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VIEW FROM THE PEW
A church celebrity was coming to town, so we wandered into a pew down the ecumenical way to hear him. I just knew it would be fuel for a column because he had just sharply criticized the latest anti-immigrant policy spewed forth by our country’s executive branch.
“It is one more effort to pull the United States back from our leadership in addressing humanitarian crises,” said Bishop Michael Curry, head of the Episcopal Church in the United States, in response to the Sept. 17 announcement about lowering the annual limit for people allowed into the country as refugees. The decision to lower the ceiling from 45,000 to 30,000 people “flies in the face of our nation’s history of being a place of refuge to persecuted persons,” Bishop Curry said.
If you’re thinking that name sounds a bit familiar, you may have been among the billions who watched televised coverage of the British royal wedding a few months ago. Curry gave the homily at the invitation of Prince Harry and his American bride Meghan. The exuberant and charismatic style of the first African-American presiding bishop of the U.S. branch of the Anglican Church, talking about Jesus and love, was a counterpoint amid the pomp and celebrities and some awfully stuffy though well-dressed people in the Windsor Castle chapel pews.
His performance there led me to high expectations for Curry’s homily at a Sept. 27 eucharistic service at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, center of the Episcopal Church in Hawaii. It was a national conference of the Episcopal Asiamerica Ministries, with 250 attendees from several countries and ethnic groups. What better occasion for a message about welcoming immigrants?
Now, if you’ve gotten this far and are wondering why a religion writer doesn’t leave the issue of immigration to the political columnists, may I respectfully refer you to the Bible. Ponder Matthew’s account of Jesus preaching about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the sick and imprisoned, the punchline of which is “Whatever you did to one of the least of my brethren, you did it to me.” And “In so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.” And the real punchline is that how you respond is how you will be sorted out for heaven or hell. I’m sorry, that seems like a political “with us or against us” tweet, but it is in the Good Book.
This was a Protestant service, where they choose scriptural readings to match the occasion, so I anticipated hearing that passage from Matthew. Or maybe the Good Samaritan parable from Luke’s Gospel; you remember the plot, the stranger is your neighbor and you take care of him when he needs help.
Well I was right in anticipating a rousing and meaningful homily from the eloquent and entertaining former bishop of North Carolina, who has a long string of academic credentials and a history of engaging in social issues. But I was off the mark in expecting an activist on a pulpit. Curry bypassed the elevated ornate pulpit and spoke from the center aisle in the midst of the crowd, using the first reading from Isaiah for a message that I considered gentle, more pastor than activist.
The prophet talks about people going to the mountain to seek the Lord. “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”
Look to the Bible
Curry said that in modern times, people look to the United Nations to take on the role of arbitrator but “at the United Nations, they cut out the God part. What they need to do is look at the Bible” and interpret its poetic language into a practical goal of turning tools of war, including the technology used as weaponry, “to use to feed hungry folk.”
“When the Bible talks about people coming to the mountain, it refers to where heaven and earth come together. It’s talking about a better world, where justice prevails, where poverty is history, where there is room for everyone.
“Enemies can become friends when God’s law begins to rule. The Bible talks about the lion laying down with the lamb. In America, our version is the donkey and the elephant,” he said in a sole reference to politics that brought a wave of laughter from the crowd.
“I don’t think it’s an accident when Jesus is shown on a mountain. That’s where we hear his message that blessed are the poor, the persecuted … the peacemakers, his commandment to do onto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The chief pastor of the Episcopal Church told the packed house, including at least two of us Catholics: “Jesus told us to love one another. It’s not going to be more complicated than that. And while you’re at it, love yourself. Whatever island you live on, whatever country is yours, whatever your ancestry, you are loved by God.
“We are about the business of real evangelism. It is not about making a bigger church, real evangelism is about making a better world. Real evangelism is about what our slave ancestors were talking about when they sang that there is plenty good room in the flawless kingdom of God.”
The format of the evening service, with nine different languages used for readings, hymns and the prayers of the people by participants in the Asian-American conference, was affirmation of the immigration theme I had in mind. Being in a crowd of people from many different ethnic origins was likely rare for some of the conventioners, but it’s a blessing we who live in Hawaii experience every day and not just in church.
Christians of every stripe read and hear the same Scriptures and yet many are bigots, focused on differences of “other” people. I often daydream at events and church services. I imagine transporting someone — a lawmaker or judge who wields power to hurt, separate, damage people — into a crowd here. That Catholic Congress member, that Catholic judge, that Christian in the West Wing power structure, would they get themselves in perspective if they found themselves singing and praying in a typical Hawaii multi-ethnic crowd?
Of course Curry was not a lone voice about the curtailed admission of refugees who, by the way, are a small percentage of the total number of migrants entering the United States. According to the 2016 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 1.8 million legal immigrants came to this country that year, the latest record I could find. People given fast-tracked asylum because they faced threats in their homelands totaled 231,000 when the Refugee Act of 1980 was approved. The number has declined steadily.
President Barack Obama set the cap at 110,000 in his last year in office. President Donald Trump lowered the cap to 50,000 in his very first executive order a year later. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other faith groups reacted with alarm when the Trump administration further closed the door last month.
People with faces, names
“We are gravely concerned for the tens of thousands of extremely vulnerable refugees left behind by this decision,” said Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration. “This decision has very severe human consequences — people with faces, names, children and families are suffering and cannot safely or humanely remain where they are until war and persecution in their countries of origin get resolved. These people include at-risk women and children, frightened youth, the elderly, those whose lives are threatened because of their religion, ethnicity or race.”
Bishop Vasquez said that the refugees go through extensive vetting before being admitted and many have families already here, fit in and get jobs “to rebuild their lives, in turn contributing to the strength and richness of our society.
“God has blessed our country with bounty and precious liberty and so we have great capacity to welcome those in such desperate need, while ensuring our nation’s security. We urge the administration to move past this period of intensified scrutiny and skepticism of the U.S. refugee program, which serves as an international model.”
The American bishops, at their semiannual meeting in June, had already strongly criticized other elements of the government’s anti-immigration mode, including separation of children from parents at the U.S.-Mexico border and ending a program that protected from deportation the “dreamers,” undocumented young immigrants who were brought in as children.
Various bishops deemed the policies immoral, with at least one bishop deeming the denial of asylum to refugees a “right to life” issue as is abortion. Another bishop suggested imposing “canonical penalties,” such as withholding the sacrament of communion, for people involved in implementing the Trump policies.
Mainline Protestant denominations have chimed in with dismay at our closing doors to immigrants.
But, as one Washington Post reporter pointed out, it’s unclear how much effect the bishops have on the president whose faith advisory council is composed exclusively of evangelical Christians.
It was in June and September that we heard from American church leaders on immigration, a hot-button issue in various political campaigns around the country. Don’t expect there to be a refrain in the next few weeks. The reason is not about faith, mission, courage in speaking truth to power at election time. It is about money.
The tax code of the Internal Revenue Service prohibits participation or intervention in a political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate as a condition of maintaining federal income tax exemption. That is the reminder posted on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops online site.
Among the do’s and don’ts listed is advice that it is acceptable to: “address the moral and human dimensions of public issues. Share church teaching on human life, human rights and justice and peace. Apply Catholic values to legislation and public issues.” So I expect religious leaders of every persuasion to keep a low profile.
As a citizen and voter, I can natter and lobby all I want against politician perpetrators. I can rail at immoral and unethical actions and actors. But I’ll keep it civil here, just reminding us of these words of an American poet engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
As the grandchild of immigrants, I believe that vision of refuge and welcome is rooted in Jesus’ teaching and defines what has kept America great from its very beginning.
