Lux Lucet

Anton observes in his article that “the amendment specifies two criteria for American citizenship: birth or naturalization (i.e., lawful immigration), and being subject to U.S. jurisdiction.”[2]

The first criterion – birth or naturalization – is not subject to much discussion or controversy.  But the second, “subject to U.S. jurisdiction,” is. Most American legal opinion interprets “subject to the jurisdiction” as meaning simply “subject to American law.” Anton comments,

That is true of any tourist who comes here. The framers of the 14th Amendment added the jurisdiction clause precisely to distinguish between people to whom the United States owes citizenship and those to whom it does not. Freed slaves definitely qualified. The children of immigrants who came here illegally clearly don’t.[3]

What does “subject to the jurisdiction” mean if not simply “subject to American law.” According to Anton, it means not owing allegiance to any other country or tribe.

Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, a principal figure in drafting the amendment, defined “subject to the jurisdiction” as “not owing allegiance to anybody else” — that is, to no other country or tribe. Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, a sponsor of the clause, further clarified that the amendment explicitly excludes from citizenship “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, [or] who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”[4]

Anton is wise to appeal to the ratification debates about the Fourteenth Amendment to help clarify its framers’ intentions.  Yet many conservative critics, many of whom are Roman Catholic,[5] reject Anton’s method and conclusion, appealing to Supreme Court precedent and questioning his research. 

Anton’s work on the birthright citizenship issue is some of the best that I have found. Yet his work suffers from the defect that it fails to appeal to the Scriptures as the grounds for rejecting current American legal theory and practice that absurdly grant American citizenship to the children of illegal aliens, many, probably most of whom give birth at American taxpayer expense. It is to the Scriptural argument that I will now turn.

Unless we are naturalized citizens, most of us probably have not spent much time considering how we acquired our citizenship. However, there are two basic answers to the question, How does one become a citizen? One is called jus soli, Latin for “right of the soil.” It is the idea that “citizenship is acquired by birth within the territory of the state, regardless of parental citizenship.”[6] America’s current practice of awarding citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is an example of jus soli. Jus sanguinis, Latin for “right of blood,” is the other option. Jus sanguinis “grants citizenship on the basis of the citizenship possessed by one’ parent or parents.”[7] In this author’s opinion, the Bible supports jus sanguinis, not jus soli.

According to The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) Chapter XXV.2, “The visible Church…consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children.” How do children become members of the visible church? By having at least one believing parent.  For this conclusion, the WCF appeals to, among other verses, I Cor. 7:14: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now they are holy.” This shows that jus sanguinis, and not jus soli, is the rule in the church. If jus soli prevailed in the church, an infant would be considered part of the visible church if the mother gave birth on church property.

Jus sanguinis as the rule for the church is also supported by The Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) Question and Answer 166. It reads,

Q. 166 Unto whom is baptism to be administered?

A. Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, and so strangers from the covenant of promise, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him, but infants descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptized.

Again, we see the principle of jus sanguinis applied to the church. Infants descending from at least one believing parent are part of the church, are to be baptized, and are considered “in that respect within the covenant,” that is, they are part of the visible church.

What about those who are not born to at least one believing parent? Is there any hope for them? Do the Westminster Standards allow them to become members of the visible church?  In short, yes. Adults can receive baptism and become members of the visible church by a credible profession of faith in Christ Jesus.

Protestants historically recognized three forms of government: family, church, and civil. Further, they have recognized that these forms of government have been established by God. And because all three have been established by God, we should expect to see the same principles of justice apply to all three. In view here is the principle of justice by which we can determine who is and who is not a citizen.

We have already seen that one becomes a member of the visible church either by being born to at least one believing parent or by professing faith as an adult.

Likewise, there are two ways to become a family member: by birth or adoption. One example of adoption in the Scriptures is Joseph and Jesus. Although not Jesus’s natural father, Joseph raised him as his own son; that is, Joseph was Jesus’s adoptive father.

Applying these principles to civil government, the Bible endorses two ways to become a citizen of a nation: first, by having at least one parent who is a citizen (jus sanguinis), and second, by naturalization.[8]

The children of the Hebrews were considered covenant members of the nation by virtue of their birth, and male children were required to be circumcised on the eighth day as a sign of their membership in the covenant community. Israel practiced the principle of jus sanguinis.

However, one could become a naturalized citizen of the Hebrew Republic as well. Ruth, the young Moabite woman who was an ancestor of King David, is perhaps the clearest example of this. In this author’s opinion, her words, recorded for us in Ruth 1:16-17, represented Ruth’s citizenship oath to the Hebrew Republic. There we read,

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. [17] Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.[9]

Viewed in light of what the Scriptures teach about government and how an individual acquires citizenship, the Fourteenth Amendment’s granting of citizenship to freedmen “born in…the United States” falls outside the normal rules of what the Bible teaches about how one acquires citizenship in a nation – either by a child being born to at least one citizen parent or by naturalization.  The freed slaves had no citizen parents, and, as Michael Anton notes, naturalization did not apply to them either.[10] While the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment was good, they created confusion by codifying jus soli as a constitutional principle and, probably unwittingly, provided an opening for Antichrist to exploit in its irredentist immigration war on the United States. Had they instead applied the Biblical principle of jus sanguinis, this likely would have prevented the issue of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens from ever coming up. Further, it would have allowed freedmen to obtain American citizenship via naturalization.

