Is the Kingdom of God Red, White, and Blue?

Migrants, USAID, and the Christian Witness

A demonstrator holds an upside-down American flag during a protest to oppose Donald Trump administration's policies, including efforts to cut the federal workforce, at the Capitol Reflection Pool on February 17, 2025. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP.

About the author: Rev. Catherine Tobey is a current PhD student in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Drawing on Karl Barth’s theology, her research centers children as the dynamic, interpretive key to the Church’s understanding and enactment of the Kingdom of God. Catherine is a graduate of Whitworth University and Princeton Theological Seminary, and is a Minister of Word & Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

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As an evangelical child of the 90s, I went on international mission trips, read Left Behind, and won sword drills. My testimony intertwined the notion of heavenly citizenship found in Philippians 3:20 with lines from DC Talk’s album Jesus Freak. I wanted nothing more than to be a missionary.

It’s no surprise I developed some closely held beliefs along the way. Truth be told, I did not expect to defend them to fellow Christians. But, somehow, it has become a radical idea to care more about others than yourself, more about your witness than your retirement plan, and more about migrants than borders.

It is my fault, really. I believed what I was taught for all those years in Sunday School and at my Christian school: God so loves the world.

So when I heard about the 90-day freeze on federal foreign aid, I felt like I had been gut-punched. The amount of people and communities this impacts is unimaginable, and it started impacting them the moment the Executive Order was signed.

Taking a step back from this political situation, let us turn our attention to Barth himself. In 1934, he authored the Barmen Declaration, which Eberhard Busch describes as the “theological basis” for his and Charlotte von Kirschbaum’s “activism” in the coming years.¹ In particular, this “meant abandoning the ‘two‐kingdoms’ doctrine” and, therefore, “the idea that outside the church Christians have to follow a different Lord than they do within it.”²

Together, Karl and Charlotte led and participated in direct service with immigrants and refugees from both Germany and Austria. Indeed, in 1935, Barth was even appointed the Commissioner of Refugees in Basel. What is more, by 1938, “the Swiss Relief Organization to help the Confessing Church in Germany was founded in Zurich through Barth’s involvement.”³ His role was not symbolic but intensive; indeed, records show he would go on to meet with the highest-ranking leaders in Switzerland and Hungary to discuss the needs of specific refugees.⁴

In the early 1940s, Barth published pamphlets and gave public lectures emphasizing caring for migrants; he even helped raise money for refugee relief organizations. At one such fundraiser, Barth insisted,

The refugees are our concern: not because they are good and valuable people, but because they are today the lowest, the most wretched people in the whole world and as such they knock on our doors, [and because their] inseparable companion is the Saviour….The refugees (whether they know it or not) are honoring us by seeing our land as a last refuge of justice and mercy, and by coming to it…We see in the refugees that which we have been miraculously spared of.⁵

Barth’s commitment to migrants was so clear that I wondered how it impacted his theological anthropology. Turning to Church Dogmatics, I began to read about humanity’s determination as God’s covenant partner: Because Jesus is for humanity, we are called to be with others.⁶ For Barth, if we fail to understand this, we fail to understand the incarnation.

He puts it this way:

A man without his fellows, or radically neutral or opposed to his fellows, or under the impression that the co-existence of his fellows has only secondary significance, is a being which ipso facto is fundamentally alien to the man Jesus and cannot have Him as Deliverer and Saviour.⁷

For Barth, Matthew 25 is the relevant biblical text: “Come,” Jesus will say, "inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:34–35, NRSV). Barth explains, “Wherever in this present time between the resurrection and the parousia one of these is waiting for help (for food, drink, lodging, clothes, a visit, assistance), Jesus Himself is waiting. Wherever help is granted or denied, it is granted or denied to Jesus Himself.”⁸ Indeed, he goes on,

It is for them that He sits at the right hand of the Father, so that no one can know Him in His majesty, or honour and love Him as the Son of God, unless he shows concern for these least of His brethren. No one can call God his Father in Christ's name unless he treats these least as his brethren.⁹

Barth seeks to emphasize this point, noting that the Church will be asked “whether in this time of God's mercy and patience, this time of its mission, it has been the community which has succored its Lord by giving unqualified succor to them in this needy world” (emphasis added).¹⁰ Indeed, we will be asked if we have “been affected by the concrete miseries of the world, not passing by on the other side with haughty disdain, but being simply and directly human, with no excuses for the contrary.”¹¹

This brings up an interesting point. When discussing service and charity, we often think about being responsible only to other Christians, or more specifically, Christian Americans. There are significant problems with this view, only one of which is that it isn't very Barthian.

