Church leaders in the United States at every level have stressed that xenophobia is an urgent and enduring problem. Church teaching, too, makes it clear that xenophobia and discrimination against migrants are matters that we must confront and oppose. But how? How can we invite a change of minds—or better yet, a conversion of hearts, to recognize the dignity of migrants?
Despite the fact that migration is a central feature of the history of all three Abrahamic religions, studies show that religiosity is negatively correlated with positive feelings toward immigrants. In other words, the more religious you are, the more likely you are to hold negative views toward migration. A Pew Research study released in early 2025 showed that Christians in general (46 percent) and Catholics specifically (41 percent) were twice as likely as those of other religions and the religiously unaffiliated (both 23 percent) to say an increase in immigrant population has been “a change for the worse” in the United States.
This data presents both a challenge and an opportunity to the Catholic Church, with its strong pro-migrant tradition rooted in Scripture, the preferential option for the poor and the belief in the fundamental dignity of every human being.
Addressing the incongruity between the teachings of Catholicism and the views of its followers is crucial during Donald J. Trump’s second presidential term, one that has seen sweeping changes in migration policy, including travel bans, restrictions on asylum and the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents into U.S. cities to reach extreme deportation quotas. We have also witnessed the spread of insidious myths about migrants, including that undocumented immigrants disproportionately perpetrate violent crimes, smuggle drugs and directly compete with U.S. citizens for jobs and public benefits. As the ethicist Kristin Heyer has noted in Kinship Across Borders: A Christian Ethic of Immigration, these myths “can serve as idols to conceal a sinful reality and provoke demonization.”
Those working in academic, journalistic and political fields to counter these myths often assume that if citizens had accurate, nuanced information, anti-immigrant sentiment would decline and rational dialogue on immigration policy could ensue. The Catholic Church has taken a related tack, with leaders at every level condemning U.S. policy and rhetoric on immigration. In 2025 the U.S. bishops issued a rare “Special Message” on migration, writing that they are “compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.” Still, the prophetic voice of the church—while a balm to migrants and immigrant advocates—often seems ineffective in penetrating the hearts and minds of immigration opponents.
Social Science and Christian Ethics
The theological ethicist Tisha Rajendra has argued in Migrants and Citizens: Justice and Responsibility in the Ethics of Immigration that justice for migrants depends on narratives that are “faithful to reality.” However, while social science research is not of one voice, it provides good evidence to doubt the efficacy of rational discourse alone in shifting mindsets on subjects like migration.
The Catholic Church has long upheld the value of rationality to inform morality. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the human as a “rational being…who can initiate and control his own actions.” But ethicists like Elizabeth Sweeney Block, Heyer, Bryan Massingale and others have focused on the transformation of unjust structures and cultures that account for distorted consciences and impeded moral agency. In a 2015 essay on racial bias, Massingale proposed a model of conscience formation that integrates “nonrational factors” of decision making—imagination, affect, disposition or intuition—with mere information gathering.
But what about those who have already been shaped by and within xenophobic cultures? For those who already hold anti-immigrant sentiments, how can we invite conversion? Aware of structural and cultural influences on our consciences, how might we come to see conversion as a communal responsibility?
Deep Canvassing
The practice of “deep canvassing” among our fellow citizens could enable this very conversion on social and political levels.
A standard deep canvassing conversation, as summarized by the political psychologist Sarah Stein Lubrano in Don’t Talk About Politics, might look like this. A canvasser asks individuals to rate where they stand on an issue from one to ten. Then the canvasser asks why that person is not a “one” or a “ten” and listens nonjudgmentally. From there, the canvasser seeks to uncover a personal connection to the topic at hand: Why does the individual believe what he or she does?
The canvasser delves deeper with questions and reflects the answers back to the individual. The individual is invited to rearticulate his or her position if the reflection did not feel accurate. In the latter portion of the conversation, the canvasser makes clear their own perspective through a story of how they or another individual were directly affected by the issue. Finally, the canvasser asks again what the person’s views are, on a scale from one to ten, and invites the person to articulate why.
Two researchers who study deep canvassing, Joshua Kalla and David Broockman, have conducted three experiments on the practice, involving 230 canvassers working across different topics with nearly 7,000 voters in seven locations. They have varied the conversation to find the “active ingredients” of deep canvassing. While conversation remains more of an art than a science, the research suggests two key principles: nonjudgmental listening and a process of “narrative exchange.”
Because we all have a unique set of experiences that inform our beliefs, a canvasser engaged in nonjudgmental listening must act more like a chaplain than a political operative, providing individuals the space to unpack their own opinions and accompanying them as they do so. Rather than debate each person’s justifications for believing something, the goal is to understand the motivations behind them. The tone of the conversation, then, is one of mutual listening and learning.
Research suggests that individuals resist persuasion on many topics due to concerns about belonging: Admitting error may risk ostracization from their community. To change one’s mind, a person needs to trust that it is safe to do so, especially amid heightened polarization.
If nonjudgmental listening creates the environment in which change is possible, then narrative exchange deals with the content. The canvasser invites the person to speak from his or her own story. While explicit arguments tend to elicit explicit counterarguments, stories decrease critical states of mind, tap into emotion and increase engagement. The exchange needs to be mutual, though, which means a canvasser must also share a story about oneself or someone else that informs the canvasser’s views.
