Visions of the End at the Texas-Mexico Line: Crises of Sovereignty and Theodicy in Department of Homeland Security v. Texas

Drawing on Jon P. Gunnemann’s monograph, *The Moral Meaning of Revolution*, this paper reads White Christian Nationalist responses to Department of Homeland Security v. Texas as a revision of the movement’s theodicy.  I begin with an analysis of the court documents that reconstructs the crisis of sovereignty underlying the case.  Next, I turn to White Christian Nationalist commentary on the case to draw out this crisis’s theological significance.  Here, I contend that although this commentary leaves intact nativist diagnoses of the problem of evil, it relocates the messianic power which is to overcome this evil, espousing state sovereignty over and against federal sovereignty, “America” over and against the “United States.”  I conclude by warning that the violence this contest produces will nevertheless be born principally by the migrant bodies it presses to the geographic, political, and theological margins - not by the bodies politic at odds in the courtroom.