In a recent interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, President Donald Trump said he'd be open to granting special exceptions to Christian refugees seeking to gain entry to the United States.

"They were chopping off the heads of everybody, but more so the Christians," Trump said. "I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them."

In response, a coalition of Christian groups sent a letter to Trump denouncing the exception and imploring him to lift the ban on refugees.

“The Bible teaches us that each person—including each refugee, regardless of their country of origin, religious background, or any other qualifier—is made in the image of God, with inherent dignity and potential,” the letter read, according to POLITICO. “Their lives matter to God, and they matter to us.”

Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett Price joined the chorus of voices criticizing the ban and the Christian exception. Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist and Price is a professor and director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

"It's the wrong message, it's the wrong approach, and it's just bad all the way," said Price.

Monroe shared an email with a listener criticizing Cardinal Sean O'Malley for not joining protests of the refugee and immigration restrictions at Copley Square yesterday. O'Malley was at the March for Life over the weekend in Washington, D.C., but he wrote on his blog that "our country has the opportunity to respond to the reality of immigration with policies and practices which reflect our deepest religious and social principles."

The listener wrote, according to Monroe, that "it would have been nice to see Cardinal O'Malley, who traipsed the 400 miles down to D.C. for the Right To Live March, make the one mile trek over to Copley for the protests speaking out for our Muslim and immigrant brethren...only to discover that Sunday morning the gospel reading of the week was Matthew 5—the Beatitudes."

"That is just an absolute hoot," Monroe said.

To hear more from Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett Price, tune in to Boston Public Radio above.