It's a square place with 12 squares around the outline of that square.
And so also in, in the New Jerusalem description in Revelation 21. So he really down to the, the planning of the city limits and the households around the outside, the center of worship, which is now still the center church on the green as the place of worship in the middle, mimicking that heavenly vision.
Matt Croasmun: And then falling through, I mean, this first chapter is just so fascinating as you tell the story. Eventually we get all the way to Ronald Reagan. How's Ronald Reagan, how's Ronald Reagan imagining the, at that point, I suppose, not just a single city, right? But at this point now we get the entire nation imagine it's a new Jerusalem.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah. So Ronald Reagan picks up famously the phrase shining city on a hill and he traces that back to Winthrop. Abram Van Angen has written a book, City on a Hill, and which traces the use of that phrase. It kind of dropped out of circulation for a while until it was brought up again in the 1900s, I want to say 1950s.
And then Ronald Reagan really starts using it a lot in his political speeches. And he's invoking a few things. One is this origin myth of the Puritans that kind of. taps into an American understanding of itself as a pilgrimage, as holy place, as a new start for those who are in exile. Um, but he also uses Shining City on a Hill from those roots to depict America as God's city.
Um, and his farewell speech to the nation in 1989, he's describing what he sees when he has used the term shining city on a hill. And he basically gives a description that is parallel to Revelation 21 of the New Jerusalem. He talks about strong foundations. There's a wall, but there is a door that's always open, just like the gates are always open, even though they exist in the New Jerusalem.
Talks about it teeming with people and commerce, like the kings of the earth coming in and the people coming in, bringing the glory of the nations, like tribute and wealth. So, Almost, you know, exactly parallel to what's being described in Revelation 21. So he's also tapping into, as the great evangelical leader at the time, I mean, not, you know, seen as a promised leader for that particular group.
Speaking directly into a biblical context, I would say as a wink in that way to that part of his constituents.
Matt Croasmun: Yeah. You talk about there's 1983 was declared by some of these folks, the year of the Bible. And so there's a lot of sort of, at least aspired for sort of biblical literacy and therefore, and with a sort of political such a, I guess, Reagan might have, may have a ready audience to sort of hear these various sorts of resonance and hear these things.
Yeah. I mean, you've mentioned right there, one of the tensions. which is that, uh, in revolution 21, we have the gates are always, the gates are perpetually open. They're open all day and there is no night. So the gates are all, are always open. And yet that's not the story of America's immigration policy.
It's not even, you know, necessarily part of, I mean, maybe when it comes to trade, that's part of Reagan's sort of political vision, but not when it comes to sort of immigration policy itself. In fact, you conclude that the primary elements of the metaphor of America as the new Jerusalem are its exclusion of those deemed unclean, its contradictory processes for entry and naturalization and the walls and gates as its borders.
How does exclusion end up so central, given that the text of Revelation 21, as I said, describes these perpetually open gates?
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah, so rhetorically, and I would say politicians use this all the time too, is the sense of open gates and it's never shut and God is present is to give a sense of hospitality, right?
To convey that, you know, people are welcome, people are comforted, it's a refuge, God is there. That's a great, Symbol and metaphor of hope that also is used and co opted in American rhetoric regarding itself by politicians to talk about, you know, it is a, you know, quoting the Emma Lazarus poem, right? It's a refuge for those who are coming to this nation.
to escape, to find a new home, et cetera. But at the same time, and what's running truth throughout all of the book of Revelation, right? The rest of the entire story is that God's enemies need to be kept out and God's enemies need to be destroyed ultimately. What's really odd about Chapter 22, which comes after the descent of the new Jerusalem is that you still have description, even though the lake of burning fire has already supposedly consumed all the people who are judged, you know, enemies, God, there's still people lurking outside the city, as far as the chapter runs in chapter 22, where you have outside are the dogs and the idolaters and the fornicators and those who practice falsehood, et cetera.