The results? Ten percent of individuals changed their minds after one conversation. This may not seem like a large number, but it indicates that deep canvassing is significantly more effective than other techniques (102 times more than traditional canvassing) and has the power to shift our political and moral landscape. Even more, the shifts in opinion had staying power, were effective across the political spectrum and did not require teams with extensive canvassing experience.
What can Christian ethics learn from deep canvassing? Key principles like nonjudgmental listening and narrative exchange already exist within the Christian tradition: in the values of hospitality and encounter, and in the practices of storytelling, parables, preaching and scriptural tales of conversion. Thus, deep canvassing does not require that the church adopt radical new methods. Rather, it uplifts existing practices that may be particularly effective in bringing about conversion on issues like migration.
The classic example of such a practice is one that has been the focus of church discussions for a number of years now: synodality.
Conversations in the Spirit
Synodality is not always easily defined, but the recent Synod on Synodality identified it as a way of being church by journeying together, discerning how to be in community and how to be in the world given the signs of the times. As a path of both “spiritual renewal and structural reform,” synodality balances the import of structural, communal and individual conversion. I see deep canvassing and synodality as mutually reinforcing, especially looking at the synodal method of dialogue called conversations in the spirit, which itself is rooted in nonjudgmental listening and narrative exchange.
Sometimes called listening sessions, conversations in the spirit demand humble engagement that, to quote the Synod on Synodality’s final document, can foster a climate “where people feel welcomed and not judged.” Synodal listening centers silence as a means to avoid knee-jerk reactions or doubling down. From silence, participants share what “has touched them most deeply and what they feel challenged by most strongly.” Moreover, these conversations in the spirit are not centered around listening to church teaching or “setting out one’s own personal point of view.” Narrative is the language of synodality. Participants share stories from their own experience.
In the case of migration, synodality invites those with anti-immigrant views to listen nonjudgmentally to migrants who share their story and the choices they made to survive—in the hope to someday flourish—amid constrained situations. Perhaps even more difficult, synodality asks migrants and migration advocates to listen to those who harbor fear or vitriol toward migrants. Why do they believe what they do? What experiences or stories shaped them? What is their own family’s “migration story”?
To be clear, I am not arguing that the church should “deep canvass” as a political technique. Rather, its efficacy can encourage those who are doubtful or resistant to take up the synodal call. If we take the research seriously, synodality could in fact be our most powerful resource for broad and grassroots conversion on migration.
One might wonder about intention here. Deep canvassers set out with the express intention of shifting minds, something that can seem contrary to the synodal method, which “does not guarantee the desired result,” to quote a document from the Synod on Synodality. But the key principles of deep canvassing that engender conversion lie not in the intent but the process itself. Thus, the intent need not discount the insights it can offer migration ethics.
Further, conversations in the spirit are not meant to be simply a performance nor are they just a process of manipulation. These conversations are theologically empowered by the knowledge that sin is present in all of us. Refraining from “casting the first stone” creates the conditions for conversion in the other, but it also calls forth our own conversion.
Rooted in the universal call to conversion, conversations in the spirit represent a collective effort to discern and cooperate with the Holy Spirit, trusting that the spirit “blows where she wills,” not at random, but toward what is liberative and life-giving, especially for the most vulnerable in our society. The synodal way of being, then, is not aimed at a one-time shift in polling nor a single piece of legislation, as important as that may be. Synodality, rather, aims to create conditions and foster encounters where the Holy Spirit may fill us and “something like scales” may fall from our eyes (Acts 9:18).
Nuts and Bolts
Turning to the practical, we should recognize that deep canvassing is “deep” because it is time-intensive and resource-intensive. What makes it successful also limits its efficiency as compared with normal canvassing, let alone with mass political advertising or social media campaigns. Sarah Stein Lubrano acknowledges that deep canvassing is not realistic for most political campaigns but asks us instead to “imagine if our lives were structured so we had conversations like that all the time anyway.” This, I argue, is where the synodal church comes in.
The limitations faced by political campaigns do not limit the church. Synodality is not about results. As Thomas J. Reese, S.J., noted in the National Catholic Reporter, “Being synod, doing synod, in other words, is more important than the decisions that will come out of the synod.” This mindset uniquely situates the church in a position to prioritize conversion of heart over polling data, return on investment or election wins.
Of course, such processes can also prove confounding and frustrating to those seeking change. While impatience with the synodal way is fair amid urgent threats to migrants’ dignity, adopting this path makes the church, in the words of the Synod on Synodality’s final document, “increasingly capable of making prophetic decisions that are the fruit of the Spirit’s guidance” and invites deeper change. The slow movement of the church, often seen as a weakness, can be seen as a strength in this case, a unique way for the church to take up difficult and polarizing topics like migration.
Given the rampant anti-immigrant sentiment present in the United States today, the church needs to interrogate and adapt its modes of engagement on this issue. The method of deep canvassing, rooted in nonjudgmental listening and narrative exchange, endorses the potential of the synodal process as a methodology. Catholic parishes seem uniquely situated as communities to invite a grassroots conversion of heart on migration.
No individual can force conversion, but the church can cooperate with the Holy Spirit in fostering the conditions, opportunities and encounters that make a conversion of heart possible. Everyone has a role: parishes, teachers, professors, chaplains, preachers, Christian ethicists, the U.S. bishops and, perhaps most importantly, the lay parishioner.
This task is not easy, yet it is a necessity born out of a Christian belief that repentance, conversion and redemption are always available to every person. As Pope Francis put it: Todos, todos, todos.
This article appears in November 2026.
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