Would You Deport Jesus?  🔗 **Source:** [Would You Deport Jesus?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFqoYTFqe4I) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [biblical-studies, christian-nationalism, rhetoric-analysis, immigration, apologetics, media-literacy] > author: Dan McClellan > source: Dan McClellan (YouTube) > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFqoYTFqe4I > date created: 2026-09-20 19:55 > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > # 🏷️ Title: Would you deport Jesus? > ## 🧭 Table of Contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#️-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > - [🧱 Refactor Appendix](#-refactor-appendix) > - [🧰 Template Library](#-template-library) > ## 🔗 References (in-page) > - Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFqoYTFqe4I > - Channel: Dan McClellan — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAAJCQ0FCqRmAEv95SyTfNg > - Duration: 11m27s. Upload date: 2026-09-20. > - Format: stitched response. Clips of an unnamed interlocutor are interleaved with McClellan's commentary. > ## 📝 Summary > **What happened.** Dan McClellan, a biblical scholar who publishes short critical-analysis videos, > responds to footage of an unnamed person being asked a gotcha question at what he identifies as a > TPUSA-adjacent event: if Jesus crossed the border illegally today, would you deport him? The > respondent declines to answer, arguing Jesus would not have done that — the flight to Egypt, he > says, went from one Roman territory to another and was therefore legal passage. McClellan takes > the non-answer apart in three moves: the dodge is rhetorical, the history is wrong, and the > respondent eventually answers anyway without meaning to. > **The rhetorical analysis.** McClellan reads the question as a deliberate trap that forces a > choice between two identity markers — nationalist commitment and Christian commitment — and > argues the respondent avoids it because either answer alienates part of his in-group. He draws a > structural parallel to the pericope of the woman taken in adultery, where Jesus is asked to choose > between Mosaic law and Roman authority and sidesteps the penalty while tacitly affirming the law. > **The historical corrections.** Three specific claims are challenged. The flight was from > Bethlehem, not Nazareth. It ran from a client kingdom into Roman territory, not between two Roman > territories. And the category of illegal or undocumented immigration did not exist in the ancient > world, so no ancient crossing can be parallel to a modern one — McClellan adds that the earliest > US immigration prohibitions targeted specific ethnic groups rather than documentation status. He > further argues the premise that Jesus would not break laws is falsified by the New Testament > itself, citing the temple cleansing and the swords passage in which Jesus is counted among > lawbreakers. > **The concession that decides it.** The respondent offers a joke — if Jesus ran his grandmother > over with a car, yes, he would send him to jail. McClellan treats this as the honest answer > arriving by accident: it concedes that there are circumstances in which the respondent would > punish Jesus under law, which means no identity exempts anyone from enforcement, which answers the > original question in the affirmative. > **Why it matters.** The clip is a compact worked example of analyzing an evasion — separating the > factual errors from the rhetorical maneuver from the unintended admission. It is also openly > polemical. McClellan characterizes the position as "the worship of power" and uses "fascist" and > "draconian" as descriptors, and he attributes motives to a person he cannot interview. Readers > should take the historical corrections, which are checkable, at a different confidence level than > the motive attributions, which are not. > **Stakeholders.** Students of biblical studies and rhetoric; people in arguments about Christian > nationalism; anyone teaching source criticism or fallacy identification; the unnamed interlocutor, > who is analyzed at length without opportunity to reply. > **Bottom line.** The historical claims are specific and verifiable; the rhetorical reading is > sharp and mostly fair; the political characterization is argument, not analysis, and should be > labeled as such when cited. > ## 📖 Main Content > The clip opens with the question put to the interlocutor: if Jesus came over the border illegally > right now, would you deport him? The response is a denial of the premise. Jesus would not have > crossed illegally — the flight from Nazareth to Egypt, the respondent says, moved from one Roman > territory to another, making it legal passage. Jesus was escaping a ruler, but doing so lawfully, > and so violated no orders. > McClellan structures his reply around three problems. > **The dodge.** He reads the opening move — *I don't think Jesus would do that, therefore I need > not answer* — as an admission of fear about the honest answer. His account of the question's > purpose is precise: it is designed to pit identity markers against each other, holding up two > commitments and asking which takes priority. In this case, a contemporary position that anyone > crossing the border illegally must be deported regardless of circumstance or identity, set > against the position that Jesus's teaching and the gospel take priority. Whichever the respondent > picks, he alienates the portion of his in-group that ranks the other first. McClellan's claim is > that the refusal is not confusion but avoidance. > He supports the structural reading with a scriptural parallel. In the story of the woman taken in > adultery, the question — do we impose the law of Moses or exempt her — has the same shape: satisfy > those who prioritize Mosaic law and you provoke Roman authority; defer to Rome on the death > penalty and you provoke the other faction. McClellan's reading is that Jesus tacitly endorses the > law of Moses while making its execution impossible by assigning the first stone to the sinless, > sidestepping the penalty without repudiating the statute. The point he draws is that even a dodge > can carry a tacit endorsement — which sets up his treatment of the respondent's eventual answer. > **The history.