In the end, the most important question for our purposes is whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens born on American soil, as several conservative commentators believe.[11] In the opinion of Michael Anton and this author, it does not. But even if the Fourteenth Amendment does require birthright citizenship to be granted to the children of illegal aliens, the Bible does not support this. Since civil government is a creature of God – Paul in Romans 13 calls the civil magistrate “God’s minister” – a nation’s laws must be justified by an appeal to God’s written revelation in the 66 books of the Bible. This is an application of what Martin Luther called the Schriftprinzip or writing principle, the idea that “nothing except the divine words [found in the 66 books of the Bible] are to be the first principles for Christians; all human words are conclusions drawn from them and must be brought back to them.”[12] The Bible teaches that one can acquire citizenship in a nation in two ways: first, by having at least one parent who is a citizen, and second, by naturalization. Children of illegal aliens born in the United States – having neither one parent who is an American citizen nor having themselves taken an oath “to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States” – have no claim on American citizenship.

In the opinion of this author, ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens is the single most important step that can be taken to defeat the Antichrist Roman Catholic Church-State’s irredentist immigration assault on America. In the first place, it removes the “magnet” the U.S. welfare benefits the illegal alien parents can claim for the infant.[13] Second, it prevents Rome from using an appeal to pity. Often, when it comes time to deport those who have violated American immigration law, Antichrist will argue that the parents cannot be deported. Why? Because they have American children!  It’s time to stop this madness and put an end to birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens.    

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[1] “Citizenship shouldn’t be a birthright” by Michael Anton, July 18, 2018, The Washington Post, https://wapo.st/4hb3ZWi, accessed 10/20/2024.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Unsurprisingly, Roman Catholic conservatives would follow the lead of their church in promoting birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens. One critic of birthright citizenship called it “a great magnet for illegal immigration,” which indeed it is. As such, it is a useful weapon in Rome’s irredentist immigration war on the historic, Protestant American nation. This brings up the problem that John Robbins discussed in his Trinity Review “Conservatism: An Autopsy,” in which he noted that political conservatism is not Christian but heavily influenced by Roman Catholicism.  Robbins wrote that “Both liberalism and conservatism are united in the Antichristianity. Both are ‘tolerant,’ but neither will tolerate Christianity.”

[6] https://www.britannica.com/topic/jus-soli, accessed 10/20/2024.

[7] Ibid.

[8] It’s interesting to consider what would happen if the Baptist definition of the church were applied to determining one’s nationality. Since the Baptist definition of the church excludes the children of believers until they make a profession of faith, on that same Baptist principle, the children of citizen parents would be considered stateless until they decide to become citizens in the nation to which their parents belong. It is doubtful that Baptist parents would accept the non-citizenship of their children. In the same way, applying the Baptist definition of the church to the family would leave it up to the children to eventually decide whether they want to be part of the family. Again, it is unlikely Baptist parents would accept such an absurd conclusion. Thus, we see that Baptists apply jus sanguinis to their children with respect to family government and civil government but inconsistently deny the principle in the matter of church government. That Presbyterians consistently accept the principle of jus sanguinis in all three forms of government – family, church, and civil, all of which were established by God – is a strong argument in favor of the WCF’s definition of the church and the practice of infant baptism. For the importance of consistency within a system of thought, see Gordon Clark’s discussion about the coherence theory of truth in A Christian View of Men and Things, p.27.

[9] Note that Ruth swore a loyalty oath to God and his covenant people.  She was not promoting Jesuit-style multiculturalism, seeking to import the pagan practices of the Moabites into Israel to subvert it, but instead identifying herself with the Lord and seeking to assimilate into the Hebrew nation. As one Christian put it in a post on X, “The very first laws in the Torah about Israel’s treatment of sojourners/foreigners demand assimilation,” https://x.com/WokePreacherTV/status/1838522621266178297, accessed 10/21/2024. Yet Americans are unctuously lectured that they must accept multiculturalism, that is, the destruction of their national heritage, to accommodate foreigners. Refusal to do so makes you a very bad person in the eyes of those pushing Rome’s immigration lies.

[10] “Birthright Citizenship: A Response to My Critics” by Michael Anton, Claremont Review of Books, July 22, 2018, https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/digital/birthright-citizenship-a-response-to-my-critics/, accessed 10/21/2024.

[11] Writing in the National Review, a conservative publication founded by Roman Catholic William Buckley, Dan McLaughlin, himself a Roman Catholic, argues, yes, the Fourteenth Amendment does require citizenship be granted to the children of illegal aliens born in the territory of the United States. See his article “Constitutional Originalism Requires Birthright Citizenship,” https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/constitutional-originalism-requires-birthright-citizenship/, accessed 10/21/2024. By arguing as he does, McLaughlin is working to advance Rome’s irredentist war on America.   

[12] “Christ and Civilization” by John W. Robbins, The Trinity Review, December 2002-March 2003, https://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=110, accessed 10/21/2024.

[13] In a 2019 interview with Breitbart, author Michelle Malkin, herself a Roman Catholic, called granting birthright citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens the “ultimate magnet” and went on to say, “[T]hat is why you’ve got pregnant women – not just from Mexico and Central America but from around the world – traveling here dangerously when they are eight months…pregnant.” See “Michelle Malkin: Anchor Baby Policy the ‘Ultimate Magnet’ for Illegal Aliens” by John Binder, Breitbart, September 18, 2019,  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/18/malkin-anchor-baby-policy-ultimate-magnet-illegal-aliens/, accessed 10/21/2024. The article further quoted Malkin as saying, “My father, who was a legal immigrant to this country and a naturalized American, was a neonatologist in Atlantic City…And he would come home with stories about people from Africa, Korea, and Russia whose sole goal was to give birth in this country and then sit back and watch all the benefits flow. This is not how a sovereign country should run its immigration system.”

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