So there's still a sense of a barrier that's necessary that there's, you know, I don't, for some reason, the seer doesn't see just an open landscape, right? He sees these definite walls and definite gates, even though they're open. And I would say the same is true of American rhetoric of immigration is speaking of hospitality, but at the same time, implicit in that is the flip side of enemies of this place, enemies of God's city, aka God City.
America, that need to be kept out and described in exactly those terms as animals, as sexual and moral, as violent, et cetera.
Matt Croasmun: You provocatively then take up, um, some of that language in Revelation 20 and 22, as you said, um, pointing out the sort of bureaucratic nature of the accounts in, in the, in, in the text of Revelation itself, these books of, of deeds and book of life and, and so then becomes the sort of, I don't know, is that, is this the, this is the immigration role or the sort of list of those who can be admitted?
How did those scenes become the basis for sort of American bureaucratic exclusion?
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah, that, I have to say that those chapters are my favorite because it was just so interesting to think about entry and exclusion to heaven and how that can be a bureaucracy and thinking about these heavenly books. So in Revelation 20 at the judgment of the dead books are opened, right?
And this is this like bureaucratic scene. And when we, before we entered into the new Jerusalem and the books are opened and then another book has brought out the book of life and we're told that deeds, et cetera, are recorded in the books that are opened. And then there's this other book of life of the lamb.
And these are, you know, symbols, tropes that are used in Jewish apocalyptic in many different apocalyptic literature that we have. So we have different books of deeds or ways of describing the book of life. Sometimes you have an angel continuously writing down what everybody's doing on earth, and that's put in this gigantic volume.
I think it's the Testament of Abraham in which that But here we have these two books, and what's interesting about Revelation, because it describes God's kingdom in these explicit terms, it's been used as an understanding of how to understand if we're going to use, you know, God's kingdom as a model of civic life on earth.
So it has a genealogical relationship to the ways that one thinks about admission and exclusion, um, in different ways. And heavenly bureaucracy has become also a trope in popular culture life, where we think of the good place or, you know, other TV shows and movies in which, you know, St. Peter's at the gate, or they have to look through the files.
So this is already a live thing, right? Very oddly. And it's also happening, I would argue, in American immigration policy through its history from the very, from when it's a colonial understanding of, um, pretty much open immigration, but things that need to be done and lists that have to be kept to think about why we need to keep lists, what records matter.
So that's a really interesting thing to think about too. But the main thing is that. There are really contradictory things at play in the Book of Deeds and the Book of Life, and those play out, I would argue, also in American immigration, where you have, on the one hand, a Book of Deeds, which is the So, it's implying that what you do can merit entry or it can keep you from entry.
Right? So it could merit either exclusion or entry. And then there's a book of life that's just a list of names. Right? So it's like, why? And that seems to be destiny because it's from the foundations of the world. And from the very beginning, you can be. Struck out of it. It never seems to say that you can be added to it, so, so this is of course the classic Christian question of election and deeds.
It, you know, works. And so again, also in American life, right? You can do many things to try to say, you know, I'm a good person. I don't commit any crimes I enter by these particular ways. But whether your name is on the book of life, I would argue is sometimes determined definitely by destiny. That is whether you were born white, whether you're coming from a particular country.
And those two things are in contradiction to each other as well.
Matt Croasmun: Yeah. And of course, as you point out, the, there's a, that Christian anxiety is my name written in the book of life comes in especially reformed sorts of theological traditions, right. It has its roots. Way back at the beginning of American self imagination and religiosity with the Puritans and the sort of anxiety, you know, am I, is my name in the book of life and your account of this sort of bureaucratic scene and reading it onto, or reading our immigration system onto it and back and forth mutually sort of reading these two things together is really, really enlightening.
But you intriguingly suggest in the introduction of the book that you think that this would have been, this would have read also to ancient readers. as a scene of immigration, this, cause there's, I guess I gather because it's just, there's city walls and, and there is this sort of journey to a, to a new place.
