Jeb! Bush, trying to answer questions about his "Christians and orphans only" Middle East refugee policy, thinks it's easy to parse out what refugees are Christian and which are evil Da'esh infiltrators trying to sneak into the US to kills us all in our sleep.
"Well, you're a Christian, you can prove you're a Christian"
"How?"
"I think you can prove it."
Really? Have them cross themselves? Recite the Nicene Creed? Eat a bacon burger? Display stigmata? Have a permission slip signed by your priest or minister? Wear the t-shirt?
Of course, in the case that Jeb! was presented with — a Christian refugee with Muslim relatives — it didn't sound too promising for those relatives. Presumably they get sent to the magical safety vetting camps in the Middle East where Jeb! promises they will be safe from the Bad Guys.
Kudos to the Twitter commenters who included notes like:
"You prove you're a Christian by NOT turning away humans fleeing bombs."
or noting one of the few "lake of fire" sins actually mentioned by Jesus, in Matthew 25:31-46 (https://goo.gl/XvRDeE), particularly:
'41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’'
Jeb Bush: If ‘You’re A Christian You Can Prove You’re A Christian’
Jeb Bush says only the Syrian refugees who are Christians should be allowed into the U.S., and he thinks Christians have a way to prove their faith.
I'll add that Christians being unable to prove they are Christian is the story behind much of the bloody horror that is European history for the past dozen centuries. I doubt seriously that Jeb! has found the magic bullet to fix that.
This smacks of "convert or die!" and it gives me the creeps.
+Solonor Rasreth It's not quite an Inquisitorial thing, but it has those vibes — and shifts the Overton Window that direction ("Hey, if we're screening out Muslim refugees, why not all Muslim immigrants? If we're worried about the ones coming in, how about the ones who have already moved here in the past?").