A moment of silence for those killed by ICE — immigrants and Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three, poet and singer — followed the music of protest folk singer Jesse Welles as the Jan. 13 online meeting of the Sacred Resistance Ministry of the Diocese of Los Angeles got underway:
“If you’re looking for purpose in the current circus,
if you’re seeking respect and attention,
if you’re in need of a gig, that’ll make you feel big.
Come with me and put some folks in detention …
Take my advice, if you’re lacking control and authority
come with me and hunt down minorities. Join ICE.”
The Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards Action, a lead organizer, invited participants to share “a glimmer of hope … a spark of light … some manifestation of blessing (in spite of) the ongoing violence and vengeance that’s happening right now in our country and in our communities, against our communities.”
That hope, participants said, looks like:
- A recent YouGov and The Economist poll indicating 46 percent of those surveyed favor abolishing ICE, compared to 43 percent opposed to the idea;
- Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota who resigned after being asked to prosecute Rebecca Good, the widow of Renee Nicole Good, for domestic terrorism;
- “Folks who are changing their minds, rather than embracing, what is happening. We have to give permission and be kind and gentle, rather than piling on when someone is struggling with wanting to change their mind.”
Guest speaker Bishop John Harvey Taylor began his remarks by offering the gathering greetings from Bishop-elect Antonio Gallardo, slated to be consecrated July 11, who “is with you in solidarity and in spirit and will be with you in body and soul before too long.”
Given the current political climate, Sacred Resistance demonstrators could soon be construed as “domestic terrorists,” Taylor told the gathering.
“Trump’s regime appears to be stretching to reserve the right to kill at will, abroad for certain, perhaps also at home, while stating explicitly that it recognizes no moral or legal constraint beyond one man’s constricted conscience,” he said. Taylor cited not only Good’s killing and subsequent labeling as a domestic terrorist, but also what he called the murders of more than 100 people of color aboard alleged drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean. He also noted the deaths of “a record 30 who died in ICE hands last year, plus 10 who died in U.S. custody just in the first 12 days of this year.”
If the government’s attempt to characterize Good and other dissenters as domestic terrorists succeeds, it will get worse, Taylor said. noting that New Hampshire Bishop Rob Hirschfeld “is telling his deacons and priests to get their wills in order because of the possibility that the times may require more martyrs.
“We must pray it will not come to pass,” he added. “We must pray that those with the constitutional authority to constrain this regime will recognize that their freedom, their prosperity, their sacred honor, are all at risk, along with ours. We must pray that none of us will be asked to put our bodies in the path of more ICE bullets. We must pray that the Church will continue to be able to exercise the divine right of peaceful resistance to unjust authority.”
Taylor warned that events may be reaching a tipping point. “No matter what our critiques of American society and culture have been up until now, whatever our politics,” he said, “none of us has any experience of our nation being led along this dark passage to authoritarianism and possibly tyranny.
“We have to keep our lamps lit, remain in community and solidarity, contend with whatever each day brings, and take care of one another, especially those who are most at risk.”
Taylor thanked contributors to the diocesan One Body & One Spirit Appeal fund to aid wildfire victims. He recalled his video invitations during Advent to “the 100 or so missions and parishes where people aren’t afraid to go to church every Sunday to be more mindful of people’s experiences of the 30 or so churches where English is not the principal language of worship,” where people live in daily fear of ICE raids.
“Even if we don’t agree on immigration policy, can’t we agree that we think it’s a sin and a shame that our fellow Episcopalians are afraid to go to church on a Sunday morning, or go shopping or go to work, go to a birthday party?”
Citing the power of narrative, and the need to “broaden the depth and breadth of our storytelling,” he added: “We can’t be the Body of Christ until we know what it feels like, either from personal experience or the intentional sharing of narratives in community, what every toe and digit is feeling. I believe all the people of God in this diocese, no matter what they think about politics and policy. I believe that if you take the average closed border hardliner from one of our churches to Tijuana and introduce them to a pregnant woman and the other members of her family in a shelter or sleeping outside, the hardliner’s first reaction will not be to tell the family to go back to Guatemala but ask if the woman is getting proper prenatal care.”
“But that’s not going to happen unless we breach the dividing walls of geography, socio-economics, language, and ideology and introduce ourselves to one another” for deeper mutual understanding, he said.
Taylor also encouraged support of news outlets, like the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Taco, which “publishes a daily digest of ICE sightings and kidnappings all over our region, plus excellent feature stories … (and) deserves your $100 annual membership.”
Individual social media and diocesan communications also offer critical opportunities for connection, added Taylor, renewing a request for congregations to share their email lists. “Trump’s government wants to isolate, frighten, divide, scare and discourage people … but can only win by lying, cheating and stealing — that’s his essential weakness.”
In response to a question about how to discuss the current political climate as part of a larger story of the nation’s historical targeting, oppressing and disenfranchising people of color, Taylor cited the book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, by Laura K. Field. A political theorist, Field, according to Taylor, says “an animating principle of the intellectual structure of Trumpism is a fear of the pluralizing of America” rooted, in the case of some guiding figures, in misogyny, nativism and racism, and homophobia. Some, Taylor said, are explicit enemies of democracy “who have come to the conclusion that elections no longer produce outcomes in which they have faith.”
He said Trump’s victory depended on attacking Trans and nonbinary people, who represent “a minuscule percentage of our population who have been portrayed as this ongoing threat to all that we hold dear, and our undocumented neighbors who labor without representation. The extent to which we can persuade people away from a hard line on both or either, we essentially wear away at the foundation of this scant plurality,” Taylor said. “It’s wise to keep our focus on two groups that Trump scapegoated to get power.” He said politics in the age of Trump was no longer a matter of weighing both sides equally, since one side threatens the end of democracy and “the last best hope of earth.”
The Rev. Canon Susan Russell noted a short documentary film called “All the Walls Came Down”, by Ondi Timoner, about the Eaton Fire in Altadena, featuring intersectionality.
The movie “is about not only the walls coming down in the middle of the inferno in our homes, but in our communities, breaking down those walls that divided us, around class, around orientation, around ethnicity, to become a community that’s forged together trying to work to restore what Altadena was,” Russell said. “I can make the same analogy that the firestorm that’s brewing in this moment is trying to burn down democracy, and that the walls that are being burnt down are the ones that might have silo-ized us into silo-ization of competing oppressions.”
The more narratives are shared and engagement across differences occurs, the reality is, the right is outnumbered, she said. “What we have to do is remember that we have to out-hope them. We have to out-love them, and we have to out-organize, mobilize” and outvote them.
The Rev. Dr. Francisco Garcia said Sacred Resistance, initially begun in 2016 when convention voted to assume sanctuary status, seeks to serve as a resource not only throughout the diocese, but the state as well. Representatives from four of the state’s six Episcopal dioceses are meeting to build a statewide Sacred Resistance network, he said.
Information about resources is available on the Sacred Resistance website, including a Jan. 17, 2026 Orange County Rapid Response Training from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Laguna Beach. Sign-ups are available here. The location will be shared with those who register.
Volunteers are needed, to help develop a book study, and in the areas of music, communications and fundraising. Interested parties are asked to email: lasacredresistance@gmail.com or hopeinhollywood@gmail.com.