The New Sanctuary Movement

I write a monthly column for my church newsletter, and I thought this month's topic was suitable for more general consumption.


ST. JOHN’S AS A PLACE OF SANCTUARY AND CHRISTIAN EDUCATION
In 2007 we have been exploring the promises in our St. John’s Vision Statement and how they relate to the decisions we each make in our daily lives. This month I would like to look at two powerful statements, specifically:


We are a sanctuary, a haven where people can come, knowing their needs will be met and they will be safe.

and,

We are a School for Christian Education, where we use our resources to study, learn, and understand the word of God and the Holy Scriptures…to challenge ourselves and seek the answers to the great questions of our time. More importantly, we provide our children the moral foundation to know the peace of God’s love, a faith that will guide them throughout their lives.


The idea of church as sanctuary has taken on new meaning in recent months, as Americans have followed the case of Elvira Arellano, an illegal Mexican immigrant who holed up in a Chicago Methodist church for nearly a year before being deported this past August. She had sought sanctuary in the church because she was being called to a deportation hearing and did not want to be separated from her seven-year-old son, an American citizen. The legalities of the case are clear. Arellano had twice entered the country illegally, had already been deported once before, and the traditional belief that people are protected from arrest in a church is not recognized under U.S. law.

The morality of her situation is less cut and dry, and poses a dilemma for all of us who call ourselves Christians as our nation struggles to re-define its immigration policies. Pastor Walter Coleman said his congregation offered Arellano (an active parishioner) refuge after praying about her plight, saying he did not believe Arellano should have to choose between leaving her son behind or removing him from his home (to take him with her to Mexico). "She represents the voice of the undocumented, and we think it's our obligation, our responsibility, to make a stage for that voice to be heard," he said.

We are unlikely to be called on to shelter an illegal alien here at St. John’s, but our delegates will be called to vote on a resolution at the annual Diocesan convention in New York next week. The resolution, submitted by Rev. Richard Witt of the Rural & Migrant Ministry, reads as follows:

Pledge Of Support For The New Sanctuary Movement

Resolved, That the Episcopal Diocese of New York acknowledge that the large-scale immigration of workers and their families to the United States is a complex historical, global and economic phenomenon that has many causes and does not lend itself to simplistic or purely reactive public policy solutions.

That we stand together in our faith that everyone, regardless of national origin, has basic common rights, including but not limited to: 1) livelihood; 2) family unity; and 3) physical and emotional safety. We witness the violation of these rights under current immigration policy, particularly in the separation of children from their parents due to unjust deportations, and in the exploitation of immigrant workers. We are deeply grieved by the violence done to families through immigration raids. We cannot in good conscience ignore such suffering and injustice.

Resolved, That we in the Episcopal Diocese of New York commit ourselves to:
1. Support the New Sanctuary Movement and;
2. Promote the New Sanctuary Movement within our denomination and congregations and among our other allies.

Explanation:
The Diocese has long welcomed immigrants and championed their just treatment. Many of our congregations have worked hard to ensure that the humanity and dignity of our immigrant brothers and sisters are upheld. The New Sanctuary Movement is a coalition of interfaith religious leaders and participating congregations, called by our faith to respond actively and publicly to the suffering of our immigrant brothers and sisters residing in the United States. The New Sanctuary Movement pledge outlines three goals including taking a public, moral stand on behalf of immigrant families and workers; opening the American people’s eyes to the suffering of immigrant workers and families under current policies; and protecting immigrants against hate, workplace discrimination and unjust deportation. The Movement aims to enlist millions of people of faith through signing of the New Sanctuary Movement pledge and other moral and material support.(end of Resolution)

One of the things I love about St. John’s is our commitment to Adult Christian Education, where both scripture and cultural issues are discussed and prayed about. This issue of sanctuary is likely to be on the table for some time to come, and I look forward to our discussions of what we believe Christ calls us to do.

And, as our nation grapples with these issues, we here at St. John’s can and will be true to our Vision Statement, challenging ourselves to seek answers to the great questions of our time.

