Remarks by Senior Researcher Wael Taji Miller “What the Crisis of Migration Means for Families and Nations”

We are pleased to share the transcript of a speech delivered at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington, DC, where two of our latest white papers were formally introduced. The remarks outline the key themes and policy insights that shape our current work.

Thank you. Panelists, guests, friends of Hungary, friends of America, good evening. I’m Wael Taji Miller, a Senior Researcher and the Research Coordinator for the Axioma Center.  

We are gathered here today to share with you our latest works tackling core issues of migration and family from the voice of the Christian tradition, as lived in both West and in East. As I begin my remarks, I would like to pause for reflection on what this Christian tradition is, and on what it means for us as a Christian public policy center to follow such a tradition in the first place.  

We Christians believe that our tradition was revealed to us through the person of Jesus Christ. Before that, it was spoken through the prophets. Ultimately, our scripture tells us that our tradition goes back to the very dawn of time itself. It is passed on from generation to generation. It teaches us fundamental values such as beauty, truth, and goodness. It is both lived and experienced by us, once a week on Sundays, in churches and prayer halls around the entire world. It continues to shape us as individuals, as families, and as nations or faith communities. 

But that word – ‘continues’ – is crucial here. For inherent in the very concept of a tradition is that attribute of continuity.

Without continuity, a tradition cannot exist.

It cannot be passed down from father to son, or from mother to daughter. It cannot be taught in Sunday Schools, nor can it shape the hearts and minds of future generations. Without continuity, a tradition is ruptured in time and in space. At best, it becomes intellectualized, desacralized, and disconnected from the individuals and families which constitute the necessary preconditions for its very existence.  

That rupture of continuity which shattered a Christianity tradition took place not long ago in Lebanon: a cautionary tale that is described in the first chapter of our whitepaper on the Ethics of Migration. A quotation from the letters of Elias Peter Hoayek, the 72nd Maronite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, in writing to the French government, goes as follows: 

“The original idea that served as a basis for the establishment of the Lebanese state was to make it into a refuge for all the Christians of the Orient.”

Scarcely 10 years after achieving its independence in 1943, Lebanon was hit by its first major crisis: a tidal wave of overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim Palestinian refugees emigrating into the country in the aftermath of Israel’s victory in its war for independence against a coalition of Arab States. By 1950, at least 127,000 refugees had flooded into Lebanon from the Palestinian territories, amounting to 10% of the entire country’s population. 

The Lebanese reaction to these newcomers was mixed. Many, especially political and religious leaders, showed charity and hospitality to the refugees – values for which Christians are so well known across the world. Some felt that while accepting and integrating the refugees was desirable, to do so would require a religious and cultural baptism in Christianity that was, practically speaking, impossible; in Islamic law and morality, changing one’s religion from Islam is both a mortal sin and a crime requiring capital punishment. Others still felt fear and uncertainty toward the new arrivals and the demographic change they heralded, but did nothing about it.  

Of course, what happened next is well known by the audience here tonight. Lebanon’s religious demography steadily changed, parallel societies emerged, then solidified. In 1975, after a drive-by shooting at a Maronite Catholic Church in East Beirut, the country fell into a civil war that lasted for 15 years, during which over half a million Christians fled the country for good.  

The end result of all of this – as of where we are now in 2026 – is that Lebanon is no longer a Christian homeland in any meaningful sense.

Instead, it has become a cultural and religious archipelago, where the government and indeed the army are weaker and less significant than the Islamist terror organization Hezbollah (which is incidentally a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran). 

This story is not intended as a history lesson, but to prove a point: that while our tradition itself is timeless, our ability to participate in it is not. Being able to openly live out the Christian tradition and play a role in its continuity from generation to generation is highly contingent: it cannot be taken for granted. 

Firstly, it is contingent on the flourishing of Christian families and the birth of children. This is a topic which we have exhaustively researched in our Family Policy Whitepaper with both empirical data, borne out by the Hungarian experiment in pro-family policy initiated by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as well as with Western Christian social teaching.  

Secondly, it is contingent upon having a societal, cultural, and political environment which the Christian believer can call his home: a shared place inhabited by people with shared characteristics, who might not share private opinions, but do at least share common values. This is a topic we have also addressed extensively in the Ethics of Migration, which is the other whitepaper being presented here by Axioma today. 

These two conditions for the vitality of a continuing Christian tradition – healthy families, and a healthy collective home – are deeply intertwined with one another, and both are indispensable.