** Three corrections, stated flatly. First, the flight was from Bethlehem to Egypt, > not from Nazareth. Second, it did not run between two Roman territories; it ran from a client > kingdom into Roman territory, which McClellan concedes is arguable as semantics but insists is an > escape from a ruler's sovereignty. Third, and most consequential, the reason people raise the > flight at all is to establish Jesus's refugee status, not his documentation status — because > illegal and undocumented immigration did not exist as categories in that period. He extends the > point to early American history, noting that the United States lacked that category at its > founding, and that the first laws prohibiting immigration targeted specific ethnic groups rather > than the absence of documents. The conclusion is that no ancient crossing can be parallel to a > modern illegal entry, so the respondent's premise cannot do the work asked of it. > He then attacks the underlying assumption that Jesus would not break laws, citing the New > Testament against it: the cleansing of the temple, and the passage about acquiring swords so that > the text about being counted among lawbreakers would be fulfilled. He offers this as an example of > Jesus breaking law in order to fulfill prophecy. Turning to the modern hypothetical, he argues one > can easily conceive of Jesus crossing a border today without documentation, and adds an empirical > claim: the majority of people crossing If Jesus came over the border illegally right now, would you deport him? >> All right, let's see it. >> I I don't think that Jesus would would would go illegally. Like, so for example, like the the flight, you know, from from Nazareth to to Egypt was uh from one Roman territory to another Roman territory. So, it was it was a legal, you know, passage, if that makes sense. And he was escaping a ruler, but he was doing so legally. So Jesus wasn't violating any any orders, you know. So >> So three things to say in response to this non-answer. To begin, this is transparently dodging the question. This person is running away from the question and refusing to answer it because it is a rhetorical trap and they don't want to get caught in the rhetorical trap. By starting off with, well, I don't think Jesus would do that, therefore I don't have to answer the question. You're just acknowledging that you're scared of the outcome of an honest answer to the question because very clearly the question is intended to pit one's identity politics against themselves. It's to hold up two different identity markers and to say which one is going to take priority for you. And this person doesn't want to do that because they know once they do that, members of the inroup who prioritize the other identity marker that they're subordinating are going to get upset and they're going to alienate one side of the particular intersection of the social identities that are important to them. In this case, you have the contemporary fascist notion that anyone and everyone who crosses the border illegally must be deported irrespective of circumstances, irrespective of identity, irrespective of all that kind of stuff. And then we're pitting that against the notion that Jesus's teachings and the gospel should take priority. And so if you say one or the other, you're going to upset the people who would put the other one ahead of the one you chose. And this person doesn't want to do that. It's very similar to the story of the woman taken in adultery where they bring the woman to Jesus and say, "What say you? Do we impose the law as required by Moses and God, the law of Moses, or do we exempt this person from the law?" It's asking Jesus to say whose side are you going to take? Because if you do impose the law and satisfy the people who prioritize the law of Moses, you upset the Roman authorities. But if you acquies to the Roman authority over the death penalty, then you upset the people who prioritize the law of Moses. And what did Jesus do in the story of the woman taken in adultery? basically tacitly endorses the law of Moses but goes on to say the one who is without sin should cast the first stone sidstepping in short the imposition of the penalty. So Jesus basically says yeah the law of Moses ought to be the priority but who's going to do it and nobody can do it. So that's how the narrative has Jesus dodge the implications. But Jesus does tacitly endorse one of those positions. Now this individual is going to go on later to tacitly endorse one of the positions. And we're going to see that there is an answer. But there are two other parts to this non-answer that we need to get to first. Uh the notion that Jesus was going from one Roman territory to another Roman territory is not true. And it's also not the flight from Nazareth to Egypt. It was the flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. And this was not from one Roman territory to another. It was from a client kingdom into a Roman territory. And you can argue the semantics of that, but this was to escape the sovereignty of a ruler. But this is not an argument that people bring up about illegally entering some other territory. People bring this up to highlight Jesus's refugee status because they did not have any illegal immigration. They did not have undocumented immigration in this time period. We didn't even have that kind of undocumented immigration in the United States of America when it was first founded. And the first laws against or prohibiting specific kinds of immigration prohibited specific ethnic groups. It wasn't based on just whether or not you had documentation. It was based on whether or not you were a desired ethnic group entering the United States. And they just didn't have