And it made me all of a sudden wonder, wait, what was immigration like in the Roman world? I guess I've always imagined, I don't know, Paul seems to be traveling relatively freely. The seer himself, at least on some accounts was maybe a Judean follower of Jesus. Traveled to the Greek around the Greek East.
I always imagine rather easy travel. What was, how should we be imagining immigration in the Greco Roman context?
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah, I mean, I think obviously they don't have the same systematized, you know, overall way of Checking for identity, you know, all of those things were not in place in a systematic way. There were definitely citizenship lists.
I don't think that they were used particularly in the same way, but as we see, you know, of checking for entry and exclusion, but there certainly were people who are escaping. famine, people who are escaping different crises, plague, et cetera. And then walls for in particular to keep people out as a defensive way of handling that.
And of course also invasion, I think would be the bigger thing, which of course I think is tapping into, I think what the rhetoric is using is not necessarily just migration, but viewing this as an invasion, as a militaristic kind of understanding. Um, so yeah, I would say in the ancient context, it's different, but you still can.
There are records, there are documents and lists and registration of some sort and travel to escape from particular situations and seeking shelter. In those ways, I think that would be recognizable in the movement from what's happening on earth, the old earth that is basically destroyed and then traveling into this new Jerusalem.
And then of course, there is the explicit citizenship list of the book of life of the lamb that, you know, is showing you what the citizenry is or should be in the new Jerusalem.
Matt Croasmun: You give, uh, you make vivid connections to very contemporary moments. You have just this title of this CPAC, conservative political action conference panel.
If heaven has a gate, a wall and extreme vetting, why can't America or Steve King's tweet in 2019, heaven has a wall or gate and strict immigration policy. Hell has open borders. I think it's often easy for me to imagine, oh, these are almost quaint, or at least they feel rather distant. Okay, so we are Puritan, you know, the, you know, ancestors or first or earlier settlers have this ideology, but it seems to be rather contemporary.
And I guess given our experience in the last five years, I was especially struck by your discussion of disease and exclusion. Because in that sense, even as you're describing, and there are, there's like a centuries long history of anxiety about disease around, American Immigration Policy. The whole time you're describing that just feels so so current because we sort of know where it's going.
I wonder if you could tell us a little bit of that story of how America has believed for a long time that infection comes from dangerous forces outside the walls.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah. Well, what's interesting is it wasn't always the case, right? So in the very beginning, when the immigrants were the colonizers, right, then disease is not their fault, although it very much is, right?
Um, because they are the ones bringing smallpox and other diseases to what they call the new world. It's the help
Matt Croasmun: of, it's the help of God for them. Exactly. Yeah. So
Yii-Jan Lin: they, you know, they land and then, I mean, the indigenous populations and the places they reach are just. decimated by the new diseases that these immigrants introduced.
But of course, we don't talk about the Puritans as immigrants, even though they are, or other colonists as immigrants, but they very much are. And they're the ones bringing new diseases to the land, but they understand it as a justification, a divine act to wipe the land clear. And they even talk about it as the sword of the Lord or as clearing of the new land to make room for better growth, right?
Those are quotations from the colonists themselves, understanding this divine plan for their new Jerusalem that they're going to establish. Later on, of course, when they see themselves as the natives of the land, then the Newcomers then become the threat and they are viewed as specifically enemies of God and bearing plague and disease.
And then this evolves into, you know, particular ethnic groups being associated with certain diseases. And that travels through the Irish being associated with cholera or Italians and Jews being associated with the plague. Things like tuberculosis or typhoid or other types of diseases. And then, but I would say one of the ones that is longest lasting and would be seen in the last five years is first thinking about the Chinese as especially diseased and spreading the plague.
And of course we see that recently, right? So this was at the end of the 19th century into the 20th. But then of course, now in COVID with the rise in anti Asian hate across the country, And what's interesting is that once the Chinese were excluded by immigration laws, that vilification turned onto Mexicans at the southern border at the beginning of the 20th century of there being particularly diseased, especially with typhoid.
