Religious communities in the U.S. cannot sit idly by as the Trump administration persecutes immigrant families and cuts assistance programs to pay for it, said Bishop Dwayne Royster, executive director of Faith in Action.
Dwayne Royster
“We are truly living in unprecedented times and as people of faith, we are being called to expand how we view faith and more importantly, how we do faith,” Royster said during an interfaith prayer vigil and day of action for immigrants livestreamed from St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.
People of all religious traditions must act with intention and love to wage a prophetic resistance to the administration’s plans for the mass incarceration and deportation of immigrants, he said.
“It is no longer acceptable for us to sit in our pews and our pulpits and to think that somehow we are going to pray this thing away. We have to get up and stand up and be like the prophets of old, speaking truth to power and calling out the ways the powers and the principalities and the rulers of darkness are trying to destroy this world today. Over the next four years, it won’t be enough to pray.”
Action was the theme of the March 3 event. After discussion and prayer sessions at the church, Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Baptist, Jewish, Muslim, Bahaʼí and Buddhist leaders headed to Capitol Hill to urge members of Congress to vote against a proposal to cut $4.5 trillion from the U.S. budget, including billions from Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, education and child and family nutrition programs.
“It is no longer acceptable for us to sit in our pews and our pulpits and to think that somehow we are going to pray this thing away.”
Conservatives plan to use the savings to boost defense spending, decrease taxes on the rich and finance President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, including the expansion of Guantanamo Bay and other detention centers to house immigrants pending expulsion.
The Republican spending plan gives a whole new and much darker meaning to the the adage that budgets are moral documents, Royster said. “Cutting Medicaid and food assistance to build massive detention centers and to deport immigrants, and giving billionaires tax breaks, is immoral. How can we consider gutting the safety-net programs that provide access to health care and nutrition? It’s Robin Hood in reverse — stealing from the poor to give to the rich.”
But it’s not too late for faith groups to make a difference, he added. “We can disrupt those plans through our work of organizing and public education and advocacy. Once more people begin to understand more clearly what’s at stake, we will grow our capacity to mitigate the harm their plans will inflict.”
Jason Kimelman-Block
The Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants is in stark contradiction with the Bible’s demand they be treated with welcome and compassion, said Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, Washington director of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action.
“What’s happening right now, it is truly an abomination,” he said. “At least 36 times in the Torah you hear, ‘Do not oppress the stranger.’”
The repetition communicates the shared humanity of immigrants and their hosts, he said. “The basic idea is empathy, and we are seeing a serious lack of empathy in our society. We have an empathy deficit. And so, for those of us who recognize that, that means we have to make up for that deficit.”
Vashti McKenzie
Americans must not let despair prevent them from taking action on behalf of immigrants, said Vashti McKenzie, interim president and general secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.
“We are not helpless. The Bible says the weapons of our warfare are spiritual and they can pull down the strongholds of the enemy. The word of God reminds us, over and over again, how people used to pray before battle. … And early in the morning Jesus went apart to pray, and if Jesus understood about prayer, what about us?”
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