Yet I will argue – albeit cautiously – that between the two, the stability, vitality, and perpetuity of the collective home is more salient in the short-term perspective than family is. A government enthused with Christian morality can spend millions – even billions – of dollars on support for families, on tax incentives for procreation within marriage, and on other essential goods for family formation and continuity. Yet if the nation itself falls into disarray and the continuity of Christian life is threatened, those very same Christian families may feel forced to leave and live in exile. 

It should be obvious to everyone here that Europe now seems poised to follow that same sad trajectory that Lebanon fell into during the 20th century. The stakes at hand here could not be higher. A continent that before World War I was united in its proclamation of the Gospel now stands to lose its unity, its Christian heritage, its distinct and wonderful nation-states, and even its continuity as such. What we refer to in our whitepaper as the ‘Christian oikos’, meaning the ordered relational sphere of public life where family, community, and faith converge, is now in mortal danger. All relevant statistical indicators across a myriad of domains including criminal victimization, mental health, optimism about the future, and family formation converge to show unanimously that we are moving in the wrong direction.  

How are we to confront such colossal challenges? What tools are we supposed – and indeed allowed – to use in this task? The lack of coherent answers to such questions from the European political establishment (which has existed in a state of effective moral paralysis for over a decade at this point) seems to suggest that the European Christian tradition is entirely devoid of solutions to these very real-world problems. At Axioma, we believe, contra the establishment, that this is not the case. For the faithful, articulating a coherent policy response to the challenges of mass migration requires re-immersing ourselves in our Christian traditions – the very subject at hand in this discussion – which have ample precedent of ethically grounded Christian governance on the very same issues we now face today. 

One example I would like to call upon is that of Saint Justinianos o Megas: a man whom most of you would know as Justinian the Great. This Orthodox Saint-Emperor ruled over the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th century at a time of extreme calamities, including the West’s first ever experience of a global pandemic (now called the Plague of Justinian), as well as a migration crisis that saw hundreds of thousands of Latin-speaking refugees from the Balkans flooding into the Empire’s capital city, Constantinople. The sudden arrival of so many Latin-speakers into a Greek city caused profound social and economic upheaval, ethnic tensions between Greek and Latin Christians, and even mass riots. Justinian, who was himself a Latin by birth and descent, viewed this mass migration as an assault against the human dignity of the refugees and against the common good of the nation.  

To address this, Saint Justinian passed decisive legislation limiting internal migration within the Empire, and encouraged remigration by Latins to their ancestral homes where possible. His Novellas urge migrants to 

“avoid abandoning their homelands and leading a wretched life over here, perhaps dying deprived of what is theirs, and without even the benefit of their ancestral burial grounds.”

This is a powerful example of an ethically grounded Christian response to migration that is perhaps more relevant to us today than at any prior moment in history.  

Another example somewhat closer to home for us is that of Saint Stephen, whose coronation by Pope Sylvester II in the year 1000 AD marks the founding of the Hungarian Christian nation. Catholic Saint-King Stephen, in his Admonitions (described in greater detail in our whitepaper), outlines the principles for morally righteous Christian kingship and governance – including on the issue of migration. The ethos of Saint Stephen’s ethical approach to migration centers on the balance between Christian caritas and mercy toward migrants and refugees on the one hand, against the necessity of putting the common good of the Christian kingdom first when deciding who is allowed to stay, and who is not.  

I will wind down my remarks by offering a few short thoughts in reflection on the issues covered in my speech.  

The first thought is that continuity itself is a value, and must be treated as such. Without continuity from the Apostles who witnessed the resurrected Christ, none of us would be here today. The continuity of Christian tradition is complementary with the continuity of familial, social, and cultural life in Christian countries. The two are not at odds with each other, and cannot be treated as such.  

The second thought, or observation, is that actors or institutions who engage in public policy – including ourselves at Axioma – must embed devout commitment to this principle of continuity into their policy work. We are Christians, not Communists. Our perspective is that of the light which shines from generation to generation, not that of five-year plans. If we sincerely believe that our tradition offers salvation for all of humanity, irrespective of race, color, and yes, even creed, then it is incumbent upon us to ensure that the gateway to this destination – that is, the Christian tradition – never closes.  

My third and final thought is as follows:

Christians can no longer abnegate moral responsibility to a higher power over the crisis for nations and families that is mass migration.

Just as a doctor cannot turn away a sick patient knowing that God holds power over healing, neither can we turn ourselves away from the worsening wounds of the migration crisis with the arrogant expectation that God Almighty should come down to fix our mistakes. Our traditions are replete with ample precedent, and indeed also agia sofia, waiting to be remembered, revivified, and re-used in our struggle to save our societies, even in the 21st century.  

Thank you, and God bless you all.