Um, and we see that exact same move recycled in COVID, where you have the blame of Asian peoples, in the United States. And of course, also in China with the concentration on the Wuhan virus, as it's often called. And then when that is changing and the political needs and urgencies are changing in America for many speaking of the border and of caravans, et cetera, then the Delta virus or Delta strain of the virus is blamed on those at the Southern border, right?
So from Latin America. And so you see the exact same moves on. That are really politically expedient to attach disease and play onto particular ethnic groups that are unwanted.
Matt Croasmun: And I mean, as you are right there in the book, you highlight particularly the experience of Asian, particularly Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.
You try to sort out for us our, our timeline. You talk about a sort of racialized timeline that imagines that first came the Anglos and the white Northern Europeans and only later, and that's not the order. And you. It is striking because I think often the Chinese immigrant experience is not always the first to come to mind when we think of immigration in the United States.
But as you tell the story, perhaps it should be or should be among the first experiences come to our mind. You say, for example, that the government entity that eventually becomes ICE was created to enforce laws explicitly excluding Chinese immigrants. What would you want our listeners to know about that experience?
I think there's a sort of knowledge gap for many Americans in sort of understanding our own national history with respect to immigration when it comes to the experience of Asian and Chinese Americans in particular.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah. So I would say you're exactly right. There is a There's an implicit racial chronology and the imagination of what American immigration history is like, where you have first the colonists, and then you have all the rest from, you know, European countries coming.
And it's the Ellis Island story. It's the, I can't even remember the name of the movie, you know, Fievel the mouse arrives, you know, he's coming from Eastern Europe. Anyways, an
Matt Croasmun: American tale,
Yii-Jan Lin: American tale. That's right. Um, I mean, I think that those are the quintessential, that was the early immigration. And then came the really different people, right?
The people from Asia and that came, you know, later, but actually that's not true where you have. Chinese immigrants coming in the middle of the 19th century in 1850 and increasing in population slowly in the west part of the nation. And it's only later that you have Scandinavians coming in larger number.
And of course you have British coming this entire time and they come in much, much greater numbers. in the end of the 19th to the 20th century. And so it doesn't follow what's usually seen as, oh, well, first we have what is most like our original kind of people. And then it gets, you know, more and more different.
There's an understanding of dissipation or degeneration in a way of speaking from an originary, point of purity, but that's actually not the story of American immigration. And also, you know, who gets talked about as immigrants. We don't talk about the threat of a British invasion or the British are taking our jobs.
We don't think, well, the British may be loyal to their crown. And so they're going to come and we need to put them in internment camps. Like that, that discussion never happens. Right. The
Matt Croasmun: British invasion is a great cultural moment when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones come. Exactly.
Yii-Jan Lin: Versus, of course, the Chinese hordes.
These are the heathens. They're taking over. They're going to spread disease. You know, they're basically prostitutes if they are women. So that's the general, you know, and then of course that moves on to, you know, Mexican and then Latin American immigrants as well, who become quintessential ideas of immigration and very much so today.
Matt Croasmun: But in the story of Chinese immigration, the revelation again shows the figure of the dragon in Revelation 12. I did not know, yeah, I didn't know much of this story. So I wonder if you could tell, like, how does the figure of the dragon in Revelation 12 kind of be associated? How does, yeah, because again, it's interesting, the revelation again intersects the story that you're telling.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah. So, yeah. It is interesting to see, especially in the political cartoons that are being drawn at the time of depictions of China as this enemy of the West and also of Japan as their economy and commerce is rising and being seen as a threat in Europe as well. So there is the beginnings of this phenomena.
of Yellow Peril, and which is, you know, caricaturizing nations, peoples, countries in the East in particular ways as going to encroach upon white European and American land, culture, et cetera. And so it begins with, uh, oh, it doesn't begin, but it includes novels. It includes political cartoons. It includes different tropes in political discourse of thinking about the heathen horde coming and taking over.
