My childhood church sponsored Vietnamese refugees coming to the United States. I remember the time, the language challenges, the cultural shocks. Also, an amazing dinner they refugees prepared for the volunteers. We moved out of the area before the work was done, but it sticks in my memory as something that Churches do.
Immigrants #2 Sanctuary
We looked at some easier ways to help immigrants, and we’ll look at some middling ideas. Today I want to suggest your congregation can risk it all to care for the stranger among us.
Just after graduating college, and living in Burlington, VT, I attended a presbyterian church near the UVM campus. What pulled me in was their communion feast each week. It took me awhile to figure out that the family in the back row, were from El Salvador and they were living in the church building.
The Sanctuary Movement started in the eighties and is based on the theory, begun in the fourth century, that churches are a place of refuge. Governments have not always agreed with this stance; Biden used an Executive order to make Hospitals, Schools, and religious institutions safe space, and our present leadership revoked that order.
The US movement started in a Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ and a few years later several members and volunteers were tried for conspiracy and encouraging and aiding illegal aliens. Some of those charged were found guilty; they received suspended sentences. The publicity from their actions gained wide public support for the movement.
If your congregation is willing to take the risk, has a relationship with immigrant families and immigrant organizations, and you have space in your building, now might be the time to take on a sanctuary project. If you are not already connected to immigrants but want to consider this, start by connecting to other organizations in your area that are protecting immigrants. For many congregations your parsonage, or other outbuildings maybe unused; this might be good motivation for fixing up the spaces. Some churches in the eighties were stopping points for immigrants moving elsewhere, others were long-term housing. As with any project you’ll want a steady source of volunteers from within and outside of your congregation. You’ll want strong connections to immigrant organizations and to legal resources.
Right now ICE agents may enter the areas in our churches that are public, like the worship space, and not areas which are private such as offices and parsonages. There has been some effort to create laws (rather than executive actions) that identify schools, hospitals, and places of worship as safe space, and there may be legal action to stop this executive order.
Know also that there was no formal declaration that the government supported Sanctuary when churches in the eighties hid immigrants in their buildings. Those involved describe meeting immigrants and being moved to action—some from politically conservative congregations.
To decide to engage in Sanctuary is to take a risk as a congregation, and as individuals. You will be risking arrest. The present administration might attack your non-profit status. All immigrants, apparently regardless of the legal status, are at risk right now. They will still be at risk inside your walls. You will need safety planning and legal resources. You will need the flexibility to adjust to a rapidly changing situation. You will need faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.
Luke 9:23-24 Then he said to them all, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.
In many ways our Christian faith is choosing risk over the status-quo. Some risks are small, talking to a stranger, or standing up to a bully. Choosing to be a sanctuary church is to choose to risk it all for the sake of the Gospel.
Have you been part of a Sanctuary Church? Is your church helping immigrants in some small or middling or big way? Just reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
The podcast 99% Invisible shares the story of the first Sanctuary Church--how they got into it, and what impact their work had on churches in the United States.
Here is the Presbyterian Church's denominational guide on Sanctuary Congregations. Note that some of it presumes that the immigrants have had due process and have legal deportation orders. What is happening right now seems to skip the due process step, and so will make the decision for sanctuary quite different.
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