Image: civileats.com
My colleagues in Christ, I’d like to devote my time, and perhaps a few minutes extra, to exploring the likelihood that the cruel road the Trump administration is following will bring our neighborhoods and our nation to the brink of a catastrophe that will demand a strenuous prophetic and pastoral response from the church of Jesus Christ.
Diocesan Council is not an immigration seminar. I understand members of our missions and parishes have a wide range of views on this issue. But for as long as I can remember, mainstream Republicans and Democrats recognized a category of immigrant labor comprising 12 to 13 million of our neighbors nationwide.
These are folks who came here for jobs that were freely offered by United States enterprises. Many have been here for five, ten, 20 or 30 years, paying their taxes, sending their kids to college, making America great. We worship with hundreds of them every Sunday. These workers were here long before the recent flood of asylee admissions. Undocumented workers from Central America have been picking fruit and vegetables in the Central Valley for nearly a century.
It’s true that they are in technical violation of the immigration rules and laws. While recent presidents have favored regularizing them, they have had trouble getting Congress to help. But this president, for as long as he has been talking about these issues, has blurred the line between this cohort of workers and those who are really are criminals. For ten years, he has made our immigrant worker neighbors public enemy number one.
Now Los Angeles is the epicenter of their plan to round up and deport a million of these workers a year. In their tax and spending bill, they’re seeking $75 billion more for ICE. My friends, deporting a million people a year for four years will tear our country apart and leave a stain on our soul that will take generations to erase.
What’s going on in the streets is the media’s preoccupation. Los Angeles religious leaders are calling on people to demonstrate peacefully. We’re calling on the government not to use violence against peaceful demonstrators. But after worrying about what’s going on in the streets, Jesus wants us to worry about what’s going on at home, in the lives of the people affected by these cruel workplace roundups.
In almost every meeting I’ve had I today, no matter the subject, leaders of our diocese, particularly those serving people of color, are saying that our fellow congregants are afraid to go to work. They’re afraid to come to church. They’re afraid to go to backyard birthday parties. They’re afraid to walk on the streets of their own neighborhoods.
One priest, who works with immigrants in her secular job, told a group of us that everyone is terrified. Then she said, “So many people don’t have a church behind them.”
But at our missions and parishes, and in our communities — our people do have a church behind them.
So first the political, then the pastoral.
We’ve all read the First Amendment. We all have a right to express our views. As far as I’m concerned, there can be no separation of church and state until powers and principalities, kings and presidents, obey the universal divine law of love. In these secularizing times, as our culture becomes more selfish, we have to stand up for leadership, whatever its party or doctrine, that pledges to do the best it can for the largest number of our people.
When it comes to immigration policy, in the light of recent events, the only humane stance for The Episcopal Church, in my view, is to insist that, at long last, after a century of political posturing, all otherwise law-abiding undocumented workers should be regularized. We mustn’t insist on citizenship. Most of these workers don’t. But a society that takes advantage of the labor of up to 13 million of its people needs to stop abusing them for political gain. We are indeed a nation of laws. I can’t tell you the number of people who put that pronouncement on social media. When it comes to the undocumented, we’re also a nation of users.
You and your members may not agree with my view. Another view is that every undocumented person is a criminal who should go home and try to enter legally. I don’t believe that’s a realistic or humane view, and Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush agreed with me.
But even if that is your opinion, it is unacceptable that members of our churches and our neighbors should live in terror. ICE took 13 members affiliated with our diocese on Friday. I’ve broken bread with them. ICE sent them God knows where. They have no due process. There is no way to contact them. Their families are sitting at home, waiting to hear. At the prayer vigil we had Tuesday in Grand Park, one of the workers’ daughters told us about her family’s ordeal, and a thousand hearts broke.
So whatever our members think about immigration policy, our neighbors are in pain. And that brings me to our pastoral obligations. First of all, we pray – for justice, fairness, nonviolence, and enlightenment. Second, we study. If we can, let’s move beyond harsh zero-sum positions that break the backs and hearts of those who take care of our homes, work in the businesses we patronize, and care for our parents and grandparents in nursing homes and board and cares.
Third – and this is where your ministry comes in as members of Diocesan Council – let’s make common cause with ecumenical and interfaith organizations in our communities. There’s a Home Depot near you where people show up every day, hoping that a legally licensed United States business will pay them so they can feed their family. Instead, they are now living in fear that ICE is coming – and so their families are going hungry. Talk about these issues with other people and faith. See if you can decide on a way to advocate or at least care for our neighbors.
If you can, if you want, advocate locally, regionally, and nationally – but whatever your view, even a tough line on immigration could be transacted with humanity and decency. Advocate for reform, or just for kindness. If you don’t want to stand up these workers at City Hall, I understand. So stand up for them by doubling support to your local food bank.
I must insist on one thing. Disagreement about policy does not relieve us of our responsibilities as ministers of the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Beholding our undocumented sibling and saying they’re a criminal is a cop out. We know in our hearts they’re not. We know that if we took time to hear their stories, we’d take a more humane view. If this government continues with this policy, that’s what the church must do. We’ll lift up their stories and make the critics look them in their face and tell them why they shouldn’t have a shot at staying here with their families and the others they love.
Because our people do have a church behind them. Our neighborhoods have churches in their midst. This is our time to do what Jesus would do. This is often the moment where one is tempted to quote Isaiah or Amos about kindness to the foreigner. But this goes even deeper. This is the realm of the law of love our God in Christ planted in our hearts. In our baptismal covenant, we pledge to respect “the dignity of every human being.” But even that understanding comes from what God teaches us long before we learn to read or talk, which is that everyone deserves to be treated with kindness. Everyone.
— My remarks on Thursday night to the monthly meeting of the Diocesan Council of Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.