There are novels that are written about the conquering of The United States by China by infiltrating the workers in the West. And then, you know, they fly the flag of the dragon or is it there's pictures of China as a big black dragon. And this is always in dragons in Western imagination where they're breathing fire and they're standing basing down uncle Sam, for example, as versus the Chinese understanding of a dragon or a long, which of course has overlapped, but it's quite a different kind of character.
So there's, you know, um, A, a co-optation of that for a a, an apocalyptic view of who these Asian nations are, which is definitely God's enemies and those who are gonna invade
Matt Croasmun: One of the cartoon cartoons you interpret also depicts China with use the figure of the Buddha. I never thought of the Buddha is all that threatening
Right. A figure. Yeah. Right. But I hadn't seen him drawn by 19th century American political cartoonist. But I wonder, to what extent do you think this is also about religious difference? Because it was interesting to see that sort of religious figure invoked there.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah, well, so that one is actually by a German, uh, cartoonist, but it becomes circulated in the United States as this yellow peril.
But yeah, the. Buddha is that the Buddha in that picture, although you can't see it very well in the book, cause the picture's not large enough, but if you blow it up, it's sitting on a dragon. And so it's very much, and I see this, I think of this as somewhat related to the depiction of the whore of Babylon and who is seated on a beast.
you know, the orientalization, uh, of the East and of Asian countries and of thinking of, you know, Chinese as particularly given to opium smoking, thanks to the British and, you know, sexually depraved or corrupting. And, you know, at once the West wants the goods from the East. porcelain silks and all these things, but they also come to represent what is decadent and effete, et cetera, very similar to the whore of Babylon and understanding that as, you know, the scarlet robes and the, you know, the goblet full of abominations, et cetera.
So there's that religious posing of China as all of these things represented by the whore of Babylon in revelation, I would say.
Matt Croasmun: That's a difficult history. That's not, that's not fun reading, but it's important history. And I'm really grateful for you telling it in, in the book. Listeners should know, of course, we've only been able to scratch the surface here. There's much more. I read, I wonder, you know, there are moments in the book where it seems to go in this direction.
I wonder if I, if ideas of eschatological, that is eschatological judgment at the end of all things, comes to frame American ideas of immigration and exclusion, does it run the other way around? Do American political ideas about immigration start to frame American theological imaginations about the world to come?
Yii-Jan Lin: That's interesting. I don't know about that direction. It would be interesting to think about how our own understanding of wanting a nation, I mean, but in some ways it's circular, right? Because we're beginning with first century understanding of empire and then God's kingdom and God's empire, and then coming down into American understandings of that and then re I don't know, supporting a certain type of theology of boundary marking really, and the ultimate boundary marking of what's happening in Revelation.
So yeah, I do think the tenor of that can change as we follow along in the cycle, depending on how we're thinking about it and how we're talking about it.
Matt Croasmun: Yeah, that, that idea of the circle had definitely occurred to me as I was reading the book, just sort of thinking, Oh, these things sort of feed on one or another.
And it does seem that there's sort of, there, there can be a, there can be fears that sort of feed from. from theological to political registers and back and forth and back and forth, which I wondered in part, if that's part of what's like, because as a, as a theologian reading, reading this book and thinking about these big questions of, I mean, it makes me take a step back and think, wait, hold on.
How should Christian people think about Contemporary questions of immigration. Um, and it strikes me that there are all kinds of other, you know, resources, theological resources in the, in various biblical traditions, including a rich tradition in the Hebrew Bible of insisting that the people of God care for the stranger, the foreigner, the alien in their midst.
And it just makes, so, so at one level, there's like this sort of normative question of just, I suppose, as a first we're listening, like, okay, I'm an American Christian. I'm trying to just. genuinely trying to ask the question of what should a Christian posture towards contemporary questions of immigration be?