that in the ancient world. So Jesus could not have entered some place illegally in any way that is at all parallel to contemporary immigration laws. So not only is it just not accurate to say one that it was the flight from Nazareth to Egypt, but two that it was from one Roman territory to another and three that it was therefore not illegal. Therefore Jesus wouldn't do anything that was illegal. Because we do have Jesus advocating for if not engaging in activity that was either considered a violation of Mosaic law or considered illegal under Roman law. So for instance, his cleansing of the temple, his saying we got to have swords so that the passage can be fulfilled which says he was counted among the uh lawb breakakers or whatever. That's another example of Jesus breaking the law in order to fulfill prophecy. So the notion that Jesus wouldn't break laws is kind of falsified by the New Testament itself. Now to say Jesus wouldn't break immigration laws, well there were no immigration laws really for them to break at that time. Could you conceive of a situation where Jesus crosses an international border today without proper documentation? Absolutely. You can probably imagine all kinds of different circumstances. There are many many Christians, in fact, the majority of the people who are crossing the southern border of the United States of America without documentation are Christians themselves, fleeing persecution, fleeing dangerous circumstances, fleeing things that I think we wouldn't be out of line to say Jesus would advocate fleeing that Jesus would probably support. So, this individual is refusing to answer the question, at least in this part of the video, is getting a lot of facts wrong, is engaged in an anacronistic kind of rhetorical jiujitsu by suggesting that, well, Jesus's passage from Bethlehem to Egypt was legal, therefore Jesus wouldn't cross a border illegally. That's a straw man and a red herring. So, there's all kinds of stuff going wrong here, but it's about to go entirely off the rails. >> Um, so all that to say, I think you have to be honest about the question that you're asking. >> I think it's more important that you be honest with the answer, which you're not. >> And Jesus, I don't think well, he he didn't do that. So, okay. Okay. So, the fact that the New Testament doesn't narrate Jesus doing the thing doesn't mean that you can't ask hypothetically, what if Jesus did the thing? So, we're still not being honest with the answer. And we're using this rather silly and juvenile rhetorical dodge in order to facilitate not being honest with the answer because you don't want the smoke from the members of your group that you know will be upset once you actually answer honestly. However, we're going to see something of an honest answer in just a moment. >> It's kind of like asking if you know if Jesus ran somebody over with a car, would you send him to jail? Like, would you send Jesus to jail? Well, yes, I'd send Jesus to jail if he ran my grandmother over with a car. You know what I mean? Like, so, so, you know, I think that um a funny question deserves a funny answer. >> It's not a funny question. It's a serious question. And the point is to show that you are incapable of giving an honest answer because you know the implications are something you want to avoid and so you're not going to be honest about it. However, here you did suggest that you would be willing to punish Jesus legally if Jesus did something that was against the law. In this case, this kind of hyperbolic, what if Jesus ran down my grandma with a car? Sure, I would be willing to send him to jail. And in a way, this is tacitly saying, yes, there are circumstances I can imagine where I would punish Jesus legally for doing something that was against the law. And that's somewhat of a signal that yes, if Jesus broke the law, you would be willing to punish him. If Jesus crossed the border illegally, you would be willing to deport him. is kind of the tacit signal that is being given off here. Even as this individual is trying to dodge the question precisely because they don't want to be honest about it. It seems that the honest answer is yes. This individual would deport Jesus if he crossed the border illegally. which is a way to suggest I endorse the position that there are no circumstances, there are no identities that exempt an individual from this rule that we need to deport anyone who crosses the border illegally. So, this individual is really suggesting they're going to lean more into the nationalism side of Christian nationalism than into the Christian side of Christian nationalism because they want it to be more important that we strictly enforce these draconian fascist laws than that we display any kind of empathy, any kind of compassion, any kind of Christian mercy. Because right now, our struggle is for power. It is not for making the world a better place. It is not for prioritizing the weightier matters of the law. It is precisely for imposing the law even if it results in greater harm to people who have done what amounts to a speeding ticket in most cases. So uh this person is not being honest. this person realizes that the implications of giving an honest answer are undesirable and so they make up this silly little dodge about well I don't think Jesus would do that therefore I don't have to answer the question even though ultimately they did kind of provide an answer and suggest that oh yeah they would deport Jesus if he crossed the border illegally because their nationalism is more important to them than their Christianity but that's always been the case with TPUSA and With Christian nationalism, it has always been the worship of power. It has always been about structuring power and values and boundaries in ways that serve right-wing authoritarian and social dominance orientation, identity, politics, irrespective of what the letters in red suggest. And the fit for this video has been, Would You Deport Jesus?, Dan McClellan, 01m30j9e9k8r83xv43bdh8rnry.