Respectfully submitted,
Liz Nealon

Thinking about Civic Ministry

I write a monthly column for my church newsletter. Occasionally, I like to share a topic that seems suitable for general consumption.

A BEACON OF CIVIC MINISTRY
By Liz Nealon

This month we would like to consider two promises in our parish Vision Statement as they each relate to our obligation to reach outward to the community around us.


We are a center of civic ministry. We need to be a beacon, open in ever expanding ways to our community.

and,

We are a place of compassion, a congregation whose mission is deeply rooted in concern, care and action to the needs of others.


Each of us has something to offer to others. We can give our money and our time to charity, be a friend to someone who is sick or lonely, do volunteer work, or be a peacemaker, teacher or lay minister. We may give unselfishly of our time to our spouse, children or parents. We might choose a service-oriented occupation, or we may just do our everyday jobs with integrity and respect for others. At St. John’s, our civic ministry includes our support of feeding programs like the Good Shepherd Soup Kitchen, our willingness to allow community groups involved in self-help to use our facilities, and our openness and willingness to support one-time and recurring civic concerns such as the Communities That Care program.

Logic dictates that the more we give to others the less we have, but in fact, the opposite is true. Service to others and spiritual leadership in our community bring meaning and fulfillment to our lives in a way that wealth, power, possessions and self-focused pursuits cannot.

The idea that St. John’s should be a place of civic ministry, a beacon of God’s love and compassion in our mid-Hudson community, made me think about the book GOD'S POLITICS: WHY THE RIGHT GETS IT WRONG AND THE LEFT DOESN'T GET IT (HarperCollins, 2005), written by Jim Wallis, publisher of Sojourners magazine, God's Politics Blog, and a public theologian, preacher, speaker, activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life.

Wallis objects to the idea that any political institution, Conservative or Liberal, Right or Left, can claim to have a monopoly on representing God and His wishes. Instead, he evokes Jesus’ continual reminders, throughout the Bible, of our obligation to serve the Poor. In his book Wallis writes: I am always amazed at the debate about poverty, with one side citing the need for changes in personal behaviors and the other for better social programs, as if the two were mutually exclusive. Obviously, both personal and social responsibility are necessary for overcoming poverty. When this absurd bifurcation is offered by ideological partisans on either side, I am quickly convinced that both sides must never have lived or worked anywhere near poverty or poor people. That there are behaviors that further entrench and even cause poverty is indisputable, as is the undeniable power of systems and structures to institutionalize injustice and oppression. Together, personal and social responsibility creates the common good. Because we know these realities as religious facts, taught to us by our sacred Scriptures, religious communities can teach them to those still searching more for blame than solutions to pressing social problems.

Wallis goes on to say that: Recovering the faith of the biblical prophets and Jesus is not just about politics; it also shapes the way we live our personal and communal lives. How do we live a faith whose social manifestation is compassion and whose public expression is justice? And how do we raise our children by those values? That may be the most important battle of spiritual formation in our times… Our religious congregations are not meant to be social organizations that merely reflect the wider culture’s values, but dynamic countercultural communities whose purpose is to reshape both lives and societies.

We all know this from Jesus’ words in Matthew Chapter 25 – “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Or as James Forbes, the pastor of Riverside Church in New York City, put it, “Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor!”

I have a dream that one day my four little children...will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I've been reading Martin Luther King this morning. I have a great little book, edited by his wife, of his most significant sermons and speeches, and make a habit of reading excerpts from it on his birthday each year. This year it brought to mind the wonderful book by Jim Wallis, called "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get it." He writes passionately about the place of spirituality in the public discourse, and holds up Martin Luther King as a shining example, fighting for African Americans' civil rights "with a Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other." It is a book well worth reading.

Photo courtesy of Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford University.

Execution of Saddam Hussein

I am sorry. I do not believe that the State (any State) should be in the business of killing. No matter who he was, or what he did, we demean ourselves and our humanity when we kill out of vengeance and hate, calling it justice. He should have been locked in a solitary cell for life. Period.