There, there are those questions that I can hear some of our, our listeners wrestling with that I'm wrestling with myself. And I, I guess in part, I'm sort of thinking like, Oh wait, there are other traditions, but there are other resources in the biblical, in the biblical texts. But even just sticking in the sort of historical, I wonder, in the American story, what allows the xenophobic strains of thinking that you're following here drown out this sort of crystal clear ethic of xenophilia that you get, like I said, in the Hebrew Bible?
And Like it just do these, does that sort of dissenting biblical voice itself sort of come up in any of these, in any of these sort of historical arguments as you see them unfold?
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that's hopeful and it doesn't show up very often in my book is the counter voices in terms of congressional debate.
You know, they're not focused on as much because They don't win in those debates, but there are voices throughout American history who are saying, should we draw the line this way? And no, we should not, you know, conduct our nation in this way. So there are people and people of faith also acting in these particular ways.
And then, you know, from the perspective of the immigrants themselves, you know, writing and thinking about, and also those who are, you know, of the Christian faith, thinking about it in a very different way and having, or trying to have hope. Like that. I think what, I think, yeah, what revelation offers against, maybe, I don't know if I'm getting into theological trouble by saying against, but you know, there are the other texts that you mentioned in which there should be compassion, there should be hospitality and openness and not a sense of scarcity, right?
Which is runs throughout so much of the rest of the Christian canon. I think what revelation offers and why it's been picked up so well politically is because it offers a a sense of finality and satisfaction. And that's what people crave. I think when they feel threatened, when they feel dissatisfied, you don't want to be like, well, eventually we should do this.
And, but, you know, you want the end, you want the reward, you want the definite line being drawn. But when you draw a definite line, you're going to have two sides of that, you know, in or out. So it's very absolute. And there's, I think there's a part of the, political life in America that really is just headed right to the extreme.
And how do we counter that and thinking about it in a way that's, you know, one, one way I've thought about this is like, where do we have a sketch? And I think of Hebrews and the sketch of the tabernacle where it's just fuzzy, right? Like we know that God is good. We know we should be compassionate in the end.
We don't know what the end exactly will look like. There's a sketch. It's sort of a platonic out there, but we're not going to realize it in a hard line. And that can be a counterpoint where pushing a crack and cracking that open in Revelation and saying, this is a very concrete, like literal, like stone made city.
But there are other ways to think about heaven. There are other ways to think about finality and not draw that line. And so how we get that to go into our political understanding is hard. And we're seeing that right now where people want, like, Absolutely. And, you know, this or that, and very difficult to work around that, especially in the way the structure is set up for how things get done, how quickly they have to be done, you know, four year terms, like everything needs to be immediate right now.
Understood.
Matt Croasmun: Well, and I think it's really helpful that imagination in Hebrews is really helpful. I also, as I was reading your book, I was thinking about, I mean, just that fundamental identification right from the beginning, like it strikes me that the identification of America with the new Jerusalem, like that strikes me as just.
Theological error. Like number one, maybe, right. And just in the thought that, so for example, there might be theological, one might, one might argue back. I mean, I'm thinking here largely in the lines, when our colleague Willie Jennings says that theological errors require often theological solutions, right?
So if Christian theology has been woven through sort of some of America's Thanks for joining us. way I get pretty focused on just broken ways of thinking about immigration and migration. What are biblical resources for thinking, thinking otherwise? And so I mean, just like one basic thought is I think that heavenly city is just, comes down from God.
It is not a political project built by anyone on a revelation account. I mean, it makes me think of the. When I think of it as the Corinthians error in First Corinthians, right? Of a sort of, if the problem there is a sort of over realized eschatology, a sort of sense like we have, you know, achieved the final and wanting maybe some of that, some of that clarity, that sort of moral certainty, that intellectual certainty, which, yeah.
Paul, you know, folks, I think get into the weeds here, but, you know, I think folks are arguing that they've received, they've achieved rather perfection of a certain sort. And Paul says, teleos, you think you're perfect. Like that's, that is precisely immaturity, which is of course, another meaning of that Greek term.
