This week, as Protestants celebrated Reformation Sunday on Oct. 25, Haitian pastors and community members led a pilgrimage of more than 40 miles across Ohio to remind America of one of Christianity’s most fundamental commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself. 

Their four-day journey from Springfield to Columbus included people subjected to electronic ankle monitoring and families living under the threat of detention and deportation. Fellow clergy and faith leaders walked alongside them in solidarity, demanding an end to these practices and lasting protections for Haitian immigrants. 

The betrayal is especially profound. The United States granted Haitians Temporary Protected Status because conditions in their homeland made returning dangerous. Springfield welcomed thousands, and they helped revitalize its economy, filling jobs, starting businesses and strengthening local congregations. Now the U.S. administration has terminated their protections, threatening to deport people to a country where rampant violence could cost them their lives. 

It is a remarkable act of faith and courage. And it raises a question Christians have faced repeatedly throughout history: When political leaders demand that we fear, exclude or turn away from our neighbors, whom will the church follow? 

Nearly 500 years ago, the Protestant Reformation — which many Protestants commemorate on the last Sunday in October — challenged the church’s entanglement with political power and its claims to unquestioned authority. Reformers insisted that Christians must continually return to the teachings of Jesus rather than simply accept the dictates of powerful institutions. 

That struggle did not end in the 16th century. 

Last month, I visited Dresden, Germany, where I spoke at the Frauenkirche, the magnificent church destroyed during World War II and rebuilt decades later as a symbol of reconciliation and peace. 

Standing there, I was reminded of a painful chapter in Protestant history. In the 1930s, as Hitler consolidated power, many German church leaders embraced nationalism and welcomed the promise of a restored Christian nation. The Nazi-aligned “German Christians” sought to bring the church into conformity with the ideology of the state. 

Others resisted. In 1934, leaders of what became known as the Confessing Church issued the Barmen Declaration, insisting that Jesus Christ, not the state or its political leaders, was the church’s ultimate authority. 

But that history is also a warning. Most German Christians did not resist Nazi rule. Even the Confessing Church largely failed to confront the persecution of Jews. Some recognized the danger of political control over the church without fully recognizing the suffering of their neighbors. 

It is possible to defend the church’s freedom while failing to defend the freedom of others. 

Standing in the Frauenkirche, I wondered what our own generation of Christians will be remembered for — and whether we will recognize the moment when faithfulness requires us to stand with those whose rights and dignity are under attack. 

That distinction is enormously salient today. 

Christian nationalism in America is not simply the belief that faith should inform public life. It is a political project that seeks to privilege a narrow and exclusionary vision of Christian identity in determining who belongs, whose rights are protected and who should govern. 

It places the nation, and the power to control it, ahead of our obligations to our neighbors and the wider human family. 

Such movements depend on more than political coercion. They must also reshape our moral imagination. First, they identify people to fear. Then they encourage us to look away from those people’s suffering. Once we accept that some neighbors are less deserving of dignity or freedom, restrictions on their rights become easier to justify. 

This is why the emerging campaign against empathy is so troubling. Influential voices on the religious and political right have begun portraying empathy as “toxic” or even “suicidal,” recasting a central Christian virtue as a dangerous weakness. 

New research from the Public Religion Research Institute reveals the depth of this divide. Only 38% of Christian nationalism adherents consider empathy a foundational moral value, compared with 94% of those who reject Christian nationalism. 

But empathy — the capacity to recognize another person’s suffering as morally significant — is essential to the kind of neighbor-love Jesus commanded. 

When Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment, he answered with two: Love God with all your heart, soul and mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. 

These commandments cannot be separated. We cannot claim devotion to God while turning away from the suffering of people made in God’s image. 

For the church, this is not a partisan preference. It is a theological obligation. 

The Reformation is not simply an anniversary of an event in 1517. It is an ongoing invitation to examine where the church has confused its own security, privilege or political influence with faithfulness to Christ. 

Today, many mainline Protestant congregations are rediscovering this calling. Some are small. Some have declining memberships and uncertain futures. Yet they are feeding neighbors, accompanying immigrant families, defending religious freedom and building communities of belonging in places where fear threatens to prevail. 

Christian nationalism seeks power over others — the power to determine who belongs, whose rights deserve protection and whose religious beliefs should shape the nation’s laws. 

The power of a reformed church must look different. It is the power to speak truth to those who govern, defend the dignity of the vulnerable and build communities where people can live together across differences. 

That kind of influence is not politically insignificant. It can change public policy, elections and the direction of our democracy. But it begins with a different understanding of what it means to be faithful. 

Reformation Sunday invites us to celebrate the courage of those who challenged the religious authorities of their time. It should also invite us to examine our own. 

The Haitian pastors leading the pilgrimage across Ohio are showing us what faithful public witness looks like. They are not seeking power over others. They are demanding that their neighbors be treated with dignity and inviting the rest of us to stand alongside them. 

Perhaps the most important test of a church that claims to be continually reformed is not how much power it can accumulate but how it uses its influence when its neighbors are in danger.