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Advocates at World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, can usually expect a warm greeting from large evangelical groups wielding clout in the halls of Congress.

But this year, they're getting a downright chilly reception to one of their priority agenda items: immigration reform.

As Congress grapples with legislation regarding an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, the nation's most powerful conservative Christian organizations have been watching from the sidelines. This occurs despite decades of evangelical initiative to make America a hospitable haven for religious and political refugees.

The search to explain the silence leads through several layers of reasoning. For starters, the Christian right says it has other issues at the moment, such as the confirmation of conservative judges and the battle against same-sex marriage. Beyond that, some suspect evangelicals don't want to appear soft on lawbreakers of any kind. And on a level that plumbs the depths of what it means to bear Christian witness, evangelicals confide they're still struggling as a community to determine the right thing to do.

Among Southern Baptists, for instance, "there's no consensus about what to do about the [illegal immigrants] who are already here or about how we would allow legal immigration," says Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which articulates public policy positions for the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention. Southern Baptists "see a basic distinction between people who are refugees, who are in fear of losing their life and home … and those who are coming over primarily for economic reasons and are not abiding by the immigration laws." Because mass deportation "isn't realistic," Land says, the denomination needs to wrestle longer with what to do.

Evangelicals on the immigration front lines say time is running out. Near Tucson, Ariz., Maryada Vallet travels the desert in a pickup truck, stopping to not only feed undocumented border crossers, but wash their blistered feet. It's a gesture from biblical accounts of what Jesus did for his disciples at the Last Supper.

Such inspired volunteer work, warns World Relief staff attorney Amy Bliss, could lead to federal prosecution if a bill passed in December by the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law.

"Anyone who believes" in the biblical story of the gentile who stopped to help a wounded man, Vallet says, "should be outraged that … the government is making it a crime to be a Good Samaritan."

Soon the U.S. Senate is expected to start reviewing the House-passed bill in committee. Liberal religious activists say evangelical participation could make the difference between success and failure. "To have the evangelical voice there [advocating] has been particularly important to this administration, which listens to them," says C. Richard Parkins, director of Episcopal Migration Ministries for the Episcopal Church U.S.A., a mainline Protestant denomination with a liberal bent. "They have access to leadership that we've not had access to."

Yet despite appeals for help from evangelicals at Baltimore-based World Relief and Arlington, Va.-based Jubilee Campaign, the faith's political heavy hitters have kept mum on immigration. Amber Hildebrand, a spokesperson for the Washington-based Family Research Council, explains: "It's not that we don't think [immigration policy] is important. There have just been other issues the FRC has chosen to focus on." Colorado-based Focus on the Family spokesperson Gwen Stein gives the same reason for her group's reticence to take a stand.

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January (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50