Maturity would be precisely realizing that we haven't yet, that that world is still to come, which again, another, which points finally, I guess, that theological resource to say. There's lots of biblical warnings against taking on God's prerogative of judgment. It is God's to judge. And we can, in your book, if any who read it will be, I think as we ought to rightly be, troubled by these accounts of God exercising God's judgment.
And as troubled as maybe we should be there, there still is, I think, total clarity and again, like really clear biblical injunctions to say, That judgment, however troubled we might be by God's exercise of God's prerogative of judgment, that prerogative of judgment remains God's and not ours, which I think is actually part of that sort of, just as you're saying, that finality.
Oh, that's a, that's like way above our pay grade, not anything we should get involved in trying to imitate or create in our own sort of political systems. Just again, there's again, it's another sort of biblical resource would just be all of these injunctions. Against sort of taking usurping divine, uh, prerogative for judgment.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah, I mean, one way to read revelation is who is acting right? Mm-Hmm. . And if you are going to presume. that if you are the one acting, then I think you would have a deep problem in the way you're interpreting that particular text. And yet, and you know, and that presumption of doing what only God is able to do.
Matt Croasmun: You give us some thoughts at the end, at the end of the book, bringing us back to our own history and helping us maybe reflect honestly about it. Yeah. How should we approach this? These are big questions about immigration and belonging and what it means to be citizens or part of parts of a society.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah.
So I would. I'll bring up two things at least. So one is to be honest about the past, right? And to actually know about what happened in this long history of American immigration and how that nation was constructed. I think oftentimes people will say, you know, online and forums, you know, in the news that this is not who we are.
This is not what America is. And I want to say, actually, it's very much what America is and had been from its founding, that it was founded in which citizenship is. the property of those who are white and free. And that was in, you know, within the literature that's being written in the nation's documents.
Right. And so we have to know that to see how this is still baked into a lot of the, you know, legal, federal understanding of what the United States is. And oftentimes we are, you know, and that's, what's really dangerous about right now as an originalist understanding is that we'll, we can just go right back to those roots.
So how can we. Disentangle a national identity, a national structure and understanding of what it is and what the social contract is and what the government is, if can somehow take out or deconstruct in a particular way. But to know that history and to know that this was, And I think that's, you know, from the beginning a part of its understanding of itself and the build the foundational documents for that.
And the second thing is also beyond, you know, understanding and remembering is knowing also that things don't always have to be this way. And it's, you know, only recently that, you know, we've been required passports to fly or have papers to check for legality, the understanding of a person being legal or illegal.
That's a construction and that's fairly recent, right? Do we have to continue with that? I think there's just a naturalization of these things as just, you know, Oh, that's just how life is. That's how immigration happens, but actually know that those were inventions. Those are creations within the last 150 years of U S history.
So if that's the case, and we are relatively. Newcomer to using these particular laws, then why do we have to keep them? Right? Is there a more creative way to think about it rather than retreading, you know, just the ways that we've done things and understanding a human being as needing papers? What, you know, that was not always the case.
or of being legal or illegal. Those are constructions created by the law. Laws that we can change, right? So I think the sense of we need to open our creativity and our imagination to think beyond those particular tracks that are too well tread.
Matt Croasmun: I would hope that there are also, as we talked about, maybe even theological resources to bring to bear there in terms of God's love and preference for, for the stranger, for the alien.
There are these resources to also imagine otherwise. JanJan, thank you so much for this book and for this conversation. It's important, it's timely, and I'm grateful for you spending some time with us today to talk about it.
Yii-Jan Lin: Yeah, thank you. I'm really glad to be here.
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured Yii-Jan Lin. Production assistance by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Zoë Halaban, and Kacie Barrett. I'm Evan Rosa and I edit and produce the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu or lifeworthliving.yale.edu. And there you'll find all sorts of resources, including podcasts, videos, articles, books, and much more all to help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity. If you're new to the show, welcome. Remember to hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app. And to our loyal supporters and faithful listeners, if you haven't ever shared an episode with a friend, we'd be grateful if you did that today.
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