According to Barth, the task of the Church is to be ready and, indeed, glad to assist all others.¹² We should treat them as our siblings in Christ because they are asking for help. Put another way, it should strike us as impossible to be God’s Church without being in “solidarity with those in affliction and standing at their side.”¹³

Barth, reflecting on World War II, notes that this is ultimately a “question of the rights, dignity and sanctity of the fellow-[human].” He writes, “Humanity stands at the crossroads. In its future development as humanity, will it be for man or against him? Behind the political, social and economic possibilities there stands always with the same urgency, if in different forms, the necessity of this decision.”¹⁴

When individuals and families are seeking safety, when they are scared, tired, and traumatized, it is not ours to ask about their religion or immigration status. It is not ours to justify their suffering because it may be from a “wholly ‘secular' affliction.” Rather, per Barth, we are to be “simply concerned with [humans as humans], and therefore [treat] them as brothers [and sisters].”¹⁵

The task before us is very large, indeed. Still, according to Barth, “Better that [the Christian congregation] stand up for the weak three times too often than one time too less, better to raise its voice unpleasantly loud where justice and freedom are endangered than to be pleasantly silent!” After all, God did not “give us time and did not let us participate in the events of the day in order that we would act as if all this were none of our concern.”¹⁶

The situation (at least according to Barth) is simple: “My action is human when the outstretched hand of the other does not grope in the void but finds in mine the support which is asked.”¹⁷

I wonder if you could imagine migrants worldwide reaching out for help today. Call your representatives to oppose what’s happening in Guantanamo Bay. Prepare to act when ICE shows up. Donate to organizations that have been impacted by the funding freeze.¹⁸

For God’s sake, do something.

I understand the overwhelming state of the world, but we can’t get stuck there. For me, the way out is listening to 4 Non Blondes and seeing what Barth has to say about things. It turns out, when it comes to migrants, he has a lot to say.¹⁹ Linda Perry had a surprisingly similar message:

I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man

And so I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out what's in my head

And so I wake in the morning and I step outside

And I scream from the top of my lungs
"What's going on?”

And I try
Oh my God, do I try
I try all the time
In this institution

And I pray
Oh my God, do I pray
I pray every single day
For revolution

Whether today is the day you cry or scream, donate or protest, or simply learn more about what’s going on, may God be with you, and may you be with others.

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1. Eberhard Busch, “Barth and Charlotte von Kirschbaum,” in Wiley Blackwell Companion to Karl Barth, ed. George Hunsinger and Keith L. Johnson (John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2020), 686.

2. Busch, “Barth and Charlotte von Kirschbaum,” 686.

3. Frank Jehle, Ever Against the Stream: The Politics of Karl Barth, 1906–1968 (Eerdmans, 2002), 58.

4. Jehle, Ever Against the Stream, 59.

5. Jehle, Ever Against the Stream, 78.

6. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2 (T&T Clark, 1960), 244.

7. Barth, CD III.2, 229.

8. Barth, CD III.2, 509–510.

9. Barth, CD III.2, 510. Rebecca Lindsay poignantly explores this notion with regard to refugees in Australia in “Learning to Encounter Boat People: A Theological Reflection on Australian Asylum Seeker Policy, in Dialogue with Karl Barth.”

10. Barth, CD III.2, 510.

11. Barth, CD III.2, 510.

12. Rather than being neutral or reluctant to help, Barth describes “the last and final step of humanity” as when “we gladly receive and offer assistance” (Barth, CD III.2, 266).

13. Barth, CD III.2, 510.

14. Barth, CD III.2, 230. Have you ever wondered how much of the American federal budget comprises foreign aid? What do you think this number should be…5%? 10%? Before the current freeze, it was consistently less than 1% (Read more here: What every American should know about U.S. foreign aid).

15. Barth, CD III.2, 510.

16. Jehle, Ever Against the Stream, 81.

17. Barth, CD III.2, 265.

18. In 2010, while studying abroad with Whitworth University, I got to know the missionaries who would go on to develop Casa Esperanza, a migrant shelter on the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. This organization is one of many that were promised life-changing funds from USAID, but only to have them disappear. Read more about here and please donate: One Night in a Shelter, the Next on the Streets?

19. The pope has a lot to say, too: https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2025/documents/20250210-lettera-vescovi-usa.html